tried to pacify, tried to quieten. Shrieks followed, then a bump as something fell and a crash as something broke. Men began to shout.
‘Are they allowed to bring women in?’ asked Theodore.
‘Certainly not, but nothing’s done about enforcing that rule unless something like this happens, a case of the old army don’t-let-me-catch-you understanding. But now I’m afraid the guard’ll have to intervene.’
The noise continued, though not so loud or so near that it would have hindered their conversation, had they wanted to resume it; instead, both watched intently. The resemblance between what they saw and a stage performance was increased by their view of it framed between two of the pillars of the temple and by the intensity of the moonlight, which seemed to have grown since they had come out of doors. Behind the upstairs windows gesticulating human figures, some of them partly nude, came into view, milled about or grappled with one another, and vanished. Once, the shape of a man moved rapidly backwards across the entire breadth of the visible space, no doubt as the result of some blow. Sound effects included the smashing of glass, twice repeated, and a periodic thumping like the driving-in of nails with a heavy mallet. Little groups of men from other buildings were strolling over for a closer view, and there was something of an audience when four of the guard arrived under an NCO and shortly afterwards dragged off three women, all by now weeping loudly. The NCO stayed a moment to bawl promises of retribution at the occupants of the offending house, and then he too was gone.
‘What will happen to those girls?’
Alexander made a disdainful noise. ‘Girls? They’ll be thrown out of the main gate when the, guard have finished with them.’
‘That seems a bit harsh.’
‘Not a bit of it; they’re lucky it’s a fine night.’
‘How will they get home?’
‘They’ll probably pick up a horse-bus. Why all the concern? They’re animals. How do I know? Because those fellows down there are no better and no worse than my fellows, and any female who’ll fuck any of my fellows has got to be an animal – anyway I hope she is for her sake. You were saying, about the… revolution.’ He brought the word out with an air of surprise.
‘Yes.’ It took Theodore nearly half a minute to collect his thoughts. ‘Well… on the night of 21st September, the last night of the Festival of Culture, when there’ll be celebrations and attention will generally be distracted, we strike. We seize the broadcasting station, the post office, the administration buildings and the other nerve centres. And we arrest Vanag and all his staff and other prominent figures, including I’m afraid your father, but he’ll be well treated and very soon confined only to his house and its grounds, which is no extreme hardship.’
‘No great matter if it were. Meanwhile I’m subduing the rest of the regiment single-handed. Lucky you happened to find me, isn’t it?’
‘We had and have something up our sleeves for the whole regiment, including you. Just before we move a fake message from London reaches your colonel telling him to confine all troops to quarters. At the same time we cut his communications with Northampton. Then at H-Hour two of us release TK into the park.’
‘Almighty God! How did you get hold of that? And the impellor?’
‘From Moscow,’ said Theodore lightly. ‘We’re constantly in receipt of deliveries of cultural equipment and stores.’
‘You know, Theodore, if the 4th were the only troops in England the thing might conceivably work.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m so taken up with our local movement I forgot to tell you. We here are just part of an organisation that covers the whole country, the whole EDR. Surely you knew at least that the Festival was a national affair.’
‘No, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about any of it. And if there’d been the slightest whisper in the regiment I’d have heard.’
‘The Guards’ morale is known to be high. And in rural districts like this one the military are isolated, impossible to mix with on any scale. It was decided that outside the larger towns, where circumstances are different, the safe course was to leave them alone and then neutralise them.’
‘With certain exceptions.’
‘You’re special, Alexander, you must admit. Son of the Controller, lover of the Deputy-Director’s wife – when are you seeing her again, by the way?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.
‘We’ll come back to her in a minute – and now somebody with the means of blowing up half England. We have to have you.
‘What would you like me to blow up?’
‘One can’t say yet. You must just be ready, prepared. You’ll be able to lay hands on some of those projectiles?’
‘With everybody else knocked unconscious for twelve hours I should be able to manage it, yes.’
‘What chance have they got of reaching their insufflators in time?’
‘None whatsoever. One whiff and you collapse, so suddenly that there’s often a high casualty-rate from men injuring themselves as they fall. Anyway, that’s what the manual says.’
‘Excellent.’
After a brief pause, Alexander said, ‘Of course, fighting off the entire Russian army and air force the next day will stretch me somewhat.’
‘There I go again. I should have said much earlier that there’s to be a change of government in Moscow timed to coincide with all this.’
‘A coup in Moscow?
‘A change of government is how it was described to me. The new leaders will be favourable to an autonomous, neutralised England. That’s all I know.’
There was a longer pause. Alexander could be heard rubbing his cheek or jaw. In the distance a pane of glass broke suddenly and violently.
‘Our friends. At least they’re presumably still alive as I speak. Well, Theodore, I think this scheme has some very interesting possibilities.’
‘Then you’re still with us now you know more about us?’
‘Yes,’ said Alexander’s voice firmly out of the darkness.
As when he was relighting his pipe, Theodore did not see his co-conspirator’s expression. This time it was accompanied by a slight lift of the shoulders.
8
The Old Parsonage turned out to be a rather large, squareish building painted pink. In front of it ran a plank fence on which someone of no great talent had recently drawn in chalk an erect penis with testicles appended. Alexander, riding through the gateway, considered that some generous neighbour, rather than the lady of the house herself, was most likely responsible, but that the second hypothesis could not be dismissed with any confidence. On the far side of the fence, out of sight from the road, there was an untidy lawn that had evergreen bushes on it. Untying the couple of metres of head-collar rope he fastened Polly to the gate and began a cautious advance, his eyes open for alternative escape-routes as if he expected to meet a Cambodian suicide squad rather than a presumably unarmed female.
The front door was ajar. He hesitated and pressed the bell beside it, which he heard ringing both then and on a second and a third try, but nobody came, so he pushed the door. A short passage manifested itself with a tiled floor of chequered pattern, rooms on each side behind glass doors, more passage beyond at right-angles and the foot of a staircase. Continuing to advance cautiously, he found a dining-room to the left, a drawing-room to the right and nobody in either. When he reached the right-angle he thought, he was almost certain, that there was a person on the landing or half-landing of the staircase, but his direct look a second later showed nobody. On the left-hand side of the house, behind the dining-room, he noticed another door that was not quite shut. It proved to give into a kitchen in which there was somebody: Mrs Korotchenko, leaning naked against the wall that faced him.
