Blue Rondo (aka Flesh Wounds) Read online

  ‘Wot kid didn’t, matey?’ said the Big Man without sympathy. ‘Bet you didn’t get rickets, though, nor pneumatic fever – not toff’s diseases, are they?’

  Every so often the Big Man would do this to him, remind him, whether he liked it or not, of their respective places in the layers of the big onion that was English society. Troy spent a split second wondering what pneumatic fever might be, then gave up. ‘Can I finish?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘I was a sickly child – but nothing prepared me for this, I mean for the last six months. For all this . . . recuperation … all this fucking hospitalisation . . .’

  ‘Mind yer French, young Fred, there might be ladies about.’

  ‘. . . and if I thought … I mean if I thought I’d have to go through this again . . . ever … I mean . . . spend this much time in hospital. . .’

  He had no ending to the sentence, but the Big Man did: ‘If you want to avoid all this malarkey in the future, then you best do what that Klankiwitch bloke and Bob Churchill are telling you.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘O’ course. Mr Churchill and me, we go back a long way. Till when you was a nipper, I should think. He’s done a fair bit of the old owsyerfather for the guv’ner, has Mr Churchill.’

  Troy had given up trying to find out who the ‘guv’ner’ was. He was clearly the Big Man’s employer, and once in a while the Big Man would refer to himself as a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’, but declined to solve the mystery. Troy had known him intermittently since the end of last winter, when he had come across him tending a pig on an allotment carved for wartime necessities out of the former elegance of Tedworth Gardens in Chelsea. The last time Troy had discharged himself from hospital, in June, it had been the Big Man who had bundled him up like a baby and rushed him to hospital and, when it came down to it, saved his life. Troy had never been really grateful to him. It had all got in the way of an indulgent self-pity that had left him wanting to die.

  ‘So you think I’m going to get myself killed as well, do you?’

  ‘You can bet your best baggy underpants on it, old cock.’

  The Big Man held underpants in one hand, trousers in the other. As Troy snatched them from him he remembered a phrase of Dorothy Parker’s that came close to the approximation of gratitude: ‘You might as well live.’

  ‘Might as well live? Wossat mean, cock?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Troy. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve won this one.’

  3

  The Big Man wrapped him in a blanket – a parcel awaiting collection once again – and put him into the back seat of Troy’s father’s 1937 V12 Lagonda. The last time Troy had seen the car it had been up on blocks. Now it purred softly at the pavement, like a big cat lazing away a savannah afternoon. ‘Where did you get the tyres?’ he asked.

  The Big Man tapped the side of his nose. One of those infuriating ask-no-questions-be-told-no-lies gestures he seemed to delight in using.

  ‘The petrol?’ Troy persisted.

  ‘Your family pooled their coupons to give you a smooth ride home. An invalid carriage fit for a king.’

  ‘How about an invalid carriage fit for an invalid?’ said Troy remembering how he had got the car up to no m.p.h. on the Great North Road one day in 1938.

  ‘Trust me,’ said the Big Man.

  Troy found himself in the back, next to Masha, his mother the best part of six feet away next to the Big Man, who sat behind the steering-wheel.

  Masha smiled almost sweetly at him. It was one of her great cons to be unpredictable and unreadable. Troy thought there might be a Just So story somewhere in which a deadly creature habitually smiles at its prey. ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Let’s hear what?’

  ‘Whatever it is that you’re bursting to tell me. Whatever snatch of gossip is eating your soul at the moment.’

  ‘I don’t gossip.’

  ‘Fine. Have it your way. Bitch a little instead. You can bitch for Britain, after all.’

  Masha mused, lips gently parted, one hand idly conducting some invisible orchestra. ‘Well . . . Mummy’s raised the most enormous crop of leeks for the winter.’

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  ‘And with no keepers and no shoot the pheasants have bred like rabbits, so we have a positive plague. Cocks duelling at it all over the place. And, of course, more pheasants means more food for foxes so we have an army of little red—’

  ‘Masha, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ (Pause) ‘Speaking of cocks. . .’

  ‘Yeeees?’

  ‘My co-natal sibling would appear to be the object of a penetrating physiological enquiry.’

  The woman was talking bollocks. Then he realised: code. A code to exclude their mother, who might have nodded off or might be listening. Co-natal sibling? Her twin, Sasha. Penetrating physiological enquiry? Fucking. Sasha had a new lover.

  ‘Really,’ Troy said at last. ‘Who’s she shagging now?’

  ‘Freddie!’

  But his mother had not turned. Her ears had not pricked up at the prick. Troy concluded she had nodded off, ramrod straight, more upright asleep than she would ever manage waking. And the Big Man was in a happy world of his own, foot on the floor – flouting wartime wisdom – tearing along at over ninety, a tuneless tune humming on his lips. The outrage on Masha’s part Troy knew to be bluffery – the fond illusion the twins cherished that, whilst flinging caution to the winds themselves, they could somehow protect him from the very people they were. There were times their catalogue of conquests bored him, times, as now, with little else to echo in the idling mind, when it was better than nothing.

  ‘Anyone I know?’ he asked.

  ‘Nice young chap. RAF, actually. Based at Duxford. Shot up in a Hurricane. Not too bad, but too bad to fly, so he’s one of those chaps with lots of rings on his cuffs who pushes little models around a map with a sort of snooker rest.’

  Troy revised his metaphor slightly – they had flung caution to the hurricanes, well, at least to a former Hurricane pilot. ‘You know,’ he said tentatively, ‘there’s something awfully familiar about that description. Didn’t you have a thing with a chap out at Duxford last September?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘How sort of?’

  ‘Sort of yes.’

  ‘Sort of yes with a chap who got shot up in a Hurricane and now pushes little models around a map with a sort of snooker rest?’

  ‘If you put it like that, yes.’

  ‘How else could I put it? What you’re saying is that you passed this Wotsisname—’

  ‘Giles Carver-Little, actually.’

  ‘Whatever. This English toff with too many names gets passed from one sister to the other like a brown-paper parcel.’

  ‘A brown-paper parcel? No. Not at all. More like some delicacy from Fortnum’s in a little white box all done up with a pinky silk ribbon and a gold-edged card saying, “To my darling sister, all my love Masha”.’

  Good God, it was rich. He had often wondered if there was anything of which these two were not capable.

  ‘I mean, if you found out about something jolly good wouldn’t you tip off a mate about it?’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like a tip for the Derby. What you’re telling me is that the two of you are willing to share lovers.’

  ‘Not literally, not any more. We haven’t done threesomes for a while. But yes. I mean. Bloody hell, why not?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s all a bit melodramatic? Everyone having everyone else?’

  ‘Not in the least. I simply let my sister in on a good thing. As for having everyone else . . . isn’t that just that Darwin chap – evolution, survival of the fittest and all that?’

  ‘Herbert Spencer,’ said Troy.’

  Masha mused.

  ‘No. Can’t say I’ve had him. Don’t think I’ve ever had a Herbert, in fact. But you can’t really expect me to remember the lot now, ca
n you? Friend of yours, is he?’

  ‘I meant,’ Troy persisted, with wasted logic, ‘that the survival of the fittest was said by Spencer not Darwin, and I cannot for one moment see how you can pass off what you get up to as the ascent of the species.’

  ‘Selective wotsit? Natural thingies?’ Masha ventured.

  ‘Shared shagging,’ Troy said.

  ‘Quite,’ said his sister. ‘I mean. Wouldn’t you?’

  Troy said nothing. Yet again the woman had gone beyond the bounds of what he knew.

  They rode awhile in silence. Troy had no wish to feed whatever bizarrely amoral trend of thought might be lurking deeper in the pit that was his sister’s psyche. They had crossed into Hertfordshire ten minutes ago. Home, after all, was not far away. It just seemed that way and had for a while – but as the car passed through the gateposts of Mimram (the gates having gone to make Spitfires in 1940), rounded the curving, crisply brown winter beeches at the head of the drive and the house sprang into view, Troy lost mental sight and sound of his sister. His childhood home. The rotting pile his father had bought in 1910 and had never quite finished restoring. An English country seat crossed with a Russian dacha. It was like a Mexican blanket, thought Troy, ragged at one corner where the artist had left loose threads and thus allowed his soul’s escape from his art. His father had escaped into death, and Troy’s own words to the Big Man came back to him in all their crassness – if he could get him alone he’d tell him so. ‘You might as well live’ seemed so inadequate in the face of all that Mimram now dragged out of him.

  He turned to Masha, said, ‘Home.’ And thought that perhaps his inflexion had not been as intended for she said, ‘Where did you think we were going?’

  4

  Christmas came to drive him mad. Christmas at the family home seemed tailor-made to drive him mad. It was their second without his father – Troy was certain his mother counted ‘dead Christmases’ – one of many without brother Rod, a pilot on Tempest fighters, stationed in France, or the brothers-in-law Hugh and Lawrence, both doing their bit for King and Country. It was, Troy thought, a return to the infantile: too many women to remind him that he was the baby of the family at twenty-nine and would for ever be so. Yet it was lavish in a way few English families could extend to in the winter of 1944, for his mother raised not only leeks but potatoes in her greenhouse, fresh as June for Christmas Day, turkeys in a pen on the south lawn and Brussels sprouts on a vast raised bed in her vegetable garden. She had propped up her failing limbs and dug for victory since the first blast of war in 1939. Nonetheless he had had all the gin and charades he could take by Boxing Day, so his mother suggested to him that it might be a good idea if he invited some of his ‘chums’ round for a day or two. He leapt at the chance, rang Jack Wildeve and rang Kolankiewicz.

  Kolankiewicz said, ‘And your lessons, my boy?’

  ‘My lessons?’

  ‘You are bored already. Give Bob Churchill a call and get down to business.’

  To his surprise Churchill readily agreed, said that he had not been to Mimram since he had personally delivered a hand-made shotgun to Troy’s father in 1928.

  Churchill was last to arrive, rolling up the drive at the wheel of a ‘34 Buick, a huge two-seater, complete with dickey seat propped open and covered in tarpaulin. He was in tweed, all set for a pre-war country weekend. The Big Man slid out from the passenger seat, still in his LCC Heavy Rescue outfit, and muttered ‘Wotcher.’ He unroped the snow-spattered tarp from the dickey and unloaded a pile of darkly polished, dovetail-jointed, brass-plated, mahogany carrying cases. He set them on the drive, a neat and presumably lethal pile at their feet.

  ‘Don’t expect me to hump the lot on me tod,’ he said.

  ‘You came prepared, then?’ Troy stated the obvious.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Churchill. ‘We’ll tackle the lot. Smith and Wesson, Colt, Winchester, Mauser, Walther, Schmeisser – get you familiar with them all.’

  The Big Man picked up two cases and stomped off into the house. Churchill fished his dinner togs from the dickey seat, crumpled on their hanger. Handed them to Troy. A black tent of a jacket and capacious trousers.

  ‘You came over-prepared, then?’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘We haven’t dressed for dinner since before the war. But don’t let me put you off. My mother will be delighted.’

  ‘Y’know, the last time I was here your father was in . . . what shall I call it? One of his moods. Not only would he not dress for dinner he wouldn’t dress at all. Spent two days in his dressing-gown . . . wouldn’t shave, often as not wouldn’t speak.’

  ‘He could be like that. I’ve seen dinner pass with him sitting like Banquo’s ghost at the end of the table.’

  ‘And at other times—’

  ‘You wished you knew how to make him shut up?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Churchill.

  ‘I can promise you a more customary evening,’ said Troy. ‘We are none of us enough like the old man to put you through that again.’

  He spoke too soon.

  5

  Troy’s mother had gone to bed after the main course, leaving Troy, Kolankiewicz, Wildeve and one sister to finish the meal alone. She had been charmed by Churchill’s dressing for dinner, something Jack and Troy chose not to do and something Kolankiewicz never would, but perhaps the presence of two such trenchermen as Kolankiewicz and Churchill had proved too much for the old lady. Troy had seen few men with the appetite of Bob Churchill. But he, at least, was virtually teetotal. Kolankiewicz could drink a pub dry. The Big Man had declined to join them on the grounds that ‘an evenin’ of toff chat would like as not bore the britches off me and, worse, lead to me missing me favourite programme on the wireless’. A pity: Troy had wanted to see the look on his face when he realised there was a Sasha as well as a Masha. As identical twins went, they were identical. Troy had never had any trouble telling them apart, but he’d known his own brother get them mixed up; he’d known both of them to exploit the fact for all it was worth, and, as yet, time and chance had not wrought enough differences in their characters that one could drive a playing card between them. They were, as Troy was wont to think and utter, one dreadful woman with two bodies. He decided to reward the Big Man for his churlishness by letting him find out the hard way. Masha had gone home on Boxing Day: let him ‘discover’ sister Sasha for himself. All the same the Big Man had been right about toff chat. Even Wildeve was stifling yawns as Kolankiewicz unburdened himself of one of the many theses he seemed to store up in a mental sack. Troy thought that conversations a bit like this, though surely less intense, must be taking place all over the country – ‘when the war is over’ had all but displaced ‘before the war’ as an opening gambit.

  ‘It won’t be the same,’ Churchill was saying. ‘It can’t be the same.’

  ‘You’re speaking professionally?’ Troy asked.

  ‘Indeed I am. But it’s your profession as much as mine.’

  ‘What are you expecting? A sudden surge in the possession of guns?’

  ‘Goes almost without saying. Call it the debris of war. Any war. The flotsam and jetsam. Whatever shade of government we have, whatever system we set up for the demobilisation of a million men-at-arms, we’ll never get back so much as a fraction of the handguns we’ve issued.’

  ‘Souvenirs,’ Wildeve offered. ‘All my uncles kept an old Webley in the desk drawer throughout the twenties. We boys thought it was great fun. Never saw one fired, though.’

  ‘Lower your sights a little,’ said Churchill. ‘What happens to a handgun in the possession of your uncles is a world away from what happens to it in the hands of a man for whom it has become simultaneously his first taste of freedom and power.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Bob is saying,’ Troy said, ‘that we can expect a crime wave as soon as our boys get home.’

  ‘Really?’

  It wasn’t that Jack was thick, thought Troy, more that he was distracted. He had had the feeling for sev
eral minutes now that Sasha had been playing footsie with him under the table – the slope of her torso, the sense that she was stretching out, the seductive grin on her too, too pretty face – and as Jack’s innocent ‘ehs’ and ‘reallies’ mounted he had been certain that the damn woman had winked at him.

  ‘Jack, we’ve turned a million men loose on the continent. Some may come back and settle for being bank clerks or hewing coal again but as many won’t. The Labour Party may talk of a quiet revolution after the war. What they don’t see is that it’s happened already. It wasn’t necessary to politicise the working classes, it was necessary merely to turn them loose. And when they get back they may well just take what they want. Legally or not. They won’t wait on a change of government, and they won’t tuck their old Webleys or their “souvenir” Lugers in a desk drawer to amuse the kiddies with.’

  ‘But,’ said Wildeve, ‘it didn’t happen that way after the last war, now, did it?’

  ‘That was a very different war,’ said Churchill. ‘Men came back hammered into the ground. It may not be for a man of my age to say this, and I certainly wouldn’t say it in the presence of a serving soldier, but this generation, this English generation, has got off lightly. It could have been so much worse.’

  Kolankiewicz, having kicked off this discussion, had said nothing for several minutes. His interjection cut through brusquely: ‘You English. You English. The island mentality. The compromise with history. You do not know the half of it.’

  ‘Meaning?’ said Troy.

  ‘Where were you when the war ended?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Humour me. I am a cranky old Pole.’

  ‘I was three,’ said Troy, with a hint of exasperation, ‘and Jack wasn’t even born.’

  ‘I was thirty-two, pretty well where I am now, doing pretty much what I’m doing now,’ said Churchill.