A Read online

  Belle was starting to cry. Fay could see the tears on her eyeballs, reflecting tiny televisions.

  – Why us?! said Belle. It’s always fucking us! What the hell did we ever do?

  The tears turned into streaks on her cheeks.

  – Come on, Belle, said Pete. He patted her head awkwardly. I mean, it could have been worse. The pigs reckoned someone in Kingston’s running an acid factory. You know? Imagine if it was us! If they’d found one in the potting shed or under the stairs or some bloody place! I mean, we’d all be doing twenty years. Wouldn’t we?

  – Something like that, Nick muttered.

  He received the joint off Tim.

  Fay returned into her room, testing the water with her fingers and rubbing off the condensation on the mirror. For a moment she looked at the reflection of her face, pale like the moon, hair hanging limply to either side of it; then she wet her hands and picked up the soap.

  c: the sky about to rain

  Angus was sitting in his kitchen, wrapped in several jumpers, looking at a piece of paper with the pilot written in biro at its top. Across the room a woodburner was spluttering on the too-wet firewood that he’d scavenged from round the stream. It had been the same for days: the rain horizontal on the hillsides, scouring them of leaves and sheep, coming in packs against the pre-war windows, oozing through the cracks in the single-brick timber-framed walls.

  Things were closing in on him, that was how it felt. The weather, the autumn, the loneliness; but beyond all those the crippling, swollen brilliance in his head – the burning – that had arrived with Belle, and now spelt her absence. After three or so months alone in a Welsh cottage, Angus had hoped it might have died back down, even slightly; but the truth was that the burning was growing. It was huger than ever: orange towards the centre, cherry red at its edges. Even vodka could barely allay it.

  That was why Angus had decided to write. It was the only channel he could think of. In itself, the burning was dazzling, unconfrontable. But if he could only control it, direct it, expose it to some kind of understanding; perhaps then he might still re-emerge.

  Angus poured himself another vodka, tucked up his legs underneath him and looked again at his piece of paper. The edges were starting to curl with the damp. The light from the windows was dim and greyish.

  So where did the story start? Angus drank the vodka, struggling to think. Then it came to him. The Emperor’s broadcast: the end of the Empire. Oita airfield, Kyushu, Japan. August 15th 1945.

  Surrender.

  – …state of calamity… here to our loyal subjects proclaim… We, Imperial Domain ruler, do… acceptance do instruct that notification be announced…

  The speaker shrieked with static: waves of it without obvious amplitude, wiping out words and mangling sentences.

  – …continuation of hostilities can only finally lead to our nation’s destruction… to die on the battlefield… we must resign ourselves to occupation to prevent our whole people from falling prey to untimely death… concern for the bereaved families must accept… kofuku suru.

  Surrender.

  And that was it. The Voice of the Sacred Crane melted back into unadorned static.

  In the hut, not a word was spoken. Six men sat in rows before the radio, their uniforms identical: goggles on flying helmets, harnesses over issue shirts, clocks in perfect synchrony. Around the walls, the ground staff were arrayed like waxworks, pressed to the shrapnel-spattered walls as if trying to stop the wind that moaned through the holes. Still no-one spoke.

  Perhaps we were alike, the six of us. The storm outside was the storm of static was the storm in the mind, and ultimately it all had only one meaning. That is to say, the unthinkable. All I had known in my twenty-year life was that we – the Empire – were invincible.

  It was the point from which the world emerged.

  – Never! cried a voice at last. Never have I felt such shame!

  – Revenge! called another. We must exact revenge!

  We had, of course, all heard of the Vice-Admiral’s intention. We knew that the enemy fleet lay west of Okinawa, anchored: arrogant in its victory. We knew that we were to fly and fall upon them, dropping like cherry blossoms.

  But as the first man rose from his seat to lead us to the airfield, such knowledge slipped away from me. It was as if I had met with a juncture: a boiling point that had, in one sense, been approaching over minutes and, in another, over my entire life – an emptiness that had risen and risen, and finally consumed.

  We filed neatly from the hut, discarding our flying helmets, marching through the wind towards the command pit and binding hachimakis around our heads.

  And crossing the runway, falling into line outside the pit, it was as if our devastated unit had been subject to a renewal. The expressions that passed before me were ones of wonder and animation – red-disk suns glaring from their foreheads – not pallid with defeat, but urgent, on the threshold of achievement.

  I stood erect, looking blankly across the airfield – the bomb-pocked, wind-scoured summer grass, the scurrying engineers – towards the bullet-riddled Zeroes in which we were to die.

  The Vice-Admiral approached slowly. His car was a large model: black, and in unusually good repair. We watched it creeping from among the trees beyond the runway, a stray bolt of sunlight flashing from its surface as it rounded the fighters and drew up on the concrete twenty metres away.

  The Zeroes were running now, their engines roaring and their propellers sending skewed waves of motion across the field beneath their wheels. The Lieutenant emerged hurriedly from the command pit, hastening ahead of his staff and, nervously, coming to attention outside the car’s rear door. A chauffeur then climbed efficiently from his seat, closing his own door and opening the one behind it.

  The man who rose to his feet before our line was round-faced, a little overweight and devoid of regalia. His staff – four of them – were similarly without ornament. They flanked him in outfits all but identical to his own; yet it remained the Vice-Admiral on whom we were focused. He looked at the six of us with unconcealed emotion, tears welling and glinting in the corners of his eyes.

  – Commander, he barked finally. The order must be given for three planes!

  The Lieutenant stiffened. His cheeks were fiery.

  – While our Commander-in-Chief intends to launch a special attack himself, he replied, shouting against the wind and the bellow of the Zeroes, we cannot stand aside and see only four planes despatched! My unit wishes to accompany him at full strength!

  The Vice-Admiral looked again from the first of us to the last, his presence a light in our midst. He detached himself from his aides and strode towards us, mounting the damaged stand that lay perhaps half the distance between our two groups.

  – Will every one of you go with me? he asked.

  In unison the six of us raised our right hands towards the clouds, answering:

  – Yes, sir!

  The Vice-Admiral bowed his head in respect.

  – Then I thank you all, he said.

  Angus stopped. His head was reeling and he pulled himself up from his chair, wanting suddenly to be outside.

  The cottage’s door faced west, away from the stream and out across a stubble-coated field that someone would probably have ploughed by now if it hadn’t been for the recent rain. Above the skyline of the nearest ridge – above the balding silhouettes of trees – the nub of Llandefalle was a spot of black against the chaos of the sunset.

  The rain had stopped; the puddles in the field gleamed like holes in the hillside.

  Angus stumbled out onto the lawn, the too-heavy oak door pondering ajar a moment behind him, then gathering speed and slamming shut. Up in the roofspace, the resident squirrels awoke in a panic, chasing across their flimsy plasterboard floor towards the hole beside the chimney. One after another they burst from the eaves, shinning down the climbing rose and hurrying away into the bushes. It was the same every time he went outside. The nerves of squirrels never se
emed to steel.

  Angus leant on a fence post, breathing haltingly and keeping his eyes on the colours above the horizon. Behind him, the swollen stream grazed the belly of the footbridge. In his mind was Belle; always Belle. Everything he’d ever wanted. He was thinking of a weekend in Norfolk, driving up to the Wash at lowest tide, chasing across the gleaming mudflats, vaulting the river channels till the coastline faded. The sky had been blue, the day had been beautiful. He remembered her running towards one of the channels, springing from the bank, the look that had crossed her face as she realised she wouldn’t make it.

  She’d had an innocent sheen about her – standing up to her thighs in muddy water – a look of disbelief like she hadn’t quite believed that falling in was possible. Her arms were frozen above her head, her jeans darkening as the water spread up them; then her T-shirt began to turn transparent.

  Up on the bank, Angus was reaching out to grab her hands when a separate idea occurred to him. Belle was looking up at him. The burning flared exquisitely in his mind: clear and brilliant, the sun as you would know it. So he jumped down in there with her, peeling off the T-shirt and his own, peeling off her jeans.

  They’d been muddy enough as it was.

  d: boiling point

  Jaundiced light was leaking between the curtains: a liquid yellowy-orangeness, moving with the lashing of the rain. There were cars caught in lines across the river, the drivers peering through wipers and streetlights in the fading hope of seeing their supper. Some way to the north – the scene of the accident – a couple of buildings were flashing blue. The reflection on the river bristled them with raindrops.

  Nick turned from the window, sighing and relighting his joint. He looked at Paolo, who was on the bed, talking, then at the pictures from the Pirelli calendar stuck all over the walls. They’d been all over his walls till he’d started going out with Sonia and had had to get rid of them. Typical of Paolo to fish them out of the bin.

  Laetitia Casta! There she was! Partly concealed by Paolo’s basil plant, but beautiful as ever. Her long wavy hair, her dreamy dark eyes, her innocent alluring face, her see-through top. She had breasts that proved the existence of God… And then there was that blonde, the one on the wall above the bed! Her big blue eyes and tiny rubber shorts, arms folded coyly across her chest. Paolo had been claiming for about three months now that he’d slept with her one night in Florence. He knew for sure who she was – he said – because just before dragging him off to a hotel for a night of reciprocal passion she’d shown him her passport. Nick had never exactly been convinced by this story, but after three months of Paolo going on about it he wasn’t exactly unconvinced either. Paolo had even gone so far as to stick a gold star in the picture’s bottom right-hand corner.

  Vidi, vici, veni…

  But how come Paolo had got himself a double bed?! And a little balcony overlooking the river! And no hydrangea blocking the window. Nick felt resentment welling up in him. There was hardly a draught in Paolo’s room. In fact, it was so warm he could have taken off his woolly hat, if he’d only had the energy. It was the raid yesterday that had done it – the raid yesterday and every other bloody disaster of the past three months. They’d drained him. It was all he could do to take another puff on the spliff.

  – So, we say that’s the plan, said Paolo. I’ll ring Steve and get it over with. You go upstairs and check the equipment… Nick?

  – Huh? said Nick. That blonde, he thought, the one in the little rubber shorts! Could it really be true?

  – Vaffanculo, Nick! Wake up!

  – Huh? said Nick again, looking down from the picture. But suddenly someone was knocking on the door and Paolo flopped back on his bed, exasperated, winding a tuft of hair round his ring finger.

  – Nick? called Sonia. Her voice was muffled. Nick, you’ve been in there for ages! When are you coming back downstairs?

  – Oh, for fuck’s sake, Nick muttered. He pulled himself away from the windowsill, slapping himself twice across the face to straighten out and handing the joint to Paolo. Sonia! he told the identical buxom twins stuck to the door. I told you, we’ve got some stuff to sort out. We’ll be down as soon as we’re ready. Alright?

  – What stuff? said Sonia. Why can’t I come in?

  – You can’t, said Nick, thinking a second. It’s… a surprise.

  – What kind of surprise? said Sonia dubiously.

  – Look, we’ll just be five minutes! said Nick. For God’s sake, Sonn, go back downstairs, will you?

  The sound of aggrieved footsteps receded down the landing. Paolo drummed his fingers on his chest. Nick picked up his flick-knife from the windowsill, toying with it, admiring the blade. On the muted television beside the bed, a healthy-looking Paul Eddington approached from the top left-hand corner, a spring in his step and a twinkle in his eye. Felicity Kendal looked up from her vegetable patch and greeted him with a smile that could have saved the Titanic. The two of them embarked on a jovial conversation.

  – Nick, said Paolo. Put the knife away. You are not streetfighting, or whatever the hell you think you get up to. We are in a hole, okay? And if you’d done anything you were supposed to while I was away we wouldn’t be in it. So listen. I’m going to phone Steve and make sure he can live with the delay. You know what you’ve got to do, so, for fuck’s sake, can you just do it!

  Nick put the knife down, rubbed his eyeballs carefully with the first finger on each hand, then picked the knife back up again, weighing it thoughtfully. He looked at the photos on top of the television: Paolo with a smaller Afro and various – how was it possible? – extremely attractive women.

  – Here’s what I’ll do, he said eventually, his voice calm, confidently East End. First off, I’ll smoke that spliff. Then, when that’s done, I’ll go downstairs and see Sonia. Then – when I’m ready – I’ll go upstairs and get on with the shit. Alright? And I’m absolutely fucked if, today of all days, I’m going to start panicking about anything.

  – Porca… puttana, said Paolo to himself, shaking his head. Porca fucking puttana.

  – And, infatti, I do know a thing or two about streetfighting. So why don’t you just watch it?

  – I really must, said Paolo sarcastically.

  He reached for the mobile phone on the table beside the bed and dialled in a number. Nick kicked a heap of dirty clothing to one side, took the joint from Paolo, relit it a second time, sat on the floor and turned his eyes to the television. Felicity Kendal – bell-bottoms and Wellington boots – was now smiling sunnily at an indignant Penelope Keith.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Paolo continued to twist his hair abstractedly. He listened to the sound of ringing in the earpiece for ten to fifteen seconds, then kicked off his trainers and swung his legs up onto the bed, feet vanishing inside blue denim flares as he bent his knees and shuffled a few things aside to get comfortable.

  – Steve? he said suddenly. Alright, it’s Paolo… Yeah. Yeah. Not that bad. You know… Well, yeah, I mean, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Not, of course… No. Sure… No. Ha ha!

  Nick ceased to pay attention. He took a final puff from the joint and doused it in a half-full tea cup, sinking back against a pile of dirty washing, which made a crunching noise. Reaching behind him, he pulled out one of Paolo’s old seafood cookery books and one of the packets of tagliatelle that his mother posted him regularly from Rome. Nick decided to see if he could work out what the writing meant.

  – Ah, Paolo was saying. No, look, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We’re having one or two little problems… No, nothing major. It’s just, well, I just spent a couple of days in the cells. Just got out… No, no. Nothing’s been screwed up or anything, but I am going to need, like, three more days till everything’s ready… Yeah. No, no. Sure Steve. Vaffanculo! I know you’ve got people to satisfy… Really, man. No, really, I am sorry. There was nothing I could do… Però, Steve, I can’t just produce a million out of thin air, huh! It was, like, a spotcheck. I mean, on the fu
cking street. They came back and tore the house apart and…

  There was a pause in the monologue. Paolo had returned to sitting on the side of the bed and had his head resting on his right hand. Someone was climbing the stairs. The banisters were rattling.

  – Porcoddue, Steve! It was tight! The pigs even told us they were looking for an… A factory!… I don’t know. They’d got themselves some tip-off about it… Of course I didn’t say anything, man. You think I’m going to show them the attic?… No… No, Steve, hang on! No, no, no, no. Come on, man, this is straight up, I wouldn’t do that to you… Steve? Porca Madonna! For fuck’s sake, man, come on!

  – Look, you bastard! called Sonia through the plyflush. I came all the way over here to see you. If you don’t…

  – Sonia, shut the fuck up! said Paolo, his hand over the mouthpiece. Steve! Steve, are you there?

  – How dare you talk to me like that!

  – Sonia! Nick pulled himself to his feet, spreading a part-rolled joint across the floor, colliding heavily with Paolo, who had jumped up to stop him leaving.

  – Steve? Steve, come on! Paolo was almost shouting now. Steve, where the fuck are you?! Sonia! Jesus! Tu’ madre è una troia bocchinara!

  – Right, that’s it! said Sonia. The door received a wood-shattering kick. That’s fucking it! Goodbye! I’m leaving!

  Paolo was standing with his back to the door, one hand still holding the mobile phone, the other on his cheek where Nick’s shoulder had caught him. His breathing was shaky. His face was getting paler.

  – Sorry, said Nick. I didn’t mean…

  – Nick, said Paolo. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, focusing with difficulty. Nick, we’re going to have to get out of here.