CharlesKimberley Bittersweet (named for the diamonds discovered in the Orange FreeState) had lied about his age to join the Loamshires. Despite the need to getmen to the front he had fallen in with two others and learned how to firstbribe, then blackmail the Battalion Clerk so that time and again when theincreasingly foreshortened training cadres shipped out he and his mates were oncourses, or once victims of camel fever. When the Clerk had been discoveredfiddling the rum the nose of an especially unlikely provost called Cromwell hadled to Charlie being just in time and overly qualified for the British ExpeditionaryForce sent to Russia. So it was he had been made, wriggling and chancingeveryone’s hand but his own, as a signaller in Arkhangelsk sent to do what the-thenSecretary of State for War Winston Churchill had described as ‘striking at thebirth of Bolshevism’. He could still remember the anger of bloody Major Bulldogwhen the field telephone failing to work and he, courses never actuallyattended but listed as passing nonetheless, had been able to do nothing aboutit.
So it was that Corporal Bittersweethad found himself in the mess about Koikori, a scrap so bad that the officersdead the company had refused to fight. Later the details had come out and anact of Parliament saw the sentences commuted to hard labour, and that not longenough to matter. In Archangel the stores and weapons sent by the yanks hadpiled up in the harbour and that had been Charlie’s war.
He had done better in the secondbloody-arse. Crime in the Blitz was still not talked about even today. And todayCharlie Bittersweet read the Daily Express in a deck-chair out the front of hisarches. He had knotted his kerchief to protect his head from the sun but hestill wore a muffler over his string vest because more than fifty years after Koikoriand Archangel it was still never warm enough.
Later and his boy would come round.Already and Charlie’s little helpers, his stepsons as they were still known,had knocked off. They started early because Charlie started early. Nothing wasworth doing in the markets by the time it was light. But if Charlie was a nighthawk then here he sat with eyes closed to soak up the sun where by lateafternoon it cut for one happy hour between the train-tracks above and theyards on the arches other side. Charlie was a man that found things, and if acustomer had not strictly speaking lost what he wanted himself, then that couldbe arranged too. In a bucket two bottles of Burton pale ale kept warm nicely.You would have had to have a gun on Charlie to make him drink anything cold,and then you had better be bloody willing to use it.
“I hear you’re the very man,” said apair of brogues.
“That’d be my cock then,” saidCharlie without opening his eyes above the shoes.
Mr Brogues laughed. It was high,affected, something from the radio.
The hour was wasting. “Fuck off,” said Charlie.
Mr Brogues did not. “I was ratherwanting a little information. Henry mentioned your name?”
“Henry Cooper? Hooray Henry? King bloodyHenry the VIII?”
“Henry Lord Rockingham.”
“Don’t know him. You’d be surprisedhow few peers of the realm come by Oil Drum Lane.”
Brogues said nothing at first, thenafter what might have seemed a suitable pause suggested, “It will be worth yourwhile?”
Charlie doubted that very much. Hedidn’t need money. He had tins full of it. Less now since his boy had put somuch of it in the bank, the smarty-pants. Besides which Charlie had his bus-pass and forCharlie trains, the underground, taxis, even once a passing Austin Cambridge workedwith it, much to the startled disbelief of the padre that had been driving. ButCharlie wanted Brogues gone so he looked up to see an unshaven slob in freshlylaundered clothes. It was like one of those flip-books, he thought. One whereyou turned the pages to put heads, middles and bottoms together. Someone neededto turn to the next page. “What does old Charlie call you then, squire?”
“Ludovic.”
“And what does Ludovic want to know?”
“Ludovic wants to know where to findMme Roux.”
“Right,” said Charlie. “Whenexactly?” he laughed. The plate on his working-teeth worked lose and he sworeas he mangled putting it back. “Hang about,” he showed Ludovic the shockingstate of his dentures. Holding up a hand in apology he rose, stretched andscratched his bum before vanishing into the dark hole of the nearest railwayarch. He returned with a double-barrelled Purdey. “You remember,” he said, “whenI told you to fuck off?”
“Now-now...”
“Is the turn of phrase confusing you?”
“Now look, as it happens it won’t doyou any good.”
Charlie thumbed back both hammers. “It’sa nice day, and you’re spoiling it. Let’s just say for the sake of argument itwon’t do any good. But it’ll knock you through the fence. And when my boy comesround he’ll find you hanging from the arch by your feet. And there are ways.”
“I believe you would call me a ‘dago-type’?”said Ludovic.
“That’s nice. We’ll just lock you upthen. And you won’t die but you’ll get fucking thirsty until at last they knockdown the house whose bowels we’ll brick you up in.”
Ludovic frowned, then nodded. “I’llbe fucking off then.”
“Good boy.”
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