The Partridge Kite (25 page)

‘Well, Mr McCullin, I don’t know what you mean by a “dangerous experiment”. But your knowledge and research must be quite superhuman if you can presume to talk for the people of this country. You may well know something of this present Government, a small group of unrepresentative men whose political philosophy is well known if not entirely well supported. But to know the minds of the British people! Well, that is indeed an extraordinary achievement.’

‘If
I
can’t, Mr Wilde, then neither can you! And neither can any single group of ambitious men.’

‘And what is this Government, Mr McCullin, if it is not a single group of men perverted by ambition? You talk of dangerous experiments. Once upon a time men experimented with something that was later defined as Democracy. Where is it now in the scheme of things? Whatever happened to its seniority? There was a time, not so long gone, when it was revered above Christianity. But where is its place today in the politics of your Government?

‘What is the Prime Minister today if he is not an elected monarch, and, as the system is now, unthronable? And what is his Cabinet if it is not a caucus of sophists whose careers depend entirely on the grace and favour of their Prime Minister King? A Government by the People? Of the People? For the People? No, Mr McCullin! Twelve men and two women in Cabinet who nod their heads at every Prime Ministerial decision made from that dingy house in Downing Street. Decisions that are irreversible, unnegotiable, and rubber-stamped by the whipped clowns in the Commons, who no longer have the wit or energy to contest them.

‘We are governed, Mr McCullin, by small men. Men without a sense of history, without a sense of duty, who no longer recognise the obligations of inheritance, whatever their form. Who no longer care about our final plunge into a new dark age of Philistinism. They are men entirely without honour.

‘Our politicians are like bedsitting-room dwellers, squatters who muck along from day to day, careless of who has lived there before them or who comes after.

‘But stupid or evil, careless or clumsy, the end is the same. They are about to destroy the very nation of people who helped pioneer Democracy, a people who spread their tongue and their charm to every comer of the world.

‘I do not believe, Mr McCullin, that they care one bit for those precious English things, freedom above all, that we have for so long taken for granted as our birthright. But I do know they are now about to fritter that birthright away in the name of Socialism.

‘If I were to talk of the mind of the British people, Mr McCullin, I would first listen to their despair, sense their helplessness. And ask what they can do.

‘What can outraged decent people do if they are to survive? Must they prepare to adapt themselves to the weapons of the Philistines? Must they be forced to do all those vulgar things that a vulgar age will ensure their voices being heard? And by so doing join their ranks?’

He had spoken non-stop, without a pause or a breath it seemed, all the time looking directly into Tom’s eyes. The eyes held him. The pupils tiny pin-pricks of black in a watery grey. No eyelids blinked to break the stare.

Tom might have been shocked had he not expected it. And by expecting it he found it that much easier to absorb. How exactly Wilde and Linklater and the rest shared the same creed! Their speeches might have all been written by die same one man from a central speech-writing desk. Their appeal was the same, touching on every prejudice, every pretension every man had ever held.
Fertilising
them, fusing them into their arguments, which then seemed to be everyone’s own, writ large.

‘Mr McCullin,’ he said, ‘I talk as one of the despairing. A simple private man who does not involve himself in politicians or any of their accompanying dangerous experiments.

‘But let me tell you, on behalf of those who do, that what you have undertaken is dangerous to you. It is dangerous to all those you work with. . . and all those you play with.’

He paused deliberately.

Yes, thought Tom, I’ve got it.

Wilde went on, ‘But I am instructed to offer you a way out.’

‘Go on,’ said Tom.

‘An honourable way out, Mr McCullin, in which the motives of the people you are investigating can be explained to you in such way that you may feel your pursuit is no longer necessary.’

Tom said nothing.

‘Would you be prepared, Mr McCullin, to meet, as anonymously and as protectively as you wish, a person who is in some small way involved in many of the things you seem so concerned about?’

‘You have a roundabout way with words, Mr Wilde. You mean, will I meet a CORDON member?’

The grey eyes didn’t move. Nothing moved. Except for the tiny trickle of water from the tear glands. Wilde was not going to answer.

‘Where?’ asked Tom. ‘When?’

Tomorrow. Five o’clock. Selfridge’s. He will be waiting for you on the fifth floor, in the toy department. He’ll meet you at the model railway counter directly opposite the lifts, to the left of the Father Christmas Grotto. If it sounds melodramatic, I assure you it’s not meant to. And if you would rather change the time or location you need only say so now.’

‘How will I recognise him?’

‘Oh, you’ll recognise him without difficulty, Mr McCullin.’

‘But how? What is his name? What does he look like?’

‘You know his name. And you know what he looks like.

His is the last name on your list, Mr McCullin. The one that follows mine!’

Tom left the house with the black shiny door and saw Fry’s Range Rover on a meter opposite. The carol singers had moved to the other side of Grosvenor Gardens and were well into ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’ on behalf of the little child in Bangladesh. Fry pulled out into the flow of traffic as Tom jumped in, and went across the lights towards Buckingham Palace Road and Pimlico. He glimpsed the lanterns on the pavement but couldn’t hear the singing above the traffic and the whine of his gearbox.

Nor did he see the man standing at the corner a yard from the carol singers, his face suddenly lit up as a lantern swung in the wind.

A military-looking man with a cauliflower left ear and an umbrella held like a scabbard at his side.

‘It’s a trap.’

‘Of course it is!’ said Tom.

‘And you’re going?’

‘What else would you do?’

Fry had begun to drive down Victoria Street thinking they were both going back to the Department. But Tom asked instead to be driven west.

‘They’ve shown themselves,’ he said. ‘Do you play poker Fry?’

‘No.’

‘No, of course you don’t!’

Fry was driving badly. Tom braced himself against the hard plastic fascia as Fry braked sharply, not seeing a car in front turning right.

‘What protection will you take, Tom?’

‘You.’

‘But that’s absurd. You don’t know how many they’ll have. You must take more. We ought to have one in every corner.’

‘Who they’ll see, just as soon as we place them! And then

they’ll try some other way. No! We’ll go in together, let them know it’s just two. Anyway, you don’t expect an OK Corral gunfight in Selfridge’s toy department, do you?’

‘I don’t know what to expect, Tom. You’ve never underestimated them before, but if they’re only expecting the two of us then it seems to me they are pretty damned certain of taking us.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘And remember, Tom, they know who we are and what we look like. We only know one of them!’

‘That’s true.’

‘And?’

‘Just the two. Fry. You and me. Five o’clock. Model railway counter. Tomorrow.

‘And I’ll be staying out of my flat from now on,’ he said. Tor a few nights, anyway, precaution, nothing else. You might want to do the same thing. Let’s meet up in the morning, usual time; and get me a Browning, will you, and whatever you like to use, but make sure it’s mobile, for Christ’s sake!’

They had manoeuvred their way through the evening rush-hour traffic and were now crossing Sloane Square into King’s Road, going west. Tom asked to be dropped off just beyond the Fire Station at the comer of Sydney Street.

Fry knew what it meant. Tom was seeing Kate. Her flat was at the river end of Beaufort Street, only a five-minute walk away.

Tom!. . .’ Fry began as Tom got out.

‘Yes?’

Fry paused. ‘Nothing. Just good-night!’

What else could he say? He wasn’t supposed to know them as lovers. And as far as he knew, Tom didn’t know he had ever been to Kate’s flat. So what could he say? What he felt? That he desperately wanted to see them both together tonight? To enter that warm flat again? To sit on the edge of the white goatskin rug and drink Geneva gin with hot water? To smell Kate’s scent and feel his face burning from the fire in the old Edwardian grate. To be one of three people eating, drinking, talking together. To be more than just one.

He did a violent U-turn, holding up traffic in both directions. Two dozen obscenities were shouted at him but he didn’t hear.

Tonight he had arranged to drive to Farnham for dinner with his mother. She would be expecting him, would have turned on the central heating especially for him. She would already have underdone the joint and overcooked the vegetables. The same standard meat, veg, and gravy browning she had served up all her life and his.

They would sip coffee and eat milk chocolates. And she would talk in her soft apologetic way of the trivia that enveloped her. Of the boredom that was slowly and very effectively killing her. There are many ways of dying, she had once said, and suburban euthanasia is just one of the more painful.

But not tonight. He could not face her and listen to her dying tonight. Not so obviously and dreadfully alone with her in that dark brown house smelling of boiled cabbage and furniture polish.

He would sleep on the bunk in the Duty Night’s office and cook himself an omelette on the Baby Belling.

From there he would telephone his lies to her and she could put the plates back on the shelf and the food back into the fridge for another day, perhaps.

And then cry herself to sleep in the cold pink bedroom that overlooked the allotments and the railway line.

Tom didn’t tell Kate about the rendezvous at Selfridge’s the next day. He couldn’t go through the don’ts and danger routine again.

So instead they made love on the floor. It was simply done and all over in less than five minutes. They didn’t even bother taking their clothes off. It was lazy, comfortable, proper and very satisfying. Tom’s balls still ached, but the drugs worked wonders.

He didn’t move. One of her arms was tight around him, the other stroked his hair, her finger-nails massaging his scalp.

‘Sometimes, McCullin,’ she said, very softly, ‘you make me feel like.. .’ Her voice trailed off.

He didn’t answer.

‘You remind me of the dreadful Australian joke,’ she said, eventually, ‘. . . the one where the fellow says to his girl, “How about a fuck” . . . and she says, “I don’t feel like it now”. . . and he says. . . “Well, d’you mind lying down and letting me have one?”’

She started giggling.

‘I’ve heard that joke a hundred times, Kate, and I still don’t find it funny!’

She began to tickle him.

‘I’m going to Scotland tomorrow,’ he said.

‘What on earth for?’

‘Skiing.’

‘You? Ski?’

‘You’d be bloody well surprised if I could, wouldn’t you?’

‘Well, can you?’

‘No.’

‘But you’re going to Scotland?’

‘Fry thinks CORDON’S Headquarters might be somewhere up there. In the Cairngorms. He reckons it’s nicely tucked away and a woman ski champion helped find it, someone called Elsa Pilkington. Must say I’d never heard of her.’

‘I have. She was a great skier, Tom, probably one of the greatest. I suppose she was probably their runner when the place got snowed-up. Unless they used helicopters.’

Tom raised himself up on his elbows and looked down at her.

‘A helicopter! That’s it. That’s probably how they caught him!’

‘Caught who, Tom?’

‘Some poor bastard who tried to get away from them. At least, that’s part of Fry’s theory.’

Kate let out a gasp as Tom lowered his weight back on to her again.

‘You think he might be wrong?’ she asked.

‘I think he can’t be one hundred per cent certain,’ he said. ‘But neither of you can know the odds. It’s bound to be a gamble.’

‘The whole thing’s a gamble now, Kate. Whether we find them before they can have a go on their Big Day! Anyway, Military Intelligence has taken over the daily confabs now. The bastards are delighted. They’ve been waiting years, waiting for Kellick to go so they could pull us in. Wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t nail him themselves the other night, except it was too well done for one of their lot!’

‘Do they know you’re going to Scotland?’

‘No.’

‘Is that wise? What could you do on your own if you did get on to something?’

‘Look, if I told MI that I was going secretly to Scotland they’d have a band to play me out of King’s Cross.’

‘Tom, be serious! And don’t start that again when we’re talking!’

‘I think you’re bloody marvellous, Kate!’

She kissed him. ‘It’s a good thing for you, Tom McCullin,’ she whispered into his ear, ‘that I’m not a woman who expects fine words.’

‘By the way,’ she said, stretching herself as the rhythm began again, ‘what would you like for Christmas?’

But already his mind was on other things.

Wednesday, 22 December

The shop was full. It was more than full. Shoppers were walking on tiptoe, heads high, sniffing their way to the presents they still had to buy, because their eyes could no longer help them.

Tom and Fry moved with the current of bodies in the aisle between what smelt like the cosmetic counters. Tom led the way, turning his body this way and that, barging, side-stepping, dodging packages held high, bruised by the low ones. Occasionally he could feel Fry’s hand grab the belt of his raincoat whenever a pushing body came between them.

It took them nearly ten minutes to cover the thirty yards from the front doors to the lift and another ten waiting for a space to take them up to the fifth floor.