And there standing at the pigeon-hole, with the faceless servant of the unemployed public behind it, her soul said aloud, “You are sweet!” only to come plummeting down as the face flashed into an amazed smile then blushed scarlet. Moreover, she thought, as she handed in the completed form, moreover I know he doesn’t work because he can’t work, it’s not in him. How can a child work? Now he has all of me and my body, he is waiting without knowing it for the box of bricks or the train set—
The fourth night, Gerry told her about his friend Bill.
“Quaint character. He was shot at as it happens. They got his C.O. so he opened up and knocked off half a dozen of them.”
“He really shot people?”
“So they slung him out! Imagine! What in hell do they think soldiers are for?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He said it was tops. Smasheroo. Stands to reason, doesn’t it? All those millions—wouldn’t be done if it wasn’t natural to do it. For God’s sake. Christ. I mean!”
“Oh you—yes, yes!”
“Bloody silly the whole thing.”
“This friend of yours, Bill—”
“He’s a bit thick mind you. But then you don’t want privates to go thinking, do you? Perfect other rank, I’d have said. End up in a red coat at Chelsea. And then they go and chuck him out!”
“But why?”
“Didn’t I tell you? He enjoyed it you see. He likes killing. The natural man. So they told him he didn’t ought not to have done it, as he put it. Said he supposed they thought he should have had tears in his fucking eyes. Pardon his French.”
“He sounds like Uncle Jim. Was he an Aussie?”
“British to the backbone.”
“Fun to meet him.”
“Well you will. He’s not a handsome chap like me, my sweet, but remember whose doggie you are.”
“I bite.”
So she did.
They met Bill in a pub. He had some money, only just enough for the three of them and he was vague about the source. He was much older than Gerry but treated him with awful respect and even called him “sir” once or twice, which made Sophy smile. He was physically rather like Gerry, but with less forehead and more jaw.
“Gerry’s told me about you.”
Bill sat very still. Gerry broke in.
“Nothing you’d mind old sport. That’s all over—”
“Of course he doesn’t mind, do you Bill?”
“She really all right sir, Gerry?”
“What’s it like, Bill?”
“What’s what like Miss, Sophy?”
“Killing people.”
There was a long silence. Gerry gave a sudden shudder then took a long drink without stopping. Bill surveyed her, stonily.
“They give us ammo.”
“Bullets, you’d call them, dear thing. Live rounds.”
“I mean—was it sort of led up to? Was everything arranged, so that when you did it, it was like finding a stone ready for throwing—kind of?”
“We was briefed.”
Now it was her turn to be silent for a while. What do I want to know? I want to know about pebbles and the hissing in the transistor and the running down, running down, endless running down!
“I’m sick of all the things they say. Pretending life is what it isn’t. I want—I want to know!”
“Nothing to know, dear thing. What is. Bed and board.”
“That’s right sir, Gerry. You got to look at the facts.”
“And what happens?”
“Bill. I think she means when you knock one off.”
Then there was more silence. Staring at him, Sophy saw a faint smile come in Bill’s face. The direction of his gaze altered. Slid over her body, came back till he glanced at her eyes again. Then he looked away. She knew, with a tiny prickle of the flesh, what was happening. She said the words inside her head. He fancies me! Oh how much he fancies me!
Bill was looking at Gerry.
“Tarts is all the same.”
He looked back at her with the faint smile of his awareness round the mouth.
“You squeeze, see? Pip! He falls down.”
“All fall down, dear thing. Nothing to it. Ringa ring.”
“Does it hurt? Does it take long? Is there any—is there much—”
The smile widened into one of more accurate comprehension.
“Not if it’s a neat shot, see? One wriggled. I give him another. Finee.”
“It’s a highly technical matter, Sophy dear. Don’t trouble your pretty head. Leave it to us splendid male beasts. Yours not to reason why.”
Bill was nodding and grinning into her face as if they understood each other. Oh how he fancies me; and no you don’t, she said to herself, not with a bargepole as they say, you dumb animal!
She looked away.
It soon became evident that the two men had not met merely to drink. After a certain amount of allusive talk, they stopped, with Bill looking at her again. Gerry patted her shoulder.
“Honeybunch. Wouldn’t we care to go and powder the little nose?”
“Powder your own, dear thing!”
“Haw,” said Bill with his best imitation of a debby voice. “Powdah your own. Sorry, miss. Sophy, I mean.”
But she went, for all that, because it didn’t much matter and she smelt a secret to be worked out later.
The next day Gerry said he had a date and he was very excited and shivering a bit. That was when she found out that he was on pills, tiny black things that could be hidden under a thumbnail or lost in a crack between two boards. He came back very late at night. He was white and exhausted and she made a joke of it, saying it must have been some bird, some bird he’d been with. But she knew what it was all about when he slipped a gun, real or model, back in the drawer. She had sex with him and ended in their single bed with his head on her naked breast. All the same, he was Gerry again next day and produced a wad of notes he said he’d won at the dogs, having forgotten, apparently, that she had seen the gun. So it all came out. He and Bill did a job now and then. They had a high old time for a day or two. Once they met Bill and his current girlfriend. She was a card, Daisy, a punk, six-inch heels, cheap trouser-suit, dead white face, dead black eye make-up, straw hair like a rick, plastered down on one side and sticking straight up on the other. It seemed to Sophy that one meeting was enough, but it turned out she had something to do with Gerry’s black pills.
Gerry took her to another party with no Daisy and no Bill, but some very odd types. It was a party in a real flat with several rooms. There was much music and chat and drink and they went just the two of them, as Gerry said Bill’s face wouldn’t fit. He meant her to be debby and straight because of the man he was contacting, but things went wrong in a very odd way. Somehow as the noise increased into a party roar some of the people began playing a silly game with a piece of paper with a blotch of ink on it. You had to say how many things it was like and some of the answers were wonderfully dirty and witty. But when Sophy had her turn she looked at the black shape in the middle of the paper and nothing happened at all. Then without any kind of intermission she found she was lying on the sofa and staring at the ceiling and there was no party roar and people were standing round and looking down at her. She got up on one elbow and saw the woman who was giving the party standing by the open door of the flat and talking to someone who was outside it.
“Nothing my dear Lois, nothing at all.”
“But that dreadful screaming and screaming!”
Gerry took her away, explaining that she had fainted from heat, and it was a day or two before she worked the whole thing out and knew why her throat was sore. But that night, after they had left the party, Gerry said they needed some calm. So the next evening they sat, drinking quietly in a pub, and watching the telly that was fastened high up in one corner. Indeed, Sophy, puzzling over the darkness inside her, began to find it a bit too quiet and suggested they should move on. But Gerry said to hang on
. He was watching the box intently and smiling.
“Christ!”
“What gives?”
“Fido! My old friend Fido!”
It was indoor athletics. A young man bulging with sinew and muscles was performing on the high rings. To Sophy he seemed like every other young competitor in the hall; but perhaps that was because he wore a face of such stern dedication.
“Fido! He was in with me—”
“Was?”
“Teacher now. PT. Some posh school or other. Wandicott.”
“I know Wandicott. Knew of Wandicott. It’s out our way, beyond Greenfield.”
“Oh good show, Fido! Splendid fellow! Dear God he’s sweating like the Sunday roast.”
“What do they do it for?”
“Showing off to their girls. Winning prizes. Getting promotion. Health, wealth, fame—show’s over.”
Sophy persuaded Gerry and Bill to let her help. Daisy didn’t come, didn’t want to come, it wasn’t her scene. They did three shops and came away with just over two hundred pounds. The risk seemed appalling to Sophy and she persuaded them to try Paki shops. It was certainly job-satisfaction for a bit. Pakis dwindled when Gerry pointed his fake gun at them. Sophy improved their technique by making Bill tell them that the organization would bomb the shop if there was any trouble. It was fun to see how the Pakis bundled money into the bag as if it was sweets or incense. They couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.
Sophy did some arithmetic with it, putting risk on one side of an equation and the money on the other. She talked to Gerry in bed.
“It’s no good, you know.”
He yawned in her ear.
“What isn’t?”
“Robbing the till.”
“Old soul! Have you got religion?”
“Too much chance of being caught.”
“One in a hundred.”
“And when you’ve done a hundred shops?”
There was a long pause.
“I mean—who’s got the money? The real money, I mean. The stuff to set you up for life, set you free, go where you like, do what you like—”
“Not banks my poppet. They’ve learnt too much. Advanced technology.”
“Arabs.”
She felt him shaking with laughter.
“Invasion is just not on. We’d need all three services. Good night, gorgeous.”
She put her lips close to his ear and giggled at the sheer outrage of her idea.
“Where do they send their children to school?”
This time the pause was even longer. Gerry broke it at last.
“Christ all bleeding mighty. As Bill would say. Christ!”
“Wandicott School, Gerry. Where your friend is. It’s stiff with them. Princes—the lot.”
“My God. You—you really are—”
“Your friend—what was it—Fido? Gerry—we could grab a boy and hide him and ask—we could ask a million, a billion and they’d pay it, they’d have to pay—they’d have to pay or we’d—Gerry kiss me right now yes feel me fuck me we’d have a prince in our power to bargain with and if that’s good more he’d be hidden and tied up and gagged and if oh if ah nothing nothing nothing on and on and on and on oh oh oh—”
So then there was another time of lying side by side, she with her arm across the chest of a Gerry who seemed wrecked and confused in the darkness. Then when he did breathe evenly she shook him—shook him hard.
“I wasn’t joking or pretending. It wasn’t just a thinking to come with. I mean it. Not this fiddling with shops! We might as well be stealing milk bottles!”
“It’s too much.”
“It isn’t too much for us, Gerry. It’s just enough for me. We’ll be caught if we go on doing shops because it’s small. But this—We need one big thing, a thing so monstrous no one would bother to defend against it—”
“It’s too much. And I want to kip.”
“I want to talk. I’m not going on with shops. That’s flat. If you want me, you’ll—We could be rich for life!”
“Never.”
“Look Gerry. At least we can go down and see what the school’s like. Meet your friend Fido. Get him in, perhaps. We could go and see how things are—”
“Not bloody likely.”
“We’ll drive down there and see what’s possible.”
“No we won’t.”
There was a long silence which she did not choose to break this time. Then when he was breathing evenly again, she spoke to herself, silently.
Oh yes we will, my sweet. You’ll see!
Chapter Eleven
They parked the car where the tree-covered track led up to the crest of the downs. They walked up and found that the old road along the top was deserted and windy. Clouds and bright sun succeeded each other, like takes in a film, across the rounded greennesses and indigo horizon. Nothing moved but the clouds. Even the sheep seemed to prefer motionlessness. A mile ahead of them the downs rose to a blunt top. The track led over the top then on, bump after bump away into the remote centre of the country. Sophy soon stopped.
“Wait a minute.”
He turned to her, grinning. He had plenty of colour and the hair was flopped over his forehead. She thought dizzily, as she got her breath back, that he had never been so beautiful.
“Not a natural walker are you, my beloved?”
“Your legs are longer.”
“Some people call this fun.”
“Not me. I wonder why they think so.”
“Beauties of nature. You are a beauty of nature and so—”
She twisted out of his arms.
“We’re doing a job! Can’t you keep your mind on it?”
They walked on, side by side, a country-visiting pair. Gerry pointed to the concrete stand at the top.
“That’s a base for triangulation.”
“I know.”
He looked at her in surprise. But unfolded the map.
“We spread this out on the plate and look round.”
“Why?”
“Sheer pleasure. Everybody does it.”
“Why?”
“Actually I am enjoying it quite a lot, you know. Takes me back to all that ‘Forward men!’ and so on.”
“What do we look round at?”
“We identify six counties.”
“Can we?”
“It’s always done. Great British tradition identifying counties. Never mind old thing, I won’t press it. Notice anything about the air?”
“Should I?”
“But they’ve written whole books about it!” And standing by the concrete pillar, his hair and the map fluttering, he began to sing, “‘Give to me the life I love, let the lave go by me—’”
From deep inside her she was shaken by a gust of sheer rage.
“For God’s sake Gerry! Don’t you know who—” She caught herself up and went on quickly. “I’m edgy. Can’t you see? You don’t know what it’s like to be—Sorry.”
“OK. Look, Sophy. This isn’t going to work, is it?”
“You said. You agreed.”
“A recce.”
They stared at each other across the pillar. It seemed to her that something, the air perhaps, was reminding him of other places and other people. He was firm and drawing back almost as if he might—escape.
The man in the van. My will is stronger than his.
“Gerry dear. We aren’t committed to anything. But we’ve spent three days on the job already. We know he uses the right of way and that we’ll meet him there by accident. We’ll make contact, that’s all. Argue later.”
He still stared at her from under his fluttering hair.
“One thing at a time.”
She moved round the pillar and squeezed his arm.
“Now then, map-reader. Where is it?”
“The right of way leads down from this place—see the dotted line? Down there is what you saw from the other side of the valley yesterday. He brings the boys up this dotted line towards us then turns to his le
ft and circles back. Healthy country run.”
“Just about right. Come on.”
The right of way led down at the side of a wire fence that seemed to stretch without a break into clumps of trees in the bottom of the valley. Sophy pointed to a huddle of grey roofs.
“That’s it.”
“Over there on the other side where the trees are is where we were yesterday.”
“And there they are!”
“Christ yes. Dead on time. And there he is. Tell him a mile off. Well. He is a mile off or near enough. Notice his high-stepping action? Come on.”
The boys were coming up from the hollow with its glimpsed leaden roofs. They were a string of bobbing red objects, small boys in some sort of red sports outfit, and a larger bit of red bounced up and down in pursuit of them. The whole string trotted up the hill and the patch of red behind it became a wiry young man in a scarlet tracksuit who ran with an exaggerated knees-up action and now and then shouted at the boys in front of him. Gerry and Sophy stopped and the boys ran past, looking at them and grinning. The young man stopped too and stared.
“Gerry!”
“Fido—we saw you on the box!”
The young man called Fido gave a bellow that halted the boys. He and Gerry slapped each other’s backs, punched ribs and exchanged badinage. Fido was introduced. Fido was, or had been, Lieutenant Masterman but pointed out at once that he answered to the name of Fido or Bow Wow or Doggie but Fido mostly.
“Even the boys,” he said triumphantly. “They all call me Fido.”
Though Fido was only of average height he was splendidly developed. He had less head than face and his features were weathered by exposure. Sophy knew, from what Gerry had said, that Fido’s chest had been expanded by weight-lifting, his legs by assiduity on the trampoline and his balance by hair-raising exploits on any rock face within reach. His hair was dark and curly, his forehead low and his manner imperceptive.
“Fido is a positively national athlete,” said Gerry, with what Sophy recognized as malice. “You’d never believe his snatch.”
“Snatch?”
“Weight-lifting. D’you know how much?”