Trouble on the Heath Read online

  “And there are plenty of proper grounds for objection,” Malcolm went on. “The proposed development is not in keeping with the other houses in the road, which is in a Conservation Area. It is twice the size of the existing two houses put together. It will mean felling no less than forty trees and it’s in a Tree Conservation Area. But there are even worse problems. Patrick, you’ve got some facts on the groundwater, I believe?”

  Patrick Simpson, the lawyer, stood up. He was a strong supporter of the Residents’ Association. “Yes, we’ve had a hydrological study done …”

  “A what?” put in Mr Kendrick, the vet.

  “A study of the ground-water and streams in the area,” said Patrick.

  “Well why didn’t you say?”

  “I did,” Patrick replied.

  “I still think we should have our tea and biscuits now,” Mr Kendrick said.

  “I’ll get Molly to put the kettle on,” said Lady Chesney. She was worrying that more people might leave. She charged £1.50 for the tea and biscuits, and was counting on making enough money to buy another bottle of vodka.

  “Please allow Patrick to continue!” Malcolm’s voice had a whine in it now.

  “Well. This second basement they’re proposing …” said Patrick.

  “The one with the swimming pool?” asked Mrs Furlong.

  “Exactly!”

  “Will they let us use it?” asked someone.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Malcolm.

  “I wouldn’t mind a swimming pool,” said Mrs Furlong.

  “Yes! I can’t see how we can object to that!” said Mr Kendrick.

  “Well listen!” shouted Malcolm. “Listen to what Patrick’s going to tell you!”

  “This second basement,” continued Patrick, “will be built right across one of the underground streams in the area. The weight of the building and the way it will divert the water will flood the wild-life sanctuary on the corner. Plus we have no idea how the development might affect the ponds. It could drain them by altering the water courses and the level of the water table.”

  “These are strong grounds for objection to the development!” exclaimed Malcolm triumphantly.

  “The Council can’t ignore things like that, not in a Conservation Area,” added Patrick.

  “And what about the lorries?” Mr Clarkson was on his feet again.

  “And the mess,” said Barbara, the Secretary of the Residents’ Association.

  “Exactly!” said Malcolm. “With the amount of building work they are proposing, we calculate that there will be something like forty lorry movements per day for something like four years! The road is only three metres wide. There’s just about room for a car, but a lorry will take up the entire road. There’d be nowhere for people on foot to get out of the way. So there is a serious risk of accidents.”

  “And where are the lorries going to turn?”

  “And think about the noise!”

  “And the damage to the road surface. It’s a private road. We pay for its upkeep.”

  By the time the tea and biscuits arrived, Malcolm was quite happy with the level of outrage in the room. Lady Chesney was equally happy that she would be able to afford another bottle of vodka. The tea and biscuits triggered a buzz of conversation. Malcolm banged his teaspoon against his cup.

  “OK, everybody,” he said loudly. “If you’ve all got your teas can we carry on, please!”

  “What! There’s more?” asked Mr Kendrick, the vet.

  “Yes, of course there’s more!” Malcolm felt himself getting irritated by Mr Kendrick. There was something about the vet’s moustache that annoyed him. It was so clearly based on Adolf Hitler’s moustache. Had Mr Kendrick grown it on purpose as a tribute to the Great Dictator? If he hadn’t, shouldn’t someone have a quiet word with him?

  Malcolm pulled his mind away from Mr Kendrick’s moustache and forced himself to speak calmly.

  “We still haven’t decided what action to take,” he said.

  “I thought we were going to write to the Council?” said Mrs Furlong.

  “Shall we each do that or will the Residents’ Association write on all our behalves?” asked Lady Chesney. She did not normally join in the discussions. She felt it was beneath her dignity, but the thought of actually having to make the effort of writing a letter moved her to speak.

  “Well, it would be good to do both,” replied Malcolm.

  “Oh!” Lady Chesney’s face fell.

  “But there are all sorts of other things we need to discuss, like publicity, whether we should demonstrate, who else we can get to join the protest. All that sort of thing,” Malcolm looked around the faces of the members of the Residents’ Association. Most of them looked dismayed.

  Chapter Four

  Trevor Williams sat at his desk and buried his face in his hands. It was all too much.

  “They’re planning yet another protest demonstration. This time it’s outside numbers 26 and 27 Highgrove Park,” he murmured.

  “How do they have time for it?” asked Cynthia, who looked after the filing. “Don’t they have jobs?”

  “Not proper ones,” groaned Trevor. “They’re all writers and academics and bankers. I suppose they’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “It’s shocking,” said Cynthia. “Here we are trying to do the best for people, and all they do is moan. Moan, moan, moan.”

  “It’s the way they hate us that gets me down,” said Trevor. “It’s the constant hostility, the way they look at you when they know you’re from the Council. That little glint that jumps into their eyes when you say what your job is, and they reply: ‘Oh! The Planning Department, eh?’

  “What does ‘eh?’ mean? I’ll tell you what ‘eh?’ means, Cynthia. ‘Eh?’ means: ‘We’re going to make your life a misery!’ ‘Eh?’ means: ‘We have complete freedom to be nasty to you.’ ‘Eh?’ means: ‘Society has given us permission to be rude to your face.’ ‘Eh?’ means: ‘Society empowers us to swear at you, to yell at you, to bad-mouth you and generally torment you and make your lives not worth living! Because we pay your wages! You are our servants! Our slaves! To do what we tell you!’ That’s what ‘Eh?’ means, Cynthia!”

  Then Trevor Williams put his head in his hands again and started to sob. Cynthia put her arm around him and whispered something into his ear. Pretty soon, Trevor Williams put his arm around Cynthia, and pretty soon they were kissing. A little bit later they were hard at work.

  It was lucky the rest of the office had all gone home.

  “Happy birthday,” whispered Cynthia.

  Some time later, Trevor and Cynthia were sitting in a pub in Camden Town. Trevor had a pint of bitter in front of him and Cynthia a small glass of white wine.

  “I often can’t get out of bed in the morning,” Trevor confided to Cynthia.

  “That must be terrible,” she replied soothingly.

  “I sometimes think that God has laid his curse upon me!” Being on his third pint Trevor was in confessional mode.

  “You shouldn’t say such things!” exclaimed Cynthia. “Besides, you got that promotion only last week.”

  “Yes! ‘He’ really wants me to suffer! Head of Camden Planning! I ask you! The worst job in the world!”

  Trevor heaved such a deep sigh it seemed to have started in his trousers. “They’ll blame me for everything. They’ll blame me for planning permissions granted. They’ll blame me for planning permissions refused. No one ever says, ‘Well granted!’ or ‘Well rejected!’ They just complain, complain, complain!”

  “But your decisions affect everybody! You save the environment! You look after conservation areas! It’s important work, Trevor!” said Cynthia.

  But Trevor didn’t seem to have heard her. “God is punishing me for something, but I don’t know for what!” He looked up at the ceiling of the pub, and cried, “What have I done wrong, God?”

  As he did so, he noticed bits of chewing gum and silver paper stuck to the ceiling.

  That’s
my life, he thought. A lot of people have worked terribly hard to produce something pointless and ugly.

  “And you’ve got a lovely home,” said Cynthia. “It’s really nice.”

  “It’s not a ‘home’, it’s a flat,” replied Trevor.

  “Well, a flat can be a home, can’t it?” Cynthia sounded uncertain.

  “A ‘home’ is a house with a garden and children running around it and the smell of hot bread coming from the kitchen,” said Trevor.

  “Well … you could have that if you wanted,” Cynthia murmured softly. But Trevor was still staring at the ceiling.

  “I wonder how they get those egg-cups made out of silver paper to stay up?” he muttered, and he didn’t even notice as Cynthia reached out her hand for his.

  Chapter Five

  In his iron fortress, surrounded by slaves and minions, the Evil Emperor stared at the latest message from his servants in the West. There was trouble. His plans were being challenged by something called a ‘Residents’ Association’. What was a ‘Residents’ Association’? He had never heard of such a thing. He would have to look it up in the English–Russian Dictionary.

  ‘Skulking’ that was a great word! He’d found that in the English–Russian Dictionary. He wished he could ‘skulk’ more. He felt like ‘skulking’ now. He wanted to ‘skulk’ around his vast iron fortress, and see what his slaves and minions were up to, for he trusted no one.

  The Evil Emperor (for that was how he liked to think of himself) lived in a world where it was unsafe to trust anybody or anything. ‘Strike first!’ was his motto. Strike before anyone realises you know that they’re plotting against you. And one thing was always certain – people were always plotting against you.

  This ‘Residents’ Association’, for example, what could it be but a plot against him? It was clearly some sort of criminal gang devoted to taking over his territory. It could be that filthy creep, Ivan Morozov, his one-time partner.

  Morozov was always looking for ways to do him down. He was forever scheming to take over the gambling cartels in Romania and the Ukraine.

  “Pah!” The Evil Emperor spat at the imaginary Morozov. Morozov was too soft. He could never handle the rough side of the business.

  Any business had its rough side, and in his particular business if that meant taking vital organs out of someone’s body and replacing them with their own credit cards, so be it.

  Or the rough side of business might involve kidnapping someone’s mother and photographing her performing undignified acts with animals. That was just the way of the world. It was nothing to get upset about, like Morozov did. He was pathetic.

  Or maybe this ‘Residents’ Association’ was an off-shoot of the Zolkin Operation? That would be serious.

  The Evil Emperor scowled. That was another great word: ‘scowl’. He’d looked it up in the English–Russian Dictionary, and it fitted what he was doing now perfectly. Ah! The English language was a wonderful thing! You could always find just the right word. He only wished he could speak the language.

  The Evil Emperor ‘scowled’ again. (You can never have too much of a good thing, he reminded himself.) If the Zolkin Operation were behind the ‘Residents’ Association’ he would have to act swiftly. Boris Zolkin was as ruthless as he was cunning. If Boris was preparing to push his way into the UK business, then a short, sharp response was vital. It would have to convince Boris Zolkin that the Evil Emperor was even more ruthless than he was. It would have to be a deadly blow to Zolkin’s ambitions in the UK. It would have to teach him never to meddle again in the Evil Emperor’s affairs.

  There was no question about it.

  The ‘Residents’ Association’ (whatever it was) would have to be destroyed.

  Actually the Evil Emperor didn’t live in ‘an iron fortress’. That was just the way he liked to think of his house. It was, in fact, made of wood, and it was painted a cheerful bright blue. It had wooden pillars all around it and although it was large and rambling, it was actually a very pretty house. It had been constructed in the 19th century for a wealthy landowner.

  Grigori Koslov, for such was the name of the Evil Emperor, had bought it some years ago as a wreck. He had restored it with taste, and yet had managed to kit it out with all the latest stuff. It had central heating, satellite dishes, and broadband. It had a sauna, an indoor swimming pool, and a gym.

  In addition the windows were fitted with bullet-proof glass and the whole building had been made fire-safe and bomb-proof. Grigori had also constructed a five-metre-high electric fence around the property. In addition three American pit bull terriers ran loose in the grounds. Grigori had researched the most dangerous breeds of dog, and discovered that the pit bull has a bite that can go through both muscle and bone. He immediately had the dogs imported from the US.

  As he explained to his wife, it wasn’t that he was paranoid. He just had a lot of business contacts who would like to see him impaled on an iron spike.

  Chapter Six

  Malcolm Thomas finished his lecture on the distribution of early Celtic fish hooks 6,000–5,000 BC. He packed his notes neatly into his bag. He nodded to the six students who had unexpectedly turned up to the lecture, and then wandered over to the porters’ lodge.

  His pigeon hole was surprisingly full.

  The first thing he took out was a mailing from the Medieval Academy of America. He always liked getting their letters, because they had such an impressive logo. It made the study of history seem respectable again. Most people, when you told them you were a Professor of History, would look blank and say things like: “Are people still doing History?” or “I thought we already knew it all.”

  But you had to take the Medieval Academy of America’s logo seriously. It gave the subject weight.

  Then there were a dozen bills, all from the university, and addressed to “Prof. Michael Thomas, Department of History”.

  “You’d think they could get my name right by now,” Malcolm murmured as he stuffed them into his bag.

  The university had a new Managing Director, whose greatest achievement had been to change his title from ‘The Principal’ to ‘The Managing Director’.

  His second greatest achievement was to introduce a new system of accounting. Instead of the university owning the buildings, and using them for research and teaching, the new Managing Director had sold the buildings off (for a vast fortune). Lecturers and staff now had to compete on the open market to hire the lecture halls and classrooms.

  Whenever a lecturer used a lecture hall, he had to pay the university out of his own salary. The lecturers’ salaries were then topped-up by grants, made possible by the sale of the buildings.

  The new Managing Director called the system ‘Transparency in Action’. The staff called it ‘Stupidity in Action’.

  In addition, the new Managing Director had ordered that ‘students’ must now be referred to as ‘clients’ or ‘customers’. ‘Subjects’ were, in future, to be referred to as ‘areas of future expertise’.

  Malcolm continued pulling envelopes out of his pigeon hole. There was the History Now! magazine. He would keep that to read over coffee. Nothing gave him more pleasure, in the whole month, than reading History Now! over a cup of coffee, and sneering at the articles.

  But then at the bottom of the pigeon hole was an envelope that he didn’t recognise. The writing was unfamiliar and it bore a Russian stamp.

  Curious, he slit it open. Inside was a scrap of paper, upon which someone had written in capital letters the words: “STOP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING”.

  Malcolm thought for a while. Was the author of the note talking about teaching History? If so, Malcolm would take their advice seriously. When the new Managing Director had taken over as head of the university, he had spent a large part of his Opening Address being rude about any university teaching that did not contribute to the Gross National Product or produce some commercial breakthrough, like the mobile phone or soft ice-cream.

  Malcolm had the distinct
feeling that the teaching of Medieval History was high on the Managing Director’s hit list.

  If Malcolm were looking for a secure future, he should certainly stop what he was doing, but there was nothing else he wanted to do. History was his chosen subject and Medieval History, in particular, was his passion.

  But he had a creepy feeling that the writer of the note was not advising him to stop teaching History.

  That evening he showed the note to his wife Angela over supper.

  “I received this weird note this morning,” he said as he poured out two glasses of Chilean Merlot. He pushed the note across the table and watched her read it.

  “One of your students perhaps?” she said, with a slight curl of the lip.

  “But what are they talking about?” Malcolm took the note back, and examined it again, as he might examine a medieval manuscript. The colour of the ink, the style of the lettering, the pressure of the pen on paper, the age of the paper – all these things might give a clue as to who had written it, when they had written it, and why.

  Although Malcolm was an expert in unlocking the secrets of medieval manuscripts, this scrap of paper told him nothing.

  “Have you got something going with one of your students again, Malcolm?” Angela’s eyes were not narrow slits at the moment, but he knew they would become narrow slits if he didn’t head off this line of enquiry. He knew that once Angela’s eyes became narrow slits, he would have to do a lot of soothing before they returned to their proper shape. If they remained as narrow slits for more than five minutes, his life would not be worth living for the rest of the evening.

  “Of course not, my dear! You know I don’t do that sort of thing!” Malcolm tried to sound as indignant as possible.

  In fact Malcolm’s relations with his students had always been entirely correct. But several years ago, he’d received a note in his pigeon hole which read ‘I love you dearly X X X’.