17

Tall Walker, having obtained a temporary job as a Père Nöel in a Paris department store, could count on a modest pay for a few weeks ahead. He rather liked the job and fancied he suited it well.

But Walker was weary. The furnished flat comprised two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Lucky normally occupied the bedroom, while Walker slept on a divan in the sitting room. The place had been decorated by someone with a mania for stripes, pale stripes on the wallpaper, louder ones on the upholstery throughout the apartment. The bathroom tiles formed red stripes punctuated by little bunches of cherries and rosebuds. The towels were striped. The stripes in the sitting room were green and white. The wall-to-wall stuff on the floor, discernible as a yellowish green by origin, was now a matted and stained old brown. A tap in the bathroom dripped incessantly but Walker didn’t feel like approaching the concierge about it; there was the question of the overdue rent which the husband of the concierge ferociously wanted.

Now Walker was idly practicing his part before a mirror above the mantelpiece; it seemed to him that he had been attitudinizing most of his life. He had been the perfect English butler in Mexico, he had been Lucky Lucan for over ten years in Central Africa, and recently in Paris; and now Father Christmas at the Bon Marché.

A key in the lock of the front door. Lucky Lucan walked in, not a hair out of place. He held a white carrier bag from which he extracted a bottle of whisky. He put it down on a side table with a thud.

“Where have you been?”

Lucan, on his return from the kitchen with a corkscrew, two glasses, a bowl of ice, said, “Where have I been and what have I done with the money? I might just as well have stayed with my wife. Well, I’ve had a run of bad luck.”

“I know we’re absolutely broke.”

“No,” said Lucan, “I’ve just come back from Roget’s junk shop. I didn’t expect him to let me in, but do you know, he did willingly. I had a long talk with him. We’re in business again, we have to go back to Africa.”

“Oh, God! Impossible!”

“Can’t be helped. It’s inevitable. It’s a question of one of these tribal chiefs wanting an English tutor for his children. Two English tutors would be even more acceptable. The utmost discretion about us. His nephew is a Dr. Karl Jacobs—here’s his card—lives in Paris. There are three sons. No further questions asked. He wants them to grow up like English lords. That’s where I fit the bill.”

“Do you trust Jacobs?”

“I shouldn’t think so. I haven’t met him. But we’ve nothing much to lose. We’ve no option, in fact.”

“And Roget?”

“I don’t trust him. He’s a swine, besides. He makes it a condition that we take this job in Africa. A condition. Otherwise he’ll expose us.”

“But Hildegard . . .”

“He tells me Hildegard is well protected. She has the means to defend herself, we don’t. And that’s maybe the truth. Roget tried to follow me here in a taxi. Some hope! He failed.”

“How much did you get in Scotland?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Haven’t you any other old friends?”

“Plenty. One of them has a daughter who wants to get at me. She wants an interview. Writing a book. She’s going around with an old gambling friend of mine, Joe Murray. Her mother was Maria Twickenham. They even got on the same plane to Paris as I did. It was touch and go. They half recognized me and half didn’t, and then, it was too late, you know how it is.”

“I can get a job as a butler again, anytime, Lucky. You can count me out of Africa.”

“Oh no I can’t. I can make trouble for you and you know it.”

“Not so much as I could make for you.”

“Try it, then.”

It occurred to Walker that much the same conversation had been repeated between them for years; for years on end. He would go to Africa because Lucky Lucan said so.

“I hope,” he said, “that it will be a comfortable job.”

“Very comfortable. Every comfort,” said Lucan.

“What part exactly?”

“It’s a small independent tribal state, north of the Congo, called Kanzia.”

“I’ve heard of it. A small diamond mine, but extra large diamonds,” said Walker.

“That’s it. And some copper. They do well. They import most things, including equipment for their very decent-sized army.”

“Too hot,” said Walker.

“The Chief’s residence has air conditioning.”

“The Chief?”

“His name’s Kanzia, like the place. He calls himself the Paramount Chief. He has a jacuzzi bath,” Lucan said.

“I could swear,” said Lacey, “that I even saw him dressed as Santa Claus in a department store. Something about his shape, and very tall, no kidding.”

This gave rise to another explosion of laughter all round. There were Lacey, Joe, Jean-Pierre, Hildegard, Dominique, Paul and Dick, with the help of Olivia, all dining together in Hildegard’s flat. It was a remarkably happy evening. Lacey, now due home for her children’s holidays, had decided to give up her quest. She was recounting with much merriment the number of occasions in which they had missed Lucan by a hair’s breadth, and the other occasions in which Joe was either too late or completely mistaken.

“We did really see him on the plane. At Longchamp almost surely. But then Joe had a sighting at a lecture at the British Council. Now, if there is one place Lucan would not be, it would be a lecture at the British Council. A lecture on Ford Madox Ford.”

“And then, you say he was Father Christmas . . .” said Hildegard.

“That takes the biscuit,” said Joe.

“Well, we’ve had a good time, Joe and I,” said Lacey. “It’s a pity we never caught up with him after all this effort.”

“He would never have let you interview him.”

“You think not? Even for old friends like Joe and my mother?”

“I don’t know,” said Hildegard. They had not been told about Lucan’s double. It would be too much for them to take in with all these breaths of happiness they were experiencing. Even a simple manhunt had been so peripheral to their love affair that they had let him slip time and again, and enjoyed it.

“I daresay he’ll go back to Africa,” said Jean-Pierre. “That’s where he always feels most secure, I imagine.”

“Oh, surely,” said Hildegard.

“I’m looking forward to getting back to normal, actually,” said Lacey.

“Me, too,” said Hildegard. “I’m opening my office again next week.”