The Adventures Of Una Perrson Read online

  The room had a small fire in it, burning some sort of smokeless fuel. The fireplace was surrounded by a large fender which had brass and leather seats at either end. The woodwork was dark and highly polished. There were photographs on the walls and mantelpiece, books on the shelves set into alcoves on both sides of the fireplace. The room seemed to Una to be a self-conscious reproduction of a late-Victorian study. There were a couple of pieces of blue china on a sideboard opposite the fire. There were leather, high-backed armchairs. The room was lit by oil-lamps. There was a kettle on a stand over the fire. She could see neither fork, toast nor crumpets. Chapman took her coat and, in her long divided skirt, riding boots, leather shirt, she sat down in the chair he indicated, leaning forward to warm her hands. The kettle began to boil.

  Eunice Moon removed the kettle and made tea in a large earthenware pot. It's Earl Grey, I'm afraid. It's all we have.'

  'My favourite,' said Una. It was not, but she had always thought her preference for ordinary Indian popular brands of tea to be a bit vulgar.

  Eunice Moon poured the tea and handed her the cup, which was pink willow-pattern. There's no sugar or milk at the moment. And, of course, no lemon.'

  'I don't take them.' Another lie. This is just what I need.' She smiled at Miss Moon. The woman's voice was tragic; it seemed to contain the fragments of a different voice, one that had been animated.

  'And nothing to offer you to eat, until lunchtime,' Chapman said, standing to one side of the fire and accepting his own cup. Thanks, Eunice.'

  'Actually,' said Eunice Moon very shyly, as she pulled her cardigan about her, 'we were told that they might send some supplies down with you.'

  'They said nothing to me. I'm sorry.'

  'Oh, we can manage.' Chapman was cheerful. Unlike the woman he seemed to enjoy the actual inconveniences of the life they were leading. 'Normally there's fresh bread, you know. I go to Aylesbury, where there's a baker. I should have gone today. And we had some rich tea biscuits up until yesterday. I must remember to ask for some. I don't know where Mr Whiting gets them from, do you, Eunice? He's a wonder.'

  She nodded at him, pouring her own tea.

  'Actually, we take a bit of a risk,' Chapman continued. 'If it wasn't for the people's good will we'd be scotched, of course. But we give a good service in exchange for the little luxuries. They send their children to us for whatever education we can give them. There isn't a school in Aylesbury now. In a round about way that's how we came across the girl—through one of her friends saying something to Eunice.'

  'How did you get her here?' asked Una, for want of anything else to say.

  'Well, of course, that's why I sent to London for the gold. Not for myself. You hadn't heard?'

  'Gold? You're bribing her?'

  Even Eunice Moon smiled at this and Chapman laughed aloud. *Not her, Miss Persson. You must be unfamiliar with what's going on in these parts. I thought the same state of affairs existed in London—and Birmingham's notorious—or was. No, no. We bought the girl. It was the only way to get her. The farmer who had her wouldn't let her go. We couldn't make an enemy of him or bang would go our cover and our heads would be bound to roll.'

  'She was working for the farmer? A slave?'

  'In a manner of speaking.'

  Una wondered why the child had been purchased. Her dislike for Chapman had increased.

  'Wait till you see her,' chuckled Chapman, 'and you'll see why she was so expensive. I must say . . . ' Eunice Moon caught his eye and he became embarrassed. 'Sorry, Eunice.'

  'Of course,' began Miss Moon, 'she'll hardly . . . '

  'You'll have to think up some sort of story in London,' Chapman said. His cup clacked against his saucer. 'To cover what's been going on. Luckily, the farmer didn't know who she was.'

  'I can't think how she ever turned up in this part of the world.' Miss Moon shook her head. 'I'd heard that she had been killed with the other child, near Salisbury, wasn't it?'

  'Salisbury,' confirmed Chapman. 'There were certainly two children in the photographs, though badly burned. They were buried in the Cathedral, when the FKA were pushed back for a while. Then, of course, the Cathedral got a direct hit when the FKA recovered, so ... '

  'So there was no real proof, apart from those photographs,' said Eunice Moon. 'Anyway, I don't think there'll be much doubt about her identity. She was very reticent before she learned we were friends. After that, everything she said confirmed who she was. Physically, there's no question.'

  'She's nervous, naturally,' continued Chapman, placing his cup and saucer on the mantelpiece beside a photograph of himself in a black gown and mortar-board. 'But she knows she'll be safe as soon as you get her to London.'

  'And she's heard of you, which helps,' added Eunice Moon. She sighed and collected up the cups, putting them on a brass Chinese tray.

  The woman left with the tea things. Chapman sat down in the other chair. 'It's been a very nerve-racking time for her,' he explained. 'You can imagine.'

  'Quite,' said Una.

  'We didn't leave Oxford with everyone else and we managed, as it happened, to live quite well. It's isolated. Nobody takes an interest in the place. We get along. Eunice didn't want to be involved in this business and it seemed odd that I, with my political convictions, should be the one to discover the girl and decide to tell London. But there you are.' He sat back in the chair. I thought it was for the (good of the country. Anything's better than this sort of anarchy, isn't it? And your people should be able to control her.'

  'Oh, certainly.' Una was beginning to recover her memory. There ,were images, now, of the group in London, but they were unspecific. 'We'll be glad to have her off our hands.' Chapman grinned. His pale features seemed to stretch in abnormal lines. He waved his hands, his fingers spread. 'Still, a bit of excitement stops you getting stale, as I told Eunice.'

  'Yes,' said Una. She hoped that when she finally met the girl her amnesia would lift. It was the worst attack she had had for a long while, she thought. Carefully, she suppressed that particular line of contemplation.

  'There's some hope now, at any rate, of order being restored 'throughout the country, of Oxford being rebuilt, of proper university life beginning again. I suppose that's what I'm chiefly hoping for, to be frank. Call it self-interest.'

  Una could not resist a random and vicious question. 'You're not worried, then, about knowing the child's secret?'

  Chapman frowned. 'What do you mean?'

  'Well, I'm sure it isn't worth considering, but if you and Miss Moon are the only ones to know what was going on. With the farmer . . .' He was still puzzled. Perhaps she had misjudged the importance of what he had told her.

  'You don't think,' she continued, 'that there'll be an attempt to silence you both?'

  'Kill us, you mean?'

  'Or keep you locked up. There are, after all, medieval precedents. And we do seem to have returned to the conditions of the middle ages.'

  'Not in our thinking, surely?' He stroked his upper lip where once, she was sure, a moustache had grown. 'Not in our judgements?'

  She pretended to shrug off the problems she had herself raised. 'Some believe we've never really left the middle ages.' As she spoke, she received an inkling of the girl's identity or, at least, her political importance.

  He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. 'Well, I hope you inform London that it's certainly not in our interest to say anything.'

  'I will.' She affected a comforting tone. 'Of course I shall. They'll see that.'

  'It would be most unfair if ... '

  'Don't worry, Mr Chapman. Justice will triumph.'

  'All I want to see is Oxford restored. And the other great uni versities, too, of course. Cambridge, at any rate.'

  'If the population merits it,' she said.

  'Get the country running properly again and we'll soon have the population.' He seemed glad to return to what were obviously familiar opinions. 'A constitutional monarchy is better then the kind of fascism, whethe
r it's from left or right, that we've been experiencing. England could do worse than to start from scratch. Back to 1660. A genuine Restoration, in more senses than one.'

  Una's mirth was spontaneous. 'And you a Marxist!'

  'There's nothing really strange about it, if you accept that societies must experience certain stages in their development towards a state of true Socialism. You see, England's trouble is that she was the first nation to begin the experiment, just as she was the first nation to experience the industrial revolution—there are obvious disadvantages to being the first. You create a structure containing too many of the old factors and as a result you get far worse confusion than, say, in France or America—and they were confused enough.'

  'You're confusing me!' Una spoke good-naturedly. 'Don't bother to explain, Mr Chapman. It's hard enough for any of us, these days, to rationalize out instincts with our politics. Miltonian ideals are probably more suitable than Marxist ones, at this time.'

  'I'm perfectly serious,' he said.

  'I respect your opinions."

  'Can't you see what I'm getting at, though? We've got a fresh start, a new chance. Everything's broken down. We can rebuild it properly.'

  'If there are enough optimists of your persuasion we might.'

  'You think I'm foolish. You could be right. But being in London can also make you cynical, you know.'

  'I know.' She began to warm to him a little more. 'So can hiding in Oxford make you cynical. You could argue that. In more fundamental ways. You would have dismissed your own statements as being thoroughly reactionary a few years ago, wouldn't you?'

  'I'd argue now that we have to go back a bit before we can press on forward. It's a respectable argument.'

  'And a conservative one.'

  He shrugged. 'Circumstances shape one's political opinions. The circumstances are a bit different today from those of even two years ago. I welcomed the FKA at first. They had some good men, but most of those were killed in the early fighting, and the brutes that followed them were nothing less than bandits.'

  ‘Bandits often make the most successful revolutionaries. Certainly they are very good at preparing the way. Robin Hood, Pancho Villa, Makhno.'

  'Makhno was hardly a bandit.'

  ' "Trotsky" thought he was.'

  ‘He was simply naive. A martyr.'

  ‘You've made my point.'

  He accepted this with a stiff, ironical smile. 'All right. But you'd put Cornelius in the same category, would you?'

  She sighed.

  'Well?'

  'Cornelius?' She had been taken off-guard. The leader of the FKA?' A guess.

  'In actuality, for all he calls himself an advisor. Does he see himself as a responsible revolutionary, do you think?'

  'He's very complex.'

  'You knew him, didn't you?'

  'I've had some dealings with him, yes.'

  'I didn't mean to suggest. . .'

  'No, no. That's all right. I'd call him something of an agent provocateur, with few discernible goals—a renegade, if you like. That is, the goals are probably private, half-conscious. And yet his heart's often in the right place and certainly he's been known to support some unlikely and unfashionable causes for apparently excellent reasons.'

  'Well, as far as I'm concerned, he's a bandit—an assassin—and all you've done is describe a bandit, Miss Persson. Or would you prefer to dignify him with a more romantic title—soldier of fortune, perhaps?' He was becoming aggressive. Una brightened. 'God! Women will always fall for these flashy buccaneer-types!'

  'I wouldn't call him that. . . '

  'He works for himself,' Chapman went on, 'and not for any cause. That's a bandit.'

  'All right.' She had discussed the Cornelius brothers' motives too often for the subject to hold any interest, but she liked Chapman better when he rose to her baiting, so she continued: 'He's done a lot of good for a great many of the poor devils abandoned by their previous leaders.' She had no idea what this would mean to Chapman.

  'Really? You'd admit that he was entirely responsible for the Sack of Birmingham, wouldn't you?'

  'He never liked Birmingham.'

  'And Leicester? And Rugby? And Lincoln? Another cathedral . . .

  'He wasn't very fond of the Midlands at all.'

  'Eunice's mother died when they levelled Wolverhampton. There's no sanity in killing innocent old women or kids. You're not serious, Miss Persson!'

  Una wondered why Jerry always did take it out on Birmingham. It had to be personal.

  'I didn't say he was sane,' she said.

  'Just a disenchanted idealist?' Again the constipated grin. His irony.

  'Aren't we all that?'

  'Not me, Miss Persson. Not you, either, or you wouldn't be here.'

  'I suppose not. Sometimes I think, however, that Jerry Cornelius is the only one who isn't disenchanted. He manages to enjoy life, in a desperate sort of way.'

  'You could say the same for me,' said Chapman. 'And I've nobody's blood on my hands. Of course, I'm not exactly Douglas Fairbanks, either . . . '

  'It was you who made the remark about circumstances.' She was still being deliberately contentious.

  'Well,' said Chapman with satisfaction, 'it'll certainly put his nose out of joint when you get back to London with your charge.'

  Una was probably even more pleased by the thought than Chapman, but she said: 'He could win her over, perhaps, to his side.'

  'Or go over to hers, more likely.'

  'You wouldn't like that?'

  'It would make my efforts meaningless.'

  'Yes. I'm sorry, Mr Chapman.' She felt that she had probably gone too far. 'It is a factor, however, they'll have to consider in London. Little girls always liked Cornelius.'

  'I think this particular little girl has had enough of men, however charming.'

  'Exactly.' She had become alarmed by Chapman's change of colour. There were red, puffy blotches under his eyes.

  'I know you were only joking. Miss Persson. I'm a bit on edge. It's been a strain. And I was trying to do my duty.'

  'You've done it marvellously, Mr Chapman. Oxford will soon be a thriving university again. And I shouldn't be surprised if they don't make you Chancellor or something.'

  'Oh, all I want is the old life back.' The prospect attracted him, although he did not seem willing to admit it to himself. He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past twelve. ‘Time for lunch. Would you like a glass of Madeira? We've run out of sherry, I'm afraid.'

  'Madeira would be excellent.'

  'You don't mind if she—the girl—lunches with us?'

  'It would be a good idea to have a chat with her, to reassure her before I take her back to London.'

  'Quite.' He poured three glasses of Madeira, draining the bottle. 'Ah, well, that's that. Another link with civilization broken.' He brought her the drink, sipping his own. 'Enjoy it while you can, eh?'

  'Shouldn't we toast the future?' Half-mockingly Una raised her glass.

  'Or the Queen,' he said, joining in the joke. 'The future's been pretty thoroughly toasted, wouldn't you say?'

  She took his meaning.

  Eunice Moon entered. She had brought the girl. She was nine or ten years old, with a creamy skin, blonde hair to her shoulders, and wide blue eyes. Una could see why she had cost London so much gold. Una wondered if the farmer or Chapman had dressed her up in the green silk Alice in Wonderland dress with the white ankle socks and the patent leather shoes. Una began to rise. Chapman was already bowing, the glass still in his hand so that a little of the contents spilled. 'Your Majesty,' he said.

  Una could see that already the child was no stranger to power.

  FOURTEEN

  Innocents at home: in which the Cornelius family celebrates a reunion

  'Oo-er, look at 'er face!' Mrs Cornelius shrieked with excitement, 'Covered in pimples. And she's got a case o' dandrufft!' She fell back onto the off-white plastic upholstery of her new settee. 'Oh, Gawd!' Her cheeks glo
wed under their rouge; tears fell into her powder, like rain on the desert.

  'Well,' said Sammy patiently, 'is that good enough for ya?'

  'It'll do, honestly, Sammy,' said Catherine over her shoulder. She was arranging mixed nuts in two glass bowls on the tawny sideboard. The sideboard was also relatively new, in the "contemporary" style of the other furniture. Only her mother's armchair remained. Mrs Cornelius had refused to have it removed or recovered. Frank had brought her the furniture from the warehouse he was running. He was in the HP business. Everything was of light wood and imitation brass, white plastic; distemper dashes in three colours on the walls, jazzy red, brown, blue carpet. The spirit of the Festival of Britain recaptured in Blenheim Crescent. And here was Sammy with the TV he had hired for the week so they could watch the Coronation. The problem was that the portable aerial didn't give a very good picture, so he had added a length of cable and hung the whole thing out of the window. The picture was moderately better.

  'I'll 'ave to go up on the roof,' said Sammy. He plucked at his shirt, where it stuck under his arms. ‘I'll need an 'and, Jerry.'

  Jerry was trying to crack a nut with his teeth. He sat in his mum's old chair; there was a half-finished glass of pale ale on the arm beside his left hand. He wore a grey two-piece suit with narrow velvet-trimmed lapels and drainpipe trousers. His yellow paisley waistcoast was of satin. He had thick crepe-soled shoes on his feet; they were brown suede. When questioned about his appearance he would argue that he was ahead of his time.

  'What can I do?' Jerry remained seated.

  'I'll lower the cable down from the roof. All you 'ave to do is plug it in an' then tell me when the picture looks right. Okay?'

  'Okay.' Jerry abandoned the nut and jumped to his feet. Sammy disappeared through the door onto the landing and began to climb a ladder which went through the loft and up to the roof. Jerry opened the window and stuck his well-greased head out. 'Ready when you are, Sammo!'

  Catherine heard a catcall or two from the street, as if in response to her brother's shout.