The Stars’ Tennis Balls

‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘Thanks so much.’

Oliver had set the tape-recorder running again.

‘Think nothing of it. Now then, you have a girlfriend I think you said?’

‘Yes. Portia. She doesn’t know anything about this. In fact, I’ve been wanting to ring her.’

‘All in good time. What does her father do, I wonder?’

‘Well, he’s a history lecturer at the North East London Polytechnic.’

Oliver could have hugged himself with delight. It was almost too much. A history lecturer! At the NELP, if you please…

‘I see,’ he said, ‘and just for the record, I wonder if you could give me his full name and address?’

‘Um, Peter Fendeman, 14, no 41 sorry, 41 Plough Lane, Hampstead, London NW3. But why…?’

‘Say that again for me, would you? Just the name and address.’

‘Peter Fendeman, 41 Plough Lane, Hampstead, London NW3.’

‘Excellent.’

Jewish too, by the sound of it. Oh frabjous day. When things fall into place like this, Oliver told himself, it doesn’t do to become arrogant. It is God’s work.

‘Ned you’ve been fantastic! I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we had to hoik you out here and put you through this nonsense. Look, I’ve got to hare up the motorway in the other direction from you, check out a few things in Scotland, so I’ll say goodbye. Mr Gaine can look after you from now on.

Ned took the outstretched hand and shook it warmly. ‘Thank you, Mr Delft. Thank you so much.’

‘It’s Oliver. And thank you, Ned. It’ll make a real difference you know. You should be very proud of yourself.’

‘But what about the drugs?’

‘Drugs, what drugs?’ said Oliver, lifting the spools of tape from the recorder. ‘The whole incident is forgotten, Ned. No, better than forgotten – it never happened. The police never picked you up, in fact they’ve never heard of you. They don’t know your name, they don’t even know what you look like. I promise you this, by tomorrow morning every record of your arrest will have disappeared for ever.’

And oh, if only you knew how true that was, Oliver said to himself. How wonderfully, wonderfully true.

‘Phew!’ Ned smiled as relief flooded through him. ‘If the press had heard about it, my father would have been … well, devastated.’

Oliver checked his watch.

‘I’m afraid it may be a little while before you can leave. I’m taking the only car. We’ve sent for another though, and it shouldn’t be too long before it gets here. I’d get into those clothes now if I were you. Have a safe journey home and if you need anything, just ask Mr Gaine.’

The pullover fitted. There was that to be said. It smelled of rotten onions, but at least it fitted him perfectly. The jacket and tennis shoes were too tight by miles and the trousers seem to have been made for a five foot man with a forty-eight inch waist. Oliver hadn’t thought to include a belt, so Ned hunted around the kitchen looking for string. He found some in a drawer and drew it five times around his middle. He was picking up a knife to cut the string when he heard the door open.

‘Oh, hello, Mr Gaine,’ he said, turning with relief. ‘I was hoping you might…’

Gaine stepped forward. Before Ned knew what was happening his right arm had been twisted behind his back so high that the bone was wrenched from its socket. Ned screamed as much from the sound of the crack and pop as from the pain. He screamed again when Gaine’s enormous fist slammed into the side of his head, dropping him to his knees. But when Gaine followed up with a blow of incredible force to the back of his neck, Ned was already incapable of screaming any more.

Mr Delft had been right as usual, thought Gaine, returning the knife to the drawer. Nasty piece of work. Weak though, he said to himself, looking down at Ned’s unconscious body. Very weak. Like wrenching a wing from a chicken. Where’s the challenge in that? He heard the sound of a van in the driveway and, pausing only to deliver a heavy and pleasingly crunchy kick to Ned’s ribs, Mr Gaine made his way out into the hallway.

‘Oliver, my dear, what a delightful surprise. I do wish you’d let me know. I can’t offer you a scrap to eat.’

‘I’ve not come for lunch, Mother,’ said Delft, sidestepping her embrace. ‘I’ve come for a talk.’

‘Oh dear, that sounds positively horrid. Well, we’d better go up to the drawing-room. Maria is in the kitchen cleaning out the oven, poor thing. I had the most spectacular disaster last night, you wouldn’t believe. Two boys from Australia who do dinner parties. The highest recommendation and shatteringly good-looking, as so many queers are these days, but their soufflés exploded and Maria had to run out and buy that new American ice-cream that comes in fifty-seven varieties. Monsignor Collins was here and some frighteningly rich people whom I wanted to soften up before digging into them for the Oratory Fund. Heavens, there’s a terrible fug, isn’t there? Jeremy’s cigars I suppose. Shall I open a window?’

‘No, Mother, just sit down.’

‘Very well, darling. There!’

‘Where is Jeremy, by the way?’

‘At the office, of course. He’s been working like a Trojan lately. So long as he doesn’t overdo it like your poor father. Or like you, come to that. You’re looking awfully tired, darling. Positively hagged. Anyway, I think there s something rather good in the air, so if you know anyone who can buy shares for you, I would scoop them up as fast as you can.

‘Mother, how many times have I told you? It’s against the law.’

‘Oh, I know I was a bit naughty with Cohn’s airline, but this is family and surely that doesn’t count. Besides, Father Hendry told me in confession once that insider dealing as you call it isn’t the least bit of a mortal sin, it’s only a manmade one, so I really don’t think it can be said to matter very much.’

‘I tell you what, Mother,’ said Oliver taking up a position in front of the fireplace, ‘let’s cut all this dizzy Belgravia hostess nonsense, shall we?’

‘Oh, do move away from there, Oliver. You look like a Victorian patriarch. It’s too lowering. It reminds me of how Daddy used to stand when I’d been naughty. That’s better! Come and sit down beside me and don’t be so pompous. Tell me what’s eating you.’

‘Well, since you mentioned him, let’s talk about your father.’

‘Darling, what an odd idea!’

‘Not Great Uncle Bobby but your real father. We’ve never discussed him, you and I, have we?’

‘Is there something to “discuss”, as you put it?’

‘Of course there is. I’ve always known, you know.’

‘Always known what, dear?’

‘How you felt about him. How proud of him you’ve always been. I’ve seen it in your face the handful of times you’ve ever mentioned him to me.

‘Daddy was a very great man. A very great man. If you’d known him, you would have adored him. You’d have been as proud of him as I am. You are strangely alike in some ways.

‘I damned well hope not. The man was a traitor.’

‘You’re not to use that word. To die for your country isn’t treachery, it is heroism.’

‘But he didn’t die for his country, did he? He was English. One hundred per cent hearts of oak, village green, maypole and mutton English. There wasn’t a single drop of Irish blood in his veins.’

‘He loved Ireland and Ireland loved him! Loyalty to your country of birth is vapid and unremarkable. Only loyalty to an idea has meaning. You don’t understand the first thing about it. You wouldn’t recognise a principle if it stared you in the face. You would stamp it with your dull civil service stamp, push it onto a spike and send it off to be filed.’

‘I do recognise murder when I see it, however.’

‘Murder? What are you talking about? Daddy never murdered anyone in his life.’

Oliver took a white envelope from his pocket. ‘For you, I believe.’

‘Goodness!’ exclaimed his mother, reverting a little to her former manner. ‘How wildly exciting. What is it, an invitation?’

‘I believe everything is in place. You’ll note the little hair protruding from the flap. Open it, Mother.’

‘It doesn’t say that it’s for me …

‘I have it on the best authority that it is to be delivered into the hands of Philippa Blackrow of 13 Heron Square and none other. Those were the exact words – well, exact enough at any rate. Believe me, Mother, it is for you all right, the gift of a dead man.

‘Dead?’

‘I’m afraid so. Paddy Leclare died two days ago. It was his last request that you should have this. Who am I to stand in the way of a dying wish?’

‘It ate into my heart when you applied to the Home Office,’ his mother said, looking sadly down at the envelope and twisting it in her hands. ‘I remember how excited you were when they accepted you, and I thought how ashamed I was that a son of mine could be so unambitious as to choose such a career for himself. It turns out I misjudged you. You are like your grandfather after all, only a mirror image, fighting on the wrong side and with every good quality reversed. Do you have a knife?’

Oliver passed over a penknife and watched his mother carefully slit the envelope open.

‘Ah, you’ve made a mistake there, darling,’ she said, with something like triumph. ‘The letter should be tucked in with the folded side up, how silly of you not to have noticed.’

‘At it happens I was not present when they opened it.’

‘When who opened it?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Well, thank you so much for delivering it, Oliver dear. What happens now? Am I to be arrested? Interned without trial? Shot out of hand? Escorted to one of your secret lunatic asylums and pumped full of thorazine perhaps?’

‘We don’t do that kind of thing, Mother.’

‘Of course, you don’t, darling. It’s just awful gossip and rumour. You don’t shoot to kill, you don’t torture, you don’t lie, spy, bug and blackmail either, do