(Year 2054)

Post hydrogen bomb

The senior warder looked pleased when she saw the old woman had died. She took two gold coins, both with an engraving of Malone's face on them and spun them in the air in a gesture of triumph. She slapped them onto the old woman's eyes. In the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, it was natural to cling to ancient traditions, even if it was less natural to show reverence towards someone who had just died.

"This is my lucky day," said the senior warder, "I'm off to spill the old woman's deadly, repulsive secret, the secret no-one knows yet. It will make the Profumo Affair like an old pensioners' picnic. Ha! Ha! The scandal's so utterly ghastly, even the biggest ghoul in the country will faint!"

"I remember you saying something about that. You're going to sell the information Murphy's sister had about the old woman, aren't you?"

"That's right. I've got the filthy evidence on tape, ha! ha!"

"What did Murphy's sister know?"

"You'll have to read it in the News of the World," said the older warder.

"What's the News of the World?"

"Don't you know what the News of the World is? Christ, you're ignorant! It's the newspaper run by leering degenerates and read by filthy old men in black rubber mackintoshes. Once they buy my story, they'll be rich enough to issue all its readers with radiation-resistant black macks, free of charge."

"I never understand when you talk about that sort of thing."

"Don't worry. A paper like that will give you a bloody revolting ride for your money," replied the other.

"I was called a coward in the days of old," the elderly woman said, "and the brand of cowardice is a cancer of the soul."

"I found glory by helping to bring about the attainment of power by one far more glorious than I and one far wiser than I. But I killed once, long before I found glory, when a funny law existed and the taking of another person's life was called `murder'. A hundred and one summers have passed me by and I have only to wait for the Reaper to call for his pound of flesh. But I am not afraid because he shall know how I found glory in the days of old."

Jeremy Klator was the Keeper Elect of the Malonist Vault. It was his responsibility to supervise its maintenance and cleaning both inside and out. A team of cleaners, known as vaultmen, worked under him. A man referred to as First Vaultmate Vernon, was responsible for the cleaning of the giant-sized effigy of Malone in battle clothing, occupying the inner chamber of the vault. Klator and the vaultmen wore white overalls, white gloves and beekeepers' headshields. Their bodies were encased in radiation resistant polythene.

Klator's family had all died of radiation, except his five-year-old son who had cancer. The doctors said there was a chance this might be cured. They manned an emergency underground clinic called Harley Zone One, twenty feet below the site where Harley Street had once existed.

Klator found the vaultmen lined up in a row in front of Malone's effigy. As he entered the inner chamber, they saluted him.

"Is the work done?" asked Klator in a sepulchral tone.

First Vaultmate Vernon came forward and lowered his head.

"Yes, sir, the work is done," he said.

"Good, You may go to your shelters now."

"And you, sir?" asked Vernon.

"I? I shall stay here awhile."

"Yes, of course, sir, I understand." Vernon turned to leave and put on his headshield.

"Vernon!" called Klator.

"Sir?"

"I'd like you to have this."

He placed a coin worth a hundred pounds in Vernon's hand. Inflation had altered substantially since 1997.

"One hundred pounds, sir! That's ever so generous. I'll be able to buy a half-pint can of beer on the black market for that."

The intruder turned round and looked over his right shoulder.

"Is this a hearse?" he asked, taken by surprise.

"No, it's a plane. A damned silly question gets a damned silly answer."

There was another silence. The man looked at Natalie and Natalie looked at him.

"Natalie Klein's my name. What's yours?"

"Seamus Murphy."

"Irish? I can tell by the accent. It's rather pretty."

Murphy banged his fist on the dashboard.

"And what of it?" he shouted.

"Nothing of it. I was only saying you have a charming accent."

"It's an accent that has kept me out of work for five years. After two, I stopped trying. I was sacked for poor time-keeping. I couldn't wake up in the mornings. Whatever shop I went to, no one would sell me an alarm clock because of what you call my pretty accent."

"We will have to go in the back. There are blinds in the back. Get out of the hearse," said Natalie, suddenly.

He got out mechanically, his mind befuddled by drink, bewilderment, mental depression, desire and general confusion. He stared at the ground.

"You laundered?" she asked curtly.

"What do you mean - am I laundered?"

"Have you got any venereal disease, you slow-witted fool?"

"No." he said. He was too depressed to get aggressive and fascinated by her manner.

The bier rollers dug into him but he was too flattened to complain and too roused to care about the discomfort.

She knelt astride him and took his face in her hands and ran her fingers through his hair. It was her first gesture of affection or tenderness towards him. He smiled and she returned the smile. She said:

"Come up through the lair of the Lion

With love in her luminous eyes."

"Fine words, those. Are they yours?"

"Aye, to be sure they are, b'fockin' Gorrah!"

He took her by the scruff of the neck and turned her over.

"Go on, I like it rough," she said.

"Then to be sure you'll be getting what you came for!"

It took Natalie twenty-five minutes to satisfy herself with Murphy. When he got out he looked more downcast than when he got in. He had done exactly what she wanted the way she wanted it done.

"Get back in, Seamus, there's something I wish to say."

He didn't answer. He got in and stared vacantly into space.

"Unemployed for five years, you say?"

"Aye."

"You what?"

"I meant `yes' for Christ's sake. Perhaps you don't understand our humble paddy's parlance."

"Not again, please, Murphy, dear, it's awfully sordid to talk about Ireland straight after sexual intercourse."

Murphy said nothing. She felt ill at ease and raised her voice to a clipped military bark.

"You've proved yourself to be a damned good man about the hearse. You may consider yourself employed. I shall want your services on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Each time you will be paid fifty pounds in cash. Here's fifty pounds for the work you did today.

"I don't understand why you are making this arrangement with me."

"Must I be reduced to spelling it out?"

"Aye."

"Can't you say `yes'? `Aye' sounds damned silly."

"Yes. I'd like you to tell me the reason."

"Because I need what you've got to offer."

"I've nothing to offer you except a nihilistic view of the meaninglessness of things and the misery and uselessness of life."

"I'm not interested in what you think or how you think. I am referring to the work you did for me this afternoon. I told you I wanted it rough and you gave me what I asked for. That is satisfactory."

"You sound like some fockin' old colonel. Do you mean you want me to be your whore?"

"Dead people have travelled in the back of this hearse, Seamus. In pomp. In style. In reverence. So please don't use language like that in here."

He looked over his shoulder as he had before and waved his arms in a bemused, Gallic gesture.

"I don't understand you at all. You're a raving lunatic."

"You are probably right but fortunately I know it. I'm going to have to bung you out, now, because I've got to deliver the hearse in a spirit of dignity. Buck up. Out you get!"

Ulalume: Edgar Allan Poe.

Johnny Rucelli, a wealthy bereaved American, could hear a lot of noise coming from within the Funeral Parlour. He hammered at the door and rang the bell.

Natalie, the Funeral Director, opened the door.

"Say, are you guys closed all the year round?" said Rucelli. "Don't people die no more in Great Britain?"

"Would you come in and sit down and we can discuss your friend's funeral arrangements.

"I guess I chose to come to London to bury Sammy because I'm pretty wound up right now about da American way of death. There's only one thing more obscene than that and that's da American way of life. I know the British know how to throw a downmarket, low-key, low- profile type of fooneral. Back home in the States, you can't back out in no style no goddam more without a fleet of flash caddies, fat flash morticians and a fat flash casket carried like it was some lousy bag of groceries. Sammy had heart trouble and knew he had to go and just before he died in that hospital he said: `I either gotta have me a British fooneral or else I don't get buried at all'."

"Johnny Rucelli's my name and Sammy and me was making it just fine."

"I am sure we shall be able to do exactly what you want the way you wish it done."

"Yeah. I chose you because a guy from this part of town I met at some races you call the Durby, said you guys didn't charge as much as da other goddam flasher parlours."

"Your friend was indeed right. We try to exploit sorrow as little as we can. Our consciences force us to charge less than other parlours.

"Sammy wanted a simple job so I guess I came to da right tomfool joint."

"You have indeed, sir," said Natalie.

She gave him a charming smile. "Your wish is our command. We will charge you seven hundred and fifty pounds, inclusive of VAT for the simple burial you ask for. Mercenary firms such as Crumblebottom and Bongwit down the road, charge three times as much as we do.

"Forgive me for intruding on the more painful side, but your Sammy, would you mind telling me how tall he was?"

"Four foot three inches."

"A child Ä your son? How very tragic for you, sir!"

"Nah. A dwarf. Him and me was hittin' it off real cool. I met him in a gay joint patronized by freaks in L.A. and I guess it was love at first sight. Pa'd already made his roll in prohibition and passed his dough to me, so I gave Sammy a home."

"Have you any particular preferences - any special floral formations, any personal touches?""

"May I see your casket catalogue?"

She nearly laughed but controlled herself. "Certainly, sir. Here are our patterns. This section at the back is used for the loved ones shorter in stature, including children."

The catalogue varied from the very conventional to the ridiculous. Rucelli chose a model with a Vuiton cover.

"I will see to it that you have that model, sir. Would you very kindly excuse me for one minute."

"Yeah. I got all day." Rucelli sat with his arms folded, chewing gum.

Natalie went to the cellar and told Elliott and Murphy to stop shouting.

"Say, lady, do you mind me asking - what the hell's all that shoutin'?"

"Shouting?"

"Yeah. I can hear two fellas screamin' and shoutin' like they was bustin' each other to pieces. What's da big idea, huh?"

"You're imagining it. Some tea?"

"Nah. Don't wanna abide by no British customs except da burials."

"I hope everything will be to your satisfaction. I'll be back in a minute."

She went down to the cellar to speak to Elliott. "The American wants us to do a four foot three inch dwarf in a Vuiton."

"A Vuiton? Stone the fucking saints!"

"Yes."

"We've only got one and I kept it as a relic. But it's four foot long so how are we going to manage?"

"Cut its feet off, you cretin! Use your head. But stop that noise, both of you, or the man will ask for his money back and take his custom to bloody Crumblebottom and Bongwit!"

She came up to the office.

"I'm so sorry about that, sir," she said, "I can assure you it won't happen next time we meet. Which hospital did your friend die in?"

"Da goddam London Clinic, surrounded by a bunch of good-for- nothing Ay-rabs."

"How shocking! Is he in the mortuary there?"

"Sure thing."

"Then I will have him collected and all you have to do now is leave everything else to us."

"You promise there won't be no goddam noise? Hell, I want this thing done with some frigging reverence, man!" shouted the raving mad American.

A middle-aged ice-cream vendor with horn-rimmed spectacles and thick powder, stood in the aisle during the interval of the film, while a queue gathered in front of her.

"I bet you don't dare go up to the ice-cream vendor and say: `There's a good-looking boy in the cinema who'll fuck you for a shilling'." said Mark.

Emma pleaded with her not to do it but Natalie wanted to make more of an impression on Mark than Emma had made.

"Excuse me, madam," echoed a ten-year-old's voice.

"Wait your turn!" said the ice-cream vendor. Her unfriendly tone made it easier for Natalie to be impertinent.

"I've come to say: `There's a good-looking boy in the cinema who'll fuck you for a shilling'."

"One shilling! One shilling! Tell your friend he's going to have to offer me more than one shilling."

"I did as you said, Mark, but she says her rate is higher than a shilling."

"Then go back and tell her she's only good for a shilling."

"Excuse me, madam, my friend says you're only worth a shilling."

"Get out of it! Don't be so bloomin' rude!"

(The above incident occurred in Berry's early life. A boy of her age dared her to be naughty, and she accepted the dare.)

Malone stared in disbelief at the coffin lying beside a hearse abandoned by the side of the road, and a young woman in black pacing up and down in a rage.

Malone got out and walked towards Natalie Klein.

"Blimey, madam, you seem to have come to a dead end," he said.

"You could say that. I've been having trouble shifting the stiff back into the hearse."

Malone regarded his new acquaintance, his head raised, his eyes alert, shrewd, fox-like, curious and questioning. He had seen a massive slice of humanity in his life but had never come across a situation quite as bizarre as this.

"I don't understand how it got out in the first place." he said in a startled tone.

"The wheel had to be changed. A lorry driver had to get the coffin out. He couldn't put it back."

"Why?"

"Because of its weight."

"Why couldn't he have used his common sense?"

"Maybe because he had none."

"Then why didn't you tell him how to use his common sense?" asked Malone.

"If I'd seen an obvious solution I wouldn't be here now. What do you suggest I do?"

"It's simple. You solve the problem in five moves." Malone turned to his secretary.

"Get the iron rod."

"Get the iron rod, what?"

"Get the iron rod, please."

The secretary took a heavy metal stick for wrenching things open, from the back of the Malonemobile and handed it to Malone who took off his jacket and loosened his tie, shoving a cigar into his mouth and spitting its end into the gutter. Natalie thought he looked ravishingly attractive with his tie loosened.

As he worked he spoke to her like a lecturer addressing students.

"First you get it open. Then you roll the thing out. Then you put the coffin in the back of the hearse. Then you swing the bastard over your shoulder."

He winced as he did so. The pain of dislocation was like a knife with its handle rotating. He walked towards the hearse with the body on his shoulder while she gaped at him in astonishment. After a silence lasting for about three minutes she said:

"Are you really Rex Malone?"

Footnote: It was the above passage in particular which caused the late Robert Maxwell (recognizing himself instantly) to exclaim that he was "absolutely flabbergasted".

"Yes."

A child aged nine, wearing a brownie uniform, marched towards him and demanded his autograph. He had not had a chance to lay down the dead body but the child was unconcerned.

"Your autograph, please, one to keep and two to sell."

"Smart thinking. This sounds like an order not a request. How much?"

"Fifty pence for one. I'll get a pound if you give me two extras Ä that is apart from the one I keep for myself."

"A shrewd business sense, I see."

The child smiled at him precociously and handed him three books, one after another.

"Would you mind holding the book steady so that poor Uncle Rex can write his name for you."

"Who have you got over your shoulder?"

"I'm surprised you didn't ask before. That's Bill. He works for us.He's passed out.

Natalie broke into paroxysms of giggles and turned away. The child accepted the explanation and ran off. Malone felt as if he had been sprayed with shrapnel and the pain in his shoulder radiated to his waist.

He threw the earthly remains of Augustus Brown into the coffin. The head made a strange hollow sound on impact and Malone swore under his breath.

"I am so grateful to you for what you did. Is there anything I can do in return?" Natalie asked.

"What are your politics?" Malone asked hoarsely, after recovering his breath.

"I am an anarchist."

"Is there an anarchist candidate in your constituency?"

"No."

"Who the hell do you vote for, then?"

"For Maggie Thatcher, of course. She's the closest to anarchy you can get!"

The press conference held by Malone was rowdy. The reporters had become over-excited, interviewing this extroverted, controversial, entrepreneurial buccaneer who was wearing a tweed workman's cap, incongruously combined with a white flannel suit.

"How's your Rolls Royce, comrade?" called a Morning Star reporter, wearing a black rubber mackintosh.

"My Rolls is going like a bomb, thanks, comrade," retorted Malone, "I bet your boy-friend likes your charming black rubber mackintosh."

"It's Mr Mutton on the telephone for you, Mr Malone," said one of his secretaries.

Malone lurched over to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

"B-a-a-a-h!" he shouted, irritably.

There was a Mr Mutton working in Robert Maxwell's constituency. Maxwell did indeed bark "B-a-a-a-h!" when he answered the telephone. He loved to crack jokes about names. Sometimes, he addressed his Filipino cook, Oping as "Opium", and Berry as "Basso Profundo".

Buttercrow, the bent Harley Street psychiatrist, was using the washroom when Malone came in. He did not look at the mirror in front of him. Nor did he look at the newcomer, but he noticed through the corner of his eye that the man was smoking a cigar and wearing a white flannel suit. His air of nonchalant self-confidence impressed him. The man was obviously the new consultant who seemed to have a far greater air of authority than he had expected. He went out of his way to impress him.

"Take a tip from me, old chap," he said, slapping his thigh and filling the air with a whiff of stale brandy, "Here's what I say to 'em the first time I meet 'em, to put the damned blighters at their ease, if I think they're clinic meat. I say, Absolutely strapping stuff, sex, hey what!' Do you know what I do afterwards? I bung my stinking carcass out of bed, wipe the spunk off my hampton, crash into a bath, go for a smacking good run round the block. Then I burn up to the kitchen where I make four socking great crumpets, all of them absolutely sqwelching with butter. Then I bowl upstairs and start all over again, what!"

Malone dropped his cigar. He concluded his companion was a psychiatric patient and decided to be as kind to him as possible. "Blimey, guv, some like it hot," he muttered.

Footnote: The above eccentric words of the psychiatrist are authentic. They were uttered by the late society consultant, Dr Morgan Whitteridge. For a man who trained at Guy's Hospital, his bizarre sense of humour was far more attributable to a Barts-trained doctor. Whitteridge and Maxwell met briefly in 1969. They did not get on.

Malone took Natalie canvassing with him one evening. One of their calls was a dirty street on the outskirts of Milton Keynes.

"Just watch me, Natalie. Then you'll be able to canvass on your own." He knocked on a front door whose paint was peeling off. The sole occupant of the house was an elderly, demented woman, who associated Malone's clothing with that of her doctor, who visited her every evening, and mistook Malone for him. She started ranting before Malone had a chance to speak. She was describing some disabling illness effecting her bowels.

"I've already told you, and I won't tell you again. I'll be buggered if I'm going to use a suppository!"

Malone raised his head which he always did when disquieted.

"Blimey, madam!" he eventually managed to mutter.

"Now, you won't be eccentric in Belfast, will you dear?" said Mrs McKearney, the wife of a senior IRA terrorist.

"I'm not eccentric," retorted her son whose Irish accent was less obvious than his mother's.

"Yes, you are, dear, you're the most eccentric volunteer the Provos will ever have among their ranks. I want you to remember you're going across the water to help your father in an operation on Christmas Day that is vital to the cause."

"I know, Mother."

"So don't go round looking an oddity or you'll be stopped and searched."

"I don't look an oddity."

"You do look an oddity and you are odd and the boys will laugh at you. You can't even pack a bag, let alone manage a marksman's cover."

Mrs McKearney bent over and repacked her son's bundles, still in the middle of the road, while Malone waited, hoping they would move on to the pavement while they planned his assassination!. Mrs McKearney found a thick, elegantly bound book in her son's luggage.

"Fine book! Is this a history of Ireland?" she asked as she opened it. It was The Lord of the Rings.

"Tolkien!" she shrieked at the top of her voice. "Tolkien! What's a big boy like you want to read Tolkien for? All he ever wrote about was pixies!"

"It's to help me relax, Mother."

"You don't join the IRA to relax, nor to be eccentric either. When one of the boys gets eccentric, the person blamed for it is the mother. It all comes back to her. I know because I remember how it was in your father's day."

"Mother, would you keep your voice down. You're slap in the middle of a British street and there's someone wants to come by." (The "someone" wanting to come by was the IRA's target!)

An identical incident occurred between the Berry and her mother, when she (Berry) was opening and closing bags in a London Street, before going to America in 1968. The "Tolkien" incident also occurred on the same occasion, as did the remark that mothers are held responsible for their children's eccentricity.

The ranting of Ruari McKearney continued: "With the help of God and his blessed mother, shall all our comrades and all our holy martyrs in heaven look down upon our tortured, crucified country!"

"I've arrived, father," said the boy, relieved to have interrupted Ruari before he had started a new sentence."

"Turn round!" The boy turned, fearing that his father would find something to criticize about his appearance.

"Would you be getting your hair cut, son, dear," he said.

In comparison with his father's heavy brogue, Liam's Irish accent was not very pronounced, due to the length of time he had lived in England. He replied, "Jesus Christ wore his hair long, so why shouldn't I?"

Ruari picked up his Armelite rifle by its barrel and swung it violently against the desk like a golfer. "Jaysus Chroyst may have worn his hair long," he bellowed, "but Jaysus Chroyst didn't happen to be roydin' any of my fockin' hosses!"

Footnote: Although Berry's Irish uncle had no connection with the IRA, one of his sons was a jockey who rode his father's horses. The above angry remark was made by the boy's father. He was not in possession of an Armelite rifle, however. Had such a firearm actually been swung violently against a desk, it would have been irretrievably damaged. (Author's licence).

Malone and Natalie came out of the house into the drive.

The first thing Malone noticed was a glossy Austin hearse, its elm- surfaced bier rack newly waxed, its silver bier pins gleaming.

"Christ, Natalie, what the fucking hell's that thing doing here?" shouted Malone.

"I brought it here. There's plenty of room in it. It's ideal for bundling your supporters into it and bombing them down to the polls."

Malone looked depressed. He chewed his unlit cigar.

"It's your vehicle I'm not too confident about," he said in a blunted tone.

"What's wrong with it?"

His voice lowered two octaves. "Because I want to win the election," he muttered.

Footnote: Due to Robert Maxwell's horrific childhood, Berry never had the appallingly bad taste to park a hearse outside his house. However, she did own a hearse between 1980 and 1982.

She was particularly attached to it. It was an old Austin Hearse, registration number PNT 417. She had to part with it, for fear that her father would cut her out of his will.