The Twentieth Week
Monday 16 — Sunday 22 July 1984
Neil Fontaine stands outside the door to the Jew’s suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s. He listens to the Jew whimper and whine in his dreams. He listens to him weep and wail. Neil Fontaine stands outside the Jew’s suite on the fourth floor of Claridge’s and wonders where the angels are tonight. Those better angels, their wings tonight –
The lights out. The shadows long –
The scars across his back.
Neil Fontaine stands outside the Jew’s suite. Neil Fontaine listens to the summer –
Inside.
‘— at the time of the Falklands conflict, we had to fight the enemy without —’
Malcolm Morris had found Clive Cook first —
He was sitting in the road outside the telephone box in Hoyland.
Clive was a mess. His shirt open. His buttons gone —
He was pissed. Frightened.
‘I’m fucked,’ Clive had kept saying. ‘I’m fucked! Fucked! Fucked! Fucked!’
Malcolm got Cole to take Clive’s car. Malcolm stuck Clive in the back of his. Gave him a lager —
To keep him pissed.
Malcolm drove him down through Mexborough and Doncaster to Finningley —
Eyes in the rearview mirror, ears bleeding.
Malcolm took Clive into the barracks —
Light inside, dark outside. It was night now, and that was good —
Things changed in the night. Things always looked different in the morning.
Clive woke in the room with the mirror. In a change of clothes.
He said, ‘I want to go home now. I want to go backhome.’
‘OK,’ said Malcolm. ‘I’ll get the car.’
But before Malcolm reached the door Clive had remembered —
Clive said, ‘No, wait. I don’t —’
‘What?’ said Malcolm.
Clive looked at him. Clive said, ‘I don’t want to go home any more. I’m fucked.’
‘Relax,’ Malcolm told him. ‘She’ll be here any minute. Then everything will be all right.’
Clive nodded. Malcolm nodded, too. Clive smiled. Malcolm smiled back —
Clive said, ‘That’s good. That’s very good. Diane will make things better.’
‘— but the enemy within, much more difficult to fight, is just as dangerous to liberty —’
Neil Fontaine picks up the Jew in the small hours. The Chairman and the Great Financier carry the Jew down the stairs from the flat in Eaton Square and out to the Mercedes. They have been drinking jeroboams again. The Jew demands that Neil pin black cloths over the inside of the windows in the back of the car. He demands that Neil play the elegy from Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C for String Orchestra, Op.48.He demands that –
Neil Fontaine does ninety up the M1 with the Jew asleep on the backseat –
Neil Fontaine likes to drive North through the night. To hurtle into the new dawn. To meet the light head on –
The Jew wakes in the black of the back. He is disorientated and has a hangover. He taps on the partition. Neil Fontaine lowers the glass.
The Jew says, ‘Where on earth are you taking me, Neil?’
‘Oxton, sir.’
The Jew struggles to remember why on earth Neil would be taking him to Oxton.
‘Grey Fox, sir.’
The Jew slumps back in his seat. The Jew sighs. The Jew says, ‘Quite.’
Neil Fontaine turns off the Tchaikovsky.
The Jew sits forward again. The Jew says, ‘Can we stop somewhere, Neil?’
Neil Fontaine exits the M1 at the next services –
Leicester Forest East.
Neil Fontaine parks the Mercedes among the lorries and the coaches.
‘Please tell me you’ve brought my flying-jacket, Neil,’ says the Jew.
Neil Fontaine nods. He says, ‘Along with a complete change of clothes, sir.’