The Stars’ Tennis Balls

you?’

Oliver turned his head at the sound of a sudden creak on the stair. He strode quickly across the room and opened the door.

‘Ah, Maria, how can we help?’

‘Good mooring, Mister Oliver. I’m sorry, distrubbing you. I woss wunnering if you or Mrs Blaggro like maybe some cop of coffee? Or some bisskiss? I have bake many bisskiss.’

‘Thank you, Maria, no. If we need anything, we will come down,’ said Oliver, closing the door.

‘But such a sweet thought!’ his mother called over her shoulder. ‘Thank you, Maria, dear.’

Oliver closed the door, crossed over to the window and looked out over Heron Square. Through the balusters of the first floor balcony he could see a sparklingly clean turquoise Bentley manoeuvring into a parking space. In the central garden a game of tennis was in progress on one of three courts set aside for the use of residents. From most of the stucco faзades that overlooked the square, national flags drooped from cream-painted poles. The houses here were so large and opulent that few were still in use as private residences, the majority served as embassies or grand offices.

‘I just want to know one thing,’ Oliver said. ‘Why? That’s the question isn’t it. Why? You have more than most people ever dream of. A rich husband who adores you, health, friends, luxury, status…, why?’

For Philippa Blackrow who had lived with her passion since almost before she could remember, the answer to that question was so clear in her mind that it seemed almost impossible to express. She lit a cigarette and looked up at her son, whose face was dark against the window.

‘After the British shot your grandfather,’ she said at length, ‘Mummy and I went to live in Canada to avoid the fuss. She died there when I was fourteen. The doctors never explained what it was, but I knew that it was what they used to call a broken heart. We seem to have lost that capacity of late, don’t we? Doctors have told us not to be so silly. Animals still die that way, but what do animals know? To this day I am sure that she would never have been taken ill if Daddy had still been alive. The British killed both my parents. Well, Mummy’s brother, my Uncle Bobby, adopted me and so I came back to England and became his daughter. He never let me talk about Daddy. If I so much as mentioned his name I would be sent to my bedroom. Uncle Bobby was to be called Daddy and Aunt Elizabeth was to be Mummy. It was as if my real parents never existed. Daddy was the wicked brother-in-law that Uncle Bobby’s poor sister had been tricked into marrying and his name was to be struck from family history. I suppose they thought I would forget him, but I never did. The less he was mentioned, the more proud of him I grew and the more determined to have my revenge on the unjust, cruel and gutless regime that destroyed him. You think I have more than most people dream of? What other people dream of doesn’t matter. I always had less than I ever dreamt of. All I ever dreamt of was a family. A father and a mother. Most people don’t even need to dream of such luxuries, they take them for granted. That is what I used to dwell on, alone in my bedroom. I dwelt as all children do, on the injustice. Injustice is the most terrible thing in the world, Oliver. Everything that is evil springs from it and only a cheap soul can abide it without anger. You were named, you know, after the great Irish patriot, Saint Oliver Plunkett, who was betrayed on the lying word of Protestant perjurers and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered on Tyburn hill just there, at the top end of Park Lane.’

‘And there’s me,’ said Oliver, looking out over the rooftops towards Marble Arch, ‘thinking I was named after Oliver Cromwell, the very man who had him hunted down. You paint a very sweet, a very sentimental, a very Irish portrait, if I may say so, Mother, of dignified suffering and noble ideals, but I seem to remember that the Blessed Oliver Plunkett, as he was known when I was at school, by the way…

‘The Holy Father canonised him not long ago …

‘Did he now? I must have missed the headlines. Be that as it may, my memory tells me that he died thanking God for giving him the grace to suffer and praying for the forgiveness for his enemies. I don’t remember reading that he shrieked down curses and swore bloody revenge on all the English. Would the sight of British children blasted into little pieces have made his heart rejoice, do you think?’

‘I do not expect you to understand. In fact, I would prefer not to discuss it further.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ said Oliver, turning from the window. ‘I can at least be grateful for one part of your childhood.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘Great Uncle Bobby’s adoption of you allowed my real ancestry to slip through the net, didn’t it? He buried your father so deep that it was never picked up when they vetted me for the service. Do you seriously imagine that the government would have given me a job if they had known I was the grandson of a Fenian traitor and spy, a friend of Casement and Childers and a proven enemy of the Crown?’

‘And now you will tell them, I suppose.

‘I’ll do no such thing, Mother. You were wrong when you described me as unambitious. You and I are the only people on God’s earth who know the truth and that is how it will stay. I have been busy making arrangements and you are one of them.’

‘Really, Oliver? I’m one of your arrangements? But that’s too tremendously intriguing. Have you worked it all out?’

‘You’ll send a message to your friends to tell them that Leclare’s last message to you was intercepted. You fear that you are being watched and have decided to lie low in the country.'

‘Have I decided that, darling?’

‘You have. From time to time I will visit you and you will furnish me with the names of every member of every bomb-making factory, every cell, every Active Service Unit, every safe house, every weapons cache and every recruiting officer, money-raiser and sympathiser you have ever heard of. The smallest shred of intelligence, rumour or gossip you have ever picked up in your long years of crime and betrayal you will pass to me. This will advance my career enormously and should fill your remaining years in the country with maternal pride.’

‘My bowels opened as you were being born,’ said Philippa. ‘For many years I used to wonder if perhaps in all the confusion the midwife accidentally disposed of the child and wrapped the shit in a blanket for me to feed. Now I know.’

‘A charming sentiment.’

‘And supposing I refuse?’

‘You really don’t want to do that, Mother. I am in a position to make life very difficult for you, for Jeremy, for your step-children and most especially, for the young man who was assigned to deliver that letter to you.

‘Who is he?’

‘You don’t know him, but you would adore him, I promise you. He’s suffering eternal torment like Christ on a crucifix, and all for your sins. I’ll give you a week, to explain to Jeremy that you have tired of the city and yearn for the rural peace of Wiltshire. And if you think you can feed me useless information mother, think again. I will take my chances and hand you in. You will spend the rest of your life as a prisoner in the hardest jail in Europe.’

Oliver walked across the square, humming ‘Lillibulero’. The sun was shining and the roads were giving off a pleasant smell of softened tarmac. Poor mother, he thought to himself, how she will miss London.

He stopped off at the Berkeley Hotel to use the telephone.

‘News desk.’

‘This is the Provisional IRA. We have the son of the British war criminal Charles Maddstone. His clothes will be sent you as proof. The code is “Interior Interior Interior.” Good afternoon to you.

Handcuffed to a wooden upright, Ned sat on the floor of the van opposite two of the ugliest men he had ever seen in his life.

At the age of fifteen his collarbone had snapped during a game of rugby and he had supposed at the time that this was as far as pain could ever go. He knew better now. Every turn and bump that Mr Gaine negotiated, driving in the cabin up front, sent through him blinding surges of a pain so intense that at each wave of it, orange and yellow light flashed in his eyes, the blood roared in his ears and the very guts within him seemed to explode in shock. The pain grew from his shoulder, where a grinding background ache radiated outwards into violent raging fires that scorched and spat into every corner of his body. The effort of holding still without tightening his frame as he breathed had prevented him from even trying to talk, but he could feel now that the van had joined a motorway and the smoother progress encouraged him to try a few words.

‘Mr Delft…' he began. The men opposite turned their eyes towards him, ‘Mr Delft said I was to go home … he said I was …

Mr Gaine swung the van out to overtake a lorry and Ned’s body slid forward, detonating an explosion in his shoulder that sent sheets of pain flashing and screaming through his body.

Five minutes later he tried again. ‘I’m supposed. supposed to go home…’ The words came out in a whisper.

The men regarded him with silent interest for a moment or two, then looked away.

Ned had lost almost all sense of time and space. He did not know whether he had been left to lie for five minutes on the kitchen floor or for five hours. He could not tell how long they had been travelling or in which direction. The van was closed and windowless, and his only clue as to time was a feeling that the number of cars and lorries around them was increasing, which suggested the build-up of morning traffic.

He attempted speech again. ‘My shoulder … it’s … I think it’s dis … dis … I think it’s dislocated.’

Curiously, through the uncomprehending fog of his senses, Ned was still careful to be polite. He could have said that his shoulder had been dislocated, or even that Mr Gaine had dislocated it.

The men turned to each other.

‘You know how to put a shoulder back?’ one of them asked.

‘I’m not bleeding touching him,’ said the other. ‘The cunt’s cacked his fucking pants. Fucking stinks.’

Ned’s smashed nose, bubbling with blood, had not detected the stench that surrounded him, but he understood now why he felt a soft squash and slide between his buttocks.

‘I’m sorry …‘ he said, tears dropping down his face. ‘I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, only

‘Give it a fucking rest, can’t you?’

‘Mr Delft said … he said I was to go home. He’ll be angry…, and my father…, my father is an important man … please, please!’

To stop the unpleasant whimpering, they took it in turns to kick him into unconsciousness.

It is not often that I confess to being baffled, but for a short while today the disappearance of Ned Maddstone struck me as the most complete mystery