Godwin had never been so exhilarated in his life.
One wall in particular was clearly about to collapse: the frontage of the
building where (if she still lived) little Greer must be hiding. Apart
from having shed all its glazing, it was rayed by huge irregularly
slanting cracks, springing from door- and window-corners. It was dark; the
darkness stank; the air was dry and dried out the mouth, the gullet, the
guts of Godwin Harpinshield so that like a desiccated sketch for a reed
pipe he sang unbearable chants of delicious agony to the basso continuo
of the falling bombs and the rising shells and the tormented city.
Transfixed by the experience, he was a collected butterfly on the stark,
bare mounting board of time.
A flare, or a flash from reflected searchlights, lent a gleam of whiteness
to the world. Abruptly he saw a child clearly in the maw of the sandbagged
entry: skeletally thin limbs poking out from a cotton nightdress much too
small for her, peaked on her rib-ridged chest by fistlike breasts achieving
the status of a nipple/knuckle, an O-wide mouth and O-wide eyes, obviously
screaming . . . but the sound was drowned out by other and more awful noise.
Now the building adjacent was alight from basement to attic and the flames
created a blowtorch roar, the hiss of a dragon closing on his virgin prey.
So much oxygen was being sucked from the air, it was growing hard to breathe.
Calm, Godwin assessed his chances, surveying the piles of rubble. The odds
were bad but not prohibitive. Decision reached, he darted forward with the
erratic, jinking run of a rugby three-quarter, treating the obstacles as
though they were only opposing players. And the wall to the left, and then
the wall to the right, began to buckle, dislodging bricks
clunk, clunk
.
"Stop!" howled the warden following Godwin. And, invoking the most powerful
charm he knew: "Stop,
sir
!"
Godwin paid no heed. His leg was hurting worse at every step, but it would
last long enough. Greer rushed toward him. He seized her in both arms,
spun around and fled back the way he had come, carrying her as lightly
as a mere football. Only twenty yards to the corner . . . ten . . .
The shock of yet another bomb, falling a street or so away, was too much
for the wall of the burning tenement. It opened brick-dribbling jaws at
first-floor level, sliding, grinding, settling in a torrent of sparks,
a wave of flames.
"Hurry!" the warden screamed, and Godwin lunged forward as though
hurling his body across a goal line, the child thrust out before him
at full stretch. He was not quite fast enough to save himself. A chunk
of masonry hit him on the right arm, and he heard as much as felt the
bones snap. But before pain wiped away consciousness he was able to
register that he had saved the little girl, who could, he now realized,
be no older than ten. She was staring at him by the flamelight with huge,
dark, somehow hungry eyes, as though to eat the very image of her rescuer.
She was there also, with her mother and sisters and baby brother, in the
crowd that lined the pavement to watch heroes arriving for the following
week's royal investiture. The high iron railings before the palace yard
had been taken away to build fighters, but loyal citizens would not have
dreamed of venturing uninvited into the grounds.
It was curious, Godwin thought as he marched smartly forward at the
calling of his name and gave an awkward salute with his left arm because
the right was in a sling -- it was curious and also somehow a little
disappointing that this king was not majestically tall as children would
have wished, but only of average height, and that his queen should be
of such a comfortable housewifely plumpness . . . But it was a moment
to be treasured forever when those thin, uncertain fingers lifted the
George Medal -- named after a saint, and himself -- from the red velvet
cushion on which it was proffered by an equerry and pinned it below the
wings which he himself did not display, even though he wore the uniform
of a Marshal of the Royal Air Force.
"Congratulations, Squadron Leader," he said. The promotion had been
gazetted while Godwin lay in the hospital. "By the way, yours is an
unusual name. Irish, one presumes?"
"Yes, Your Majesty." A little dryly, a little deprecatingly. "I've always
been told -- excuse me -- we were descended from the High Kings of Erin."
That provoked a wan smile. "An older house than mine! Whose members had
the good sense to go out of business before they invented modern warfare."
It was known that there was a miniature factory in the palace, where
bombs and shells were made by royal hands.
"I understand you lost your parents in a recent raid," the king continued
after a brief hesitation.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm very sorry."
Pause. There were others waiting. Time to take a pace backward and again
give the wrong-handed salute. It was returned, but distractedly. Another
medal was on the red velvet pad; another name was being announced.
It was over.
But of course he had to make it seem much more dramatic for Mrs. Gallon
and her children and all the strangers who came swarming around him as
he regained the street. The little girls were dressed in their best,
and it was pitiful, but they had at least been thoroughly scrubbed and
their well-washed hair shone in the sunlight and they shared a waiflike
prettiness which, if one looked hard, might be discerned also behind
the tired mask of their mother's features. He told them all about the
ceremony, with a garnish of invented detail because truly he had not
paid much attention to the furnishings or decorations of the room he
had been in; he had looked only at the king and queen.
Finally he said he had to go, and saluted Mrs. Gallon, who giggled and
blushed, and rumpled the hair of each of the girls, leaving Greer to
last. But she was not content to be patted on the head. She seized his
hand as it approached and pulled him down and put her other arm behind his
neck and astonished him with her precocity by kissing him open-mouthed,
thrusting her tiny tongue between his teeth.
"Greer!" her mother said in horror. "You mustn't do that to the gentleman!
I'm sorry, sir -- she's a real terror, that one, a proper caution! I'm sure
I don't know where she gets it from!"
But the last thing Godwin wanted was for her to stop. The contact was
incredibly erotic; sensation lanced down his spine like electric current,
triggering every reflex on its way.
Must, though. Must! He visualized headlines about indecent assault in
broad daylight. Never mind that she committed it.
Contenting himself with one answering passage of his tongue against hers,
which conveniently trapped a trace of saliva that might otherwise have
glistened on his chin -- and irrelevantly remembering that he had expected
to have a mustache -- he hoisted Greer off her feet for a one-armed hug
and grinned as he lowered her again.
Thinking of infection, and countless thousands of girls of this generation
who would be given complete sets of false teeth for a twenty-first birthday
present.
"Not to worry, Mrs. Gallon!" he said in the heartiest tone he could conjure
up. "I'm sure it's kindly meant. You take care of yourself, young Greer,
and one day you'll make some man extremely happy, I'm convinced of it.
And now" -- he glanced around -- "I really must go. There's my bus!"
Everybody knew buses were too precious to miss, these days. It was the
right excuse. He went away.
Returning home, he landed his Fouga Magistère -- his current favorite
of the available two-seater jet aircraft -- at Stag Lane aerodrome and
drove into central London in his Lamiborghini Urraco. There was a reggae
program playing on Capital Radio which served to distract him during
the occasional traffic snarl-ups, but as ever he made excellent time;
even the cowboys seemed reluctant to dice with a machine wearing that
much horsepower. He dropped it off for a tuneup, wash, and polish at
the usual garage and completed his journey on foot, raising the collar
of his coat against a gray drizzle, carefully shielding his medal and
the newspaper cutting which authenticated it.
So far nobody, he noted as he turned the corner of his home street,
had turned up to collect the Jaguar Mark X which had been pushed into
the curb when it ran out of petrol . . . how long ago? Long enough
for piles of rubbish -- ice-lolly wrappers, fish-and-chip paper, empty
soft-drink cans -- to have accumulated against its wheels. Its windscreen
wipers and wing mirrors had been pilfered and kids had tried to start a
spectacular fire by setting a match to cardboard piled under its tank,
but by then it had been too dry to yield the hoped-for pyrotechnics;
they had only managed to blister some of the paint.
Shame about that.
The rain was penetrating and the wind was chilly. As soon as he reached
the upper floor of the house where he rented a room, he realized that
what he needed was some bright warm sunshine. Carefully closing the
door behind him -- not that, in fact, even the old woman who owned
the house and was overfond of gin and could be heard, until he shut
the door, laughing her silly head off at some nondescript television
comedy show, could have interrupted him without invitation . . . because
that was one of the conditions -- he peeled off his Dunn's tweed hat
and his Gannex raincoat (as patronized by a recent prime minister),
and then his sweater and jeans and boots and socks and helped himself
to a generous measure of José Cuervo tequila, complete with salt and
lemon, en route to a refreshing shower. When he came out, sweating
just enough not to want to don clothing again for the moment, he felt
hungry. He lay down in sunshine, but with his head in shade, and ate a
slice or two of smoked salmon with crisp fresh salad, washed down with
a foaming mug of pilsner. Satisfied, he lit an El Rey del Mundo petit
corona and debated where in his souvenir cabinet to put the George Medal
and the accompanying scrap of newspaper dated 20th September 1940, two
columns under a common headline saying LOCAL HEROES HONOURED AT PALACE;
the left column gave a description of the award ceremony and a list of
names, while the right one contained four passport-style photographs,
the second of which was captioned
Sqn. Ldr. G. Harpinshield, G.M.
It
was an excellent likeness. The photographer had gone to much trouble to
capture the contrast between his pale, chiseled features and his dark
eyes and hair.
Eventually he concluded the medal would look best next to the Schneider
Cup and hung it there, intending to pin the cutting alongside.
Curiously enough, however, he found himself unable to rid his mind,
every time he looked at it, of the memory of that scrawny little blond
girl who had kissed him with a skill beyond her years. Indeed, the erotic
associations were so fierce, he found his hand straying toward his crotch.
Before he reached a decision, however, concerning either where to put the
press cutting or whether to masturbate, he was startled by a yawn. And
also a little dismayed. It was not ordinary to be overcome in this fashion
quite so soon after one of his rewards.
Still, there was no point in trying to resist -- or he assumed there wasn't;
he had never made the attempt, and most likely never would. A little leeway
was always permitted, and this time he used it to fold the press cutting
carefully, slip it into an envelope, and pocket it. But that was all the
margin he was given. Resigned, he switched off the room.
Surrounded now by stained and faded wallpaper, with cobwebs in the corners
and a layer of grease coating the sink which doubled as a washbasin,
he lay down on the unmade, creaky, narrow single bed and closed his eyes.
Time to pay.
Both of that was mostly Thursdays, but it was obviously Saturday
when came to himself again, his right calf aching in a manner that
made him think of falling bombs and a child with fluffy fair hair,
and his mouth and belly sour with a sensation forty-eight foul hours
of self-indulgence deep, compound of overeating and overdrinking and
far too many cigars. Without even bothering to activate the room again,
he made for the sink and emptied his bladder and scrubbed his teeth so
hard he made his gums sore, then gulped down a cup of powdered coffee and
began to feel halfway normal, apart from the usual strains and bruises.
Catching sight of himself in the room's one fly-specked mirror,
he grimaced. He looked more like fifty than his chosen thirty-two. A
visit to Irma, therefore. No appointment necessary. His arrival would
be taken for granted, as he took for granted the need for it. It was
never pleasant, having her work him over, but awareness was burgeoning
in his mind that tonight he had a task to perform: one of the tasks
he was so superbly good at. He would far rather have taken time out --
gone to Bermuda or the Caribbean for a while, to recover from what had
been done to his body -- but he did, after all, have his George Medal.
Fair do's.
Turning the room back on, he went to the wardrobe and found appropriate
clothes: a white bomber jacket with gold stripes, new black trousers,
black boots with thick elastic soles. Also on the table beside the
enormous circular waterbed were dark glasses and the key to a room at
the Global Hotel in Park Lane. Although he had never to his recollection
been there, he knew he would be recognized when he arrived; it was part
of the pattern.
The room automatically shut itself down as he left. Outside, he found
the early-evening weather overcast and damp. A bunch of kids, two black
and four white, had taken over the Mark X Jaguar as a playhouse, someone
having forced its doors. Oh, well . . .
Only at the end of the street did he realize he had omitted to shave.
But there must be a reason for that: style, trendiness . . .
There was always a reason for everything he did, whether or not he
understood it.
At one of Bond Street's most fashionable addresses there was
not
--
naturally! -- a sign to tell the world that here was where the Beautiful
People spent most money on being made so. Word of mouth served infinitely
better to support Irma's cherished, and fulfilled, ambition.