Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Read online

  Cosmo de Paul raises a hand, exposing a melting clock face on his customised Dalí waistcoat.

  ‘Sir, will you be going over the Seven Years War today?’

  ‘Just a moment, Monsieur du Paul.’ It always pleases Kite when Peele deliberately mispronounces his surname. ‘I have another announcement to make. Speaking of birdwatchers, it will no doubt please the assembled company to know that an American golden-winged warbler, never before seen on British shores, has been spotted in the car park of a Tesco supermarket in Kent.’

  ‘That’s great news, sir,’ says Saltash.

  ‘Yes it is, Mister Saltash! Yes it is!’ Kite knows that Peele subscribes to the Spectator magazine and raids it for titbits that he can share with the boys at the start of each class. For this reason, among others, he always feels that Peele is playing the role of an eccentric schoolmaster, both for his own, and for the boys’ amusement, rather than showing them any glimpse of his true character and personality. In private, Peele is far less theatrical and in every way more inscrutable.

  ‘Speaking of distinguished novelists, what are the general feelings among you lot about Salman Rushdie and the lovely ayatollah’s fatwa? Senor del Paul, before we reintegrate with the Seven Years War, would you deign to comment?’

  Cosmo de Paul is a short, reed-thin late developer with a first-class brain and a third-class personality. He will later try to seduce Kite’s girlfriend and, within a decade, expose him to the FSB as an intelligence officer. His views on the Rushdie affair are as impatient as they are predictable.

  ‘I think he had it coming, sir.’

  Peele looks suitably appalled.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘If you walk into a field and poke a sleeping bull with a stick, don’t be surprised if it wakes up and tries to kill you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow the analogy. Isn’t it sleeping dogs that we shouldn’t be poking with sticks—’

  De Paul talks over him.

  ‘Rushdie has written a provocative book that deliberately set out to enrage one of the world’s great religions. It’s not surprising Muslims are upset.’

  ‘Upset? That’s how you would characterise the ayatollah’s mood?’

  De Paul hesitates. ‘More than that, obviously.’

  ‘Upset enough to encourage men to murder? Tell me, does anyone else share Comrade Cosmo’s intolerant view? Does it worry you that books are being burned in the streets of Bradford less than fifty years after the fall of the Third Reich? Does it concern you that a religious fanatic’s refusal to tolerate Salman Rushdie’s legal right to free speech led directly to the deaths of five men protesting against the Satanic Verses in Pakistan last week?’

  Silence. Billy Peele is beginning to run out of steam. Unless somebody finds something interesting to say, he’ll be forced to abandon Rushdie and return to the death of General James Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec.

  ‘Tell me, Monsieur du Paul,’ he says. ‘Have you even read The Satanic Verses?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve been too busy revising.’

  ‘I see.’ It is evident from Peele’s blank reaction to this excuse that he finds de Paul intolerably annoying. ‘Anyone else?’

  Peele looks to the back of the room, where Kite is simultaneously enjoying the sight of de Paul wriggling on Peele’s hook, but aware that he could be asked at any moment to contribute to the discussion.

  ‘Mr Kite! Give us the Scottish perspective. Your thoughts, please.’

  Billy Peele is one of several beaks at Alford who regularly mention Kite’s Scottish roots for purposes of comic relief. Kite is still known as ‘Jock’ and occasionally suffers someone making a joke about bagpipes or haggis or whether he wears boxer shorts under his kilt.

  ‘I think the ayatollah wanted attention and got it, sir,’ he replies. ‘If the story hadn’t been reported so widely, if the newspapers and television stations had just ignored Khomeini for what he is – a leader trying to look like a tough guy to whip up anti-western feeling – then the whole thing would have gone away.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem realistic.’ Peele’s response is instant, though his expression betrays some interest in Kite’s point of view. ‘One can hardly ignore a call from the leader of the largest Shia country on earth for all Muslims to assassinate a Booker Prize-winning British writer. Isn’t that censorship of a different kind?’

  Kite sits forward in his seat and attempts to expand on his answer.

  ‘What I mean is it’s a great story, but everybody is overreacting. Nobody has actually read The Satanic Verses. Cosmo hasn’t. Maybe even Ayatollah Khomeini hasn’t. If Rushdie shaved his beard off, took a new surname and changed his address, I doubt if one in ten million Muslims around the world would be able to pick him out of a line-up.’

  Peele is stopped in his conversational tracks. A broad smile breaks out on his face as he considers the ramifications of Kite’s response.

  ‘What about death squads?’ he asks.

  ‘What about them, sir?’ Kite replies, not really knowing what ‘death squads’ constitute in this context.

  ‘The Iranian intelligence service – the MOIS. They would be able to trace him, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe. Depends if the police gave away his new identity or leaked his new address. But it’s not like all Muslims are trained assassins carrying around a rifle and a photo of Salman Rushdie hoping they suddenly run into him on the street so they can bump him off. Why should they even do as the ayatollah says? Rushdie’s probably perfectly safe. He could still live with his family. He could still write under the same name. Plenty of writers have …’ Kite loses his way. ‘What’s the word …?’

  ‘Pseudonyms,’ says Cosmo de Paul, looking pleased with himself.

  ‘That’s right. Pseudonyms. So let’s say Rushdie calls himself Rehan Raza, moves house, changes his kids’ schools. Nobody’s any the wiser. He could still go on holiday, just with a new passport. He could still meet his friends in the pub, as long as they remember not to call him “Salman”.’

  Peele looks as if he doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry or applaud Kite’s chutzpah.

  ‘What about public appearances?’ he says. ‘What if Mr Rushdie wins an award and wants to go and collect it?’

  ‘No way he could do that,’ says Elkins. ‘That would blow his cover.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Kite. ‘He just needs to be like J.D. Salinger. Nobody knows where he lives or what he looks like. But I bet he has friends and children and lives a pretty normal life wherever he is in America. If the ayatollah reads Catcher in the Rye and puts a fatwa on Salinger, apart from maybe changing his phone number and having his post sent to a new address, he can stay exactly where he is.’

  Kite turned over on the hard bed, wanting to sleep but knowing that it would only be a matter of time before Torabi’s men came into the cell to wake him.

  He reached for two of the codeine tablets he had placed under the mattress, swallowing them with the last of the water. He was still troubled by the voice in the dream. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed his head in his hands.

  Who was Billy Peele?

  William ‘Billy’ Peele joined Alford as a schoolmaster in the winter of 1986, just in time to assume responsibility for Lachlan Kite’s education in O-level history. Quick-witted, good-looking and seemingly a generation younger than the majority of his hidebound, fusty colleagues, Peele was soon worshipped by almost every boy with whom he came into contact. In a school which seemed to positively discriminate towards the recruitment of closeted middle-aged homosexuals, Peele was that rare thing: a bachelor beak who didn’t want to fondle teenage boys. Physically fit and a crack shot – he ran the Alford Shooting VIII – he had reportedly served in the Royal Marines before moving into academia. As a straight single man, rumours inevitably circulated about his private life. ‘Sex-A-Peele’ (as he was nicknamed) had been spotted dining in Chelsea with the married daughter of a retired housemaster. An Am
erican student had caught a glimpse of him outside a nightclub in the meatpacking district of Manhattan talking to a woman who ‘looked like Iman’. One boy, Christian Bathurst, claimed to have witnessed Billy Peele drinking ‘several pints of Guinness’ in the Fulham Road in the company of screen legend Richard Harris. Nobody – not even Lachlan Kite – knew what school Peele had been to nor why he had turned his back on a career in the military. It was believed that he had travelled widely in his youth, teaching English as a foreign language in Africa and the Middle East. Some said that he had a tattoo on his back, others that there was a lovechild in Paris. Depending who you spoke to, Peele’s parents were either alive and living in Devon or dead and buried in South Africa, heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle murdered by agents of P.W. Botha. Peele was said to have a sister who lived in Australia and a brother who lived in Hong Kong. Sometimes he was an only child, sometimes he was adopted. In short, he was an enigma.

  Billy Peele was arguably closer to Lachlan Kite than any other boy in the school. As much as it is possible for a student and his teacher to have such a relationship, Kite and Peele were friends. At least once a week, throughout the last two years of his time at Alford, Kite would visit Peele’s flat on Alford High Street, either in the company of a handful of other boys attending a sixth-form tutorial, or in a private capacity. Peele became a confessor of sorts. Though Kite rarely discussed his father’s death or spoke in any detail about his relationship with his mother, he nevertheless spent many hours in Peele’s company, away from the lockdown rules and creepy inertia of Jones-Lewis’s house. Recognising the vast gaps in his pupil’s knowledge, Peele took it upon himself to educate Kite in the arts, urging him to read widely – beyond the narrow syllabus of English A level – and to visit galleries in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh whenever he had the chance. Peele took boys to the cinema in Slough, arranged outings to the theatre in London’s West End and accompanied them to football matches at his beloved Upton Park. In the summer of 1988, Peele took Kite and another boy to Lord’s to watch the third day of the Test match between England and West Indies. Were it not for Billy Peele, Kite would not have read Anna Karenina and The Naked Ape, made a pilgrimage to see Rothko’s Seagram Murals at the Tate Gallery nor watched Paris, Texas, Some Like It Hot and Dr Strangelove. Nor would he have witnessed Malcolm Marshall steaming in from the Nursery End and bowling Graham Gooch six runs short of his fifty. He was already the transformational figure in Kite’s adolescence, even before he played the central role in orchestrating his recruitment to BOX 88.

  Two days after the conversation about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Kite walked down Alford High Street to Peele’s flat for his regular weekly tutorial. Four other boys were due to attend, but Kite was the first to arrive. He rang the doorbell and was invited inside. Peele, who was wearing jeans and what looked like a bottle green Royal Marines sweater, immediately offered him a beer.

  ‘That was fun the other day,’ he called out from the kitchen as he pulled a can of Budweiser from the fridge.

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The Satanic Verses debate,’ Peele replied. ‘I liked your take on it. Not a point of view I’d heard before.’

  Kite wondered if he was being sarcastic but accepted the Budweiser with a nod of thanks.

  ‘Gnat’s piss, that stuff,’ said Peele, indicating the can. ‘You boys love it because you’re all in thrall to American culture. One day you’ll know the difference between beer and mineral water.’

  ‘Mum refuses to stock it at the hotel.’

  ‘Then your mother is a wise woman with impeccable taste.’

  Kite took a first sip of the Budweiser and looked at all the books on Peele’s shelves. He loved being in this room, with its Don McCullin photographs and military memorabilia, a tower of blank videotapes toppling over beside Peele’s TV, the trace smell of Gauloises and aftershave. Women had been in this flat. One time Kite had found a scarf under the sofa left by one of Peele’s girlfriends; it seemed to him impossibly exciting that a man could own a flat and shelves of books and take a girl to bed. He felt that he could be himself in this place, just as he could always be himself in Peele’s company.

  ‘How are your plans coming along for the summer?’ Peele asked. He knew that Kite was looking for a job that would make him some fast money before he started university, but they hadn’t spoken of it for a while.

  ‘Think I might be going to the South of France,’ he replied.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Xavier Bonnard’s father has inherited a place near Cannes. He’s going to be there in August. I might take a train down and hang out.’

  Kite was struck by a sudden change in the expression on Peele’s face. The moment passed in an instant, but it was as though the mention of Xavier’s name had left a mark on him. The doorbell rang. More boys had arrived for the start of the tutorial.

  ‘South of France, eh?’ he said, heading for the door. ‘August with the Bonnards?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well well well, Lockie. Sounds like you’re going to have a lot of fun.’

  15

  The original hard copy of the letter Billy Peele wrote to Michael Strawson a day later can still be found in Lachlan Kite’s file at The Cathedral. It is dated 27 February 1989. The envelope has no stamp nor postmark; it was delivered to Strawson’s home address in Kensington by hand.

  Dear Mike

  It was very good to see you last week and to discuss things in more detail. Something has come up in connection with our Iranian project which I wanted to run past you. This is of course entirely separate to my work on CONSTELLATION.

  As you know, I’ve been looking at various boys at Alford with an eye on the future. One, in particular, strikes me as someone potentially of enormous talent who could be a great asset to us in years to come.

  I may have mentioned his name to you in passing, because I’ve been his Modern tutor for the last two years. Lachlan Kite. His father, Patrick (who may have been on MI5’s radar in Ireland in the seventies) drank himself to death seven years ago. The mother, Cheryl, is a famous beauty who still runs the family hotel on the west coast of Scotland where Paddy met his demise. (Vodka, cliff – to borrow from Nabokov.) By all accounts she’s a rather chilly, if undoubtedly glamorous figure prone to mood explosions of Chernobyl-like intensity. Tends to leave a radioactive cloud of disapproval in her wake which sometimes brings her into conflict with her (only) son.

  Lachlan is very bright, tough, charming, a hard worker, by all accounts successful with girls. In my many conversations with him, I sense what I often sense with too many boys at this place: the absence of structure, of the family hearth. In other words, he might respond very positively to the welcoming embrace of BOX.

  Something else, which prompted this letter. A slice of pure chance which seems so unlikely, so serendipitous, that we’d be foolish to overlook the possibilities. LB’s son, Xavier, is a close friend of Lockie’s and has invited him to the South of France in August. In other words, his visit will coincide more or less exactly with the arrival of Eskandarian.

  You can perhaps see where I’m heading. It’s a risk, but we could have a man on the inside. An eighteen-year-old, yes, but we make a virtue of that. For who would suspect a public schoolboy at the start of his gap year – waiting for his A-level results, smoking, nightclubbing, sleeping till midday – of being anything other than what he appears to be? The potential is limitless. Eyes, ears, bins in the bedrooms, Eskandarian’s movements, a sense of his mood and personality, the nature of his relationship with LB, possible intel on Lockerbie etc. For one so young, Lachlan is a very sound judge of character. Sees a lot. Feels a lot. Seems too good an opportunity to pass up, no?

  The worry, of course, is that Lockie might be outraged and refuse to deceive his friend, but if my reading of his personality is correct, I believe to a high degree of certainty that this would not be the case. Indeed, I think he would leap at the chance, especially if he knew what was at stake in terms
of our relationship with the Iranians and, of course, in preventing further terrorist attacks.

  Lachlan is young, yes, but I’ve never known him to be feeble or crestfallen. This place is so buttoned-up and traditional even the cobwebs are Grade II listed, but he’s made a huge success of Alford despite coming from ‘the wrong sort of background’.

  Let me know what you think. If you want to run your eye over him, he’ll be working at his mother’s hotel, Killantringan Lodge near Portpatrick, for the bulk of the Easter holidays (give or take one or two days in London at either end). Why not check yourself in and see how he responds to the Strawson treatment?

  Speaking of holidays, I hope the General Secretary has packed his sun lotion and a good book. The way things are going – from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic – he’ll soon be out of a job. Riots in Prague, Solidarity in excelsis, Hungary going multi-party, a pisspoor Russian grain harvest that would make Stalin blush – and full Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The end is nigh, Michael!

  Yours aye

  W.P.

  16

  Term ended three weeks later. Kite followed his usual pattern of spending a few days in London with friends before reluctantly returning home to work at the hotel. His mother was expecting him back before the final weekend in March to help with the Easter rush. Killantringan was full, she had fired the head waiter for stealing money from the till and Kite was needed as an extra pair of hands both in the kitchen and behind the bar.