My Little Armalite (7 page)

My course was rationally clear.

I was going to go the pub, come back, go out again, dig the garden again as if nothing had ever happened just to get some fresh earth on my hands and boots, then call the police as if I'd just found the gun.

Yes, my work time would be disturbed, but there was no helping that. What else could I do? I was a normal Englishman; I had found an Armalite; I would call the police. So long as there was no reason for them to be at all suspicious of my story, no complications about what I might or might not have said to Phil and why, they would have no reason to ever suspect me of anything, or check up on my past or …

Stoutly, I turned my back on the hole and marched back into the house to find clothes for the pub, suitable for watching England in

I opened my wardrobe and swiftly grabbed a pair at random from the monoculture pile of 34/30 Levis which were all I had bought in the way of jeans for the past twenty years. I struggled into them. Shit, come on. Must've shrunk in the bloody tumble dryer. I was not a 36 waist, I refused to be a 36 waist, I had always been a 34 waist and … aha! There. Fine, really.

I bounded down the stairs, got to the front door,
patting my pockets to make sure I had grabbed my keys and money.

But at the door I stopped dead.

Christ, I didn't even know what the hell
the England
match
was!

How could I walk into a south-London pub not knowing that? I raced back down the hall, diving into my little study area to check on the web. In my hurry to reach my laptop, I thwacked my head solidly on the side of the staircase.

—Ahh! For Christ's sake, stupid fucking ridiculous little bloody … ! I roared, and sank to my knees, blinded with the pain.

When I looked up, I found that I must have managed to hit a key before being felled. The Very Important Paper had leapt out of hibernation and was standing there once more on the screen before my eyes, bright and mocking.

For a vertiginous second, as my brain settled back from the thump, I was absolutely convinced that my work had somehow converted itself into a bizarre and completely illegible font. Then I found that I could indeed read the letters but that the words now refused to combine into any meaning. I stared at my work and felt panic rise.

I shook my head, like a dog shaking off water. I had more important things to do. Survival things. I had to make sure that no one down the pub would realise that I knew absolutely nothing whatever about soccer.

My lack of devotion to football had been, of course, nothing unusual among the youthful intelligentsia of my college days. It was in fact highly fashionable. In 1980, sport was for rugger-bugger Tories and their lumpen lackeys. Sexy post-punks and their radical ilk smoked rolling tobacco, drank Guinness, talked revolution.

At some point in the late eighties or early nineties, this all died. Soccer mushroomed even in the liberal pages of
The Paper
. I, though, took no more part in this sea change than I had in the Summer of Love. I was rarely even aware of who was leading the Premiership, and for my national team, I felt emotions which only a good German or a decent Yank can possibly understand: mere relief whenever the gang of repulsive thugs allegedly representing
us
got kicked out of whatever, thus ending the revolting hysteria.

Ah yes, here it was. Sports News on Virgin Media. The Big Match.

—Oh no, for God's sake, I groaned. It was the worst possible result. England were playing France tonight.

I loved France dearly. France was the main surviving alternative model to free-market neo-con American ultra-liberal imperialism. France was cultured. France resisted Coca-Colonialism (as I intended boldly to call it in the VIP). France had workers' rights and a concern for social traditions. And splendid wine and attractive cafés and bold strikers and people who drove tractors through the walls of McD's. France had not invaded Iraq. It was true that most of these could be said of
Germany as well, but, like most people who study Germany, I did not really like the place very much. I found it fascinating but entirely unloveable. France, on the other hand, was very highly loveable. It was European. It
was
Europe. Yes, there was the odd glitch in liking France, such as Greenpeace boats being bombed and nuclear tests being continued, despite worldwide pleas, on the orders of Machiavellian Presidents who called themselves socialists but had collaborated with the Nazis. And the fact that France's multi-ethnicity seemed confined to the football team. But these were aberrations. Without France, and hence without the EU, where would we be? A mere client state of America! Had I found myself in a friend's or colleague's house with England vs France on the telly in the background, I would have openly applauded every French goal, as in all likelihood would the friend or colleague. But I could hardly do it in the local bloody pub, sitting next to Phil.

In any case, what was I thinking of? I couldn't stay and watch the match anyway. I had to escape from the pub soon and get back home to sort out the bloody gun.

But how could I leave an England match halfway through without making Phil and all Phil's mates think I was a weirdo who merited a nutting and whose sons deserved a good kicking? There was only one way: I had to get someone to call me away from the pub on some urgent pretext.

Who?

Sarah would still be on the plane. I could hardly leave a message asking her to call me as soon as she landed. Telling her that I had found a machine gun in our garden might well worry her somewhat, possibly even ruin the holiday. If I tried to tell her any other
story she would know I was lying and suspect the worst. But I had to call someone, to get them to summon me from the pub.

There was only one person left.

As I waited for the phone to be answered, I drummed my fingers and looked absent-mindedly at the photo of the bearded man with his arm round my neck.

The man in the photo was, of course, Heiner Panke, the subject of my PhD thesis (‘Heiner Panke's Stories: The Strategic Self as Literary Resistance in the GDR', Frankfurt, 1989). We had become good friends and in 1991 Panke had sworn to me personally, in writing (I still had the letter), that I need have no fear of the revelations flooding out of the old East Germany.
My little doctor, I can swear to you here and now that no one will
ever
find my name on a list of Stasi agents, those scum who betrayed their friends for peanuts
. Armed with this scriptural promise, I had continued to make sure that Panke's books stayed on the reading lists (we academics may be appallingly underpaid these days, but we are still the gatekeepers of literary immortality, backlist sales and British Council grants). In 2003, files from the former Soviet Union revealed that Panke had indeed never been a wretched little Stasi agent who spied on his friends for peanuts. No, he had been a fully paid major in the KGB from 1977 to 1989, spying on everyone, including the Stasi itself.

A blow, of course, but fortunately no humanities lecturer has ever been kicked out just for being utterly wrong. After all, not a single university expert on East Germany in the summer of 1989 had predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall at any time in the foreseeable future.
No one lost their job over that little matter, did they? Certainly not. And things blow over. Those were confusing times, after all. We all made mistakes, back then …

—Hello?

—Oh, hi, Mum, it's only me. Look, just a quick one to ask a favour.

—Of course, dear. How are the children?

—What? Oh, fine. Away, actually, with Sarah and her parents.

—With Sarah's parents? They could have come to
us
.

—Oh, I didn't want to bother you.

—It wouldn't have been any bother, dear. I would have liked the visit. Still, you know best. Have you got them started on the piano yet?

—Well, no, actually, you see, Mum, the house is a bit small and …

—Oh, you can always make room for a piano! Are you coming down then?

—No. I mean, not just yet.

—You used to come down so much more often.

—Mmm. Mum, look, it's just, I've been sort of, well, nabbed into going out and I'm trying to work.

—How
is
your work, dear?

—Fine, fine. I'm giving a paper at the Oxford conference. A plenary paper, actually.

—Are you still writing about that man of yours who was really a spy?

—Yes, actually. Look, Mum, could you call my mobile in about half an hour? I need an excuse to escape from these people so I can sort out the bloody machine … the washing machine. Which is broken.

—You're not going to try to mend it yourself, are you, John dear?

—Mm? Oh, no, just, well, you know, Mum, just take a look.

—You've got better things to do with your time than that!

—Of course, Mum.

—So, how is
London
? Have you been to any interesting lectures and concerts?

—Oh, well, you know, it's early days, Mum, and with the kids and work, and …

Cha-chonk!

—John? My father's voice came in on the line from his shed. I licked my lips and swallowed. I could picture my father out there at the end of the garden. He had been out at work or out in the shed all my life, content to spend his days with no distinction other than having been the only conscript in his platoon of the Gloucestershire Regiment to have come back entirely whole from Korea.

—Aha, hi, Dad, there you are. So, how are you?

—Middling. Have you tried looking in Kentish Town?

—Dad, it's too late, we're here now. Anyway, I told you, yes, we looked everywhere in north London.

—You should have asked your mother and I to come up and help you.

—Your father and I
did
live in London for many years, you know, dear.

—Mum, Dad, I know, I can even remember bits of it. But look, it wouldn't have done any good. We paid the going rate and that's all there is to it.

—Oh, but those ruddy estate agents can pull the wool over anyone's eyes, John. Bloody vultures. The lot of them deserve to be shot. They'll skin you alive unless
you know the area
, you see! Have you looked in Finsbury Park? Or Archway?

—Dad, we looked everywhere. There isn't anywhere people didn't find years ago. We even looked in Hackney, for God's sake, even though Christ knows what we'd do about schools there.

—Well, I don't understand it. Your mother and I are only ordinary working people …

—… Workers of the brain, John, but workers!

—Yes, Mum.

—John, when you were born we almost bought a semi in Cricklewood. And we could have done it too, quite easily, you know. Have you looked in Cricklewood?

—Way out of our league, Dad.

—That was before we decided to move back to the West Country, for the air, dear, for your health. And your father's nerves, of course.

—Yes, Mum, I know all that.

—I suppose we were silly sods, looking back. I suppose we should have bought the bloody thing and kept it for ever. Bought in to capitalism.

—Mmmm, yeah, maybe, Dad.

—But you see, dear, we all thought that with the White Heat and everything, well, that was all going to change, wasn't it? It was going to be what you
did
that mattered, not what you
owned
.

—Yes, Mum, that would have been nice.

—John, look, I don't bloody well understand it. You're a
university lecturer
, for God's sake. Your grandmother in Cricklewood cleaned for several university lecturers and
they
all lived in St John's Wood and Hampstead. Or Swiss Cottage, at least. Have you tried Kilburn? It's full of Irish, of course, but it's not too far out, by tube. What did you say you were earning now, John? How much? Are you sure? Your cousin earns well over double that and he's only an accountant.
Christ, in my day accountants were just glorified bloody bookkeepers, that's all we thought of them and that's all they were paid …

—Dad, I'm fine, don't worry about me! We're very happy here. Look, Mum, Dad, I've got to go now. Will you call me in half an hour, Mum? We can have a proper chat then.

—That'll be nice. Don't worry about things, John dear.

—John, take my advice: if you just tighten your belts for a bit, you'll soon be able to pay off some of that bloody mortgage.

—Yes, Dad.

—Oh, and next time you come down, take the old A304. It's much shorter. You see, if you come off at …

Listening to my father's useless information, I suddenly realised that my utter ignorance of Wii games and the latest bands would soon become an inability to say anything meaningful to our sons about anything. I would be able to tell them about what had worked for me in the last quarter of the twentieth century, but that would be just as much history to them as my father's insights into how one got on in the world, or got from A to B, in the fifties and sixties.

—The A304. Right, Dad. Look, I've got to shoot. I mean, I've got to shoot off. Go back to work. Mum, call me later then?

—I will, dear. Don't worry, I'm sure something will come up.

—Oh yes, Mum, don't worry.

—Here, what about looking in West Hampstead, John? Or Queens Park?

—Bye-e!

I slotted the phone back into its wall-mounted recharger. It bleeped. I looked down at the toy-littered floor and wondered for a second where the hell I was.

Christ, what a time to find a bloody gun in the garden! Just when I was …

Stop!

Suddenly I knew exactly what to do.

Three minutes later I stepped back from treading down the earth in the refilled hole.

So simple! Sod the bloody police. This was my week of work to save my life. It was my last chance to make things right, to have my education pay off at last, restore justice to the world. The gun could wait there safely until I came back in triumph from Oxford.