Remembrance Day, page 13
As they drew nearer, stirring up the sleepers, issuing commands, bringing men out into the corridor to be searched, apprehension seized Petrik. The package Jaroslav’s contact had thrust on him burned in his pocket. He was convinced it contained illegal foreign currency. Perhaps he might hide it under Ondrej’s blanket. Then she would be in trouble if it was found… And she might be in trouble anyway if they found drugs on her…
He turned back into the compartment and shook the girl. ‘Wake up, Ondrej. Customs officers are here. We’re at the frontier.’
‘Buzz off! I just want to sleep,’ she mumbled.
‘If they discover drugs on you, you’re in trouble.’
She sat up slowly and turned a pale face to him. ‘God, I was having such an awful dream. I need a coffee.’ She began to light a cigarette. He left her to it, stepping back to the doorway to look at what was happening. The officers were about to emerge from the neighbouring compartment.
It was a time for haste. Petrik acted.
‘Hold on to this for me till we’re through,’ he said to Driscoll. As he spoke, he pulled the package from his pocket and rammed it into the Irishman’s breast pocket under his raincoat. ‘They won’t search you. You’re Western. You’re safe.’
Driscoll had no time to argue had he wanted to. The three police appeared and confronted them both flashing torches. ‘Passports!’
When they had examined Driscoll’s passport and given him a hard look, they handed it back without comment and took no further interest in him. Petrik’s Czech passport was the signal for a brief interrogation and then a body search. He knew they would be looking for illegal currency. They found nothing. He hated the search and stood scowling at them as two of them went in to Ondrej.
The officers made a crude joke as they got Ondrej out of the bunk and searched her. Looking in her case, they laughed at what they found and threw it back at her. She blew smoke in their faces.
The old white-haired man in the lower bunk had got up and stood in one corner, hands clasped together, shuddering. The police took a long look at his passport. They flashed a torch in his face and asked a few brief questions, to which the man replied in heavily accented Czech.
‘Come on,’ they said. The old man was marched down to the other cop at the end of the corridor. Petrik and Driscoll stood motionless while this happened.
‘What a lot of fascists,’ Driscoll commented. ‘What a country!’
The searchers moved on down the train and into the next coach.
Ondrej stubbed out her cigarette and went back to sleep.
After twenty minutes of near-silence, the train began its serpentine movement, to clatter over further sets of points. Distantly ahead line after line of glittering lights appeared. The other world, the world of the West, the fabulous Amazon basin itself, was approaching.
‘They’ve gone now,’ Petrik said. ‘You can give me my money back.’
‘What money would that be?’ Driscoll demanded, looking him in the face.
‘The package. I knew you to be OK, I knew they do not search you, with your English passport. Thanks for you to keep it safe.’ He held out a hand.
‘Supposing I hold on to what you gave me?’
Driscoll put his right hand up to the region of his pocket, but made no further move, regarding Petrik steadily.
‘I shall have it back now,’ Petrik said, laughing nervously. ‘The police have departed. We’re in West Germany now. The West. Your West.’
The man travelling as Driscoll made his move. Putting the power of his shoulder behind the blow, he brought his right fist smashing against Petrik’s jaw. The latter fell to the floor without a sound.
‘Teach you to call me a fucking Englishman,’ Driscoll said.
Vacek was entertaining friends when his phone rang. He took the call standing in his bedroom, making no comment until his cousin had finished breaking the news.
‘Mm… Driscoll, or whatever his name is, is the opportunist I took him for… What a sheep you are, Petr… Is that green-eyed person still sticking with you? So you have some luck… Goodbye.’
He set the receiver down, unperturbed. The loss of his Deutschmarks meant little. And the IRA was pretty small beer. The Syrians were much more important to him: he would be meeting one of their representatives soon. In fact, when he visited London in just two weeks.
He turned to rejoin his party.
CHAPTER FOUR
Adopted
Autumn 1981
As a general rule, the great house seemed to sleep at night, in a natural conclusion to its heavy, drowsy aspect during the day. The only lights to be seen after dark would be the bright lights, burning late, from the rooms on the first floor which Dominic claimed as exclusively his, and the dimmer light from the room on the top floor at the rear, in which his wife, Fenella, increasingly spent her time.
The house presented to uncritical eyes a certain grandeur. Certainly it was big. Its front elevation was saddled with a number of bays and gables, the work of romantic Victorian restoration. An overhanging upper storey made the building appear to suffer from an everlasting headache. This forgery, inspired by the medieval fictions of Sir Walter Scott, was topped by mock-Tudor chimneys, twisting above the hunched roofs like old-fashioned sticks of barley sugar. A variety of aerials sprouted there, evidence of Dominic’s way of keeping in touch with the world.
The previous owner of the property — a complete thug in Dominic’s estimation — had turned the garden into a carpark and a crazy-golf course. That had gone. So had an inappropriate conservatory. An area inside the front walls provided a proper parking space, shielded from the house by a colonnade on which roses trailed. The rest of the space was down to lawn, set off by clumps of pampas grass and a goldfish pool. The odd job man kept the area in order. Dominic’s wife sometimes walked there.
To the rear of the house was an old stable-yard, inhabited by two active young mastiffs and surrounded by various torpid outbuildings. Here Dominic kept his cars. Here too stood a stable-block converted into living accommodation for the Bettses, the husband and wife who worked for Dominic and helped with the running of Shreding Green Manor.
If strangers ventured into the grounds of the manor after dark, its silence and its darkness terminated immediately. Powerful intruder lights came on. A warning siren sounded. The mastiffs began to rush along their wire runs in search of malefactors. At the touch of a switch, Dominic from his upper rooms could cause his amplified voice to sound alarmingly all over the area.
These precautions were considered necessary because Shreding Green was no longer the convenient distance from London its first Georgian owners had intended. London’s outskirts now lapped about its protective walls. The congested airport of Heathrow was no more than five miles distant. London was full of opportunists, thieves and villains, as Dominic knew. He made most of his money there, and from them.
On a Saturday evening in October, early in the eighties, the intruder precautions were lifted. The dogs were kennelled. The entire alarm system was switched off. The electronically operated gates were unlocked. The estate was awakened from its slumber. By six in the afternoon, music filled the house and spilled over into the grounds. Fountains played. Caterers’ vans appeared. A large marquee of blue and white stripes was erected in the paddock behind the stables. A live rock group arrived and began to set up its amplifiers. Dominic Mayor had decided to throw a party.
He stood in the paved hall of Shreding Green Manor, instructing four security guards hired for the evening. He showed them the signal he would give to indicate any gate-crasher at the party. They in turn explained how they generally worked. He then walked out with them to their van to inspect the two dogs, built like kodiak bears, which they had brought along.
‘I wouldn’t muck about with ’em if I was you, sir,’ one of the guards said.
‘I had no intention to do so,’ Dominic replied stiffly. ‘Keep them on a tight leash until they are necessary.’
He stood unmoving, watching to see them disperse about the property. Dominic Mayor was a small young man, neatly built, as if designed for a tailor’s window. He had a small brown beard, possibly intended to lend a pale, wistful face strength. He stood with feet close together, frail hands clutched behind his back, watching, quick to follow every movement.
He was already dressed for the evening, in a lightweight white suit, double-breasted and buttoned up. Beneath it, a crimson frilled shirt showed, open at the neck. White and crimson were his favourite colours.
He stood there, dainty hands behind him, surveying the mansion he had won for himself. This evening it would not be dark. All the lights would be on. Flags were out, large expensive flags, for Dominic would have nothing resembling the little plastic flags he had seen at village fetes; these were flags which lapped the grey masonry with rectangles of blue, yellow, and a rather sombre ox-blood. From the high fake tower flew the Union Jack.
As Dominic regarded this display with his usual expression, in which there was less satisfaction than a look of waiting alertly for a satisfactory verdict, a middle-aged man wearing an old dinner-jacket came smartly from the main portal, advanced towards Dominic at a half-run, and saluted as he halted before him.
‘All present and creck, sah,’ he said, giving a shadowy imitation of an imaginary sergeant-major.
Ignoring the play-acting, Dominic said, ‘Look, Arold, one little thing you could do. Mrs Mayor’s mother, Mrs Cameron, will arrive soon.’
‘Don’t worry, suh, I well recall the lady. She drives a Rover 2000 if I’m not mistaken. I’ll see to her, park the car, everythink.’
‘What I want you to do, Arold, is to see — well, that everything is made sufficiently easy for Mrs Cameron, yah? In particular, you tell me the moment she arrives. No irritation for her, understand?’
Arold Betts bent his left arm and raised his left hand in a gesture of denial, at the same time canting his head so sharply to the left that his protruding teeth grazed his fingertips. ‘Rely on me, Mr Mayor. Situation understood perfeck. A touchy lady, Mrs Cameron, Doris and I know it, having experienced the back of her hand, so to speak, more than once. That car has but to appear and you shall know.’
‘Perhaps you might park her car for her, Arold. The lady has a difficulty with reverse.’
‘Understood perfeck.’ He gave a conspiratorial wink and a nod, before turning smartly on his heel and marching off, head thrust forward, teeth leading.
Arold found his wife Doris in the kitchens, smoking a cigarette and looking on as the caterers unloaded food from their vans.
‘Ooh, it’s like olden times here, Arold,’ Doris Betts said. ‘A Tudor feast day, no less. Take a shufty at all this grub, and marvel.’
He was hastily pouring himself a glass of wine.
‘These are great days for us, Doris, and great days for England. If our lad could see us now, I imagine he’d be proud.’ He raised the glass in a silent toast to the great days, or possibly England, or possibly their lad, and drank appreciatively. ‘All the same, gel, with that woman Cameron coming it spells trouble. ‘E ’ates ’er. The dogs ’ates ’er. And I reckon ’er daughter do too.’
‘Well, I certainly do,’ said Doris indignantly, annoyed to be left off her husband’s list. ‘Rudest woman I ever come across. I know I’m an orphan and all that, but I don’t care to be treated like a lump of dog-dirt, thanks. Arold, dear, don’t get too tight tonight, for God’s sake.’
He shook his head at her, grinning. ‘A mere vassal, me, Doris, but not incapable of enjoying myself when the occasion arises.’
And he sipped more deeply at the wine. ‘Mayor wouldn’t grudge me a drop. That’s not like him. He may be a foreigner but he’s a gent, a lord…’
‘Don’t be daft. He’s no foreigner. He’s got a British passport.’
‘You know what I mean. Born foreign.’ As he spoke, his wife was turning away to polish up some glasses, which one of the hired staff was unloading. This man, who was dressed in a light blue uniform, asked if there was a ‘do’ on.
‘I’ll say there is,’ Arold replied, proudly. ‘Three ’undred and fifty guests expected on parade ’ere this evening. It’s like an entertainment of old, with lords and ladies. And the boss is only twenty-five and a bit. A youngster. That’s what I call success, on the grand scale, modern-style. Come from nowhere, now worth a million. See his car out in the garridge? That’s a Porsche Carrera Targa, with special interior fittings. Not another like it in the whole country. And he lets me drive it on occasions. That’s your new aristocracy for you, mate.’
He lifted his glass, negotiated it past his teeth, and drank again.
“Ere’s to ’im, says I.’
The subject of Arold Betts’s admiration had gone indoors. Before confronting his wife, he went into the library and took down from the shelves a leather volume with a title on the spine, Great Expectations. The volume was in reality a box disguised as a book. Inside was his supply of cocaine. Dominic crooked his left hand and poured himself a generous shot on the stretched skin between thumb and forefinger; this he snorted up both nostrils. He returned the book to its shelf. Then he went briskly to see Fenella Mayor.
Fenella had moved out of the Mayor’s communal bedroom a month earlier, following a quarrel. She now slept in one of the guest bedrooms, on the door of which Dominic knocked. After a pause, he heard her ask who it was.
‘It is me, Fenella. Who else?’
She unlocked the door, opened it a crack, and looked out at him. Her long anxious face lacked colour. She studied her husband without comment.
‘Well — may I come in, dear?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Oh, come on, dear, we are married, if you remember it.’
She opened the door further and stepped aside to let him into the room, still clutching the doorknob. She was a tall woman, an inch or two taller than Dominic, and eleven years older. A yellow chenille dressing-gown loosely draped her figure. Clothes were spread out on the double bed.
Dominic went to stand by the window. Rubbing his hands together, he put on a genial tone of voice. ‘Nearly ready, are you? Our guests will arrive soon. I want you to be down to greet them with me. Host and hostess. Will you wear that pretty dress you bought in Richmond yesterday?’
She continued to look at him without expression before speaking. ‘I don’t like you in my bedroom, that’s the trouble. I told you that all that sex thing is over between us until the quarrel is settled and you apologize.’
‘OK, fine, Fenella. No sex. I understand. I have apologized. I do again. This is different. It’s party time. I have come to see you are OK and have on a nice dress to meet people. It’s getting late.’
He glanced nervously at his watch before clasping his hands behind his back. He was aware that he spoke to her as if she were a child to be humoured. About that, Fenella rarely complained.
The room in which she had taken refuge suffocated him. His mother-in-law, Morna Cameron, had provided most of its furnishings from her estate in Scotland. The brass bedstead rattled as he paced back and forth at its foot. The dressing-table which stood to one side in the bay window was a relic of Victorian days, its frontage of little drawers bearing complex wood inlays. It was laden with lace mats, cut-glass pots with silver lids, and cut-glass trays.
Like sentinels on opposite sides of the room stood two matching wardrobes, one for a lady, one for a gentleman. Their austere mahogany fronts imposed silence on the room. The lady’s wardrobe stood open, to reveal a line of dresses, hanging there imprisoned and limp.
These relics from a British yesterday he did not share were not to Dominic’s taste. Nor was the tartan carpet underfoot.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Look at the time.’
Seeming to ignore him by not following his movements, Fenella merely stared ahead, in the direction of the window. ‘I don’t know all these people. Why are they coming? I didn’t ask them.’
‘We both sent out the invitations, if you remember. The pink invitations you selected in Harrod’s. The occasion is to celebrate the making of my first million. It’s a cause for celebration, Fenella, and the chairman of Schatzman’s Bank will be here. Josh Rund. You remember him. Put on your dress like a dear and let me see you in it.’
‘How are we to get three hundred people in here? I don’t want them coming upstairs. Besides, the reception rooms are filthy. I’m sure Arold never cleaned them as I instructed. He drinks too much, that’s Arold’s trouble.’ She gave a brief laugh. ‘I’d sack him but I know how you like him. What will the chairman think? You ask the chairman of a bank to a filthy house and you think that’s good for business? You don’t understand British ways, that’s half your trouble.’
He smiled, saying in a mollifying tone, ‘I don’t suppose anyone will notice a bit of dust. I guarantee the rooms were thoroughly cleaned. The important thing is to make everyone feel welcome, yah? Now, tell me you’re almost ready.’ Even to himself, his words sounded artificial; he could not force himself to be natural in her presence.
‘How can I do anything with you standing there talking? If only you’d leave me alone and stop bullying me, I could get on. The guests will soon be arriving. They don’t want to see me anyway. It’s you they’re interested in. It’s not my million.’
‘Correct. But it is our house. Our home.’ With a malicious smile, he added, ‘And of course you must be ready to receive your dear mother.’
She moved. She came closer to him and said, ‘Is my hair suitable? I didn’t like the way the man did it, and I told him so.’
‘It looks just lovely, dear. Put on those pearl earrings your mother gave you — don’t forget — and she’s certain to be pleased.’
