King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu
“ALL WE HAVE to remember now, Mr Cornelius, is that many of our new sister countries believe quite profoundly in the virtues of tyranny. To them the words ‘freedom’ and ‘auto-nomy’ are, on other lips but theirs, the ultimate obscenities. And as for a United Germany, God knows what this will mean to my constituents!”
Miss Brunner nervously adjusted her twinset and glanced at her watch. “I’m on such a tight schedule, these days.” Reminded of that, she breathed a sigh of relief. All she knew was control. It so reduced one’s anxieties.
Jerry scratched his stomach with a borrowed loofah. His fatigues were far too tight for him and if she wanted the truth, he’d cheerfully give it to her.
“I’m too old to be a revolutionary,” he said. “I’m just trying to hang on to the gains we made. And that’s why we had to act, Miss Brunner.”
“You won’t get far,” she said. The movement of her hand to her perfect auburn hair was a kind of spasm. “You’re having trouble breathing as it is.” Unconsciously she reached for her own pulse.” And don’t think I’m afraid of any hidden gin bottles or whatever it is you believe you have.”
“I believe I have the killing-harmony, the power-without-fear, white-eyes!” His fingers twitching towards his needle-gun, Jerry uttered something like his old mindless grin. “What you people never allow for is just how short a distance you can push some of us before we stop going with the flow.”
“You disgusting old hippy.”
“I never was an old hippy, darling.” And he plugged her with one neat shot to the cortex. “I was only reborn in the 90s.” He gave his wizened hands a wipe and returned to the video he had been planning to watch before she interrupted him. It was Cat Ballou. He was desperately in need of a new role model, even if it had died in the meantime. Concentrating on the credits, he reached for his pipe and his rocky.
COLD SNAP
President Iliescu of Romania claimed yesterday that the police and parts of the army had been ‘psychologically incapable’ of putting down anti-government protests, which was why he was setting up a new riot-control force. An unrepentant Mr Ionescu accused Western governments of overlooking the difficulties provoked in the police and army by the traumatic experiences during the December revolution.
He also disclosed that he was considering a formal request to Britain to train the controversial new force.
The Times, 25 June 1990
IT JUST MIGHT be Hampton Court, he thought, wheeling his bicycle out of the maze at night. The Tardis - or police box - put the date at around 1965, the year of his immaculate conception, when an empty winter had been filled with the warmth of very young children and an overwhelming sense of responsibility, to self and to them. Jerry now wondered if that hadn’t been just before the depression set in. The times were a-changing and interpretations varied; he was all at sea.
Defeated again, he returned to Blenheim Crescent. It had been an age since he had cycled that far in the snow.
“‘Ere ‘e is!” His mum came to the door, her sleeves rolled up on her red forearms and a huge knife in her right hand. “A regular bad ef fin’ penny, ain’cher, Jer?”
“‘Appy Xmas, Jer, boy.” His brother Frank’s weaselly expression shifted between pacific leer and burning hatred. It was his common response to Jerry’s arrival. “Caff’s on ‘er way, she said.”
Jerry shivered. He was not sure he was emotionally ready for his sister’s manifestation. Yet it was too late to worry.
Obediently, he took his old place at the table.
“Now, Jer - isn’t this better than freedom?” Frank grinned across the turkey as their mother poised the knife, her sweat dripping from elbow to half-burned carcass, to mingle with her coarse gravy.
At last Jerry remembered what he had always loved in his sister and no longer felt afraid of her.
OUR LOVE IS RUNNIN’ OUT
The knife-sharp air bit painfully into my face when I stepped from the Orient Express at Bucharest in the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1938. The gloomy station, silent save for the shufflings of the few sleepy porters and the tired hissings of the engine, gave emphasis to the frigidity, as it were, of my entry into the Roumanian Capital. It was not a heartening beginning of my mission to investigate the real meaning of King Carol’s nomination of the fascist, anti-semitic govern-ment of Octavian Goga.
King Carol, Hitler and Lupescu
LYING ON THE artificial beach at Nova Palma Nova reading a Largetype edition of The Prisoner of Zenda and listening to Ivor Novello’s Glamorous Night on his Aiwa, Jerry congratulated himself: an earlier generation would have been reading The Prisoner of Zenda on a Blackpool or a Brighton beach. What Romania really needed at the moment was a decent Colonel Zapt. But then everything kept changing. Maybe Ruritania was no longer a viable model? The thought filled him with sadness. He looked up, expecting to see the towers of Zenda fading before his eyes, but his horizon was filled with neon, with the magic names of a different age - Benny Hill, Peter Sellers and Max Bygraves; McDonald’s and Wimpy.
This vision disturbed him. These days almost any vision disturbed him.
Some sixth sense warning him, he looked up. Una Persson was tramping across the canary-coloured sand. She wore a Laura Ashley sun-dress and blue Bata strap-ups. In her hands was a heavy Kalashnikov.
That was enough for Jerry. He retreated into the romance of an earlier age and would have stayed there were it not for the touch of cold steel on his sphincter.
“I need some help, Jerry,” she said. She had removed one earphone.
It was hideous. Her voice mingled with a hundred machine noises, the video arcades, discos and pinball halls, the traffic of road, sea and air.
“What?” He desperately tried to hear her. It was too late to try to cross her. “Eh?”
“Come along now.” She reached towards his other ear.
“Damn you Rasendyll,” he said. “Can’t they find some other poor devil to be king?”
“You ain’t the king, boy. You’d be lucky to be queen for a day. You missed your chances.” Shakey Mo’s little rat face twitched with a kind of lascivious rage. Hanging about near the steps up to the promenade, he had for obscure reasons smeared blacking on his face. He, too, was sporting a rather unfashion-able olive green leisure suit. Things had to be bad when Mo got this patronising. “Where the hell you been, man? Life goes on, you know, even if you haven’t noticed.”
“I ain’t drunk, I’m just drinkin’,” said Jerry.
“You could have fooled me.” He removed his wraparound shades with a flick of the wrist once considered sexy.
“Which isn’t saying a lot, really.” After a second’s hesitation Mrs Persson dumped her rifle and the book beside the hot-dog stand. She couldn’t make up her mind about them. Nothing stayed obsolete for long, these days.
WHEN A GUITAR PLAYS THE BLUES
The National Salvation Front government, accused by critics of being closely linked to the Communist Party of late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, appears to be trying to mend the damage to its international reputation caused by last week’s events.
ReuterlMajorca Daily Bulletin, 24 June 1990
“IT’S NOT MUCH of a job and you don’t get a whole lot of respect.” Jerry brushed rain off his sodden fedora. “The pay’s no good and the hours are lousy - yet there’s something in you has to go on doing it, the way other guys get hooked on dope or, maybe, a woman. Someone has to walk down those streets respectable people don’t like to know about, especially when they might have a relative living there. Someone has to take the insults and the bruises and, occasionally, the bullet, so that those respectable folks can sleep peacefully in their beds. In some ways you’re a messenger between two mutually selfish sections of society - the Glutted Rich and the Vicious Greedy. Well, maybe that’s exaggerating just a tad…