11. Begging with Threats
I LOCKED THE KITCHEN door – Ilse and Ludger were out, but somewhere in Oxford, and I didn't want any surprises. It was lunchtime and I had an hour before Hamid arrived. I felt strange pushing open the door to Ludger and Ilse's room – my dining room, I reminded myself – and I reminded myself again that I hadn't set foot in there since Ludger had arrived.
The place looked as if refugees had been holed up there for a month or so. It smelt of old clothes, cigarettes and joss sticks. There were two inflatable mattresses on the floor with unzipped sleeping-bags on them – ancient, khaki, army issue, creased, almost like something once living, a cast-off skin, a decomposing giant limb – that served as beds. There were small stashes of food and drink here and there – tins of tuna and sardines, cans of beer and cider, chocolate bars and biscuits – as if the occupants were expecting to undergo a short siege of some kind. The table and chairs had been pushed against the wall and served as a form of open wardrobe – jeans, shirts, smocks, underwear were hung or laid flat on every edge, chair back or level surface. In another corner I saw the grip that Ludger had arrived with and a bulky rucksack – ex-army – that I supposed was Ilse's.
I very carefully noticed its position against the wall and just before I opened the main flap the thought came to me that she might have placed some snares. 'Snares,' I said out loud, and forced an ironic chuckle: I was spending too much time in my mother's past, I thought to myself – and yet had to admit that here I was indulging in a clandestine search of my lodgers' room. I undid the buckle and rummaged inside – I found a few dogeared paperbacks (in German – two Stefan Zweigs), an Instamatic camera, a tattered teddy-bear mascot with the name 'Uli' stitched on to it, several packs of condoms and something the size of a half-brick wrapped in kitchen foil. I knew what this was and smelt it: dope, marijuana. I unpeeled a corner of the foil and saw a dense dark-chocolate mass. I took a tiny pinch of it between forefinger and thumb and tasted it – I don't know why: was I some kind of drug connoisseur who could identify its provenance? No, not at all, even though I enjoyed a joint from time to time, but it seemed the sort of thing to do when one was secretly investigating other people's belongings. I folded the foil shut again and put everything away. I searched the other pockets of the rucksack and found nothing interesting. I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for: a weapon? A gun? A hand-grenade? I closed the door behind me and went to make myself a sandwich.
When Hamid arrived for his lesson, he handed me an envelope and a flyer. The flyer was to announce a demonstration outside Wadham College to protest at the official visit of the Shah of Iran's sister, Ashraf. In the envelope was a xeroxed invitation to a party in the upstairs room at the Captain Bligh pub on the Cowley Road on Friday night.
'Who's having the party?' I asked.
'I am,' Hamid said. 'To say goodbye. I go to Indonesia the next day.'
That evening when Jochen was in bed and Ludger and Ilse had gone to the pub – they always asked me; I always said no – I rang Detective Constable Frobisher.
'I've had a phone call from this Ilse girl,' I said. 'She must have been given my number by mistake – she was asking for someone I didn't know – some "James". I think it was from London.'
'No, she's now definitely in Oxford, Miss Gilmartin.'
'Oh.' This threw me. 'What's she meant to have done?'
There was a pause. 'I shouldn't really tell you this but she was living in a squat in Tooting Bec. We think she might have been selling drugs but the complaints made about her were to do with aggressive begging. Begging with threats, if you know what I mean.'
'Oh right. So she's not some kind of anarchist terrorist, then.'
'What makes you say that?' There was new interest in his voice.
'No reason. Just all this stuff in the papers, you know.'
'Right, yeah… Well, the Met just want us to pick her up. We don't want her type in Oxford,' he added a bit priggishly and foolishly, I thought: Oxford was full of all sorts of types – as odd and deranged and as unpleasant as they came: one Ilse more or less wouldn't make any difference.
'I'll be sure to call if she makes contact again,' I said, dutifully.
'Much obliged, Miss Gilmartin.'
I hung up and thought of thin, moody, grubby Ilse and wondered how aggressively she could beg. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake calling Frobisher – he was very keen – and what had made me mention terrorism? That was a blunder, really stupid. Here I was thinking I might be inadvertently harbouring the second generation of the Baader-Meinhof gang but had discovered that they were just the usual sad sacks and losers.
The demonstration outside Wadham College was billed for 6.00 p.m., when the Shah's sister was due to arrive for a reception to declare open the new library that the Shah's money had paid for. I picked up Jochen from Grindle's and we caught a bus into town. We had time for a pizza and a coke in the St Michael's street pizzeria before we wandered hand in hand along the Broad towards Wadham.
'What's a demonstration, Mummy?' he asked.
'We're protesting. Protesting that the University of Oxford should take money from a tyrant and a dictator, a man called the Shah of Iran.'
'The Shah of Iran,' he repeated, liking the sounds of the words. 'Will Hamid be there?'
'Definitely, I would say.'
'He comes from Iran as well, doesn't he?'
'Indeed he does, my clever lad…'
I stopped, astonished – there seemed to be about 500 people gathered in two groups on either side of the main entrance to the college. I had been expecting the usual small quorum of earnest lefties and some punks looking for fun but here were dozens of police, arms linked, keeping the entrance to the college as wide and as clear as possible. Others stood in the street on their walkie-talkies, impatiently waving cars on. There were banners – saying DICTATOR, TRAITOR, MURDERER and OXFORD 'S SHAME and (more wittily) THE SHAM OF IRAN – and orchestrated chanting in Farsi led by a masked man with a megaphone. Yet the mood was strangely festive – perhaps because it was a beautiful warm summer evening, perhaps because it was a decorous Oxford demonstration, or perhaps because it seemed hard to be really outraged and revolutionary about the opening of a new library. There was a lot of grins, laughter, banter – still, I was impressed: it was the largest political demonstration I had seen in Oxford. It reminded me of my Hamburg days and, thinking of Hamburg, I was reminded of Karl-Heinz and all the fervent, angry marches and demonstrations we had been on together. My mood collapsed somewhat.
I spotted Hamid with a group of other Iranians, chanting along with the megaphone man, and pointing their fingers in emphatic unison. The larking English students, in their combat jackets and keffiyehs, looked like amateurs; for them this protest was a kind of extra-curricular luxury, nothing was really at stake – a bit of fun on a sunny evening.
I looked around at the crowd and at the sweating, harassed policemen holding back the protestors' half-hearted surges. I saw another two dozen coppers coming down the road from vans parked outside Keble – the Shah's sister must be due. Then I spotted Frobisher – he was standing on a low wall with other journalists and press photographers – snapping away with a camera at the crowd of demonstrators. I turned my back on him quickly and almost bumped into Ludger and Ilse.
'Hey, Ruth,' Ludger said with a wide smile, seemingly pleased to see me. 'And Jochen too. Great! Have an egg.'
He and Ilse each had two boxes of a dozen eggs that they were handing out to the crowd.
Jochen took one carefully. 'What do I do with this?' he said, uneasily – he had never really warmed to Ludger, despite Ludger's ceaseless, amiable jocularity, but he liked Ilse. I reached out and took an egg as well, to encourage him.