Vintage Stuff

Chapter 24

At the cortège drove slowly out of the Crematorium, Glodstone stared miserably at the back of the chauffeur's head. It was one of the ironies of having attended his own funeral that he should now recall that 'chauffeur' came from the French for stoker; presumably even modern furnaces had to be attended by somebody to take out the ashes. Whoever had just been incinerated (probably an unidentified tramp or something they'd finished with in the dissecting-rooms at one of the teaching hospitals) had gone to his Maker bearing Glodstone's name. It was there on the death certificate and a little obituary would shortly appear in the Old Groxboumian. The Great Adventure had gone up in smoke.

'I know just how you feel,' said the Countess, patting his hand. 'Mourir c'est partir un peu.'

'What?' said Glodstone.

'To die is to part a little. But it won't be for long. By the time the surgeon's finished with you you'll be a new man.'

'Surgeon?' said Glodstone. 'What bloody surgeon?'

'The plastic one. He's said to be terribly good with burns.'

'Burns? Considering where I'm supposed to be he'd have to be fucking miraculous.'

'There's no need to use that sort of language,' said the Countess sharply, 'I haven't gone to all this trouble and expense to have you swearing like a trooper.'

Glodstone considered the change in her own language and said nothing. There was something about this extraordinary woman that frightened him and it was only when she stopped the car at the top of Hampstead Heath and they were walking down to the tube station that he brought up the matter of burns and plastic surgery.

'What the hell do I need plastic surgery for? Apart from whoever went up in that coffin...'

'Well, we won't go into that now,' said the Countess, 'that's all past and done with. You've got to look to the future and since you refuse to go to Brazil you'll just have to do what I tell you. The main thing will be to alter the shape of your ears. They're the give-away and the police always look at them first. Then '

'But with this wig on no one can see my blasted ears,' said Glodstone.

'I'm not going to be married to a man with a toupee. It's unbecoming and anyway it won't fit your image. As far as the rest of you...'

But Glodstone wasn't listening. 'Did you say "married"?' he asked.

'Of course I did. You don't imagine for one moment that I'm going to live in sin with you, do you?'

Half an hour later Glodstone entered a clinic near Portland Place. On the door a brass plaque seemed to suggest its main business lay in abortions, but Glodstone no longer cared. It was enough to know he was going to be married. It was infinitely preferable to spending the rest of his life in Brazil.

'My hero,' said the Countess, kissing him lightly on the cheek, 'Now don't forget to sign your name as Mr Smith.'

'Slymne's where?' said the Headmaster when Major Fetherington returned a week later, in the company of two Special Branch officers.

'Rampton,' said the Major.

'Rampton? But that's that ghastly hospital for the criminally insane, isn't it? And what on earth have you been doing to your face?'

'Dog-turd in Shrewsbury,' said the Major, who hadn't fully recovered from the effects of the truth drug and his hours of interrogation.

'But that was your backside. Now you come back here with a face looking like a...'

'Dog-turd in Shrewsbury,' said the Major.

'Christ,' said the Headmaster. If Slymne was sufficiently off his rocker to be in Rampton, the Major could do with some treatment himself. 'And what about Glodstone?'

'That's what we've come to see you about,' said one of the men and produced his identification. The Headmaster examined it cautiously.

'Special Branch?' he asked weakly.

The man nodded. 'Now about Mr Glodstone, sir,' he said, 'we're going to require access to his rooms and we'd be glad if you answered a few questions. For instance, were you aware that he had any Communist inclinations?'

'Communist inc...I thought the sod belonged to the Monday Club. He certainly read the Daily Telegraph.'

'That could have been cover. Homosexual tendencies? Excessive drinking? Chip on his social shoulder? Anything of that sort?'

'All of it,' said the Headmaster fervently and glanced out of the window. A number of soldiers had driven up in a lorry and were debussing on the drive. 'What the hell are they doing here?'

'If you'll just sign this,' said the Special Branch man and placed a document on his desk.

The Headmaster read it through with increasing alarm. 'The Official Secrets Act? You want me to sign '

'Just a simple precaution, sir. Nothing more. Of course if you'd prefer to face criminal proceedings in connection with certain offences again the person committed in Belfast...'

'Belfast? I've never been anywhere near Belfast,' said the Headmaster, beginning to think he'd shortly be joining Slymne in a padded cell. 'You come here and tell me to sign the Official Secrets Act or be charged...Dear God, where's that pen?' He scrawled his signature at the bottom of the form.

'And now the key to the School Armoury, if you don't mind.'

The Headmaster handed it over and while one of the men took it out to the officer in charge of the squad the other settled himself in a chair. 'I think I must warn you that should anyone make enquiries about Mr Glodstone or a certain ex-pupil it will be in your interest not to say anything,' he said. 'The Belfast charges are still outstanding and having signed the Official Secrets Act the consequences could be slightly unfortunate. Need I say more?'

'No,' said the Headmaster indistinctly, 'but what am I going to tell Mr Clyde-Browne?'

'Who, sir?'

'Christ,' said the Headmaster. Outside the soldiers had begun to load the lorry with all the weapons from the Armoury. That was a relief anyway. He'd never liked the bloody things.

'And now if you'll just take me up to Glodstone's rooms.' They crossed the quad and climbed the staircase. 'Not that I suppose we'll find anything of interest,' said the Special Branch man. 'When the Russians employ a sleeper they do things thoroughly. Probably recruited the traitor when he was at Cambridge.'

'Cambridge? I never dreamt that Glodstone had been anywhere near a University. He certainly never mentioned it.'

'Obviously not. The man's clearly an expert. One only has to look at the sort of books he surrounded himself with to see that.'

The Headmaster gazed at the collected works of Sapper and felt peculiar. 'I really can't believe it even now,' he said. 'Glodstone was a ghastly man but he didn't have the brains to be a...what did you call it?'

'A sleeper,' said the Special Branch man, putting the cigar box containing the Countess's letters in a plastic bag. 'Probably in code.'

The Headmaster tried to look on the bright side. 'Well, at least I won't have the damned man around me any more,' he said. 'That's some relief. Have you any idea where he is?'

The Special Branch man hesitated. 'No harm in telling you now. We found his Bentley parked near Tilbury yesterday. An East German tramp steamer sailed on Wednesday night.'

They went back to the Headmaster's study.

'I think that'll be all we'll require for the moment, sir. If anything should occur to you that might be of use to us, we'd be grateful if you'd call this number. It's a phone drop, so just leave your name.'

'And what about him?' asked the Headmaster glancing anxiously at Major Fetherington.

'What about him?'

'I can't have a master going about muttering "Dog-turd in Shrewsbury" in front of the boys all the time. He's as mad as a hatter.'

'You should see Mr Slymne,' said the Special Branch man grimly. 'The Major's all right. He's a hero by comparison. And you can always use him as a groundsman.'

But it was in Pine Tree Lane that feelings were most mixed.

'I'll never forgive you. Never,' wailed Mrs Clyde-Browne, ignoring the presence of ten undercover agents dressed in overalls who had already installed double glazing and were now redecorating the entire house. 'To think that I'll never see poor Peregrine again!'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Mr Clyde-Browne cheerfully, 'he'll probably get leave once in a while. They can't keep a garrison in Antarctica for ever.'

'But he isn't used to the cold and he's got such a delicate chest.'

'There is that,' said Mr Clyde-Browne almost gaily. 'You can always go out and put flowers on his grave. And he certainly won't need embalming. Things keep for ever on ice.'

'You murdering...No, I don't want flock fleur-de-lys in the kitchen,' she yelled, as one of the agents tactfully interposed a wallpaper pattern book between them, 'and you can stop painting the hall pink. That's a William Morris design.'

Mr Clyde-Browne made himself scarce. He had an interesting divorce case to consider involving custody of a domestic cat and now that Peregrine was out of the way it might be advantageous to goad his own wife a little further.

In Bognor Regis Glodstone looked at his face in the bathroom mirror, and failed to recognize himself. It wasn't the first time, but it still shook him to see someone he didn't know staring with such horrid amazement back at him. And horrid was the word. The Countess had been right in claiming the plastic surgeon was good with burns, though, in Glodstone's livid opinion, she ought have said 'at' them.

'Just let me get my hands on the sod,' he had shouted when the bandages had been removed and he had finally been allowed the use of a mirror. 'He must have used a bloody flamethrower. Where are my blasted eyebrows?'

'In the disposal bin,' said the Sister in charge. 'Anyway, you specifically asked for total non-recognitive surgery.'

'Non-recog...bugger it, I did nothing of the sort. I came in here expecting to have my ears adjusted, not to be turned into something that'd frighten a fucking punk dalek into a fit. And why am I as bald as a coot?'

'We did a scalp transplant with another patient. He had alopecia totalis. It's taken very well.'

'And what have I got then, galloping fucking ringworm?'

'It'll save you having to brush your hair again.'

'And shave,' said Glodstone, 'Who did you swop my face with, some terminal leper?'

'That's called the Spitfire effect,' said the Sister. 'Lots of pilots who crashed in the Battle of Britain looked like that.'

'In that case I'd have thought the Messerschmidt effect would have been more appropriate,' said Glodstone. 'Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life with these pustules? There's one actually swelling on what's left of my nose.'

'They're just leeches. We use them for scavenging '

'Shit,' said Glodstone and had to be held down to prevent him from trying to dislodge the things.

'We'll have to give you a sedative if you don't behave like a good boy.'

'Madam,' said Glodstone, managing to rally some dignity under threat of the needle, 'I have had some considerable experience of boys and no sane one would allow his face to be used as a watering hole for scavenging leeches. I could get tetanus, or the from loss of blood.'

'Nonsense. We ensure they're all perfectly healthy and they're only cleaning up the scar tissue.'

'In that case they'll get bloody awful indigestion,' said Glodstone, 'they've got enough grub there for the Lord Mayor's banquet. And get that sod out of my left nostril. I can't with my hands in bandages. And what's that for?'

'Fingerprint removal,' said the Sister, and left Glodstone to contemplate a life without any physical means of identification. Even his closest friends wouldn't know him now. Or want to.

But at least the Countess had been delighted. 'Darling,' she said when she came to collect him, 'you look wonderful,'

'You've got fucking peculiar tastes is all I can say,' said Glodstone bitterly and was promptly rebuked for using filthy language.

'You were something hush-hush in the War and you'd rather not talk about it. That's the line you'll have to take,' she said, 'and from now on you're to call me Bobby.'

'But that's a boy's name,' said Glodstone, wondering if he was about to marry some sort of lesbian with a truly horrific lust for disfigured men. It was a wonder he hadn't had a sex-change operation.

'It's nice and thirtyish. Lots of girls were called Bobby then and it'll blend with the Peke.'

Glodstone shuddered. He loathed Pekes and it was clear he was no longer going to be allowed to call his life his own, let alone his face.

It had proved only too true. After a swift registry marriage at which he had had to declare himself to be Clarence Sopwith Hillary, a combination of names Glodstone found personally humiliating, unnecessarily provocative and, in the case of the last, in exceedingly bad taste, they had driven on in Bobby's dinky Mini ('We mustn't be thought to consider ourselves a cut above the neighbours, Clarence,' she told Glodstone, who knew damned well he was a hell of a lot of cuts just about everywhere else) to the bungalow in Bognor Regis. It had fulfilled his direst expectations. From its green-tiled roof to the petunias bordering the weedless lawn and the cubistic carpet in the drawing room, it represented everything he had most despised.

'But it's pure art-deco, Clarence. I mean it's us.'

'It may be you,' said Glodstone, 'but I'm damned if it's me. And can't you call me something other than Clarence? It's almost as foul as Cecil.'

'I shall call you Soppy, darling. And this is Beatrice.'

'Hell,' said Glodstone, who had just been bitten on the ankle by the Peke.

Now as he stood gazing at his own nonentity in the bathroom he knew he was beaten. They would play bridge all evening with the Shearers and he'd get told off for bidding badly and have to make the coffee and have to take that bloody Beatrice for a pee before going to bed. And he knew what they'd drink. Crême de menthe. Constance Sugg had returned to her roots.

In a hedge in South Armagh, Peregrine, now Number 960401, stared through the night-sight of his rifle at the figure moving in the field below. It could be a Garda but he didn't care. He'd already notched up five IRA men, two poachers and an off-duty RUC constable, not to mention an Army Landrover, to such awful effect that even the local Protestants had joined with the IRA in declaring his sixteen square miles a No-Go Area, and the Army avoided the place. Peregrine didn't care. He was in his element, doing what he had been trained to do. And every few weeks an unmanned balloon (there'd been an unfortunate incident with a helicopter) would drift over for him to shoot down and collect his ammunition and supplies.

Not that he needed the latter. He'd already bagged a sheep for his supper in the burrow he'd dug halfway down an old well and was rather looking forward to it. The Major had said one should live off the land, and he did. He squeezed the trigger and watched the man drop. Then he obeyed another of the Major's dicta, that an army marched on its stomach, and crawled the two miles back to his hide-out. Presently, in the happy knowledge he was doing exactly what he'd been told, he pulled his rifle through and oiled it, and settled down to leg of lamb.

The End