Black Butterfly Read Free Page A

dismissed.
    I went through into the outer office, a smaller, darker, cooler version of Playfair’s. Miss Beveridge looked up from her desk and smiled.
    Ah, Miss Beveridge.
    Charming girl. Carrying out her sherpa-like duties for the Service without a word of complaint. Padding up and down the olive-green corridors with buff files under both arms. Scribbling memos, delivering dockets. For a short while, she’d been seconded to the Royal Academy and that’s when yours truly, never content to doze off into a copy of Art and Artists when there’s something delicious about, had noticed other things about Miss Beveridge. I’d observed her long, lovely neck, for instance, startlingly brown against the crisp white ofher lace collar; the way her eyes disappeared into crinkled half-moons when she smiled; her infectious and frankly dirty Lancastrian chuckle. In addition, having studied dusty files of my adventures in her youth, she was a dedicated fan. Perhaps, over a Madeira or four, I could immerse myself in a very different Beveridge Report…
    ‘The young lad’s here, sir,’ she said brightly.
    I had lost myself in dreaming again. ‘Is he? Right. Thank you, Beveridge.’
    ‘Smashing to see you again, Mr Box.’
    ‘And you, my dear.’
    As she began shuffling papers, I gazed at her. Slender, exquisitely coiffured and perfect. I was fooling myself. What the deuce would someone like her see in old Lucifer Box? An indulgent smile was all I would ever get.
    But as I moved to the door, she looked up again.
    ‘Sir? I just wanted to say good luck, sir. And…well, it won’t be the same without you.’
    ‘Thanks.’ I felt suddenly emboldened. Perhaps the party wasn’t over just yet. ‘Um…I was wondering…I have an appointment tomorrow. Rather a depressing matter, I’m afraid. Funeral. Old friend.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’
    ‘Well, I was wondering whether you’d be available to accompany me? Hate to go to these things alone. Then, perhaps, a spot of lunch? And I can regale you with tales of some of my more sensational past glories.’
    To my delight, the girl’s face lit up. ‘Oh, that’d be grand, Mr Box!’
    ‘Splendid.’
    ‘I can drive us there, if you like,’ she enthused. ‘I’ve nowt flash, mind, in the car department.’
    ‘That’s perfectly all right. It’s Number Nine, Downing Street.’
    ‘Yes, I know that bit,’ she chuckled.
    ‘Shall we say eleven o’clock?’
    Miss Beveridge nodded enthusiastically and, with as much insouciance as I could muster, I left the office and made my way down the peeling stairwell, grinning like a youngster and positively dancing on air.
    Awaiting me at the entrance was a little boy. He was sitting on a bench, legs sticking out before him like two white poles in neat grey socks. A beret covered most of the thick blue-black coils of his hair. He looked up as I approached but didn’t smile.
    ‘Good afternoon, Christmas,’ I sighed.
    ‘Hello, Daddy,’ he said.

.2.
SCOUTING FOR BOYS
    T he Scouting Association has never held much appeal for me. I’ve no truck with paramilitary organisations. Way back in the mists, mind you, when the old Queen was happy and fairly glorious, I did have some slight acquaintance with Baden-Powell. Though quite why the defender of Mafeking devoted his declining years to all those athletic young lads– well –you have to wonder.
    However, my son Christmas had taken to Scouting with almost indecent fervour, and was forever knotting Sheepshanks, sparking up campfires and shinning up those ropes with waxy ends you find dangling in chilly school gymnasia. He’d done so well, indeed, that he was to participate in some sort of International Camp and it was my duty, on that sultry afternoon, to set him on his way.
    I didn’t have the heart to tell him some of the things I’d done for International Camp but then fathers and sons shouldn’t have those sorts of conversations, should they?
    I’m getting ahead of myself,