Homeland (34 page)

‘The whole of London’s under siege, innit?’ The gravel-voiced man said this for effect, and got a ripple of wry laughter from the listeners. Encouraged by his success, he went
on, ‘And tell me what sort of herbert’s goin’ to chuck food up at my window when there’s a shortage on?’

This time the laughter was scattered and uncertain. Food was a worrying issue. The unprecedented series of blizzards had come hard on the heels of a national hauliers’ strike, and many
shop shelves remained ominously empty.

‘All right,’ Carol conceded quickly with a splayed hand. ‘Maybe people won’t manage to turn out in this, maybe we can’t expect them to. But we still got the police
at the door, we still got a corkin’ story for the newspapers. We just got to hold on till the press people get here.’

‘What’s the point?’ said the first woman.

‘The point,’ Carol said in a voice that rose dangerously, ‘is for the council to be shamed into givin’ us housing.’

‘The council’s not shown up this far, so they’re not likely to show up now, are they?’ growled the gravel-voiced man. ‘Not when they’ve got the police doing
their dirty work.’

‘Can’t hang about on the off chance,’ muttered the first woman. ‘It’s too blithering cold.’

‘Look, I’m not askin’ for all of you to stay on,’ Carol pleaded. ‘I know there’s some of you that’s got to get to work, needin’ to get the kids
hot food. I know that. But the rest of you – it’s just two days I’m askin’ for. That’s all.
Two days.
We’ve got a couple of stoves up on the first floor.
We’ve got some food.’ She forced her voice onto a lighter note. ‘And we’ll get some beer in to keep us warm.’

No one looked persuaded.

Carol threw out her hands in a final appeal. ‘Come on!’ she said cajolingly. ‘Where’s your fighting spirit?’

‘All gone, love.’

The mood had shifted. People were tired of arguing. There was a movement towards luggage and children, and the murmur of general conversation as people discussed their transport and
accommodation options.

Carol let out a tight breath and glanced towards Billy. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she declared dispiritedly. Then, registering his knapsack: ‘So, you’re off too, are
you?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘Well, there’s a surprise.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘You were never goin’ to be a stayer, were you? That was pretty bloody obvious from the start.’

‘Come off it, Carol. If I thought the newspapers were going to turn up I’d stick around, no question.’

‘And you think they won’t?’

‘Not while there’s a national crisis on.’

‘Well, that just goes to show how much you know, doesn’t it?’ she scoffed. ‘Because I had a reporter from the
Sketch
all lined up. Goin’ to do photographs,
the lot.’

Billy offered her a cigarette, which she refused impatiently. ‘The papers aren’t going to turn up unless there’s trouble, and the police aren’t going to let there be
trouble, are they? Not when they can get us out the easy way, just by sitting there and stopping food coming in.’

She glared at him because she knew it was the truth.

‘The only other thing the papers might come for is a bit of light relief. If the story was going to give people some laughs.’

‘
Laughs?
’

‘Yeah. Like at the beginning. Like with that siege at Regent’s Park.’

‘You think that was funny?’

‘You bet it was. It was the best value ever. Seeing the police and the government looking like total berks, held to ransom by a bunch of women and children sitting in the street. The lads
in my camp laughed their heads off. Everyone did. That’s what got the country on your side. The entertainment value. But now – well, people aren’t in the mood for fun and games,
are they? Not when they’re busy trying to keep body and soul together.’

‘I’ll have that fag after all,’ Carol declared, thrusting out her hand. She inhaled hard, and glowered at the noisy ragtag horde in front of her as though she’d gladly
swap them for a fully equipped guerrilla army. ‘All for nothing,’ she sighed.

Billy swung his knapsack onto his back. ‘Nah. Nothing’s ever for nothing. And it’s only one battle, isn’t it?’

He gave her a kiss on the cheek and, spotting Rosie nearby, purposefully avoided her stare and marched briskly across the hall to the door. His move stirred some other people into action: they
began to pick up their bags.

Stepping outside, Billy felt the full onslaught of the wind and the cold. The night’s snowfall was ankle deep. The policemen were stamping their feet and hugging their hands, but at the
sight of him they pulled their shoulders back and stood stock still.

As Billy approached, one of them bade him an ironical, ‘Morning, sir.’ Then, as he drew level: ‘I trust we are not intending to return.’

Billy paused. ‘Well, you’ll just have to hang around and find out, won’t you?’

Picking his way along the pavement, enjoying a small glow of satisfaction, Billy didn’t spot the tall figure in peaked cap and greatcoat until he was a few feet away. His first thought was
that the army had been called in to break up the squat, that things might turn nasty and he should stick around after all. But then he realised there were no lorries and no soldiers. The officer
was alone.

The tall figure moved towards him and said, ‘Excuse me, could you tell me what’s happening?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Well, I’ve rented a flat here, you see, and I was rather hoping to move my family in later this morning.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

‘You don’t think they’ll let me in?’

‘Not if you’re renting one of their flats.’

‘Oh.’ The logic clearly puzzled him. ‘Do you know how long they’re planning to stay?’

‘Couldn’t tell you.’

The officer hesitated. ‘Is the place all right inside? They haven’t done any damage, have they?’

‘
They
haven’t done anything,’ Billy said pointedly. ‘But I’d speak to the landlord, if I were you, about the pipes.’

Again, the officer wasn’t too quick off the mark. ‘The pipes?’

‘They’re frozen solid.’

‘Ahh.’ It was a heavy sigh of defeat. ‘Back to the drawing board, then.’

The dawn had brought a heavy metallic gloom. The wind was bitter, the coldest Billy had ever known. A flurry of needle-sharp flakes darted back and forth on the air, advancing
in sudden stabbing motions. The pavements were impassable, a deceptive combination of soft snow and sheet ice, so he walked down the tyre tracks in the middle of the road where the snow was crisp
and compacted. There was almost no traffic, just the occasional car moving at a crawl.

Until the snow arrived Billy had walked to work or ridden on a bus platform, but now he took the underground from St John’s Wood. The atmosphere in the tunnels was warm and dry, the blast
of the approaching train brought an illusion of fresh air, but it did little to quell his incipient panic. Once the doors shut behind him there was no escaping the press of bodies, the closeness of
the air, the damp cigarette-fuelled fug, and the cloying scent of women’s perfume. By the time he had changed trains and endured a crowded lift at Great Portland Street, his ears were
roaring, his lungs were tight, and he emerged onto the street ready to do violence to anyone who got in his way.

The local café, though hot and humid, held no fears for him. The door was never more than a step away and unlocked, while the stink of frying fat, the streaming windows, the slap of the
plates landing on the counter brought memories of the NAAFI canteens in which he’d whiled away the early years of his military service.

He ordered egg, bacon and sausage, to be told that the bacon was off. Yesterday it had been the eggs. He took a seat by the window and glanced at his neighbour’s newspaper. It was just
four pages long and full of doom and gloom. Carol was living in cloud cuckoo land if she thought that a story about twenty families trying to get a leg up the housing ladder was going to find space
anywhere near the headlines
Three Million Laid Off
.
Power to Be Cut to Homes.
The smaller headlines told of twenty-foot drifts blocking railway lines, of coal not getting through,
forcing five major plants to close in a single day. Worse, the government had ordered beer production to be halved, which seemed to Billy to be a crass error. You could ask people to put up with
almost anything, cold, even hunger, so long as they could get pissed at the end of the day.

At eight he reported to the showroom behind Warren Street to find it locked and no sign of life. The showroom was George Gibbon’s gesture to respectability. Beneath a sign that read
‘Gibbon Motors – Jaguar Cars by Appointment’ was a double garage fronted by glass-panelled concertina doors through which could be seen a 3.5-litre drop-head coupé in
racing green. The car was in mint condition, polished and gleaming, but for all its attractions it never quite sold. This was because George relied on it too heavily for his trips to the greyhound
tracks of London, the racecourses of southern England, and his weekend excursions with Mrs Gibbon, whose health benefited greatly from spins in the country. According to Dave the chief mechanic
this wasn’t the only reason it never sold. The failure of such a beautiful motor to shift even at a knockdown price was kept as proof for the tax inspector, should proof be needed, that trade
was truly dire, the worst ever.

Billy waited another twenty minutes until his feet and nose had lost all feeling, then picked his way over the ice ridges of the Euston Road, past a large bombsite blazing white with snow and
into the ice-locked streets to the west of Euston Station. The workshop was situated in a grimy mews, largely uninhabited, with at the far end a deep bomb crater fenced off by corrugated iron which
the kids had long since breached.

The workshop was poorly lit and poorly heated; he might have been stepping from one winter landscape into another. The only bright light came from the rabbit hutch of an office, where Fred the
bookkeeper sat behind a glass panel, bent over his desk, fag stuck to his lower lip, ashtray overflowing. His lugubrious gaze swivelled towards Billy and registered his arrival without
interest.

Parked in the paint bay was a Jag that hadn’t been there the day before, a maroon 2.5-litre saloon. Dave was nowhere in sight but he was clearly planning a respray because he’d
removed the registration plates and begun taping the chromework. Dave did all the resprays. Sometimes the job involved just a panel or two, but as often as not it was the whole works, sometimes on
cars with no more than a couple of scratches. That was the trouble with your average Jag owner, Dave explained proudly, a bloody sight more money than sense.

Billy donned his overalls and switched on the electric wall heater. Since the heater was mounted a good six feet up the wall most of the heat went into the roof, but the glowing bars gave a
passing illusion of warmth. Billy was fixing up an old SS2. The paintwork was patchy, the front offside wing dented, but the engine was shaping up well. He’d fitted a new head gasket and some
valves cannibalised from a wreck. After tweaking up the timing, he’d got the engine running sweetly the previous afternoon. He would be sorry to see the job finished, not least because George
had no more work for him.

He dropped down into the inspection well to remove the greenhouse heater he had left under the sump overnight and found himself standing in a recent oil spill. Swearing, he switched on the
inspection light and, examining the gearbox and sump plate in turn, discover a bolt with a faulty thread. He replaced it, then hunted through the workshop for some fresh oil. Finding only drums of
sump waste the colour and consistency of tar, he went over to the rabbit hutch and flung open the door, to be confronted by George Gibbon in characteristic pose, propping up the wall beside
Fred’s chair, his face partially obscured by a cloud of cigarette smoke.

George looked up with a benign expression. ‘Ah, Billy. Just the lad.’

To Fred’s left was a man Billy hadn’t seen before, dressed like George in a velvet-collared coat and trilby. With the briefest glance in Billy’s direction the man resumed his
scrutiny of Fred, who was counting a pile of notes or coupons, deftly flicking the corners with a rubber fingerstall.

‘I waited for you at the showroom,’ Billy said to George.

‘I was unavoidably detained due to forces beyond my control,’ said George, who was partial to a well-turned phrase. ‘Close the door, sport. It’s a bit nippy out
there.’

Normally Billy would have taken this as an instruction to make himself scarce but George was gesturing him inside with quick, scooping motions of his cigarette. Billy hesitated. He was never
comfortable being party to other men’s business. He could never shake off the suspicion that things would turn sour and that somehow or other he would be held to blame.

George’s beckoning motions became increasingly impatient. ‘Don’t hang about!’ he said with an exaggerated shiver. ‘It’s brass monkeys out there.’

Stepping inside, Billy was careful to keep his eyes off the desk. He didn’t want to see what Fred was counting, and, even more importantly, he didn’t want the others to witness him
seeing it. He looked directly at George and, when George talked to the other man, he crossed to the back wall, and stared intently at the jumble of notices and girlie calendars pinned there.

‘Thanks, Lennie.’ George was ushering the other man out of the office. At the door to the mews, they shook hands warmly, cracked some kind of joke, and gave each other a comradely
pat on the shoulder.

Marching back into the office, George said, ‘How you doing with the SS2, Billy?’

‘All right.’ Billy couldn’t bring himself to call George ‘guv’, so he didn’t call him anything. ‘Two more hours should do it.’

George lit another cigarette. Holding it between forefinger and thumb like a dart, he sucked in the smoke with a greedy rasp. He was fifty or so, with a large face, spread nose and pitted skin,
a taste for expensive suits with stripes and wide lapels, and a fondness for eau de cologne.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘’Cause I’ve got a punter for the silver saloon and I need you to take care of it.’