Red Crystal (6 page)

Some fears never faded. She drew a deep breath and went in. Her mother spotted her and, putting on her best hostess’s face, came bustling over. ‘Well!’ she said tightly. ‘Don’t you look splendid, Victoria dear. Just like a Red Indian, with that’ – she indicated the bright scarlet bandeau Victoria had tied round her head – ‘thing!
Very
exotic!’ She took Victoria’s arm and cast round a little desperately.

At the far side of the room Victoria could see Caroline and Henry in a group of five or six people. Before she could move towards them her mother gripped her arm and, pushing her firmly sideways, said hastily, ‘Come and talk to the brigadier for me, will you?’

The manoeuvre was too late; a brittle-faced woman was standing in front of them, waiting for an introduction. ‘Ah, Lady Ranfurleigh,’ Mrs Danby said with a nervous laugh, ‘have you met my
other
daughter?’ Then, retrieving the situation triumphantly: ‘She’s our
exotic
one, you know!’

Victoria thought: I’m going to scream.

Some drinks appeared. Victoria grabbed a gin and tonic and downed it in three. Lady Ranfurleigh was saying how colourful Victoria looked and how the young seemed to think they were the first young people ever to rebel, but of course that just wasn’t true. She herself had been a bit wild in her time and worn rather a daring frock to the Savoy.

Spotting her father nearby, Victoria mumbled an excuse and backed away. She stood, uncertain, in front of him and said, ‘Hello, Daddy.’

He smiled at her, blinking rapidly. ‘Hello, old thing. What a surprise.’

In a surge of affection she reached out and hugged him awkwardly.

‘I say, old girl. Well, well …’ Embarrassed, he pulled gently but hastily back and patted her arm. ‘You … er … keeping all right?’

‘Daddy, I – ’ She looked into his face and grasped at the essential kindness behind it. ‘Daddy, can I –
talk
to you later?’

A look of alarm came over his face, one she recognized well. She knew then that it was hopeless.

‘A bit overdrawn, are you, old thing? Eh? Need some new clothes? Well, don’t worry, I’ll look after it …’ He glanced away. Then, murmuring ‘There’s a good girl, there’s a good girl’, he was gone.

She stood still for a moment, working hard to make herself calm, then took another drink from a passing tray. It tasted good. She made her way round the edge of the room, head down to avoid strangers, and found herself in front of some canapés. She wolfed down half a dozen, then a few more, and felt better.

She found Caro and Henry still in a tight group. Someone was talking loudly about government policy on law and order and Henry was nodding vaguely, his eyes glazed with polite disinterest. Caroline was listening intently, her head inclined towards her neighbour. Victoria tugged at her sleeve.

Caroline turned and broke into a warm smile. ‘Tor! How lovely to see you. I was wondering where you were. Gosh, it’s been
so
long!’

As they talked Victoria was struck, as always, by Caroline’s calm assurance. She had a rock-like core of honesty and serenity. Integrity: that was what she had. Victoria thought admiringly: She’s everything I’m not.

Someone touched Victoria’s arm. It was Henry. ‘Well, well, how are
you
?’ He kissed her warmly on the cheek. Victoria was pleased and flattered. She’d only met Henry three times, and she’d been a bit frightened of him. Yet here he was greeting her like an old friend. She smiled at him and wondered why she hadn’t realized before how very nice he was.

He leant down and whispered conspiratorially, ‘Good thing for everybody that you’re here. You bring the average age in this room down at least thirty years.’

Victoria laughed and lurched to one side. She recovered, flushing with embarrassment. The gin had gone to her head. Henry looked politely away.

Lunch was interminable. On Victoria’s right was the old brigadier. His breath smelled of whisky and stale tobacco. ‘I say, rather like the garb!’ he kept saying, as he eyed her dress. ‘You a
flower
child, are you? Or a hippy? Never quite sure what the difference is meself. Tell me – d’you believe in all this make-love-not-war thing? I mean, it’s all very well, but people will never stop being
aggressive
, y’know. Take it from me! I was a soldier.’

Victoria took a second, larger, helping of chocolate mousse and washed it down with more white wine. Her elbow slipped off the table and she realized she’d drunk a little too much.

In a moment of self-honesty of which she was rather proud she thought: No, not a
little
too much, a
lot
too much.

‘What are you up to nowadays, Victoria?’ It was a young man sitting opposite, the son of a local landowner.

‘Setting up a collective farming project.’ It sounded wonderful, put like that, except that she seemed to be having trouble getting the words out in a nice tidy row.

‘Is that one of these
commune
things?’ chortled the brigadier. ‘Free love and all that? Gosh, all right if you can get it!’ He leered at Victoria.

The young man said loudly, ‘I knew a chap once who went potty and gave up everything to live in a sort of commune. Because the world had too many possessions or
something
. But really he wanted to opt out. Couldn’t face responsibility. He was nutty as a fruit cake, of course. Quite mad.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ hooted the brigadier. ‘Got the
free love
, didn’t he? Can’t have been that potty!’ He turned to Victoria and winked.

She stared, aghast. ‘You think that’s what it’s all about! You think we – do it for
that
!’ Her anger flowed out, white-hot and unsteady, a long passionate jumble of justification and explanation. Words mixed themselves up inexplicably, syllables jumped out of sequence, but she rushed on. ‘We try to
care
about each other which is more than anyone usually does.
Society
– is so selfish an’
money
-centred. An’ people pay
lip
service – about caring – but they
don’t
. Not
really
. And peace. We care about
peace
and we make an
effort
to stop war. Which is more than any of the governments do. An’ as for love – yes, sex if you like – it’s open an’ free an’
kind
. Better than being hidden away an’ joked ’bout an’
dirty
like
you
think it is …’

She suddenly became aware of her own voice unnaturally loud and ugly in her ears. Around her was an eerie silence.

At the far end of the long table there was a frozen, if blurred, tableau. Her mother’s face, appalled and reproachful. Lady Ranfurleigh’s, averted and embarrassed. And Henry, who was looking sympathetic and a little pained.

Victoria said under her breath, ‘Oh shit!’

Conversations started to pick up again and Victoria stared hard at her plate, thinking: I don’t care. And knowing perfectly well that she did.

After a few minutes she pushed back her chair and stumbled out of the room.

Caroline found her on her bed, crying miserably, and said quietly, ‘Oh,
Tor
.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Victoria said, with all the dignity she could muster. ‘I didn’t mean to be an embrass – ’ she took another shot at it ‘ – an embarr-
ass-ment
to you both.’

‘Oh, never mind about
that
. What about you? Is there something the matter?’

‘It’s just – they were laughing at my farm. They think it’s a joke. No one believes – or understands … No one’s really
interested
…’

‘But
I’m
interested, Tor. A
farm
? I’d love to hear about it. In fact’ – she paused slightly, as if making up her mind – ‘why don’t you come over in the week and tell me about it?’

Victoria eyed her uncertainly, trying to suppress the dizziness. ‘But – surely you’re busy. I mean – aren’t you?’

‘I’m usually free for lunch. And sometimes in the evenings too. Henry often has to dine out. It’d be fun.’ She patted Victoria’s hand. ‘Really.’

Victoria blinked and, gripping Caroline’s hand, said, ‘You know – you’re very kind. Did you know that? Always have been. V-e-r-y kind.’ She tried to bring Caroline back into focus, but without success. She shook her head and said in a small voice, ‘Oh, Caro. Why’s it all so difficult?’

T
HE BRITISH PEOPLE
had no idea how lucky they were.

Nick Ryder read the
Guardian
’s front page. He’d already gone through
The Times
and the
Telegraph
. There were serious riots in Paris, and the French had brought out the CRS riot police. The CRS weren’t known for their gentleness and consideration – they went straight in with batons and tear gas and walloped you on the head. No British easy-easy tactics there.

But Nick wanted to understand the nature of this trouble. It had been started by the students – but why?

At eleven he went out and bought
Le Monde
from the news-stand at Victoria station. His French wasn’t that good but he was able to get the gist of it. Three days ago, on the Friday, someone – either the Rector of Paris University or the Minister of Education – had called in the police to clear five hundred protesting students from a sit-in at the Sorbonne. By nightfall there were running battles all over the Latin Quarter. Hundreds had been wounded and almost six hundred arrested. The next day, Saturday, four students had been given two months in prison: unusually heavy sentences by any standards.

But what had caused the trouble in the first place? Nick ploughed through the editorials and after half an hour had the consensus of opinion. Gross overcrowding in the universities, childish old-fashioned rules, paternalistic overbearing university authorities … Yes, that would be enough to set most students off.

But was there more to it than that?

He called the DST in Paris, the French equivalent of a combined Special Branch and Security Service, and, after a long wait, spoke to the English-speaking liaison man, Claude Desport.

Nick began smoothly, ‘Just wondered if there was any information you needed? Any way we could help?’

Desport replied wearily that he would appreciate a watch on the ports. ‘We already have German, Italian and Dutch anarchists and Trotskyists,’ he explained. ‘You might as well let us know when your agitators are going to arrive.’

‘We’re keeping an eye out.’ Nick knew from Con-way, who’d been weekend duty officer, that the ports had been alerted to look for people on the political agitators list. Nick asked, ‘D’you expect this trouble to go on for some time then?’

‘Ah! Who can say? But I think – certainly.’

‘Is it organized then, Claude? Who’s behind it?’

Nick could almost see the Gallic shrug at the other end of the line. ‘Impossible to say at the moment. But I think our trouble is our own.’

The moment he rang off, Nick got out the list of political agitators. It included members of anarchist groups, extremists of every political shade, and agitators who could be expected to turn up at whatever event was likely to cause the most trouble – rent-a-mob. There were pacifists who went on Ban the Bomb and anti-Vietnam marches – a lot of well-known faces here: actresses, churchmen, writers – as well as the purely political extremists.

The list was very long. The ports could never be expected to pick up so many names.

He went through the list carefully. Who out of all these people was most likely to cause the French real trouble?

He picked out twenty names from active far-left groups and, telexing them to Dover, Folkestone and Heathrow, asked for a special watch to be kept for them.

It was all he could do. With a bit of luck one or two of them might turn up.

But would it mean anything? He had the unpleasant feeling that there were many more figures in the shadows. Figures that had no names.

The train seemed to have reached the outskirts of Paris at last. Gabriele tapped her fingers impatiently against the window. It had taken a couple of days to scrounge enough money for the trip and now it was Thursday and she was quite certain they were going to be too late for all the excitement.

She turned to Max. ‘Are we nearly there, d’you think?’

He didn’t answer, but stared morosely at the opposite seat. He’d been in a deep depression ever since Stephie had been arrested two months before. Gabriele sighed, ‘Come on, Max. This is
revolution
, for God’s sake.’

She knew what was eating him: the thought of Stephie in that remand centre, and his own guilt at not having been caught. But the trial was coming up soon and then Stephie would be out with a suspended sentence and they could all forget about it.

Except that Gabriele couldn’t forget. She still had terrifying nightmares. She dreamed that people came for her in the night and stripped off her clothes and took her into a brightly lit room full of cold watching eyes and left her there, naked and vulnerable … She woke from these dreams with an overwhelming sense of despair, as if she’d been defiled and raped. It was the kind of humiliation that never left you, even when your mind was occupied with other things; the kind of pain that made you shiver even after the memory of the incident itself had faded.