The Green Gene Read online

  “I will pay double, double!” shrieked Humayan.

  “Double double is four times, mister,” said the cabbie.

  “All right,” said Humayan. The green grin was malicious but the green hand put the flag down. Humayan had to help Glenda up the step; she was still sobbing when she collapsed on to the worn leather of the seat. Humayan gave the address of Mr. Palati’s restaurant and when they reached it paid the quadruple fare but refused to add a tip. The man drove off with neither curse nor thanks.

  It was too early for supper customers. Mr. Palati was sitting at the window table faking his accounts with one hand and drinking tea with the other.

  “Good evening, good evening,” he said. “Oh, the lady has trouble. Shall I telephone the hospital, Pravi?”

  “No, no,” whispered Glenda. “I want to stay with you.”

  “Sirri, my friend,” said Humayan earnestly, “you must trust me. I will explain it all later. Now this poor girl must wash and rest and eat, and there is nowhere but my room. No, it is not what you think, Sirri—look at her. I knew her father.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Palati, beaming out of his doubt. “The debt to a parent is a debt that must be paid. Mine are long dead, thank the gods. Shall I make you a tray to take up?”

  “Oh you are a good man, Sirri, a very good man. Not a strong curry, you understand.”

  Mr. Palati beamed. His little black eyes glittered in the fat folds of his cheeks at the sudden excitement and mystery and scandal. Humayan led Glenda out past the heavy reek of the kitchen and the milder, sourer odour from the lavatories to the lino-covered staircase. His shock and horror were ebbing from him now, and as he heaved Glenda up the last flight he became almost gigglish with the thought that it was a mercy he had never met Selina under such circumstances. This notion was no doubt started by the decor with which Mr. Palati signalled the difference between his public and private lives—downstairs and on the first floor wallpaper and curtains were all of an irreducible prudish dinginess, but up here every free surface was covered with enormous erotic posters for which Mr. Palati had made a special trip to Denmark.

  Glenda appeared not even to notice them. She staggered through the door which Humayan held open for her, collapsed on the bed and started to sob again, but more easily now. Humayan fetched a jug of warm water from the bathroom and sponged her face, but before he had finished there was a knock on the door. Mr. Palati beckoned him out.

  “I have some ladies’ clothes in a cupboard,” he whispered. “It is a little hobby of mine.”

  He took Humayan along to the locked door which shut off the far end of the corridor, opened it and led the way through.

  “You will not laugh at me?” he whispered.

  The suite was furnished like rooms in a Bombay romantic film, all mirrors and pink gauze and twinkling knick-knacks and ostrich-feathers and buttoned stools bulging with stuffing and a vast, circular bed. Mr. Palati slid open the doors of a fitted cupboard and revealed an array of astounding dresses.

  “Three sizes I have,” he said with shy pride. “You see, several ladies come, and they dress up to amuse me.”

  He ran a dark hand caressingly down what appeared to be a cutaway track suit of soft black leather. Then he smiled his giggling smile and tiptoed back to his curries.

  Glenda was lying on the bed, feebly trying to wipe her spectacles one-handed on the pillowcase. Humayan quickly looked away from her unguarded gaze.

  “These bloody things,” she said. “They get so filthy when I cry. Is there a bath, Pete?”

  “Yes indeed, yes indeed. And my friend Mr. Palati has some clean clothes too. But I’m afraid … well, you must see.”

  He left her pawing, too feeble for hysterics, at the Palati Collection. Twenty minutes later, when he came into his room with a tray of food, she was sitting on the edge of the bed draped in a blue sari which he had not noticed. She was wearing it all wrong but only allowed him to make minor adjustments.

  “I’m not wearing anything else,” she said. “You’ll have to burn all my clothes, Pete. He’s got some smashing underclothes there, but … and in any case I wouldn’t be able to do the bra. Something’s happened to my left arm, so it won’t do what I tell it.”

  He put the tray on his chair so that she could reach it from the bed, and himself settled cross-legged on the floor. She took a long time to finish the small helping which he had purposely brought her, knowing the ways of starvation.

  “We had curried chicken in your room once,” she said as she put her fork down. “Your … other room, I mean.”

  “Why did they put you in prison?” he asked. He knew the answer, but wanted to know whether she knew, and why she had been so mistreated.

  “It was something to do with Daddy,” she said. “At first I couldn’t understand anything, but then from the questions they asked I worked out that he was some sort of … I don’t know.”

  “He was in charge of a department called R5, which is involved in secret work overseas.”

  “Yes, something like that. Some days they were quite nice, and some days … oh, there was a man with cricket bats on his tie and very short hair. It was always a bad day then. He seemed to think that I’d joined the Greens, joined them against Daddy … oh, Pete, that collar. It was written on in Ogham. That’s what they kept coming back to. Pete, did you write that stuff?”

  He nodded.

  “But what was it? What was it? That worried me more than anything. I used to think if only I knew that I wouldn’t mind what else they did.”

  “A charm against witches.”

  Now she was strong enough for hysterics. He snatched the tray away before she could upset it, then stood over her watching the working muscles of her face and listening to the unstoppable, shrill, agonised whooping—that noise, as of a dog wailing at the end of its chain, which the soul makes as it tries to burst itself free from the intolerable kennel of flesh. In the end he nerved himself to slap her but had to pluck the spectacles clear first. At the touch of his fingers the noise stopped. She seemed to try to shrink down into the bed, whispering words he could not hear. In twenty seconds she was asleep.

  She was still asleep next morning when he woke all stiff with sleeping on a borrowed mattress on the floor.

  “Sirri, my friend,” he said to Mr. Palati, “you will look after the girl? I will tell you—I stayed in the house of her father when I came to England. And then the Greens bombed it and all her family were killed. I lost my memory, as I have told you, and went wandering about, but the police thought that this girl had helped with the bomb, killing her own family. They thought this because of something I had given her, and they were very cruel to her. Now they have let her go and I have found her. She has done nothing. It was all a mistake—my stupidity—she is quite innocent.”

  Mr. Palati’s heavy but normally happy face clouded at the mention of the police and did not clear again.

  “This restaurant is my life, Pravi,” he said. “Already I pay protection to the police—you know they could put a bomb in here and say the Greens did it. They are swine. I cannot anger them.”

  Humayan drew his National Insurance Card from his wallet and slid it across the cash-desk.

  “That is my hostage,” he said. “You keep that, and I will return this evening with a residence permit for the girl.”

  They shook hands over the deal, very solemnly.

  “You are a good man, Sirri,” said Humayan. “I think you are the only good man I have ever met.”

  Mr. Palati looked at him in astonishment.

  “That is not what my ladies say,” he chuckled. “Very much not.”

  Humayan left him beaming with the remembered pleasure of what his ladies had said to him and what had caused them to say it.

  To know your way round an organisation is one thing. To know your way through it is another. In the time since he
had returned from captivity Humayan had begun to learn the latter art, and though he was by no means an adept he had discovered one or two tunnellings of which Mr. Mann was only dimly aware. He got Glenda’s card and residence permit from an apparently very lowly official; they cost him twenty-eight pounds. The clerk generously threw into the bargain a coding which Humayan chose, partly because it could have no connection with the family that had lived in Horseman’s Yard.

  “In any case the big machine’s got gremlins,” he said. “So if there’s any kick-back we can put it down to that.”

  He peeled his chewing-gum off the tiny grid of the concealed microphone by his desk and changed the subject to that which Humayan had ostensibly come to visit him about.

  Mr. Palati returned the Insurance Card with a flourish and did not even ask to see Glenda’s documents.

  “I have put a bed in the little room opposite yours, Pravi,” he said. “It is not pretty, but you must have two rooms. This is a most respectable house. That is what I am always telling my ladies.”

  He laughed until the drawer of the cash register shot open with the vibrations and nudged him in the stomach.

  Glenda woke to the rattle of the cutlery on the tray. At first she tried to worm herself further into the bed, but then her head poked dear.

  “We’ve only just had supper,” she said in a complaining voice. “But don’t take it away. I’m still hungry.”

  For the next week Humayan worked with real verve and interest at the new task he had set himself, though odd little things—the intonation of a colleague, the length of time the switchboard operator took over his calls, the chilliness of his morning coffee—told him that he was not any longer the brightest hope of the organisation. He didn’t mind. As he said to Glenda one evening, “You see they all despise me. It is only partly a race thing. They have decided that I am—what was Kate’s word?—a creep. Yes, I am a creep, it is true. But I am not a creep all through. That is where they make their mistake, because they despise everything I do, and forget that in one way I am better than any of them. In one way I am Mr. Muscles. I will outwit them. I will destroy Mr. Mann.”

  “Who’s he?” said Glenda in the leaden tones she used all the time.

  “A man with cricket bats on his tie and short hair. He hated your father. He was glad of the excuse to torture you.”

  Even this information failed to make any impact on the dullness of her desolation. But she had evidently taken it in, for when he was settling her down for the night she said, “Don’t bother about that man with the cricket bats, Pete. Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter. It’s just something that happened, like a traffic accident.”

  Once more he was alarmed at her powers, her ability to see into his mind, her knowledge that he intended to bother.

  Next Saturday morning he used his RRB pass to wander up into the Zone. Action, as Anna had said, is sometimes necessary even against hopeless odds, because the odds against inaction lie at that infinity where the hyperbole meets the axis. He had vague ideas of actually stopping strangers and questioning them, but having been stopped and questioned himself by policemen a couple of times he no longer had the nerve. He wandered in an almost dreamy mood through the hot, littered streets, where the chief activities seemed to be mending very old cars and leaning against rusty railings. A few of last night’s drunks still lay on the pavements. Only the children seemed to move and speak as though there were any luck to be had out of this world. The shops here were small and solitary, their windows obscured by old advertisements for pipe-tobacco and sewing machines.

  Humayan zigzagged to and fro until he was lost. Then he paused and stared at a pawnbroker’s shop. The window, which had a grille over it, contained watches and jewellery, but the customers went in empty-handed and emerged with several suits of clothing over their arms. Humayan watched a plumpish, plainish girl strut into the shop on shoes whose soles were so thick and heels so high that they made her appear four inches taller than she was. He had always resented the fact that it was not ridiculous for a woman to add to her stature in such a fashion, but when he had tried it all his cousins, and even some of his aunts, had giggled all day. He gazed after the girl with dislike.

  An argument rose inside the shop, a man’s voice against a woman’s. The girl emerged, flushed and pouting, with the usual set of male suitings draped over her arm. A bald man in shirtsleeves followed her out, brandishing another garment.

  “Would I have taken it in if ye’d told me you wasn’t going to redeem it pay-days?” he snarled.

  The girl strutted away without answering.

  “What good is it to me?” he shouted, brandishing the garment to the street, so that all the gold glittered on its lapels.

  “Take up amateur thayatricals, uncle,” shouted a railing-leaner.

  Humayan moved away. The girl was easy to follow, because of her walk. Her skirt was so short that folds of her buttocks showed like jowls above her green thighs. At first he sneaked along, but then he realised that if she disappeared into a house he would have the fresh problem of making contact, so he hurried his pace and caught her on the very steps. They led down to a stinking basement area.

  “Miss, miss,” he whispered.

  She turned and stared through the railing at him, sulky-eyed.

  “I want to see Frank,” he whispered.

  Her face closed and hardened.

  “Tell him it’s Pete,” he said. “Just tell him what I look like.”

  She turned without word or sign and teetered down the ragged steps. Humayan waited, leaning against the railings like a native. After five minutes the door below opened and she hissed at him to come down. Her eyes held a speculative look now, but she said nothing as she led him along a passage full of bicycles and pointed to a dark brown door. He knocked. A known tone grunted. He went in.

  It was a woman’s room, full of cheap odours and holy knick-knacks. Mr. Leary lay on the bed, wearing a pair of pyjamas far too small for him. His face, from long hiding, had the colour and texture of concrete from which the shuttering has just been stripped.

  “Hi,” he said. “Didn’t expect to see you here. How did you find me?”

  Humayan told him.

  “That bitch,” said Mr. Leary. “Christ, she’s stupid. Can you lend me the cash to get it out of hock, old man? Even a thick-headed copper might make the connection. The going rate for a coat’s two quid in these parts.”

  Humayan counted five pound notes on to the dresser.

  “How are you?” he said.

  “Burnt out,” said Mr. Leary. “Shell-shocked. It’s like metal fatigue. You stand the stresses OK for years, so you think you’ll stand them for ever. Then you snap, under no load at all. I’d like to get out of the country, but none of them will handle me. I’m starting to wish those apes had shot me. You won’t believe this, old man, but I can’t stop thinking about Katie. Jesus, I was a fool about that.”

  His voice, which had been a model of half-humorous resignation at the beginning of this speech, was now tinged with soft self-pity.

  “That is what I came to ask you about,” said Humayan stiffly. Mr. Leary’s eyes half dosed, but as he turned his head away his pupils remained fixed on Humayan.

  “Let me explain,” said Humayan. “Moirag had tried to poison me, and Mr. Mann learnt of this. Before I left for home that evening he told me that Moirag was now fixed. A kidnap gang, unconnected with the local organisation, attempted to waylay me before I reached Horseman’s Yard. Mr. Mann had asked when I was going home. You were one of his agents. What I need to know is whether Mr. Mann knew that you were intending to blow up the Glisters’ house.”

  “Go and chase a rabbit,” said Mr. Leary.

  Humayan shrugged. He had several possible levers, including the simple threat to betray the man on the bed, but he thought it would be demeaning to employ them.

  “I will giv
e you ten pounds for an honest answer,” he said calmly.

  “Fifty,” said Mr. Leary.

  “Twenty,” said Humayan. He put the two notes with the others on the dresser and shut his wallet with a snap. His back pay had accumulated beautifully while he had been living cheaply as a prisoner, but there was no point in wasting it on this trash. Mr. Leary sighed.

  “OK,” he said. “I didn’t get precise orders, but I knew what he wanted, and he knew I knew. Only he didn’t know it suited me. That’s all.”

  “But he watched Glenda being tortured,” protested Humayan.

  Mr. Leary made an enquiring grumble. Humayan explained.

  “Sure,” said Mr. Leary. “He’d have to go through with that. He couldn’t let on how he knew she’d had nothing to do with it, could he? That’s an organisation where half your colleagues go about with a permanent crouch, just in case they get the chance to snatch the rug from under you.”

  “I see,” said Humayan. He stood for a moment looking at the money on the dresser. He would have liked to take the five pounds back so that he could redeem the coat and send it to Mr. Zass, but that would have been an extra risk.

  “Thank you,” he said suddenly. “Goodbye.”

  Mr. Leary started on a sentence of protest, but then sighed, waved a dismissive hand and lay back on the bed.

  The girl was waiting in the passageway. She beckoned Humayan up to the further end, then whispered, “Will you be turning him in, mister? Will I be getting the reward?”

  Humayan looked up at her, which he would not have needed to do had she been wearing more decorous shoes.

  “I would prefer him to stay here,” he said. “What rent is he paying you?”

  “Him!” she sneered.

  “All right. I will pay you five pounds a week, in advance, provided he stays here. You understand?”

  “Ach, I can keep him,” she answered with a curiously repulsive movement of her torso, a small free sample of what she regarded as her allure. “It will be a change having a man in the house who’s bringing the money in.”