deployment in the General Assembly. Then I’ll fly to Havana and pose for photographs with Fidel in front of an R-14 in firing position.’
He slapped the table and hooted with laughter.
‘Comrades,’ he concluded, ‘I trust you see the enormous advantages that flow from this one simple idea. Not only do we secure the revolution in Cuba in perpetuity, but by placing existing medium-range missiles there we achieve, at a single stroke, full nuclear parity with the United States. All this at virtually no cost! The money we save from our defence budget can now flow into our economic and agricultural programmes. We will beat our swords into ploughshares. There will be no need for so many tank regiments, so many destroyers, so many fighter aircraft. You see how progressive my plan is? You see how truly it’s in the interests of world peace? With this one move, we will make socialism safe for a generation!’
11
In the enclosed all-male world of a boy’s boarding prep school in rural Sussex she might as well have been an alien descended from outer space. A beautiful alien, an emissary from a more advanced civilisation perhaps, sent to enslave mankind. At this moment she was sitting hunched over a stool in the school’s art room, at work on a still life. Her subject, an empty wine bottle behind two apples, stood on the windowsill. Dappled light filtering through the branches of the lime trees outside made patterns on the apples’ shiny surfaces. She worked with frowning concentration, smoking a cigarette, letting the ash fall unnoticed to the floor.
The art teacher, once craggily handsome, now a ghost of his former glory, slouched in a canvas chair and watched her with a dulled and hopeless longing. She was well worth the watching: eighteen years old, slim, distractingly beautiful. Black slacks, a tight black jumper, almost black hair. Not much good at art, of course.
Maurice Jenks, known in the school as the Magnificent Wreck, was not much good at art himself, but he was good enough to hold down a job overseeing the sons of the privileged in what was essentially a leisure activity. The goddess on the stool was called Pamela Avenell. She had come to him for private lessons becauseshe had two younger brothers in the school, and lived nearby, and like so many pretty girls with no qualifications, supposed she might have a future in something to do with art. For example, thought Maurice Jenks in a burst of aching lust, she could peel off that tight black jersey and show me her artistically interesting naked body. Ah, if only. Twenty years ago he would have given it a shot. As matters stood, restraint was the order of the day. At least she gave him a break from the company of small boys, who merely bored him, given that he was not queer. Though considering his record of decline, no doubt that was to come.
He could hear them now, flocks of them, their thin voices calling in the sharp spring air from the playing fields beyond the lime trees. The Magnificent Wreck hoisted himself to his feet to attend to his charge. Time to check her work and tell encouraging lies.
‘Better,’ he said. ‘Much better. Take a closer look at the apples.’
‘I hate apples,’ said Pamela.
‘They’re just forms. Look for the light and dark.’
He looked at the light and dark of her curving neck, her tumble of hair. It would be so easy to lean down and kiss that soft skin. He watched her pencil scratching away over the sketchpad, steadily making her first passable rendering a great deal worse. What was it about art that made everyone think they could do it? Indulgent parents, presumably. Confronted with offspring who failed at long division and Latin grammar, they fell back on the consoling nostrum that they were artistic. In the upper middle classes the stupid boys went into the City, and the stupid girls did art.
The Magnificent Wreck wondered if Pamela would tell on him if he took a swig from the bottle in the paint cupboard that was
He slapped the table and hooted with laughter.
‘Comrades,’ he concluded, ‘I trust you see the enormous advantages that flow from this one simple idea. Not only do we secure the revolution in Cuba in perpetuity, but by placing existing medium-range missiles there we achieve, at a single stroke, full nuclear parity with the United States. All this at virtually no cost! The money we save from our defence budget can now flow into our economic and agricultural programmes. We will beat our swords into ploughshares. There will be no need for so many tank regiments, so many destroyers, so many fighter aircraft. You see how progressive my plan is? You see how truly it’s in the interests of world peace? With this one move, we will make socialism safe for a generation!’
11
In the enclosed all-male world of a boy’s boarding prep school in rural Sussex she might as well have been an alien descended from outer space. A beautiful alien, an emissary from a more advanced civilisation perhaps, sent to enslave mankind. At this moment she was sitting hunched over a stool in the school’s art room, at work on a still life. Her subject, an empty wine bottle behind two apples, stood on the windowsill. Dappled light filtering through the branches of the lime trees outside made patterns on the apples’ shiny surfaces. She worked with frowning concentration, smoking a cigarette, letting the ash fall unnoticed to the floor.
The art teacher, once craggily handsome, now a ghost of his former glory, slouched in a canvas chair and watched her with a dulled and hopeless longing. She was well worth the watching: eighteen years old, slim, distractingly beautiful. Black slacks, a tight black jumper, almost black hair. Not much good at art, of course.
Maurice Jenks, known in the school as the Magnificent Wreck, was not much good at art himself, but he was good enough to hold down a job overseeing the sons of the privileged in what was essentially a leisure activity. The goddess on the stool was called Pamela Avenell. She had come to him for private lessons becauseshe had two younger brothers in the school, and lived nearby, and like so many pretty girls with no qualifications, supposed she might have a future in something to do with art. For example, thought Maurice Jenks in a burst of aching lust, she could peel off that tight black jersey and show me her artistically interesting naked body. Ah, if only. Twenty years ago he would have given it a shot. As matters stood, restraint was the order of the day. At least she gave him a break from the company of small boys, who merely bored him, given that he was not queer. Though considering his record of decline, no doubt that was to come.
He could hear them now, flocks of them, their thin voices calling in the sharp spring air from the playing fields beyond the lime trees. The Magnificent Wreck hoisted himself to his feet to attend to his charge. Time to check her work and tell encouraging lies.
‘Better,’ he said. ‘Much better. Take a closer look at the apples.’
‘I hate apples,’ said Pamela.
‘They’re just forms. Look for the light and dark.’
He looked at the light and dark of her curving neck, her tumble of hair. It would be so easy to lean down and kiss that soft skin. He watched her pencil scratching away over the sketchpad, steadily making her first passable rendering a great deal worse. What was it about art that made everyone think they could do it? Indulgent parents, presumably. Confronted with offspring who failed at long division and Latin grammar, they fell back on the consoling nostrum that they were artistic. In the upper middle classes the stupid boys went into the City, and the stupid girls did art.
The Magnificent Wreck wondered if Pamela would tell on him if he took a swig from the bottle in the paint cupboard that was
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