The Storytellers Read Free

repeated.
    â€œYes, Mr Mudd, I have been expecting your call. Shall we meet?”
    â€œCertainly. I could meet you tomorrow.”
    â€œExcellent. The bridge in St James’s Park, say at ten. You know it?”
    Harvey had to think for a moment. St James’s was the park closest to government. At one end Buckingham Palace, at the other, Horse Guards, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Treasury and Cabinet Office. Now bridge, bridge – yes there was a bridge, across the lake.
    â€œI believe so, yes.”
    â€œGood. Tomorrow then.”
    The line went dead.
    â€œI’m going out for a quick walk before turning in,” he called out to his mother from the hall.
    â€œVery well, dear,” she called back. “Wrap up warm.”
    He put on his thick overcoat and wound a scarf tightly round hisneck. Outside, light snow flurries swirled past the pavement lights. Occasional Christmas decorations in windows gave the streets a festive air, incongruous against the mountains of bagged rubbish that were piling up in every corner because the refuse collectors were on strike for higher wages. At least the cold suppressed the smell of rotting waste. But he loved his city, in spite of it all. What things it had witnessed since being founded on the banks of the River Thames two thousand years ago by the Romans. Wars, plagues, fire, but somehow it had gone on growing, a testament to what people, pursuing their own interests, can achieve. Its population had fallen back since the world war, but was still over 6 million with more than 300 different languages spoken.
    He had been born just after the great deflagration and so was spared being sent off into the countryside to live with strangers, a well-intentioned policy, invented by bureaucrats to save the city’s children from German bombs. The heartache caused was invisible and so the policy was never questioned until many years later. At the same time, in Germany, bureaucrats were sending Jewish families by the thousand, and eventually by the million, to death camps where work would set them free. There was something about the ‘state’ that frightened him. Its capacity for cold-blooded efficiency, in simple things – like sending millions of men from this war-front to that, or millions of families from their homes to somewhere else, all at the stroke of a pen, – was surely diabolical.
    Perhaps there were worse things than the near anarchy gripping Britain now, although it was hard to think so. When the Conservatives had briefly been returned to office, Edward Heath, the new Prime Minister, had attempted to curb union power. But the miners took him on with strikes in 1972 and 74, forcing the government to introduce a three-day working week to conserve fuel. He called an election to bolster his position, but the result was inconclusive and the long-standing Labour leader, Harold Wilson, was eventuallyreturned to power. Now Wilson, too, had gone, leaving Callaghan the poisoned chalice.
    As he turned into Haberdasher Street, he came upon three youths huddled outside the off licence, which had just closed, handing what looked like a bottle from one to the other. A large black woman, with late-night shopping bags, walked past from the other direction and cussed them.
    â€œWhat’s your problem, sister?” one of the boys taunted, which seemed mild, but Harvey hurried on quickly, avoiding eye contact. His was a mixed area and none the worse for that. As he walked, he turned over in his mind what the mysterious Peter Betsworth, if that was his real name, might have to say. There was certainly a growing mood in the country that things had to change.
    When he came back into the front room his mother was asleep. The television flickered away and he turned the volume down. She would wake soon and take herself off to bed. With her head tilted forward and her face reflecting the ebb and flow of the pale light from the screen, he found himself