The Romanian Question

DEVIL CHILD

The reluctance of the army to rush to the aid of the government in the recent rioting has been interpreted differently by many Western intelligence experts, who claimed that many officers and soldiers were reluctant to oppose rioters who alleged that the government was run by neo-communists. As part of the power struggle the interior minister General Mihai Chitac, was dismissed after the rioting and control of the police switched from the interior to the defence ministry.

The Times, 25 June 1990

OLD SAMMY CAME out of the kitchen into the alley. He was red with sweat.

His stained white hat and apron fumed with the greasy heat of the chop shop whose flaring, agitated jets were the constant of his busy Friday night trade. He deep-fried pies and chops to order. Those boiling vats, in which all kinds of questions floated, reminded Jerry what eternal damnation must be like. No wonder those poor bastards were terrified. No wonder they clung to their ramshackle faiths - their habits which they could no more discard than the Jews in 1933 or the English in 1979. They were locked into self-made prisons, justi-fying all that was most cowardly and most cautious and most unjust in human society. He’d rather have Unitarianism which at least believed in handing out soup and a sandwich from time to time. Faith, he had to admit, was a bit of a baffling one. It couldn’t be good for people.

Nothing fitted.

He’d ride with the tide for a while. After all, the cards were still settling.

What had he been getting so angry about?

The sandwiches weren’t, anyway, that bad. He’d recom-mend the Tuna Melt.

“I had a feeling I was getting in touch with the occult.” On his apron Sammy wiped fingers swollen and impure as his sausages. “But I suppose that’s typical at my time of life, isn’t it?”

Jerry shook his head. He glanced carefully up the alley. “Any port in a storm, eh, Sam? When in doubt consult your stars. What can you lose?”

“What can you lose, old son?” Sammy nodded with melan-choly introspection, perhaps revealing all the many things he had already lost.

Above their heads was the blindness of the East End night in those precious years between the Blitz and the Thames Develop-ments.

“There must be easier ways than this of making a living.” Sammy drained off another wave of sweat with his heavy arm and dashed the liquid to the concrete of the step. “So long, Jerry. So long, squire. So long.” He went back to his chops and his pies. He had only recently introduced the pies to compete with a modern formica cafe across the street, and was not sure if they were worth it. They were bloody hard to fry.

Jerry, munching his free pasty, pushed his bike with one hand round the corner into the blazing white light of Whitechapel High Street, a salutary vision, where the wide roads were already gone through Leman Street and half the ruins of his youth. Leman Street had become little more than a slip-road and Wapping Old Stairs was blocked with corrugated iron on which posters for Tommy Steele and Bill Haley were already fading. The grey iron was bent and torn in places and through the gaps Jerry could watch the rain approaching across the moody waters of his Thames, where pieces of timber and old Tizer bottles jogged and drifted above depths which promised every horror. Even the agitated lapping of the water had a sinister, neurotic quality, and Jerry, never a keen East Ender, was glad when he got to the Tower and the waiting motorboat.

“We thought we’d lost you,” said Mitzi Beesley, decisively securing her Mae West.

“How was your mum?” Shakey Mo asked over his shoulder as he started the engine.

“She wasn’t working tonight.” Jerry studied the water, swir-ling like a Mr Softee, and wondered just how many of these memories were actually his.