Shadow of a Hero (6 page)

He had been waiting in the cold and looked frail but his voice came out strongly. Though he was a small man and his English was peculiar, the moment he spoke you forgot about that and he became the one who mattered, the centre of things. Mr Jaunis handed him an envelope and he turned and walked up the drive, with Mr Jaunis a pace or two behind his shoulder.

‘Who is this guy, then?’ said a man who’d come with the photographers. There was a woman with them too. They both had notepads and pencils.

‘He is our last democratic Prime Minister, Restaur Vax,’ said the woman who’d worried about Letta understanding the words of the song.

‘Spelling?’ said the reporter, and wrote it down. ‘How old, anyone know?’

‘Over eighty, I believe,’ said the woman.

‘Eighty-one,’ said Letta.

‘Sure, love?’ said the reporter patronizingly.

‘She’s his granddaughter,’ said Nigel. ‘And I’m his great-grandson.’

Letta could have kicked him. It wasn’t his fault not knowing about her pact with Grandad, but even so . . . Luckily, no-one took him up on it.

The woman started trying to tell the reporters about Grandad being named after the national hero, but they weren’t very interested, and at that point things started to happen at the Embassy door. There was a flight of steps up to the pillared porch, and Grandad had been standing patiently on the doormat while Mr Jaunis rang the bell. He’d tried short rings and nothing had happened, and he now had his finger steadily pressed on the bell-push. The door opened a crack. Grandad had the envelope held out and a hand came through the crack and snatched it from him. Whoever it was just tore the envelope in half, stuffed the pieces back through the crack and tried to close the door, not realizing that Mr Jaunis had turned his umbrella upside-down and hooked the handle round the bottom, so that it wouldn’t quite shut.

This was obviously against the rules, because the policeman made a disapproving face, said, ‘You just wait here, all of you,’ and started up the drive.

Whoever it was behind the door made several attempts to heave it shut before they realized what had happened. Then they flung it open and rushed out, two stocky, thuggish-looking men in grey suits. They simply barged Grandad and Mr Jaunis out of the way, rushed back in and slammed the door.

Mr Jaunis was knocked clean off his feet and sprawled across the doormat, and Grandad, staggering back, tripped over him, teetered for a moment, and was actually falling down the steps when the policeman caught him. At the same moment the whole group of Varinians went rushing up the drive and gathered, clamouring furiously, on the Embassy steps.

Letta was swept up in the rush but managed to push her way out and found Grandad sitting on the bottom step with Mollie and Nigel kneeling beside him and the policeman standing over them.

‘All right now, then?’ said the policeman.

‘I don’t think he’s hurt, just shaken,’ said Mollie. ‘Thank you very much, officer. If you hadn’t caught him . . . These bloody people! God!’

‘Better get him to hospital,’ said the policeman. ‘Now I’ve got to sort this little lot out.’

He turned and started trying to persuade the infuriated Varinians back into the road. Letta sat beside Grandad and put her arm round him. She was weeping. She couldn’t help it. If the policeman hadn’t caught him he’d have been badly hurt, with his thin old bones crashing down the stone steps.

‘You two keep an eye on him for the moment,’ said Mollie. ‘I’ll send for a taxi.’

She strode away. Two more policemen appeared from somewhere, but they didn’t know what had happened and seemed to think the Varinians were trying to storm the Embassy, out of bloody-mindedness.

‘Back in the road now,’ snapped one of them.

‘He’s hurt,’ said Letta. ‘They pushed him down the steps.’

‘Back in the road, will you?’ said the policeman, like a robot.

Letta was going to protest again when Grandad said, ‘We go now, officer. Help me up, darlings. Good. That’s it. I’m a little dizzy, I think. Now.’

Together, with their arms round his waist and his round their shoulders, Nigel and Letta steadied him across the gravel. In the gateway the photographers crouched and tensed, cameras busy. Mollie was beyond them, talking into the mobile
telephone
which she’d commandeered again. The woman reporter was waiting in front of her, notepad poised. Mollie switched the phone off and waved them over.

‘Taxi’s coming,’ she said. ‘How are you, Grandad?’

‘I’ll do, I’ll do. Thank you, my dear.’

‘Do you feel up to answering a few questions?’ said the reporter.

‘She’s from the
Independent
,’ Mollie explained. ‘Mr Vax was delivering a peaceful protest at the Romanian Embassy when a couple of thugs charged out and threw him down the steps. He might easily . . .’

It looked as if she was going to take the interview over, but Grandad held up a hand and stopped her. Letta thought she actually felt a surge of strength coming from somewhere inside the trembling body.

‘I am Restaur Vax,’ he said. ‘I am last democratically elected leader of the Varinian nation.’

‘He led the Resistance against the Germans,’ said Nigel, getting his oar in as usual. ‘Then the Communists put him in prison for thirty years.’

‘Details you will find in our press leaflet,’ said Grandad. ‘Important now is that my people who live in Romania are by the Ceau
ş
escu regime being savagely oppressed, turned from ancestral land and homes, massacred, when they protest. This they do here this morning is in small way typical of how they have contempt for civilized modes. On the British government and the British people we are calling to use all means in their power that they dissuade the dictator Ceau
ş
escu from continuing his aggression.’

The wave of energy died and left him trembling
worse
than before. If Letta and Nigel hadn’t been holding him he might have fallen. Letta was concentrating on him, and only vaguely aware of Mollie turning and beckoning, and then a taxi pulling up. They helped him in, and climbed in after him.

‘We’re taking you to hospital for a check-up,’ said Mollie.

‘No,’ murmured Grandad. ‘Wait, please.’

‘I really think . . .’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘We will wait, Mollie.’

She didn’t like it, but she did what he said. He leaned back on the seat and closed his eyes. The meter ticked. The robot policeman came over, wanting to move them on, but Mollie climbed out and persuaded him not to. It didn’t look that difficult. Letta guessed that somebody must have told him what had happened on the Embassy steps. The Varinians were allowing themselves to be shepherded out into the road and back behind the barriers. Mr Orestes was handing out leaflets to the reporters and anyone else who would take them.

When all the protesters were back in place, Grandad climbed out and, leaning on Letta’s shoulder, went down the line, shaking hands with them in turn. Some of them, men as well as women, began to cry. He was moving very feebly and trembling badly by the time she got him back to the taxi, but he still refused to go to hospital.

‘For hours they will make us wait,’ he said. ‘Much quicker that I go home.’

‘Well, you’re probably right there,’ said Mollie. ‘Can you spot your driver, Letta?’

‘I’ll get him.’

‘If he’s put the car into a multi-storey don’t
let
Grandad out of the taxi till he’s got it down and Grandad can get straight in. Sure you can manage? Here’s a tenner for the fare, and another for emergencies. And put him to bed as soon as you get in, and get the doctor round. No, I’ll call Momma at work and tell her to lay that on. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?’

As they drove away she heard the protesters starting to sing again, a folk-song, but one she didn’t know, not at all like ‘The Two Shepherds’, wild and fierce. They sang it as though they meant it.

LEGEND

The English Milord

FOR THE DEATH
of his son the Pasha of Potok put a price on the head of Restaur Vax, of a hundred and seventy pieces of gold, and seventy also on the head of Lash the Golden, but Lash laughed when they told him the news.

‘For these nine years,’ he said, ‘I have slept with a price on my head, and my dreams have been all the sweeter.’

Now Restaur Vax fell ill of a fever, so Lash carried him to a farm where he could lie concealed. A great storm blew down from the north, and an English Milord,
¹
travelling past that way, sent his guide to the door to ask for shelter. This guide was a Greek. The Milord brought with him two horses, a black and a bay, while the Greek rode a pony.

The farmer’s wife put food and wine before the Milord and he ate, and that done he settled to playing dice for pastime, left hand against right. Now above all else in life Lash loved three things, a hard fight, a fine woman, and the rattle of dice on the board. Moreover, he thought in his heart, ‘If we are to fight the Turks we must have horses.
There
are two here for the taking, with St Joseph’s aid.’
²

When he made his offer the Milord laughed.

‘My horses are worth more than a peach and an olive,’ he said. ‘What will you stake against them?’

Lash laid on the table the first of the Bishop’s rings, which Restaur Vax had given him. The Milord examined it and accepted it as a fair stake. So they played, and the Milord won, and won the second ring also in the same manner. Then Lash climbed to the loft where Restaur Vax lay in his fever and took from his wallet the four remaining rings, and staked them.

First he staked a ring of fine gold, set with blue lapis carved to the shape of a dolphin. That he lost.

Next he staked a ring of fine gold set with chrysoprase. That he lost.

Third he staked a ring of silver entwined with gold, of marvellous workmanship. That he lost also.

Last he staked a ring of fine gold set with a ruby and three diamonds.

‘This is worth more than a single horse,’ he said.

‘Then I will stake my guide’s pony also,’ said the Milord.

But Lash desired both the Milord’s horses, so he said, ‘The pony is no more than a skeleton with a mangy hide.’

‘Not so,’ said the Milord. ‘She is a sturdy mare, not six years old. Come to the barn and see.’

They took the lantern and went out to the barn, where the horses were stabled, and there they found that the pony was gone, and its saddle and harness too. The Milord called for his guide, but the Greek did not answer.

Lash said, ‘This man saw me and knew who I am, for I am Lash the Golden and there is a price on my head. He has taken the pony and ridden to Varni, where there are Turkish
bazouks
. I must take my companion and go, for there is a price on his head also. But first, since the stakes are set, let us throw the dice one more time. Then with St Joseph’s aid we will have horses to ride, for my companion is sick and cannot walk, and without horses I must carry him on my back.’

The Milord agreed and they rolled the dice on the floor of the barn, and once again Lash lost.

But as he stood up and prepared to go the Milord said, ‘Wait. I do not love the Turks, and you have played honourably with me, neither cursing your luck nor accusing me of cheating, as most men would have done after such a run on the dice. Moreover you need at least one horse to carry your companion. I will stake either one against a single hair of your beard.’

So the stakes were agreed and they rolled the dice for the last time, and now Lash won.

‘Now choose,’ said the Milord. ‘The black is the better bred and the better looking, but he was bred in the plains. The bay was bred among mountains, and has the heart of a lion.’

‘Then I will take the bay,’ said Lash.

He fetched Restaur Vax down from the loft and wrapped him well against the storm and put him on the bay horse and took him by goat-paths and the paths of the hunter to a cave that he knew of on Mount Athur. But first he bound the Milord and the farmer and his wife with cords, so that they could tell the Turks that they had been forced into all they did.

When Restaur Vax woke in the cave on Mount Athur the fever was gone and he knew himself.

‘What horse is that?’ he said.

‘He is yours,’ said Lash the Golden. ‘I paid a Milord for him, with the four rings which the Bishop gave you for that purpose. He was bred among mountains and has the heart of a lion.’

¹
In one version of this legend the Milord is identified as Milord Byron. Byron, though sympathetic to the Varinian cause (cf letter to Hobhouse 19 Feb 1822), did not in fact at any time visit Varina.

²
St Joseph is the patron saint of Varina. His bones and a chisel said to be his are kept as sacred relics in the cathedral at Potok. The story is that Our Lord was in the workshop one day when Joseph swore at a knot in the timber on which he was working. At that, his chisel leaped in his hand and cut him to the bone. Then Our Lord, having rebuked his father for his intemperance, touched the wound and healed it, and then touched the timber and made the grain straight. Hence the Varinian belief that to swear by St Joseph is not accounted blasphemous.

WINTER 1989

GRANDAD STAYED IN
bed for two days. Momma tried to unplug his telephone, but he wouldn’t let her.

‘I must speak my own words,’ he said, ‘or people will put words that were never mine into my mouth.’

There were photographs of the vigil in some of the papers, two of Grandad almost falling down the steps and one of him being helped away by Nigel and Letta, and two of the singing. The
Independent
had a six-inch news report as well, and next day the
Guardian
actually mentioned Varina in a leader about the Balkans, saying it was one of the problems to which there weren’t any right answers, but that didn’t excuse the filthy way the Romanians were behaving. Some of the kids at school brought copies of the photographs along, which meant that people who didn’t have any special reason to be interested in Varina must have noticed.