After all, both lots put together only came to around £60 a year.
Shadwell didn't consider this in any way criminal. The army was a sacred trust, and a man had to do something. The old ninepences weren't coming in like they used to.
Saturday
t was very early on Saturday morning, on the last day of the world, and the sky was redder than blood.
The International Express delivery man rounded the corner at a careful thirty.. five miles an hour, shifted down to second, and pulled up on the grass verge.
He got out of the van, and immediately threw himself into a ditch to avoid an oncoming lorry that had barrelled around the bend at something well in excess of eighty miles an hour.
He got up, picked up his glasses, put them back on, retrieved his parcel and clipboard, brushed the grass and mud from his uniform, and, as an afterthought, shook his fist at the rapidly diminishing lorry.
“Shouldn't be allowed, bloody lorries, no respect for other road users, what I always say, what I always say, is remember that without a car, son, you're just a pedestrian too ...”
He climbed down the grassy verge, clambered over a low fence, and found himself beside the river Uck.
The International Express delivery man walked along the banks of the river, holding the parcel.
Farther down the riverbank sat a young man dressed all in white. He was the only person in sight. His hair was white, his skin chalk pale, and he sat and stared up and down the river, as if he were admiring the view. He looked like Victorian Romantic poets looked just before the consumption and drug abuse really started to cut it.
The International Express man couldn't understand it. I mean, in the old days, and it wasn't that long ago really, there had been an angler every dozen yards along the bank; children had played there; courting couples had come to listen to the splish and gurgle of the river, and to hold hands, and to get all lovey.. dovey in the Sussex sunset. He'd done that with Maud, his missus, before they were married. They'd come here to spoon and, on one memorable occasion, fork.
Times changed, reflected the delivery man.
Now white and brown sculptures of foam and sludge drifted serenely down the river, often covering it for yards at a stretch. And where the surface of the water was visible it was covered with a molecules.. thin petrochemical sheen.
There was a loud whirring as a couple of geese, thankful to be back in England again after the long, exhausting flight across the Northern Atlantic, landed on the rainbow.. slicked water, and sank without trace.
Funny old world, thought the delivery man. Here's the Uck, used to be the prettiest river in this part of the world, and now it's just a glorified industrial sewer. The swans sink to the bottom, and the fishes float on the top.
Well, that's progress for you. You can't stop progress.
He had reached the man in white.
“'Scuse me, sir. Party name of Chalky?”
The man in white nodded, said nothing. He continued to gaze out at the river, following an impressive sludge and foam sculpture with his eyes.
“So beautiful,” he whispered. “It's all so damn beautiful.”
The delivery man found himself temporarily devoid of words. Then his automatic systems cut in. “Funny old world isn't it and no mistake I mean you go all over the world delivering and then here you are practically in your own home so to speak, I mean I was born and bred 'round here, sir, and I've been to the Mediterranean, and to Des O' Moines, and that's in America, sir, and now here I am, and here's your parcel, sir.”
Party name of Chalky took the parcel, and took the clipboard, and signed for the parcel. The pen developed a leak as he did so, and his signature obliterated itself as it was written. It was a long word, and it began with a P, and then there was a splodge, and then it ended in something that might have been .. ence and might have been .. ution.
“Much obliged, sir,” said the delivery man.
He walked back along the river, back toward the busy road where he had left his van, trying not to look at the river as he went.
Behind him the man in white opened the parcel. In it was a crown .. a circlet of white metal, set with diamonds. He gazed at it for some seconds, with satisfaction, then put it on. It glinted in the light of the rising sun. Then the tarnish, which had begun to suffuse its silver surface when his fingers touched it, spread to cover it completely; and the crown went black.
White stood up. There's one thing you can say for air pollution, you get utterly amazing sunrises. It looked like someone had set fire to the sky.
And a careless match would have set fire to the river, but, alas, there was no time for that now. In his mind he knew where the Four Of Them would be meeting, and when, and he was going to have to hurry to be there by this afternoon.
Perhaps we will set fire to the sky, he thought. And he left that place, almost imperceptibly.
It was nearly time.
The delivery man had left his van on the grass verge by the dual carriageway. He walked around to the driver's side (carefully, because other cars and lorries were still rocketing around the bend), reached in through the open window, and took the schedule from the dashboard.
Only one more delivery to make, then.
He read the instructions on the delivery voucher carefully.
He read them again, paying particular attention to the address, and the message. The address was one word: Everywhere.
Then, with his leaking pen, he wrote a brief note to Maud, his wife. It read simply, I love you.
Then he put the schedule back on the dashboard, looked left, looked right, looked left again and began to walk purposefully across the road. He was halfway across when a German juggernaut came around the corner, its driver crazed on caffeine, little white pills, and EEC transport regulations.
He watched its receding bulk.
Cor, he thought, that one nearly had me.
Then he looked down at the gutter.
Oh, he thought.
YES, agreed a voice from behind his left shoulder, or at least from behind the memory of his left shoulder.
The delivery man turned, and looked, and saw. At first he couldn't find the words, couldn't find anything, and then the habits of a working lifetime took over and he said, “Message for you, sir.”
FOR ME?
“Yes, sir.” He wished he still had a throat. He could have swallowed, if he still had a throat. “No package, I'm afraid, Mister ... uh, sir. It's a message.”
DELIVER IT, THEN.
“It's this, sir. Ahem. Come and See.”
FINALLY. There was a grin on its face, but then, given the face, there couldn't have been anything else.
THANK YOU, it continued. I MUST COMMEND YOUR DEVOTION TO DUTY.
“Sir?” The late delivery man was falling through a gray mist, and all he could see were two spots of blue, that might have been eyes, and might been distant stars.