The Lords' Day (retail) (2 page)

The house was small, part of a run-down terrace in the middle of Southall, and typical of so many rented properties in western London, ill-painted, unremarkable, shrouded in
anonymity. The curtains were tightly drawn to ward off prying eyes, and the windows were closed, too, shutting out the noise. In the back of the house, the bedrooms were stifling.

‘Are you awake, Mukhtar?’

‘How can a man sleep?’

‘It’s time, anyway.’

For a moment they grew quiet as their eyes adjusted to the first light and they contemplated what lay ahead of them.

‘It’s so airless and hot in this place,’ Mukhtar complained. ‘It’s like lying on the doorstep of Hell. How I miss our home.’

‘Remember, it is for our homeland that we came here.’

Mukhtar sighed, a sound of deep sadness. ‘I would like to have seen it – one last time.’

‘Don’t weaken, don’t you dare weaken. Not today!’ Masood’s voice grew sharp, betraying his own inner tension. ‘Remember what they have done to us. Remember,
Mukhtar, that day when you held your mother’s broken body.’

‘I shall have her name on my lips when I die.’

‘And hate her killers more with every breath.’ Masood stirred. ‘It is time to wake the others.’

‘They will not need it,’ Mukhtar replied, and from elsewhere within the small house they could hear the sounds of movement.

‘Remember our pledge, Mukhtar, to go on to the end. To fight them not only in the caves and mountains of our home, but to fight them in their own land, with ever greater courage, no matter
what the cost may be. To make war on them, father and son, just as they have done to us, and never give in.’

‘You make fine speeches.’

‘The words are not mine. I borrowed them, or words like them, from one of their own leaders. It is time for them to feel their own pain.’

‘May it rain on them like the winter snows, but –’ Mukhtar hesitated.

‘I’m listening, my friend.’

‘It is what we did last night, to those men.’

‘Does it trouble you?’

‘A little.’

‘That is good, Mukhtar. To care, to have compassion, is good. It sets us apart from our enemies.’

‘But, Masood, there is something else you should know.’

‘What is that?’

‘I think I am scared. Very scared.’

She came through the bathroom door, still naked, dabbing at her mouth. ‘What the bloody hell’s this?’ Harry demanded, the voice low but filled with menace as
he waved the pamphlet.

‘You’ve got a nerve, Harry, going through my drawers.’

‘They’re my drawers, remember. I paid for them.’

‘Yes, you did. And now they are my drawers,’ she replied primly, ‘so keep the hell out of them.’ She snatched at the piece of paper but he was too quick for her.

‘What are you hiding, Mel?’

‘Nothing!’

He began quoting from the leaflet. ‘
Marie Stopes. The
country’s leading reproductive healthcare charity. The first choice for those seeking expert help and advice
. Help
and advice in what, Mel? Well, I don’t see you offering yourself for sterilisation and you scarcely qualify for a vasectomy. So what is it?’

‘Harry, I’ve got to say you look ridiculous, sitting there shaking with indignation when you’re stark naked. Even a man with your physique can’t quite get away with
it.’ Her voice was light, teasing, attempting humour, and also avoiding his question.

‘You’re pregnant,’ he whispered.

She didn’t answer immediately but reached for her robe, wrapping it carefully around her before sitting down on the end of the bed, keeping her distance. ‘It’s why I invited
you last night. One of the things I wanted to tell you.’

‘That you’re pregnant. And going to have an abortion.’

He made it sound like the summing up of a prosecuting lawyer and she blushed, while Harry’s world began to spin slowly out of control, taking him back to a different place. He remembered
the last time he’d been told his wife was pregnant – not Melanie, but Julia, his first wife. It had been so clinical, in a side room of a Swiss hospital, just below the mountain where
that early spring morning they’d gone skiing off-piste. His choice, his passion, one in which Julia had tried to follow him, as she had always done. Except they hadn’t made it. Too much
fresh, unstable snow. And then he was lying with a drip in his arm and a broken leg and porridge for brains, trying to shake off the effects of a bad concussion as a doctor with a dark brow and
exquisitely starched white coat broke the news to him. That Julia had been a couple of months pregnant and in all probability hadn’t even known it.

‘You did not know, either? I am so sorry, Herr Jones, we did all we could,’ the doctor had said in his over-precise manner. ‘If it is of any consolation, it is my view that
your wife would not have suffered in any way.’

‘Suffered?’

‘It was instantaneous, you see.’

‘What was instantaneous?’

A look of despair had crossed the doctor’s brow. ‘No one has told you?’ Or had the delayed effects of the concussion wiped it all from his mind? ‘The fall, Herr Jones. It
broke her neck. And, of course, the baby . . . My profound regrets.’

Beautiful, loving, two-months pregnant Julia. After which Harry’s life had never been quite the same, never reached its old heights. It couldn’t, not when he was drenched in so much
guilt and with the accusations of Julia’s distraught father ringing in his ears. Yes, it had been his fault, and after fifteen years carving out a career in the British Army, Sandhurst, Life
Guards, Pathfinders, MoD, the lot, he was used to taking his share of the responsibility, but not like this. Something had switched off inside Harry, and not all the years his country had invested
in teaching him to be one of its most effective killing machines had been able to keep him from suffering more hurt than he ever thought was possible. Until Melanie came along. ‘Time to put
Humpty back together again,’ she’d said, covering everything with laughter. She was what he had needed, never took anything too seriously, except her body, of course, and that was worth
taking very seriously indeed. Got him back on his feet until he was able to walk again. Yet Harry was never content simply to walk; he was the type of man who always wanted to do things his way,
and at a pace that left most in his wake. It wasn’t that Melanie couldn’t keep up; what had begun to hurt was the realisation that she never truly tried. He’d been blinded by
pain, too eager to find something and someone to hold on to once more, and it was another thing he’d got wrong. She didn’t want to follow; while Harry rushed off in search of dragons,
she was content to sit elegantly beside the large pot of gold that had been left to Harry through his inheritance. Different routes, different destinations, and now different lives.

‘I’m sorry, Harry,’ he heard her saying. Just like the Swiss doctor. Everybody was always fucking sorry. So why didn’t it make a difference?

‘You were going to talk about it with me, weren’t you? And we are going to discuss it, aren’t we?’ His tone was untrusting, full of accusation. She hated it when he grew
angry. There was, perhaps, something in her that feared Harry, even when he was naked, when his body reminded her of what Harry in his anger could do. The scars, the bullet wound in his back.

‘Harry, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘What could be more important than our baby?’

‘Harry, I want a divorce.’

The spare, balding man looked out from his high window and stared down the Mall. From the street below he would have seemed a small, insignificant figure in such a grand
building, and at times like this he felt it. His eyes wandered past the ceremonial flags hanging limply from their gibbets towards the outline of the palace that was beginning to emerge in the
grey, oily light. He stood for a considerable time, motionless, the only sign of his inner turmoil being the relentless twisting of the crested cufflink on his left wrist. He would be on duty
today, just as he had been, and would continue to be, every day of his life.

He turned from the window. A mahogany clotheshorse stood next to the dressing table. From it hung the uniform of the Welsh Guards. He’d first been fitted for that uniform more than thirty
years before, yet it had remained unaltered, like so much else in his life. Duty, obligation, the sense of being owned by others, hadn’t faded with the years, unlike the hairline and his
patience – particularly his patience. Later that morning he would climb into the uniform and once again do his duty, even though he wasn’t Welsh and had guarded nothing more than his
reputation these past years, and that often poorly. He was commanded to attend upon the State Opening of Parliament, an annual ritual stuffed to the studded collar with symbolism yet without the
slightest trace of any substance. Just like his wretched life. He had been ordered to take part – ordered, him, a man of sixty! Yet in spite of all his years he was in no position to refuse.
So he would damn them and do what was required of him, as he so often did, with reluctance.

No, not reluctance. Stupid word! He didn’t feel reluctance, instead he felt a burning, blinding resentment. How dare they? It would be kinder to send the bloody clotheshorse, yet kindness
didn’t come into it; there wasn’t even a sub-clause in the constitution for compassion. With a low curse he started tugging once more at his cufflink.

He’d wriggled out of the occasion for years, but this year was different. His father was ill, too wobbly even to climb into his boots, so in his place they demanded the son. England
expects! They commanded his presence, yet they were unwilling to pay even the simple price he asked. And what could be simpler, more dignified, more appropriate, more just, than to permit him to
walk with his wife? A woman who had done none ill, a lady who gave none harm, who had brought only joy and gentleness to his life. Yet they wouldn’t let her be. She’d been the reason
for the divorce so they treated her like an outcast. They deemed his wife’s appearance . . . inappropriate.

Inappropriate. That was the word they’d used, those cowards and courtiers, as they shuffled round the issue like three-legged spaniels. It was no explanation at all. So she had taken
herself out of London to avoid causing him any embarrassment while he was left on his own to—

Bugger!
The cufflink, tired with its mistreatment, shot from its post and disappeared somewhere in a dark corner. He cried out, first for assistance and then in an outpouring of
unremitting despair. He was the grandest man in the land, yet also the most powerless and pathetic. From the other side of the window the outlines of the palace seemed to be mocking; it was so
close, yet in some respects so very far away from him. It was from near this point, several hundred years before, that they had taken one of his ancestors, walked him across the park dressed in a
double layer of clothing to prevent him shivering, and when they had reached Whitehall they had chopped off his head. Right now, that seemed the very best part of the deal.

Charles Philip Arthur George, heir apparent to all he surveyed yet master of not even a humble cufflink, let forth a howl of frustration and sent a footstool crashing into a corner. It was going
to be one of those lousy, screwed-up days.

Masood was their leader, although not the eldest of the men gathered at the table. Ghulam, the bomb maker, made up their simple breakfast of paratha flatbreads fried in butter,
with which they ate the remnants of the lamb pulao that had gone unfinished the night before. Mukhtar sat quietly soaking his bread in the dark, bitter-sweet tea, and chewing thoughtfully. No one
spoke much.

A portable television flickered mutely in the corner of the kitchen; the breakfast news showed scenes of preparation for the State Opening and warned of traffic disruption in Central London. All
was as it should be.

When they had finished their food, they prayed, for the last time, in the formal manner. ‘We shall not pray like this again,’ Masood announced. ‘It will only persuade them that
we are what they call fundamentalists or fanatics. Then their hatred for us will burn all the more. No, we must show them that we are simple men, who wish nothing more than to show them
justice.’

‘Until they choke on it,’ Jehanzeb, the eldest, added.

They were dressed in different clothing; some in suits, some in workmen’s garb. Masood made one final inspection. Then it was time. They left the house without cleaning up after their
breakfast. There was no point. None of them would be returning.

6.40 a.m.

It would be a long morning. This was, after all, the most significant state occasion of the year. The State Opening of Parliament is more than merely the beginning of a new
parliamentary session, it is an occasion snatched from the furnace of British history. The ceremony is held in the House of Lords because the Monarch has been denied access to the House of Commons
ever since her ancestor, the hapless – and soon to be headless – Charles kicked down its door while trying to arrest several of its members. Faced with the inhospitality and not
infrequent hostility of the Commons, the Monarch retaliates by summoning a member of the Government to the palace and holding him hostage for the duration, just in case. Uneasy sits the crown.

There was also the lesson of Guy Fawkes, of course, when he and other Catholic conspirators stocked the cellars with gunpowder and attempted during the State Opening to blow up not only the King
but also the entire government, lock, stock and explosive barrel, yet that was more than four hundred years ago. Affairs had settled on a gentler keel since then. Even the royal hostage is treated
gently and to a glass of something suitably old.

As the skies above London yielded to the first rays of a sickly sun, the Household Cavalry was well into its preparations. Reveille had long since been sounded and the members of the
Sovereign’s Escort were mucking out the stables at Knightsbridge Barracks, surrounded by spit and polish and the pungent smell of horse piss. On the roads around Westminster, access routes
were being blocked. Metal crowd barriers already lined the Mall and large concrete barriers were being hauled around in the jaws of forklift trucks to divert the traffic away from the processional
route. Nothing would be allowed through, unless it was waving the right pass or arriving in a gilded coach.