A Cure for Cancer, Page 2

  Beyond the wall the middle-class women walked the pleasant paths, glancing nervously or with disapproval at the creature who, as if he owned the place, locked the gate behind him. They mistook him for a dandified negro, and thought it likely that he was responsible for the increasingly loud bass tone: he carried something rather like a transistor radio.

  Jerry put the key in his pocket and wandered in the direction of the Woodland Garden which, with its streams and shady trees, was flanked by the Sun Pavilion Restaurant which was not yet open.

  He passed several black doors marked Emergency Exit and paused by the lift, murmuring a word to the attendant and the ticket girl. They nodded. The girl entered the lift and with an air of finality it descended.

  Jerry turned back to the Woodland Garden. As he reached it the bass tone sounded very close and he looked up and saw the helicopter, moving in low, up over the outer wall, its rotors thrashing, the leaves of the trees whipping off their branches, the petals of the flowers flung about in all directions.

  The women screamed, wondering what to do.

  Jerry drew his vibragun. He knew an enemy helicopter when he saw one.

  The chopper was huge, over forty feet long, and flying close to the tops of the trees, its deep-throated motor full of menace, its shadow over the gardens.

  Jerry moved swiftly across the open space towards the tree-shaded lawn of the Woodland Glade, the leaves stinging his face.

  A machine gun hissed and slim bullets bit the concrete. Jerry rested his vibragun across his bent right arm and took aim, but he could hardly see his great target for the whistling petals and leaves that lashed his face. He stumbled backwards into a pool, slipped and found himself waist-deep in cold water. There were almost no leaves on the trees now as the rotors flicked round and round.

  Someone began to shout through a megaphone at him.

  “Fuckpig! Fuckpig! Fuckpig!”

  The old ladies gasped and ran about in panic, finding the lift out of order and the emergency exits blocked. They huddled under the arches of the Tudor Garden or threw themselves flat behind the low walls of the Spanish Garden.

  Some of the copter’s bullets hit a group of noisy ducks and blood and feathers mingled with the flying leaves. Rather half-heartedly, Jerry fired back.

  The chopper—a Westland Whirlwind with the 750hp Alvis Leonides Major engine—banked slightly until it was hovering over a clear space in which a fountain splashed. It began to drop lower, its 53ft rotors barely missing the trees.

  The machine gun hissed again and Jerry was forced to fling himself under the water and slide along until he could crouch beneath a small stone bridge. A man jumped from the copter, cradling the gun in his arms. He began to trudge towards the point where Jerry had gone down. There was blood on the surface, but it was the blood of ducks and doves.

  Jerry smiled. He aimed his vibragun at the man with the machine gun. The man began to tremble. The machine gun fell apart in his hands; he shook violently and collapsed.

  The copter was beginning to rise. Jerry dashed for it.

  “Easy,” he called. “Easy.”

  There could be as many as nine people in the copter, apart from the pilot. He dived through the hatch. Save for the fallen megaphone, it was empty. Above him, the pilot stared at him through goggles. The copter gained height.

  Jerry put his head out of the hatch. Frightened ladies, their hats like so many coloured dollops of cream, wailed up at him.

  “We’re stranded! We can’t get out! We’ll starve! Hooligan! Go back to your own country! Help!”

  “Don’t worry,” Jerry called as the copter climbed. He picked up the megaphone. “The restaurant opens soon. Please form an orderly queue. It will assist everyone if you try to behave in a normal manner! In the meantime…” He flung his taper to the soft ground. It began to play a selection of George Formby’s greatest hits, including ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’, ‘Fanlight Fanny’ and ‘Auntie Maggie’s Remedy’. “And don’t forget Old Mother Riley, Max Miller and Max Wall! It is for them that you suffer today!”

  As the helicopter thrummed out of sight, the ladies murmured among themselves and their lips curled in disgust as George Formby sang about the tip of his little cigar, but they formed a long, disciplined queue outside the restaurant.

  Eight days later they would still be standing there, or sitting, or lying where they had fallen. Through the glass walls of the restaurant they had been able, every day between three o’clock and five o’clock, to see the waitresses laying out the little sandwiches, scones and cakes and later clearing them away again. If a lady signalled a waitress the waitress would wave, smile apologetically and point at the notice which said that the restaurant was closed.

  One plump middle-aged housewife in a blue paisley suit hugged her handbag to her stomach in disapproval. The George Formby songs, rather scratchy now, were still going. “I feel filthy,” she said. “It’s wicked…”

  “Don’t start a fuss, dear.”

  On the lawn, quacking cheerfully, forgetful of their earlier upsets, jolly ducks waddled about.

  4. SING TO ME, DARLING, IN OUR CASTLE OF AGONY

  “Drop me off at Earls Court, would you?” Jerry asked, stroking the pilot’s neck with his vibragun.

  Pettishly the chopper sank towards the flat roof of the Beer-A-Gogo, recently built on the site of the old Billabong Club, and hovered there with undisguised impatience.

  Jerry opened the hatch and jumped out, falling elegantly through the thin asbestos sheeting and landing with a bump on mouldy sacks of flour that filled his nostrils with a sour smell. Rats scattered and turned to watch him from the shadows. He sighed and got up, dusting his suit, watching, through the jagged hole, the helicopter disappearing into the sky.

  Jerry left the storeroom and stood on the landing listening to the lusty sounds from below. The migrants were celebrating ‘Piss on a Pom’ week, getting drunk on home-brewed beer or “pickling Percy’s plums” as they put it.

  Jerry could hear them laughing a great deal as the jokes flew back and forth: “That’s a beaut drop of beer, mate!”/“I’m telling you, drong, that sheila was like a flaming glass of cold beer!”/“Watch you don’t spill your fucking beer, sport!”

  Some of the lusty singing was also about beer or its absence. The migrants seemed fully absorbed. Jerry walked softly downstairs and sneaked past the main room. He was momentarily dazzled by the electric-blue drape suits (Kings Cross Blues) but managed to make the front door into Warwick Road, full of Dormobiles, Volkswagen minibuses and Land-Rovers covered in pictures of kangaroos, emus and kiwis, all marked FOR SALE.

  Jerry tossed a silver yen to a negro boy with a face daubed in white clay. “Can you find a cab?”

  The boy swaggered around a corner and came back at a run. He was followed by a skinny horse drawing a lavender cab, its bright paint peeling to reveal old brown varnish and its upholstery cracked and bursting. The gaunt young man on the box wore a long beard and a fur hat; he signalled with his whip for Jerry to climb into the hansom which rocked and creaked as Jerry got aboard.

  Then the whip cracked over the jutting bones of the horse; it lurched forward, snorted and began to gallop down the street at enormous speed. Jerry clung on as the cab rocked from side to side and hurtled across an intersection. From over his head he heard a strange, wild droning and realised that the driver was singing in time to the rhythm of the horse’s hoofs. The tune seemed to be ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and only after a while did Jerry realise that the song was a favourite of the 1917–21 war.

  “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here,” sang the driver, “because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re he
re. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.”

  Jerry pushed up the trapdoor in the roof and shouted at the singing, glassy-eyed face, giving his address. The driver continued to drone, but gave a sharp tug on the reins and the cab turned, flinging Jerry to his seat and making the trap shut with a thud.

  “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here. We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” Through the west London streets, all desolate and beautiful in the soft tree-filtered sunlight, to the high walled fortress in Ladbroke Grove that had once housed the Convent of the Poor Clares, a closed order. Jerry had bought it from the Catholic Church shortly before the reformation. Behind the heavy metal gates topped by electrified barbed wire came the sound of The Beatles singing ‘Back in the USSR’. Jerry got out of the cab and before he could pay, the driver had whipped up the horse and was off towards Kilburn, his high voice still singing.

  “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play.” Jerry rested his palm on the recognition plate and the gate opened. He glanced, as usual, at the slogan VIETGROVE painted on the north wall of the convent. It had been there for two years and continued to puzzle him. It didn’t seem to be the work of the regular slogan painters.

  Crossing the elm-lined courtyard to the bleak, brick house, Jerry heard a tortured scream coming from one of the barred upper windows and recognised the voice of his latest charge (whom he had come to take to the country), an ex-chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, well known in the early forties as a heavy playing opposite Humphrey Bogart, and now awaiting a crash transmog.

  A tricky customer, thought Jerry.

  5. MYSTERY OF YOWLING PASSENGER IN SNOB AUTO

  Jerry drove the Phantom VI convertible at a rapid lick. The controls of the car, beautifully designed in diamonds, rubies and sapphires by Gillian Packard, responded with delicate sensuality to his touch. In the back, in his chamois leather straitjacket, the transmog case continued to scream.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.”

  “That’s what we’re trying to do, old lord. Hang on.”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh! Why? Why? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaa whyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaaaaahhhh! YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH THIS, YOUNG MAN! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! You’ll regret thisaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! WHY! WHY! WHY! AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! THE AUTHORITIES WILL SOON CATCH UP WITH YOU, MY FRIEND! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOH. URSH! YAROOOOOOOOOO! I SAY, STOP IT, YOU ROTTERS! OOOOOOOOOOOCH! GAARR! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??????”

  “Do you? That’s what we’re trying to fix. Be quiet, there’s a good chap.”

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  HHHHHHHHH!” said the ex-chairman defiantly.

  Jerry pursed his lips and touched the ruby stud of his taper, adjusted sapphire and diamond controls for balance, and turned up the volume. Soon the passenger’s voice was more or less drowned by ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey’.

  Jerry winked at his black face in the overhead mirror.

  6. DANGEROUS DUDE’S DREAM OF DESTRUCTION

  “Don’t worry, we’ll soon have him in the fuzz box,” smiled the kindly old matron as Jerry said goodbye to her at the main door of the Sunnydales Reclamation Centre. The matron had formerly been a Greek millionairess, famous for her escapades, and had known the new client in the old days when he had holidayed aboard her yacht Teddy Bear. She handed Jerry the latest issue of The Organ (A Quarterly Review for its Makers, its Players & its Lovers). “This came for you today—at the house.”

  “No other mail?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  Jerry put the magazine in his pocket and waved goodbye. In the peaceful grounds of the Centre the day was warm and beautiful. His silky pink Phantom VI stood in the drive, contrasting nicely with the grey-and-yellow gravel. Pines and birches lined the drive and behind them Jerry could see the red roof of his little Dutch mansion which he’d had shipped from Holland in the days before the blockade.

  He leapt into the Phantom VI and was away, touching seventy as he passed the gates and hurtled into the road in the path of a slow silver Cadillac that pulled up sharply as he turned and zoomed off towards the metropolis, his milk-white hair streaming in the wind.

  The sweet music of a thousand hidden radio transmitters filled the countryside and brought heavenly sound to the pastoral landscape. Such harmony, thought Jerry contentedly, that only The Beatles could achieve; such a perfect combination. From the circle of US and Russian Navy radio ships surrounding and protecting Britain, the same synchronised record played to all the people everywhere. Was there ever such a Utopia? he wondered as he left the subsidiary road and hit the main drag, joining the racing rainbow stream of cars on the multilane highway.

  Overhead, like birds of paradise, swarmed the flying machines, the little helicopters, gliders, rocket chairs, pediplanes, air taxis, light aircraft of every variety, belonging to the comfortably off (and who was not in these delightful Home Counties?), flowing towards London where gleaming towers of all colours could be seen in the distance.

  * * *

  Was it fair, Cornelius asked himself, relaxing for a moment, to scheme the destruction of so much of this life, happiness and colour? It was a shame that his mission in life conflicted with it; but he was a man of will and integrity, not without a marked moral sensibility, and his first loyalty was to his organisation. He was a total convert and he couldn’t afford to relax until there were a few more around.

  And his adventures were really only about to begin.

  TISSUE SAMPLE

  Clean air and economical electricity are two good reasons to celebrate Nuclear Week. Here are four more.

  Clean air from clean energy.

  Economical energy, too.

  Nuclear-powered egg-poacher.

  Suddenly it’s 1980.

  Nuclear crime detection—a fifth reason.

  Nuclear Week for your kids—three more ways to celebrate.

  Headings, Con Edison ad

  1. 50,000 VICTIMS OF KILL-CRAZY PRINCE CHARMING

  Beale, claws together under his chin, eyed Jerry Cornelius only for a moment then moved suddenly, rising and falling across the room on his flamingo legs, the woollen frock-coat, which was Burton’s latest autumn offer, rumpling and floating. “I am really an antiquarian.”

  The room was long, lined with bound newspapers, the ceiling so large and heavy that it seemed about to fall with a thud. Cornelius glanced upwards and settled warily into the swivel armchair, knowing that, if the ceiling did fall, even he would not have a chance of surviving.

  “Which volume? We have fifty thousand.” Beale’s sibilant voice took a long time to reach Jerry. “Records of the past.”

  “The names,” murmured Jerry, ready to slip hand to vibragun if the situation demanded.

  “London, the city of dolorous mist,” hissed Beale. “The names, Mr Cornelius, yes; the confidential names. You say he’s called S?”

  “According to the Cheka.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Something in code about a mouse strangler of Munich, I’m told. But that could be a reference to an anagram of Mephistophilis…”

  “Catching, Mr Aserinsky,
hmph.” Beale spoke as if in reply to a question, and began to cough.

  “Not in my book, general. It’s oh, oh, five and wild skidoo.”

  “Unused—unusual…” Beale was puzzled, as well he might be.

  It was only a ruse on Jerry’s part to get into the library, but he could not move yet, could not be certain that the ceiling would not fall; and he suspected the chair.

  He got up. Beale gasped, hastily reaching for a file.

  Jerry knew it was now or never.

  He drew the chromium-plated vibragun from its silken holster and pointed it at Beale who fell on his knees and began to shake.

  When Beale had shaken to pieces, Jerry slid the warm gun back in place, stepped over the corpse, checked doors and the many windows, and got to work, pulling the bound volumes from their shelves until every last one was on the floor. Wading through this rubble, he picked one up and opened it. As he expected it contained six months’ issues of the Sunday Times Colour Supplement. It would do to start with.

  From his pocket he extracted matches and a tin of lighter fluid, squirted the fluid over the book and lit it. The rest of the fluid he squirted at random over the piles of newspapers. A little blow at History.

  Someone was coming.

  He ran to the door and drew the bolts; ran, stumbling, to the doors at the far end of the gallery and bolted those too. The fire was beginning to take hold. It was getting warm. He drew his vibragun and gave the huge central window a touch of ultrasonics so that it shattered instantly and he was through it, peering down into the misty street.

  Swinging himself onto the ledge, he began to slide down the drainpipe, scraping the heel of his right hand quite nastily, and reached the ground where his Phantom VI, its motor turning over, waited for him.

  * * *

  Two or three streets away, he stopped for a moment and looked back and upwards to where he could see the white stone of the library building and the orange flames and rich, black smoke that whipped and boiled from the window he had broken. Farewell to precedent.