Inkerman Writers - Richard Nicholson

Regime Change

I was punched hard in the back then pushed towards the car, one of the old style unmarked limousines which have staged a come back. A black-clad silver buttoned officer (the uniform is more military these days) guided my head so it didn’t bang against the car roof, ironic in view of what was certain to follow.

The man in the suit and double breasted beige mackintosh sat in the front passenger seat, a clichéd figure from my nightmares. A bearded uniformed officer (you see more policemen with beards now) sat in the driver’s seat staring straight ahead as he moved off.

There was silence inside the car and nothing to create sound outside, no traffic, and no public announcements from the speakers. It was too early for the first tram to run. The banners lining the street for the celebrations hung limp. Raindrops beaded the windscreen.

For a moment I thought the streets were completely deserted (even though the curfew was over half an hour ago) but the single figure was there again standing on the pavement, the young boy, ten or eleven, turning his head to watch the cars glide past and as usual I was swept by a wave of sadness for what had past and what was to come and because the pale-faced boy so resembled me at that tender age.

The old torture instruments had long since been consigned to museums where people were astonished and amused by their crudity though I knew modern methods were not painless. Whatever made our ancestors, even in recent history, think it was a good idea to attack the body when the mind is so vulnerable and accessible.

The plain clothes man read from papers taken from a black document case, an account of my meetings with three men held at various addresses and public places, meetings to further the conspiracy in which we were all engaged. The interrogator made reference to many photographs and much CCTV footage but showed me only three mug shots of middle aged men, all with beards.

Of course I confessed my guilt. Which of us is innocent?

Persistent noise was the worst thing about the prison.

The incessant playing of military marches interspersed with strange alien music.

The clang of doors slamming shut.

It took many weeks before I could bear to take my hands from my ears.

Here solitary meant solitary.

There was no human company, the closest being the opening and closing of the hatch when my food tray arrived but I never saw more than a hand and an arm. When I was allowed to dispose of my excrement the door was unlocked and I walked along a passage to a lavatory used by other inmates, slopped out, and returned with my rinsed bucket. It was arranged that I saw no-one.

I have no romantic or inspirational stories from that period. I didn’t befriend birds, or rats, or spiders though they shared my cell. Guilt and self-loathing were the only companions I recognised and listened to.

I counted up the paltry achievements of my working life and found them almost valueless like old pennies.

I felt less guilty about my official crimes- encouraging my students to read books from the proscribed list- the books in my little private collection. Just as Tom, my history colleague had dared to depart from the official account of the so-called Liberation, but they were small, insignificant protests.

I was beginning to lose track of time (though I knew by the changing seasons that years had past) and I knew I would be unrecognizable being bearded and like a skeleton. Through starvation and dehydration I hallucinated and thought I was dead.

When I had a sense of identity I was certainly someone different, a stranger to myself.

When the letter was pushed under my cell door I thought my wife Imogen must have died and I was totally unprepared for what happened. Someone, claiming to be a woman, had written to me. ‘I fell in love with your picture,’ she said. I was deeply suspicious because the authorities denied me letters from my wife or anyone else. It had to be a trick, a trap of some kind, another way of getting me to reveal my innermost thoughts- as if they didn’t know enough.

She carried on writing and I became convinced the letters were indeed written by a woman whoever she might be and whether or not she was really called Greta.

My arrest had been reported in the party newspaper and on the TV channel if Greta was to be believed. She wrote about the humanity in my expression, my ‘kind eyes’ and her utter belief in me. She didn’t say she knew I was innocent, just that she believed in me. A photograph came with her third letter. She was beautiful. Dark hair, sallow skin, brown eyes.

Of course I was wary. I’d heard murderers and rapists on death row get letters from ‘admirers’ if that’s the right word to use.

Yet now when I fell asleep I had erotic dreams in which she behaved provocatively. I say frankly I masturbated during the night and when I awoke in the morning. Then I felt remorse and tried to conjure the image of Imogen, feeling dirty, shameful and depressed that Greta had become more real to me than my wife.

Then Greta wrote to say she would visit.

My worst fear was that the authorities would withdraw their permission at the last moment.

Or that Greta would change her mind.

When the day came I was not allowed to meet her in the visitors’ area; the officer brought Greta to my cell. Was this the usual imperative, that I could never go near other inmates, or an attempt to humiliate us both?

I was horrified.

The place reeked of my sweat and sour with rancid food. There was a stinking bucket waiting to be emptied. It smelt foul to me and I lived with it every day so I could imagine how Greta would recoil, probably vomit on the spot.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Most of the time the food is inedible but they won’t take the tray away unless I eat everything. If I return the food on my tray they throw it back into my cell.’

‘Doesn’t it bring vermin?’ she asked.

‘I never see any rats or mice but I hear them,’ I said.

Greta held her handkerchief over her mouth.

‘Poor man,’ she whispered.

‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ I said.

‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I admire you.’

‘Why for God’s sake?’

‘Your resistance, it’s heroic.’

The portentous words fell heavily between us.

‘I don’t feel heroic.’

‘You’re like a martyr.’

‘I feel like shit.’

‘They can never capture your mind completely.’

She spoke earnestly, her eyes seeming to burn.

‘But I think they’ve damaged it beyond repair. The mechanism is kaput like a broken clock.’

Years ago, before the banning of the micro-chip technologies, I might have compared my brain to a faulty computer.

‘I can hardly string a few simple thoughts together. And when I try to speak I really struggle. I’m not much use to anyone.’

‘Don’t say that. It’s not true.’

She was even more beautiful than her picture.

I wanted to kiss her on the lips but it wasn’t possible.

There was a gulf between us though we stood within kissing distance. I had to grant her that: she’d come very close despite the smell.

I wanted to be loved- liked- for myself, filthy stinking body or not but it was far and away too much to expect of a pretty young woman like Greta. Imagine how I would taste to her if she kissed me.

Yet I also felt the obstacle was not just my beard, my long matted hair, my emaciated appearance (I probably looked far worse than I realized) and my God-awful smell.

I’d told myself a thousand times not to raise my hopes for our first meeting. But now I felt the problem was matching her expectations, failing to give her what she wanted. I hadn’t reckoned with that.

‘I believe in you.’

It was what she’d said in her first letter.

I didn’t want anyone to believe in me. It was like a millstone to hang round my neck. In practical terms I simply wanted them to hand back my ID card.

I’d been vehemently against the idea at its inception but at least the card acknowledged membership of the human race. I’d reached a point where I would settle for that.

I thought of the face of the small boy on the street on the day I was arrested and I wept for the first time.

When I was released with my little bundle of belongings I saw a tall woman walking towards him. It couldn’t be Imogen because she didn’t know I was coming out.

When she drew near I realised it was Greta.

This time she did kiss me, on both cheeks.

She led me to a large shiny car. Everything seemed pristine and clear so much so I had to shade my eyes. I walked unsteadily and Greta linked arms to give support.

Peering inside, I saw the faces I’d seen in the police mug shots.

I was squeezed into the back seat between two of the men. Now we all wore beards.

Greta sat next to the driver.

He took us a circuitous route through the conurbation making sudden turns and sometimes doubling back on himself. It was clear they expected to be followed.

Later when I recovered I remembered Greta had fed me soup and then more solid food and she’d stroked my brow as I slipped in and out of fitful sleep. I slept for most of three days and nights.

I looked in her mirror as she cut my hair and trimmed my beard curious to see the face revealed.

I discovered I was sharing a house in a terrace with Greta and the three men. They spent their time in a workshop that had once been a garage. Greta took them drinks and cooked their meals.

I never heard the men call her Greta and I wondered what her real name was and who she was in reality. There was very little conversation and I was slow to realise they were frightened the building was bugged. Much of the time they lip read each other or used a kind of basic sign language which I tried to learn.

Sometimes the three men took me to meetings in other houses and public places. I was almost certain we were followed and photographed. The events were just as the interrogator had alleged.

Thoughts of Imogen would invade my mind but I had no desire to contact her and I pushed the thoughts away.

On the last night Greta came naked to my bed. I wanted her though I knew I was being rewarded for what I would do not for what I’d done.

And I was resolved.

I had an appointment at 11.15 to collect my ID from the Ministry of State Security. Even if we were under surveillance as I suspected I would probably have seconds to act before I was arrested.

Of course I would be searched when I got there but by then I would be inside the temple-like building with its great echoing vaulted hallway.

The danger was we might be intercepted on the way.

I got dressed with all the curtains drawn to frustrate prying binoculars. It was like putting on a costume to take part in a play at school.

All of them spent a long time patting and smoothing my outer coat and they took photographs.

This time Greta drove the car and the men stayed at home. I was pretty sure she’d volunteered and I tried to guess her reasons. Was she afraid I might flinch at the very death?

There was no road block or sudden appearance by a police car. Once or twice Greta made a mess of a gear change and I concluded she was not as nerveless as she seemed.

Greta dropped me directly outside.

Since I’d been chosen, I’d thought obsessively about how full of people the target area would be. I’d never been to the Ministry when there wasn’t a crowd. It was true to say all citizens had regular business there whether they liked it or not.

As soon as I entered, security men converged from all directions. I had to knock one of them down and elbow my way through the throng.

I wanted to get to somewhere near the middle of the crowd under the building’s great dome but they were closing in.

It was then that I reached under my coat to find the detonator.

Amis, Lessing and McEwan

I never asked to be born, certainly not by Immaculate Conception.

Perhaps I should describe my progenitor. Give you some idea of what I have to put up with.

Rupert Avery sports a silver beard which he strokes when he’s thinking his Great Thoughts. He cultivates a casual look but it’s carefully contrived; he’s vain as a peacock. Likes to wear black polo neck sweaters with leather jackets. Has rimless tinted glasses which he takes off frequently to wipe with extra large spotted handkerchiefs, another way of looking reflective and intellectual. You’ve probably seen him on the Newsnight Arts Review or some such programme. He’s wise owl as well as preening peacock if we want to keep to bird metaphors.

He says that a lot. ‘Mustn’t mix my metaphors’ or ‘if you’ll allow me to mix my metaphors.’

Has this affected way of speaking, pompous little sod.

He’s got this long-running feud with another writer who once gave him a bad review. They goad each other like kids in the playground.

You see him at his worst when he collects his prize at the posh dinner.

He rabbits on about a long list of guys as if he wants to prove he’s got plenty of mates. I can only remember a few names, Amis, Lessing, and McEwan. People clap at the end of his speech but I get the impression he isn’t that well liked. You can feel the air is thick with petty jealousies. Everyone’s greeting each other with luvvie smiles but I can see they’re not genuine. Some anorexic birds in backless dresses flit between tables picking up crumbs of gossip.

Lord Superior Somebody gives a long eulogy (I think that was the word used) praising Avery’s book Caliban’s Feast.

I wasn’t in that one, thank God.

You’ll have gathered I despise the man which may seem ungrateful when he created me and everything but you see he never lets me forget it for a second. Yet he says in his speech ‘characters take off and surprise you.’ Not if he can help it. I’m chained like that Prometheus guy with my vitals exposed.

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

In his latest draft for this book he’s working on he’s contemplating a scene on the tube.

He’s got me travelling back home to Wimbledon after seeing Jerry Springer: the Musical. I sense he’s got something more in store than a quiet night out in Theatreland.

The feeling’s confirmed when three drunken yobs pile into my compartment and sprawl over the seats opposite an attractive girl in a dark suit, might be a PA, secretary, someone like that. Expensive clothes and hairstyle, very toothsome (one of his words for very sexy). I sit further along with a younger bloke; both of us study the District Line Map as if we’re spies committing it to memory.

‘Give us a smile, darlin,’ says one of the lads to the girl.

His mates watch us carefully hoping for a frown, a sideways glance, a sniff of disapproval.

Earl’s Court, West Brompton, Fulham Broadway, Parson’s Green, Putney Bridge…

I’m riveted to the map reading a route that’s already lodged in my memory but in my peripheral vision I see Romeo (he’s got a stud in his eyebrow) is tapping the girl’s knee.

There are empty seats she could move to but she freezes.

He pushes up the hem of her skirt and strokes the insides of her slim thighs.

One of his mates lurches towards us. He opens his beer-stinking mouth inches from the young man’s face. ‘You’re all right with that, ain’t you?’

No answer.

‘Ain’t ya?’

I can tell Avery is dithering, wondering whether to pitch me into battle or have me play the coward’s part. Have-a-Go hero or Wimp. I know which he’ll choose. I think he’s trying to make some points about the ills of modern society (same with sending me to Jerry Springer) and it suits his argument if I sit there paralysed.

I find myself brimming with loathing for the three Neanderthals.

Though I can feel Avery trying to yank me back, I smash my fist into the guy who’s out of his seat hassling my travelling companion.

The force of the punch takes even me by surprise and the yob reels back like he’s been whammed! or zapped! by a comic superhero. But the blood from his nose is real enough.

Before they can react I move in on his two mates.

Romeo is half out of his seat when my knuckles kiss his snarling lips. I have to twist my body to kick the other yob in the groin but I manage the manoeuvre effortlessly.

The girl cowers back, stark terror etched (is that a good word?) on her face.

The tube shudders to a halt at East Putney. The timing’s perfect.

I grab her hand and we run up the stairs without looking back.

*

In the cafe she warms her hands round her polystyrene cup, still shaking.

‘I’m so grateful,’ she says.

I look for hero-worship in her deep blue eyes but I’m disappointed.

‘Are you O. K.?’

She asks this because I’m studying my knuckles which are reddened and bruised.

‘It’s nothing,’ I tell her, trying to strike just the right note, implying I’m quite used to bruising my knuckles in the course of carrying out my civic duties but without giving the impression I get into brawls every day of the week.

‘I’m really grateful,’ she says again in her caressing voice.

‘Were you working late?’ I asked.

‘I’d been for a meal with my boyfriend.’

The boyfriend popping up so soon is mildly discouraging but you couldn’t really expect such a stunning girl to be without male admirers.

‘You have to be so careful these days.’

I hoped it didn’t sound like an implied criticism of her choice of boyfriends or this particular one who’d put her on the train unaccompanied to travel home to…

‘Where do you get off normally?’

Before she answered she looked at me with a slight frown. ‘Wimbledon,’ she said.

Perhaps she saw me as a potential stalker, more menacing than the characters she’d just escaped. I thought of backing off and knew Avery was trying to influence both of us.

You can guess what I really wanted to do.

Though there weren’t many other places to take her at that time of the night when she’d already eaten.

I got as far as ‘would you like to…’ when she cut in with ‘I ought to be going. Thank you again for being so brave.’ She was on her feet, tucking her seat under the table. ‘You really shouldn’t take them on you know, it could backfire. Not that I’m not grateful.’

We didn’t even exchange names. I half thought she might want my name and address so she could write to me to express her gratitude properly.

As she left me to disappear underground again I heard her speak into her mobile, calling the boyfriend and I felt quite bereft.

*

You see what a hypocrite Avery is. He’ll end up in bed with one of those scrawny women back in his hotel after the dinner; both well pissed. They’d have to be.

Yet he doesn’t allow me more than a few minutes chat with the woman I’ve rescued. My Lois Lane. My Gwen Stacy. Worse than that he plants the idea I might be some sort of pervert.

Looked at from any angle he seems clueless. If he wants commercial success he should write about real heroes. O.K. he wins literary prizes but he could be writing best selling blockbusters and really coining it, he could have the whole life style, yacht in the South of France, private aircraft, blonde on each arm, the whole caboodle.

He’s more concerned about writing books with a message.

‘Perhaps our most incisive commentator and interpreter of the contemporary scene,’ said the man who gave the eulogy. ‘Elevates crime fiction to dizzy heights.’

This novel he’s hatching now (working title Lucifer’s Lance) features his university professor turned detective, Laurence Benson. I’m the prof’s younger brother, fairly nondescript so far at least. The sort of passive guy to whom things happen (I’m trying to express myself grammatically) rather than someone who makes things happen. I’m determined to carve out a better part for myself, influence his thoughts. ‘Characters can take flight,’ he says. Just you watch me.

*

It’s windy at the coast but the sky’s bright. Bright enough to provide a foretaste of summer. It’s possible to imagine the deck chairs out on the beach again, the surfers returning, day-trippers strolling along with ice cream cones; but the wind’s still keen.

Laurence and I take one of the many meandering paths to the cliff edge. The wind ruffles the tufts of grass with a sound between a whistle and a moan.

White horses top the waves.

Standing there on the cliff top with the wind whipping his clothes, Laurence struggles to understand why he feels such inner despair even as the world outside his consciousness tugs at his sleeve and bids him lift his head and look at the sharp freshness of the vista. He’s overwhelmed with a sense of the futility of all he’d achieved as autocratic ruler of his little fiefdom at the university. Never to be contradicted when it comes to the big decisions. Making sure everyone understands there’s a man of steel under the urbane exterior. Sharp-eyed captain navigating a careful course ahead.

And his amateur sleuthing seemed as pointless and ridiculous as the rest. He knows he won’t solve this last case.

I’ve worked hard to get him into this state of mind.

I’m not taking any chances though.

I give him a little nudge when we’re standing shoulder to shoulder. Just a little push in the right direction, enough to knock him off balance.

An onlooker with binoculars who later speaks to the police sees him plummet towards the rocks, not like the lightness of the wheeling gulls; heavy, ungainly with flaying arms and legs, travelling at great velocity.

I grab at the air as if trying to claw him back.

I wonder what it’s like moments before you smash onto the rocks. Does your whole life really flash before your eyes?

At first most people, readers and critics, suppose Avery was motivated to kill off Benson for the same reason that Conan Doyle arranged the death of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls.

Yet people come to feel Benson’s death was so inappropriate, so ignominious, not the kind of dramatic ending Conan Doyle engineered for Holmes locked in mortal combat with his arch enemy in the Swiss Alps. However unpopular it was with his readers to kill off Holmes, it was a location and a death fit for a hero.

There’s no clamour to bring Benson back like there was with the Great Detective and Avery doesn’t try a prequel.

In fact Lucifer’s Lance is his last novel and it’s not well reviewed.