Castro Can Wait

Chapter One

Far removed from the picture postcard version of the ‘garden of England’, the Hoo Peninsula in north Kent is an unloved and largely unvisited corner of the south east. The landscape is mostly flat with treacherous mud on the ground which peters out into the mouth of Thames with its busy international shipping lanes. Even the villages dotted around the area have a foreboding ring to them; Mockbeggar, High Halstow, Grain, Allhallows.

From the 14th century church at Cliffe, any visitor is afforded the quintessential view of the marsh. Acres of flooded fields and brambly hedgerows stretch out below epic skies that caught the imagination of Charles Dickens when he was out looking for a suitable setting for the start of his classic Great Expectations. At this lonely spot the escaped convict Abel Magwitch terrifies Pip ‘among the graves by the side of the church porch’.

Today the area is of interest only to birdwatchers – the herons at the nearby nature reserve number some 150 pairs – or those who, over the years, have tried to turn this unpretentious wilderness into London’s ‘third airport’. The peninsula ends abruptly at the Isle of Grain, a grim and strangely un-English setting for a 1950s oil refinery. A scruffy stretch of shingle beach looks out over the estuary to Essex – a post-industrial vista of disused factories, telephone pylons and long-neglected creeks.

It is in such a setting that Martin Flint and his son Jason had, one Saturday afternoon in the late-1970s, had spent a frustrating day looking for wildlife. There had been no sign of any dark-bellied Brent geese. Nor grey lags. Several swans, accepted, but the sky was darkening and the damp had seeped into their bones. Jason, for one, would have preferred to be at home listening to the football scores on the radio instead of sheltering from the light drizzle under the hood of his fur-lined parka. His team were playing away and soon it would be that time of day when the clipped, well-spoken voice of the announcer dished out the good or the bad news.

Exeter City nil, Carlisle United one. Hereford United three, Lincoln City two…

You could tell whether your side had won or not by the man’s intonation, especially when it came to the score of the home team. If the emphasis sounded jaunty, you could put money on it that the away team had lost.

Blackpool two (with a prolonged oooh)…Stockport nil (definite slump in the voice).

Funny, but it also worked the other way round.

Bradford one (not so jaunty, bordering on the comatose)…Plymouth Argyll two (bright and perhaps slightly over-triumphant for someone who is meant to be neutral).

Martin blew resignedly into the wet estuarial air. Come on, son. It’s time we were off. Jason returned his father a week smile, his cheeks were shining like ripe Braeburns. The family Rover was parked up on the other side of the woods. Looking around one last time to survey the stark flatlands which they had scanned all afternoon, the boy suddenly noticed something. Whatever it was, it was busy preening itself in the reeds about half a mile away.

Dad, look!

Seizing his son’s binoculars Martin focused in on the find. Hmm, an American wigeon. Mind you, it could be a ruddy shelduck. An oil tanker nudged its way past the vast cooling towers of the refinery on the other side of the river. And then he had a change of heart. Nah, it’s got to be a wigeon. It’s got a little white hat on. Lovely it is!

In no time at all, the two birdwatchers were skipping down towards the river, ducking down low and with a certain degree of stealth once they began to close in. They wanted a proper look at the bird, a creature so rare that it had beaten other exotically-daubed ducks to this spot by at least two months. While its fellow wigeons were freezing their pretty little feet off in the Fjords, this one was busy bumming its way down to the Mediterranean.

Martin fumbled with the lens of his camera as they squatted in the wet grass just a few feet away now. You beauty, he whispered to himself, jamming the zoom on. Too late. Just as he had lined up his first shot, the bird flapped its wings and disappeared into the grey estuarial sky.

Dad, said Jason with a frown, his best jeans now plastered with muddy slime, can we go home now? The light was fading fast and the birdwatchers were now almost a mile from the car. Not even the regular twitchers, the nutters with their Thermos flasks, notebooks and Clingfilm-wrapped egg and cress sandwiches ever came this close to the river. Martin felt hot and his mouth was dry from all the running and nervous energy he had wasted over the stupid bird. He unzipped his cagoule and wrapped it around his waist.

I could do with a pint, he muttered. But a refreshing drink would have to wait as the nearest pub was a mile and a half away in the village. He settled instead for a cold splash of lagoon water. Crouching down as low as he possibly could, he scooped it up in his palm and let it run down his sweaty forehead.

Are you alright Dad?

To his impatient son’s annoyance Martin remained crouching. He seemed transfixed, and for once it wasn’t all about a feathered creature.

What is it?

The boy was now starting to feel a little isolated out there, the oil refinery glowing eerily on the other side of the water. I dunno, son. It’s a gadget of some sort. He then picked up the object of his attention – a chunky fist of twisted metal that jutted out of the mud – and examined it more closely.

C’mon Dad, we’ll be late. Mum says we’ve got to be back by six.

Like the last of the daylight, the boy’s patience was running out fast. His dad, meanwhile, seemed strangely engrossed in the find. He kneeled over it as if it was a treasure trove of some kind, and began scraping away the sludgy surface with a penknife.

Just look at this! It’s amazing! We’ve got real discovery here. The clippies used to have these back in the day when the buses were one-man operated. He scraped off some more mud to reveal part of a serial number that was clearly engraved on the top. He found a handle, which although clogged with foul-smelling gloop, he was able to wind backwards and forwards. It’s a bus ticket machine. That’s what it is! An old Gibson ticket machine. Any more fares please? Ha, ha!

With this frankly ridiculous-looking contraption dangling from one hand, Martin ran towards his son. He was wearing a smile as broad as the Thames itself. Then he slipped over, landing painfully on his back. Bollocks! he cursed, clumsily attempting to raise himself up by rolling onto his front.

As he forced himself up onto his knees, there, right in front of him, was yet another example of the river’s corrosive power. This time it was a solid side of steel jutting out like a beached ship and, next to it, a rusty old pole with some plastic tape wound around it. He prodded the flat surface with a handy piece of driftwood and, wiping away yet more mud, noticed that it had cracked red paint and a riveted seam running down one side. In a nearby pool he spotted what looked like a torn roller blind printed with the remains of what appeared to be some flaky white lettering. A-L-D-G-A, he tried hard to decipher the message.

Martin reached down and tugged at the scroll until he could read the entire word. A-L-D-G-A-T-E. Aldgate? Bloody hell! He pulled harder and the thing unravelled yet more words, or place names as it turned out:

Camberwell Green

Old Kent Road

Bricklayers Arms

Tower Bridge

ALDGATE

Standing back for a moment and breathing in the cold, damp air, the bright lights of Essex twinkling away on the other side of the estuary, Martin contemplated aloud the full significance of his discovery. Do you know what? I get the feeling that something very strange has been going on here. We appear to be standing right next to a number 42.

What do you mean number 42? Number 42 what? asked his incredulous son, practically spitting the words out with frustration.

Bus, you idiot! Can’t you see? He seemed to be processing the thrilling events of the last few minutes as he spoke. He urged his son forward so that he could have a closer look.

There! We only happen to be staring at the wreck of a London double-decker bus.

Chapter Two

Wake up, sir. You wouldn’t want your breakfast to go cold now, would you?

The landlady stood in the corridor tapping repeatedly on the door of room nine. Inside, the Cuban national who was buried beneath three layers of blankets squinted at his wrist watch which rested on the bedside table. It was gone eight thirty which meant he must have been asleep for the last 12 hours or so. The rough 24-hour sea crossing from Santander, followed by a long, slow train ride across south west England had clearly taken its toll.

But after a shave and a warm bath Antonio Corrales was sitting in the landlady’s deserted ground floor dining room listening to the chime of an old grandfather clock and the purr of the Gloucester Road traffic outside. He was dressed in a grey utilitarian-looking suit and sported a pair of neat round glasses that framed his deep brown eyes. With his full-ish lips and thick black hair which he parted to one side, he made for a respectable-looking guest with just a hint of the exotic about him.

"Ah, if isn’t señor Corrales. Good morning to you. I was beginning to wonder whether you’d make it down here before nine, after which breakfast is no longer available."

It was the landlady, Miss Spinnemaker carrying his breakfast tray. Her slightly over-effusive manner immediately reminded him of the night before. It must have been after midnight when he eventually signed in at reception. Exhausted and a little surprised by the chill of the night air, Corrales had managed to pass himself off as a Spaniard, from Badajoz to be precise. Quite why he had chosen to use the name of this undistinguished Extremaduran town he wasn’t quite sure.

At least it had sounded convincing when he said it, and he figured that he was unlikely to meet anyone with relatives or friends living in such a remote spot. But in the unlikely event of him being drilled about events at the town’s weekly cattle market or last year’s festival of San Miguel, Corrales would have been the first to admit defeat.

Room nine. There’s no view I’m afraid, but it’s clean and comfortable and terribly quiet at night, the landlady had declared, handing him the key with a wrinkled yet well-manicured hand.

Now she was putting the tray down. Under his nose sat a plate which was piled high with what is known in the trade as a full English breakfast. I expect you poor fellows starve to death on the Iberian Peninsula, observed Miss Spinnemaker before leaving him to prod at a sausage which had been practically drowned in lard.

Corrales noticed that his landlady had spruced up her appearance from the night before. Well, just a little anyway. Today she wore a ruby red shirt with matching lipstick. Her jet black hair, which had an alarming streak of grey running down the middle, was set above her head like dry plaster. Around her neck she wore a silk scarf with the words ‘Paris’ and some miniature Eiffel Towers printed on it. As he braved another mouthful, Corrales imagined that at one time in her life she must have been quite a beauty.

And how, might I be bold enough to ask, do you intend to spend your sojourn in our fair city?

As she spoke, Miss Spinnemaker jabbed the dining room curtains with a feather duster. She was entirely focused on her task yet seemed equally keen to learn more about her dark, bespectacled visitor.

Corrales gave up on the pile of stodge in front of him and pushed the plate to one side. Actually I am planning to visit the British Museum and maybe, if there is time, I will visit your National Gallery, he replied washing the remnants away with a cup of sugary tea.

Miss Spinnemaker then returned from her window duties to clear his breakfast things away. Ah, the arts. I do love the arts. I could spend hours gazing at Monet’s water lilies or a good landscape by Pissarro or Sisley. The finer things in life are so incredibly important, don’t you agree? In London, however, it’s all about the theatre. That’s the thing that everybody comes here for. Have you been?

Well, actually…

"I don’t expect my guests to listen to everything I tell them, but I always remind them of this: ‘If you’re heading to the West End, don’t you dare miss a performance of The Mousetrap.’ You could say that this is practically my motto."

She then recounted a tale of how, as a promising young actress, she had appeared in the eponymous murder mystery in Scarborough. It was a rather long drawn-out story and one that at times Corrales had difficulty in understanding. What she seemed to have being saying was that she had been left to ad lib almost an entire scene while the unfortunate actor who had been playing the part of Detective Trotter kept fluffing his lines.

"He was such an ass, she said, finally winding up the story. Probably went on to star in films." She said the word ‘films’ as if they were something rather distasteful.

Corrales excused himself from the table and thanked her for the breakfast. There would be no reciprocal anecdote from him. As someone who had been sent to England on top-secret business, he would be saving the true purpose of his visit for those who really mattered. This meant that as far as his landlady or anyone else in this place was concerned, he was simply a law student from Badajoz – one who had been packed off to London by an ambitious father to brush up on his English.

In fact Corrales’s own story could not have been more different. Originally from the sleepy provincial city of Camagüey in central Cuba, he had arrived in the capital Havana just over a year ago to fill a post in the university’s history department. In the spirit of these post-revolutionary times, he had been responsible for giving the last 500 years of European history a complete Marxist revisionist overhaul. The guise of being someone who was at the very least engaged in the process of education was therefore not as far-fetched as it might have seemed. With his little round glasses and measured conversational offerings, he certainly had an aura of academia about him.

In this esteemed seat of learning, Corrales had been the first of many young dreamers and thinkers to replace the old guard with their dusty old books and clapped out colonial views. And unlike