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BINKS. The name rang oddly in my ear. It was only a week or so since I had made contact with her after many years. She had been an admired senior when I was in the third form at school. But my admiration for her was far greater now than it had been in those halcyon days of childhood.
I had seen her to be a person of enormous courage, intelligence and resolution. Above anyone I had ever known, I regarded Amelia Bingham as truly great. If it is greatness to be born into a world which despises everything you stand for and stands for everything you despise; to refuse to give an inch, but to fight that world for the right to be yourself and to emerge gloriously triumphant — if that be greatness, then Amelia Bingham must be numbered among the truly great.
Such was my reverence for Amelia Bingham that it struck me as oddly discordant to hear her referred to in so flippant a manner.
“Binks, oh yes. You’ll find her in the Common Room.”
I was standing in the foyer of the Girl Guides Club, an exclusive private Knightsbridge club for ladies, and found myself swiftly ushered into the Common Room. For the first time I felt some curiosity as to the other members of the Club. The Common Room was spacious and elegantly furnished. A few members were gathered around Amelia, who was reclining in her chair, her hands forming elaborate and gracious gestures. Evidently she was telling some story. As soon as she saw me she stopped, arose and came over to me. Turning to the company she said, “Ladies, allow me to introduce Pash Chevender.”
I felt the warmth rise to my face and hoped I wasn’t blushing visibly.
I had almost forgotten that nickname. It is a shortening of my first name—Hypatia—of course, but at school, it also signified the fact that I was often in the violent throes of a “pash” for one of the older girls. I hoped nobody here would guess at this second meaning of the name.
Amelia seemed to read my thoughts, and she did something even more disturbing. She twisted a finger in my hair in a playful older-sister kind of way, part caressing, part patronising, and wholly thrilling.
“It’s all right, old thing,” she said. “You’re among friends here.”
It was some time before I had a chance to speak to Amelia privately.
“You’re fond of nicknames here, aren’t you?” I remarked.
“Oh, Pash,” she said. “Well, it’s so delightfully appropriate that it seems a pity to let it be wasted. I shall call you Pash. The Guides Club shall know you as Pash. I am decided.”
“What about Binks?”
“My friends call me Binks. They always have. My bank manager and the police call me Miss Bingham. Those who are intimate with me — or who imagine they are intimate with me — call me Amelia. But that rare and fine company I have the honour to call my friends, they, and they alone, call me Binks.
“But what brings you here, Pash? Are you in some trouble as you were before?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied. “Well, not real trouble this time, but in a way it feels almost as bad. My sister is getting married, and I shall have to attend the reception. It will be a dreadful affair. I can hardly...”
“So you want me to take you. You want me to treat you as if you were still a helpless little third-former and I a prefect...”
“I am sorry. I see that it was absurd.”
“Not at all, Pash. I never dreamed of treating you in any other way.”
The words could have been cruel and cutting. They were not. Along with a little humour, they conveyed a wealth of warmth and kindness.
“Thank you...” I was about to say her name, but her earlier words left me uncertain as to how to address her.
“You may call me Amelia,” she said.
Amelia attended the reception in a striking black evening gown with a low neckline and long gloves. She wore a simple diamond necklace and a fox-fur stole. Before she left her rooms at the Club she had run her hand up and down a mahogany rack which stood by the door. The rack contained canes of all descriptions, some of which she had purchased from places all over the world, others she had inherited from her maternal grandmother. Finally, as if inspiration had struck, she selected a slender ebony cane with a round chased silver end. This she would not leave with her cloak, but toyed with at intervals throughout the evening.
The reception was as bad as I had feared. Worse, in fact. It was held in a large hotel, and my sister had engaged musicians to entertain us. They were called Bill Cretin and the Morons. Truly, they were. During the early part of the performance Amelia innocently asked if they were likely to make up their differences soon.
“What do you mean?” asked my sister.
“I mean when are they going to stop screaming at each other like Billingsgate fishwives and sing us a song,” explained Amelia.
“Surely you’ve heard of Punk Rock,” said my sister.
“I was not even aware that there was a seaside resort called Punk,” replied Amelia.
Things became worse. During the interval, Mr. Cretin was invited to join us at the table.
“Miss Bingham does not approve of your music,” said my sister, as if this were something vastly amusing.
“P’raps she’d prefer a line of coke,” said the Cretin. He was intending to shock her, but Amelia sensed that this was more than just a joke.
“Opium is more my style, Mr. Moron,” she replied. “But if you should ever stand in need of cocaine...”
“What, me? You’re jokin’. We got a few kilos of the stuff, ain’t we?”
“Then I take it you are a retailer. This meeting may be extremely fortunate for us both. You see, I am a wholesaler. I could supply you with a pound or two at extremely favourable rates. Though I warn you that I deal only in imperial measures.”
“You’re jokin’.”
“Most assuredly not. Do you have ready cash available?”
“Yeah, we always keep a stash handy in case something comes up.”
“Then come aside for a moment and we shall talk business.”
The two of them left the table. My sister was quite white. This was rather more than she had bargained for.
Even when the music resumed, Amelia did not return. She walked across the room, clumsily bumping into a man and knocking the drink out of his hand. He was a burly, thuggish-looking fellow. I understood that he was the group’s road manager. They talked for some little time, and Amelia returned, looking satisfied. She beckoned me for a private word.
“Amelia,” I burst out, “surely you’re not a drug-pusher.”
“Tonight I am,” she replied enigmatically. “Now, quickly, before he catches a waiter, give a glass of champagne to that fellow whose drink I spilled, and,” she pressed a small glass vial into my hand, “sprinkle a pinch of this into it. I am afraid I must take my leave of you for an hour.” So saying, she left.
The rest of the evening passed as in a dream. As Amelia and I were leaving the hotel, we were accosted by Mr. Cretin and his friends. They sat together in the ample passenger compartment of her limousine, discussing, examining and sampling the white powder Amelia produced in a briefcase. Most of the conversation was beyond me.
“Pure as the driven,” said Amelia at one point.
“Nah, it’s cut wiv speed, just like ourn,” insisted Mr. Cretin.
Eventually they settled on a price which frankly amazed me. I had no idea that a little briefcase of the stuff was worth so much. I was also disgusted.
“So this is how you make your money,” I said as we drove back to the
Club.
“Yes, it is,” admitted Amelia, “but I think you may misunderstand the
exact nature of my business.“
“Are you or are you not a pusher?”
“Only for tonight. I have never done it before and shall quite likely
not do it again.”
“Then were did you get that stuff?”
“From Mr. Cretin’s flat.”
“What?”
“Yes. I sold him his own cocaine. Amusing, what? Dose of his own
medicine, you might say.”
“How did you find it?”
“The roadie told me exactly where to look. Gave me keys as well.”
“But why?”
“Simple fellow. Not difficult to deceive. I gave him a ‘message’ from Mr. Cretin that the police were about to raid the flat. They had their eye on the hotel as well, naturally. So if someone was to remove the evidence, it had to be someone not connected with the band.”
“He believed you?”
“His doubts vanished when Mr. Cretin rushed by on his way onstage. I said, ‘Shall I go and get Charlie?’ and, of course, the Cretin said, ‘Yes’.”
“Charlie?”
“All these people seem to call it Charlie. Wouldn’t you think they
could be more inventive? Cicely sounds much nicer to my ear, but still…”
“What if they had talked together afterwards?”
“Hardly likely after you’d slipped the roadie a Mickey Finn. They thought he was in a drunken stupor.”
“Well, they certainly deserve it for being pushers.”
“They deserve it in any case, Pash. These people spread coarseness and ugliness wherever they go. They rot away whatever is left of decency, grace and human dignity in this world. I should happily rob the whole lot of them whether they were pushers or not.”
“I didn’t know you were such a supporter of the status quo.”
“Look around you, Pash, open your eyes and see the world as it really is, instead of seeing the world the mass-media tell you to see. These people are the status quo, or a part of it. They are pushed by the media, the press, by ‘establishment’ people like your sister. They are not a canker eating away the heart of society. Some of them might like to think they are, but they are nothing so grand. They are simply one of the many plague-spots that appear on the skin of a society which is already in the terminal stage of a much deeper disease.
As we got out of the car, a van swerved into the Guides Club car park after us. The door opened and a burly man leapt out. It was the roadie.
“My hat! That Mickey should have put him down for twelve hours. He must have the constitution of an ox!” exclaimed Amelia.
“Strength to match, by the look of it,” I observed.
“You’ve ’ad it, bitch,” roared the roadie, advancing on Amelia.
Better men than you have said that,” said Amelia, “though admittedly in better language.” Amelia skipped towards him, twirling her cane and avoiding his massive hands. She caught him a neat clip on the temple with the silver knob and he dropped to the ground like a felled oak.
“How did you do that?” I asked, amazed.
She handed me the cane by the lower end. It twisted itself out of my grip with what seemed like a strength of its own. Amelia caught it, smiling.
“Deceptive, isn’t it? The business end is loaded with twelve ounces of lead. The ferrule is strengthened by a steel rod. Deadly if you know how to use it. Old piece of my grandmother’s.
“As you predicted, Pash, the reception was dreadful. We shall have a real party tomorrow at this haven of sanity we call the Guides. We shall spend some of our well-gotten gains in the support of a good cause.”
Find out more about the adventures of Amelia Bingham
