Flying Under Bridges (27 page)

‘Of
course! Bassey! I don’t think it’s a secret in this town that there’s
absolutely nothing I don’t know about Shirley Bassey. I can sing. I can be fun!
This
is
fun — I, a councillor and a security adviser by day, will sing
one of her songs at the musical revue!’

Going
to the Top

Let
every person be subject to the governing authorities …

(ROMANS
13.1)

As I waited to cross the
road to J. C. Bergman’s Estate Agents, a huge green truck thundered past. Adam
had helped to make the High Street into a one-way system to stop the big lorries
clogging up the road. Now they didn’t clog the place at all. They just killed
people on the way through. The truck had a massive advert painted on the side.
What
are you doing with your visit to planet Earth?
it blared at me as I stood
in my Etam raincoat. The correct answer apparently was sleeping well on a
Drift ‘n’ Dream mattress. It didn’t seem enough somehow.

Mr
Bergman was on the phone. Actually, he was on two phones at once, so I sat and
waited. He had a brass plaque on his desk with his name engraved on it — J. C.
Bergman. Funny initials for a Jewish person, I thought. Mr Bergman was very
Jewish. He wore a little black circle on the back of his head, held on with
hair grips. He was going bald and it was obviously becoming a daily problem to
find a good location for the grips. I wondered what completely bald Jewish men
did. Could you use Blu-Tack or maybe have a circle painted on? I knew what the
skull cap was for.

‘It
shows my constant devotion to God,’ he’d once told me. At least I think that
was Mr Bergman. I might have remembered it from
Fiddler on the Roof.

I didn’t
know anyone in town who was Mr Bergman’s friend. I don’t think it was because
he was Jewish, although I couldn’t think of anyone else in Edenford who went to
synagogue. There isn’t one for a start. I wondered if he thought of himself as
one of the ‘chosen people’. Funny of God to pick just one group like that. I
mean, it was just an accident that he belonged. Maybe when Mr Bergman looked at
me he didn’t think I was as good as him. This made me feel defensive. I could
have been Jewish if my mother had been Jewish. How bizarre to judge somebody
just because of whose legs they came out between. And it caused wars. All these
artificial divisions in humanity. Countries spending money on getting ready
for war instead of welfare and health. Tom had told me that, ‘Any religious
system built upon the justification of social inequality on the basis of birth
is an obstacle to civilisation and…’

I
realised Mr Bergman was looking at me.

‘So,
Mrs Marshall, you thinking of moving? Must be twenty years since I sold you
your house. Still, a change is good. I think about it myself. I too dream of new
horizons. I plan to move one day. Be with my family.’

I had
been sitting thinking too much. ‘Israel?’ Mr Bergman looked confused. ‘Sorry?’

‘You’re
thinking of moving to Israel?’

‘Why?’

‘To…
be with your people.’ ‘I come from Colchester.’

‘Right.’

We sat
for a moment, silenced by my stupidity.

‘I came
about the swimming baths. The old baths. Adam says they’re for sale.’

The
estate agent leaped to life. ‘Indeed, indeed. Indeed, I have details. Great
development potential, but not cheap, not cheap at all.’ Mr Bergman rummaged in
a filing cabinet and brought out a small sheaf of papers. ‘Yes, yes. Not cheap.’

‘How
not cheap?’

‘Half a
million and the council has to approve the intended use. You’d need the council
on your side.’

Half a
million! How could we raise half a million? But at least I did have the council
on my side. I’d had a councillor by my side for twenty-five years. It was the
least Adam could do for me.

I
stopped at the Crown for a quick sandwich and a tonic water. There was much
laughter going on in the back room.

‘Having
a party?’ I asked Jill, who runs the place.

She
raised her eyebrows disapprovingly. ‘Sounds like it. It’s supposed to be a men’s
meeting, but they’re certainly ordering more beer than most meetings.’

‘Men’s
meeting?’

Jill
nodded and pointed to a poster on the bar as she went off to serve coffee to
some old women.

The
Centurion Club

Men!
Are you tired of being pushed

around
by the modern world?

Come
and meet your fellow sufferers

Tuesday
lunchtimes at the Crown.

For
details contact John Antrobus 889675

The
door to the meeting room opened to allow a couple of men to get to the bar. The
room was full of smoke and laughter. I could just hear one man calling out, ‘Hey,
why did the pervert cross the road?’ and another answered, ‘Because he couldn’t
get his dick out of the chicken.’ There was wild laughter and in the doorway I
could just see Adam and William standing together.

I went
to the charity shop with renewed determination and the particulars on the pool.

‘It’s a
huge amount of money,’ they all exclaimed but we knew we could do it. Now the
fund-raising had to start in earnest.

‘Don’t
worry about the council,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to Adam. They won’t give
permission for anyone else to buy it if they know we’re trying to raise the money.’

‘Six
toilets!’ Emma was impressed, but then she does have a tendency to bladder
infections and worries about sanitary provisions.

‘The WI
did very well a few years ago with a nude calendar,’ said Helen.

‘I
thought it was in poor taste,’ sniffed Doris, who still smarted from being
overlooked as Miss March.

‘We
shall need masses of jumble,’ declared Mrs Hoddle. ‘And someone will have to
take charge of the official paperwork. I suppose that will be me.’ She sighed
bravely.

‘And
blankets! They’ll need blankets.’ Emma darted off into a corner to click with
brand new needles bought for the occasion.

There
was some discussion about us having a sale to get people’s attention but in the
end it was decided that might be a little odd for a charity shop. Things are
quite cheap anyway. We knew we could do it. The refugees were as good as saved.
They were as good as moved into the Edenford Swimming Baths.

I
wanted to talk to Adam straight away to get his support but he was away. Adam
had started doing occasional business trips for Stalwart Security. He always
brought me something back. If he had been on a plane it was usually something
from the in-flight magazine but sometimes it was things like a very nice basket
of coconut bathroom stuff from the Body Shop and the receipt so I could take it
back. And always some new device to safeguard the house. The prison people
would have done better to have left me at home. There were days when I could
hardly work out how to get to the garden.

His
security campaign had really caught everyone’s attention. There were demands
for better street lighting, curfews for teenagers, registered cabs for lone
female passengers. The posters were everywhere.

Don’t
let Eden Ford become a nightmare.

Vote
Marshall. Sleep safe at night.

Safety
First

But understand this, that
in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of
self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents,
ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce,
haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power
of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into
households and capture weak women…

(2
TIMOTHY 3.1-6)

A young policeman came to
the door when Adam was away.

‘Mrs
Marshall?’

‘Yes?’
I said through the security gate, which seemed to be on some kind of timer.

‘Constable
Carter. Your husband asked me to come round when we had the details on the bus
station mugging.’

‘Yes.’
I tried the gate again to no avail. ‘I’m afraid you can’t come in.’

He
nodded sagely. ‘I quite understand.’ The constable flicked through a notebook. ‘It
has been deduced that the perpetrator was one Dennis Harrison of Reading in
Berkshire. It seems he was travelling through with his girlfriend when they had
something of a domestic dispute.’

‘So it
wasn’t a mugging?’

‘Not as
such, no.’

‘And it
wasn’t someone from Edenford?’

Carter
looked at his notes again. ‘No. It was the Edenford bus depot but not an
Edenford citizen, as such that would be correct.’

There
was no mugging. Just some trouble with people passing through. It was nothing
to do with Edenford. John came round to get some more leaflets for Adam’s
campaign and I told him.

‘It was
nothing to do with Edenford.’

John
smiled at me and squeezed my hand. ‘Isn’t that marvellous, Eve?’

‘I
suppose. I mean, at least Adam can stop frightening everyone.’

John
shook his head. ‘I don’t think you understand the public service Adam is doing.
He is protecting the people.’

‘But
they don’t need protecting.’

‘No,
Eve, they won’t need it if they are already on their guard. It doesn’t matter
who mugged who. It happened in Edenford and we shall stop it happening again.’

I
watched him tapping bundles of leaflets on the table as he arranged everything
in neat piles. He had the most perfectly manicured nails I had ever seen on a
man.

‘You’re
running the men’s meetings, aren’t you?’

‘The
Centurion Club. It’s nothing. I did it for William actually.’

‘William?
My brother?’

‘Mmmm.
It’s been tough on him, this sperm thing. He needs to know it’s okay.’

Adam
came back from his business conference full of beans. I had really missed him
when he was away. I mean, we had been married a long time and it wasn’t
perfect, but I was used to having him there. A bit like a scrap of rough skin
on your hand that sometimes you wished wasn’t there but you touched all the
time anyway. I got Mother sorted and made a special dinner of steak and kidney
pie — homemade, not bought or anything. I think he was pleased to see me.

‘What a
great conference!’ he boomed as soon as he got out of the car. ‘Look what I got
you!’ Adam handed me a bumper sticker. ‘I thought we could put it on the
fridge.’ I looked at the bright red message.

Smiling
wins more friends than frowning!

‘Isn’t
that true, Eve, isn’t that just so true?’ He bounced in telling me how much
value he had got from learning that
Your attitude determines your altitude
and
Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.

He was
so busy conceiving, believing and achieving that he never even asked what I’d
been up to. Actually we had a lovely evening and there was even some hint that
we might head upstairs for an ‘early night’. It had been some time since Adam’s
‘injury’ and he hinted he might finally be ready for that ‘test run’, but then
we got into a bit of an argument. The conference had spent some time planning a
new ad for the Stalwart Security Home Alarm System and I’m afraid I didn’t like
it at all. The front cover showed a dark, shadowy figure of a man with the
words,

This
man might be a mugger,

This
man might be a burglar,

This
man might be a rapist.

Then
you opened it up and there was a picture of a smily face and the reassurance,

Or
he could be the man from Stalwart Security

with
your new home alarm.

Stalwart
Security
—

Keeping
You Safe as Houses

Adam
was thrilled. ‘Isn’t that great? I really think it says everything about the
need for this kind of product.’

‘I hate
it,’ I said quietly.

‘Don’t
be silly, darling, you don’t hate it. It’s exactly right. We spent two days on
that. You should have seen some of the brainstorming sessions. It’s perfect.
Everyone said so. We’re going to do a leaflet drop to every house in Edenford.’