1985 (29 page)

‘
Religious?
Does that matter?' Faulkner waited. ‘Well, I was brought up Primitive Methodist. Dropped it, of course. I'm nothing now. God's abandoned the world.'

‘Ah,' said Faulkner. ‘Not everybody would say that. I'm Unitarian. It helps. His lordship will want to know. He'll inveigh against a society gone mad with materialism. He believes the only answer is a return to God. He'll want to know how you feel about that.”

‘Accommodation?' asked Bev again.

‘The usual. No married patches, I'm afraid. But take that daughter of yours to Al-Dorchester. Ask for the Abu Bakar Suite. Where are you staying?'

‘I've only just been let out of Crawford Manor. My rehabilitation course didn't work. But I've thirty pounds.'

‘That won't take you far. We have a sort of miniature transit depot by Turnham Green station. Officers only. I can fix you up for the night if you like”.'

‘You're kind.'

‘No, just doing my job. We need good officers. Plenty of recruits for the lower levels.
Leading
an army is always the problem.'

‘How much of an army is it? Thanks.' He had been given a third double scotch. Faulkner surveyed him coolly before answering. Then he said:

‘Like the Salvation Army in a way. But we're not for derelicts. We're for energy and patriotism, skill and God. We're the alternative State. We have no arms. We've no desire to function outside the law. Not, that is, until the law puts itself beyond reason.'

‘It's done that already,' Bev said with gloom.

‘No. Use your imagination. Or just wait. I don't think you'll have to wait long. Events have a peculiar genius of their own. Whatever the mind imagines, the mind itself is primarily a boggling machine. Wait. One for the road?'

The transit depot had formerly been a small biscuit factory. Bev found several six-bed chambers, with very clean lavatories and a kitchen that provided bread and cheese and very strong tea. There was no officers' bar. Talking to Lieutenants Brown and Derrida, Captain Chakravorty and Acting Major Latimer, Bev discovered that they were waiting for postings to provincial barracks – Darlington, Bury St Edmunds, Durham and Preston. Chakravorty estimated that the strength of the Free Britons
was now above 50 000 and growing, but it was, he said, sadly under-officered. The problem of placing arms caches worried Latimer. He was convinced that it would soon be necessary to be armed. He was recommending crash instruction in the use of automatic weapons, with dummy guns if need be. But they needed an arsenal network and they needed to be able to ensure the free passage of arms. ‘We'll have to wait till G Day,' he said, ‘but that's cutting it very fine.'

‘G Day?' puzzled Bev. They looked at him as at one who was unforgivably ignorant, but then Derrida said:

‘Of course, you're new, you can't know. General Strike Day. Ours as well as theirs. There's going to be terrible opposition.'

‘And where will the arms come from?' asked Bev. They held back their laughs, but Chakravorty said:

‘That's something you ought to know. There's no excuse for that kind of ignorance.' He said no more. He yawned genteelly and said it was time to turn in. He had to take a train at 05.15, picking up a Drains and Sewage detachment half an hour before.

Bev was up early enough. He had to get Bessie before the 08.15 virginibus took her to school. He rode the underground railway – a diminished service but not now on strike – from Turnham Green to the Bank, and then changed lines for Highbury and Islington. The Girls' Home was off Essex Road. He had bought a newspaper at Turnham Green, the media strike over, and found it full of blanks where the printers had not allowed certain items to be published. The front page news concerned the beginning of a construction workers' strike that day. There was a pugnacious photograph of Jack Burlap, the union leader, saying that sweet reason had failed and the twenty-hour week and the £20 rise reasonably requested had been brutally thrown out at a joint meeting of the National Productivity and National Wages Boards. They knew what was coming, brothers, and now here it is.

Bessie, waiting with her friends for the virginibus, chewing roundly on something, listening to raucous rock on a gipsy-looking girl's transistor radio, did not at first recognize her father. Then she said, ‘Dad,' and embraced him lusciously. She was clean in a short blue skirt and a provocative red sweater, was much fined down in body except for her breasts. ‘He was on the telly, my dad was,' she told her friends, ‘The strike's over,' she told her father. ‘It was terrible, wasn't it, Linda, having no telly. But tonight it's
Road Floozy
.' The gipsy girl was turning the
selector. Talk came through an instant and another instant and another as she sought noise:

‘Sheikh Abdulrahman said he was . . . under no circumstances would the strike be permitted to . . . Great Smith Street was scheduled for. . . .' And then music, loud, crude, brash. Bev said:

‘Put the news back on. It sounded important.'

‘Up your fucking arse,' said the gipsy. ‘Bus is coming, Bess.'

‘You, Bess, are coming with me,' said Bev. ‘Get packed.' Bessie howled. Her friends climbed aboard, miming sexual assault on the driver, who wearily said, ‘Stop that lot now.' Bessie sought to follow them. Bessie's friends got off to rend Bev with their nails. Bev said:

‘A day out. Lunch. Cinema.'

‘It's
Road Floozy
tonight.'

‘I'm talking about
today
.'

‘So I don't have to pack, do I?'

‘I suppose not.' Bev and the driver exchanged a nod of large frustration. ‘We'll get you things, whatever one means by things.'

‘Lipstick? Manegloss?'

‘Come on,' said Bev. He still had, after his tube-fare, twenty-five pounds in his pocket. He took her to a Crumpsall's Yumbox and watched her eat sausages with her fingers. She told him about her life at the Girls' Home, which meant mostly what television programmes she had seen. The strike had been terrible, strikes shouldn't be Allowed by Law, but Miss Bottrell had put on film shows. And they didn't have a wide-screen telly there, anyway, which was a fucking cheat, and there was only one set, and there had been scratching and hair-tugging and gouging about what they should all look at. But it would be all right tonight, they all wanted to see
Road Floozy
. She did not seem to remember her mother; she was vague about her old address; her father she remembered because he had been on the telly. She spoke of Red Azel and Dirty Nell and Black Liz and the night they had got a boy into Dorm B and thrown his clothes out of the window and made him do things to them, but he couldn't do much and it wasn't as good as the telly. Bev sighed.

He gave her lunch at the Pig-in-a-Blanket on Tottenham Court Road and watched her eat sausages with her fingers. She ate two helpings of Cream Corn Heaven with Old Piggy's Chocsauce. Bev had enough cash left to take her to the one o'clock showing of
Sex Planet
at the Dominion, and she wanted to see it round again, but he said:

‘No. We're having tea now,' knowing that they weren't unless it was going to be stood them, ‘at one of the finest hotels in the world. And don't ask if they have telly there, because they do.' He counted up his deckers. They could afford to ride to Green Park. From there they must walk. By the tube station the
Evening Standard
was being sold. A headline said:
MOSQUE SCABS THREAT
. Bev couldn't afford a copy.

High above Al-Dorchester on Park Lane a yellow flag flew, with the name of the establishment, in beautiful Arabic script, and floodlights flooded it with light. Bev and Bessie went through the swing-doors. The vestibule was full of Arabs, some in robes, others in badly cut Western suitings. In the long lounge tea was being taken. Bessie said:

‘Look at them lovely fancies.' Weary British waiters pincered cream horns and eclairs on to the plates of disdainful male Arabs. Bev said:

‘Sit down there.' And he shoved her into a canary-coloured armchair while he went to the desk to ask about Colonel Lawrence. Colonel Lawrence was expected at any moment, he was told. He went back to Bessie. Bessie complained:

‘You said we was going to have tea. I want some of them cakes.'

‘Be quiet child. I haven't enough money.'

‘You promised.' She beat on his chest with a sturdy fist. Some tea-taking Arabs looked amused. One man, in snowy robes and corded headpiece, gazed through dark glasses long and with no discernible expression. He said something to a big-eared young man in an atrocious brown suit. The young man nodded and came over to Bev. He said:

‘His Highness says you join him for tea.'

‘Well –' Bev was doubtful. Bessie said:

‘His Highness?'

‘He says you join him for tea.'

‘Then tell his Highness ta,' said Bessie, and she pulled Bev vigorously up from his chair. They went over. Bev inclined to His Highness.

‘Sit,' said His Highness. ‘Sit.' There was a clapping of hands. Two waiters appeared with silver teapots and fancy cakes. Bessie couldn't wait for the pastry-tongs. She grabbed. His Highness smiled with reluctant indulgence. He spoke long Arabic with many throat-clearings and glottal checks to a fat man in a navy blue double breasted of which the bosom sagged sadly. The fat man said, nodding:

‘
Gamil, gamil. Hamsun?
'

‘What precisely is –?' Bev began, and then he was aware of a stirring in the lobby. Somebody important had arrived.

‘Al Orens,' said His Highness. Bev said, rising:

‘Excuse me. An appointment. I –'

‘You leave her,' said the fat man. ‘She eat. She be safe.' As an earnest of this he clapped his hands for waiters. Bev now saw Colonel Lawrence for the first time. He was immensely tall, had a Mediterranean nose and a northern pallor, was dressed in a green suit with discreet yellow piping on the lapels, wore a black cloak. He had an entourage of five or six, white, brown, black. To an aide of an aubergine colour he spoke rapid Arabic. He bowed to the Arab tea-takers with deferential grimness, making for the lifts. He carried a riding-crop. Bev went, pulled out his note of introduction, addressed the aide:

‘Sent by Major Faulkner –'

‘Okay, you come up. Long wait maybe, maybe not. Many things going on now. You take next elevator.' Too tall for the ascending box, Colonel Lawrence seemed to bow towards Bev. The door closed. Bessie was on her, surely, seventh eclair. His Highness encouraged her gently to eat. Bev took the next lift.

The room where he was made to wait was a sumptuous lounge half-transformed into an office. Office? More like a map-room, war-room, operations-room. Two girls in green, one of whom greeted Bev with, ‘Hi,' were dealing with, respectively, a telex machine and a typewriter whose carriage moved the wrong way (of course: Arabic). A map of the United Kingdom was on one wall, on another a map of Greater London. There were flags stuck on these maps. In the Westminster area was a black lozenge with the moon of Islam in the middle. Of course, the new mosque. The typing girl, very English rose and yet a great clatterer of Arabic script, got up and took a Coca Cola from a drinks-fridge. She offered one silently to Bev. Bev was thirsty.

He was standing with a black bottle stupidly in his hand when Colonel Lawrence came in. The eyes that looked down on him were speckled and flashed irregularly and disconcertingly. ‘There is little time,' the voice was a reedy tenor, the accent vaguely Scottish, ‘for formalities. Things are beginning. I have a strong recommendation from Major Major –'

‘Falk er ner,' said the aubergine aide.

‘You are, I gather, highly literate. Have you had journalistic experience?'

‘I edited the university magazine for a year. But listen, sir, I would like –'

‘You would like to know terms of engagement etcetera etcetera. There is no time, I say. This is the evening of the double strike. We need full eye-witness information ready for press by at latest 22.00. We wish you to go to Great Smith Street.'

‘I fear, I'm afraid –'

‘Afraid? Ah, I see. Give him money, Redzwan. Give him, ah, one of our anonymous raincoats. Take a taxi. Take a notebook and a pencil. You seem, if I may say so, to have nothing. Soon, I promise you, if you are obedient and faithful, you shall have everything.' Colonel Lawrence, aide following, strode back to the neighbouring room. Bev frowned and swigged his coke. The typing girl, without looking up, said:

‘He's like that.'

Bessie was still stuffing, but more slowly. ‘Oad Oozie,' she said. The entire Arab company watched benevolently. ‘Telly,' she said. Bev said:

‘I have to go. Work. For Colonel Lawr –'

‘She be safe.'

Bessie, drugged with goo, looked up at her father and did not seem to recognize him. The white raincoat perhaps. The oversize bowler hat that was really a lightweight steel helmet. Bev went to the door and the Cockney doorman whistled him a taxi. Bev gave him a five-pound note. Sophisticated by Islamic prodigality, the doorman scowled. Bev rode off through the winter evening. There was not much traffic. The price of petrol, the cost of cars. Hyde Park Corner. Grosvenor Place. Victoria Street. The taxi-driver sang some bitter recitative to himself. The corner of Great Smith Street, Westminster Abbey just ahead. Of course, the great mosque must challenge the ancient temple of the people of the scriptures, British branch. Bev heard the noise of crowds. He gave the driver a ten-pound note and told him to keep the change. ‘Ain't no bleedin' change.' Bev gave him a twicer. ‘Ta, mate.' And there it was facing him: the start of the great confrontation.

The crowd was angry and was hardly to be held back by an unhappy police cordon. Mounted constables clacked up and down. There was much light. Huge generating trucks fed huge brutes of floodlamps. By
the light of these men worked. How many? A hundred? More? Two sky-high cranes were gravely busy, their gantries gyrating, their cabled grabs placing great blocks of masonry with delicate care. A brace of concrete-mixers ground and growled. Workmen in aluminium bonnets climbed ladders and descended them. An electric hoist took up a whole brickie gang to a boardwalk. The crowd of strikers yelled filth at the scabs. A loudspeaker truck rolled into Great Smith Street and a voice hurled and echoed: