Sons and Daughters Read Free

‘and since your feelings and inclinations are sympathetic, a decision was made to take advantage of your – ah – sexual urges. Surely your times with my wife were preferable to your times with women you picked up in Soho, yes?’
    ‘My infatuation with your scheming wife is costing me far more than all the women of Soho.’
    ‘Your pride, you mean?’ Kloytski’s smile did not reach his eyes. It rarely did. ‘Or your integrity? Oh, you’ll adjust, I’m sure, and as soon as you have any information for us, let me know through the agreed channels. Then either my wife or I will arrange to collect it.’
    ‘Damn you for your blackmail.’
    ‘Sometimes it happens,’ said Kloytski. ‘As this is a beginning for you, I’ll give you a month to make your first delivery. We can now part as friends and comrades?’
    ‘That’s a bad joke.’
    ‘Perhaps it is at the moment,’ said Kloytski. ‘Ah, yes, and by the way, remember you will be known to us only as Victor.’
    ‘So you said ten minutes ago, an even worse joke,’ remarked ‘Victor’ acidly. ‘Idiot would have been a more suitable code name.’ He departed in an angry but resigned mood. What he was about to become was not altogether against his politicalconvictions, but he felt furious and humiliated at the way his recruitment had been contrived. His weakness for women willing to perform unconventionally had been his undoing.
    Approaching the corner of Wansey Street, he saw a woman turning in from Walworth Road. She was carrying a shopping bag. They glanced at each other and stopped. Victor bit his lip, and a slight flush tinted his cheeks.
    ‘Ah, hello, good morning,’ said Mrs Kloytski.
    ‘Allow me to inform you you’re a reincarnation of Jezebel,’ said Victor.
    ‘But everything is now arranged?’ smiled Mrs Kloytski. ‘We are now all in the same ship?’
    ‘Boat,’ said Victor curtly. He eyed her fulsome figure as a man who had come to know it intimately. ‘If I had my way I’d throw you overboard.’
    ‘Tck, tck,’ chided Mrs Kloytski, ‘after such happy times together?’
    ‘With a hidden camera keeping us company?’ said Victor in disgust. ‘Goodbye, madam.’
    ‘Goodbye,’ responded Mrs Kloytski. ‘Victor,’ she added, with another smile, and they went their separate ways. Mrs Cassie Brown, coming out of her house with her son Lewis and her daughter Maureen, received Mrs Kloytski’s next smile. It was of the kind disillusioned Victor would have called glutinous. Certainly, it parted Mrs Kloytski’s full lips wide and revealed shining white teeth. It could make susceptible men think of sweet sugar. ‘Ah, hello, Cassie, hello, childer.’ She meant children.
    ‘Hello, Mrs Kloyst,’ said eleven-year-old Maureen,known as Muffin. Kloyst was as much as her young tongue could manage.
    ‘Nice to see you,’ said Cassie, as exuberant at thirty-four as she had always been. Life was still well worth living to Cassie. If gloom happened to be lurking about, she vanquished it. She sometimes thought about vanquishing this Polish woman. Mrs Kloytski was inclined to get too close to Freddy, much as if she had illegal designs on his person. Not to Cassie’s liking, that, no, not a bit. Freddy’s person was personal to her alone. He’d served with distinction in the hellhole of Burma, making sergeant and turning himself into the kind of man who, at thirty-four, could catch the eye of busty blondes like Mrs Kloytski. At the moment he was at his work. Saturdays were full days for him.
    ‘Your little ones are so sweet,’ said the fulsome lady. ‘And Freddy, how is Freddy?’
    ‘Safe at work,’ said Cassie.
    ‘Safe?’
    ‘Oh, from – from –’ Cassie thought of a phrase she’d come across in a novel of dark doings. ‘From the forces of evil.’
    ‘The forces of evil?’ Mrs Kloytski looked astonished. ‘They are here, in our community?’
    Cassie went all melodramatic. She looked around, here and there, and whispered, ‘Pssst,