The hammering on the door would have woken the dead. Instead, it woke a bleary-eyed Mr Akinwande who opened the door furiously. ‘What the god-damn business do you think this is?’ he said to the three stone faced brutes standing, intimidating him, on his own doorstep. ‘Shut it, sambo, we’re here looking for Billy O’Leary, know where he is?’ Even if he did know where Billy O’Leary was - which he did not - he was now only concerned with the use of the word ‘sambo’ in conjunction with himself, and the grave offence that it offered. Proving Billy’s suspicion that Mr Akinwande was a man it would be foolhardy to cross was right, he set his feet and began to swing punches. The thugs fought back but, as with most bullies, were only effective against those who, for either physical or psychological reasons, were unlikely to defend themselves. Their well-aimed kicks and punches merely glanced off their target, whose rage had elevated him to an adrenaline infused sphere far abo
Baden’s Brains Bashed In By Buggered Builder!Exclusive by Dick Littlecock, read the headline of the Daily Rail. A photograph of Littlecock at the head of his copy revealed an unpleasant looking man with a somewhat hateful expression. The picture had been expertly taken to hide much of the obviously bad angles of his face with light tricks and retouching, but it could not hide the fact that he was ugly. It was nearly enough to put Lala off her vodka and red bull, but not quite. Jeremy Baden-Flogg MP, and newly appointed cabinet minister, was found dead in the study of his Somerset home last night after being attacked by a young man who was later arrested in a field several miles from the scene of the crime. The suspect, who police have named as Billy O’Leary, 23, of no fixed abode, then allegedly confessed to Inspector Harry Bingham the sensational story that he had been Baden’s lover and, that Baden-Flogg, known for his arch conservative views and long sitting memb
A Small, Scientific Name in MarchJude Cameron opened the stiff window doors to the tiny balcony of his apartment on Rue Lachassaigne in downtown Bordeaux. The sky glowed sky blue and, for the first time, the warmth in the air superseded the cold, the vestiges of which glided gently as a cool undercurrent across his body as he rested his elbows on the balcony rail and looked down into the street. Down there, it was empty, apart from the meagre array of bicycles chained to the black, metal tubes meant for that purpose, the green recycling bin half in the road, Arabella’s old blue Volvo transporter, and the cigarette butts and other street detritus mixed in with the soot and dust of city life. It was quiet. A quiet, broken only by the Doppler effect of irregular cars and then, by the heavy, clunking footsteps of a jogger running down the middle of the empty road. The bearded man’s face strained red with effort as he looked determinedly into the middle distance, seeing
At first, Tony Porsche complained on the radio about the measures being taken to slow the spread of the virus. He had even entertained the popular notion encouraged by the usual hard of thinking public figures, that it was no more dangerous than a common flu, and that the ‘herd immunity’ was just what was called for. The penny drop took a long time, and the bronze coin spun slowly in the air of public belief, discourse, chance, before landing tails up, meaning everyone had lost. It was all seriousness and solidarity after that. Still Lala could not bring herself to loathe him, nor Boris Johnson. Part of her understood their charm, whereas they had always made Teddy apoplectic. Lala was not perturbed by braggarts and liars, in fact, she preferred them to the moralists, who, she thought, were far too often cloaking their own venality in fine robes. The world was entering a disaster like the flu of 1918 (though science would most likely halt it at some point), but La
Bordeaux was empty. Never, ever, had Lala seen it so. As Sèdonoudè drove Teddy’s old fiat along the Rue Aristide Briand, near Place de la Victoire, no soul was to be seen. The cafes that served the milling university students and the shoppers of the Rue St Katherine were shut. The punters, vanished. Only at food shops here and there were shoppers with scarves wrapped around their mouths, woollen gloves on hands, even though the sun had come out to kiss the benighted people of Bordeaux. Matchstick Lowry figures, clutching reusable cotton bags, seeking food for their caves. Lala rolled own the wind and, the smell! It smelled fresh as spring! The throat burning, sinus clogging foul odour of petrol fumes were gone. As they got near to the hospital, a semblance of normality returned with the urgency of flashing blue lights and now, totally unnecessary sirens. The interior of the Institut Bergoniè was a near silent study in motion, as hospital staff moved around covered i
In the worrying days before her operation, Lala tried not to drink, but she could not stop. The doctors at a clinic in La Rèole ran test after test: blood, heart, lungs, but the results, astonishingly for one so cavalier with their health, all proved to be no cause for concern. Even the numbers for her liver, though the enzymes were high, were not catastrophically so. Lala was so afraid for what life she had, she locked herself in one of the rooms at Chateau Nullepart, the one with the Fantin paintings of flowers and the old wooden trunk, before persuaded by Sèdonoudè that staying at home in a room and allowing the cancer to grow and kill her, as it had Teddy, was not an option he would allow. He would break down the door and call the doctors if need be. Finally, she left, meekly accepting that whatever would be would be, and sat in silence on the journey back to the Institut Bergoniè. Once there, she donned the long, tight, white, elastic stockings to help prevent
Sèdonoudè stood in the grocer’s shop on the corner nearest the entrance to the Institut Bergoniè. Grapes, isn’t that what all sick people have? He had not been behaving himself in Lala’s absence, or in the confinement that was now supposed to apply to everyone. Except for the most important public service workers in those essential roles of health, food, transport, and public safety. He had printed off his ‘attestation de dèplacement dèrogatoire’, and gone out for cigarettes and booze, and trysts with Linda in the back of Teddy’s old fiat. A gendarme had caught them in flagrante, and, after watching his dark buttocks heaving in between Linda’s milky white thighs for longer than necessary, he proceeded to extract a 135 euro fine from each of them, and then angrily deliver a long moral lecture of the bit ‘the public’ can do to help the nation in its time of great need. It was idiots like them, he said, which prevented him from visiting his mother in the ephad, adding tha
There were no more hospital visits. From now on, those entering the sick world of hospital halls, or those trapped by infirmity in those halfway houses to the after world - old people’s homes - and, in some pathetic cases, little children, were to die alone, save for the remote compassion of those ordinarily dedicated to saving and nursing them. France, like the rest of Europe, was in a desperate fight against an exponential monster. Lala went home in an ambulance just as Teddy had done, but to a better prognosis. Sèdonoudè was there to greet her. ‘How are you doin’, Lala?’ he said, as two ambulance men unstrapped her wheelchair and rolled it down the ramp. They had tired, irritable eyes above the obligatory face masks. Eyes which had seen too much and were sick of seeing it all too often. They maintained a polite aloofness, which at least was better than that time in the hospital when a porter, clearly at the end of his wits, cursed under his breath as he banged the troll