The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

Gone under? The driver was pulling something from between the front wheels. He was bent double and they could see his bottom rise in the air, with the frill of tartan at his waist. Inside the body of the car they sat very still, as if not to draw attention to the incident. They did not look at each other, but watched as the driver straightened up, rubbed the small of his back, then walked around and lifted the tailgate, pulling out something dark, a wrapping, a tarpaulin. The chill of the night hit them between their shoulder blades, and fractionally they shrank together. Phil took her hand. She twitched it away; not petulant, but because she felt she needed to concentrate. The driver appeared in silhouette before them, lit by their own headlights. He turned his head and glanced up and down the empty road. He had something in his hand, a rock. He stooped. Thud, thud, thud. She tensed. She wanted to cry out. Thud, thud, thud. The man straightened up. There was a bundle in his arms. Tomorrow’s dinner, she thought. Seethed in onion and tomato sauce. She didn’t know why the word seethed came to her. She remembered a sign down in the town: The Sophocles School of Motoring. “Call no man happy…” The driver posted the bundle into the back of the car, by their luggage. The tailgate slammed.

Recycling, she thought. Phil would say, “Very laudable.” If he spoke. But it seemed he had decided not to. She understood that they wouldn’t, either of them, mention this dire start to their winter break. She cradled her wrist. Gently, gently. A movement of anxiety. A washing. Massaging the minute pain away. I shall go on hearing it, she thought, at least for the rest of this week: thud, thud, thud. We might make a joke of it, perhaps. How we froze. How we let him get on with it, what else could we … because you don’t get vets patroling the mountains by night. Something rose into her throat, that she wanted to articulate; tickled her hard palate, fell away again.

* * *

THE PORTER SAID, “Welcome to the Royal Athena Sun.” Light spilled from a marble interior, and near at hand some cold broken columns were spotlighted, the light shifting from blue to green and back again. That will be the “archaeological feature” as promised, she thought. Another time she would have grinned at the exuberant vulgarity. But the clammy air, the incident … she inched out of the car and straightened up, unsmiling, her hand resting on the taxi’s roof. The driver nudged past her without a word. He lifted the tailgate. But the porter, hovering helpful, was behind him. He reached for their bags with both hands. The driver moved swiftly, blocking him, and to her own amazement she jumped forward, “No!” and so did Phil, “No!”

“I mean,” Phil said. “It’s only two bags.” As if to prove the lightness of the load, he had gripped one of the bags in his own fist, and he gave it a joyous twirl. “I believe in—” he said. But the phrase traveling light eluded him. “Not much stuff,” he said.

“Okay, sir.” The porter shrugged. Stepped back. She rehearsed it in her mind, as if telling it to a friend, much later: you see, we were made complicit. But the taxi driver didn’t do anything wrong, of course. Just something efficient.

And her imaginary friend agreed: still, instinctively you would feel, you would feel there was something to hide.

“I’m ready for a drink,” Phil said. He was yearning for the scene beyond the plate glass: brandy sours, clanking ice cubes in the shape of fish, clicking high heels on terra-cotta tiles, wrought-iron scrollwork, hotel linen, soft pillow. Call no man happy. Call no man happy until he has gone down to his grave in peace. Or at least to his junior suite; and can rub out today and wake tomorrow hungry. The taxi driver leaned into the car to scoop out the second bag. As he did, he nudged aside the tarpaulin, and what she glimpsed—and in the same moment, refused to see—was not a cloven hoof, but the grubby hand of a human child.



HARLEY STREET



I open the door. It’s my job. I have a hundred administrative tasks, and a job title of course, but in effect I’m the meeter and greeter. I take the appointment cards the patients thrust at me—so many of them never say a word—and usher them to the waiting room. Later I send them along the corridor or up the stairs to meet whatever is in store for them: which is usually nothing pleasant.

Mostly they look right through me. Their eyes and ears are closed to everything except their own predicament, and they might just as well be steered in by a robot. I said that one day to Mrs. Bathurst. She turned her eyes on me, in that half-awake manner she has. A robot, she repeated. Or a zombie, I said brightly. That’s what our doctors should do, make a zombie. That would cut down on their practice expenses, give them less to complain about.

Bettina, who takes blood in the basement, said what do you mean, make a zombie? Child’s play, I said. You need datura, ground puffer fish, then shake up a herbal cocktail to your family recipe. Then you bury them for a bit, dig them up, slap them round the head to stun them: and they’re a zombie. They walk and talk, but their will’s been taken out.

I was talking on airily, but at the same time, I admit, I was frightening myself. Bettina watched me for signs of madness; her pretty mouth parted, like a split strawberry. And Mrs. Bathurst examined me; her lower jaw sagged, so that the light glinted on one of the gold fillings done cheap for her by Snapper, our dentist.

“What’s the matter with you two?” I said. “Don’t you read the New Scientist these days?”

“My eyes are poor,” Mrs. Bathurst said. “I find the TV is company.”

Of course, the only thing Bettina buys is Hello! She is from Melbourne, and has no sense of humor: no sense of anything really. “Zombies?” she said, articulating carefully: “I thought zombies were for cutting cane under a hot sun. I never associated them with Harley Street.”

Mrs. Bathurst shook her head. “Beyond the grave,” she said heavily.

Dr. Shinbone (first floor, second left) was passing. “Come, come, nurse,” he said, startled. “Is that the sort of talk?”