Page 317 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

Jasper raised his M16 and pointed it at the woman's forehead. She had dark-brown eyes, he saw, and a little gray in her black hair. She did not move away from his gun, or even flinch, but continued pleading in words he could not comprehend.

Jasper touched the selector lever on the left side of the gun, moving it from "Safe" to "Semi," allowing it to fire a single round.

His hands were quite steady.

He pulled the trigger.

PART SIX

FLOWER

1968

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Jasper Murray spent two years in the army, one year of training in the USA and one of combat in Vietnam. He was discharged in January 1968 without ever having been wounded. He felt lucky.

Daisy Williams paid for him to fly to London to see his family. His sister, Anna, was now editorial director of Rowley Publishing. She had at last married Hank Remington, who was proving to be more enduring than most pop stars. The house in Great Peter Street was strangely quiet: the youngsters had all moved out, leaving only Lloyd and Daisy in residence. Lloyd was now a minister in the Labour government and therefore rarely home. Ethel died that January, and her funeral was held a few hours before Jasper was due to fly to New York.

The service was at the Calvary Gospel Hall in Aldgate, a small wooden shack where she had married Bernie Leckwith fifty years earlier, when her brother, Billy, and countless boys like him were fighting in the frozen mud trenches of the First World War.

The little chapel could seat a hundred or so worshippers, with another twenty or thirty standing at the back; but more than a thousand people turned up to say good-bye to Eth Leckwith.

The pastor moved the service outside and the police closed the street to cars. The speakers got up on chairs to address the crowd. Ethel's two children, Lloyd Williams and Millie Avery, both in their fifties, stood at the front with most of her grandchildren and a handful of great-grandchildren.

Evie Williams read the parable of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke. Dave and Walli brought guitars and sang "I Miss Ya, Alicia." Half the cabinet were there. So was Earl Fitzherbert. Two buses from Aberowen brought a hundred Welsh voices to swell the hymn singing.

But most of the mourners were ordinary Londoners whose lives had been touched by Ethel. They stood in the January cold, the men holding their caps in their hands, the women shushing their children, the old people shivering in their cheap coats; and when the pastor prayed for Ethel to rest in peace, they all said amen.

*

George Jakes had a simple plan for 1968: Bobby Kennedy would become president and stop the war.

Not all of Bobby's aides were in favor. Dennis Wilson was happy for Bobby to remain simply the senator from New York. "People will say that we already have a Democratic president and Bobby should support Lyndon Johnson, not run against him," he said. "It's unheard-of."

They were at the National Press Club in Washington on January 30, 1968, waiting for Bobby, who was about to have breakfast with fifteen reporters.

"That's not true," George said. "Truman was opposed by Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace."

"That was twenty years ago. Anyway, Bobby can't win the Democratic nomination."

"I think he'll be more popular than Johnson."

"Popularity has nothing to do with it," Wilson said. "Most of the convention delegates are controlled by the party's power brokers: labor leaders, state governors, and city mayors. Men like Daley." The mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, was the worst kind of old-fashioned politician, ruthless and corrupt. "And the one thing Johnson is good at is infighting."

George shook his head in disgust. He was in politics to defy those old power structures, not give in to them. So was Bobby, in his heart. "Bobby will get such a bandwagon rolling in the country that the power brokers won't be able to ignore him."

"Haven't you talked to him about this?" Wilson was pretending to be incredulous. "Haven't you heard him say that people will see him as selfish and ambitious if he runs against a Democratic incumbent?"

"More people think he's the natural heir to his brother."

"When he spoke at Brooklyn College, the students had a placard that said: HAWK, DOVE--OR CHICKEN?"

This jibe had stung Bobby and dismayed George. But now George tried to put it in an optimistic light. "That means they want him to run!" he said. "They know that he's the only contender who can unite old and young, black and white, and rich and poor, and can get everyone working together to end the war and give blacks the justice they deserve."

Wilson's mouth twisted in a sneer but, before he could pour scorn on George's idealism, Bobby walked in, and everyone sat down to breakfast.

George's feelings about Lyndon Johnson had undergone a reverse. Johnson had started so well, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and planning the War on Poverty. But Johnson failed to understand foreign policy, as George's father, Greg, had forecast. All Johnson knew was that he did not want to be the president who lost Vietnam to the Communists. Consequently he was now hopelessly enmired in a dirty war and dishonestly telling the American people he was winning it.

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