‘Yes, I heard you, sir.’
‘When I say right, I’m asking you a question; and a question needs an answer, right?’
‘Oh, right, sir, right.’
‘Right. What I’d like to do is arrest him on the plane.’.
‘Oh?’
‘Saw it done on a film once. Very effective. Spy it was, trying to defecate to the East.’
Horsefield laughed. He was pleased and also relieved at this proof that Sly had a sense of humour. However, Sly was not laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘To defecate to the East, sir.’
‘I’m not with you, Horsefield. Defecating to the East is a serious matter. Right?’
‘Right!’
Horsefield’s body imploded with suppressed laughter. Every orifice had to be slammed shut. Tight. Keep it in, Horsefield. To laugh now could cost you promotion, early retirement and a good pension.
‘So, Horsefield, I will go on the plane and you can wait at Arrivals in case that murdering bitch is daft enough to turn up with a bunch of daffs and a welcome home kiss. Be back in a bit. Percy needs pointing.’
Sly lumbered his way through the fragile café furniture towards the lavatory sign. Horsefield laughed and laughed and laughed. The laughing policeman and no need to put a penny in the slot, either. When he’d recovered himself Horsefield went to a telephone and phoned home. His small son answered the phone.
‘This is Matthew John James Horsefield speakin’ on the phone at the moment. Which person do you want to have a talk to?’
Horsefield laughed again at the thoroughness of the three-year-old’s telephone manner.
‘It’s Daddy.’
“Lo Dad, it’s Matthew John James Horsefield talkin’.’
‘Yes, I know; you said. Is Mummy there?’
‘No, she’s in the kitchen; there’s only me here.’
‘Can you go and fetch Mummy?’
‘Yes.’
Horsefield heard the receiver drop abruptly then heard it cracking against the wall as it swung loose on its cord. How many times had he told that kid not to …?
‘Darling?’
‘Darling, I just rang to tell you …’
‘Nothing wrong?’
‘No, Sly drove down, though!’
‘Oh, poor you. ‘‘What are you cooking?’
‘Green mashed potatoes and blue fish fingers.’
‘Oh.’
His little son had watched a cookery item on children’s television. Horsefield had gone out in his lunch break in the week and bought six bottles of food colouring. His wife had told him off and accused him of spoiling the boy.
‘I’ll have to go, Malcolm.’ Horsefield was touched, she rarely used his Christian name. ‘The stove’s on and …’
‘Let me say goodbye to Matthew.’
He heard his son’s feet clumping across the parquet of the hall floor. He guessed that he was still wearing his new winter boots, bought earlier that day.
“Bye Matthew, see you tomorrow. ‘‘Why?’
‘Because I’m far away, in London.’ ‘Why?’
‘Because I’m at work.’
‘Why?’
‘To get money to buy you new boots. That’s it. Matthew, don’t ask any more questions.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it drives me mad, you know it does. I’m going now. Tell Mummy I love her.’
‘Tell Mummy I love her,’ Matthew repeated.
‘No, tell Mummy I love her. Not you.’
His wife came back on the phone. ‘You’ve made him cry! What did you say?’
‘I only raised my voice!’
‘Malcolm!’
‘Oh Barbara, what am I doing here? I want to be there, at home.’ Sly was making manic faces through the plastic hood of the telephone booth. Horsefield whispered, ‘I love you,’ and put the phone down.
Mrs Horsefield was astonished at the urgency in her husband’s voice. She looked forward very much indeed to his homecoming.
34 Transition
It didn’t take long for me to become wildly excited by Gatwick Airport. It was the most romantic place I’d ever visited. At the end of the tunnels and walkways were jungles and deserts and ancient cities; there were possibilities. I asked Dodo how I could get a passport.
‘It would be difficult, but not impossibly so. Why, darling? Where do you want to go?’
‘Anywhere,’ I said. I wanted to leave the ground and pierce the sky, and disappear inside the clouds.
I’m forty and I’ve never flown in an aeroplane; never driven a car; never, as an adult, been to the theatre or been ice-skating; never played tennis or been to a night-club; never eaten Chinese food in a Chinese restaurant, worn pretty underwear or had a bank account or talked about sex, money and polities in mixed company. What is the Dow Jones Index. I admit, I don’t know. I’m an ignorant woman. How has this happened? When I was little I was considered clever; I won certificates for cycling proficiency, swimming and hurdling. And the books I used to read when I was sixteen! Adult books about important issues. Why did I stop reading the books?
It’s not Derek’s fault, it’s really not. It’s not Derek’s fault. And I’m not going to blame John and Mary either; it’s my own fault. I became timid and quiet and frightened of imposing myself Something has happened to me. Killing Gerald Fox has broken the spell. I’m ready to fly. I know this is hard on Gerald Fox.
Only one more plane is due from the Algarve this evening. Our plan is to stand back and wait for Sidney and Ruth to come through into the Arrivals lounge. We will then follow them at a distance. We will be heavily disguised and when we consider it safe, I will make myself known. I don’t know what will happen then. I want to ask Sidney to look after my children until I can send for them and look after them myself Again, I don’t know how Sidney will react. He pretends not to like children but I’m sure he must have a soft spot for my kids. They are so nice, I don’t see how anybody could dislike them. It is now over a week since I saw them and in that time not an hour has gone by that I haven’t thought about them. They are splinters in my brain. I will take them with me everywhere I go for the rest of my life. Only my own death will release me from them.
I haven’t missed Derek. But I feel very sad about leaving him to cope on his own and I hope he’ll find somebody to love him one day. A good listener, who likes tortoises and can do the foxtrot, would be ideal.
Dodo has been on the telephone to her brother for over twenty minutes. I don’t know what she’s saying; all I know is that she looks serious and insistent and she is doing most of the talking. I wish she would hurry; Sidney’s plane is due to land in thirty-five minutes.
35 Podger’s World Collapses
Podger was in the bath reading the News of the World when Nicholas Cutbush rang. His wife answered the phone and at first refused to put the call through to their en suite bathroom. ‘Honestly Nick, it’s the only time he gets to truly relax all week, I’m furious with you.’
Nicholas sounded hysterical as he said, ‘Unless I speak to him now he’ll be out on his arse and reading the Sits Vac by Tuesday morning.’ So she put him through and scrambled the phone, as she had scrambled the eggs earlier in the day.
‘Nick, what is it?’
‘My bloody sister’s got a photograph of you fondling the left breast of a fugitive murderess.’
‘Which fugitive murderess?’
‘For fuck’s sake, Podger, how many do you know? Jaffa! The dinner party. Caroline took your pie…’
‘Oh Jaffa. She did a murder? Christ!’
‘Christ indeed. Jaffa is Coventry Dakin.’
‘Who?’
‘Coventry Dakin, she smashed a bloke’s head in with a doll. It’s been on the front page of every …’
‘Nick, I’m finished.’
‘You’re not, not yet. Dodo wants two false passports. ‘‘ Right.’
‘And, of course, money.’
‘Of course.’
‘Today.’
‘But it’s Sunday afternoon.’
‘If she doesn’t get them today she sends the photo round to Paul Foot in a minicab.’
‘Mike’s nephew?’
‘Well it wouldn’t be Paul Foot, chiropodist, would it? Or Paul Foot, interior decorator? Yes, Paul Foot, investigative journalist, committed socialist.’
‘Oh God! Oh God! … Nick, this is in confidence. Herself the PM is announcing the date of the by-elections tomorrow.’
‘Oh lovely, marvellous, perfect timing.’ ‘Nick, shouldn’t I just resign?’
‘You’ve only been doing the job a bloody month, if that.’
‘But Profumo, Thorpe, Parkinson, Archer … We’ll never get away with …’
‘You utter, utter prat, Podger. If we lose those by-elections the money will flood out of the country and leave us up shit street.’
‘It was your wife who took my photograph. It’s all your fault. One assumes when one goes to dinner that one’s amongst friends or, at the very least, vetted strangers.’
‘OK, OK. Sorry Podge. Now calm down, calm down. Phone the Duty Officer and arrange the passports. You know Dodo and Jaffa: both forty-ish, no distinguishing marks, one dark, one redhead, both about five foot seven … they’re having their passport photos taken now.’
‘All right. Can I finish my bath now?’ ‘There’s something else, Podger.’ ‘Go on.’
‘You’ll say it’s impossible, but it has to be done.’
As Podger listened the bath water cooled around his belly and the scum rose to the surface.
36 I Face Myself
Dodo came off the phone and said: ‘Let’s have our photograph taken in one of those dinky little booths.’
I chose the blue background curtain, adjusted the winding stool and sat down and composed myself in front of the mirror. I wanted to appear serious, clever, happy, sad, sexy, detached, mysterious and kind; but when the sticky photographs spewed out of the machine I was disappointed.
‘What do you think?’ I asked Dodo, when she came back from wherever she’d been with a set of stationery and stamps.
‘You look pale, startled, and thoroughly forty,’ she said, putting the stamps on the envelopes. Dodo doesn’t mince her words, she grinds them into paste. ‘What you need, Jaffa dear, is a holiday.’
Dodo went into the booth and stayed in there until eight photographs had been taken. The first four were of Dodo, looking stern. The second four were of Dodo laughing and holding up the photograph of me and Podger.
‘Just for the record,’ she said, as she waved the second strip around in the air to dry.
‘What are you going to do with those?’ I asked.
‘Escape,’ she said. ‘And take you with me, if you want to come.’
‘Where are we escaping to?’ I asked.
‘Anywhere in the world,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the Welsh mountains.’ At the time I thought she was joking, or perhaps fantasizing. She took my photographs from me and put them inside her big leather shoulder-bag, saying, ‘They’ll be safer in here.’
I thought it a strange thing to do because Dodo knows that I am very careful with my possessions. I’ve never lost anything I didn’t want to lose. I’ve had the same front door key for nineteen years, whereas my precious daughter Mary has lost ten keys in four years. Oh my sweet, lovely Mary, I’m pining for you. How surprised you’d be to read these words. We were not an openly affectionate family. We stopped touching each other and swopping endearments long ago, and became embarrassed and awkward in each other’s company.
I’m so sorry this happened. Dearest Mary, I want you to stay on at school and have an education; it’s the only dignified way out of Grey Paths Council Estate. We are not lost to each other, Mary. We are bound by a cord far stronger than the umbilical one that was cut and tied on the day you were born to me. Dear Mary, don’t stoop and slouch, walk proudly with your shoulders back. And look around, don’t look away. And speak out clearly, don’t mumble. Don’t lie or dissemble, or only tell people what you think will please them. And don’t forget me, Mary. Remember that I loved you. Oh, and try very hard not to lose your front door key. And always, always, be kind.
Sidney’s plane has landed! Dodo, who knows about these things, says that it takes at least twenty minutes to get through Passport Control, Baggage Reclaim and Customs. So, to kill more time we spend more of the stolen money and buy sweaters, gloves, scarves, and woolly hats. Dodo says that we will need warm clothes, but won’t say why. I think we are escaping to the Welsh mountains after seeing Sidney. I hope so. Though I will look silly, not to mention conspicuous, climbing mountains in my leopard-skin coat.
My darling son went to Wales for a weekend when he was fourteen. The school organized it, but it was a business called ‘Mobile Adventure’ that actually took him and eight other children. They left our gently undulating county in a minibus and drove to wild Wales and walked a mountain ridge. My son still had his head in the clouds when he arrived home. I was pleased that he had seen other horizons. A young woman called Andrea had been responsible for him abseiling down a rock face.
Dear John, I hope that you will never forget that you once put your life in such safe, womanly hands.
37 Bradford Treads the Grey Paths
Bradford Keynes stood outside Number 13 Badger’s Copse Close, Grey Paths Estate. He now knew that Lauren McSkye was also Coventry Dakin and he loved her more than ever. He could hardly believe that such a gorgeous woman had spent the majority of her adult years in such an abysmal place, had been obliged to tread these rancid grey pavements and look out upon such a lustreless landscape. He was not surprised that such a passionate, full-blooded woman had resorted to murder. She was an enchantress and needed to live in a magical place, not this pettifogging collection of concrete and brick they called an estate. His artist’s eye was repelled by the T-squared design of the houses, with their skimpy front doors and meagre garden paths. He thought: ‘This is nothingness’ and he thanked a God he didn’t believe in for his own quirky inner city terrace with its corner shop and Lowry matchsticks walking by his front room window. He scorned the nonsensical pseudo-Georgian front door and windows of Lauren’s house.
‘She’s married to a parvenu,’ he thought and, fired by curiosity, he walked up the path and rang the bell.
‘If I Ruled the World’ chimed inside the house and Derek Dakin opened the door as far as the security chain would allow. Bradford had not expected anybody so old. This guy must be forty-five at least. He had prepared nothing to say.
‘Mr Dakin?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m a friend of your wife’s.’
‘I don’t know you.’
‘No. I did say I was a friend of your wife’s.’
‘But I know both of my wife’s friends. Are you sure you’ve got the right address?’
‘Your wife is a very talented artist.’
‘Yes, you’ve got the wrong house, young man. Now, if you wouldn’t mind …’
‘Could you give me something of hers? I’d like a keepsake, a token, something I can hold …’
Bradford’s bushy beard was poking through the chain length of the open door. He hadn’t meant to sound so subservient, but he couldn’t pull himself together at all. Oh the humiliation! He knew he would hate himself tomorrow. He’d read about love and how it reduced people to staging histrionic scenes but he couldn’t believe he was taking part in one himself. He’d learned, from reading Jung, that he was an introvert.
‘A handkerchief would do. Is there anything in the washing?’
‘No, go away. Take your foot and your beard out of my hallway.’
‘I love her, I love your wife and when I find her I’m going to take her away and keep her to myself!’ Bradford hadn’t known he was capable of shouting with such passion.
‘You’ll wait for her to come out of prison, will you?’ said Derek.
‘Why? Is she in prison?’
‘No,’ s
aid Derek. ‘But when she’s captured she will be.’
‘Then I’ll pitch a tent outside the prison gates.’
‘The authorities would never allow it. You’d be contravening several by-laws.’
‘I’ll hire a plane to fly over the prison. It will carry a banner: I LOVE YOU LAUREN MCSKYE. She’d look out of her little barred window and see it.’
‘Lauren McSkye?’ said Derek with relief. ‘I said you’d got the wrong address. My wife’s name is Dakin, Mrs Derek Dakin.’
Derek kicked Bradford’s foot out onto the doorstep and slammed the door, trapping the end of the madman’s straggling beard. Bradford screamed in pain but Derek did not dare risk opening the door and confronting the maniac again, so he hurried to the kitchen, found the scissors and passed them out through the letter-box to Bradford who was forced to trim his beard by four inches. Bradford posted the ginger hairs back through the letter-box but Derek didn’t want to be accused of theft, so he posted them back to Bradford. He had enough on his plate: the children had been told to be home by two-thirty, but there was no sign of them and it was now four-fifteen and their Sunday dinners were dehydrating in the oven.
Derek turned the gas down and went outside to his shed. He had his tortoises to prepare for hibernation. ‘Lucky little things,’ said Derek, stroking the waving prehistoric heads. ‘You’re well out of it.’
38 The Young Dakins Grow Up
The young Dakins got off the coach at Gatwick and hurried into the Arrivals hall. They had quarrelled throughout the journey. It was Mary’s idea to meet Uncle Sid and Aunty Ruth off the plane. ‘We’ll ask Uncle Sid to drive us round London, perhaps we’ll see Mum.’
‘Mary, do you know what the population of London is? We’re talking in millions.’
‘It’s worth a try though, isn’t it?’
‘S’pose so, but don’t get your hopes up. She’s not such a dibbo as to be standing about in Trafalgar Square or anywhere famous, is she?’