Chain Reaction (44 page)

It’s not Lovette after all. Blow me down. On the phone is the weedy Mathews himself.

‘Mathews? Is that you? Mountjoy Minor here, old bean. You remember me, surely?’

T
HE MATTER IS ATTRACTING
worldwide interest and there is just no letup. The authorities are at their wits’ end. If anything, the pressure gets greater as supportive crowds move in with their tents and their sleeping bags. Neighbours provide coffee and charge the press for good vantage points. Unwittingly, Irene Peacock has been turned into a national symbol, a symbol of the good old days when people cared, little boys could go fishing in riverside pools and little girls could safely visit the ice-cream man, when valued grannies sat on steps smoking pipes, telling tales and rocking the family babies and everywhere there were poppies and bluebells. Ahh. Dream on…

The campaign headquarters has moved to Emily Benson’s tiny flat, where extra phones and faxes have been installed, along with an instant soup machine. Naturally the police tried to prevent the world and his wife strolling into the very building which was the centre of operations, but the police were too busy, at that stage, trying to present a sympathetic image, eager not to upset the mob. They would rather capitulate than force any confrontation which might cause the ever-present fuse to spark and flare. Anyway, it’s too hot for any sort of conflagration. If only the weather would break, if only it would rain. That would wash most of the camping fraternity away but they’d still be left with the hard core of troublemakers—long-haired weirdoes who make it their business to fan the flames wherever there’s a likely crisis.

So here we have it. Two lead stories side by side each as strong as the other and both hanging on issues of morality and responsibility to those weaker than ourselves. And everyone is perfectly entitled to give an opinion; from the youngest to the oldest, chins are wagging, from early morning till the last news comes on at night. Miss Benson is now overwhelmed by mail every day and it is mounting up, unanswered, in her small bedroom. She certainly needed this fortnight’s holiday. The vet, where she usually works, has kindly allowed her to use his storeroom at the back of the surgery for the excess mail. His customers are suitably impressed, and likewise, all sorts of companies have offered aid and sustenance out of the kindness of their hearts and also for publicity purposes because supporters of the siege are perceived to be
GOOD;
anyone else is
BAD.
The County Council is bad, the government who caused all this because of their mean mentality, is bad, the Social Services are bad for not sorting the matter out before poor Mrs Peacock was driven to take such extreme action, her uncaring family are bad, Greylands Rest Home and all who work within it are bad…

In spite of her promiscuous youngest son, the Queen did the decent thing by responding to a desperate old lady’s plea for help, but is that all she is prepared to do—send a letter of commiseration? The cautious statements issuing from the Palace do not seem to support that initial goodwill, and loyal subjects are becoming restless and uneasy. What is the point of paying out all those millions every year merely for ceremonial purposes designed to bring in the tourists? Is that what the Royal Family have now been reduced to, apart from screwing the odd infatuated subject and leaving her in the lurch? Some predictable old codgers rant on about the role of the Monarch and the dangers of interference, while some folks remember how the old Prince of Wales went round decrying the poverty of the miners and then hopped off to a life of luxury in the Bahamas with his American moll.

No wonder the country is in the state it is.

Everyone’s got their snout in the trough. Some folks are earning fifty grand while others cope on seven.

The Health Service is on its knees and turning away children with cancer and animals are disappearing off the face of the earth.

The sun is even strange, these days; it doesn’t feel like it used to, and that’s because of the hole in the ozone layer—and yet they’re fighting over oil at the North Pole. They give grants for home improvements to people with Listed houses, while thousands haven’t even got one.

Teachers get beaten up regularly in their classrooms and there’s never anything on the telly.

Something is badly wrong.

Hooray for Irene Peacock.
Someone, at last, has made a stand.

Ambulances stand ominously by. The Fire Service is well represented in case a ladder might be required, or cutting devices. Stalls selling baked potatoes, doughnuts, flags and hand-made jewellery have been set up.

At night, in the well-lit street which, with its boarding, has turned the area into a forum, people link arms and sing
Land of Hope and Glory,
and
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.
Yes, religion has moved in, albeit rather late in the day, and Bishops and Archbishops appear regularly on the news giving their guarded support and leading prayers for the little old lady behind the walls.

Jesus cares.

The whisper goes round that a startlingly new development can be expected at any moment. The fax machines are jumpy. The mobile telephones bleep. Miss Benson is besieged in her flat as she waits for the appropriate moment and she chooses to make her announcement from the window like the Pope addressing the crowds in St Peter’s Square.

Miss Benson’s window is a balcony which is not a balcony, in other words you can open two French windows but you cannot step out, there is nothing there but a window box surrounded by safety bars. It is possible to hang your washing to dry over the edge of the little mock-balcony but residents are requested not to do so for aesthetic reasons. She is a timid but dignified figure as she stands there with a note in her hands, then turns to accept the megaphone passed over by a gentleman of the press.

Below her, all heads are turned up towards her. The crowd is hushed and waiting.

She clears her throat in readiness to proceed. She hopes Mrs Peacock can hear her. They discussed how this should be done last night. ‘This is a letter which was given to me by Irene Peacock before she was forced to board up her home. I have no idea what it says, and still don’t know,’ she lies. ‘It was she who wrote it. I was required to open it and read it seven days after it was given to me and I have kept my word. Now I intend to share it with you—
with all Irene’s good friends’

A roar of approval goes up from the crowd. Miss Benson trembles; she is understandably terribly nervous. She has never spoken in public before, only in elocution at school when she stood on the stage and chanted, after thirty others before her, and using exactly the same inflections,
The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

‘This letter,’ she starts, ‘is addressed to the Queen, and I sent off a copy to Her Majesty this morning. Tomorrow she should receive it.’

The crowd crows with delight. They are part of this, and this is undoubtedly revolution. History is being made tonight.

‘Your Highness!’

Below her comes a pleased flutter of anticipation.

‘Thank you so much for your kind reply to my letter. As you will probably have heard, I have been forced to resort to extreme measures in order to protect my freedom and my property. By now, hopefully, everything will have been solved and this letter might never need to be posted. I regret having to bother you again with my little problems and hope I may not need to do so. However, in the event that I am still stuck in my flat, negotiations having come to nought, I now beg you to intervene on my behalf and on the behalf of all elderly people at present in this same plight.’

Miss Benson pauses for a breath and for effect. That initial palpitating fear has left her. ‘Can you hear me all right at the back?’ she calls.

A roar of, ‘Yes!’ comes drifting back. And a few shouts of, ‘Get on with it.’

‘I would not normally presume to make any request of my Sovereign, but my present shattered circumstances mean that I am having to behave in all sorts of abnormal ways and I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me. I am not merely requesting now, I am begging at this tragic hour. I know you have an elderly mother of your own, I know how fond you are of that very frail and lovely lady. I know too how caring you are about your family and relations, so that is why I am begging you please to intervene in this dilemma which affects so many of your most vulnerable subjects, and come to speak to me personally. Come and knock on my door so the whole world can see how much you care, and I will open it and accept my fate whatever it might be.’

Some yob sets off a firework. It spirals into the night sky leaving a trail of stars behind it and starting a frenzied wave of stamping and clapping which grows so thunderous and threatening that those few security men who are armed put their hands on their hidden guns and stand to immediate attention.

‘Damn,’ says the Police Superintendent, hiding in the back of a reinforced security van. ‘That’s put the cat among the pigeons.’

‘You don’t think the Queen will come?’

‘Of course she won’t. You can’t blackmail your Royals like that. You can’t start off on that slippery slope, God knows where it might lead.’

Miss Benson has to visit the lavatory. She fights her way through her little sitting room, locks the door behind her and kneels on the floor with a beating heart. She pushes back the carpet and raises the floorboard.

‘Mrs Peacock?’

A short pause while Irene Peacock positions herself to answer. ‘You were wonderful, Miss Benson!
Absolutely wonderful!’

‘Oh, thank goodness you think so. I was so afraid I might muff it.’

‘Now we can only wait and see. I have played my last card.’

‘And if there is no response from the Queen?’

‘Well, let’s face it, I can’t stay down here for ever. There’s nothing else for it; if there is no response I shall have to creep out and suffer the humiliation of a complete U-turn. At least we have brought this wicked practice to public attention. At least people have been able to talk about it and get angry and be listened to by those few folks in London who are only interested in wars and foreign lands and the Common Market and such like. We’ve kept those issues out of the news for a few days anyway, those and all the devious sex practices nobody wants to know about. MPs and their silly wives.’

‘You have bravely defied them all,’ says Miss Benson from her bathroom floor. ‘You ought to be very proud of yourself.’

‘I couldn’t have done it without your help, Miss Benson. You have been my inspiration and my right hand. Heaven only knows how you are coping with all those newspaper people in that small flat. It will want complete redecoration when they have gone. And what about the carpets with all that wear?’

‘Now is not the time to worry about such insignificant matters,’ Miss Benson reassures her neighbour. ‘I will contact you at seven-thirty in the morning and we will decide on our next course of action. Have you got everything you need? Cigarettes? Gin? How about lime juice?’

‘I’m fine, thank you, Miss Benson. In some ways I shall regret having to come out at all. It’s so cosy living like this and never having to see anyone. I could go on quite happily like this for weeks. My only real regret, of course, is that Frankie has been so upset.’

‘That was unavoidable. She’ll get over it, you wait and see. And perhaps it will make her think a bit harder about her attitude towards you.’

It’s so nice being waited on hand and foot and yet comfortable in your own home without having to get up and face the everyday turmoil of life. Irene can only compare this strange lifestyle to being ill in bed when she was little and let off school and having her favourite meals brought up on a tray to tempt her. Those were the only times she was allowed to read uninterrupted, listen to the radio, go to sleep when she wanted, presented with little treats like comics and jigsaws and ice cream for her sore throat. The only times she was ever totally approved of. After all, you can’t misbehave when you’re ill. Whatever your behaviour, you can’t help it.

You get to be a monster by the time you are better, calling down with impatient demands, sulking and desperate to get out of the house. Quarrelling. Hot and scratchy.

William. How she misses him still. But now she gets to thinking that William was treated as if he was ill all his married life. Did she treat him like that because he was a man, and whatever his behaviour might be she secretly believed he couldn’t help it? She knows how angry her relationship with William always made poor Frankie. ‘He’s nothing but a bad-tempered old misery and you are the one who made him like this. There’s no one to blame but yourself if he doesn’t lift a finger to help you. Hell, Mum, he’s even jealous of the kids! And they don’t like coming to the bungalow because Dad is so spoilt and unpleasant.’

Well? Was William spoilt and unpleasant? For the first time in her life she has the space, the peace and quiet to consider the whole matter. William was a self-centred man, everything and everyone revolved around him, much as the world is revolving round her today. It makes a change for Irene to attract this sort of attention, any sort of attention.

And she is thoroughly enjoying it.
She has never seen life from William’s angle before.

It is an excellent angle. She looks round her safe and cosy flat with the planks nailed across the windows, all this: her cupboard full of good things, enough gin and fags to last her, the television on in the corner, Miss Benson upstairs, the great provider… This comfortable life she is living today, this protected, peculiar existence, is what William enjoyed all the time. There was Irene keeping the rest of the world at bay, answering the telephone, dealing with the letters and cards, entertaining the grandchildren, going to bed when he went to bed, watching the programmes he chose to watch and eating the food which was always his favourite. Except when he was out at work William conveniently barricaded himself off from the world while she fed him all his necessities down through a chute and felt just as satisfied as Miss Benson does, poor Miss Benson, racked by a guilt which is her undoing.