On a Tuesday evening, with the sound of the BBC World Service (soon to be discontinued) in the background, she got a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down a flow chart of her personal revolution. An item to be acquired, and a man to put it where it must go. These in turn would entail disguises, forgeries… but not so many as that. More a confidence trick, really, than a covert operation. All at arm’s length, of course, because there could be consequences, and because her name might still trigger alarms in places which must remain oblivious just a little longer.
And now, looking at Joe Spork’s business card and stroking her eyeless dog, she thinks about those consequences and feels like a cow. She has webbed the young Spork into a muddle of almighty proportions. It was necessary, if distasteful, and ultimately he will be fine. Once they look at things seriously, they will see he was a patsy.
If they look at things seriously. If they take the time. If they don’t need a scapegoat for the redtops. If they feel generous. And there’s that word again: “necessary.” A magic word to excuse a multitude of sins, and all it really means is “easier this way than the other.”
The only thing she need do now is sit back and watch, and know that she has discharged her debt and made a difference. There’s no danger of anything really bad happening to him. All the old ghosts are surely laid to rest.
So why, having ascertained weeks back that he would do for item two, has she been dragging him here ever since to work on junk? Getting to know him. Discovering that he’s sweet and a bit lost?
No reason at all.
Except that she is feeling, as already noted, like a cow. Cow, cow, cow.
And to be honest… was it necessary? It may have been. It’s quite possible that he’s the only person around with the skills to do the job right. If he learned from his grandfather. If he paid attention. If there are complications any halfway competent clockworker couldn’t deal with. If, if, if. She is conscious that she has heard these arguments before, in the pusillanimous mouths of modern politicians.
She peers at her reflection in the tabletop, wondering. Joshua Joseph Spork, grandson of the great love of her life, but not, obviously, her own. Evidence of her insufficiency.
Is it possible that she has put him in the line of fire out of spite?
Her reflection won’t look at her.
“Mooo,” says Edie Banister.
So now, having been the bad fairy, she will have to be the good one, too, and keep an eye on him.
And with that decision, she finds herself delighted. Hah. Hah! Hold onto your hats, gents, and avert your eyes, you rose-petalled ladies in your mopsy, mumsy woollens. Banister is back! And this time she’s leading the charge!
Bastion looks up at her, and slowly staggers to his feet. A moment later, he turns his back on her and growls ferociously, then cranes his head round for her approval.
“Yes, darling,” she says, “you and me against the world.”
Which is when she hears a hiss of indrawn breath, and moves abruptly from jubilant to very, very serious.
She is not alone in her flat.
Edie Banister opens her bedroom door to find three men, the middle one very large, standing in her living room in attitudes suggesting that her arrival has come at an unexpected time. They wear solid shoes and drab, ho-hum clothes. The large one is carrying a hammer, held loosely in his left hand, and his zip-up tracksuit top is bulgy under the left arm. He has a small, ski-jump nose, the product of reconstructive surgery, fatuous on his slab of a face. His wingers are younger. Trainee bastards. Edie switches over to automatic. Action stations, old cow, she thinks, these lads have your end in view. Too late to stop it all from starting. The deed is done. This last meeting with Joe Spork was for the sake of her conscience, not her devious plan. That was set in motion some days back, oh, yes, and indirectly. This is consequence, not prevention. But in time to take you out of the picture, sure enough. So.
She smiles, a dotty old lady smile.
“Oh, goodness,” she says, “but you made me jump. You must be Mr. Big—”—oh, yes, bloody brilliant, Edie: Mr. Big, because he is big, and so many people have adjectives for family names. Dig yourself out, or fall at the first—“—landry, from the Council. I’m glad Miss Hampton let you in, I’m terribly sorry to be so late!” There. Someone else is due here at any moment, and I think you’re them. Best come back later, eh? Finish me off in the quiet time.
The newly-christened Mr. Biglandry hesitates. Edie steps brightly towards him, hand out, and he moves his body to suggest he may take it. Edie has no intention of touching him, oh, no, not and get a hug from a lad with shoulders so broad. Though in our younger days, we might have enjoyed climbing a mountain like that, mightn’t we? Oh, yes, indeed. “Oh, where are my manners?” She takes her hand away. The junior bastards are spreading out to block her escape. I must just get some milk, darlings, to make you tea, all right? Hah! They’d snap me in two. Softly, softly, old cow. You’ve a long way to go and a short time to get there. Objective: escape. Nothing else. So. “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I, and would you mind moving the furniture? I’m too old, I’m afraid, I did try, but the flesh is weak. Not like yours, Mr. Biglandry. And who are these?”
Junior Bastard A sticks out his hand when her gaze falls upon him and mutters “James.” It clearly isn’t his name, but Junior Bastard B and Mr. Biglandry stare at him as if he has taken his trousers off. Hah! I fancy that’s an instant fail on your test, young Jimmy, and quite right too. Mr. Biglandry will want a word later, I imagine, about talking to the mark. “Hello!” Edie waves daftly. “And you must be Biglandry the younger, I can see the family resemblance! Was it George?” You’re both stone killers, there is that, but he’s a red-faced old git and you’ve something pale and Hungarian about you, Georgie-boy, I wouldn’t wonder your Dad was AVH, no, I would not, and likely a goon just like you. She smiles even wider. “Would you mind pushing the bolt across? Sometimes the door rattles in the wind and it gives me a start.” George Biglandry looks at Dad, and Dad nods. Edie slips into the kitchen: knives, rolling pins, the microwave oven (she pictures herself jamming the door open and threatening to cook them, the thing plugged in behind her and beeping, a little picture of a chicken in blue neon on the dash), no, no, and no. Edie Banister knows where she is going. Flick the switch on the kettle. Now they have to separate you from that, indeedy they do. No gentleman wants a lap full of the hot stuff when he’s killing old ladies. Permanent damage can occur. Edie summons her first secret weapon.
“Bastion! Dar-ling? Bast-ion? Mummy’s got a bit of pie, yes, she has, hasn’t she, yessywessy, she has!” And may the good Lord have mercy on your souls.
It is not the hour for pie. Bastion knows it. He knows that Edie knows it, too. They have long ago settled between them that he is to be disturbed between three and nine only in the direst of emergencies or if there is steak. The steak should be meltingly soft and warmed over in the pan. The emergencies are more exigent: fire, earthquake, rains of frogs, the arrival of a cat in the building. Certainly, pie does not figure. Bastion’s afternoon nap is sacrosanct.