Players at the Game of People Read Free Page B

buses were too precious to miss, these days. It was the

right excuse. He went away.

Returning home, he landed his Fouga Magistère -- his current favorite

of the available two-seater jet aircraft -- at Stag Lane aerodrome and

drove into central London in his Lamiborghini Urraco. There was a reggae

program playing on Capital Radio which served to distract him during

the occasional traffic snarl-ups, but as ever he made excellent time;

even the cowboys seemed reluctant to dice with a machine wearing that

much horsepower. He dropped it off for a tuneup, wash, and polish at

the usual garage and completed his journey on foot, raising the collar

of his coat against a gray drizzle, carefully shielding his medal and

the newspaper cutting which authenticated it.

So far nobody, he noted as he turned the corner of his home street,

had turned up to collect the Jaguar Mark X which had been pushed into

the curb when it ran out of petrol . . . how long ago? Long enough

for piles of rubbish -- ice-lolly wrappers, fish-and-chip paper, empty

soft-drink cans -- to have accumulated against its wheels. Its windscreen

wipers and wing mirrors had been pilfered and kids had tried to start a

spectacular fire by setting a match to cardboard piled under its tank,

but by then it had been too dry to yield the hoped-for pyrotechnics;

they had only managed to blister some of the paint.

Shame about that.

The rain was penetrating and the wind was chilly. As soon as he reached

the upper floor of the house where he rented a room, he realized that

what he needed was some bright warm sunshine. Carefully closing the

door behind him -- not that, in fact, even the old woman who owned

the house and was overfond of gin and could be heard, until he shut

the door, laughing her silly head off at some nondescript television

comedy show, could have interrupted him without invitation . . . because

that was one of the conditions -- he peeled off his Dunn's tweed hat

and his Gannex raincoat (as patronized by a recent prime minister),

and then his sweater and jeans and boots and socks and helped himself

to a generous measure of José Cuervo tequila, complete with salt and

lemon, en route to a refreshing shower. When he came out, sweating

just enough not to want to don clothing again for the moment, he felt

hungry. He lay down in sunshine, but with his head in shade, and ate a

slice or two of smoked salmon with crisp fresh salad, washed down with

a foaming mug of pilsner. Satisfied, he lit an El Rey del Mundo petit

corona and debated where in his souvenir cabinet to put the George Medal

and the accompanying scrap of newspaper dated 20th September 1940, two

columns under a common headline saying LOCAL HEROES HONOURED AT PALACE;

the left column gave a description of the award ceremony and a list of

names, while the right one contained four passport-style photographs,

the second of which was captioned Sqn. Ldr. G. Harpinshield, G.M. It

was an excellent likeness. The photographer had gone to much trouble to

capture the contrast between his pale, chiseled features and his dark

eyes and hair.

Eventually he concluded the medal would look best next to the Schneider

Cup and hung it there, intending to pin the cutting alongside.

Curiously enough, however, he found himself unable to rid his mind,

every time he looked at it, of the memory of that scrawny little blond

girl who had kissed him with a skill beyond her years. Indeed, the erotic

associations were so fierce, he found his hand straying toward his crotch.

Before he reached a decision, however, concerning either where to put the

press cutting or whether to masturbate, he was startled by a yawn. And

also a little dismayed. It was not ordinary to be overcome in this fashion

quite so soon after one of his rewards.

Still, there was no point in trying to resist -- or he assumed there wasn't;

he had never made the attempt, and most likely never would. A little leeway

was always