The General swore at him to shut up, and put out a hand to stop one of the hurrying industrial workers. “Who are you?” he demanded into the man’s scared face? “No—tell me who you were!” He pointed at the darned and greasy pinstripe clothing and laughed at whatever response he was given. He turned back to the young man. “OK,” he drawled, “Seeing is believing. Some things are beyond even you Goddamn Limeys to lie about. Yes, Siree,” he chuckled, “seeing is believing. Take me back to Hooper!” He got back into the car, which left a thin cloud of petrol exhaust as it started up again and was at last able to move slowly into Millbank.
“If I’m not mistaken,” the old man said, “that was Madison Rockville Jr.” Jennifer was fighting off another wave of tiredness, and noted without exploring the faint confusion at the back of her mind. “The American Secretary of State,” he prompted. Jennifer nodded vaguely. She did know that—or thought she might. “In the last news before the Great Storm,” the old man added in a strange tone, “he was at a meeting in Tokyo. How do you suppose he got here in time for The Break?”
She was saved the trouble of answering by the approach of another vehicle. This was just an old lorry that had been pushing forward, an inch at a time, across the Bridge. It was now through the crowds, and the driver was pressing hard on the accelerator. As it rumbled past in a cloud of the usual organic diesel, she looked briefly up. Pipe in mouth, the driver had taken his hands off the wheel, and was rejoicing. The armed guard beside him looked shiftily about. Faces pushed against nine inch slits along the side, she glanced into the terrified eyes of dozens of sheep. There may have been a hundred others who couldn’t push through to the light and air. The factory whistles had stopped, and she could hear the bleating of the sheep. As it reached a junction further along the road and turned right, Jennifer was aware that the old man had gone into a rambling speech that involved a lost battery for his camera, before settling into speculations on whether the Americans had ever started their exchange of nuclear missiles.
The old man stopped in mid-flow about flying times from the Far East, and looked closely into her face. The blood was already dry before she’d been able to rub at her face. There had been no getting if off her hair. The best she’d been able to do before trying her luck on the Bridge was to push her head into an ash heap and brush off the excess. She wondered if he’d remark on her appearance. Instead, he turned and waved vaguely at somewhere within the shanty town. She looked over the low huddle of waferboard and cardboard boxes and saw nothing remarkable. But she forced out another smile. “I’m sure you’ll find it,” she said. She leaned wearily on her bicycle and set out in the direction of Victoria. Before she passed out of hearing, the old man was into a sorrowful lecture about how price controls had lowered the quality of bread. Perhaps he’d found someone else to buttonhole. More likely, he was talking to himself.
£500 a night—up front,” the old Indian said without looking up. “£200 for every client you service.” He gave one of those high-pitched Asiatic laughs and watched Jennifer count the heap of dirty notes. He pulled one out and held it under his violet lamp. He grunted and repeated his scan with two other notes from the bottom of the pile. He looked up. “£50 for me to put the water on.” He giggled. “If you want to look like a street whore, you can do business in the street.” Jennifer stood aside as he came out from behind his desk and led the way into a building that smelled of dirt and stale spices. He took her upstairs to the second floor and showed her into a windowless room that might once have housed a photocopier, and that was now largely taken up with a mattress. He waited for her to put her backpack on this and take out a few things, then led her along an unlit corridor to the bathroom.
“Five minutes of hot water.” He held up the fingers of one hand for emphasis. “Don’t try stealing the soap.”
Alone, Jennifer found that the door didn’t lock. She pulled off unbelievably dirty clothes and, stepping under the shower, waited for the dribble of cold water to start. As promised, it ceased after five minutes. She looked at the towel that had been provided. Leaving it untouched, she rubbed most of the water from her body with the inside of her sweatshirt and waited for the rest to evaporate. This had been the executive washroom in the little office block. Though it looked as if someone’s face had been smashed into it, the bloody smear and pattern of cracks covered only one end of the long mirror opposite the row of toilet cubicles. In the light of the single bulb that flickered overhead, she stared at her reflection. It takes effort to make a teenage body ugly, and Jennifer, most decidedly, wasn’t ugly. She had her father’s neck, and much of his wide shoulders and big chest. But the hard and endless travelling of the past year had kept her from the Baldwin tendency to stoutness. And she did have her mother’s colouring and features. Perhaps she wasn’t beautiful in the conventional sense. Perhaps she never would be. But no one could deny that young Jennifer Baldwin was a fine-looking girl. Count Robert had always thought so. Even in the baggy robe she wore among the Outsiders, it wasn’t just knowledge of who she was that turned every male head.
Thoughts of her parents, and of what had soon become her normal life, might have set her off on a long moment of the blubbers. But she was suddenly aware of the Indian’s loud breathing as he watched her through a hole in the door. She stepped closer to the mirror and unfolded the clothes she’d picked up at a stall in Vauxhall Bridge Road. They were shabbier than they’d looked in the sunshine, and the moth had eaten a few holes in the lower part of the dress. But a coat of paint on her face, and she’d pass for what she was pretending to be. Leave the paint off, and she’d pass for respectable. She couldn’t ask more than that.
Back in her room, she lit the candle and propped a chair against the door. Fully clothed, she lay on the stained mattress. The thin partition walls didn’t keep out the grunts and squeals of pleasure that came from all about. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to put the noise out of mind. But her hair was still wet, and she was feeling hungry again. She sat up and took out the yellow loaf she’d earlier stuffed into her backpack. It came apart with a shower of crumbs, and she washed it down with the boiled water the Indian had left in the room. She was about to take out the motion detector she’d also bought and hang this on the door. Instead, she played with the key to the deposit box where she’d put everything of real value. Nothing was totally safe, one of her father’s dodgier contacts had often assured her. But there were levels of security, and anywhere might be safer than this ghastly place. Since she was still probably being watched from somewhere, she resisted the impulse take the key from round her neck and fiddle properly with it. She now did unpack the motion detector. She hooked it over the door handle. More than a hard bang on the door, and it would deafen everyone within twenty feet. What she could do if it did go off was another matter. She’d left her knife in someone’s throat. But, if she was to be murdered in her bed, she might as well be awake when it happened.
Jennifer lay back again on the mattress. “You’re ever such a grown up little girl,” her father had been telling her for as long as she could remember. He’d never believed that, she knew—if he ever got to discuss her trip into France with Count Robert, he’d certainly act on different assumptions. Her mother had never said anything so stupid, and had countered every assertion of independence with a mixture of scolding and sound advice. Now, both her parents were gone. It was for her to get them back. And only she could get them back. But how? Yes, how? This was a question she’d repeatedly asked on the way up to London—asked and failed to answer. Here, finally in London, the little games she’d played in her mind to blank out the failure no longer worked. Half riding, half walking, she’d taken days to get here. She’d killed a man. And what next? She might have cried herself to sleep. But there are some horrors so overpowering that tears themselves are stilled.