Sons and Daughters (7 page)

Saying goodnight to Rosie and Matthew, Emma and Jonathan went through the kitchen to the annexe, their living quarters, where little Jessie lay sound asleep. Their own home, off Denmark Hill in south-east London, was occupied by a young couple who were renting it on a year-by-year lease.

‘Is Emma expecting?’ asked Matthew. He and Rosie knew their business partners wanted a brother or sister for Jessie.

‘Not as far as I know,’ said Rosie.

‘Still no bun, then?’ said Matthew.

‘No conception.’ Rosie smiled. ‘Matthew Chapman, I object to bun.’

‘Noted,’ said Matthew. ‘Jonathan looks healthy enough, but I wonder, would a Guinness a day help him if we could feed him oysters as well?’

‘Phone the fishmonger tomorrow,’ said Rosie, ‘and if he can oblige, we’ll feed Jonathan a Guinness and some oysters with his lunch.’

‘Who’s serious?’ asked Matthew.

‘I am,’ said Rosie, ‘and so are you. And so is Emma, I’m sure.’

‘Oysters and Guinness for Emma too, then?’ said Matthew.

‘Don’t go over the top, Dorset man,’ said Rosie. ‘I’m still trying to come to terms with Grandpa’s promised knighthood.’

‘That,’ said Matthew, ‘would be way over the top in my book if it weren’t for the fact that my
wife’s the natural daughter of a baronet.’

‘I’m happy you’re able to live with it,’ smiled Rosie, and went a little pensive. Sir Charles Armitage, her natural father, had been killed at Tobruk during the Middle East campaign. Rosie had come to find him a completely likeable man, but had never been able to give him the kind of love she gave Boots.

Sometimes that love had had its dangerous moments. If no-one in the family had noticed, Polly had, and she experienced clear-cut relief when Rosie fell in love with her Dorset man, Matthew Chapman. Even then, Polly felt Matthew’s initial attraction for Rosie was due to the fact that he was not unlike Boots in his dry humour, his tolerance and his naturalness.

‘Penny for them, Rosie,’ said Matthew, interrupting her musings.

‘Oh, I’m thinking we must keep our promise to call on my grandparents one evening next week,’ said Rosie.

‘To congratulate them?’ said Matthew.

‘Well, we should, shouldn’t we?’ said Rosie.

‘Personally, I’d like to,’ said Matthew.

‘Personally, so would I,’ said Rosie, and Matthew put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.

‘You’re a sweet woman, Rosie,’ he said.

‘Thank ’ee, m’dear,’ said Rosie in West Country lingo.

Monday morning
.

Sammy and Jimmy were motoring north to Edmonton, and Paul was at the desk of his poky office in the Labour Party’s Walworth headquarters. His brow furrowed. It was no joke, it seriously wasn’t, being related to a title. Here he was, coming up to a man’s age of nineteen, secretary of the Young Socialists and a dynamic political career in front of him. But he could imagine some know-all heckler getting at him with a lot of heavy sarcasm about the titled toffs in his family, his grandparents. As it was, he already had problems on account of his Uncle Sammy being a bloated capitalist and his dad being a well-off one. Curses, there was something else too. Suppose someone who wanted his job as secretary found out that on top of his granddad getting a title, the father-in-law of Uncle Boots was General Sir Henry Simms? Working-class voters could sound off in shocking fashion about generals who were also titled toffs.

Paul, usually a brisk and bright young bloke, gloomed.

John Saunders, the local Member of Parliament, came in. There was a young lady with him.

‘Morning, Paul, enjoy your weekend? That’s something the Party never let up on, campaigning for the workers’ right to a five-and-a-half-day week. Now we’ve got a five-day week in mind, to give ’em a full weekend of freedom from their labours. And freedom from their sweatshops and their bosses, eh? Come to that, who needs the general run of bosses? I hear certain Cabinet ministers are prepared to back nationalization of private business and getting the workers to run their own factories, but of course we can’t do that sort of thing overnight, eh? We’ve done welfare, the health service and the mines, but the PM’s treading water on other matters until after the recess. Bevan’s rumbling and growling, of course. But you’d expect that of a man who embraced the compassion of the Labour Party from the day he was born. All that’s given you something for some new leaflets, eh? Well now.’ The MP, having automatically delivered a speech, made way for the young lady. ‘Here’s my daughter Lulu, your new assistant.’

‘Pardon?’ said Paul.

‘As arranged,’ said the MP, burly figure attired in a smart suit. He wore his cap and scarf only when meeting the workers during electioneering. ‘Wake up, brother.’

‘Oh, yes, right,’ said Paul, remembering that his previous assistant had been upgraded to the post of secretary to the local constituency’s agent. He looked up at the MP’s daughter, dressed in long-skirted mauve. His notes told him she was eighteen. She looked twenty and a bit more. Her black glossy hair, parted down the middle, hung like straight curtains on either side of her face, and between the curtains dark eyes regarded him through the lenses of horn-rimmed spectacles. She wasn’t bad-looking, she had a wide firm mouth and an unblemished skin, but against that, she also had the paleness of a student given to earnest study all day and half the night. ‘Hello,’ he said, rising to shake her hand, ‘I’m Paul Adams, secretary of our group.’

‘Yes, good-oh,’ she said. ‘Lulu Saunders. Miss. Pleased to meet you. Trust we’ll get along. Can’t always tell. Not at first sight. Still, here’s hoping.’ Her speech was clipped and staccato, putting Paul in mind of Mr Jingle making his mark in Dickens’s novel
Pickwick Papers
.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ said the MP, and ducked out, looking so happy to escape that Paul suspected the daughter made him nervous.

‘Fill me in,’ she said.

‘For a start,’ said Paul informatively, ‘our chief work here is recruiting and propaganda.’

‘Know that, don’t I?’ said the earnest young lady. ‘Good at it, are you?’

Paul blinked.

‘Good at it?’ he said.

‘No worries if you’re not,’ said Miss Saunders, ‘I’m brilliant.’

‘References?’ said Paul.

‘What?’

‘References to confirm your brilliance,’ said Paul.

‘Give over. My father’s my reference. Honest John. Not many like him in Parliament. But he’ll never make Prime Minister. Not the right kind of brain. If he had mine, he’d stand a chance.’

‘How’d you come by all that modesty?’ asked Paul.

‘Modesty?’ Miss Saunders looked sorry for him. ‘Can’t afford modesty. That’s for shrinking violets. Gave all that bunk the heave-ho when I was nine. Knew by then life was a curse for shrinking violets. Earned myself a good education. Now I’ve got my foot on the ladder.’

‘Tell me more,’ said Paul.

‘Nothing to tell. Apart from making a decision.’

‘What decision?’ asked Paul.

‘Going to be a Member of Parliament by the time I’m thirty,’ said Miss Saunders.

‘Is that a fact?’

‘A promise. Where do I sit?’

‘Over there.’ Paul indicated a desk opposite his own. There was a chair and a typewriter.

‘Crummy,’ said Miss Saunders. ‘Listen, Adams. Let’s understand each other. I do what’s required of me, but I don’t take orders.’

‘Listen, Saunders,’ said Paul, ‘you’ll do what’s required and you’ll take orders.’

‘How old are you, bossy boots?’ asked Miss Saunders.

‘Fifty.’

‘What’s your real name, then? Peter Pan?’

‘How would you like to be fired before you start?’ asked Paul, thinking her name suited her. She was a Lulu all right, full stop.

‘That’s it, make me laugh,’ she said. ‘Suppose we get down to biz? Don’t like wasting time. What’s the schedule?’

‘Delivery of leaflets,’ said Paul. There was a large parcel on his desk, brown wrapping paper ripped open. ‘Five hundred. They came to us from the printers Saturday morning. See that satchel?’

Miss Saunders saw it, hanging on the door peg.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘You carry the leaflets in that,’ said Paul, ‘and you spend the day knocking on doors, talking to tenants and leaving a leaflet at every house. Whenever you get no answer, slip a leaflet through the letter box.’

‘Listen, Adams—’

‘That’s all, Saunders,’ said Paul. ‘There’s a General Election coming early next year, and these are pre-election leaflets, spelling out the dangers of the Conservatives getting back in if we take victory for granted.’

‘Now you’re talking,’ said Miss Saunders. ‘Don’t want that bloody lot back in. Nor that warmonger,
Churchill. Upper-class drunk. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Establishment made him Lord Churchill. Probably give him his own distillery too.’

‘Some of our voters like the old boy, even if they’d never vote Tory,’ said Paul. He fidgeted. ‘Forget upper class and titles.’

‘Forget ’em? Why?’ Between her shining black curtains, Lulu Saunders peered suspiciously at him. ‘That’s what we’re fighting, aren’t we?’

‘Don’t ask the converted,’ said Paul, ‘just talk to the people of Walworth about the points detailed in the leaflet.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Lulu. ‘Didn’t take this job on to deliver leaflets, did I?’

‘Consider it a pleasant surprise,’ said Paul. ‘Off you go. You can take all day. Tomorrow you can do some typing for me.’

‘I’ve got a feeling,’ said Lulu.

‘What feeling?’

‘That we’re not going to get on. You’re playing the superior male.’

‘How about that?’ said Paul. ‘Just when I was thinking what a superior female you are. Nice to have you with us.’

‘Someone here needs sorting out,’ said Lulu, ‘and it’s not me. Right, Adams, let’s have the bloody leaflets, then. But watch your back.’ Her spectacles looked threatening. ‘I’m a killer.’

‘Enjoy your day,’ said Paul.

He felt better after she’d gone. After all, with luck, no-one need find out in due course that Sir
Edwin Finch was any relative of his. And if anyone did, well, he could ride the upper-class stigma as an incorruptible Young Socialist.

Miss Saunders. Why the long, ankle-length dress? Was she, one, a bluestocking? Two, a frump? Three, bow-legged? Not three, he hoped. If one or two, well, a bloke could forgive a girl for either if she had good stilts.

Paul’s politics did not limit his interest in the opposite sex. As a young man, he naturally subscribed to the belief that politics exercised a bloke’s social awareness, and girls exercised his imagination.

Sammy, Jimmy and Mr Greenberg arrived at the specified warehouse in Edmonton. Brick-built, with dusty skylights in its roof, it seemed old enough and grimy enough to date back to Roman times. There was a tough-looking geezer about four feet wide at the door.

‘Morning,’ said Sammy.

‘Name?’ growled Toughie.

‘Adams, Sammy Adams.’

Toughie consulted a well-thumbed notebook.

‘Ain’t got no Adams,’ he said, ‘and if I ain’t got yer monicker, you ain’t getting in.’

‘Have another look,’ said Sammy, and Toughie did another scrutiny, thumbing pages.

‘Oh, I got yer,’ he said, ‘Jammy Adams. But hold on, who’s he and who’s him?’

‘Him’s my son and he’s my business consultant,’ said Sammy. It was black market all right, and only
authorized dealers were going to be admitted. Well, he needn’t tell Susie.

Toughie scrutinized Jimmy, then eyed Mr Greenberg. Mr Greenberg’s white-peppered beard advertised he was heading towards old age. His round rusty black hat was already there. But he still loved business and still pursued his rag-and-bone rounds in South London. He was also known north of the river.

Toughie, grinning, addressed him.

‘Watcher, Eli, how yer doing, you old pirate? Nice to see yer.’

‘My pleasure, ain’t it?’ said Mr Greenberg.

‘Didn’t spot it was you at first,’ said Toughie. ‘Jammy Adams was in the way. All right, in yer go, you’ve got time to look at the apples and oranges before you place yer bids.’

They entered the warehouse. Tiers of stout shelving on either side contained bales of material, and plain wooden stairs led up to the top tiers. Dealers, some furtive and some brazen, were making inspections of the wares. At the far end two men sat at a desk, observing the scene.

Sammy was after bales of nylon, one of the modern man-made materials beginning to replace natural yarns. All bales were marked with a number.

‘So vhat do you think, Sammy?’ Eli’s whisper murmured through his beard.

Sammy, noting a dealer talking to the men at the desk, said, ‘I think, Eli old cock, that that’s where we place our bids.’

‘Vell, Sammy,’ said Mr Greenberg, who had
never lost his own kind of pronounced English, ‘it’s done that vay in some varehouses.’

‘Warehouses that don’t advertise?’ said Jimmy.

‘We won’t tell your mother,’ said Sammy.

‘Hello, hello,’ wheezed a squeezed set of tonsils, ‘who’s slumming it?’

They turned to find an enormously fat man regarding them out of eyes set in blubber. Beside him was a large lump recognizable to Sammy as a bodyguard.

‘Well, well,’ Sammy said, ‘I think I know you, don’t I? You’re still putting on weight, y’know. How d’you manage it, seeing the rest of us are living on this austerity diet?’

‘Always the second-class funny bugger, are you?’ wheezed Ben Ford, the Fat Man. He turned to his large lump. ‘Ask him what he’s after.’

‘Mr Ford wants to know what you’re after,’ said Large Lump, his jaw looking like old concrete. ‘Tell him.’

Dealers sidled around them as Sammy said, ‘Oh, bits and pieces, y’know.’

‘Tell him to lay off the nylon,’ wheezed the Fat Man.

‘Mr Ford says lay off the nylon,’ said Large Lump.

‘If I might put in a vord,’ said Mr Greenberg, ‘Mr Adams don’t take kindly to being told vhat he can and can’t do.’

‘That’s true, I don’t, normally,’ said Sammy amiably. ‘Still, they’re a lot bigger than we are, Eli, and I can make exceptions.’

‘We’ve come a long way to make exceptions, Dad,’ said Jimmy.

‘Tiny, tell the runt to shut his cakehole,’ wheezed the Fat Man.