The Roar of the Butterflies

‘Sorry. So Chris is putting Willie up for membership, is that what you’re saying?’

‘So I’d guess. And of course if you want to get into the Hoo, then getting yourself proposed by Christian Porphyry is just about the closest thing you can get to a guarantee of success.’

‘Because everybody likes him, you mean?’ said Joe, who didn’t find this hard to believe. One of the many perks of being a YFG had to be that everybody liked you.

‘Don’t be silly. What’s liking got to do with it? Because the Royal Hoo more or less belongs to the Porphyry family, of course.’

‘That more or less?’ asked Joe.

‘I don’t know the precise details,’ said Butcher. ‘Just what I picked up when researching the family background. Know your enemy, Joe. You never can tell when some little detail might come in useful in court.’

Joe shuddered at the thought of finding himself on the wrong end of Butcher in a courtroom. Not even Young Fair Gods were safe.

He said, ‘OK, give me the history lesson, long as you’re not charging.’

‘I’ll put it on your slate,’ she said. ‘Back in the twenties, one of the Porphyrys was so hooked on golf he built a course on an outlying stretch of the family estate known as the Royal Hoo because, according to tradition, King Charles had been hidden there in a peasant’s hut during the Civil War.’

‘And he was anonymous, so they called it Hoo?’

‘Funny. I hope. No, it’s called Hoo because that’s what hoo means: a spur of land. At first it was for private use only, by invitation from the family. Then the war came and the course got ploughed up. When peace broke out, and the UK was once more a land fit for golfers, the old gang of chums and hangers on started pestering Porphyry to have the course refurbished. Only this was a new Porphyry, your boy’s grandfather, I’d guess, and he was commercially a lot sharper and didn’t see why he should pick up all the tabs. He insisted a proper company was formed and the Royal Hoo Golf Club as we know it – everyone, that is, except you – came into being.’

‘With the Porphyrys still in control?’

‘Don’t know the contractual details, but I’d guess they kept a controlling interest. People like them don’t give their land away, free gratis and for nothing,’ she said grimly.

‘So, with Christian’s backing, Willie looks like a cert for membership? Good for him, if that’s what he wants.’

‘And good for you too, Joe. Maybe. I’d guess whatever trouble Porphyry’s got, he did what the ruling classes always do and turned to his old butler for help. That’s OK if you’ve got a Crichton or a Jeeves, but all he had was Woodbine, who felt he couldn’t help officially but tried to keep his nose up master’s bum by recommending you as a last resort.’

Joe tried not to show he was hurt but he wasn’t very good at dissimulation, and Butcher, who was very fond of him, said placatingly, ‘Look, I don’t mean you don’t get results. For God’s sake, I’ve recommended you myself, haven’t I?’

This was true, and the memory eased the smart a little.

‘All I meant was, I mean, Jesus, what can you do in a set-up like the Hoo? You’ll stick out like a…’

She seemed lost for a simile.

‘Like a black ball,’ completed Joe.

This time she didn’t reprove his vulgarity.

‘Something like that. When Porphyry met you, didn’t he say anything?’

‘Like, hey man, no one mentioned you were a short black balding no-hoper with parrots on his shorts? No, I don’t recollect hearing anything like that. Unless giving me four fifties and saying come and have lunch with me at the club is posh shorthand for I’d be crazy to hire a slob like you.’

‘Joe, don’t go sensitive on me. It doesn’t suit you.’

He consulted his feelings. She was right. And in any case, it was too much of an effort in this weather to keep it up.

‘Apology accepted,’ he said.

‘Apology? You going deaf too?’

That was better. Now they were back on their proper footing.

They chatted about other things till Butcher told Joe to drop her in an area on the fringe of Hermsprong that even in the full brightness of a midsummer day had an aura of dark menace.

‘You want I should come with you?’ offered Joe, glancing uneasily at a group of young men who looked like they were planning to blow up Parliament.

‘To do what?’ she asked. Then, relenting, she added, ‘No, I’ll be OK, Joe, but thanks for the thought. It’s you who needs protection. I’m just going among the poor and the disadvantaged. Tomorrow you’ll be mixing with the rich and successful. That’s where the sabre-toothed tigers roam. Take care of yourself there, Joe.’

She got out of the car, lit her cheroot, and set off along the pavement, pausing by the terrorists to say something that made them laugh and exchanging high fives with them before she moved on.

Sixsmith watched her vanish behind the graffti’d wall of a walkway, tracking her progress for a little while by the spoor of tobacco smoke which hung almost without motion in the lifeless air. She’d be OK, he guessed. She was worth more to these people alive than dead. This was her chosen world. People like Porphyry and the other members of the Royal Hoo were the enemy, which was why she knew so much about them, presumably.

Not that Butcher was the only one able to identify the enemy.

The terrorists had begun a slow drift towards the Morris.

He gave them a friendly wave and accelerated away towards the visible haven of Rasselas.

Tiger

That night, with Beryl working, nothing but repeats on the box, and his cat Whitey plunged deep into whatever the summer equivalent of hibernation was, Joe decided to wander round to the Luton City Supporters’ Club bar in search of social solace.

To start with it seemed a good decision. He arrived just in time to get in on the end of a round that most democratic of club chairmen, Sir Monty Wright, was buying to celebrate the close-season signing of a sixteen-year-old Croatian wunderkind. Word was that Man U and Chelsea had both been sniffing around, but while they hesitated, Sir Monty, who hadn’t got where he was by hesitating, had dipped his hand into his apparently bottomless purse and said to the manager, ‘Go get him.’

Joe bore his pint of Guinness to a seat next to his friend, Merv Golightly, self-styled prince of Luton cabbies but known because of his exuberant driving style as the man who put the X in taxi.

‘Good to see you, Joe,’ he said. ‘But I thought you was on a promise tonight. What happened? Beryl give you the elbow?’

‘Something came up at the hospital,’ said Joe.

‘Better than washing her hair, I suppose,’ laughed Merv. ‘So how’s business? Slow or stopped?’

The slur prompted Joe to tell Merv about Christian Porphyry. If he’d hoped to impress his friend he was disappointed.

‘And this guy wants you to meet him at the Royal Hoo? And he’s going to say you’re applying for membership? Must be someone there he really wants to wind up! Give him the finger, Joe. He’s using you. You don’t believe me? Take a look at Sir Monty there.’

Joe, ever a literalist, turned to look towards the table where Sir Monty was holding court with some of his directors. He found Sir Monty was looking back. Joe gave him a cheerful wave and got a nod in return, which was not to be sneezed at from a man worth a couple of billion and rising.

The Wright-Price supermarket chain had started from a flourishing corner shop owned by the Wright family in a Luton suburb. When Monty was eighteen, one of the big supermarket chains looking to expand had approached Wright senior with an offer for the business, while at the same time negotiating with the Council for the purchase of a small playing field adjacent to the shop. This looked a smart move, taking over a flourishing local business and acquiring enough land to expand it into a full-blooded hypermarket. With young Monty pulling his parents’ strings, the sale of the shop was delayed and delayed until the day before the Council Planning Committee meeting which was expected to confirm the sale of the playing field on the nod. Fearing that if they went ahead with the land purchase before they’d got the shop, the Wrights would be in an even stronger bargaining position, the big chain caved in to most of their demands and ended up paying almost twice as much as their original offer.

The deal was signed.

Next day the Planning Committee voted to reject the chain’s offer for the playing field, preferring, as it said, to put the needs of the local community first.

On the same day the bulldozers moved on to a piece of derelict land only half a mile away and, financed by the big chain’s own money augmented by a large loan from a city bank whose CEO had long nursed a grudge against his opposite number on the chain’s board, the first of Monty Wright’s supermarkets was erected in record time.