The Stone That Never Came Down (9 page)

XI

“Brother Val!”

Glancing up from the biography of Chaka Zulu which by a miracle he had found in the hospital’s library list, Valentine Crawford thought for a moment that it was one of the hospital’s many black nurses who had parted the curtains around his bed. The doctor in charge claimed they’d been put there because for no apparent reason he had slept for more than two days and they’d been worried. He suspected the real explanation was that white men in the adjacent beds had complained about the presence of a black.

–Not that I give a damn. I need privacy and the chance to concentrate. The way my mind’s working, I’m almost dizzy!

Abruptly he realised the girl peering in was Cissy, and with her–

“Dad!”

–six-year-old Toussaint in person, letting fall a drawing-book that fluttered to the floor like a dying bird as he rushed to greet his father.

“Careful, son!” Valentine cried, fending the boy off with his right arm. A transfusion-tube was taped to the left one, and he had had eighteen stitches in the knife-wound across his belly. The buckra who carved him had obviously not meant him to make such a good recovery. Or any recovery.

Laughing, Cissy captured the kid, sat down, and perched him on her knee. She was looking marvellous today; her coat of bright orange trimmed with white-was old, but the brilliant colours suited her to perfection.

“Your mam been looking after him, right?” Valentine said.

“No, me!” Cissy countered in surprise. “They didn’t tell you?”

“I thought your mam …” Valentine licked his broad lips. “See, I was half-unconscious when they brought me in, but I explained he was there on his own, over and over to make sure they knew what I was saying, and gave your phone-number, and then after the operation I didn’t wake up for the longest time, you know?”

“Sure, I heard. Kind of weird! Got us all worried. But the minute I learnt the news I went and got that key you had cut so we could go in and study up in your books, and there he was squalling his head off, and though I got him calmed down in a little he wouldn’t come back with me to Mam’s, so”– shrugging–“I just kind of moved in. Hope you don’t mind.” She rumpled the boy’s hair. “He’s okay now. He’s fine.”

“I like Cissy, Dad!” Toussaint said. “She gives me nice things.” He dug in the pocket of the anorak he was wearing, dark with damp from the snow, which was sifting down beyond the windows, and produced a carton of coloured pencils. “She gave me these, and a drawing-book, and I brought lots of pictures to show you!”

Remembering he’d dropped the book, he scrambled down to retrieve it. Smiling, Valentine laid aside his own reading and prepared to be impressed by his son’s masterpieces.

“Chaka Zulu,”
Cissy read out, leaning to see what Valentine had been passing the time with. “Oh, yeah. I never read about him, but I guess you mentioned him in class.”

“Mm-hm,” Valentine said absently. “A great man. A genius.” He interspersed his words with admiring comments on the polychrome scrawls Toussaint was displaying. “It tells in there how the first time he met explorers from Europe who tried to persuade him the world was round, he made up off the top of his head all the same arguments about it being flat that the Vatican experts had used only a couple of centuries before to put down Giordano Bruno and Galileo. And he didn’t even know how to read and write! He must have been brilliant.”

Mouth ajar, Cissy shook her head. “Who was this Bruno? And who was–? I guess I didn’t catch the other name.”

–Shouldn’t have expected that to register. After all, she is in my class instead of at a regular school because she got sick of being told only what’s proper for a black kid to know. When I was her age, did they tell me about important thinkers like Galileo? Let alone Chaka!

Aloud he said with a sigh, “Remind me to talk about him when I get better. It’ll tie in with how the South Africans are making the Bantu as stupid as they want them to be by deporting them to land that’s half desert. It’s the only way known to reduce intelligence; you deprive kids of protein before they’re four years old, the brain doesn’t develop right. Before the whites came along, though, the Zulus at any rate were capable of producing a genius like Chaka. Must have scared the shit out of Whitey to run across him!”

And he added to his son, who had turned the last used page of his book, “Hey, that’s very good. That’s great. Say, do you mind if I draw a picture in your book?”

“Yes please!” Toussaint cried.

“Give me a pencil, then–no, a black one … Thanks.” Spreading the book out flat, he started to sketch on the next clean sheet.

“I guess they didn’t catch the bastard who cut me yet?” he added to Cissy under his breath.

“Shit, no! Don’t think they even looked for him. Not seriously.”

“Did you tell–
him
–what happened?”

“Sure I did. Remembered what you said: Don’t let the buckras get away with anything.”

“A bad white man stuck a knife in your tummy!” Toussaint declared.

“Ah … Yeah, I’m afraid that’s only too true,” Valentine muttered. “Well, if the fuzz won’t look for him, the brothers and sisters will have to. There he is.” He held up the drawing-book. In less than a minute he had produced a portrait of a man with a sharp chin, deep-set eyes, one ear sticking out more than the other, and a broken nose.

“I didn’t know you could draw!” Cissy exclaimed.

“Let me see, let me see!” Toussaint demanded, but Valentine held the book out of his reach.

“No more did I.” His tone reflected faint surprise. “It’s just that I can remember that face clear as my father’s. I only caught a glimpse of him, but… Well, do you know him?”

“Couldn’t mistake him in a million years,” Cissy said positively. “Runs a shop near my home. Mam doesn’t let me buy things there any more. Mean son-of-a-bitch keeps black people waiting twice as long as anyone else!”

She hesitated. “You’re sure he’s the one? It’s kind of dark on those stairs at your place.”

“I couldn’t be more certain if I lived to be as old as Methuselah.”

“Right!” She tore the sheet out of the book, ignoring Toussaint’s objections, folded it, put it in the pocket of her coat. “Well look after him!”

“You do that small thing,” Valentine said grimly. “And make sure he knows why– Hey, son, don’t cry! I’ll draw another picture specially for you, with lots of pretty colours instead of just black and white!”

“Ah, Stevens!”

Here was Lieutenant Cordery, the smart young officer-younger by six months than Stevens himself, as the latter had learned when sneaking a look at a personnel file he wasn’t meant to read–who had been leading the patrol when the chopper-bomb came down. Accompanying him, but hovering in the background, was a civilian in a tweed suit glancing from one to another of the many shields ranked along the wall. This was Rathcanar Military Hospital, on the Scottish border, and every ward was decorated with the arms and colours of regiments whose soldiers had been treated here. Crests and swatches of tartan succeeded one another in dizzying array.

“How are you coming along? All right?” Cordery continued as he perched gingerly on a corner of Stevens’ bed. “I see you’re still having to be pumped up, ha-ha!”–with a jerk of his thumb at the plasma-flask hung from a bracket beside the bed-head–“but the MO tells me that can be withdrawn this afternoon, so I’ve comc to enlist your co-operation, if you feel tip to it. You see …”

He felt in the side-pocket of his uniform jacket and produced a wad of news-cuttings. “You see, as the first soldier actually to be–uh–injured in the Glasgow disturbances, you made the papers in rather a big way.”

“Thanks, I know,” Stevens said in a dull voice.

Momentarily disconcerted, Cordery put the cuttings away. Then, with a shrug, he turned to his civilian companion.

“Mr McPhee, perhaps you’d explain?”

Briskening, the civilian approached with a broad smile. “Lance-Corporal Stevens! Glad to hear how well you’re getting on. I’m from Anglo-Caledonian Television, and I’ve come to organise a segment of our evening magazine programme. I don’t expect you’ve had much chance to watch TV since you came north, of course”–a chuckle–“but you must know the sort of thing. And the point, really, is that now the strikers in Glasgow are turning to terrorism, like their opposite numbers out there in Italy … You’ve heard about the things that are going on in Turin and Milan? Yes? Shocking, isn’t it?
Dreadful!
Well, we think, anyhow, that it’s high time to provide a proper balance by interviewing someone who’s suffered at their hands, and show that we are downright determined to stop the rot in Britain, at least, even if those Eye-ties can’t manage it! We only have time to talk to one of you lads, because there’s only six minutes for the whole slot, so since–as the lieutenant just said–your name was in the headlines quite a lot as a result of your
most
unfortunate experience, if you feel up to it …?” A wave of one well-manicured hand completed the sentence.

“Yes, sir!” Stevens said. “Never been on the telly. Always fancied the idea!”

“Fine!” McPhee exclaimed. “We’ll be here at six twenty-six exactly, then.”

At which time, minus thirty seconds or so, a camera trolleyed down the ward in the wake of McPhee speaking in hushed tones to a hand microphone. Having lingered on several beds whose occupants were too badly hurt to offer more response than a thumbs-up sign, the operator turned finally to Stevens.

“And here,” McPhee said solemnly, “is Lance-Corporal Dennis Stevens, who was so tragically injured in the line of duty by a vicious so-called chopper-bomb. Corporal, perhaps you’d like to tell our viewers what you think of the unknown criminals who did this to you.” Beaming, he leaned close.

“Well, I don’t know too much about them, do I?” Stevens said clearly. “Bar one thing, of course.”

“What’s that?” McPhee prompted.

“They must have more sense and guts than I have. I let myself be driven into the Army, didn’t I, when I got sick of hanging around the Labour for a job that wasn’t there? And what do I get for signing on? I get my balls cut off, that’s what!”

McPhee, in sudden panic, made to withdraw the mike, but he was slow to react and Stevens snatched it from him and shouted, “Don’t shut me up–I haven’t finishedl What’s a ruddy chopper-bomb compared to one of these H-bombs they got ready and waiting to fry the lot of us? Think they wouldn’t use ’em? I seen the buggers that would, quick as a wink! Soon as I can walk I’m going to quit the Army, and let’s see ’em court-martial this phony hero for desertion–won’t that be a giggle, hm? Hero be damned! I’m just a poor bugger who couldn’t get a proper job! Gang of fucking tearaways, that’s all the Army is, only in it you get paid for bashing people about while my mates back home who done the same on a private-enterprise basis got flung in jail ’cause they did it without waiting till they were ordered to! You stupid sheep, you–!”

At which point they finally managed to cut him off.

White and shaking after a violent dressing-down from his colonel, Cordery said to the MO in charge of the ward, “A medical discharge right away, of course. I’m still not certain how much of what he said was actually broadcast, but–”

“But whoever decided to transmit the interview live instead of recording it,” the MO snapped, “deserves to be hanged, drawn, and quartered!”

“Yes.” Cordery licked his lips. “No doubt a court of inquiry … But there is one point.”

“What?”

“Was Stevens–well–literal about his injuries?”

“As a matter of fact, he was.”

“Oh.” Cordery shuddered, and it cost him a visible effort of will not to put his hand to his crotch. “I see. In that case I suppose there’s
some
excuse for him.”

“There is no excuse,” the MO said flatly, “for a soldier to resent being injured in the line of duty. That’s what he lets himself in for when he enlists. If Stevens didn’t realise, it was his own stupid fault. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very busy. After today’s confrontation with the strikers, I have twenty-four casualties to attend to.”