A Decline in Property Values

 

chelsea marina was burning when I returned to London. From the Hammersmith flyover I could see the clouds of smoke and steam rising from the river, and hear the wailing ambulances that ferried the injured to Charing Cross Hospital. Crowds of onlookers filled the King’s Road, penned behind the steel barriers as they watched the flames lift from a dozen houses in the estate. Fire engines and police vans blocked the street, their lights sweeping the lap dancing clubs and bucket-shop agencies.

I parked in the Fulham Road, half a mile from the estate, and followed a crowd of excited schoolchildren heading towards this early Guy Fawkes display. Scraps of charred paper were falling from the air, and I picked an ashy fragment of a credit-card slip from my sleeve. Wine-store receipts, medical bills and share certificates drifted down from the sky, inventories of a middle-class life that had come to an end.

As I feared, the armistice had been brief. Soon after I had left for Heathrow a large force of police entered Chelsea Marina and swiftly seized control of the estate. Teams of uniformed officers raced through the sabotaged pedestrian gates, and an amphibious snatch squad took advantage of the high tide to make a river-borne landing at the marina.

Three hours later the police action was over. In a defiant gesture some dozen houses were set alight by their owners, but the fire engines waiting in the King’s Road moved in promptly The few residents who had burned themselves or been   roughly manhandled by the snatch squads were carried to the ambulances before the TV cameras could get too close. A small barricade in Beaufort Avenue was brushed aside in seconds Chelsea Marina was now an anomalous enclave ruled jointly by the police and the local council.

When I arrived in the King’s Road the snatch squads were drinking their tea outside the manager’s office, and the TV units had packed away their cameras. Jeers filled the air around me, and I assumed that the police were being abused.

But the boos were aimed at a family BMW leaving the estate. The parents and their three children sat crammed among the suitcases, a cowed labrador at the tailgate window. In the glare of arc lights I recognized a bank manager and his wife from Grosvenor Place. Heads lowered, they turned into the King’s Road. The crowd jeered at them, threw coins and rattled the steel barriers. Beside me, a middle-aged usherette from a King’s Road cinema shook her head in disgust.

‘Where is everyone?’ I asked her. ‘The estate looks empty.’

They’ve gone. The whole lot of them. Hundreds of cars, they just took off and left.’

‘Where to?’

‘Who cares?’ She brushed the charred fragment of a cheque stub from her braided uniform. ‘Shoplifting, buying petrol with dodgy credit cards. There’s more than a touch of the gypsy in them. Good riddance.’

‘You don’t know where they’ve gone?’

‘I don’t want to know. Look at the state they’ve left the place in. Done up nicely, those houses could be a treat

Another family was leaving, wife grimly clutching the steering wheel, husband fumbling with a map, two teenage daughters sheltering a terrified Persian cat. They looked away as the jeers followed them, and disappeared into the traffic now moving down the King’s Road.

 

A fire engine emerged from the entrance, its crew doffing their helmets to the crowd. Behind it was a police car, a handcuffed prisoner in the rear seat beside a woman officer with a bandaged wrist. I recognized Sergeant Angela, whom I had last seen outside Broadcasting House. She stared severely at the cheering spectators, and something had clearly unsettled her. Then I realized that the prisoner was Kay Churchill, hair held back by a camouflage bandeau, cheeks smeared with commando blacking. She raised a middle finger to the onlookers shaking their fists at her, exhausted but spirited as ever, still manning the barricades inside her head.

I pushed past the jeering usherette and eased myself between two sections of steel barrier. I crossed the King’s Road, hoping to reach Kay before the police car moved on, but a constable seized my arm and walked me briskly to the gatehouse.

Two men in plainclothes stood by the manager’s office, conferring among the debris of plastic teacups. One was the sandy-haired Major Tulloch, bored but all-seeing, his eyes on the huge cloud of steam that rose from the gutted houses in Beaufort Avenue. Beside him was Henry Kendall, who wore a yellow police jacket over his lounge suit. The reflected light gave his confident face a seasick pallor, and he seemed eager to get back to the security of St John’s Wood and the Institute.

When he saw me he spoke to Major Tulloch, who signalled to the constable and then strode away through the crowd of police and firemen.

‘Henry, I’m impressed.’ I accepted a plastic cup of air-raid victim’s tea passed through the broken window of the man­ager’s office. ‘You’ve joined Scotland Yard?’

‘Professional back-up.’ Henry coughed on the smut-filled air. His tie was neatly knotted, but he looked dishevelled by the day’s violence. ‘I’m putting everything into context for them.’

‘Good for you. What is the context?’

‘This wasn’t just a riot. It’s important the police grasp that.’ seemed to notice me for the first time. ‘David? What are you doing at Chelsea Marina?’

‘I live here. Remember?’

‘Right.’ Still puzzled, he said: ‘Everyone’s gone. They’ve arrested your landlady for biting a policewoman. Were you . . . ?’

‘Taking part in the siege? I’ve just come from Heathrow. I missed the whole thing.’

‘It was over in half an hour. A few die-hards set fire to their houses. The others packed up and left.’

‘Why?’

‘Self-embarrassment. I think they were ashamed.’ He lis­tened to two constables nearby who were discussing a weekend car auction in Acton. ‘You look worn out, David. Have you talked to Sally?’

‘Where? Isn’t she with you?’

‘No. We’re seeing less of each other. I’ve called her a few times, but she must be away with friends. What were you doing at Heathrow?’

‘Following up the Terminal 2 bomb. I might be on to something.’

‘Let’s hope so. The Yard are still interested in Laura. For what it’s worth, they don’t think she was a target.’

‘I’m sure she wasn’t.’

‘In fact, there may not have been a target at all. There’s a new kind of terrorist in the making. The old targets aren’t working, so they hit out at random. It’s hard to grasp.’

‘I think that’s the point.’ Concerned for him, as he gazed uncomfortably at the steaming houses, I said: ‘There are some very odd people around, Henry.’

‘Especially here. Chelsea Marina was incubating them by the hour. This maverick doctor, the paediatrician . . . ?’

‘Richard Gould? Sally met him once - she thought he was very attractive.’

 

 ‘Really?’ Henry gave a small shudder. ‘He was the ringleader here. The smoke bombs and nuisance attacks. They were all his idea. The two of you were seen together.’

‘Why didn’t the police arrest us?’

‘They were going to.’ Henry nodded briskly, his eye on me. ‘Sally made me step in. I talked to senior people at the Home Office, and convinced them you could be valuable to us. What happened in Chelsea Marina might be the start of something much bigger. It’s bad enough when, working people torch their council estates, but if the middle classes take to the streets it spells real trouble.’

‘You’re right, Henry. The effect on property values

‘Unthinkable.’ Henry pressed on smoothly. ‘I explained your background, and how you were working undercover for me. They agreed to leave you in place, unless things got completely out of hand.’

‘I’m grateful. So, all along I’ve been a police spy? Without realizing it?’

‘In effect.’ Henry patted my shoulder, as if awarding me a modest field decoration. ‘You could have some very useful input, David. First-hand testimony, insight into how resent­ment fuels itself. We’re planning a visit by the Home Secretary in a week or so. I’ll see if I can fit you into the official party. Sally thinks it’s time we began your rehabilitation ...”

As we left Chelsea Marina the police were waving on the traffic. Disappointed by the lack of action, the crowd cheered and then booed us when we crossed the road.

St John’s Wood was unchanged, an enduring stage set con­structed in calmer times. The tourists and Beatles fans haunted the Abbey Road, and drivers hunted for parking spaces. Unable to find a vacant bay, I left the Range Rover on a double yellow line, a breach of etiquette that rendered a young warden momentarily speechless. She approached me, assuming that I was a visitor from another world, unfamiliar with the social niceties that preserved civilized life and kept the pavements clear of wolves and footpads.

When she was five paces from me she stopped and raised her booking pad, as if to defend herself. She had seen something in my manner, a feral edge hinting at an ease with violence. My bruised forehead and the smuts on my cheeks reminded her of other social outcasts, the road-ragers, Porsche-owning currency traders, and drivers with out-of-date tax discs who haunted her dreams,

I waited for her to scurry away, and then walked towards the house. I hoped that Sally would be lolling on the sofa with a favourite Kahlo volume, a signal that she needed attention from me. But a pile of newspapers lay on the doorstep, sodden after the night’s rain, and I assumed that she was still away with friends.

I picked up the evening paper, delivered only a few minutes before I arrived, and studied the headlines.

‘Luxury Rent Rebels Surrender.’

‘Posh People’s Scorched Earth Policy.’

‘Win a House in Chelsea Marina.’

 

But we had not surrendered. The exodus had been a tactical retreat, a principled refusal to accept the rule of police and bailiffs. Rather than submit to the patronizing do-goodery of social workers and psychologists like Henry and myself, the residents had decided to leave with their heads high and integrity intact. The revolution would continue on a date to be agreed, seeding itself in a hundred other middle-class estates across the land, in Tudorbethan semis and mock-Georgian villas. Wherever there was a private school or a snow-white lavatory bowl, a Gilbert and Sullivan performance or a well-loved old Bentley, the spectre of Kay Churchill would lighten the darkness, hope springing from her raised middle finger.

I needed to find where Kay was held, visit her as soon as possible with a change of clothes, a list of lawyers and enough money to buy a steady supply of joints during her weeks on remand. Throwing the evening paper onto the pile of damp broadsheets, I waved to the parking warden and opened the front door.

I stood in the hall, listening to the empty house. A deep entropic quiet enveloped the rooms, the peace of spent affec­tions, of emotions run down like the batteries of talking toys that mimicked the voices around them. I assumed that Sally had given the housekeeper a week’s leave. The dust hanging in the sunlight seemed to come alive, and flowed around me like an affectionate wraith.

Upstairs in our bedroom a medley of perfumes greeted me when I opened the wardrobes, memories of restaurants and dinner parties. In the bathroom I caught the scent of Sally’s body, the sweet, killing spoor of her scalp and skin on the towels. The same bric-a-brac lay across her dressing table, a miniaturized city of bottles and jars. I missed her, and hoped that one day I could take her with me to live at Chelsea Marina.

I switched on the answerphone and listened to Sally’s recorded message. She was away for a fortnight, touring Brittany with friends. Her voice seemed distant and almost halting, as if she were unsure of her own motives for going away.

I was concerned for her, but as I sat on her bed, feeling the faint imprint of her body under my hand, I knew that I was waiting for Richard Gould to call me.

The noise of the aircraft at Heathrow still drummed inside my head, almost drowning Richard’s voice as he set out his credo of meaningless violence. Thinking of his pressed suit and polished shoes, his pale but fleshier face with its hints of health like the  first shoots of spring, I knew that he was waking from a long dream. He had been moving through an unlit world, refusing to believe in anything but his band of brain-damaged children, Peter Pan to his lost boys. In Bishop’s Park he had at last seen the sun in the high trees. I liked Richard, and felt concerned for him, but was still not sure whether to believe him. Had he really detonated the Heathrow bomb, and killed the young woman on her Hammersmith doorstep? Or was he a new kind of fanatic, who needed the fantasy of absolute violence, and only seemed fully alive when he could imagine himself as the perpetrator of appalling crimes?

I sat alone by the dining-room table, drinking my warm whisky and watching the dust reconfigure itself around me. I knew that I should go to the police, but I could sense the force of Gould’s logic. This ruthless and desperate man was pointing the way to a frightening truth. A legion of nonentities were multiplying the tables of a new mathematics based on the power of zero, generating a virtual psychopathology from their shadows.

Gould never telephoned, but the next day Henry Kendall’s assistant rang and told me that the Home Secretary would shortly visit Chelsea Marina, leading a delegation of social scientists, civil servants and psychologists. Details of the visit, and the necessary security pass, would be on their way.

I lowered the receiver into its cradle, surprised by how light it seemed. A brighter air filled the stuffy room. I knew that I would soon be returning to my real home.

 

 

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