The English Assassin Page 15

“Darling! I have defeated you again!”

  REMINISCENCE (E)

  In the early hours of a summer morning a cat kills a mouse in the kitchen, letting it run a little way and then stopping it again. Outside in the garden large black slugs crawl over the iron furniture. There is movement in the toolshed. There is a whisper from beyond the trees.

  LATE NEWS

  A crowd of about 200 attacked two Army scout cars and a Land Rover in Belfast last night after one of them ran over and killed a five-year-old girl. Cars, vans and lorries were set on fire and there were bursts of machine-gun fire which injured four young children. The girl was one of a crowd of children playing on the street corner. An Army spokesman said she jumped under the wheels of the leading scout car.

  Morning Star, 9 February, 1971

  A widow, her five children and an uncle died in a fire at a cottage in Pontypool yesterday. Firemen found the bodies of Mrs Patricia Evans, aged 34, Jacqueline, 13, Garry, 11, Joanne, eight, Martin, six, and Catherine, two, in a bedroom. On the stairs was the body of Mr John Edwards, aged 63, the uncle who came to rescue them.

  Guardian, 9 February, 1971

  George Lasky, aged four, was drowned when he fell into an ice-covered pond in a field at Slough yesterday. He had gone on the ice to pick up a ball.

  Guardian, 2 March, 1971

  Murder squad detectives set up headquarters in a holiday beach café in Cornwall yesterday after the badly-battered body of a 17-year-old high school girl had been found near the entrance to a cliff-top camp site.

  Guardian, 15 March, 1971

  A three-year-old boy was found dead in a disused refrigerator last night.

  Guardian, 29 June, 1971

  Lynn Andrews, aged 10, was stripped almost naked and punched and kicked to death while her mother looked on helpless, it was said in court at Woolwich yesterday. Raymond John Day (31), unemployed, was sent for trial charged with murdering the girl.

  Guardian, 30 June, 1971

  THE ALTERNATIVE APOCALYPSE 5

  Jerry Cornelius was in Sandakan when the news came of the resumption of hostilities. The news was brought by Dassim Shan, Jerry’s major-domo, while Jerry swam in the cool waters of the palace pool, all pink-and-blue marble and tinkling fountains.

  Rajah? Dassim, feet together, stood uncertainly on the edge of the pool, one hand against a jade pillar. Jerry was some distance out in the middle of the pool, hidden in the shade. Milky light filtered down from the semi-transparent dome in the roof. Dassim’s voice echoed a little.

  They are fighting again, Rajah.

  Oh? A splash.

  Does it not concern you, Rajah?

  Dassim peered into the water, searching every inch of it for his master, but he could see only goldfish.

  THE ALTERNATIVE APOCALYPSE 6

  Bishop Beesley, Mitzi Beesley, Shakey Mo Collier and Jerry Cornelius stood on the footbridge staring down at the railway as the train passed beneath their feet. Through the steam they could see the open trucks piled high with stiffening corpses. Dead troops.

  Jerry pushed his helmet back from his forehead and eased the strap of his pack. Well, he said, our luck’s still holding.

  The smell! Mitzi Beesley, dressed in a complete ARP uniform, circa 1943, held her nose.

  Her father sorted through his tin of emergency rations to see if there was any chocolate he’d overlooked. That’s not the half of it, he said. He wore khaki battledress with his dog-collar rather ostentatiously displayed at the throat.

  I remember a train like that when I was a kid, said Mo Collier nostalgically. On’y in that case the soldiers on it was alive.

  Same difference, said Mitzi with a wink. She rubbed busily at her blue flannel thigh as the last truck went under the bridge.

  Jerry looked at his left watch. Well, back to work. Not far to Grasmere now.

  They all climbed onto the lightweight Jungle Bug, with its motorbike saddle seats and its canvas windshield. Jerry settled himself in front of the driving gear and started the engine. For a moment the machine reared, its front wheels spinning, and then they were off down the narrow lane as a thin cloud of rain drifted from the fells to the west and the green hills turned suddenly black.

  We’ve never fully been able to reproduce World War Two conditions, Bishop Beesley yelled over the screech of the engine and the slap of the wind. I sometimes consider it a personal failure.

  Your moral dilemmas always resolve themselves sooner or later, Dad, Mitzi comforted. She reached over from where she sat alongside him on the pillion behind Jerry and straightened his M60 on his shoulder for him. Is that better?

  He nodded gratefully, munching a piece of Nut Crunch he had found in the breast-pocket of his battledress. They bounced on towards Grasmere and, as the rain passed, glimpsed the lake on the far side of a hill lying almost directly ahead of them. They had heard that what was left of an enemy division was hiding out in Wordsworth’s cottage. It was a long shot, but it was something to do.

  The road went through a pine wood and then bent along the eastern shore of the lake, leading directly into the town of Grasmere. The town was a ruin of looted gift shops and tea rooms. In one or two places they were forced to steer round small craters in the road. Elsewhere a sack had burst and been abandoned, leaving a litter of plaster Wordsworth busts, oven gloves and daffodil vases.

  They headed for the main road with its cracked and weed-grown concrete and at last sighted Dove Cottage and, a few doors away, another cottage that was the Wordsworth Museum. There were signs of fighting in the stone, half-timbered buildings. One or two cottages had been destroyed completely, but Dove Cottage, with its roses round the door, was intact. They climbed off the Jungle Bug and readied their weapons, approaching cautiously.

  Dove Cottage seemed deserted, but Jerry didn’t take any chances. He ordered Bishop Beesley forward. The bishop lay down behind a hedge and raked the windows. There was a musical tinkle as the glass broke. Bishop Beesley waited for a while and then stood up, munching a Mars bar.

  A Webley .45 sounded from an upstairs window and the bullet went past him, hitting the ground. He turned, his Mars bar half-raised, and darted an enquiring glance at Jerry, who shrugged.

  There was another shot. Bishop Beesley eased his bulk to the ground again, put a new clip in his M60 and fired at the window.

  When there was no further answering fire, the four of them spread out and approached the cottage. Jerry noticed that the plaque on the door reading ‘Wordsworth’s Cottage’ had been holed a few times by shells larger than Bishop Beesley’s. The door opened easily for the lock had already been blown off. They went in. An American teenage girl, with long black hair and a red mou-mou pulled up around her waist, lay on the polished timber floor. Her blood had dried on her face and her left hand was missing. Apart from the girl, the downstairs rooms, with their glass cabinets of Wordsworth and Lake Poets trophies, were empty. Pictures of Southey, Coleridge, De Quincey and the Lambs smiled down at them. Shakey Mo broke one of the cabinets with the butt of his Sten and lifted out an oddly shaped object of carved ivory. He squinted at the label. Look at this! De Quincey’s drug balance. Look at the size! What a head! He put the balance into the gamebag he had slung over one shoulder and rummaged through the rest of the cabinet’s contents. He found nothing else of interest. More glass broke in the next room and the three of them trooped in to see what Mitzi was doing. She had smashed the glass partition behind which had been arranged a typical sitting room of Wordsworth’s time. She had stripped off her ARP uniform and was draping herself in the dead poet’s clothes, his hat, his jacket, his shawl and one of his waistcoats. She held his umbrella in one hand. With her Remington tucked under her arm, she tried to open the umbrella. They all laughed as she paraded round the room pretending to read from one of Dorothy Wordsworth’s diaries.

  Jerry heard a footfall upstairs and raised his Schmidt Rubin 5.56 to rake the ceiling. The footfall stopped.

  I suppose we’d better get upstairs, said Shakey Mo. />
  Jerry led the way.

  The upstairs rooms were much the same as the downstairs rooms, with more cabinets and more trophies, some of which had been smashed by Bishop Beesley’s M60 bullets coming through the windows. In the front room sat a woman of about sixty. She was tall, dressed in a plain blue dress and her hair was grey. The empty Webley was still in her hand. She was evidently upset. There are guided tours, you know, she said. You only had to ask.

  Bishop Beesley grinned with relish as he advanced on her. I’m going to fuck the life out of you, he said.

  Jerry and the rest made a tactful retreat.

  Bishop Beesley joined them later in the Wordsworth Museum where Shakey Mo was inspecting an old shotgun labelled ‘Wordsworth’s Gun’.

  My God, said Beesley in disgust, even this place has a tinge of vitality. Bishop Beesley argued that since too much life had led to their present difficulties (overcrowding and so forth), then life meant death and was therefore evil. Therefore it was his duty to wipe out the evil by destroying life wherever he found it. He was a wizard at that sort of thing. Jerry had his eye on him.

  Are we all finished here? Jerry asked.

  They padded away, turning only to watch when Shakey Mo lobbed a couple of Mills bombs into the cottage and the museum.

  Damn! said Mitzi as the buildings went up. I left my uniform behind.

  She wrapped Wordsworth’s shawl more tightly around her, pursing her lips in rage as she tripped, on cuban heels, back to the Jungle Bug. Bishop Beesley, Shakey Mo and Jerry Cornelius took the opportunity to piss against a hedge; then the rain came on again.

  In improved spirits, they mounted the Bug and headed towards Rydal and the big green hills beyond.

  LATE NEWS

  Lt. William Calley, charged with massacring 102 South Vietnamese men, women and children at My Lai hamlet, testified at his court-martial at Fort Benning, California, yesterday, that the army taught him children were even more dangerous than adults. He was taught that “men and women were equally dangerous, and children, because of their unsuspectingness, were even more dangerous”. The army also taught him that men and women fought side by side and women for some reason were better shots. He was told that “children can be used in a multiple of facets. For example, give a child a hand grenade and he can throw it at an American unit. They were used for planting mines. Basically they were very dangerous”.

  Morning Star, 23 February, 1971

  Three boys died when a house caught fire in Cemetery Road, Telford, Salop. They were Keith William Troop, aged five, Peter John Green, aged three, and Matthew Percival Green, aged two. They were the sons of Mrs Joan Green, aged 22.

  Guardian, 3 May, 1971

  Mrs Valerie Ridyard, aged 25, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Darren, aged five months, Michael, aged three, and Barbara, aged four, on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Her pleas of not guilty to murder were accepted. The children died in separate incidents between October 1970 and January 1971. Mr Arthur Prescott, QC, prosecuting, said the facts were short and tragic. There had been a history of conduct by Mrs Ridyard resulting in illness to the children through partial suffocation and poisoning.

  Guardian, 10 June, 1971

  The West Indian immigrant parents of seven children admitted at Berkshire assizes, Reading, yesterday to killing one of their sons in a ritual sacrifice. Olton Goring (40), of Waylen Street, Reading, was committed to Broadmoor after the prosecution accepted his plea of not guilty to murdering the boy, Keith, aged 16, but guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. Goring’s wife, Eileen (44), pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was ordered to be sent for treatment in a mental hospital. It was said the Gorings were members of a Pentecostal mission in Reading—a revival sect widely supported in the West Indies. Followers believed themselves possessed by the Holy Spirit while in a trance and felt they were in direct communication with God.

  Guardian, 23 August, 1971

  A boy aged 14 will appear in court at Tamworth, Staffordshire, today in connection with the death of a man aged 19 whose body was found in a house on Saturday.

  Guardian, 23 August, 1971

  A girl aged 14 was charged on Saturday with the murder of Roisin McIlone, aged five, whose body was found beside an overgrown bridle path near her home in Brook Farm Walk, Celmsley Wood, near Birmingham. A blood-stained stick was found nearby.

  Guardian, 23 August, 1971

  REMINISCENCE (F)

  The black, burning warehouses of Newcastle.

  THE AIRSHIP

  During the First Night Dance on board the LS Light of Dresden, bound for India via Aden, Mrs Cornelius went out onto the semi-open observation deck to get some air. She felt a little queasy; it was her maiden trip on a Zeppelin, but she was determined to enjoy herself, come what may. All she had to do was clear her head and let herself get used to a feeling that was like being permanently in a slightly swaying descending lift that was also moving horizontally. She stood outside the big hall where the spotlights played beams of red, blue, yellow and green on the dancers. The band was called the Little Chocolate Dandies. Their saxophones wailing, they launched themselves into their next number, ‘Royal Garden Blues’. Mrs Cornelius wasn’t too sure she was that keen on jazz, after all. At present she felt like hearing something just a teeny bit more restful. But the only thing she could think of was ‘Rock-a-bye-baby’: in fact, she couldn’t get it out of her head. She looked down at the lights of Paris (she thought it was Paris) and imagined the drop. Though she had been assured that it was completely rigid and part of the main frame containing the helium bags, she was sure she could feel the catwalk swaying below her. The music from the dance floor now seemed much more friendly. She reeled back in again.

  Everyone was really jazzing it up tonight. She was nearly knocked down twice by couples as she moved towards the bar. She grinned. Ah, well! She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Are you perfectly well, dear lady?”

  It was that bishop she’d met earlier. She’d liked him from the start, with his nice, jolly fat face, though she hadn’t taken to his wife in the baggy pink evening dress, frizzy hair, with her thin, pale, nervous head constantly grinning in a way Mrs C. personally found offensive. If you asked Mrs C., the bishop’s wife fancied herself a bit. Lady Muck. The bishop, on the other hand, was a real gentleman, he could mix with anyone at any level. Mrs C. could go for him in a big way. She smiled to herself at the thought, wondering what it would be like with a bishop.

  “Quaite well, thank yew, bishop, love,” she said. “Jist gittin’ me air-legs, thet’s hall.”

  “Would you care to dance?”

  “Oh, charmed Ai’m shewer!” She put her left arm round his ample, black-clad waist and folded her dumpy right hand in his. They began to foxtrot. “Yore a lovely dancer, bishop.” She giggled. Over the bishop’s shoulder she saw his wife looking on, nodding to her with that same set, patronising smile, though you could tell she wasn’t pleased. Mrs C. defiantly pushed her bosom against the bishop’s chest. The bishop’s red lips smiled slightly and his little eyes twinkled. She knew he fancied her. She went all warm and funny inside as his hand tightened on her corset. What a turn up.

  “Are you travelling alone, Mrs Cornelius?”

  “Well, Ai’ve got me littel boy wiv me, but ’e’s no trouble. Got a cabin to ’imself.”

  “And—Mr Cornelius?”

  “Gorn, unforchunately.”

  “You mean?”

  “Quaite. RIP.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Well, it was a long time ago, you see.”

  “Aha.” The bishop looked upwards, towards the gigantic gasbags hidden behind the dance hall’s aluminium ceiling. “He’s in a happier state than we, all in all.”

  “Quaite.”

  Well, thought Mrs C., he’s not slow. Maybe he was the original bishop in the jokes, eh? Again she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Her queasiness had completely disappeared, to be repla
ced by that old feeling.

  “And how are you travelling? First class, I assume?”

  “Ai should fink so!” She roared with laughter. “No such luck, Ai’m afraid. It’s second class for me. It’s not cheap, the fare to Calcutta.”

  “I agree. I, too—that is to say my wife and I—am forced to travel second. But I must say I’ve no complaints, as yet, though it is only our first night aloft. We are in cabin 46…”

  “Oh, reahlly? Wot a coincidence. Ai’m in number 38. Just deown the passage from you. Mai littel boy’s in 30, sharin’ wiv a couple of other littel boys.”

  “You have a good relationship with your son?”

  “Oh, yes! ’E’s devoted!”

  “I envy you.”

  “Wot, me?”

  “I wish I had a good relationship with my—my sole relative. Mrs Beesley, I regret, is not the easiest woman with whom to be joined in holy matrimony.”

  “She seems a naice sort o’ woman, if a bit, you know, out of things, as you might say.”

  “She does not take pleasure, as I do, in making new friends. Normally I travel alone, and Mrs Beesley remains at the rectory, but she has a sister in Delhi and so she decided, this time, to accompany me.” Now the bishop’s stomach pressed against her stomach. It was so cosy, it made her legs feel like jelly.

  “P’raps she should rest more,” said Mrs C. “Ai mean she could take the chance to relax before we get to India, couldn’t she? It would probably do ’er good.” She hoped the bishop hadn’t noticed the rather savage delivery of that last sentence. He certainly seemed unaware of the change in her tone and only smiled vaguely. The music stopped and, reluctantly, they broke their embrace and clapped politely at the coloured men in tuxedos on the bandstand. One of the musicians stepped forward, his black hands running up and down the keys of his saxophone as he spoke.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to give you my own ‘That’s How I Feel Today’. Thank you.”