47

The power of a queen often encourages its use single-handed. But an unsupported queen is in a dangerous position against skilfully used pawns.

Tuesday, November 5th

The fog had descended on the town. Not fog to stop the buses running or make the policemen use fog masks, but drifting areas of fog that would suddenly throw the headlight beam back through the windscreen. It had pedestrians wrapping their scarves a little higher than usual and coughing and spitting the sooty layer that formed on the mucous membrane like scale in a kitchen kettle.

At Parliament Square they had a couple of acetylene lamps roaring and flaring their distinctive green light. Two policemen in white raincoats stood in the centre of the road amid the swirling mist like spectral puppets, raising their white arms as the visibility lengthened and scampering aside when it closed in. Here and there around the entrances to the Tube stations, kids were begging for money for the guys, most of which were little more than shapeless sacks with a mask and a hat stuck on them. Near South Kensington Tube there was a wonderful one, though. It was as big as a scarecrow and was dressed in an old dinner-suit complete with white shirt and bowtie, while on its head was a dented bowler. There were four children around it and they were doing great from what I saw of passersby throwing them money. I found a place to park just across the road from Hallam’s flat. There seemed to be far more parked cars than usual because Gloucester Road was the kind of district where drinking cocktails and setting off rockets would be the right thing to do for young executives who like to play with fire.

‘Capital,’ said Hallam. His eyes were a little shiny. I guessed he had been at the decanter himself before I arrived. He ushered me into the echoing hallway. From upstairs I could hear an old Frank Sinatra record. ‘It’s the animals I sympathize with,’ said Hallam, walking down the corridor that was so dark I could hardly see him. As he opened the door to his room there was a halo of light around his silhouette. ‘They get frightened,’ he said.

Hallam’s room looked different from the way it was, the last visit I paid there. There was a Braun stereo-radiogram across one wall and a superb carpet on the floor. Hallam stood by the door, smiling.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked. ‘Sets the room off, I think.’

‘It must have given your bank account a bloodletting, though.’

‘Go on,’ Hallam said. ‘You’re always thinking of money.’

I took off my coat. Hallam wanted to explain. ‘My aunt died,’ he said.

‘No kidding,’ I said. ‘With something contagious?’

‘Good heavens no,’ said Hallam quickly, then he gave a hurried laugh. ‘She died with too much money.’

‘That’s the most contagious thing of all,’ I said, ‘and what’s more it can prove fatal.’

‘You are a terrible tease,’ said Hallam. ‘I never know when you’re serious.’

I threw my coat across the sofa without solving the enigma for him. I unwrapped the tissue paper from a bottle of rum and set it on the chest of drawers between the half-eaten pot of Tiptree marmalade and the Worcester sauce.

The pile of travel booklets had grown. The top one had a half-tone shot of a liner at dusk. Golden lights were twinkling through the portholes with a promise of cultured gaiety. In the foreground a woman with a small poodle in the bosom of her mink stole was emerging from the discreet legend, ‘Luxury Cruises for the people who know.’

‘Rum,’ said Hallam, ‘that’s very nice. I’m just taking a bottle of Algerian wine.’ He moved the wrapped bottle of Algerian close to the Lemon Hart Rum; then we stood looking at them for a moment. ‘What do you say to a little drink now?’ said Hallam.

‘I’d say hello,’ I said.

Hallam beamed. ‘What about a little rum?’

‘What sort?’ I said.

‘That sort,’ said Hallam. ‘The bottle you’ve brought with you.’

‘OK,’ I said.

Hallam bustled about squeezing some lemons and boiling water on the tiny gas ring in the fireplace.

‘How’s Grannie Dawlish?’ he asked as he crouched over the kettle.

‘Getting older,’ I said.

‘Ah, aren’t we all?’ said Hallam. ‘Good chap Dawlish, in his way.’

I said nothing. Hallam added, ‘Tends to play the heavy father a little. You know – Whitehall Top Level stuff, but a decent cove in his way.’

‘Didn’t know you knew each other,’ I said.

‘Yes, Dawlish was at Home Office for a little while. He had that office next to the lift on the same floor as I’m on. He said the noise of the lift got him down; otherwise I was going to move into there when he went.’

Hallam stood up with two steaming glasses of drink. ‘Here we are,’ said Hallam. ‘Taste that.’

I tasted it. It was a sweet combination of lemon juice, cloves, sugar and hot water, with a trace of butter on the top. ‘Not exactly alcoholic,’ I said.

‘Of course not, silly. I haven’t put the rum in yet.’ He uncorked the rum bottle and poured a slug into both glasses. Outside there was a sudden spatter of small explosions as a jumping cracker exploded.

‘I personally have always been against it,’ said Hallam.

‘Alcohol?’ I said.

‘Fireworks night,’ said Hallam.

I went across to the sofa, sat down and began to search through Hallam’s gramophone-record collection. He had a lot of modern music. I picked out Berg’s Violin Concerto. ‘Can we hear this?’ I said.

‘Play this one. It’s wonderful.’ He shuffled through his collection and found Sam’s favourite: Schönberg’s Variations for wind band.

‘It retains a strong melody even when the tonality is abandoned,’ Hallam explained. ‘A remarkable work. Remarkable.’

He played the haunting discordant work from which it seemed I could never escape. It could be just a coincidence, of course, but I didn’t think it was. While the music played I could hear the odd bang and shout outside and sometimes the whizz and spatter of a rocket ascending. When the music stopped Hallam fixed us another drink. As he said, in the dark people at the party wouldn’t notice whether it was full or not. Whenever there was a very loud bang Hallam went across to comfort one of the cats.

‘Confucius,’ he called. He had a special high-pitched voice that he only used for talking to the cats. ‘Fang.’ Fang was something like a large bath-loofah with a leg at each corner. It moved lazily from under the sofa, about four paces to the centre of the carpet, deflated itself gently and went to sleep.

‘They don’t seem very frightened.’

‘They are all right now,’ said Hallam. ‘It’s later when the big ones go off. I shall give them a sleeping draught before we go out.’

‘If you give that one a sleeping draught it will fall into its saucer of milk.’

Hallam chuckled discreetly. ‘Where’s my Confucius?’

Confucius was the active one of the household. It came from its curled-up pose on the bed in that cross-eyed, bandy-legged way that Siamese cats do and clambered with unfaltering ease on to Hallam’s shoulder. It gave a short regal purr and then Hallam stroked its head. ‘Wonderful creatures,’ he said, ‘so dignified.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘We shall need your help,’ Hallam said.

‘I’m no good with cats,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Hallam abruptly. He picked Confucius gently off his shoulder and put him on to the carpet. ‘Your help with the Broum papers, I mean.’

‘Is that so?’ I said. I took out my Gauloises.

‘Could I?’ said Hallam; I gave him one. He placed it precisely in relation to a gold cigarette lighter and lit it. ‘One way or another, you are the only one who can help. The department is extraordinary about documents like that. I know I said give them to Vulkan, but I didn’t know the department would create such a fuss.’ There was an explosion and then another from the street outside. Hallam stooped down to pat the cats. ‘There there, my lovely. It’s all right.’

‘It will cost money,’ I said.

‘How much?’ said Hallam. He didn’t say, ‘Very well’ or ‘Out of the question’ or ‘I’ll refer it to higher authority’. I couldn’t see the Home Office paying to retrieve things that they owned. It wasn’t like them somehow. I said, ‘How much? That’s difficult. What do you think the traffic will bear?’

‘It’s the time factor,’ said Hallam. ‘Are they in London?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

‘For goodness’ sake be reasonable,’ said Hallam. ‘I’m supposed to phone the PUS tonight at his private number and tell him that the documents are safely in our possession.’

There was a meek tapping at the door. ‘Wait a moment,’ Hallam said to me. He opened the door about six inches. ‘Yes?’

A voice from outside the door said, ‘She won’t let me do it in the passage, Mr Hallam.’

‘She’s an old busybody,’ said Hallam. ‘Do it outside.’

‘On the pavement?’ said the voice.

‘Yes, under a street lamp,’ said Hallam.

‘They are throwing a lot of fireworks about tonight, the young boys.’

‘Well,’ said Hallam in a bracing tone, ‘it won’t take you more than ten minutes, will it?’

‘No, that’s right,’ said the voice and Hallam closed the door and turned back to me.

‘Foggy tonight,’ said Hallam to me.

‘Yes, in patches,’ I said.

Hallam pursed his mouth like he was sucking a lemon. ‘Taste it. I can taste the fog in the air.’ He went across to the little writing-desk and lifted the lid to reveal the wash-basin. He rinsed his hands under the hot-water tap and there was a little boom and a flash as the gas heater began to operate. He dried his hands meticulously, opened a cupboard above the sink and took out a throat spray.

‘I suffer on the foggy nights,’ Hallam said. He said this while spraying the back of his throat. He stopped spraying, turned to me and said the same thing again so that I could understand him.

Outside the man had almost finished repairing Hallam’s puncture. We drove in my car with Hallam shouting directions. The fog was worse around here. It was a great green swirling bank, punctuated by dusty yellow orbs of street lamps. It tasted sour and caked the nostrils. The fog was a wall that echoed back the sound of footsteps before swallowing the sound. A heavy lorry ground past in bottom gear, following the pavement edge anxiously. A man walked slowly, guiding a car with a flashlight, and behind that a little convoy came like a line of coal barges towed by an adventurous tug. I let in the clutch and followed them. ‘It’s always bad around here,’ Hallam said.