Read Winston’s War for Free Online

Moncy Burgess woke badly. It was not a good place in which to wake badly. His apartment, in Chester Square near Victoria Station, was decorated with a deliberate taste for the grotesque—the carpet was red, the walls a murky white, the curtains and sheets beneath his heavy Italianate bed-head an uncertain blue, and everything covered with a film of nicotine. As he opened his eyes the colors and stale tobacco mounted a coordinated assault on him, and he groaned. His mouth felt like the bottom of a bird cage, and very soon he would be late. Again.
    He slipped out of bed and stumbled to the window. On his way he knocked over a pile of books on which was balanced a glass of red wine. Fortunately the wine, like Burgess, had been almost completely consumed and the stain would be invisible amongst the rest. He threw open the window and lit a cigarette,coughing as a trickle of fresh air tried to penetrate the room. It was miserably squalid, but as he insisted on telling his friends, if this was squalor it was nothing compared to what you'd find in Guernica or some of the side streets of Moscow. So, you've been to Moscow, have you? they would invariably ask. How was it? Tough, uncompromising, intellectual, unsentimental, he would tell them. He would relate his encounter with a militiaman who had threatened to beat him up for walking on the grass, but that was only half the story. He'd been throwing up over a statue of Stalin at the time.
    He flung the cigarette stub out of the window and hauled up a piece of dried fish that he kept dangling on a string from his windowsill, tearing off a piece before throwing the rest back out again. Breakfast on the run. But his mouth was so dry he couldn't chew, not until he'd poured himself two fingers of Jameson's and swilled it round the back of his gums.
    “To mastication,” he murmured, raising his glass to the straw-stuffed Regency buck that stood by the wardrobe. It stared back at him in reproach, the glass eyes seeming to follow him around the room. Sometimes it seemed as if the whole world was after him, even the stuffed animals. The apartment was crammed with artifacts, from a frigate in a bottle to an old American harmonium that he occasionally played, nothing of any great value, all garbage really. One day he'd get rid of it, along with the rest of his ludicrous life. He rubbed whiskey with his finger round his teeth to get rid of the sour taste in his mouth. He always seemed to be drinking whiskey, more than he'd intended to, and more still to get rid of the hangover. He would chew garlic to get rid of the smell of whiskey, then drive ludicrously fast to see if he could get rid of all the things that bothered him. His friends said he'd kill himself eventually, and maybe they were right. It was amazing how many friends he had, all things considered.
    It would be another one of those days. He would arrive late at Broadcasting House and they would shout at him, so he would shout back and yet again try to get them to use Churchill. He knew they would refuse, because they were under instructions from above. But in all the shouting about Churchill they would forget he looked like a tramp and had been late yet again. So he would have just one more drink to fortify himself and be on his way.
    It was at that point that the eiderdown moved. It was piled high on one side of the bed, a tangle of old silk and cigarette burns, and out from beneath it protruded a calf, then a thigh, followed by the most gorgeous arse he'd seen since…? Since last night. Victoria Station, one of his habitual hunting grounds, where if ever he was stopped and questioned he could always argue that he was on his way home, just round the corner, officer. The arse moved. It belonged to a young bellboy from Claridge's. He couldn't remember his name. Which in the scramble last night hadn't mattered a damn, but in the damp light of day seemed—well, unnecessarily rude. So Burgess decided he'd spend a little more time with