' I don't give a damn about dignity. I don't give a damn if the whole British cabinet has to crawl on its bended knees to that plane. I don't give a damn whether Mr Webster is the hero of the hour. I want those passengers out, and I want them out safely. When we've done that then we may be able to talk of dignity/
The Home Secretary came awkwardly to his feet, turned square to the policeman. ' I'm in your way, and you have work to do. I will be below if you need me.' He stopped, as if uncertain as to the wisdom of his gesture, then said quietly and without hurry. 'I apologize for wasting your time, gentlemen. It's an alien world to me, and not one that I relish, nor have any great understanding of. If you think there is need of my presence please do not hesitate to call for me.'
' I really don't think, Minister., „' the aides were round him, sidling forward, concerned.
'Minister, there is no need..
It would not be wise…'
He smiled to them all and made his way to the door, walked through, and closed it afterwards with care-that it should not bang.
'Dignity, my Christ,' muttered the policeman savagely. 'What does he think we're at, winning a bloody election?'
He crossed the room for support and found it lacking, faces averted, studying the monitors, drawing from the coffee urn, unparcelling the food. Made a mistake, hadn't he? But what did they want? Easy answers, everything's rosy, pound's doing well, balance of payments sensational, exports record- breaking? Did they want that? Or the truth? That we're in a new situation, and it's four minutes to bloody ten o'clock?
And they'd remember that, the smart little arse-lickers who burrowed in the files and said who was right for promotion to Chief Constable. They'd remember that and have a little titter behind their hands before they went out to lunch, and a damn good meal they'd have before coming back to pencil out his name.
Luigi Franconi had long been a dreamer.
Back at Party Headquarters, the drab poster-daubed redbrick block behind the Piazza Venezia where he occupied a third-floor room, the secretaries and his colleagues had become used to seeing his concentration drift away from their expositions and briefings. It was almost a joke to those that knew him well, the way he was present and then absent, merely moving his head in agreement or dissent whichever way the argument led. When he was corrected, exposed with much laughing, and irritation from those who were not his friends, then he would assume pained apology and shake himself and indicate that surely it was time for lunch in the trattoria that graced the small square close by. In truth Franconi was a private person, seldom willing to share his day-dreams and not convinced that the words of others conveyed any great importance. He worked from paper, from pile upon pile of mounting typed and printed paper. Only when confronted with the written word or figure did he produce evidence of the ability of which his superiors in the Party were convinced. They realized the value of this man, not a person to be influenced by suavity or glibness or fluency. The word and statistic had to sustain on its own, without extraneous support. They laughed about him in the office, but only to his face, never behind his back, and told him he must have the blood of the Germans in his veins, because no Italian could put such reliance on silence. Franconi would smile with them, and try to please, and think them fools, and relish their comradeship till the moment came to slip away.
No papers to read now. He had not brought a book with him, not a Garzanti classic, not even a pamphlet draft that needed tidying, nor a notebook in which to jot his more casual impressions of the Soviet Union for the report Which they would be awaiting back in Rome. Nothing in the pouch in front of him except a sick-bag and a folder that described the Ilyushin safety procedures, and which was not written in any language that he understood.
The choosing of the headmaster had made little impression on him, a brief flurry of excitement and apprehension as the man had disappeared from the doorway in the moment before the firing of the machine-gun. He had not aped the other passengers who had first stared through the windows and then subsided in their seats seeking anonymity as the eyes of Isaac had swept them; the mood of the moment had been quickly lost on him. He had not offended, he was divorced from their struggle, they had no quarrel with him. Before he had been nervous – he would admit that to himself – when they had separated him from his friend, from Aldo.
The same fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar that he had known in the hills thirty-five years earlier, and it had passed now as it had then. He had barely glanced from the aircraft porthole to discover the headmaster's fate.
He phased away the exterior world with the dreams of his home. When this was all over, and it would not take much time – the youth and desperation of his captors told him that -when they climbed down the ladder that would be brought, he would by-pass the television crews and the journalists. There were enough in the delegation who would be queueing, indeed, jumping forward, to satisfy the needs of the RAI interviewers or whoever else wanted their opinions. He would stand alone at the side, with a half-grin on his face, and shrug his shoulders and be polite and shake his head. Just wait till his colleagues had said their fill. They'd send them home by Alitalia; right to travel on the national airline, and an Italian ought to, a gesture to salve an infinitesimal percentage from the annual deficit. Over-manning, the central problem, always had been… No better at Party Headquarters where they preached organization and control of the work force and distribution of labour, but still suffered the same malady as the capitalists.
Adriana, Maria, Christina, all in the typing pool, all with time for knitting and gossip; any one of them could look af ter the needs of the section, but how to sack one? – it didn't bear thinking of, the squabbling, the arguing, the challenge over the pension rights. He'd go home on Alitalia. The wife would be there to meet him. Arms round his neck, lipstick on his collar, mascara on his cheek, sobbing in his ear. He'd have to endure all that. They'd drive out from Fiumicino and take the Reccordo Annulare and he'd see the girls beside the bushes and pretend he wasn't looking, and his wife would be firmly coping with the traffic. Be able to drink them in, the girls. Mini skirts and unbuttoned blouses, thighs and breasts and invitations, and he'd be left to his privacy to ponder on it while nodding and agreeing with all that his wife said. Often the cars pulled up sharply, a warning flash of brake lights and a man would jump from the driving-seat and the girls were already hurrying for the sanctuary of the undergrowth. Luigi had always wondered what it would be like, just what was said before the removal of the sparse strips of necessary clothing.
When did you pay, before or after? And what would there be afterwards – a thanks, an acknowledgment, a wordless wave, or just a grin? He had spent an adult lifetime travelling the Reccordo, seen them, wanted them, lusted in his way after them, his foot near the brake pedal, and never dared. His wife would drive him home, park the car expansively in the road, and he'd comment on it and she'd dismiss the matter and lead him like an exhibit, a celebrity brought back from the fair, to their fourth-floor home where the gathering would be waiting. Kisses and hugs and back slaps now, a multitude of voices, a swill of chilled wine, a pasta bowl of welcome. All would ask him to relate his experiences, but in concert so that even should he want to speak none would be listening and all talking, chattering, demanding, crying. They'd be there for hours, filling his home, taking up his time, impressing their friendship when all he would seek would be the solace of his wife's arms. Drawn curtains and extinguished lights, the cosmetics to make her no different to the girls still plying their trade by the road kerb. Moving, performing, functioning, that would be his bedroom task on the night of his return; have full run of his domain that night: later would come the denials and the tiredness and the excuses. Not the first night, though.