The Storytellers (7 page)

Incensed, the Kingsbury men reached inside the van for clubs just as the cameramen grasped what had happened and descended on the prostrate girl like vultures. As fast as they snapped, their cameras were grabbed from them and smashed to pieces on the frozen ground.

By now Abigail's two brothers and the two other drivers, each with clubs of their own, had waded in and a group of men, led by Tony Hunter was approaching from the house. As he and one of his lads pulled Abigail clear, the fight became brutal until it was obvious to Ralf Drydon's men that they were outnumbered.

Thrashing and hacking, with the Hunters side increasingly gaining the advantage, the Kingsbury lads backed themselves towards the van. They wouldn't have got away unless Tony had reined in his men. With the five surrounded, he could have had them reduced to pulp. Instead he told the interlopers to bugger off and that it was about time they did an honest day's work. As the van was manoeuvred away, a cascade of blows fell on it, converting the carrier's outside into scrap metal.

Following his gruesome discovery, and seeing that the odds were against him, Max had panicked. Screaming at Jack to ‘get the fucking Cortina away', the two had slipped on the ice while racing towards it. The club Max had used flew up, catching Jack on the side of the head,
knocking him unconscious. Max and John bundled the organizer into the car and succeeded in driving off while the action was focused on the van.

* * *

The drive back down to Longbridge was fraught, with John at the wheel of an unfamiliar car and a sobbing Max, repeating ceaselessly, ‘I didn't know she was a girl. She shouldn't have been there. How was I to know?'

“Do you fink you killed 'er?” John quickly regretted his dumb question as it unlocked another torrent of self-recrimination from Max. Meanwhile, Jack Pugh had come round and was burbling about a great victory while clutching his throbbing head and speculating that he might have broken the leg he'd twisted in the fall. His nose must have taken a knock as well because it was bleeding like an open tap, further adding to the bedlam inside the car.

“For Christ's sake, block it man,” pleaded Max who was showing an unexpected aversion to blood. “It's fucking well getting everywhere.”

At Longbridge John dropped Max at their flat. The man was falling apart, now concerned less with the girl and more with the possibility that the Kingsbury boys would fit him up for a murder he might have committed.

“You'll back me up, John, won't you? I wasn't there.”

John couldn't be bothered to remind him that Jack had introduced them both to Ralf Drydon. What was the point? The poor bastard was screwed whatever way round you cut it.

“I'll be back inside the hour,” he reassured him. “Must drop Jack back at Cowley. He's in naa fit state.”

As he closed their flat door, Max was still baying like a bereft she-wolf. “I wasn't there. I just wasn't there.”

* * *

A few miles out of Longbridge, with Jack now nursing himself in the front seat, John asked, “Where exactly d'ya liv' in Cowley?”

“On the south side,” Jack told him. “But you can drop me at Oxford University. It's closer.”

“Goen ter drop a bomb then?”

“I've an engagement.”

“Whereabouts?” John asked, resisting the temptation to press what a Trot from Cowley planned to do inside the establishment's advanced seat of learning. “Yoi'r in naa fit state ter walk.”

“Brasenose College. I'll give you directions when we get there.”

Jack's conversation was monosyllabic, as if he were giving painful birth to every word. After establishing their altered destination, he just fell asleep.

* * *

With the help of a college porter, John Preston managed to get the Cortina round to the back of the building, along Brasenose Lane. As luck would have it, the porter had seen Jack before and after they had deciphered his repeated ‘Miranda, must see Miranda', helped him haul the wounded revolutionary up to the lady's room.

Out for the count on her small bed, Jack Pugh looked like the girl had looked, curled up defenceless on the ground, arms wrapped around her head protecting it from the blows. Max might have been distraught to discover the sex of his victim, but John had been disgusted by the whole fucking thing. If this was Jack's revolution, he could stuff it.

As he started to check over the room's contents, he wondered if he should have asked the porter to call a doctor. Then something caught his eye – a letter addressed to Miranda de Coursey. He'd read
about a financier called Sebastian de Coursey who was interested in parts of British Leyland. His Longbridge brothers had pinned the article with a picture of the man to their dartboard and there hadn't been much of it left last time he looked. But what a sweet effing possibility! This surely warranted a report and would justify a visit to Stacy. Then a troubling notion occurred to him. Supposing the Trot from Cowley was working to save the nation too?

* * *

The aftermath at Hunters' yard reminded Harvey of Wellington's comment in a letter to a friend after his battle at Waterloo, that nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. The ambulance had collected Abigail and she was now on life support at the local hospital. Tony had ranted at his sons for letting her drive and then cursed himself for delaying their exit.

“Those men had been drinking. If we'd gone out first thing, maybe it wouldn't have happened.”

Amos and Virgil, caked in their own blood and that of their adversaries, had tried to comfort their mother. Now the family was standing vigil beside Abigail's hospital bed.

The photographers had combed the ground for their camera parts like scavengers searching for anything that could still be used. Hunters' other drivers quickly extracted the first truck from the ditch and had already left to deliver what was likely to be their last load. A couple of policemen were taking statements and measuring distances and a colleague was photographing the blood on the ground where Abigail fell.

Harvey took one last look at the scene before he and his neutered accomplice climbed into one of the taxis summoned to take the journalists to the station. On the train he wrote, crossed out and wrote again. By the time they'd reached London he felt he had it, but
still managed to make some changes on the way to St Paul's.

George Gilder was grim-faced.

“I need pictures. I must have pictures.”

While Harvey's almost indecipherable freehand piece was being coaxed into life by an imaginative typist, George Gilder was on the telephone to the other editors whose journalists had also been at Hunters – had anyone retrieved a useable image? A photographer with
The Tamworth Herald
had managed to secure a picture of Abigail in hospital and was now negotiating his price, while the local police were being persuaded to release a picture of the blood-stained snow to a courier standing by.

By 6.00 p.m., things were looking up. The police, anxious to catch Abigail's assailant, had agreed to release a picture and it was now in
The Sentinel
office. One of the photographers, although not Harvey's, had had the presence of mind to gather up all the unfurled film spread around the site like tagliatelle, and one grainy image had been retrieved. It hurt George Gilder to have to negotiate with a counterpart, but his determination to get a photograph of the blockade overcame his natural frugality. Only then did he grab Harvey's piece from the typist's desk and retreat to his office.

The day had been something of an epiphany for Harvey. For the first time in his life he had come face-to-face with thuggery, the muscles of the authoritarian mind. He had also witnessed the courage needed to resist it.

In her primitive, intelligent way, his mother had often talked not so much about as around
freedom
, a concept she instinctively understood but would have been hard-pressed to define, just as countless academics had been. For her, it didn't need defining. It was obvious. If there was no law which applied to all, and if people were unable to associate with one another for their mutual benefit as they chose, there was no freedom.

‘Lawlessness in one direction and beliefs in the other, Harve, are
freedom's arch enemies,' she'd once told him, ‘and both are masters of disguise.'

“Mudd!”

Harvey smiled to himself. He'd miss that cry. Even if others hearing it for the first time would have been shocked, he knew the heart it came from and they didn't. Inside he found George Gilder at his desk with tears streaming down both cheeks.

“You've nailed it, Mudd. You bloody well have. Now let's get this into print and pray our great British electorate is woken from its sleep!”

* * *

Miranda returned to her room to find her revolutionary hero sitting on her bed with caked blood around his nostrils and a bump the size of a cricket ball on the side of his head. Overwhelmed by feelings of motherhood and desire she had attended to his wounds and then to her need with such passion that the girl in the room next door, who had grown used to the sounds of rapture, was driven to come and ask if all was well. Jack had been far from sure that it was. Every part of him ached as Miranda extracted from him the highlights of his battle along with his last drops of energy.

‘It was an epic,' he assured her, ‘a battle like no other. You should have been there.' And he fell asleep with the words ‘a triumph' and Miranda on his lips.

Early next morning, she slipped out to get a newspaper, half expecting to read that her lover had been made Commissar of the People's Committee, Midlands District. She opened the enemy publication first, hoping that self-interest would have forced it to reverse its normally hostile coverage, but her hopes were quickly dashed. The headline across the front of
The Sentinel
read:
Flying Pickets Blockade Family Business – Owner's Daughter Near Death
.

Beneath a grainy picture of a lorry approaching a row of pickets,
she read that a forty-year-old family business had been brought to its knees by thugs intent on preventing it from making fuel deliveries to its customers. The owner's daughter had been pulled from her cab and savagely beaten. A picture of the woman's blood in the snow ran alongside another of her lying on a hospital bed, heavily bandaged and attached to tubes.

Convinced it was largely propaganda, she scanned the other papers, but all reported essentially the same facts. Returning to
The Sentinel
, she forced herself to read it in full until she came to the words ‘…Mr Jack Pugh, a member of Militant Tendency based in Cowley, and a witness to the outrage, fled the scene with two accomplices, although “fled” might be generous, as Mr Pugh was seen colliding with a club-wielding colleague in his rush to the car with such force that his two companions had to throw him into the vehicle before driving off.'

The words ‘a witness to the outrage' made her feel physically sick. Had her lover only been a witness? Had he not been directing events? And if he had been directing events, would he not have been responsible for the woman's condition. Feelings of hot and cold, fear and anger, swept over her. And to think his ‘war wounds' might have been self-inflicted! This was not what she had imagined. This was not what she wanted to read. The police would now be involved and the only name mentioned in the entire article belonging to a likely perpetrator was that of Jack Pugh. He had to go – and now.

* * *

Jack hobbled out of Brasenose College like a smitten dog and stood in the archway wondering what to do.

“Looking for the car?” the porter asked solicitously.

“Yes,” answered Jack hopefully.

“Your friend took it.”

C
HAPTER

F
AKE SNOW DAPPLES the stage. Marcello's painting has become a sign above the tavern door. The friends – poet, painter, philosopher and musician, have fooled their landlord out of another week's rent for the garret they share in the Latin Quarter. Rodolfo the poet and Mimi, the embroiderer who lives downstairs, have already met and are in love. Now it is winter and Rodolfo's feigned jealousy is driving Mimi away. He hopes she will find a wealthy lover who will pay for the medicines she needs. Harvey is moved. Puccini's score opens an ache in his own heart for a kind of love he has not known. The custom-house officers, asleep around a brazier, make him think of the pickets doing the same back in Britain. Did Abigail have a lover? Does life change, or just repeat, again and again, in a cycle of domination and resistance, love gained and love lost? He knows Mimi will die of consumption and that Rodolfo will be bereft. He has seen La Bohème before.

Mimi's illness had a deeper meaning for Harvey. His mother's mortality had started to weigh on him. She had complained of tiredness, which she had never done before, and he had paid for her to see a doctor.

‘Right as rain, Harve,' she said afterwards. So, in celebration, he had taken her to Milan. His star was rising. George Gilder even mentioned the editorship one day, but that had been after a heavy session at the bar, so he thought little of it. His pay was good though, which was a reality he could bank on – or spend.

His mother had never been on an aeroplane. So he had booked them first class to Malpensa International Airport, which delighted her, although the expense of it would have upset him greatly in any other circumstances. But that was nothing compared to the Grand Hotel and car he'd hired for the evening.

“Look, Harvey, it's all lit up like a fairy castle,” she said as their limousine glided to the front of the Teatro alla Scala and they were ushered inside. As they settled into their box, Sylvia's diminutive body swathed in a flowing chiffon gown smothered with costume jewellery, she leant over, revelling in the imagined intrigue of it all, and whispered, “They'll think we're a duchess and her lover, Harve!”

Mimi appears on stage and finds Marcello. She tells him of her problems with Rodolfo. He goes into the inn to find him but when they come out together, Mimi is hiding. Rodolfo confesses to Marcello that his jealousy was a ruse to drive Mimi away so that she might find a rich lover. Mimi's consumptive cough gives her away and the two agree to stay together until the spring – ‘Ah!' she sighs. ‘That our winter might last forever.'

In the last act, Mimi is dying. He sings, ‘How cold your hand.' She sings back, ‘They call me Mimi,' to the music that accompanied their first meeting. As she draws her last breath, Rodolfo's friends gather round in disbelief and he throws himself onto her now lifeless body sobbing, ‘Mimi! Mimi!'

For seconds that feel like hours, the audience is silent, undone by the tragedy it has witnessed. Then eyes are dabbed, handkerchiefs put away, and everyone jumps up and claps frantically, as if trying to attract a passing ship that will pull them back on board to a safer
reality. Ileana Cotruba
ş
and Luciano Pavarotti come forward with the players and then again with their conductor, Carlos Kleiber, to acknowledge the applause. A moment in time has come and gone, never to be repeated.

“That was sad, Harvey,” she said as they were making their way down the stairs to the door. “I don't want you to miss out on love because of me.”

“Don't be silly. Now let's hope that car is waiting.”

It was probably only a five minute walk to the hotel, but Harvey was determined to do this in style. The lobby was a crush and not much better outside and he was anxious not to lose his mother. As he looked around he found himself staring at a familiar face just as the face was staring at him.

“Lady Graham!”

“Mr Mudd!”

He was surprised she had remembered his name.

“Waiting for your driver?”

“No, a taxi.”

“How many are you? I have a car here somewhere I hope.”

“I am on my own.”

“Well you must certainly let us give you a lift. This car of mine, if I can find it, is costing me a fortune!”

Frances Graham threw her head back and laughed. She was not used to being amongst people who were concerned about the cost of things, especially hired cars.

As Harvey stared through the crowd at the traffic jostling for position in front of the opera house, their limousine came into view. The large tip he had already handed over was working its magic. Quite unperturbed by the cussing and honking, the driver got out and held the door open for his customers.

“In you go, dear,” Sylvia instructed and followed Frances, leaving Harvey to take one of the seats facing them. “This is fun!” she said.

“Al Grand, signore?” the driver asked. “Hotel, yes?”

“If you don't mind, dear. It's been a long day for me.”

“Of course not,” Frances told her.

“So where are you staying?” asked Harvey. “I am sure the driver would be happy to take you anywhere you wanted.”

“A flat near the Piazza dei Volontari. I don't think it is too far.”

“Non lontano
– not far,” confirmed the driver. “
Ed ecco il Grand Hotel
. We arrive!”

“Mother, this is Lady Graham.”

“Frances, please!”

“Well it's very nice to meet you, dear. Now, Harvey, you must see this lady home. I'll be quite all right.”

Harvey excused himself and took his mother inside. But she was unusually firm and told him to get right back out as she wanted to sit in the lobby for a bit and watch the people, and yes, she was quite capable of getting the key to her room without him.

Harvey slipped into the back seat beside Frances and the driver moved off. He could smell her scent and felt intoxicated.

“That was a wonderful production,” she said. “I am told Carlos Kleiber is a hard man to work for, but what a perfectionist!”

“I read that his family left Austria for South America in 1940, at the start of the Second World War. He was called Karl then.”

“Yes,” she answered. “Such disruption. None of us really knows what lies around the corner, do we?”

“I suppose not,” he agreed.

“Pretty,” she said looking out of the window, “but not half as lovely as Rome!”

“Ah, but the Milanese make the money. The Romans only know how to spend it!”

“A characteristic of the cultured class!” she laughed.

“Do you often go to the opera on your own?” he questioned.

“Quite often. David, my husband, does not really like it. So rather
than have him next to me fidgeting, I prefer to go alone or with a girlfriend.”

“And to Milan?”

“This is only my second visit. David had a meeting here, so I thought I would make the most of it.”

“What does your husband do, if you don't mind me asking?”

“He's a soldier, mostly. But he and his friends always have some scheme on the go. I tend to stay clear of all that.”

“Sounds interesting!”

She just shrugged.

“You're a journalist, aren't you, Mr Mudd?”

“Harvey, please. Yes, with
The Sentinel
.”

“That's George Gilder, isn't it?”

“You know him?” Harvey asked, somewhat surprised.

“Yes, he's stayed with us two or three times at Graham Castle. My husband likes gatherings of the great and the good – and the not so good!”

Suddenly Harvey felt tongue-tied. Was he sitting next to his editor's friend or to a woman he had now met twice, and to whom he felt strangely drawn?

“Oh look!” she exclaimed, “the Arco della Pace. We must be close.”

“Yes, the Peace Arch,” he echoed, relieved to be talking about something else. “I read that it has a fractured history, like Italy itself. There was a Roman arch here once. But that arch was moved in mediaeval times and became part of the Sforza Castle. Napoleon commissioned this arch as the entrance to the city on a road that ran all the way from Paris. But when the Austrians took over Milan, following Napoleon's defeat, it was completed and given its present name. This was in honour of the 1815 Congress of Vienna which laid the ground for a peace in Europe that lasted for the next one hundred years.”

“You like history,” she observed, amused that the mention of George Gilder had made him turn serious.

“Yes, I suppose I do. I think the past helps you understand the present.”

“
Piazza dei Volontari
,” the driver announced. “
Volete che guidi intorno al Parco Sempione di nuovo?
”

“What did he say?” Harvey asked, annoyed that his Italian was less good than he thought.

“He wonders if we would like to drive around the park again,” she told him with a smile.

Harvey looked at her, embarrassed and uncertain what to say.

She looked at her watch.

“My husband will not be back until the early hours, I don't suppose, but perhaps we should leave the park for another day, Harvey.”

“Yes, perhaps we should,” he accepted, savouring her use of his Christian name.

Looking back, it was then that both recognized the attraction each had for the other. Had their circumstances been different they would happily have driven all round Milan, not just one of its parks. But their circumstances were not different and Harvey realized he could not see Frances Graham again. During the flight home, when his mother said, with her customary certainty, ‘One day you will marry that girl, Harvey,' he experienced a sharp stab of anger at what felt like her cruelty.