precious as ever but its job done for now. One last look before dropping down the ladder, gazing through the dismal dark up at a spectre of the past, once more incarnate in the present, two-dimensional in paint on brickwork, four-dimensional in the minds of men, and women. A challenge to history. Giving it the V-sign.
V for Victory.
V made by two fingers.
IN YOUR FACE.
Chapter 9
In the public bar of the Rose there was a warm fug and the usual smattering of folk either standing at the counter or seated around the little tables with their heavy cast-iron legs that had been there since the pub opened two days short of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. On another planet, in another universe.
Stark nodded to a few regulars he knew by sight but not by name: the bloke with the wall eye and the frozen cheek, the result of some industrial accident; the little fellow in his eighties whose face was as crumpled as yesterday’s newspaper, eyes screwed up tight into what looked like ecstasy and might have been despair but was almost certainly just old age and apathy; the one with the lank hair and the permanently black eye who talked to no one but was never silent, muttering incessantly into his beer. At the far end of the bar were the little coterie Stark styled ‘the intellectuals’: a trades union official, a retired schoolteacher and a bit-part actor. And Del himself, robust, rotund, red-faced and profoundly devoted to a life with no more surprises.
Stark pulled up a bar stool and ordered a pint of Red Barrel. Del nodded to him as he pulled back the stiff hand-pump that forced the ale up from the cellar.
‘Evening, Harry. Cold one, ain’t it.’
‘It is, Del. It is,’ Stark replied and took a long slow pull on his pint, savouring the bitterness of the beer and the cosy familiarity of the surroundings, the same old faces, hard, craggy, factory faces mostly, save for ‘the intellectuals’ ofcourse, the trades union man in his shiny Slovakian suit, the teacher in his worn cords and the actor in imported jeans.
Everyone who drank regularly in the Rose knew Harry was a policeman. The Westminster tabloids might call members of the Metropolitan People’s Police ‘PeePees’, and the nickname had caught on among their own readers and folk ‘up North’, but amongst those who had – even before the Wall – always felt the ‘East End’ was proper London, as opposed to the cosmopolitan bit ‘up West’, politics had had no effect on tradition. Even those classes that were historically not overly fond of the police, they still called them the names they always had: cops, rozzers, ‘Peelers’ even, though most just settled for ‘the Old Bill’. The nickname for the grey men from ‘the Department’ however, was all theirs. DoSSers were just DoSSers. People knew the difference.
A tall man in an overcoat came in behind Stark and grunted rather than spoke the brief word ‘beer’, indicating dismissively with his hands that a half of anything would do. Del served him, watched as he carried it to a solitary seat in the corner, looked back at Stark hunched introspectively over his pint and sighed; he knew when people wanted to talk, and when they didn’t. It was an essential part of the trade. He turned back to the intellectuals whose conversation was growing unusually heated. Stark drew nearer, more out of idle curiosity than a desire to get involved.
‘A blockbuster! That’s what they’re calling it. As if it was some other new-fangled bloody bomb. I call it a downright provocation. Absolutely disgusting.’ Davy Hindsmith, a convener for the Tube drivers’ union, old guard and nearing retirement, was never a man to pull his punches. He clearly did not agree with the opinions of the man opposite him, and at least two decades his junior. Ken Atkinson was in hislate twenties and intensely proud when anyone in the pub – or in the street – recognised him from the bit part he played in Ups and Downs , an ETV soap
V for Victory.
V made by two fingers.
IN YOUR FACE.
Chapter 9
In the public bar of the Rose there was a warm fug and the usual smattering of folk either standing at the counter or seated around the little tables with their heavy cast-iron legs that had been there since the pub opened two days short of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. On another planet, in another universe.
Stark nodded to a few regulars he knew by sight but not by name: the bloke with the wall eye and the frozen cheek, the result of some industrial accident; the little fellow in his eighties whose face was as crumpled as yesterday’s newspaper, eyes screwed up tight into what looked like ecstasy and might have been despair but was almost certainly just old age and apathy; the one with the lank hair and the permanently black eye who talked to no one but was never silent, muttering incessantly into his beer. At the far end of the bar were the little coterie Stark styled ‘the intellectuals’: a trades union official, a retired schoolteacher and a bit-part actor. And Del himself, robust, rotund, red-faced and profoundly devoted to a life with no more surprises.
Stark pulled up a bar stool and ordered a pint of Red Barrel. Del nodded to him as he pulled back the stiff hand-pump that forced the ale up from the cellar.
‘Evening, Harry. Cold one, ain’t it.’
‘It is, Del. It is,’ Stark replied and took a long slow pull on his pint, savouring the bitterness of the beer and the cosy familiarity of the surroundings, the same old faces, hard, craggy, factory faces mostly, save for ‘the intellectuals’ ofcourse, the trades union man in his shiny Slovakian suit, the teacher in his worn cords and the actor in imported jeans.
Everyone who drank regularly in the Rose knew Harry was a policeman. The Westminster tabloids might call members of the Metropolitan People’s Police ‘PeePees’, and the nickname had caught on among their own readers and folk ‘up North’, but amongst those who had – even before the Wall – always felt the ‘East End’ was proper London, as opposed to the cosmopolitan bit ‘up West’, politics had had no effect on tradition. Even those classes that were historically not overly fond of the police, they still called them the names they always had: cops, rozzers, ‘Peelers’ even, though most just settled for ‘the Old Bill’. The nickname for the grey men from ‘the Department’ however, was all theirs. DoSSers were just DoSSers. People knew the difference.
A tall man in an overcoat came in behind Stark and grunted rather than spoke the brief word ‘beer’, indicating dismissively with his hands that a half of anything would do. Del served him, watched as he carried it to a solitary seat in the corner, looked back at Stark hunched introspectively over his pint and sighed; he knew when people wanted to talk, and when they didn’t. It was an essential part of the trade. He turned back to the intellectuals whose conversation was growing unusually heated. Stark drew nearer, more out of idle curiosity than a desire to get involved.
‘A blockbuster! That’s what they’re calling it. As if it was some other new-fangled bloody bomb. I call it a downright provocation. Absolutely disgusting.’ Davy Hindsmith, a convener for the Tube drivers’ union, old guard and nearing retirement, was never a man to pull his punches. He clearly did not agree with the opinions of the man opposite him, and at least two decades his junior. Ken Atkinson was in hislate twenties and intensely proud when anyone in the pub – or in the street – recognised him from the bit part he played in Ups and Downs , an ETV soap
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