Chapter 13
Silence of the Wolves
The left once again overplayed its hand, this time within the ranks of the armed forces, where the paratroopers and the military police were deemed sympathetic to the revolutionary left. When a thousand paratroopers were forcibly demobbed, the remainder rose to the bait and occupied six air force bases. Troops loyal to the leadership forced them out and arrested them. The following day, the leadership sent commandos in to arrest the military police en masse. They did so, this time with fatal casualties on both sides. The blood-letting stopped there, thanks to a strange agreement between the President, General Costa Gomes, and the head of the Communist Party, Álvaro Cunhal. Cunhal promised not to call upon the militants whom his party controlled, and the many more workers whom it influenced, to take to the streets in support of the radical soldiers. In return, Costa Gomes promised the Communist Party a continued place in the country’s politics. Thereafter, every step back that the country took from continuous revolution was followed by a step further back. The revolution never got the chance to devour its children. Nor did the far right.
Ed asked Paulo, whose judgement he trusted, what he thought lay behind Cunhal’s apparent renunciation of any hope of seizing power.
“I guess after all those years in prison and in exile, he likes being a free man on the streets of Lisbon. I don’t think he wants to be locked up for years or kicked out yet again.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean. But, you know, he seemed so keen on running the show.”
“I think he’s realised how hard it is to dictate things when you’re a pawn in someone else’s Cold War games. This way, he’ll always be a player in our politics, and so will his party.”
What Ed did not expect was Ção’s reaction.
“Thank goodness those so-called revolutionaries have had their teeth kicked in! The Army should put them in the Bull Ring and shoot them!”
“But aren’t you one of them any more? The revolutionaries, I mean?”
“Yes, of course I am. We are the real revolutionaries, Ed, don’t you understand that yet? We’re rebuilding the party of the proletariat, and that takes time. We don’t want the Communists to grab power and stop us.”
“So you’re ready to ally with the bourgeois parties if they stop the Communists?”
“Sure, if they stop the Communists and the far left. We want to be able to organise in the light of day. That’s what José Manuel says we should do.”
“Who’s José Manuel?”
“One of our student leaders. He really understands how things work. He’s going to be President one day, you mark my words.”
“If you say so.”
“Meanwhile, we’re going to smash the patriarchy.”
“I’m with you there. This country will never get rich as long as it treats women like second-class citizens.”
Ção gave Ed a look he could not decipher.
The government decided it was safe enough to resume work. It marked the new course by mollifying the landowners whose estates had been expropriated as part of the land reform programme. It was busy looking the other way when the military régime that ran Indonesia invaded Portugal’s former colony of East Timor and set about massacring the population. It had got away with genocide against its own people of Chinese descent ten years beforehand, and correctly surmised that nobody in the world would stop a little bit more genocide in its back yard.
East Timor is one half of one island in an enormous archipelago. The other half, and most other islands in the archipelago, are part of its giant neighbour, Indonesia. The Indonesian generals did not take kindly to having a tiny neighbour with a different official language, religion and culture to their own. When the Portuguese moved out and a leftist liberation movement took over, the Indonesian generals decided to move in and erase the anomaly with the heaviest of hands and the tacit agreement of the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The Portuguese government protested, when it found time, but no-one listened.
Ed Scripps spent another lonely Christmas in Stevenage, away from his wife, who thought the festive season might be a good occasion for bringing her own parents back together, especially if Ed was not around. However, they were already launched on divergent pathways, and their two daughters’ joint efforts failed.
When Ed returned to Lisbon, Mark and Simone invited Ção and him over to celebrate the New Year, even though it was already a week into 1976. Mark had just bought a large television, and insisted on their watching a very slow-moving Brazilian soap opera. Mark and Ção tried to guess what the characters were going to say before they actually spoke. After they had finally got their words out, Simone and Ed shouted out their version of what the characters really thought. The soap opera was followed by a game show: money for nothing was coming back into fashion. Mark and Ção generally beat the contestants to the answers, and neither Simone nor Ed was far behind.
“Do you think they’d let us take part in one of these?” Ed asked. “We could clean up.”
“It’s probably all a fix,” said Mark, wiping his spectacles.
“I don’t see why. It’s better television if it’s genuine, if they’re really trying, not just acting.”
A news bulletin followed the quiz show. After reporting on the day’s activities by the Army chief, General Eanes, it made a brief mention of East Timor. Simone turned pale.
“You know, French radio is reporting that the Indonesian army has already murdered eighty thousand Timorese.”
“They don’t hang about,” said Mark.
“That’s one tenth of the population,” Simone added. “What does the BBC say about it?”
Mark looked at Ed. “You were home at Christmas.”
“Nothing that I heard. You don’t get a lot of foreign news at Christmas.”
“The Indonesians murdered five Western journalists on the border there in November, even before they invaded. I guess the rest have taken the hint.” Simone stared at the floor.
Mark put his arm around her shoulders.
“Hey, come back to us, darling. We’re in Lisbon, with friends, it’s a new year and life is good. And things are going to get better.”
“Everywhere,” added Ed.
Mark moved to top up their glasses. “Or I could roll a nice fat joint or two?”
“No, thanks. We don’t, these days.”
“As you like.” Mark poured.
Ção was tipsy when they got home. Ed had to help her out of the taxi and then to carry her up the final flight of stairs. He shut the flat door with his foot and took her straight into the bedroom. Ção was giggling.
“Oh, put me down, Ed. Put me down, strip me naked, do it again!”
“Don’t bring me down, you pretty thing!”
“Do whatever you like to me, Ed darling. Just ... no penetration.”
“What?!”
“I’ve had too much of it, and now I really fancy a little change. Don’t you? You know, I’m awfully good at making you come in different ways ... in different places. I know you like that. Come on, you love it, don’t you, my little Teddy?”
Ed thought there was no point arguing with Ção in her present state. Besides, it was her body. He would just have to be patient, once more.
When Ção drifted off into sleep, Ed got up and went for a shower. Back in bed, he lay awake worrying about his friend, Mark. Before they left, Mark had asked him for a rather large loan. Far from taking Mark on full-time, the English Council was giving him fewer hours to teach. Simone’s job was secure, but did not make her rich enough to maintain a spendthrift husband. Ed had promised Mark the loan – he had more than he needed, but he knew how much asking had dented Mark’s pride, and he wondered what else he could do to help his friend.
Seasonal rain made the following afternoon feel colder than it actually was. Ed set out on foot to take Mark the money he had asked for. The cold drops sluicing off his umbrella started to find a way inside his mackintosh, so he hailed a taxi. Mark was waiting for him inside the tearoom, a vestige of Portugal’s love affair with its “oldest ally”. When they had finished their scones and attacked a second large pot of Earl Grey tea, Ed handed Mark a thick white sealed envelope.
“Thanks a lot, old chap. This is really helping me.”
“I wish I could do more for you, Mark. Actually, come to think of it, if it’s a job you need, I might have something for you. You see, it’s getting to the stage where I could use some help with my accounts.” This was plausible, though not strictly true.
“Really? You know, I’m more than willing to do that, but I’ll have to talk it over with Simone first. You know, she’s a very moral girl.”
“Moral? What’s that got to do with it?”
“Well, we never mention it to you, but we know where your money comes from. Not the University, but d-r-u-g-s.”
“M-a-r-i flipping Juana, Mark! Which does no harm to anyone. Unlike the booze that you and I consume vast quantities of.”
“OK, you have a point, but Simone would say that it leads to other things, like heavy drugs.”
“Not if people know the difference, and not if they can get a bit of grass from ordinary people like those in my teams, instead of organised crime gangs that want to push the high-profit alternatives.”
“Well, Simone would say that it’s illegal.”
“Well, Simone is right, for the time being. Look, until two years ago, less than, it was illegal to speak your mind in this country. Do you think the law is never going to change? A rational government would take over my distribution networks, make it all above board and tax the stuff. With help for all kinds of addicts, on the national health service, paid for from the taxes.”
“Look, don’t think I’m not grateful, old chap. I really appreciate your offer. And as I said, I’ll talk it over with Simone. That’s the decent thing for me to do. Shall we get some teacakes?”
When they came out into the twilight, the rain had lifted, but a fog hung low over the river, its tendrils drifting up the hills. Together, they walked down into it to the nearest underground station. Before they went their opposite ways, Mark gave Ed a slip of paper with a phone number written elegantly on it.
“That’s the number of the guy who runs that quiz show. Frightfully nice chap. We’ve met him. Simone and I might both be going on it. You should give him a ring. Ção too. Fifteen minutes of fame, and maybe oodles of escudos. Nice, eh?”
“Thanks, mate, but I like to keep a low profile. I’ll pass it on to Ção, though. You never know with her. She might fancy it.”
Ção was not at home. Ed watched a couple of quiz shows on their small, under-used television, and tried to picture her lighting them up with her intelligence, high spirits and beauty. She woke him up the next morning, rummaging around in their bedroom and pressing what she found into a canvas grip.
“Oh, Ed, I’m going to spend a few days with Mummy. She’s depressed.”
“What? I’ll be depressed if you leave me on my own, my love, even for a few days.”
“You, depressed? You don’t know the meaning of the word, my sweet. I’ll be back soon.”
“How about coming back here to sleep?”
“Because you won’t let me sleep, you naughty boy. But I will if I can.”
Ção straddled Ed on the bed, placed his hands on her breasts and gave him a long, amorous kiss. Then she moved slowly off and away from the bed, zipped up the holdall, put on her coat, gave him a long, sultry look and was gone. Ed was glad of one thing: she was using cinnamon perfume again.
Ed’s antidote to Ção-deprivation was teaching. He was again doing evening classes, one of which he devoted partly, but not exclusively, to English for Business. Continuous assessment was still in fashion, though the pass/fail option had been nuanced with the introduction of A, B and C pass grades. He often met Carolina and Rupert in the café there, before or between lessons, and they forecast a swift return to the old grading system of 0 to 20, with 10 being a bare pass, marks over 14 deemed exceptionally generous, and anything over 17 unheard-of. Ed tried to take this in.
“Perfection leaves much to be desired.” Ashley Beecroft was also doing evening classes this year, and he, like Ed, was new to the old system and less indulgent towards it. “And it is only for the gods, not mere mortals, not even students of this august seat of learning.”
“Amen, as my Dad would say. But since we’ve worked out a better system, why can’t we just forget the old one?”
Ashley laughed and clinked bottles with Ed.
Outside the University, the country stepped up its pace in the new, reverse direction. The editor of the newspaper taken over by its workers was reinstalled. A big foreign company locked its workers out. The major political parties signed a revised agreement with the Armed Forces Movement; the Communist Party did not sign, but an allied party did. Otelo was thrown into jail, accused of having incited a far-left coup back in November. Most ominously, a far-right organisation calling itself the “Portuguese Liberation Army” launched a bombing campaign. Ed soon learned to distinguish, when woken at night by his building shaking, the vibrations caused by a bomb near the city centre from those generated by the earth tremors to which Lisbon was prone, built as it was on the ruins of the city flattened by the great earthquake that Voltaire immortalised in Candide.
One evening in March, Ed came home from the University cheered by the news that Otelo had been released from jail with no formal charges against him. He saw Otelo as a man of vision, independence and action, and liked him for it. He imagined him, in other circumstances, as being a dashing entrepreneur, one on whom Ed might well model himself. Ção was spending as much time at her mother’s as with Ed, so he did not expect her to be waiting for him when he arrived, much as he hoped she would be.
Ed certainly did not expect the scene of devastation that met his eyes when he let himself into the flat. It had been attacked systematically. Soft furnishings and clothes had been torn apart and used to line floors onto which drawers had been emptied. Documents and papers had been ripped up and added to the heap. What unhidden money he had in the house had been thrown into the toilet bowl but not flushed. On top of a torn pillow on his ransacked marital bed, a picture of Queen Elizabeth II was held in place by twin syringes poked through each of her eyes. The wall behind the bed bore a painted message: Goodby mister Scripps.
Ed phoned and left a message with someone at Ção’s mother’s for his wife to call him at the Cascais flat. Then he took a taxi to the station at Cais do Sodré and caught the last train to Cascais. It was after three a.m. when he let himself into his flat there. Seamus emerged from his room, ensconced in a thick black dressing gown, to see what the noise was.
“Ah, Ed. Can you tip-toe or something? Marjorie is asleep.”
“Marjorie?”
“Yeah, you know. Pale face, long blonde hair, wants to be an actress. You’ve met her.”
“All right, if you say so. None of my business.”
“You look dead pallid yourself. You seen a ghost or summat?”
“Worse than that. Any whisky in the house?”
“Nah, mate, but there’s plenty of firewater.”
“Fancy some?”
They went into the kitchen and shut the door. Ed set out a couple of glasses. Seamus produced a bottle of white liquor and filled them from it.
“Cheers, wack. What’s up?”
Keeping his voice low, Ed recounted what had happened to his flat in the city.
“Looks like someone has really got it in for you. Have you stepped on someone’s toes recently? Offended anyone?”
“I guess I must have.”
Ed emptied his glass. Seamus gave them both a refill. Ed changed the subject to soccer. Seamus followed Liverpool’s other team, Everton, and they had a hushed but animated discussion until the bottle was empty.
It was just before noon when Ed woke. Judging by the silence, he was alone in the house. He found some bread in the kitchen and made himself tea and toast. It helped settle his stomach. His head felt fine and his mind was clear. He called Paulo.
“Looks like the day you warned me about has arrived.”
“Save the details, Ed. I’ll be right over. Where are you?”
Before he arrived, Ed showered and put on some clean clothes. He realised that the clothes he kept there were now his only clothes. It was lucky that Ção still had plenty of her own stored at her mother’s.
Paulo showed up in a blue Volvo. It looked almost new, though it sported a few scratches.
“Nice motor, partner.”
“I got it cheaply. People are keen to sell. Let’s go and see the flat. Give me the details as we drive.”
Paulo’s face was grim as he surveyed what had been done in Largo do Andaluz.
“Nothing stolen, nothing smashed. This was personal. I would say it was an attempt to humiliate and frighten both of you.”
“You think Ção could be a target?”
“No, not really. Just a means to get at you.”
“Well, it doesn’t humiliate or frighten me. I’m not even a monarchist. But if anything were to happen to Ção ...”
“I think these people are serious, Ed. You’re my long-term security, remember, as well as my friend, and I want to keep you alive. I’ll find out who did this, and why, though I think it’s obvious. Right now, I’ll help you to get the lock changed and clean up the place.”
They worked solidly, focusing on the task in hand. A locksmith came and did his job. They painted over the message on the wall. They took down a dozen bags of what was now rubbish. They flushed the toilet. They left the flat looking spartan but clean. Paulo drove Ed back to the flat in Cascais before going on to his family’s place in the hills.
Ção phoned him late in the evening. She was quiet as he told her about the break-in but grew hysterical as she realised the extent of her own losses.
“I hate you, Ed Scripps! It’s you they were after, and it’s me who has to suffer. I trusted you so much! I hate you!” Ed heard the phone bounce out of its cradle. At the second attempt, she cut the connection.
Bitch!
Ed was ashamed at thinking it. He would go to her mother’s the next day and comfort his wife. He would find ways of making her feel better. He always would.