‘I can’t imagine Mum in London, can you, John? You know —walking about and sleeping somewhere different from home. She’s too shy and quiet.’
‘She’s not all that shy,’ said John with heavy-hinting emphasis. He was thinking about his mother’s secret diary, which he was carrying about in the inside pocket of his bomber jacket.
‘She is shy. What about that time she won at bingo but she daren’t shout out?’
John said, ‘She’d been brought up not to shout in public. It wasn’t her fault, was it?’
‘But she sat there and let thirty-five pounds be added to the accumulator! All she had to do was shout “House!”.’
‘There’s more to Mum than you think,’ said John. ‘There’s more to her than meets the eye.’
‘You don’t think her and Gerald Fox were in love, do you?’
‘I know they weren’t.’
‘How would you know?’ Mary was infuriated by John’s smugness. John said: ‘Look, I’m not in the mood for arguing now or ever again, so let’s just not argue, eh?’
‘What, never?’
‘Yeah, I’m sick of it; it does my head in.’
‘But what if I’m right and you’re wrong, or you’re right and I’m . . .?’
‘Then just say something and I’ll do the same, agree? But let’s not argue. And …’
‘Yeah?’
‘You’ve got your gold chain in your mouth again. It drives me mad. Sorry, but it does.’
‘Oh! John?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m not doing your washing any more, or your ironing. Sorry, but I’m not.’
‘Fair enough.’
They were each amazed at how calmly the other took these remarks, and for the first time in their lives they almost liked each other and, for no reason they could explain at the time, they felt what it must be like to be grown-up.
They took their places on the periphery of the crowds waiting at the Arrivals barrier, and watched for Uncle Sid and Aunty Ruth to emerge from the Customs Hall. They both hoped that Sid was in a good mood and would be amenable to driving around London. You never knew with Sid; he was a very perplexing person.
39 Beautiful Children
There had been continual announcements on the airport public address system, and although I’d heard them I hadn’t listened to what they were saying. But now my ears strained to catch every word.
‘Will John Dakin please go to the Information Desk. John Dakin to the Information Desk.’
‘That’s my son’s name,’ I said to Dodo.
‘There must be thousands of John Dakins,’ she replied, but she looked apprehensive.
‘Where is the Information Desk? Where is it, Dodo?’
‘I’ll show you, but please, Jaffa, keep your distance; and don’t do anything silly, promise, darling?’
We left the cafeteria and looked over the balcony. The Information Desk was directly below us. My daughter Mary was standing at the desk looking worried. She was wearing her best coat and her fair hair was arranged in a new spiky style and appeared to be covered in a sticky substance.
I said, ‘What has she got on her pretty hair?’
‘Gel,’ said Dodo; then, ‘She’s astonishingly like the old you, isn’t she?’
As we watched, my golden-haired son walked through the crowd and tapped Mary on the shoulder. She turned round and they smiled at each other. They looked relieved.
‘If you go to them now you’ll end up in prison and you’ll break their hearts. Don’t go, Jaffa!’
I couldn’t take my eyes off my beautiful children.
‘Dodo, quickly, go and tell them I’m here … please, Dodo.’
Dodo walked slowly down the stairs and joined my children. It was a bizarre sight, one I had never expected to see; these people belonged in different compartments. Now Dodo was talking to them. They were looking around. They saw me. Dodo spoke sharply to them and they looked away at once. I strained towards my children. I wanted them so strongly that I felt weak and light-headed and had to stop myself making silly whimpering noises of desire.
John and Mary walked away, stiff and self-conscious; and Dodo rejoined me and said, ‘They are going to get into a black cab. It will drive around the airport perimeter once and then return to the cab rank and pick you up. Here’s your cab fare.’ She gave me a twenty-pound note. She looked sick with fear.
She said, ‘I never had a child, apart from Geoff. Now that he’s dead, I wish I had; though you’re never free again, are you? Am I right?’
I said that yes, she was right. Once you’ve had a child you’re never free.
Dodo asked if I was still interested in escaping. I said I didn’t know. A silence fell between us. Eventually I asked Dodo why the announcement had gone out asking John to report to the desk. ‘They lost each other in the crowd, then wandered around looking for each other. They’re here to meet Sidney — like you.’
40 Inspector Sly Gets His Man
Sidney had been at the buzzer again.
The stewardess hurried down the aisle and bent her Max Factored face over Sidney.
‘We’re delayed because of a technical fault, sir,’ she lied. ‘Please keep in your seat.’
‘But we’ve been on the ground for over an hour. What sort of technical fault?’
‘They know what they’re doing, Sid,’ said Ruth. This mild rebuke from Ruth surprised Sidney; it also frightened him. He remembered that Ruth had refused to have sex with him yesterday and that she had answered the telephone against his wishes. True, there had been no more evidence of Ruth’s insurgency — until now.
‘They obviously don‘t know what they’re doing, Ruth; somebody has cocked something up. I’m getting off this plane, now!’
‘Please sir, we’ve got our orders to let nobody off the plane.’ Sweat bubbled through the stewardess’s pancake foundation. A tendril of hair escaped from her chignon. She now looked human, like a real person, instead of a public relations cipher. A large, bulky man made his way, sideways on, down the narrow aisle. Inspector Sly was about to get his man. The stewardess pointed at Sidney, then stood aside to enable the law to take its course.
‘Sidney Lambert? I’m Detective Inspector Sly. Come with me please, and don’t ask why, or where or what for. I’m a busy man so let’s skip the details. Stand up now and come with me.’
Sidney said, ‘Why? Where? What for?’
Ruth said: ‘They know about the ring, Sid!’ Ruth took off her new gold and diamond ring and gave it to Inspector Sly, who turned it over in his hands, said, ‘Very nice’ and, to her surprise, gave it back.
‘It’s to do with Coventry then, is it?’ said Sidney, as he and Sly and several extraneous policemen tramped down the aluminium steps from the aeroplane.
‘Yes,’ said Sly. ‘I’m going to keep you in custody and squeeze your head now and again until you tell me where she’s hiding. I’ve got a short break due to me next week, bird-watching in Norfolk, and I want this ease wrapped up and nice and tidy before I pack my binoculars.’
Sidney shivered in his thin white clothes. After Portugal, England looked dull and washed out; the lousy weather was in one of its in-between moods: a bit cold, a bit wet, a bit misty, a bit depressing all round. As they walked across the tarmac Sidney looked at the shut-in English faces around him. ‘They’re all sexually repressed in England,’ thought Sidney, temporarily distancing himself from his compatriots.
‘What will happen to my wife?’ he asked Sly.
‘Dunno and don’t care, Sid, my boy. She’ll either go home to the Midlands or hang about here waiting for you, won’t she?’
‘All I can tell you is that Coventry is in London,’ said Sidney.
Sly asked: ‘Would that be Greater London, Mr Lambert, or the City of London? Perhaps you’d like to give me her address now? You needn’t bother with the postcode.’
When they got inside the airport terminal, Sidney searched for his cigarettes, then cursed the vanity that had res
ulted in him buying skin-tight trousers and shirts with no pockets. Sly noticed Sidney’s agitation.
‘Smoker are you, Mr Lambert?’
‘Yes, you got one?’
‘No, Mr Lambert, I am a member of ASH.’
Sly was very pleased. ‘Shouldn’t take long to break him down,’ he thought. ‘Couple of hours of nicotine withdrawal should do it.’
41 Coventry Says Goodbye
The taxi had circumnavigated the airport three times. ‘Round again, please,’ shouted Coventry.
‘Bleedin’ hell, I’m goin’ dizzy!’ moaned the driver.
‘Oh, stop whining and drive. You’re getting paid for it, aren’t you?’
She slammed the sliding window shut. The children were astonished at the authority in their mother’s voice. Where had it come from? A week ago she would have apologized to the driver for causing his vertiginous bout. Now, here she was involved in a clandestine meeting arranged by a mysterious, posh woman dressed entirely in black.
Coventry sat between the children, with an arm gripped tight round each of their shoulders. In ten minutes she had to return to the airport. She explained her dilemma to the children.
‘I promised Dodo I’d go back. I think she’s planning our escape route, to Wales.’
‘How long would you get in the nick — if you gave yourself up?’ asked Mary.
John answered, ‘I asked Dad. He reckons ‘bout four years; with time off for good behaviour.’
‘Mum would behave, wouldn’t you, Mum?’
Coventry kissed her daughter’s neck, but said, ‘I’d die in prison, Mary.’
‘You could carry on going to art classes in prison though, couldn’t you?’ blurted John.
‘You read my diary! Oh John, you didn’t, you didn’t read my diary?’
‘Sorry, Mum, but I didn’t want the law to find it.’
‘No, you’re right. You must think I’m mad.’
‘No I don’t,’ insisted John.
‘What diary?’ asked Mary.
‘Bradford Keynes thinks you’re a magic painter.’
‘Does he?’
‘Who’s Bradford Keynes?’ asked Mary.
‘He was a friend of mine,’ said Coventry, who had stopped being infatuated with Bradford on her second visit to the art classes at the Workers’ Educational Institute.
Mary was crying. ‘Mum, can we come with you to Wales or wherever you’re going?’
Coventry said, ‘You can’t miss school. You‘ve got to get your exams; and Dad needs you!’
John said, ‘What will we do without you?’
Coventry said, ‘You’ll grow up and then we’ll be together again somewhere.’
It was a dreadful moment for them all when the cab arrived back at the rank. After Coventry had paid the driver they clung together in a tight-knit family group, each one reluctant to let go of the other two.
Detective Sergeant Horsefield watched them with great sadness. He had been watching them since he’d heard the announcement calling for John Dakin. His own cab driver had been thrilled to be told to ‘follow that cab’. It was a cliché he had waited seventeen years to hear.
Horsefield should have approached Coventry immediately, arrested her and then sat back and waited for the congratulations, the admiring publicity and the inevitable promotion; but the longer he watched the little group, the more reluctant he became to break it up. He prayed to God for guidance and strength.
God advised him to leave the police force and apply to join the priesthood. So Horsefield turned his back on his career and went back to the Arrivals lounge, where he found Ruth Lambert sitting on a bench surrounded by luggage and broken Portuguese folk art plates. She looked exactly like the photograph he carried in his pocket. Small, anorexic build and snaggled teeth.
‘She must have something,’ thought Horsefield charitably, for he also had a photograph of Sidney’s dazzling features secreted about his person.
‘Mrs Ruth Lambert?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m a policeman [though not for long, not for bloody long!]. Your niece and nephew have come to meet you; they’re outside, near the cab rank. I’ll watch your luggage for you.’
42 Practicalities
Podger’s official car, containing Podger, Nicholas Cutbush and a Secret Service officer called Natasha Krantz, drove into a VIP entrance at the back of the airport and parked.
Podger was still distraught. Before the car arrived he had told his wife everything; about Jaffa, about his mistress, and about other marital and financial infidelities. Once he’d started he couldn’t stop. To his surprise his patrician wife had gone berserk and attacked him in his own bathtub. She had screamed and had hysterics and turned the shower attachment on and directed scalding water onto his unprotected genitals. With vicious malignity she had shouted, ‘Don’t expect me to stand by you and play the brave little woman and be photographed hand in hand with you walking on the lawn. There’s no way we’re going to pose for the press patting the sodding Labrador, you bastard! If this scandal breaks I shall sue for divorce. I’m not cut out for martyrdom! I will not do a Mary Archer!’
Podger had smeared Vaseline onto his sore pink genitals under his wife’s Medusa-like gaze. He wouldn’t have minded being turned to stone then and there. Anything was better than getting through the days that lay ahead. He had an appointment with the PM in the morning. They were to discuss law and order. His penis shrivelled at the thought.
With his companions Podger got out of the car and shuffled painfully along corridors, and then into a VIP ante-room where Dodo was waiting, as had previously been arranged.
‘What’s wrong, Podgie?’ said Dodo. ‘You look as though you’ve pooed your pants.’
Podger lowered his haunches into a chair with great circumspection. He wished that he had taken his genitalia to a doctor, but there had been no time and anyway wouldn’t the mutual embarrassment be even more painful than the scalds? The celebrity of his face seemed to make the ordinariness of his sexual organs harder to bear. Nicholas ordered the Security officer to cheek the room for listening devices and hidden cameras. Natasha Krantz appeared to do a thorough job, even to the extent of fetching step-ladders and unscrewing the recessed lighting in the ceiling. Nobody spoke until she said, “Sclean, sir.’
‘Now check my sister.’
Natasha set her face and frisked Dodo. ‘Clean, sir.’
‘Where’s your murdering friend?’ said Nicholas.
‘She’ll be here soon,’ replied Dodo. Then, ‘Have you brought everything I asked for, Nick?’
Natasha Krantz opened her brief-ease and took out bundles of money and various documents. Dodo opened her black bag and gave Ms Krantz the passport photographs and Ms Krantz began to change the official identities of Coventry and Dodo. Their new names were suited to their class and accents. Dodo became Miss Angela Stafford-Clark, birthplace: Leamington Spa; and Coventry was about to mutate into Ms Suzanne Lowe, birthplace: Nottingham.
43 Parting
It was Natasha Krantz who parted me from my children. ‘You must come now! Now! Say goodbye and come!’ She peeled their hands away from my waist and neck and, very sternly, said: ‘You did not see your mother tonight, did you?’ They shook their lovely blond heads.
‘And you did not see me?’ Again they shook their heads.
‘Now say goodbye to your mother; she must go.’ Splinters in the brain.
44 The Sun Rises in the East
‘Please don’t cry, Jaffa darling. I can’t bear it. Nicholas, give her your handkerchief’
‘It’s silk, it’s not meant to be used.’
Podger proffered his and I took it and covered my face in white linen. I could look nobody in the eye. I had turned my back on nature. I was an outcast, a pariah. Murder was a mere triviality compared to my most recent outrageous act. That of leaving my children.
Dodo forced something between my fingers, thin, hard, rectangular. I removed the handkerchief and saw a navy book.
I opened it and read my new name: Ms Suzanne Lowe, birthplace: Nottingham. The pages of Suzanne’s passport were stamped with visas to America and Australia and India.
‘Did you do the impossible, Podger?’ said Dodo. Podger indicated that Natasha Krantz would speak for him.
‘Yes, it was done.’ She handed Dodo some sheets of paper. Dodo looked at them and sighed.
‘Wonderful, thank you. When does it leave?’
Natasha said, ‘They owe us a favour, they have diverted a plane from Paris. You will be most unpopular with the other passengers. Now, where is the photo?’
Dodo gave Podger the polaroid photograph that had caused so much trouble. He tried to tear it in half, gave up and sat with it on his painful lap.
‘You have copies, of course,’ said Podger.
‘Of course,’ replied Dodo. ‘They’re in the post.’
‘You fucking little cow, you’ve ruined my marriage and probably my career.’ Podger’s eyes sparkled with angry tears. He put the photograph into an ashtray and set fire to it. We all watched as the image twisted and melted and eventually turned in on itself.
Dodo said: ‘Cheer up, Podger old love; you’ve still got the mistress and the bank balance, not to mention the English Establishment behind you. Things could be worse.’
‘We should have had them killed,’ burst out Nick. ‘None of us will sleep easy in our beds ever again.’
I know that I got on a bus and then a plane; and that I felt the plane accelerate, then rise, bank and turn towards the East. I remember looking out of the little window and seeing the airport lights in the far distance. Somewhere, down there, were my children, preparing to go home. And down there with them, now left behind, were Miss Coventry Lambert, my parents’ daughter; Mrs Derek Dakin, my husband’s wife; Margaret Dakin, my son’s invention; Lauren McSkye, Bradford Keynes’s student; and Jaffa, Dodo’s friend.