THE FLOUR KING SNORED ON, WITH INCREASING FEEBLENESS, towards his own black sea. Kraarkh kraarkh. Their memento mori tucked away, the voyagers tucked in. The Polyolbion dodged among the Cyclades. Kraarkh. The ham had been cooked in equal parts of chicken stock and muscatel, sliced to the bone, each slice spread with chestnut purée, ground almonds and minced onion. Covered with puff pastry, browned, served with a sauce Marsala. Kraarkh. Milos, Santarin. Roast chicken Nerone, with potatoes romana. Siphnos, Paros. Here the Nereids sing, their hair as gold as their voices. Tournedos truffés with a sauce bordelaise. Kraarkh. On Sikinos the Nereids appear with donkey or goat hoofs. Steak au poivre aflame in brandy. Master Walters frowned over the coded message. ZZWM DDHGEM. Kraarkh. Ariadne’s island. Pommes Balbee. Kythnos, Syros, Tinos, Andros. EH IJNZ. Parian marble, wine, oil, gum-mastic. Kraarkh. Hominy grits. Egg nog ice cream. OJNMU ODWI E. Kraarkh. The Northern Sporades. Sherry bisque. OVU ODVP. Kraarkh. Veal cutlets in sour cream. To starboard, Mytilene, then the Turkish mainland. Kraarkh. Miss Walters, excited by what was to come, quietened her nerves with a sex-book. The Polyolbion delicately probed the Dardenelles. Swell the march. Kraarkh with olive potatoes and juniper berries. Of England’s story with kraarkh and courgettes.
Hillier kept to his cabin because of Clara Walters. This was no time for cramming that honeycomb into his mouth. Spare bread and cheese and bottled ale fed that mouth which spent much time testing its Russian accent, reacquiring facility. Wriste was worried: was he perhaps not well?Wriste sat with him sometimes while he ate, telling tales of when he was a muckman in Canberra, a brutal stretch in jail in Adelaide, sheilas on Bondi Beach. The salt of the earth, Wriste. Of England’s story. Kraarkh. The Sea of Marmara. A mere wave at Istanbul to port: they would be visiting Istanbul on the way back. The Bosporus, Beykoz to starboard. Kraarkh. He was still alive, a mere vat of feebly bubbling chemicals. He might last till Istanbul. It would be easier there to arrange his transport to a British crematorium. The ship moved firmly towards the Crimean peninsula. Yarylyuk smiled equivocally ahead.
Nightfall; landfall. The evening was all plush, studded with Tartar brilliants; the air like soft and snaky Borodin. Some instinct told Hillier to greet his danger in underpants and dressing-gown. His L-shaped cabin was on the port side; from the light or deck-window above the washbasin he could see the harbour nuzzle up without himself being seen. He was in the dark, really in the dark. The horror was that he had no plan. He faced his fate, the fat laughers on deck their fun. There was always something inimical about the approach of land after long days at sea, even when that land was home, whatever home was. It was like the intrusion of the sforzandi of hearty visitors into the quiet rhythms of a hospital ward, or like the switching on of a raw electric bulb as the cosy afternoon of toe-toasting in the shadows, by the hypnotic cave of a Sunday fire, became churchgoing evening. The quay lights of Yarylyuk were naked enough; the go-downs were ugly with smashed windows. A dog barked somewhere in comforting international language. Tamburlaine and his sons, shabby in washed-out worker’s blue, looked up at the British ship: cruel Tartar faces with papirosi burning under ample moustaches. There was a shouting handling of ropes. Hillier heard the gangplank thud down. Some of the passengers cheered. He tried to think beyond the piled packing-cases, trolleys, oil-slicked stones, cracked windows, YARYLYUK in Cyrillic lettering and yellow neon glowing from a roof, to the distant hills, cypress, olive, vine, laughing teeth—sempiternal innocent life, clodhopping dances and flowery folk festivals. He tried, gulping, to think beyond the uniformed and capped smokers, arms akimbo, doing the rump-cleft-freeing knees-bend as they watched and waited. There would be unofficial lights—villas and workers’ holiday hostels—to left and right of this way in for foreigners. There would be little boats and regatta yachts with flags. A couple of uniforms strolled into his view. Perhaps they were not so clever here as in Moscow; perhaps Theodorescu’s message had been misunderstood or not taken too seriously. These were, surely, decent ordinary militsioners who wanted no trouble—a British whisky in the ship’s bar rather, a pen or camera or doll in Tudor silk. Their roubles would be acceptable; British shore visitors would want roubles; no trouble with roubles, no rouble-trouble.
Three jaunty Slavs, not Tartars, passport-stamping men in uniform, stamped past Hillier’s light, talking loudly. All intending shore visitors, it had been loudspeakered earlier, must report with their passports to the bar on C-deck. And would there be stripping for the thinner men in a commandeered cabin near by? A coachload was to be sped to the Hotel Krym, where there would be a feast of Crimean oysters, salmon, sturgeon, seethed kid, ripe figs and wine as sweet as ripe figs. Hillier started as his door was suddenly opened, letting in light from the corridor. ‘You’re in the dark,’ said young Alan. His Black Russian announced itself. Hillier drew the runnered curtain across his view of Yarylyuk. ‘You can switch on,’ he said. Alan was in a decent dark blue shoregoing suit with a polka-dot bow-tie. At once Hillier realised why he himself was near-naked. Yarylyuk was going to give hima uniform. ‘I’ve cracked this code,’ said Alan.
‘Never mind about that now. Where’s your sister?’
‘She’s just finishing dressing. She’ll be here in a minute. Look, about this code. The November goddess is Queen Elizabeth I. She came to the throne in November, 1558.’
‘1558?’ That had something to do with Roper. The familytree on the wall in Didsbury, Manchester. The ancestor who died young for his faith. 1558: an Elizabethan martyr. ‘I’m beginning to see,’ said Hillier. ‘A binary code, is it?’
‘If you mean alternate letters belong to alternating systems, yes. In one system the first letter is the fifth, in the other the fifth letter is the eighth. It’s quite simple, really. But I haven’t had time to do it all. They call you by a different name. I suppose it stood to reason your name couldn’t be Jagger. It begins: DEAR HILLIR. That’s a foreign-sounding name. Are you sure,’ he said accusingly, ‘you’ve been telling us the truth?’
‘They may have spelt it wrong. It should be Hillier.’
‘I didn’t get much further than that. But it’s full of apologies, as far as I can see. They’re sorry about something or other.’
‘Perhaps the amount of my terminal bonus. Anyway, I can have a look at it later. Thanks. You’d do well in this game.’ There was a knock at the door and Clara walked in. She looked ravishing. Hillier knew he had been right to go into retirement this last day and more, subsisting on bread and cheese and Russian. Infirm of purpose. She was in a cocktail dress of silver lamé with cape back and treble pearl-diamanté collar necklace, her shoes of silver kid. Perfume of an older woman clouted Hillier’s nostrils, making him salivate. He yearned for her. Damn work. Damn death. ‘How is he?’ he asked.
‘About the same.’
‘And that bitch,’ said Alan evilly, ‘is going ashore with that muscled Scandinavian bastard, God curse them both.’
‘Language, language,’ reproved Clara. She shook her head in sorrow at him and then went to sit on Hillier’s bunk. Her knees showed; Hillier knew, but did not show, an accession of agony. He said briskly:
‘To business. I want a Russian police uniform and I want it now. This means that a policeman will have to be lured in here—’
A loud complaint came from the corridor: ‘Making me bloody strip for a short-arm inspection. If that’s the condition for going ashore I’m staying on board. Bloody Russkies.’ A cabin-door slammed. So Theodorescu’s prediction was being fulfilled: a very capable, though bad, man.
‘Lured?’ said Alan. ‘How lured?’
‘You have two techniques available. If one fails, try the other. You, my boy, take that camera on deck. The Japanese one—’
‘Japanese one?’ He looked puzzled.
‘Yes, yes. The one you say Theodorescu gave you. Take it without the case, though—’ There was a knock at the door. It was Clara who raised her finger to shushing lips. ‘Come in,’ shouted Hillier bravely. He would bare his chest to bullets; he knew when he was beaten. Wriste peered in, then entered. He was smart for a shore visit, the grey suit natty enough for London, the tie—a vulgar touch that went with the toothless jaws—mock-Harrovian. He said:
‘Not dressed yet? Still not feeling so good?’ He saw Clara sitting on the bunk and did a Leporello-type leer. ‘All right, forgive me butting in, but there’s two blokes in the bar asking for you.’
‘Russians?’
‘Yes, but nice blokes both. Laughing and joking, speak lovely English. They said something about typewriters.’
‘And they asked for Jagger.’
‘More like Yagger. I just happened to be there getting my passport stamped. I didn’t say more than that I’d look to see if you was in.’
‘Well, I’m not. Say I’ve gone ashore.’
‘Nobody’s gone ashore yet. They’ve got some kind of FFI thing going on in one of the cabins. A very thorough lot, the Russians. Looking for drugs hidden up people’s arseholes, perhaps. I beg your pardon, miss. I do most definitely beg your pardon. I really and most sincerely apologise for what I said then. I just forgot myself. I do most definitely—’
‘You’ve heard of industrial espionage,’ said Hillier. ‘The Russians are better at it than anybody. Slip me a mickey and then gouge out all my technical secrets. Say,’ he said, inspired, ‘that I left the ship with a certain Mr Theodorescu. You saw that helicopter. A lot of people did. Tell them that. ’Wriste discreetly slid his thumb along his finger-ends, three times, rapidly. ‘Here,’ Hillier sighed. He dug out a hundred-dollar bill from his bunkside table drawer. ‘And don’t let me down.’
‘You, sir? You’re my pal, you are. And I’m really sorry, miss. Sometimes my tongue just carries me away—’
‘What’s FFI?’ asked Alan.
‘Free From Infection,’ said Wriste promptly. ‘We used to have it coming back off leave.’
‘How about now?’ asked Hillier. ‘This business now, I mean?’
‘That’s the funny thing,’ said Wriste. ‘They didn’t want everybody. Just a selected few. They could see I was honest.’ He struck a pose and leered. Then, wagging his hundred-dollar bill, he cakewalked out.
‘Yes,’ said Alan. ‘You said something about a camera.’
‘Find a solitary policeman and offer it for five roubles. That’s mad, of course, but never mind. Just hold up five fingers and say rubl. He ought to slaver over a chance like that. And then say you’ve got the case in your cabin, no extra charge.’
‘How do I say that? I don’t know any Russian.’
‘You disappoint me, you do really. Use gesture. He’ll understand. Then bring him in here. He’ll be quite willing to come. Any chance to snoop. He won’t be suspicious of you, a mere youngster. There won’t, of course, be any camera-case. There’ll just be me.’
‘And supposing it fails?’
‘If it fails we bring Plan Number Two into operation. Or rather Clara does.’
‘What does Clara do?’
‘You offer a camera, Clara offers herself.’ The two drooped and became what they were, children. They widened shocked and fearful eyes at Hillier. ‘It’s an act,’ said Hillier rapidly. ‘Just that, no more. Just a bit of play-acting. Nothing can happen. I shall be here in that wardrobe, waiting. But, of course,’ he ended, as they still looked at him dumbly and reproachfully, ‘you can’t really fail with the camera trick.’
‘But how do I do it?’ asked Clara.
‘Do I really have to tell you that? I thought you were interested in sex. All you have to do is to sway seductively and give him a bold look, what they call the old come-hither. You’re supposed to know all that instinctively.’ Ridiculously, Hillier demonstrated. They didn’t laugh.
‘All right, then.’ Alan didn’t look too happy. ‘I’ll go and start Plan Number One.’
‘And the very best of luck.’ Alan went out hanging his head. ‘Well,’ said Hillier to Clara, ‘that’s deflated him a bit, hasn’t it? Not quite so cocky as he was.’ He considered sitting beside Clara on the bunk, but then thought better of it. He took the nearest chair instead, crossing his legs, disclosing a bare hairy one beyond the knee, swinging it. There were women, he knew, who pretended that male knee-caps could be sexy. Clara didn’t look at it; she looked at him. She said:
‘Alan hasn’t got a camera.’
‘What?’
‘He’s never had a camera. He’s never been interested in photographing things.’
‘But he got one as a present. He said so.’
‘Yes. I couldn’t understand why he lied. If he’d got one he would have shown it me. He certainly wouldn’t have hidden it. What he got from that man he hid.’
‘Oh, God. Why didn’t he say? This is no time for having secrets from each other.’ That touched something in her—not sexology but True Romances. Hillier again considered sitting beside her.
‘Why don’t you forget all about it?’ she said. ‘It’s just not worth it, is it? Killing and spying and kidnapping. Men. A lot of children.’
‘Would you like a lot of children?’
‘Oh, fancy asking a question like that now. There’d be time for questions like that if you weren’t mixed up in all this stupidity. We could have a nice voyage.’
‘We shall have a nice voyage when I’ve finished the job. I promise you. We’ll read your sex-books together and drink beef tea at mid-morning. Or perhaps we’ll throw your sex-books overboard.’
‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘I’m not,’ said Hillier, not laughing. ‘I’m deadly serious.’ And then he thought: seriously dead; a serious case of death; prognosis purgatory. He wanted to live. The vowel shifted. A fat letter for a thin one. It seemed a long time since Wriste had talked about his typing sister. ‘I think,’ said Hillier, deadly serious, ‘I could talk about love.’ No man, uttering that word outside the heat of urgent need, could ever fail to be embarrassed by it. It was a con-man’s word. But with women, even more with girls, it was different. Clara went roseate and looked down at the Line’s carpet. Hillier had to give the word a meaning satisfactory to himself. The love he proposed, still marvelling at himself, was the only genuine kind: the incestuous kind. ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘Love.’ And as an earnest of meaning it he covered his knees with his dressing-gown, imagining himself glued by honour to his chair.
‘You shouldn’t have said it,’ flushed Clara. ‘Not to me. We don’t know each other.’
‘It’s not a word in your sex-books. If I’d proposed fellation you’d have taken it in your stride. Love. I said love.’
‘I mean, there’s the difference in our ages. You must be old enough to be my father.’
‘I am. Soon you’ll be needing a father. And I still say love.’
‘I shall have to—what’s the word?—lure him into my own cabin,’ she mumbled, still looking down. ‘It’ll be—what’s the word?—more plausible. You don’t think ahead, that’s your trouble. You just think of hitting him and taking his uniform. There’s the time after that. A dirty old man breaking into a young girl’s cabin—’
‘You needn’t choose an old one.’ Love. He loved this girl.
‘And then when you’ve gone off wearing his uniform I can scream till somebody comes and then I can say he took it off himself for what purpose everybody will know and then I lured him and got him off his guard and hit him—What would I hit him with?’
‘With the heaviest of your sex-books.’
‘Seriously.’ She tamped with excitement. ‘What are you going to hit him with?’
‘With his gun.’
‘Oh.’ The proscenium arch had come down. The maniac on the stage had leapt into the audience. ‘I hadn’t thought he’d be carrying a gun.’
‘These men will not be village bobbies. I won’t hit him too hard, just enough to give him an injection of PSTX. That produces an effect of great intoxication. If he’s already out he’ll probably stay out. Splendid. He came in drunk and undressed and then you clonked him with a stiletto heel—do that, you must do that—and then—’
‘Then I bundled his clothes out of the porthole to make things more difficult for him. Including the gun.’ She was a shine with eagerness to get down to the job of luring a strange man in.
‘You’re a beautiful and desirable and clever and brave girl,’ said Hillier gravely, ‘and I love you. And in jail or labour-camp or salt-mine I shall go on loving you. And even when the bullet bites I shall love you.’ It all sounded preposterous, like love itself.
‘But you’ll be coming back. You will come back, won’t you?’
Before he could answer, the door opened. Alan came in, very hangdog. ‘No luck,’ he mumbled. ‘Nobody wanted to buy a camera. So I tried a Parker pen, and they didn’t want that either. Nor some shirts. Not even my dinner-suit.’
‘I don’t think,’ said Clara, ‘young boys wear dinner-suits in Russia.’
‘I did my best,’ said Alan defiantly. ‘I’m not much good at this sort of thing. I’m sorry.’
‘Never mind,’ said Hillier, kindly, in love. ‘It stands to reason that you still have a lot to learn. Let Clara and me take over now.’
‘I think I’ll go ashore,’ said Alan. ‘There’s this big coach waiting at the dock-gates.’ He paused, waiting in vain to be told to be careful. ‘I’ll be careful,’ he said, doubtfully.
‘Act Two,’ announced Hillier. ‘A change of venue, but not really of scene. I’ll throw those sex-books of yours through your porthole,’ he told Clara. ‘We don’t want anybody to say you encouraged him.’
THERE WAS TIME for Hillier to make delicate love to Clara’s cabin, an extension of herself. First, though, he put out his tongue at the sex-books, bundled them, struggling to be free, in his arms, and then hurled them out into the starboard night. The illiterate sea took them as indifferently as a Nazi bonfire. Then he padded round with tiny steps, stroking hairbrushes against his hands and face (prickly male kisses, but proxies of hers), sniffing her unguents and pancake make-up and too-mature perfume. There were stockings on the chair, of a gunmetal colour, and he tried to strangle himself with them, at the same time chewing the dampish feet. She took size nine. He hesitated about burying his face in the underwear in the drawer or taking a drink of tap-water from a shoe that poked out from beneath the bed (size four). The calm of an army was the anger of a people. Love, for the moment, must be the purpose blazoned on a war-poster, not the tremor of the trigger-finger. It was time to be getting into that wardrobe.
He had to crouch in it, among her dresses. These, being the external or public she, could not excite him as much as what had lain against or soothed or scented or stimulated her skin. But he kissed the hems of her invisible garments and prayed, not at all to his surprise, less to the goddess who manifested herself to the world in them, so many discardable bodies, than to that devil Miss Devi who had racked his nerves with lust and left them weakened and exposed (flagellated into sainthood) to more spiritual influences. Through the chink of the infinitesimally ajar wardrobe door he saw just such a bunk as that on which he had suffered and enjoyed Dravidian transports. He set Miss Devi upon it in the lotus position, multibrachiate, and prayed his thanks for those fires of purgatory through which he had been permitted to pass to reach the beatrical vision. Then he wiped her out before she became human again and lay on the coverlet, waiting for him.
Time passed, and he wondered whether he had done right to expose this shining one, Clara, to even the play-acting of whoredom. But it would not be the postures of professional seduction that would excite so much as the evident innocence of their unhandy imitation. The man she would bring in here would be a bad man, no doubt of it, and would deserve what he was going to get. Then he thought about love and wondered whether any woman who was loved at all realised how excruciating were those intensities of devotion. The troubadours and con-men had debased the language, and the physical act reduced one to a paradigm of animality. Seek to possess the body of the loved one and you might as well be in a brothel. The act could not be ennobled into a sacrament in the way that bread could be transubstantiated. You could cram bread into your mouth at breakfast, spitting out crumbs as you talked about the sermon, but before that you had taken an insipid wafer, no nutriment in it, and muttered ‘My Lord and my God’. And you believed you were heard. With love you had to take breakfast and sacrament together and could not, at the moment of revelation, cry ‘My lady and my goddess’. Or if you could, you knew that there would be nobody to hear you.
Hillier suffered from cramp, crammed in among the odorous dresses. He opened the wardrobe door and prepared to loosen up his limbs, and then he heard footsteps approaching. He crammed himself in again, a mouthful of bread, and literally heard his heart hammer, out of phase with the footsteps. The cabin-door opened, my Lord and my God, she had bloody well done it. He saw drab police-uniform, the dull shine of a holster, riding-boots, and retracted to thirty or more slivers by the intermittency of his view, her silver lamé dress. How much could he bear? That belt and holster had to come off, but would she be unflustered enough to get him to unbuckle it now before those hard police-fingers mauled and probed? What Hillier saw he saw in slices, but he heard clearly enough the hoarse one Russian word: ‘Razdyevay—razdyevay—’ He widened the chink and saw too much—the rip of the dress at the shoulder, a Slav rape of the West, the fat red neck and the coarse stubble above it, the rank of the man (by God, she had done well, his brain coldly noted, noting insignia he had forgotten how to interpret but knew were above the badge of a lieutenancy, noting too, as he saw the blunt face in profile, a couple of rows of medal-ribbons and despising the man for this deflection from purpose but also loving him for being human enough to be deflected and then hating him for that lust that was all too human and was grunting and grinning in gold and stained ivory towards the one intolerable desecration). Clara, very fearful, already dishevelled as after a whole night’s forced abandon, looked across the bearing-down shoulder towards her salvation in the wardrobe. Hillier looked out at her an instant, pointing desperately towards the holster. She at once began to try to loosen the man’s tunic and he, grinning ‘Da, ya dolzhen razdyevat’sya’, rose from her, unbuckled his belt and threw it to the floor, then started to unbutton clumsily. To Clara he said, as before: ‘Razdyevay—razdyevay—’ The verb to undress, in its intransitive and reflexive forms, was one she ought to remember, thought Hillier madly, crouching hidden again. Now, in his shirt, the man made for her with fingers spread as for wrestling, and Hillier took his chance.
‘Khorosho,’ he said, pointing the gun (it was a heavy police Tigr, one of the new issue) and thumbing open the stiffish safetycatch. ‘Vstavayetye, svinyah.’ It was back to that afternoon with the Westdeutsche Teufel, though in a more satisfactory language. The shirted man addressed as pig was slow in standing up; he seemed even desirous of clinging to Clara for protection. But now, in a genuine officer-voice, Hillier called him a leching bitchget, and told him to come over to the gardyerob, he himself arcing away from it, and to stand with his fat pig-guts and lavatory-face facing it. The man obeyed, rumbling and spitting, though, disquietingly, his rather fine brown eyes looked with some warmth on Hillier: it was as though it were a pleasant capitalist relaxation—like drinking Scotch or listening to jazz—to be caught in a mere boudoir predicament. ‘This,’ said Hillier in kind Russian, ‘will not hurt much.’ He cracked the gun-butt on the man’s stubbled occiput. To his surprise, there was no response. He cracked harder. The man, with mammy-singer’s arms, tried to embrace the wardrobe and then, the skirr of eight finger-nails drawing old-time music-staves on the two wooden sides as he went down, he went down.
Hillier turned to Clara. He was shocked but wretchedly excited to see so much shoulder exposed and even an upper quadrant of her right breast. She seemed all right, though, not frightened any more. ‘I’ll buy you a new dress, my darling,’ he groaned. ‘I promise you.’ She said:
‘You didn’t hit hard enough. Look.’ The man seemed to prepare to raise himself with one hand-press from his prone moaning. Hillier gave him the gentlest of butt-thumps and, with a sigh of content, the man subsided. Hillier said:
‘I hope you’ll see me dress again. Often. But in future in my own clothes. Give me a hand with these boots. Too big for me, but never mind.’ Then came the breeches. Under them Hillier saw, with pity, patched drawers. He struggled into the uniform, panting. ‘How do I look?’
‘Oh, do be careful.’
‘Now his belt. Where’s the cap? Ah, behind the door. Treating the place as his own, the svinyah.’ The breeches were roomy, but the tunic would hide all bagginess. ‘I’d better pad myself out a bit.’ He stuffed Clara’s bath-towel in his chest. ‘And now.’ He took the loaded syringe from his dressing-gown breast pocket, squirted a sample at the air, then, in the man’s bare forearm, plunged the rest deep and rough. Some rilled along the skin, meeting russet hairs. Then, to both their astonishments, the man came to.
He came to suddenly, as if from a fairy-tale kiss. He re-entered consciousness in a state of robust drunkenness, blinking, lipsmacking, then smiling. His liberated under-mind began a drunken Russian monologue to which Hillier listened fascinated: ‘Dad in bed mother warm snow on ground said hot tea now no samovar hit Yuri hard on snout Lukerya cry tears freeze give cold boiled beetroot juice dad drunk.’ He tried to get up, gazing with love on Hillier. Hillier, with a new idea, said to Clara:
‘Where’s your stepmother’s cabin?’
‘Along here, we’re all along here together.’
‘Old Nikolayev school hit hard not know how long river.’
‘Go and see if it’s locked. If it is, get the duplicate key from the purser’s board. But hurry.’ She took from the door-hook a little fur cape. She couldn’t go out with a torn dress. Hillier loved her.
‘Salgir longest river Crimea but very short. South slopes Yaila mountains very fertile.’ He repeated it: ‘Ochin plodorodnyiy.’ Then he tried once more to get up. Hillier pushed him gently down. ‘Behind shed summer day Natasha skirt up big belly she show I not show she show I not show.’ Well, thought Hillier, he was beyond that pudeur now. ‘She show I not show she show I show.’ At last. ‘Old Nikolayev see hit hard on snout tell dad dad hit hard on bottom.’ A lot of hitting in that distant Crimean boyhood. Clara panted back in.
‘There’s that place where they make tea at the end of the corridor. There are keys there. I’ve opened up. Is that right?’
‘Good girl. Delightful, excellent girl.’ Hillier raised the smiling burbler to his feet without difficulty. ‘Lean on me, old man. A nice long sleep, tovarishch. You’re going to beddybyes.’
‘In her bed?’
‘Why not? It’ll be a nice surprise for her.’
The burbling had changed to song: ‘Whish, little doggies, off you go. Over the crisp and silver snow.’ A song of the Northern Crimea, probably, the south being free from the referred terrors of the steppes. Think of those men in Balaclava helmets. Think of Florence Nightingale. The corridor was empty. There was no trouble at all about propelling him to the bed of Mrs Walters. ‘Mama is sitting by the stove. In her samovar tea, in her bosom love.’ The room, sniffed Hillier, was redolent of sex. V grudye lyubov. In her bosom love. Soon there was no more song, only healthy snoring.
‘I must get ready to go now,’ said Hillier.
She raised her face. This time the man in that uniform was very gentle.
IT WAS THE DIFFERENCE between the eucharist and what the breadman delivered. Crammed, like bread, into tunic and trouser pockets, were the Innes beard and the Innes passport, the ampoules and syringe (needle capped for protection), dollars from The odorescu and black-market roubles from Pulj, a packet of White Sea Canal from the dead-out police-officer, as well as his card of identity (S.R. Polotski, aged 39, born Kerch, married, the dirty swine). The Tigr, safety-caught, snarled from his hip. He marched down the gangplank noisily, barking jocular Russian at the young constable at its foot (‘Bit of all right here, son. Bags of wallop and some very nice-looking tarts. Any sign of any suspicious characters, eh? No, I thought not. Load of cods-wallop that report was. All right, carry on, carry on’) and, having play-punched the bewildered youth on the chest, he marched off towards the ramp that led up to the little terminal. It was nicely dark on the quay, only a few working-lamps staring imbecilically, but it was brighter inside the terminal, though the customs-hall was in shadow, not being in use. A girl was serving beer at a little bar, the only customers Tartar dock-labourers; there was another girl at a souvenir kiosk, doing no trade. Near the landward door were a couple of constables, smoking. They stiffened when they saw Hillier, ready to throw him a salute, but he waved at them jollily as he marched through, singing. He sang S.R. Polotski’s song about the little doggies in the snow, lah-lahing where he had forgotten the words. One of the constables called to his back: ‘Find anybody, comrade captain?’ but he sang over his shoulder: ‘Niktooooh, false alarm.’ And then he clomped down steps, entering a little area of bales and packingcases and a few parked lorries. The night was delicious and smelt of strawberries. A light wind blew straight down from the mother land-mass, a reminder that the Kremlin was up there, despite the subtropical nonsense of warmth and oranges on that little southern uvula.
It was darker than it ought to be by the dock-gates and guardroom. If Hillier were what he pretended to be he would do something about that: not easy to check true face with passport parody in that light. A man in uniform with a rifle, shabby as a leftover from the Crimean War, came to attention for Hillier. In the guardroom two men played cards, one of them moaning about the deal. A very simple game, without guile; the comrades were hopeless at poker. A third man was, with sour face, mixing something with hot water in a jug. Hillier marched through. It struck him that there ought to be a police-car somewhere, but he inhaled and exhaled with a show of pleasure to the empty street that led out of dockland: he was walking for his health. On either side of the street were little gardens, grudgingly lighted to show cypress and bougainvillea and lots of roses. On a bench inside the righthand garden a young couple sat, furtively embracing. That did Hillier’s heart good. Deeper within the garden someone cleared his throat with vigour. A dog barked, miles away, and set other dogs barking. These, and the smell of roses touched (or did he imagine this?) with the zest of lemons, were pledges that life went on in universal patterns below the horrors of power and language. Hillier had to find the Chornoye Morye Hotel. He thanked distant Theodorescu for that bit of information about Roper’s whereabouts. He was supposed, of course, to know very well where that hotel was. But even police-officers could be strangers in a town. Indeed, the stranger they were the more they were respected. He marched on.
He was aware of fertile champaigns to the north, and hills beyond those: country scents blew down, unimpeded by trafficsmells. But at the end of the street which led from the docks he saw traffic and heard trolley-hissing and clanks. Trams, of course. He had always liked trams. He saw no unpredestined traffic: this blessed country with its shortage of motor-cars, where a drunk could lie down between kerb and tramlines and not be run over. Hillier arrived at the corner and looked on a fine boulevard, very Continental. The trees were, he thought, mulberries, and their crowns susurrated in the breeze. It was not late, but there were not many people about, only a few lads and girls, dressed skimpily for summer, aimless in pairs or groups. Of course, there would be an esplanade somewhere, looking out at winking lights on the water. Perhaps a band played the state-directed circusmusic of Khatchaturian from a Byzantine iron bandstand, people around listening, drinking state beer. He hesitated, wondering which way to turn.
He turned left, and saw that a souvenir-shop was open, though it had no customers. In the ill-lit window were matrioshkas, wooden bears, cheap barbaric necklaces and Czech enamel brooches. There were also china drinking-mugs and Hillier frowned at these, sure he had seen them somewhere before, though not, so far as he could remember, on Soviet territory. On each mug a woman’s face had been crudely painted: black hair screwed into a bun, the eyes wrinkled in evil smiling, the nose and chin conspiring to frame a cackle of age.Where the hell had that been? It came to him: some watering-place in Italy where the medicinal waters (magnesium sulphate? heptahydrated?) were grossly purgative, the bitter draught served sniggeringly in a mug like these, with, however, a younger, more beautiful, Italianate face. And, yes, the legend had been: ‘Io sono Beatrice chi ti faccio andare’. A low joke: I am Beatrice who makes you go. Straight out of Dante, that line, but she had been leading him up to the glory of the stars, purgatory one of the stages not the terminus. Now this had something to do with him, Hillier, but what?
He knew right away. It was Clara, clear bright one. He was becoming respiritualised, made aware of an immortal soul again after all these many years. And yet his dirty body could not be purged for her through this one last adventure, a breath-held entry into the flames then out again with his salvaged burden. It was not enough: domina, non sum dignus. A thousand clumps of pubic hair had tangled and locked in his, of all colours from Baltic honey to Oriental tar. His flesh had been scored by innumerable teeth, some false. And he had gorged and swilled, grunting. And then consider the lies and betrayals to serve a factitious end. He shook his head: he had not been a good man. He needed, in a single muscular gesture, to throw that luggage of his past self (blood-and-beer-stained cheap suitcases full of nameless filth wrapped in old Daily Mirrors) on to the refuse cart which, after a single telephone-call, would readily come to his gate, driven by a man with brown eyes and a beard who would smile away a gratuity (This is my job, sir). He was creaking towards a regeneration.
He turned to look at the street. From a closed shop which called itself an atelier a man came out limping. He wore an opennecked dirty shirt and khaki trousers. His face was lined but he was not old. A tram clanked eastwards, almost empty. To the man he said, ‘Pozhal’sta, tovarishch. Gdye Chornoye Morye?’
‘You are making a joke? The Black Sea is all behind you.’ He made a two-armed gesture as of throwing the sea there out of his own bosom.
‘Stupid of me.’ Hillier smiled. ‘I mean the Black Sea Hotel.’
The man looked closely at Hillier. He had a faint smell of coarse raspberry liqueur. ‘What is this?’ he said. ‘What’s the game? Everybody knows where that is. You’re not a real policeman, asking that question. You’re what I’d call a samozvanyets.’ Impostor, that meant. The woman who kept the souvenir-shop was at the door, listening. Hillier groaned to himself. He blustered:
‘Don’t insult the uniform, tovarishch. There’s a law against that.’
‘There’s a law against everything, isn’t there? But there are some laws we’re not going to have. Secret police masquerading as ordinary police.What will they think of next? If you’re trying to get me to incriminate myself you’ve got another think coming.’ He was loud now. A young couple, blond giant and dumpy brunette, stopped to hear, the girl giggling. ‘Where are you from? Moscow? You don’t sound like a Yarylyuk man.’
‘You’re drunk,’ said Hillier. ‘You’re not responsible for what you’re saying.’ And he took a chance and began to walk towards the few rags of red left in the west. In the unfamiliar big boots, he stumbled against a broken bit of paving. A child had appeared from nowhere in the gutter, a girl with a snot-wet upper lip. The child laughed.
‘Not too drunk,’ cried the man, ‘to know when I’m being got at. I’ve nothing to hide. There, you see,’ he told everybody. ‘He didn’t want the Black Sea Hotel after all. He’s going the opposite way.’ Hillier walked quickly past a redolent but empty fish-restaurant, a shuttered state butcher’s, and a branch of the Gosbank that looked like a small prison for money. ‘Getting at us,’ called the man. ‘All we want is to be left alone.’ All I want too, thought Hillier. He crossed diagonally to a side-street opening, totally unlighted, and got himself out of the way. Here a hill began. He trudged up broken cobbles, looking for a right turning. On either side were mean houses, in one of which a blue television screen did a rapid stichomythia of shot and dialogue, the window wide open for the heat. The other houses were dead, perhaps everyone out on the esplanade. Hillier wanted to be left alone, but he felt desperately left alone. The right turning he found was an alley full of sodden cartons, from the feel underfoot, with squelchy vegetable refuse sown among them. Hillier plopped gamely eastwards to a tune of cats fighting. There should, he knew, be a moon in first quarter rising about now. To his far left there was the scent of a hayfield: the country started early here. At one point he heard a husband-and-wife quarrel, apparently in a backyard: ‘Korova,’ the husband called the wife, also ‘Samka’, very loud. He turned right into a street which had tiny front gardens with roses in them, and then he was on the boulevard again, the mulberries stirring in a fresh breeze. He came to a sign which said Ostanovka Tramvaya. There were three people waiting.
‘So,’ said a remembered voice, ‘you’re up to your tricks again, are you? Creeping up on me nastily with your spying tricks. And if I say I’ll tell the police you’ll say that you are the police. This,’ he told the embracing couple waiting with him, ‘is what I call a samozvanyets. He thinks to disguise himself by wearing a police uniform, but I’m up to all his tricks. All right,’ he said to Hillier, ‘what if I do work at the Black Sea Hotel? It’s the big ones you ought to be after, not poor devils like us working in the kitchen. We don’t get the chance, not that I’d take it if I got it. I’ve always kept my nose clean, I have.Ought to be ashamed of yourself, you ought.’ Hillier did a resigned barmy-take-no-notice shouldershrug for the open-mouthed couple (open-mouthed, he then saw, because they were chewing American gum). The tram rattled up, its trolley sparking. It was a single-decker.
‘The next thing you’ll be saying is you don’t know the fare,’ said the man, comfortably seated opposite Hillier. ‘Go on, say it.’
‘I don’t know the fare.’
‘What did I tell you?’ he announced in triumph to the five passengers. ‘Well, it’s ten kopeks. As you knew all the time, samozvanyets.’
The conductress ignored Hillier’s proffer. The police, then, travelled free. She was a sort of bread-and-butter pudding of a girl, in a uniform that fitted deplorably.
‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘One law for the rich, another for the poor. Moscow,’ he sneered. ‘Why can’t they leave us alone?’
Hillier gathered a lungful of breath and shouted: ‘Zamolchi!’ To his surprise the man did shut up, though he grumbled to himself. ‘Going there now, are you?’ asked Hillier, more kindly. ‘To the hotel, I mean.’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ said the man. ‘I’ve said too much already.’ He took from his hip-pocket a very old-looking magazine called Sport and started to read a full-page photograph of a high-jumper with gloomy intentness. Hillier lighted a White Sea Canal, first twisting the cardboard mouthpiece, and looked out of the window. The tram turned right off the boulevard into a narrow street of pretty stucco houses with bougainvillea prominent in the front gardens. A street-lamp showed one clump of the flower up clearly, a glow of red and lilac petaloid bracts. Again that blessed world beyond politics. The tram turned left, and there beyond on the right was the sea with lights winking. There was no esplanade. Instead there were workers’ holiday hostels in garish primary colours, each with its private beach. In one a dance was swinging away to out-of-date music, corny trumpet and saxophone in unison on You Want Lovin’ But I Want Love. Was that distinction possible in Russian? The tram stopped.
‘As you well know,’ said the man opposite, tucking away his Sport, ‘we’re here.’ He let, or made, Hillier get off first.
The Chornoye Morye Hotel was on the left, away from the beach but with a winding path through a rich but ill-tended garden. Its name was on a board, floodlighted. The architecture was good Victorian English seaside, a sort of Blackpool Hydro with striped awnings. Hillier was disturbed to find plain-clothes men, bullish, thuggish, patrolling near the ornate entrance. But, of course, a temporary requisition. A scientific conference, big stuff, state stuff, the S-man, despite negative reports from the docks, perhaps really at large. That damned man was behind him, saying: ‘There you are. Real police. They’ll see through you. They’ll know you for what you are, samozvanyets.’ Hillier blazed. He turned on the man, grasped him by his dirty kitchen-worker’s collar and pulled him into an arbour of cypress and myrtle and begonia. He said:
‘This gun I have is not just for show. I shall use it on you without hesitation.We can’t have filthy little nobodies like you getting in the way of vital state business.’
‘I’ll confess everything.’ The man gibbered. ‘It was only two cartons. The head waiter’s in it up to his eyeballs.’
‘English or American?’
‘Lakki Straiyk. Two cartons. I swear. Nothing else.’
‘Let me see you go straight to the kitchen entrance. Any nonsense at all and I shan’t think twice about shooting.’
‘And the Direktor’s in it. Watches. Swiss watches. Give me time and I’ll make out a full list of names.’
‘Go on.’ Hillier butted him with his gun-butt. ‘Get in there an and nothing more will be said. But if I hear that you’ve been talking any more nonsense about impostors—’
The man snivelled. ‘It’s back to the days of Stalin,’ he said. ‘All bullying and threatening. It was different when we had poor old Nikita.’
THIS MAN WAS a nonentity, yes, a nichtozhestvo, but nonentities talked more than entities; what he said in the kitchen (probably scullery) would be transmitted very quickly to the office of the Direktor. A sort of copper sniffing after smuggled fags. Chewinggum too, perhaps. A thug in a cheap suit, the right jacket-pocket weighted down, rotated his jaws as he said to Hillier, with little deference, ‘Any news? Any sign of anybody?’ From within the hotel came noise and a faint percussion of glasses clinked in toasts: here’s to you; here’s to me; here’s to Soviet science.
‘False alarm,’ said Hillier. Another thug came up, a Baltic type, to peer at Hillier as though, which he couldn’t, he couldn’t quite place him. ‘There’s a Doctor Roper here,’ said Hillier, ‘an Englishman.’
‘Da, Doktor Ropyr, Anglichanin. Trouble at last, eh?’
‘Why should there be trouble?’ Hillier proffered his White Sea Canals and took one himself. He was dying for a real smoke, one of his filthy Brazilians. Thank God he’d brought some with him. Later, talking quietly with Roper, he would have one. ‘There’s no trouble that I know of. Something to do with his papers, that’s all. A matter of routine.’
‘Ah, rutina.’ The first thug shrugged. Hillier was welcome to go in if he wanted. The other thug said:
‘Moskva?’
‘That’s right, Moscow.’
‘You don’t talk like a Moscow man.’ Nor like a Yarylyuk one either. You couldn’t win.
‘I,’ said Hillier, ‘am an Englishman who speaks very good Russian.’ That went straight to their hearts. They waved him in, puffing laughter through their papirosi.
The entrance-hall was shabby and pretentious. There were a couple of noseless stone goddesses sightlessly welcoming, both eroded as by November rain, their glory gone. The carpet had, in places, worn down to a woofless warp; in other places there were holes, the biggest one outside the gentleman’s tualet. An old man in uniform chewed his beard outside the lift-gates, though the lift was labelled Nye Rabotayet—Out of Order. He was sticking to his post, all he had. The dining-room was straight ahead, full of what Hillier took to be Soviet scientists. Most seemed rosy and happy: this seaside convention was doing them good. They were seated, in fours and sixes, at tables with little flags of provenance, though surely all must now be convivially stirred up, making nonsense of all divisions outside of palpable ethnology. Hillier squinted through the smoke: limp pennants for the Ukrainian, Azerbaijan, Georgian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, Kirghiz, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics, but blaring banners (several) for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Time was short. That scullion nonentity might already be at work. Where was Roper? Hillier dredged the Slav, Lithuanian, Moldavian, Armenian, Ostyak, Uzbek, Chuvash, Chechenet roaring and toasting commingling for an Anglo-Saxon face. The trouble was that no one would stay still. No sense of guilt stirred by the presence of a police uniform, the scientists quaffed to each other (Budvar beer, Russian champagne, Georgian muscatel, vodka and konyak by the hundred-gramme fiasco) in amiable contortions—arms linked at the elbow, close bodily embraces so that each drank the other’s, alternate cheek-smackings between draughts. Some of the scientists were ancient and giggled naughtily in their cups, beards framing wet lips framing few or no teeth. Where the hell was Roper? Hillier grabbed a white-coated waiter with a spilling tray, young, cocky, his Mongol hair in a cock-crest.
‘Gdye Doktor Ropyr?’
‘Kto?’
‘Anglichanin.’
The waiter laughed and nodded towards the far end of the dining-room. There was a glass door there that seemed to lead to a garden. ‘Izvyergayet,’ he said gaily. Being sick, was he? That seemed typical of Roper somehow. Hillier marched towards that door.
A string of fairy-lights with gaps in the series was draped among the cypresses: surely a scientific conference ought to be able to do better than that. Otherwise it was dark, the moon still unrisen. Hillier urgently whispered: ‘Roper?’ There was a response of hiccups, somehow Russianised: ikota, ikota, ikota. Wherever he was, he was outside the square of light that came from the window. Hillier flicked his lighter, thought he might, while he was at it, have a coarse Brazilian, so lit up one. Better, much better. ‘Roper?’ A man came up with an electric torch, a new thug, so Hillier doused his light. The man sprayed the police uniform with his beam then, satisfied, grunted and spotlighted a hiccuping shape on a stone garden-seat. ‘You,’ laughed the man, ‘are the Englishman who speaks very good Russian.’ Either he was one of the hotel-entrance thugs or else the joke had spread quickly. ‘Here is another Englishman whose Russian is not so good.’
‘Go away,’ said Hillier. ‘We want to talk.’
Roper, by the sound of it, was sick. ‘Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he prayed, in English.
‘Amin,’ said the Russian in Russian. Then he said: ‘If you want to talk, go to the massage-hut there. Wait, I’ll switch on the light for you. Shall I bring strong coffee?’
‘That’s kind,’ said Hillier, uneasy that things were going so well.
‘Ikota,’ went Roper. ‘Ikota ikota.’ And then, at the end of a little path of myrtle and roses, disclosed by the walking torch, bright light, as of an interrogation-chamber, suddenly shone. Hillier took Roper’s arm.
‘Kto?’ asked sick Roper, with a very English vowel.
Politsia. Rutina.’
‘Oh God,’ said Roper in English. ‘I meant no harm walking out like that. I can’t take it like they can. I wasn’t trying to be insulting.’
‘Chto?’
‘Nichevo,’ said Roper. ‘Bloody blasted nichevo. I think I’m going to be sick again.’ He retched, but nichevo came up.
‘Perhaps,’ said the thug, ‘vinegar would be better than coffee.’ In the full light of the hut his face showed most unthuggish: it had something of the helpful shop-assistant in it.
‘Coffee,’ said Hillier. ‘And thank you. But take your time about it. Shall we say in about ten minutes?’
‘Ikota ikota.’ Hillier kept his face averted from Roper as they entered the light.
‘Ten minutes,’ agreed the man, and went off.
‘Now,’ said Hillier in English. ‘How do you feel now, Roper?’ He looked full on him and was appalled by the ageing of the face. The tow hair was patchily grey; there was a twitch near the right eye. Roper looked up and stopped hiccuping. He said:
‘Funny. I was thinking of you only the other day.’ He tottered towards one of the four army cots on which, Hillier presumed, massage was done after ball-games on the beach, and lay on it, eyes closed. He got up swiftly and blinked. ‘The bottom of the bed started coming up. The only thing that hasn’t. Matric English,’ said Roper. ‘The Authorised Version of the Book of Job. For the literature, not the religion. And you said that Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar were a proper bloody lot of Job’s comforters.’
‘Strange you should remember that.’
‘Oh, I’ve been remembering a lot of things lately.’
‘Strange you should remember the names. I’d completely forgotten them.Where does that door lead to?’ There was a door at the back of the hut. Hillier opened it and looked out. There was faint light now, the moon rising. He saw a high stone wall, full of crannies. Beyond the sea shook its tambourines.
‘I read the Bible a lot,’ said Roper. ‘The Douay Version. It’s not so good as the Authorised. The bloody Protestants have always had the best of everything.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Oh God. It’s the bloody mixture that does it. They’ve all got iron stomachs, this lot.’
‘I’ve come to take you home, Roper.’
‘Home? To Kalinin?’ He opened his eyes. ‘I see you’re in the police now. Funny, I should have thought they’d put you to spying or something. God, I do feel bad.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Roper. Wake up. You may have gone over to the Russians, but I haven’t.Wake up, you bloody idiot. I’m still in the same game. I’m taking you back to England.’
Roper opened his eyes and began to shake. ‘England. Filthy England. Kidnapping me, is that it? Taking me back to prison and making me stand trial and then hanging me. You’re a traitor, whatever-your-name-is, I can’t-remember-your-name, you’re in the bloody conspiracy, it’s been going on for four hundred years and more. Get out of my sight, I’ll scream for help, you bastard.’
‘Hillier. Remember? Denis Hillier. If you even attempt to scream I’ll—Never mind. Look, Roper, there’s no question of kidnapping. I’ve brought letters with me. Nobody’s going to do anything to you. You’re needed back in England, it’s as simple as that. There’s a quite fantastic offer here in my pocket. The trouble is, I haven’t time for nice cosy easy gentle persuasion. I’ve got to get you out of here now.’
Roper opened his mouth as to scream but then started retching and coughing. ‘That bloody huh huh cigar of yours. I could smell it all over the huh huh huh house when I went home that day. And after huh huh that she left. Poor little huh huh huh girl.’ He started to sweat. ‘I think I want to be—’ Hillier surveyed him without favour: a middle-aged man with an acquired Russian dumpiness, dressed in a dark blue shiny Russian suit, bagged and stained, its tailoring evoking an earlier age, a nonentity to whom was strapped a large mad talent. He pointed a gargoyling mouth to the concrete floor. Nothing came up, or down.
‘Take deep breaths,’ said Hillier gently. ‘Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want. Tell me what you’ve been doing all these years. Tell me what they’ve done to you.’
Roper breathed deep and rackingly, coughing up strings of spittle. ‘I’ve been on fuel,’ he said. ‘Rockets. Cosmonauts. They’ve not done anything to me. They’ve left me alone.’
‘No indoctrination?’
‘Bloody nonsense. The scientific premises of Marxism are out of date. I told them that. They agreed.’
‘Agreed, did they?’
‘Of course they agreed. Self-evident. Look, I think I feel a bit better. Did that chap say something about coffee?’
‘It’s coming. But if you’ve seen through Marxism why the hell do you want to stay here? What’s wrong with coming back to the West?’
‘I spoke too soon. I feel awful again.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake snap out of it, man. Listen. They’ll welcome you with brass bands when you get home. Can’t you see, it’ll be a marvellous bit of propaganda, apart from everything else. It’s only a matter of getting over that wall. I’ve got a fake passport for you and a false beard—’
‘A false beard? Oh, that’s—that’s—’He started to cough again.
‘There’s a British ship in the harbour. The Polyolbion. We’ll be in Istanbul tomorrow. Come on, man. That wall looks easy.’
‘Hillier,’ said Roper soberly. ‘Hillier, listen to me. I wouldn’t go back to England not even if they paid me a hundred thousand pounds a year.’ He paused as though he expected Hillier to say that it was roughly about that sum that was proposed in the letters he carried. Then he said: ‘Its nothing to do with the government, believe me. It’s to do with history.’
‘Oh God, Roper, don’t be so damned frivolous.’
‘Frivolous you call it, frivolous? What’s the name of that ship you’ve got out there?’
‘The Polyolbion. But I don’t see what that’s—’
‘It’s the Perfidious Polyolbion it ought to be called. There are some very good historians here, let me tell you, and they take history seriously, not like your lot back in Perfidious Polyolbion. They went into that business of my ancestor who was killed for his faith. They’ve told me never to forget, and by God they’re right. That bloody flowery tepid country where bygones are always bygones. I can see him now, flesh of my flesh, screaming in agony as the flames licked him, and everybody laughing and joking. And I’m supposed to forget about that and say it was all a big mistake and no hard feelings and let’s shake hands and go and have a pint of tepid creamy English bitter in the local.’
‘But it’s true, Roper. We’ve got to forget history. It’s a burden we’ve got to shed. We can’t get anything done if we carry all that dead weight on our backs.’
‘Martyrs stand outside history,’ said Roper. ‘Edward Roper’s clock stopped at two minutes to four. Fifteen fifty-eight. Martyrs are witnesses for the light, even though their lights are put out and their clocks stopped. That poor burned man may have been on the wrong track, but at least he had the right dream. The dream of a world society with man redeemed from sin. He saw Europe breaking up into little mean squabbling nations, and then usury creeping in and capitalism and wasteful wars. He had a vision of wide plains.’
‘The Russian Steppes?’
‘Laugh if you like. You always were one for laughing. You’ve never had a serious thought in your life. You’ve gone over lock stock and barrel to the bloody English.’
‘I am bloody English. So are you.’ Hillier started. ‘What’s that noise?’
‘Rain, that’s all, just rain. Not the piddling little rain of England and the measly little bit of English sun. It’s not like that here. Here it’s all big stuff.’
Big stuff. Rain beat on the roof like the fists of a people’s revolution. ‘This rain is perfect,’ said Hillier. ‘This is just the weather for a get-away.’
‘That’s right,’ said Roper. ‘Capitalist intrigues and ambushes and spyings and wars. Guns and get-away cars. Disguises. If I went back to the West they wouldn’t use me for the conquest of space. Oh, no. Has England ever tried to put a man into space? Don’t make me laugh,’ he said grimly.
‘We can’t afford it,’ shouted Hillier. The rain was near deafening.
‘No,’ shouted Roper back. He was looking a lot better. as if all he’d needed was rain. ‘But you can afford to be in bloody NATO and have spies and ICBMs and—Here.’ He fumbled in an inner pocket. ‘Here, read this.’ It was a curling photostat of something. ‘Whenever I start weakening and thinking of the bloody village green and British tommies nursing babies and what they call justice and democracy and fair play—whenever I think of the House of Commons and Shakespeare and the Queen’s corgis I have a look at this. Read it, go on, read it.’
‘Look, Roper, we haven’t got time—’
‘If you don’t read it I’ll scream for help.’
‘You’re screaming already. Russian rain isn’t on your side. What is it, anyway?’
‘It’s an extract from Hearne’s British Martyrs. Not a book I’d ever met before. But they had it in Moscow. Read it.’
Hillier read: ‘Edward Roper was drawn to the marketplace in a cart. A large crowd had collected and there were many children whom their parents had brought along for the bloody, or fiery, entertainment. When Roper appeared, dressed only in shirt and trunks and hose, a great cry was raised: Have at the caitiff, he is a blasphemer, death to heresy, to the flames with him, etc. Roper smiled, even bowed, but this was taken as an impudent mockery and it intensified the clamour of vilification. Men piled kindling round the stake; it would take quickly, for the weather had long been dry. Roper, still smiling, was pushed towards it, but he said in a voice clear and unwavering: “If I cannot avoid my fate then I will walk towards it with no rough impulsion. Leave me be.” And so he made his way with steady step and unhandled by the gross ministers of his martyrdom to the waiting stake, arm of Christ’s tree. Before they bound him to it, he took from the bosom of his shirt a single red rose and said: “Let not this emblem of Her Majesty and of the royal house which bore her perish with me. I pray that she and her kin and indeed all her subjects, however misguided and naughtily blind to the light, may escape the fire.” Whereupon he cast the rose, a full-blown June one, into the crowd, which knew not what to do with it. If they rent and dispetalled it, as having lain in the breast of a heretic and traitor, that would have been a kind of lèse-majesté. They seemed anxious to rid themselves of it while leaving it unscathed, so it passed swiftly to the back of the mob, where one took it and it was not seen again, though it has been said that it was kept pressed as a token of martyrdom in a book of devotions later lost. Roper was now asked if he would make his peace with God before the kindling was touched with the brand that was ready and waiting. He said: “See how that flame dissolves in the sunlight. It is a sad thing to be leaving the sun, but I know that I shall dissolve, through the agony of my burning, into the greatest sun of all. As for prayer, I pray that the Queen and this whole realm be brought back, in God’s good time, to the true faith whereof I am, though bad and unworthy, a steadfast witness.” At that moment the sun disappeared into the clouds, and some of the mob grew frightened as if this was a portent. And then the sun emerged again and they renewed their shouts and jeers. Roper, bound to the stake like a bear, said gaily: “Let me taste your fire. If I cry out it will be but my body crying, not my soul. I pity my poor body, as Christ on the cross must have pitied his, and in a manner beg forgiveness of it. But it will be the true witness and these impending flames ennoble it. God bless you all.” He composed himself to prayer and the kindling took quickly, the crowd groaning and shouting the while though some little children cried. The fire was built up speedily with dry twigs and branches and soon small logs, and the body of Edward Roper tasted the fire. He screamed high and loud as his garments blazed, then his skin, then his flesh. Then through the smoke and flames his disfigured head, the hair an aureole, was seen to loll. Mercifully soon his death was consummated. The mob waited, in a double sweat of sun and fire, till the roasted flesh and inner organs, including the stout heart, fell into the fire, hissing and cooking; they waited till the executioner crushed the blackened bones into a powder. Then they went home or about their business, and it was noted that many who had cried out on Roper the most loud were now reduced to silence. So it may have been that the work of a martyr or witness to the light was already beginning.’
Hillier looked up, inevitably moved. Roper said:
‘Not all this Russian rain can quench those flames.’ Hillier said:
‘This took place in 1558, did it?’
‘You know it did.’ The rain had grown discouraged; the fists on the roof beat more feebly.
‘And it seems to have taken place in summer.’
‘Yes. You can see that from the rose and the sun and the sweat. Dirty English bastards, defiling a summer’s day.’
‘Well,’ said Hillier, ‘you bloody fool, it didn’t happen in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth didn’t come to the throne till the November of 1558. The Queen that put your ancestor to death was Bloody Mary. You bloody benighted idiot, Roper. Curse your stupidity, you stupid idiot. Your ancestor was a witness for the Protestant faith.’
‘That’s not true. That can’t be true.’ Roper was very pale; the eye-twitch went like clockwork; he started to hiccup again: ikota ikota.
‘You call yourself a bloody scientist, but you haven’t even the sense to look up the facts. Your family must have been late converts, and then this story must have passed into their archives, all wrong, totally bloody wrong. Oh, you incredible idiot.’
‘You’re lying.Where’s your ikota evidence?’
‘In any reference book. Look it up tomorrow, unless, of course, your Russian pals have kindly falsified history for you. In any case, what difference does it make whether he was burned by a Catholic or a Protestant queen? It was still the foul and filthy English, wasn’t it? You can still go on feeling bitter and fuelling rockets to point against the nasty treacherous West. But you’re still a bloody unscientific fool.’
‘But ikota—But ikota ikota—They’ve always said that Catholicism would have been on the right lines if it hadn’t been for the religious ikota content. Capitalism they said was ikota a Protestant thing. I won’t have it that he died for capitalism ikota. Something’s gone wrong somewhere. Your history ikota books have gone all wrong.’
‘What your pals do, Roper, is to choose an approach appropriate to their subject. They found the right one for you all right. And they knew you wouldn’t have any historical dates among your scientific tomes. And, anyway, it won’t alter things for you even now, will it? You’re committed, aren’t you, you silly bastard?’
Roper’s hiccups suddenly stopped, but the twitch went on. ‘I suppose you could say that Protestantism was the first of the great revolutions. I must think this out when I get time. Somebody said that somewhere, in some book or other, I can’t remember the name. That world peace and the classless society could only come about through the death agony of an older order.’
‘Oh, I can give you all that. Thesis and antithesis and synthesis and all that Marxist nonsense. Socialism had to come out of capitalism. It certainly couldn’t have come out of Catholic Christianity. So you can still go on as you are, you bloody fool. Edward Roper can still go on being a martyr for a historical process that Mary Tudor was trying to hold back. You’re all right, Roper. You don’t have to alter your position. But don’t talk to me about intellectual integrity and the importance of working from incontrovertible data. You came over here for reasons other than the martyrdom of poor bloody Edward Roper. That’s just an emotional booster. You came over here because of a process that began with that German bitch. You needed a faith and you couldn’t have any faith either in religion or what you used to call your country. It’s all been quite logical. I even sympathise. But you’re coming back with me, Roper. That’s what I’ve been sent out for. This is my last job, but it’s still a job. And I’ve always prided myself on doing a good job.’
‘Bravo,’ said a voice from the door. It had opened silently. ‘But, and I’m genuinely sorry about this, nobody’s going back with anybody. I too like to do a good job.’ Hillier frowned, looking up at the man in the white raincoat who pointed, in an attitude of relaxed grace, a gun with a silencer attached. He thought he knew the man but he couldn’t be sure. ‘Wriste?’ he said, incredulous.
‘Mister Wriste,’ smiled the man. ‘The honorific is in order. My stewardship, Mr Hillier, is more exalted than you supposed.’
‘I THOUGHT,’ SAID ROPER reproachfully, ‘you were the man who was bringing us some coffee.’
‘There was a man,’ said Wriste. ‘His carrying of coffee made him easier to hit. I may have hit him too hard. One always expects Russian skulls to be tough, but one forgets that the Soviet Union comprises many ethnic types. There must be some very delicate skulls, I should think, in a citizenry so various and farflung. However, this man is sleeping—perhaps for ever, who knows?—in a bower of the most delicious roses. Red roses, Mr Roper.’ He smiled.
‘How do you know about red roses?’ asked Roper.
‘A gentleman called Theodorescu—Mr Hillier knows him well—has a Xerox copy of your autobiography. A work of no great literary merit, Mr Roper, but factually it is not uninteresting. One of the facts that Theodorescu has not, despite his collecting zeal, yet collected is the fact of my identity and office. I cleaned his cabin and found many enlightening things there. As for your autobiography, Mr Roper, I took the opportunity of photostatting some of the later pages. That business of the redrosed martyrdom was touching but not relevant to my purpose. My purpose was to understand better the reason for what I have to do. I don’t like being a mindless instrument. I like to know why the target chosen is the target chosen.’
‘What’s all this,’ Hillier asked Roper, ‘about an autobiography?’
‘I admire you, Mr Hillier,’ said Wriste. ‘You should by rights be gaping at my transformation, unable to say anything at all. I admire you as I admire Mr Theodorescu—you’re both tough minded gentlemen not easily surprised. I think perhaps I shall have some small opportunity of admiring Mr Roper before Mr Roper too is laid among the red roses. He, like you, Mr Hillier, seems undisposed to tremble at my gun. And, talking of guns, be good enough, Mr Hillier, to unbuckle that belt and let it drop to the floor.’
‘If I don’t?’
‘If you don’t I shall inflict a painful, though not lethal, wound on Mr Roper here. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?’ Hillier undid the belt and let it fall.Wriste scooped it towards himself with his foot and then bent swiftly, his own gun-point ticking between Hillier and Roper, to draw the Tigr from its open holster and then ram it into his left raincoat pocket. He smiled warmly and said: ‘We might as well all be seated. A man has a right to a certain minimal comfort before transacting a painful task, as indeed, have the men who complete the predicate of the transaction.’ Hillier sat; Wriste sat; Roper remained seated; one bed only was empty. Hillier studied Wriste. The voice had changed to suit the measured pedantry of his language, which was not unlike that of Mr Theodorescu. There was, thought Hillier, always something of the schoolmaster in the secret agent. The patrician tone that Wriste additionally shared with Theodorescu was not, however, always found in schoolmasters. Wriste’s Harrovian tie now seemed no longer a fake. Had he been to songs with Sir Winston Churchill, wondering, as he sang, what Sir Winston had saved the West for? Wriste now wore teeth. They were the finest false teeth that Hillier had ever seen. They were not merely irregular, they were gapped towards the left upper molars, there was a careful spot of decay on a lower canine, an upper incisor carried a glint of gold.
‘Well,’ said Hillier, ‘it seems I was throwing my money away.’
‘It wasn’t going to be any use to you, Mr Hillier, not where you’re going. Where are you going, by the way? Is there anything after death? I often attempt to engage in an eschatological discussion with what I euphemistically term my patients. Most seem frightened of something, else why should they (as they do, believe me, most of them) blubber so? One doesn’t blubber for the loss of life—a few more slices of smoked salmon, an hour more of sun, a session of wick-dipping (forgive the vulgarity: it reminds me of burning the candle at both ends), a few more wine-bubbles up the nose. Perhaps all of us who are engaged in this sort of work—international intrigue, espionage, scarlet pimpernellianism, hired assassination—seek something deeper than what most people term life, meaning a pattern of simple gratifications.’
‘I could have done with some coffee,’ said Roper.
‘I’m truly sorry about that,’ said Wriste. ‘No viaticum before the journey. But I think Mr Hillier might be allowed one of his shocking Brazilian cigars. Light up, Mr Hillier, rejoicing in the steadiness of your hand. To me the tremor is reserved: I can never approach that moment of truth unmoved.’
Hillier smoked gratefully. The rain had eased. He felt a peculiar peace though many regrets, the chief of which was about Clara. If he was going to be shot he was not going to be shot just yet: this interim was most precious, all responsibility put off, the ticking seconds essential drops of life’s honey, the sweet gold of pure being. He looked almost gently on Wriste. And, of course, something would intervene to scotch the act; something always did. Oneself did not die; that, like the very quiddity of otherness, was for others.
‘If you’re thinking, Mr Hillier, that there will be a last-minute intervention of salvatory forces, I beg you to put off that hopeless, or hopeful, notion. There were three guards. I have dealt with all of them. In the hotel the junketing of scientists is at its height. There are exhibitions of frog-dancing. There is talk of bringing down the chambermaids to join in the revels. I gather there is something to celebrate—isn’t that so, Mr Roper?’
‘Breakthrough on the Beta Plan,’ mumbled Roper. ‘Look here, I think I’ve got a right to know what’s going on. So,’ he afterthought, ‘has Hillier here.’
‘You’re quite right, you have a right. I’m here to kill both of you. Totally, let me make this clear, without personal vindictiveness. I am, as I said, an agent—or, in deference to the myths of your shared religion, let me say an angel—of death. I shoot people for money, but I like to find out why (here’s a Shakespearian touch for you) their names are pricked. That lends an intellectual interest. Now, Mr Roper, your death is a sort of pendent to Mr Hillier’s. My primary assignment is to kill Mr Hillier. I was paid not in roubles nor in dollars but in sterling—good crisp notes I carry on my person at this moment. Who do you think paid me that money, Mr Hillier?’
‘I can’t even guess.’
‘You can guess, but you don’t wish to. The revelation would be too shocking. Nevertheless, let us have the totality of the moment of truth. You’re going to die very bitterly, Mr Hillier. To be betrayed by the very people you have given your all to, in whose service you have grown gnarled and scarred and seared. That S on your body was a cruel touch. I’ve worked for Soskice. It’s typical of the man. Still, I think you were adequately avenged. One less man for me to work for. I don’t know, though. Others are coming up. That man Grimold promises well. The game goes merrily on.’
‘Do you mean,’ asked Hillier, beginning to feel that he could feel sick, ‘that my own people instructed you to kill me?’
‘I personally wasn’t instructed. Panleth, our agency—delightful name, isn’t it? Cosy, somehow. Kill all pan-germs with Panleth—Panleth passed on the assignment. It seems to me, having studied the matter, that there’s neither wantonness nor ingratitude in the desire of your late friends to have you killed. I should think you were even given a sporting chance. Naturally, I had a look at that letter I handed to you when you embarked at Venice. I couldn’t be bothered to decipher it, but I guessed at its content. I should think there was an apology there for what was coming. There are gentlemen in England now abed, sleeping sound in the knowledge that the decent thing was done. You should by rights have spent your voyage puzzling out that message, but you decided to dedicate it to a sort of fling. A last fling, as it happens. The pattern of things proves you were right to do that. I would have got you anyway, though not perhaps here. You’ve had a final rich spoonful of life. Gorblimey, sir,’ he added, in his steward voice, ‘that’s a bit of a bleed in’ understatement.’ And, in the Harrow voice, ‘You can be thankful for that.’
‘I still want to know why,’ sweated Hillier.
‘I think I can give the answer,’ said Roper. ‘You know too much.’
‘Too much for what?’
‘You’re being deliberately obtuse,’ said Wriste. ‘Too much to be let loose into a retirement. Mr Roper is perfectly right. I should imagine you’ve already sold information to Theodorescu. That money on your naked lap—what a stupid story you told me about a wager. Your generous hand-outs to me, incidentally, seem to attest a sense of guilt. Anyway, were you to live you’d sell more information or even give it away. That you were brought up a Roman Catholic was always one thing against you. You left your Church, but you’d probably go back to it in retirement. A sort of hobby, I suppose. As with Mr Roper here, that old loyalty tended always to militate against another. You could never be wholly patriotic. Add to this your known sensuality—itself a kind of substitute for faith—and you have, I should have thought, enough grounds for a quiet and regretful liquidation. Think about it, Mr Hillier. Put yourself in the position of those English gentlemen who, when they’re not on the golf-course, worry about security.’
Roper seemed less fearful than interested. He frankly leered his admiration of Wriste’s lucidity of exposition. He said: ‘Where do I come into this?’
‘A pendent, as I told you. It was considered, for obvious reasons, better that Mr Hillier should be given his quietus on Soviet soil. You, Mr Roper, were never thought of as more than a mere pretext for getting Mr Hillier here. This will be unpalatable, I know. You are—and I have this on the highest authority—not wanted back in England.’
Roper, despite all he had spat out at Roper-burning England, now seemed to tamp down indignation. ‘I’m not having that, you know.’
‘Come now, think it over. You’ve already done your best work. Scientists, like poets, mature early and decay early. It is young scientists that are wanted. The stock fictional image of the grey-haired doddering genius being smuggled in or out is totally false. Your value to the Russians is mostly symbolic. The British are more concerned at the moment with luring Alexeyev over to the West than with reclaiming you.’
‘Alexeyev?’ went Roper. ‘But Alexeyev’s only a bloody kid.’
‘It’s the bloody kids that are needed,’ said Wriste. The locution, in Wriste’s pedantic tones, carried connotations of sacrifice. Ritual, it was all ritual. ‘As for the moral implications of your defection, it’s only a vocal minority in Parliament that’s crying out for your head. A treason-trial would spill too much muck into the headlines. That muck has to be buried, not spread.’
Roper went crimson. Hillier asked: ‘What muck?’
‘I don’t know the whole of it,’ said Wriste. ‘Those passages of Mr Roper’s autobiography that I’ve read—’
‘How did he get hold of that?’ asked Roper in red anger. ‘That bugger you mentioned—Theo something-or-other—’
Wriste shrugged. ‘Apparently you’ve had a double agent snooping in your vicinity. Perhaps a lab-boy or room-cleaner or something. He sold a Xerox copy of your completed chapters to a man who sold it to a man who sold it to a man who sold it to Mr Theodorescu. Mr Theodorescu is voracious for information. Of course, a typescript—top copy or carbon—is valueless in any market other than the literary. It’s holographs that are needed. Though to the student of human motivation, the chronicler of that specific kind that produces the traitor, your typescript isn’t without interest. The trouble is that anybody with a moderately inflamed imagination could have written it. And your typescript seems to leave off, as though with fright, on the threshold of the really significant revelation. I should be interested to know why you embarked on this task at all.’
‘It was suggested to me,’ said Roper, mumbling again. ‘Clarify my ideas. Examine myself. It was an exercise. But you still haven’t said why—’
‘I think all that’s clear now, isn’t it? The client I have to serve in respect of you, Mr Roper—’
‘Look,’ said Roper, ‘I’m sick to death of this bloody mister. I’m Doctor Roper, got it? Doctor, doctor, doctor.’ It was like a stoic cry out of Jacobean drama: I am Duchess of Malfi still.
‘Alas, Mister Roper, your doctorate was taken away from you. It was publicly announced, I gather, but you personally evidently weren’t informed. The senate of the university concerned announced that they’d discovered evidences of plagiarism.’
‘That’s a bloody lie.’
‘Probably. But it was in the national interest that you should seem to be a fraud and a fake. The British public could sleep sound. A man of straw had gone over to the Russians. The news of your dedoctorisation, if that’s the right term, never appeared in the Daily Worker, and certainly Pravda wouldn’t mention it. You remained ignorant.’
‘So did I,’ said Hillier. ‘A great deal of what you’re saying grows more and more suspect.’
‘As you please. But you, Mr Hillier, began to opt out of the modern world long before you sent in your resignation. You read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies. All this is unimportant. What I say now is far from unimportant. A certain cabinet minister, Mr Roper, became agitated when he learned, at a little dinner party in Albany, that you were to be forcibly repatriated. About the autobiography he knew nothing. I deduced that he feared revelations which would affect him privily if you should be brought to trial. I can guess at the nature of the revelations. If only you had gone further in your autobiography I should know absolutely how this high personage was involved in your career. But no matter. It was important, so far as he was concerned, that you should not return to England. He had made use of Panleth before. It was a matter of trying to make the last government fall. The government’s majority was down to two; the member of a certain marginal constituency was known to be suffering from heart disease; Panleth arranged for the progress of that ailment to gallop to a premature consummation. When he learned, in the strictest confidence, that you, Mr Roper, were coming home, he contacted Panleth again. Hence my two assignments, their respective provenances quite independent, united only by place. Panleth is an efficient agency. It looks after its clients and consults their convenience. It takes only ten per cent.’
‘Well,’ said Roper, more cheerfully, ‘you don’t have to do the job, do you? You’re going to kill Hillier, and Hillier won’t be taking me—’ He nearly said ‘home’.
‘Ah, that’s not it.’Wriste head-shook sadly.
‘You’ve got your money,’ said Hillier. ‘You said so. You don’t have to kill either of us.’
‘I’ve got some money,’ said Wriste. ‘Not all. You paid me at the beginning of your trip, Mr Hillier, and you were presumably going to pay me at the end. So with these two jobs. Before I can receive the balance—from Department X and Mr Y alike—I have to furnish evidence of the satisfactory fulfillment of the assignments.What I normally take back is a finger—’
‘A finger?’
‘Yes. For the fingerprints. Most of my patients are fingerprinted men. Agents and top-level scientists and so on, men with detailed dossiers. Strange, once you have a dossier you seem potentially to have committed a capital crime. This sort of punishment—’ He waved his gun. ‘It always hovers. When you’ve finished that cigar, Mr Hillier, the hawk must swoop.’
‘You could,’ said Roper, ‘cut off a finger and let us go.’ He spoke as dispassionately as if his body were a tree to be pruned.
Wriste again shook his head, more sadly than before. ‘I’ve never yet performed an act of other than terminal surgery, though the request has been made often enough. No, gentlemen both, I have my honour, I have my professional pride. If either of you were ever to appear, fingerless but otherwise whole, walking the world smiling, my career would be at an end. Besides, there’s a man called the Inspector.’
‘Oh, my God,’ groaned Hillier.
‘Yes, the Inspector. Nobody knows his name, I doubt if anyone’s ever seen him, I sometimes doubt whether he really exists. He is perhaps a mere personification of Honour. But it’s convenient to believe in him. No, no, gentlemen, it’s no good.’ He took from an inside pocket a plush case, rather finely made, and clicked it open. ‘I’ve never had occasion to use this before,’ he said. ‘See, there are grooves for two fingers. I have another case, rather well-worn, for the single digit. One man I know, very ambitious, uses a cigar-case, but that seems to me to be crude. I had this specially made by a man in Walthamstow, of all places. I said it was for the accommodation of amputated fingers, and he laughed.’
Hillier could not drag any more smoke from his Brazilian. He had five more in his pocket: what a waste. ‘Well,’ he said. Roper, as if to ensure that Wriste’s token should not disgrace him, though dead, was busily biting his nails.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ said Wriste dreamily, pulling back the safety catch. Hillier’s eyes were drawn to the weapon; if he and it were to engage in the ultimate intimacy, he had at least to know its name. It was a Pollock 45, beautifully looked after. Wriste was a real professional, but there were elements of corruption in him. This personal interest in his victims would be the death of him, Hillier thought. ‘Strange,’ repeated Wriste, ‘that in a minute or so you will both be vouchsafed the final answer. Religion may be proved all nonsense or else completely vindicated. And the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope of Rome cannot in the least profit from your discovery. Top secret. Locked drawers. A safe with an unbreakable combination. There may be a quattrocento heaven, there may be a Gothic hell. Why not? Our aseptic rational world does not have to be a mirror of ultimate reality. Hell with fire and vipers and mocking devils for ever and ever and ever. At this moment I always survey my victims with a kind of awe. The knowledge they are going to possess is the only knowledge worth having. Would either of you gentlemen like to pray?’
‘No,’ cried stout Roper. ‘A load of bloody nonsense.’
‘Mr Hillier?’
Hillier swallowed on a vision of Clara. He had, even though retrospectively, defiled that image. His whores and victims marched, in swirling mist, over an endless plain, their formation S-shaped, pointing at him with three-fingered hands, lipless, noseless, only great eye-lamps staring. ‘A form of words,’ he muttered. ‘No more.’ He knew he didn’t really believe that. Roper was a better man than he. ‘Oh my God,’ he recited, ‘I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins and detest them above all things—’
‘Bloody nonsense,’ cried Roper. He seemed determined, like Kit Marlowe, to die swearing. ‘Cunting balderdash.’
‘—Because they deserve Thy dreadful punishment, because they have crucified my loving saviour Jesus Christ—’
‘Bumfluffing bleeding burking tripe. When you’re dead you’re finished with.’
‘—And most of all because they offend Thine infinite goodness. And I firmly resolve by the help of Thy grace never to offend Thee again—’
‘That’s one resolution that will be fulfilled,’ delivered Wriste.
‘—And carefully to avoid the occasions of sin.’
There was a timid knock at the door of the little hut. Hillier’s heart leaped. Never pray, someone—Father Byrne?—had once said, for the thing of immediate advantage. Wriste joined Roper in swearing, though more softly. Then he said: ‘This is awkward. This I had not expected.’
‘You talk too much,’ said Roper, ‘that’s your trouble. You could have got this job over nicely if it hadn’t been for all that yak.’ It seemed a sincere reproof.
‘A third,’ said Wriste. ‘Innocent, perhaps. A pity. Nothing in it for me. Totally gratuitous.’ Brooding on the economics of death he pointed his gun at the door. ‘Come in,’ he called.
The door opened. A boy stood there, draped against the dying rain in a big man’s jacket.
‘Well,’ said Wriste, in his steward’s accent, ‘if it ain’t little Mister bloody Knowall. I’m truly sorry about this, son, but I don’t see any way out. Come in, right in,’ he gun-waved, using the patrician tones. ‘How did you know we were here?’
Roper frowned on Alan Walters as though he had come to a class of his without registering for it. Alan said:
‘A bit of a whiff of cigar-smoke. Not much, just a bit. I lost you.’ He looked apologetically at Hillier. ‘I lost you on the road. And then I looked in the hotel, but it’s all filthy drunkenness there.’
‘Clever boy,’ purred Wriste. ‘That stepmother of yours will be pleased to have you out of the way. I wonder if it would be prudent to seek a small emolument.’
‘I was going to put her out of the way,’ said Alan. ‘This seems good territory for killing people. But then I thought: first things first. I always knew you were a phoney.’
‘Oh, naturally. You know everything, don’t you? Including the correct postures for pederastic gratification.’
‘That had to be,’ said Alan. ‘It was the only way. There are some awfulmen in the world, you included. But you weren’t clever enough. You told me you’d spent the war in an Australian prison. And the next minute you were talking about having an FFI when you came back off leave. I always knew you weren’t to be trusted. You’d never do anything without getting money for it first.’
‘I’m getting no money for this,’ said Wriste. ‘Take your hands from underneath that outsize jacket. Join them together. Close your eyes. Say your little boy’s prayers. You can precede these gentlemen. The antipasto, the Italians call it. The odorescu would like that. Come on, boy, we’ve wasted enough time as it is.’
‘You bloody neutral,’ cursed Alan. ‘You’re going where all the neutrals go.’ Dull fire spat through the jacket, leaving a smoking hole. In great-eyed surprise Wriste grabbed, rebus, his wrist, cracked bone with blood taking breath to fountain out. He watched, almost with tears, his gun drip from his fingers and fall without noise on one of the massage-cots. Alan now had the Aiken, silencer and all, in the open. ‘Now try this,’ he said. He aimed at Wriste’s pained surprise through the fumes of frying smoked bacon. He thudded fire at the nose and got the right eye. The eye leaped out on its string as in a surrealist montage. The socket leered as the blood prepared to charge, and then the whole face was black fluidity mounted on a falling body. The mouth, independent of the smashed brain, cried ‘Cor’ in Cockney. The left fingers, like rats in shipwreck, clawed at a cot, seeking to save themselves. Wriste’s going down was leisurely, noisy, the body’s indulging itself in its closing scene. There was a crack and the sound of spatter from the trousers. Then Wriste was only a thing.
‘I think I’d better be sick,’ said Alan. ‘It’s time somebody was sick.’ He went and stood, like a naughty boy, in the corner. His shoulders heaved as he tried to throw up the modern world.
‘IT’S BACK TO those days,’ twitched Roper in distaste, fascinated by the well-dressed and Harrovian rubbish on the floor. Hillier knew which days he meant. ‘There are people bent on making a butcher’s shop of the whole world.’ He did not mean Alan, on whom he twitched a wondering and nearly grateful look. To Alan Hillier said:
‘Get some fresh air. There’ll be time enough to say thank you. I won’t say it now except just thank you. But go and get some fresh air.’ The boy nodded, out of rhythm with his empty spasms, then opened the door and went out. He’d dropped the smoking Aiken on to the nearest cot, wiping his hands against each other, as though that, the corpse-maker, were itself the corpse. From the outer darkness came the noise of song and glass-crashing. ‘And now,’ said Hillier, when the door was closed again, ‘we’ll have to be quick.’
‘We? What do you mean—we? This is none of my business.’
‘Oh, isn’t it? You’ve been concealing things from me, Roper. Going on about bloody martyrdom and red roses when all the time there was something else. What have you been doing with cabinet ministers? I’ll find out, never fear. In the meantime, help me to get these trousers down.’
‘Disguised as a steward, was he?’ said Roper, not helping. ‘You just never know, do you? Harmless-looking people waiting and watching, grinning and friendly but always ready to pounce. Ikota ikota,’ he hiccuped as Hillier exposed dead Wriste’s left flank. ‘Ergh.’ He screwed up his nose. ‘What the hell ikota is all this for?’
‘This,’ Hillier said, ‘is me out of the way. Me done for, finished. The ultimate opting-out.’ He took out his pocket-knife and then, digging deep, scored an S on Wriste’s unresisting skin. Then he lighted a Handelsgold Brazilian, the first of his posthumous ones, puffing gratefully.
‘It’s a desecration,’ said Roper. ‘R.I.P. He’s paid the price.’
‘Not quite.’ By rapid pumping with his breath, Hillier inflamed the tip of the Brazilian to a red-hot poker-glow. ‘This is a very inadequate substitute for the real thing,’ he said, applying the first burn to the S-channel. ‘But it will serve.’ To the smoked bacon smell of the gun, still lingering, a richer more meaty aroma began to be added.
‘What the hell—ikota ikota—’
‘Tonight,’ said Hillier, ‘in the L-shaped cabin we’re sharing, you’ll see exactly what all this is about.’
‘I’m not coming. What the hell have I to come for? Where will you be going to, anyway?’
Hillier looked up and stared for four seconds. ‘I just hadn’t thought,’ he said. ‘Of course, we haven’t had time to take all this in, have we?’ He almost let the cigar go out. ‘Good God, no. We’re both exiles, aren’t we?’ He bellowsed the end red again and continued, delicate as a musician, his scoring.
‘I’m home,’ said Roper. ‘This is where I live. The Soviet Union, I mean. I’m not in exile.’ He coughed at the smoke and the smell of searing. ‘I’m better off than you are.’ And Hillier saw himself from the wooden ceiling—in stolen Soviet police uniform, drawing an S in fire on a corpse with a ruined face, the security-men watching at Southampton, at London Airport, just to be on the safe side, the sawn-off token undelivered. ‘Home,’ delivered Roper, ‘is where you let things gather dust, where things get lost in drawers and the waiter in the corner restaurant knows your name. It’s also where the work’s waiting.’
‘And a woman waiting? Wife or daughter or both?’
‘I’ve got over all that,’ said Roper. ‘What I mean is, in that old way. There are some very nice girls at the Institut. We have a meal and a drink and a dance. I’m not in need of anything.’
Hillier finished his pokerwork, dusting off bits of charred hair and skin. Then, without help from Roper, he pulled the trousers up and, grunting with effort and distaste, secured them to their braces. ‘This raincoat will be useful,’ he said.
‘Defile the corpse and strip it, eh?’ twitched Roper. ‘Your work’s very dirty work, Hillier. Not like mine.’
‘Let’s see what—’ I’m entitled to this, thought Hillier, drawing out from the dead man’s inner pocket a very fat wallet. Sterling, his own dollars, roubles. ‘Roubles,’ he showed Roper. ‘Don’t feel too secure when you talk about home. How do you know Wriste wasn’t doing a job for Moscow as well as for those bastards I called my friends? A defecting scientist shot when a British ship was in port. You were going on about reading the Douay Version. Perhaps they know you’ll be returning to religion one of these days—’
‘Never. A load of balderdash.’
‘Who can ever tell what he’ll do in the future? Even tomorrow? For that matter, look at me tonight, making a good act of contrition.’
‘I was ashamed of you,’ twitched Roper.
‘One of these days you’ll be defiling your pure scientific thought with Christian sentimentality. Or getting out of Russia to kiss the Pope’s toe, taking your formulae with you.’
‘Look,’ said Roper bluntly. ‘Nobody’s ever above suspicion. Do you get that? Those drunks in there are just the same as I am. It’s just something you live with, but it’s the same everywhere. It’s the same in bloody awful England. As for that thing there,’ meaning brain-smashed, branded, robbed Wriste, ‘he told the truth about that bloke gunning for me in England. That’s one thing he told the truth about. That business about me being too old and losing my doctorate was just a lot of nonsense. But he was right about the other thing. What I’m going to do now is get back to my room and have a decent night’s kip. I’ll take a couple of tablets first, I think. But I’m home, remember that. And I’m all right.’
‘You very nearly weren’t.’
‘Nor were you.’ He grinned for the first time that evening. ‘Poor old Hillier. You’re in a bloody bad way, aren’t you? But here’s something that might be useful to you. You can get the bastards with this.’ And he took from his inner pocket a rather grubby wad of paper scrawled in blue ink. ‘This is the chapter I’ve been working on. I don’t think I want to push on with my memoirs now. They served their purpose, clarified things. Here you are, something to read on the voyage to wherever you’re going. Where are you going?’
‘First stop Istanbul. I’ll think things over there. And there’s a man I’ve got to see.’ Hillier took the wad. ‘You’ve become a great one for giving me things to read. I had things for you to read—letters. But that was a long time ago. Well, I suppose we’d both better get out of here.’
‘It was nice seeing you after all these years. You could, you know,’ Roper afterthought, ‘stay here if you wanted. I should imagine they’d find you useful.’
‘That’s all over for me. I’m retiring. I don’t think I like contemporary history much.’
‘Some aspects of it are very interesting.’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Up there, I mean. Men in space. We’ll be making the moon any day now.’
‘A barren bloody chunk of green cheese. Well, you’re welcome to it.’
The door opened and Alan rushed in, his face green cheese. ‘There’s a thing out there. Something crawling and moaning. It was trying to follow me.’
It was Roper who picked up the Aiken from the cot. ‘Your friend here,’ he told Alan, ‘is finished with all this sort of thing. Leave it to me.’ He strode bravely out in a night that, the baser smells of contemporary history now subsiding, was full of rain-wet flower-scents. Meanwhile Hillier looked down on the boy, that former horrid precocious brat, with compassion and a love referred from that other love. Whether, like a father, to hide the boy’s distress in his arms was something he couldn’t decide. He said:
‘I think I can guess what the crawling thing is. There’s nothing to be frightened about. Well.’ he added, ‘I let you in for more than you could have dreamed possible when you left Southampton. Should I say I’m sorry?’
‘I can’t think, I just can’t think.’
Hillier, seeing The odorescu leering inside him, went hard for an instant. ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘you seduced yourself into becoming a member of the modern world.’ He shuddered, watching the lecherous breathing bulk of The odorescu descend on the thin young body. ‘You must have wanted that gun very badly.’
‘I didn’t know it was yours. I swear. And all I wanted to do really was to frighten her.’
‘In that vast dinner-eating crowd?’
‘I thought I’d get her alone. What I really mean is I didn’t think. I just didn’t think.’ He began to cry.
Hillier put his arms round the boy’s shoulders. ‘I’ll look after you,’ he said. ‘You’re my responsibility now. Both of you.’
Roper could be heard speaking bad Russian. There was also the noise of skirring feet, as though a man was being half-carried. Hillier went out to help. It was the guard, sorely thumped by Wriste but not killed. A skullcap of dried blood sat on his hair; on his soaked suit a few red rose-petals clung. Roper said, weightily through his panting, ‘Vot tam chelovyek—there’s the man.’ The guard, open-mouthed, glazed, frowning in rhythm with his pain, saw but did not recognise. The shop-assistant’s face looked bewildered, as if he had been unaccountably accused of shortchanging. Wriste still had half a face. That half ought, by rights, to go. Perhaps that could be left to Roper. A totally faceless Sman was required. The guard wanted to lie down. ‘And now,’ said Roper, ‘you two ought to get out of here. Leave everything to me now. One in the eye for old Vasnetsov and Vereshchagin in there. Drunk as coots and supposed to be in charge of security. A bit of a shambles all round. One in the eye all right, having to leave everything to an Englishman.We’ll show them all yet.’
‘See what I mean?’ said Hillier. ‘The old Adam coming out.’
‘None of us is perfect. There’s a bloke on this conference who says that the Ukrainians could knock spots off the Muscovites. The thing to do is to get on with the job.’
‘I borrowed this jacket,’ said Alan, taking it off, ‘from a man asleep in the vestibule. Will you give it back to him?’
Roper took out a mess of old envelopes from the inner pocket. He snorted. ‘This belongs to Vrubel. I’m going to have some fun here, I can se see that. I don’t care much for Vrubel.’
‘We’ll have to get a tram,’ said Hillier. His tunic seemed crammed with passports and money. ‘When we’ve gone, would you mind completing the image—’ He made a coup de grâce pantomime. Roper seemed to understand. ‘With his,’ he added. ‘I’ll have my own back.’
Roper surrendered the Aiken with a smirk of regret. ‘Nice little job. I assumed you wouldn’t be needing it any more.’
‘It’s unwise to assume anything. You should know that, being a scientist. I fancy I have just one final job to do. On my own account.’
‘Well, it’s been nice seeing you,’ said Roper, as though Hillier had just dropped in from next door to enjoy an evening of referred crapula, fear, threats and assassination. To Alan he said: ‘You’ve been a good boy,’ as though he’d sat in the corner with cake and lemonade, causing no trouble. Then he twitched a cheery goodbye.
Going down the winding path to the coast-road, Hillier and Alan heard a very dull thud from the massage-hut. The S-man was now fully there. Alan shivered. Hillier tried to laugh, saying: ‘Imagine you’re in a novel by Conrad. You know the sort of thing: “By Jove, I thought, what an admirable adventure this is, and here am I, a young man in the thick of it.”’
‘Yes,’ said Alan. ‘A very young man. But ageing quite satisfactorily.’
Hillier saw trolley-sparks and heard, over the sea’s swish and shingle-shuffle, the familiar rattle. ‘By Jove,’ he said, not in Conrad now but in Bradcaster after an evening at the cinema with Roper, running for the last tram, ‘we’ll have to—’ They arrived breathless at the stop just as it began to rattle off. Hillier groaned under his breathlessness as he saw who was sitting opposite.
‘So it’s you,’ nodded the man. ‘And if you think it’s a bit suspicious me going off early like this, well then, you can go on thinking. I didn’t feel well. You shouldn’t have done what you did, threatening me like that. And I see that all you’ve managed to pull in is that kid there. Easy, isn’t it, taking kids to the policestation and getting them to talk.’
‘What does he say about me?’ asked Alan fearfully.
‘All right,’ said Hillier and, to the man, ‘Zamolchi!’
‘That’s all you can say, isn’t it? But you won’t say zamolchi to that kid there. Oh, no, you’ll get him to talk. Well, he won’t say anything about me because he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him. It’s the higher-ups you ought to be going for, the head waiter and the Direktor and all that lot. All right, I’ve said my say.’ And he took out his old copy of Sport and intently examined a photograph of a women’s athletic team. But when the tram arrived on the boulevard with the mulberries and Hillier and Alan started to get off, he called:
‘Samozvanyets!’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Alan.
‘That’s what you called me that evening in the bar. When you recognised that I knew nothing about typewriters. I think,’ said Hillier, ‘I’d better turn myself into a sort of neutral.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Cap off and raincoat on. This is where my imposture starts to end.’
A boy and a bareheaded man in a white raincoat and riding boots walked quickly down the rain-wet road that led to the dock-gates. Suddenly the quiet that should have cooed with sailors and their pick-ups erupted into mature festal cries and the roar and spit of an old motor. Its exhaust pluming, a crammed grey bus was going their way, though somewhat faster. ‘It’s our crowd,’ said Alan, wincing on the ‘our’. ‘They’ve had their gutsing dinner. She’ll be there, bitch.’
‘In that case,’ said Hillier, ‘we’ll have to run again. She mustn’t get on board before we do.’
‘Why?’
‘There will be a time,’ puffed running Hillier. ‘Be patient.’
The well-dined passengers were already leaving the bus by the time Alan and Hillier reached the gates. ‘Too many figs,’ said somebody. ‘I warned her.’ A woman, not Mrs Walters, was being helped off, green. There was a powerful tang of raw spirits being laughed around.
‘There she is,’ said Alan. ‘Last off, with that blond beast.’ They pushed into the heart of the passport-waving queue, Hillier still panting. Soon there would be no more of that, slyness and nimbleness and hatchets; he foresaw mild autumn sun, a garden chair, misty air flawed by the smoke of mild tobacco. He felt for a passport and found several. He was inclined to shuffle them and deal at random—bearded Innes; dead Wriste; samozvanyets Jagger; true, shining, opting-out Hillier: take one, any.
‘By God,’ said a man to Hillier, ‘you’ve been attacking the fleshpots and no error.’ He punched Hillier lightly in the peaked cap that was hidden under the belted raincoat. ‘Nice pair of boots you’ve got there, old man,’ said somebody else. ‘Where did you pick those up? Look, Alice, there’s a lovely bit of Russian leather.’ People, including the guard at the gate, began to peer at Hillier’s legs: a space was hollowed out round him, the better to peer. ‘I don’t feel at all the thing,’ said the green woman. Hillier shoved in, showing a picture of himself. The gate-guard compared truth and image sourly, the speed of his comparison forming a slowish nod, then grunted Hillier through. He and Alan quickly inserted themselves into a complex of belching men but found their shipward progress too slow. They sped to the view of the ship, lighted, immaculate, safe, England. But England wasn’t safe any more. At the foot of the gangway well-fleshed men and women, panting under a load of Black Sea provender safely stowed, were starting to labour up. Up there he saw no Clara smiling in greeting and relief. The rail was lined with jocular wavers, but Hillier remained careful, thrusting his nose, as into a blown Dorothy Perkins, into a fat back and keeping it there. ‘Have a good time, sir?’ asked a voice at the top of the gangway. It was Wriste’s winger-pal. ‘Ta once again for the Guinness,’ he added. Hillier said to Alan: ‘See you in Clara’s cabin,’ and then rushed towards the nearest companionway, seeking A-Deck. The ship hummed with emptiness, but it would soon fill with drinkseekers, thirsty for something dryer, colder, less fierily crude than what Yarylyuk could afford. He dashed down corridors of aseptic perfume and discreet light, at last finding his own. Here was Mrs Walter’s cabin.
Inside, the bedclothes hardly rucked, snored a calm sleeper: S. R. Polotski, aged 39, born Kerch, married, the dirty swine. Hillier rapidly took off Wriste’s raincoat, emptied the tunic of all that he owned or had acquired, then stripped to his shirt and pants. He neatly laid S. R. Polotski’s uniform on the bedside chair and placed his boots at the foot of the bunk. Then, raincoat on again, the pockets stuffed, he went to his own cabin. He opened the door cautiously: there was no smell as of harmful visitors, only the ghost of Clara’s too-adult perfume lingered. He poured himself the last of the Old Mortality and drank it neat. He regretted the end of that useful, though money-loving, shipboard Wriste, then he shuddered to think how easy it was to regard a human being as a mere function. Was that what was meant by being neutral—a machine rather than a puppet-stage for the enactment of the big fight against good, or against evil? He put on a lightweight suit, knotting the tie with care. He was going to see Clara. His heart thumped, but no longer with fear.
But it was with fear that he listened outside her door, his hand on the knob. Those rhythmical screams, inhuman but like the noises made by some human engine—the screaming machine that welcomes holiday gigglers to the sixpenny Chamber of Horrors. He went in. On the bunk lay Alan prone, screaming. Clara was sitting on the bunk with him, her hair disarrayed in distress, going ‘Hush now, hush dear, everything will be all right.’ Seeing Hillier with hard hardly-focused eyes, she said: ‘You’ve done this to us. I hate you.’ And she got up and made for Hillier with her tiny claws, scarlet-painted beyond her years as in a school parody of flesh-tearing. Hillier could have wept out the whole horror of life in a single concentrated spasm. But he grabbed her hands and said:
‘We all have to be baptised. Both your baptisms have been heroic.’
From the corridor came louder screams than any of which Alan was capable. Full rich womanly outrage called. Alan was shocked into silence, listening, tear-streaked and open-mouthed. They listened all three. Poor S. R. Polotski, the dirty swine. Soon there were harsh male voices under the screams, two of them sounding marine and official.
‘Unheroic,’ said Clara as they heard protesting Russian somehow being kicked off. Her hands relaxed.
‘Shall we,’ said Hillier, ‘have a large cold supper in my cabin? I’ll ring for—Stupid of me,’ he added.
‘But that’s the best way to look at him, I suppose,’ said Alan. ‘Just somebody nobody can ring for any more.’
From Roper’s Memoirs*
THE TROUBLE WITH LUCY WAS she wanted to be in charge. She wanted to be a wife, but I already had one of those, wherever she was, and I didn’t want another. It was all right Lucy coming to the house and giving it a bit of a tidy-up and insisting on getting laundry together and cooking the odd meal. That was all right, although the meals were always finicking what she called exotic dishes, vine-leaves wrapped round things and lasagne and whatnot. It was better to have these working parties in the house (though what did I really want with a house now?) so that she could be sort of swallowed up among the others while we got on with this pamphlet about science in society. Some nights when we’d finished work and I tried to sneak off on my own saying I’d got to see somebody, she used to ask who I was going to see, and then I couldn’t think who I was going to see, not knowing many people in London now except those we both worked with. All I wanted was a quiet sandwich in a pub and then perhaps to go to the cinema, all on my own. But sometimes I had to take work home and then she said she’d cook something for me, so as not to waste my time doing it myself, and she’d be quite content to sit quiet, so she said, with a book. I saw that if I didn’t watch out we’d be on to sex, and that was something I didn’t particularly want, not with Lucy anyway.
Why not? I suppose she was attractive enough in her very thin way, but I’d got used to a different sort of woman, bad as she was. But the badness wasn’t her fault, I kept telling myself. If there’d been no woman in the house I wouldn’t have been perpetually reminded of Brigitte, reminded that is by contrast. I still had something of Brigitte, namely photographs, and it was because Lucy was around that I took to comforting myself with photographs which recalled happier times—Brigitte on a rock at the seaside posing as a sort of Lorelei, Brigitte wearing her frothy décolleté evening dress, Brigitte demure in a simple frock. They were a comfort sometimes to take to bed.*
It was when I went down with a bit of stomach trouble that things got a bit out of hand. I rang up to say I wouldn’t be coming to the lab and then I went back to bed with a hot water bottle. It was I think gastric flu. I knew there was no way out of what was going to happen that evening, but I felt too ill to care very much. Well, she turned up at about five, having got off early and everybody would wink and know why, and then she was in her element, florence nightingaling all over the house in for some reason her white lab coat. She gave me bicarb and hot milk and two hot water bottles (one of them was Brigitte’s and as if Brigitte was being vindictive even in her absence it started to leak so I threw it out) and smoothed my Fevered Brow. She said I ought not to be left that night and besides there was the question of seeing how I was in the morning, so she insisted on making up the bed in the spare room. Naturally I was grateful but I knew there would be a Reckoning.
The Reckoning came three days later when I was feeling a good deal better and thinking of getting up. She said no, see how I was when she came back that evening and perhaps the next day something might be done about my getting up. It was a very cold day in late November and she returned from work shivering. I suppose I should never have suggested to her that she have a hot water bottle that night instead of me, me being very warm now, and I told her not to take the one that leaked. But she did, either by accident or design, perhaps the latter, and she came into my room to say that she couldn’t possibly sleep in a damp bed. Well, there we were then. She just lay there and I just lay there as though we were side by side in lounging chairs on a crowded deck, then she said she still felt very cold and came closer. Then I said: You’ll catch my flu. She said: There are things more important than catching flu. Before I knew what was happening we’d started. I suppose the sweating got rid of the last of the flu, and I sweated a long time.
I sweated a long time because I was able to just go on and on, nothing happening to me at all. It was like acting it on the stage. That school group photograph was just about visible in the light from the street lamp and I could see Father Byrne and Hillier and O’Brien and Pereira and the others very dimly. After an hour they must have got very bored with the performance. Mine, anyway. She thought it was marvellous and kept going oh oh darling oh I never knew it could be like this and don’t stop. It was all right for her but there was nothing in it for me. I tried to imagine it was somebody else—a girl in one of the offices with the same black sweater on every day giving off a great aroma of stew and earwax but with huge breasts on her, a half-caste girl singer on the television whose dresses were cut very low so that the camera always deliberately tried to make her look naked, a big-buttocked woman in the local supermarket. All the time I was trying to avoid Brigitte but at last I had to bring her in and then it was different. At last I was able to bring it to an end and then she cried out very loud and afterwards said: Darling, was it as good for you as it was for me?
Somebody in some book on sex said that the biggest sin a man can commit with a woman is to do it and pretend you’re doing it with somebody else. That seems to me very mystical. I mean, who knows you’re pretending except you? Unless, of course, you’re going to bring God into it. What the book should have said was the danger of calling the real woman by the name of the imagined one. But Lucy was very good about that. She even said: Poor darling, you must have loved her very much and she hurt you very badly, didn’t she? And then she said: Never mind, when we’re really together I’ll make you happier than she ever could. And I’ll never leave you. What Lucy meant was getting married. We’re as good as married now, aren’t we, darling, except that I’m still not Mrs Roper. She had a wedding ring though, her dead mother’s she said it was, and she would use it as a kind of stimulator in bed, as though she thought that was why married women wore wedding rings.
But she couldn’t drive Brigitte out. She was making me bring Brigitte back again. Every night. And she herself had brought all her clothes and little knick-knacks from her flat and then she gave up the flat. But I’d never asked her to come and settle in and share my bed, had I? It was what they call a liberty. But I couldn’t tell her to get out, could I? One day she said that people in the Institute were talking and that it was about time I did something about a divorce. So then I went out and got drunk. I wasn’t supposed to drink at all now. When Brigitte left I’d started to hit the bottle a bit, but it was Lucy who’d stopped all that. Beer for everyone else at those parties, lemon barley water forme. So it was a big disappointment for Lucy now when I staggered in after closingtime reeking of bitter beer (five pints) and whisky (five John Haigs, large), also whiskey in memory of Father Byrne (two small JJs).Why had I been thinking of Father Byrne? Perhaps because of the damnable sex, perhaps because I was homesick and had no home.* Anyway, when I staggered in I fell against things, and Lucy was bitterly disappointed. I staggered against a little table with a brown fruit-bowl on it, and in the brown fruit-bowl not fruit but a crouching cat made of blue china. I knocked this over, and the head came off the cat, and then Lucy cried, saying it had belonged to her mother. So I said nobody had asked her to bring it into my house and for that matter nobody had asked her to bring herself into my house, so she cried worse. She said nothing of walking out of the house with her bags packed, all she said was that I’d better sleep in the spare room that night and she hoped I’d have one hell of a hangover the next morning, which I did.
From now on I didn’t much care to go home in the evenings. Damn it, it was my home, or house anyway, and I had a good big damned slice of mortgage still to pay off. But I couldn’t order Lucy out, having, in her view, taken advantage of her and allowed her to build up hopes as yet unfulfilled. And this business of it being the biggest sin a man could commit in bed with a woman made me, even though it was all nonsense, feel guilty towards her. I was turning her into a kind of thin Brigitte, although, to be fair to myself, it was always Lucy who made the first bed-move. So, although I was in my rights in regarding her as an intruder, I couldn’t tell her to get out. But I wasn’t going to marry her—oh no. I was still married. What I did most evenings now was to look for Brigitte.
I looked first of all in Soho. There were laws now which forbade prostitutes to parade the streets with little dogs on leads or to walk up and down with their handbags open, waiting for men to come along to tell them they’d got their handbags open. But the laws weren’t taken very seriously. Still, I don’t think there were as many on the streets as there had used to be, certainly not anywhere near so many as in the great days of opportunity of the war, when the lie was given to the old liberal sociological studies of prostitution which said that women took it up only because they couldn’t get any other kind of work. What you saw more of now was women beckoning from doorways and windows and suddenly darting out from the darkness and saying: Want a quickie, darling? I made a very thorough job of my search around Soho—Frith Street, Greek Street, Wardour Street, Old Compton Street, Dean Street, everywhere—but I didn’t find Brigitte. In the advertisement-cases of shady tobacconists and bookshops I saw ambiguous announcements: Fifi for Correction (Leather a Speciality); Yvonne, Artist’s and Photographer’s Model—40 24 38; Colonic Irrigation administered by Spanish Specialist. Never once did I find anything (like Fräulein with German Novelties) which would lead me to Brigitte. In a pub I found a man who had a brochure—all photographs and telephone numbers—called The Ladies’ Directory, but Brigitte wasn’t in it. I even went into a police station and said I was looking for my wife, a German girl who, through her innocence, had perhaps let herself be drugged and white slaved, but they were very suspicious about that.*
As always happens, I found Brigitte by accident. I went one night to a cinema on Baker Street (nothing I particularly wanted to see; I was just tired and fed up) and afterwards had a couple of small whiskies in a pub just by Blandford Street. A woman entered, well dressed, well made-up, well spoken, bringing in with her a synthetic smell of rose gardens† and a husky Dietrich kind of voice. She said to the landlord: Bottle of Booth’s, Fred, and forty Senior. Certainly mavourneen, he said. She crackled a lot of five-pound notes in her bag. I wondered about the mavourneen and then caught on: Bridget sounds Irish to the English. I gave her a long look but it was a fair time before she recognised me, or else she did recognise me and pretended that she hadn’t. Anyway, she couldn’t get away with that. She went out quickly and I followed. Leave me alone, she said, or I’ll call the police. That was a good one, that was. I said: The police are the last people you’ll call. Besides, there’s no law that I know of that prevents a husband speaking to his wife. She said: You’d better forget all about that. Divorce me and finish with it. I could now, I said, now that I know where you are and what you’re doing; otherwise I’d have to wait three years for desertion (she’d reconciled herself to my following her to where she lived), but once you’re divorced you’ll be deported as an undesirable alien. I saw that undesirable was the wrong word there. All she said was: I won’t be deported.
Her flat was evidently a very expensive one, central heating, corner bar with bar-stools, cushions, erotic pictures on the walls (German ones from the Nazi time; I saw that). There was a kitchenette with a refrigerator humming, an open bathroom-door with bath-smells coming from it, an open bedroom-door showing a big bed with a silk coverlet, dim wall-lights on. Will you have a drink? she said. This is my night off and I was going to get to bed early, but have a drink and say what you want and then go. Perhaps she thought I wanted to know where she’d left the spare front-door key of the house. Thinking of the house made me want to cry. What I said was: I want you. She said: You can have my number; ring me sometime. No no no, I said, I want you. I want you to come back. She laughed at that and said: Warum? Her suddenly asking why in German, when her English seemed to have improved so much, brought back the whole past to me, and I really started to cry this time. Don’t do that, she said.What has to be has to be. I want to be as I am. I don’t want shopping and hausfrauing any more. I meet some very important people now. I’m a lady. You’re a whore, I said, the English and German words being very nearly the same. That’s what you are, a prostitute. She said: the two words are not quite the same. Oh, why don’t you grow up and learn about the great world?
Apart fromanything else, I said, I have certain rights. Conjugal rights. I demand their restoration. You filthy pig, she shouted; I’ve never had such filth spoken to me before. Get out of here at once. And then she gave me a very foul mouthful of German. And then she said: If you want a woman there are thousands in London willing to do it for the money. Some of themeven walk the streets with little dogs, which is against the law. But do not come to me, no, not to me, do not come to me. I felt very bitter and ill used then, but I could not really turn against her. Also I felt triumphant, because I would have her that night and she would not know it. But I boiled also within to think that this was my wife and othermen could possess her and I could not. I became very cold and cunning outside, despite the boiling inside, and, when I saw her handbag lying open on the settee, I said: Give me a drink and then I’ll go. A cold drink. Perhaps you have beer in the fridge. We always used to have it in the old days. All right, she said, go and help yourself. Then get out. But I said: For old time’s sake, Brigitte, get me a drink with your own hands. Please. I ask no more. She shrugged and said: Oh all right, then went to get it. I knew that her key was in that bag. It was no trouble to get it out and put it in my pocket. When she brought the beer I drank it off in one draught. She said: You drink like a pig, just as you ate like a pig. I only smiled and said: A goodnight kiss? For old time’s sake? But she wouldn’t give me even that, my right. I left then and said: Goodbye, dear Brigitte. Look after yourself. She seemed a little puzzled to see me go without further trouble. Out in the street I looked up at her sitting-room window till the lights went out. Then I went home. Lucy was waiting for me with some nice hot supper.
I now had something to do every night. What I did mostly at first was to walk that street, seeing who went into her flat. Her trade was a high-class one, to judge by the cars that parked there. Once a policeman looked at me suspiciously but I got in right away with: Never mind, constable. This is a job. Private detective agency. He didn’t ask to see my card or anything. The pleasure I got from watching was what, I suppose, is called a masochistic one. I never thought such pleasure was possible, but it is. It is not just what Shakespeare calls wearing the horns; it is making a kind of crown of horns.* I delayed my entering for as long as possible, letting weeks go by. I felt especially virtuous about submitting to all this delicious pain, since I’d told Lucy that I was after evidence for a divorce. When I got back at night she said: You poor dear. Let’s have a nice hot drink before we go to bed.
I watched and watched till one night a very unpretentious car came to her door and a man got out of the car looking furtive. He darted up the stairs to the open doorway of the little block of flats and, in the light from the hall, I saw his profile fairly clearly. I knew I’d seen that face somewhere, but I couldn’t think where. It seemed to me to be a fairly important face, but whether political or artistic or even in the ecclesiastical field I knew not. A Television Personality perhaps? That got closer to it. I felt I’d seen that face earnestly talking one night on television when Lucy and I were taking hot soup from our knees, I mean from bowls on our knees, with crackling slices of Ryvita. The face, I thought, was both political and televisual—something to do with a party political broadcast? I had to wait about an hour and a half before he came out, stuffing his wallet into his inside pocket, still looking furtive but more smugly furtive. It was about the time when the theatres were finishing, and there were one or two taxis coming down the street to turn on to Baker Street. This man hadn’t yet got into his car, but I stopped a taxi and the driver said: Where to, guv? (or it may have been: Where to, mate?) I felt like giggling as I said: Follow that car once it starts. The driver said: I can’t very well bleeding follow it while it’s stationary, can I? Then he said: You mean it, guv (or mate)? Cor, this comes from seeing too much telly. But he did what I said.
It was a bit difficult, because other cars and taxis got in the way, but eventually we came to the area round about Marble Arch, and this car stopped outside what looked like a block of flats. The taxi-driver drew up very discreetly on the opposite side of the road. Now, he said, go in and get your man. Not too much rough stuff, mind. I paid him and he went off. I waited a little while then I went to the entrance where I’d seen the man go in. There was, as I’d expected, a sort of porter on duty in the entrance-hall. I said: Excuse me, but wasn’t that Mr Barnaby who went in just then? He looked at me most suspiciously and said: What’s it to you who went in, mate? (Too much of this mate, everywhere—the parody of friendliness of an uneasily egalitarian state.*) I said: Don’t call me mate. My name is Doctor Roper. Sorry, he said, doctor. No, that wasn’t no Barny, or whatever you said. That was none other than Mr Cornpit-Ferrers.† And a very nice gentleman too. This porter went on then about his eloquence on television and (though how did he know, obviously no man for the Strangers’ Gallery?) in the House. Also his generosity, always ready with the odd half-bar for small services rendered. Like now, going to put his wife’s car away for the night, that being it as he’d just come in, him perhaps not wanting to use the regular Bentley this evening. I donated 10s or half-a-bar and said: Married then, is he? He said: Thank you, sir, doctor. Yes, a lovely wife and three kids, lovely kids.
Adulterous whoring swine. But at last I saw a way of getting Brigitte back. Next time I would Confront Them both, as that time with that ghastly Wurzel. But no, I’d played no man’s role then; I’d had to leave it to Hillier. I watched and waited another week and he didn’t come, the House perhaps sitting late. But one evening a man for all the world like that filthy West German Devil came, dropped by somebody in a car. He shouted something like Guter Kerl, very foolishly, to the driver, who shouted back something like Sei gut before going off. This time I decided to go up, after a decent, wrong word there, interval. I was blazing, that bad time, the first speck of rot in the apple, coming back to me. Outside her door I had to pause and take deep though silent breaths. Then I heard them talking very serious German inside. This made me wonder. Surely there should be none of that going on, the seriousness reserved to a different kind of communication. I listened and I kept hearing the name Eberswalde. Eberswalde? That was in East Germany. Brigitte had spoken a couple of times about some filthy relative she hated who lived in Eberswalde. I listened hard but could take in little. I could not take in very fast German, despite my marriage to one who spoke it when in passion or anger. At one point Brigitte seemed to start to cry very gently. Was this relative in Eberswalde really so filthy? Had other relatives turned up there, not filthy at all? The only other word that came clearly through the door was another name—Maria. I heard it often. Surely Brigitte had spoken of a niece of that name, someone who was, apparently, far from filthy. And then, quite loud, Brigitte cried: But I know nothing, not yet. Softer, the man seemed to say: But you will know. You will know much if you try harder. And then: Ich gehe. I got away quickly before he left and walked right down the street, as far from the flat as possible.
What did all this mean? I couldn’t tell. It might mean nothing. But, like everybody else, I’d had this security thing hammered into me, and I couldn’t help thinking that a German prostitute (terrible thing to call Brigitte) who had relatives in East Germany would, in free and easy London, be all too much a subject for proposals or target for threats from the Other Side. Not that I could take it very seriously. We scientists who were socialists were working out a high minded blueprint about International Co-operation in Research, and we saw, rightly, all research as one—all answers to all questions free to all. War was to be outlawed, and we were in the vanguard of the outlawing process, the scientist having great responsibilities and terrible powers.
I looked up Mr Cornpit-Ferrers in Who’s Who and saw that he was a Minister without Portfolio. That was three governments ago. What he is now I neither know nor care. He was, and probably still is, a man highly thought of, not only by his hall-porter, a member of Commissions and Committees, including one that had something to do with Television Teenage Religious Programmes. The hypocrite. Anyway, the time for Confrontation must come very soon now, so I thought. But I still had to wait three weeks, in which period Brigitte, poor corrupted girl, had many visitors, all of them well-dressed. The night it happened was a rainy night, and I nearly decided to give up. But that remembered car drew up and the remembered face, now with a name pinned on it, looked through the rain with the old furtiveness. Cornpit-Ferrers went in, and I was five minutes after him. My heart went like mad, I could hardly breathe, and I wondered if I would be able to speak. I turned the key boldly in the lock and entered. There was nobody in the sitting-room, but from the bedroom I could hear writhings between sheets and sickening yumyumyum noises. I found I could speak, even cry aloud. I called: Come on out of there, both of you, you sinful bastards. And at the same time I felt the things in my inside pocket that I’d brought with me, just to make sure they were still there. There was a surprised silence, then whispering, then I called again: Come out, hypocritical politician. Come out, you who I’m ashamed to call my wife. Then they came out, she pulling a négligée around her, he in shirt and trousers, smoothing his hair. She said: I thought that’s where that other key must have got to. Go on, quickly, what do you want? But Cornpit-Ferrers said: He wants a good firm kick on the arse, straight down those steps. Who is he anyway? Your ponce? Of course, that was something I’d never thought of, that Brigitte might have such a man or halfman in the background. I now felt sick as well as angry and bitter and I said: I, Mr Cornpit-Ferrers, am this woman’s husband. He said: Know my name, do you? Hm, that’s a pity. To Brigitte: Get him for trespass. Ring up the police. Ah, that’s fixed you, hasn’t it? (to me). Don’t like the sound of that, do you? I said: This woman is my wife. Brigitte Roper. Here (and I took it out of my pocket) is our marriage licence. And here (taking that out too) is our joint passport; the photographs aren’t bad likenesses.
He didn’t ask for a close look. He sat down on the settee and took a cigarette from Brigitte’s cloisonné box. Then he said: What is this? What are you after? Money? Divorce? I shook my head and said: No. All I want is my wife back again. Brigitte cried: I’m not going back to you. Whatever you do, dirty filth. Never never never. Cornpit-Ferrers said: You hear the lady. I don’t see how I can do anything about getting her to return to you. Incidentally, I didn’t know, obviously. I’m sorry. Just one of those things. I said: And if it were discovered that she receives visits from East German agents?
Brigitte turned pale; it was true then. What I mean, I said, is this: she ought really to be deported. I take it you’re reasonably friendly with the Home Secretary? Cornpit-Ferrers said: What the hell’s that got to do with anything? (He was blustering badly.) I said: It’s up to Brigitte now. I could easily bring pressure on you to see about her deportation. If she comes back with me—not necessarily tonight, as there’s somebody else staying with me at the moment, but, say, in the next day or so, we’ll take it that none of this ever happened. That I never saw you. I have a responsible position and am not likely to want to discredit anyone in a position of authority. Too dangerous. Nor would I stoop to blackmail. Unless, of course, I have to.
What is this position of yours? asked Cornpit-Ferrers. I told him. He was not unimpressed. He said to Brigitte: Well, what he says seems reasonable enough. How about it? Brigitte said: Never. If you try to have me thrown out then I will say about you coming here. I will say to your wife and to the Prime Minister. He said: Difficult. No witnesses. She said: Here is a witness, my husband. I grinned at that, the silly little fool. She said: I have another. He has seen you come here often. Both Cornpit-Ferrers and I felt that might be true. He said:Well, no need to be hasty about anything. I think it’s time you and I (to me) got out of here. A drink or something. Leave little Bridget to sort things out. I must say (he said) you’re a forgiving sort of man. I admire you rather. I suppose that’s love. I said: No drink, thank you. I’d sick it up at once. If either of you wants to get in touch with me, you know where I am. Then I left. But, before going down the steps, I decided to turn back, open up again, and say, in a twisted disgusted tone,God God God, what a bloody mess you’re both in. Then I really left. I was very cheerful with Lucy that night, and she was overjoyed to think that it wouldn’t be long now, poor girl.
The things that happened after that I didn’t expect. One morning I received a rather grubby envelope through the post. My name and address were typed on it quite neatly, which made the grubbiness of the envelope seem all the stranger. Inside were ten one-pound notes. A typewritten slip said: Sorry to be so long repaying the loan. And then there came the typed initial C. I thought back, frowning, to any time I could remember lending ten pounds to anyone, but I couldn’t catch at a memory. Lucy, bringing in breakfast, asked me what the matter was, and I told and showed her. She said: Never frown over buckshee money (her father had been a soldier). You are forgetful, you know. Then we ate our cornflakes. I threw the slip and envelope away and put the pound notes in my wallet. That evening two men in raincoats came to the door. Can we have a word with you, sir? they said. I took them to be police officers. Seeing Lucy, they said: Mrs Roper? I said: A friend. Miss Butler. Ah, the older one said, as they came in, of course. Mrs Roper doesn’t live here any more, does she? No, she doesn’t, does she, sir? And then, to Lucy:We’d like a word with Mr Roper alone, if you don’t mind, miss. Lucy looked worried. Please, miss, they said. She went upstairs; she had no authority to question or argue or complain.
Now then, said the senior officer. Could we please examine whatever money you have on you, sir? Notes, I mean. I said: Oh, if it’s something to do with that ten pounds—Ten pounds is the sum, sir. Could we see the ten pounds, please? I showed them all my money. The junior officer took out a list with numbers on it. They checked the numbers of my notes with those numbers. Hm, they nodded, hm hm. The senior said: You understand, sir, it is a very serious crime to live off a woman’s immoral earnings. I couldn’t speak. Then I said: Nonsense. Utter bloody nonsense. I got this money in the post this morning. Really, sir? said the junior in a sleepy way. I take it you won’t deny that Mrs Roper, who is not living with you but is in fact engaged in prostitution, has received certain visits from you recently? I didn’t deny it. But, I said, this money—Yes, this money, sir. Mrs Roper drew out from her bank three days ago these identical notes. I said:
A frame-up. A put-up job. The senior officer said:We’ll keep these, if you don’t mind, sir. You’ll be hearing more about this. Then they got up to go. I said: You mean you’re not charging me? The junior said: We have no authority, sir. But you’ll be hearing about this in a day or two. I spluttered at them. I even got Lucy to come down and shout at them, but they only smiled and touched their hats (which they’d not taken off in the house) as they left.
It was hard for me to work in the days that followed. Then came the summons, and it was a kind of relief. It was a summons to a small house not far from Goldhawk Road. Cornpit-Ferrers opened the door. With him was a man who looked foreign and, when he spoke, spoke with what seemed to be a Slavonic accent. It seemed to be this man’s house we were in, dirty and illfurnished. But the man himself was clean and rather welldressed. Cornpit-Ferrers was very urbane. He said: I gather that you and some of your colleagues have been doing a little polemical work on the need for International Co-operation in Scientific Research. I said nothing. He said: It seems there’s a chance for you to do more than merely discuss it or draft pamphlets about it. I said: What are you getting at? He said: Oh, by the way, this is Mr—(I didn’t catch the name; I never learned it). I don’t think I need tell you which embassy he is in. He’s making all arrangements. This is a wonderful opportunity, Dr Roper. We politicians talk and talk but we do little. (You do enough, I nearly said, with venom.) You, he went on, represent a sort of spearhead of action. I understand that this is rather a good time for you to leave the country. Am I right? I swore at him; I said: Your filthy bloody trick. But you won’t get away with it. He said: Not just my trick. She was very ready to help. The Slav man now laughed. Cornpit-Ferrers also laughed, saying: He knows her too. Quite as well as I. And, as for getting away with it, to use your term, the two men who called on you are waiting for the word to lodge some sort of information with the police. The law deals harshly, for some reason, with that kind of crime. I don’t see (he continued) why you should grieve overmuch at going away. You don’t like England all that much, do you? You don’t feel all that loyal to England either. I know. You don’t want England nearly as much as you want you-know-who. Cheer up, Dr Roper. She’s going with you.
I gasped. She’s agreed to it? He said: I’m afraid it’s all got to be done rather quickly. There’s a boat leaving Tilbury tomorrow morning at eleven. Eleven? (looking for confirmation to the Slav man. The man nodded.) The Petrov-Vodkin, carrying cargo to Rostock. Some men from Warnemünde will pick you up at the Warnow Hotel. Everything’s going to be all right, believe me. A new lease of life. Your career’s done for here, you must realise that. What’s that in Shakespeare about the man almost damned in a fair wife? Never mind. You’ll like your new ambience—hard work and hard drinking, so I understand. Any questions?
I’m not going, I said. He said: That’s not a question. As for the disposal of your goods and chattels (you have a house, I believe), that can be done by remote control. The Curtain may be Iron, but it has letter-boxes cut in it. From now on our friend here will be looking after you. Give him your house-key and he’ll arrange for bags to be packed. You’ll sleep here tonight.
I said: And you call yourself a Minister of the Crown. I knew England was corrupt, but I never dreamed—And then: Will she be coming here too? Will we be going together? He said: You’ll meet at the Warnow Hotel. You don’t believe me? You think this is all a trick? Well, here’s something for you. He took from his top pocket, from behind a handkerchief arranged in seven points, an envelope. He gave it to me. I recognised the handwriting of the note within. I was a fool. We will make a new beginning. Cornpit-Ferrers said: No forgery. The genuine article. She has been a fool too. In fact, we’ve all been fools. Live and learn. But you’ve been the biggest fool of the lot. Of the lot. Of the.*
I said: This is going to be bloodymerry England’s last betrayal of a Roper. Oh yes. What you did in 1558 you’re doing again now. Faith then, still faith. England’s damned herself. Warmongering cynical bloody England. His light went out at 15-58. Continental time.† Up all your pipes. Martyr’s blood runs through them. He said: No regrets, then. Good. He put on a bowler hat and picked up an umbrella. He was wearing a grey raglan overcoat. He was Trumper-shaved-and-barbered. Eucris. Eucharist.‡ He had a hard handsome look that would soon go soft. I said:On your own head be it. In my head I carry things England thought valuable. Good, he said again. International share-out, eh? Plans across the sea. I said: Traitor. He said: To whom or to what? Then: I must be going now. I’m giving lunch to a couple of rather important constituents. He did a sort of mock-salute against his bowler-brim, then ordered arms with his umbrella, lip-farting a bugle-call, grinned goodbye at the Slav man, left. I spat in his wake. The Slav man reproved me for that in thick English. His house, he said. Rented by him, anyway.
The story can end here. Except that, at the Warnow Hotel in Rostock, there was no Brigitte waiting for me. I was not surprised. In a way I was pleased. My sense of betrayal was absolute. I fetched the barnaby out of the cheese-slice, fallowed the whereupon with ingrown versicles, then cranked with endless hornblows of white, gamboge, wortdrew, hammon and prayrichard the most marvellous and unseen-as-yet fallupons that old Motion ever hatched in all his greenock nights.* The men from Warnemünde were very jolly and plied me with gallons of the stuff. I think we sang songs. We hardhit bedfriends in twiceknit garnishes. Oh, the† welter of all that moontalk, such as it was, whistles and all.‡ Whenever an empty trestlestack is given§ more than half of its prerequisite of mutton fibres, you may expectorate high as a HOUSE FULL placard. Implacable.**
‘WHAT DO WE do now?’ repeated Hillier, awake again but dog-tired. He stood up, letting the manuscript fall in loose sheets to the floor. She sought his chest, bare under the dressing-gown, and, arms about him, wept and wept. ‘My poor darling,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘But we knew this was going to happen. You have me to look after you now.’ The figure of Cornpit-Ferrers danced through his brain, waving its rolled umbrella, another of the bloody neutrals. That was where evil lay: in the neutrals. Clara wept, her face still hidden; he could feel tears rilling down the sternum. She drew in breath for a sob and coughed on an inhaled chest hair. His arms held her tight. He stroked, soothing. But the body of a woman was the body of a woman, even when she was a girl, even when she was a daughter. ‘Come,’ he said gently. ‘You’ll feel better soon.’ And he led her over to the narrow bunk. She sat there, wiping her eyes with her knuckles, and he sat beside her, still trying to soothe. She said, her voice denasalised by tears:
‘She walked right in. To my cabin and. Shook me. It was as if she was. Glad.’
‘She’s one of the neutrals,’ said Hillier. ‘And now you’ll be rid of her.’ He kissed her forehead.
‘And then. When she’d told me. She went. Back to bed.’
‘There there there there.’ But, of course, what was there to do except go back to bed? And tomorrow she would have a blinding headache and expect pity, the widow. Had she already equipped herself with smart black? There would be men all too ready to give comfort. Hillier saw them knocking gently at her cabin door; they wore bowler hats and carried umbrellas. He saw himself, tomorrow, making all arrangements. I insist on a rebate, he would tell the purser. And, for that matter, it wasn’t Mr Innes’s fault that he didn’t embark at Yarylyuk. I’ll bet he didn’t nudge out other possible bookings. I want a sizeable chunk of money back. A question of a coffin. Thrown in free, one of the ship’s amenities?
‘There’ll be a lot to do tomorrow,’ said Hillier. ‘She’ll see out the cruise, all the way back to Southampton. A distraught and desirable widow. Leave everything to me. As for now, we both need rest.’
She was tired with the whole evening; it had been a very tiring evening for the three of them: no wonder Alan couldn’t wake up. When he woke he would have a memory of a dream of killing a man, then he would hear of the death of his father. It was no way to start a sunny cruising morning. But there was still this merciful night, a whole black sea of it. ‘Come,’ said Hillier, and he raised her gently from the bunk so that he could draw down the coverlet and blanket and top sheet. Dead-beat, she nodded, sniffing. Hillier helped her off with her silk dragonpatterned dressing-gown; the nightdress underneath was black, bare-armed and shoulder-strapped, opaque but maddening. This was no time for being maddened, though; this was his daughter. She flopped into the bunk, her hair everywhere. Hillier brought his chair closer, sat, and held her hand. Soon the hand tried to drop from his, finger by finger. She slept quite soundly, the power of the sedative Hillier had given her earlier re-asserting itself blessedly. Totally without desire, he stripped himself naked and eased himself into the bunk beside her. Her body, unconsciously accommodating, rolled itself to the bulkhead. He lay with his back to her, almost on a knife-edge of bed space.
A ghost of sobbing possessed her sleep. He could not lie so, averted. He turned to hold her, and his hands strove to avoid those areas of her body where she would cease to be a daughter. Again that sleeping body helped, turning to face him, the head at length cradled in his oxter, tiny gales of her breathing heating his bare chest. It was possible then to sleep, but he slept lightly, awakening to a rougher sea than any they had known yet, outside the half-open light. Sleepless, a man was parading the deck, coughing over a two-in-the-morning cigarette. Wriste looked in, switched on the bunkside lamp, and, dangling from a bloodless socket an eye on a rubbery stalk, said: ‘I admire you, sir, I do really.What time your early-morning death, sir?’ Hillier shook him out, along with the lamp, but Cornpit- Ferrers, much diminished in size, jumped on to the other bunk and, gripping his lapels in elder-statesman style, addressed the House: ‘My right honourable friend has spoken eloquently of duty to the country as a whole, but duty as seen by a government consists primarily not in governing so much as in existing (Hear hear), and this applies not merely collectively but (man thrown out of Strangers’ Gallery for crying: Adulterer!) componentially. Divided we stand even though united we may fall.’ Hillier found himself in the House of Commons, waiting to meet his own member to protest about being awarded death instead of a bonus. On the floor he disentangled Virtue Prevails and Love and Fidelity to Our Country and Faithful out of the florid byzantine cryptograms. Then the letters all snaked up again and the meanings were lost. Instead of his member there came along his chief and colleagues—RF, VT, JBW, LJ. Hue and cry. Guns going off while the Speaker toddled in, preceded by his mace-bearer, followed by his doddering chaplain. ‘I appeal,’ called Hillier, ‘in the name of the Mother of Parliaments.’ A policeman with the portcullis symbol on his flat cap said: ‘Court of Appeal’s not here, mate.’ Hillier was told to take it like a man, not to interrupt the grave processes of legislation, question-time just coming up. Foreign tourists disobeying orders, snapped with their cameras the leaping and twisting body of Hillier as bullet after bullet got home.
He awoke to find Clara comforting him. ‘A nightmare,’ she said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with her bare hand, which she then rubbed dry against the over-sheet. The sea was quiet again; it was grey very early morning. His member; what had that been about his member? Her hands were smoothing his body, girl’s curiosity as well as motherly tenderness in them. His body’s dream-leaping must have shaken her awake. As one hand went down he arrested it, thinking: Never would I have thought possible, never could I have ever possibly conceived that I would now resist what of all things. But her hand, that had turned the pages of so many cold sex-books, was interested. What she touched was warm, smooth, a bauble rather than a rocketing monster. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that. But there are other things.’ This was no time, this was no girl, for the big sweating engine of phallic sex. And so, very gently, he showed her. He gave without taking. He imagined shocked faces on the ceiling whispering: ‘Necrophily’, but he rubbed them out with his own acts of tenderness. To ease her in gently to that world of release and elation which lay all before her, all too easily spoilt for ever by the boor, cynic, self-seeker, was surely a valid part of the office of almost-father he had assumed. This was an act of love.
But had she already perhaps half-corrupted herself with curiosity? It was more avidity for knowledge than acceptance of pleasure that, after the first epiphany, led her to ask for more things, her greed squeaking faintly like the pencil of an inventory-taker. And what is this, that? How is the other thing done? She wanted to turn atlas names into the photographable stuff of foreign travel. Hillier bade her sleep again, they must be up early, there were many things to be seen to before their disembarkation at Istanbul. He fed her one pleasure that brought her to the sword-point of a cry that might wake the whole corridor, and after that she slept, her firm young body mottled with heat-rash and her hair all dark strings. Hillier wearily looked at his watch: 6.20. At seven she wakened him roughly and demanded what he had been loath to give her. He still demurred but soon, the morning advancing and his own lust angry at its bits and snaffles, he led her to the phallic experience. It was then that she ceased to be Clara. His head was too clear now, tenderness bundled out like a passenger who had not paid his fare, and he was able to say to himself: There are no virgins any more; ponies and gym-mistresses are the distracted deflowerers, jolly liquidators of a once high and solemn ritual spiced with pain. Tea-trays began to rattle in the corridor. He muffled the shriek of her climax with a hand over her mouth and then took his own, humbler, orgasm outside her. At once he was able to plunge into the prose-world of the morning—to lock the door against a tea bringing steward, light a cigar, tell her to cover herself and, when the corridor was clear, seek her own cabin. Love. How about love?
She said: ‘Do you think my breasts are too small?’
‘No no no, perfect.’
She put on her nightdress and then her dressing-gown with a child’s glow of smugness. She said: ‘Do you have to smoke those horrible things first thing in the morning?’
‘I’m afraid I do. An old habit.’
‘An old habit.’ She nodded. ‘Old. It’s a pity one has to wait till one’s old to really know anything. You know a lot.’
‘What any mature man knows.’
‘They’ll be jealous at school when I tell them.’ She lay on the bunk again, very wide awake, her hands behind her head.
‘Oh, no,’ murmured Hillier.
‘It’s all talk with them. And of course what they get out of books. I can hardly wait.’
Hillier was hurt. Early though it was, he gave himself a large Old Mortality and tepid water; the name on the bottle glared at him like his own reflection. She looked indulgently: this was a bad habit, but it didn’t smell like a cigar. ‘Which,’ he asked, ‘will you tell them first—that you’ve lost a father or gained a lover?’
Her face screwed up at once. ‘That was a filthy and cruel thing to say.’ It was too.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I know a lot but I’ve forgotten much more. I’d forgotten the coldness of youth till you reminded me of it. It needs to be matched with the coldness of the village initiator. There used to be such men, you know—safe experienced men who showed young girls what it was all about. No love in it, of course. I suppose now you think me a fool for having talked about love.’
She sniffed back the renewed tears of bereavement. ‘I shall remember it. It’s one of the things I shan’t tell the other girls.’
‘Oh yes you will.’ His mouth tasted sour. He would have liked to be lying in that bed alone, watching the tea brought in. ‘It doesn’t matter really. I’d forgotten you were a schoolgirl. I’ve never even asked your age.’
‘Sixteen.’ She smirked very faintly then looked sad again.
‘Not so young. I once had an Italian girl of eleven. I was once offered a Tamil girl of nine.’
‘You’re pretty horrid really, aren’t you?’ But she gave him a full gaze of neutral appraisal. Initiator: he could see the word being marshalled into position behind her eyes. And on this cruise there was a man who was really what you might call an initiator. A what? Tell us more.
‘I don’t know what I am,’ said Hillier. ‘I failed to be a corpse. I dreamed of a regeneration. Perhaps one can’t have that without dying first. It was foolish of me to think I could be both a father and a husband. And yet in what capacity do I dread your being thrown to the wolves?’
‘I can look after myself. We can both look after ourselves.’
There was a knock at the door. ‘Tea at last,’ Hillier said. ‘You’d better get off that bunk. You’d better look as though you just came in to tell me your sad news.’ She got up and went demurely to a chair. Sad news; that was what the Old Mortality tasted like. Have another nip of Sad News. Hillier unlocked and opened up. It was not the strange steward, Wriste’s replacement. It was Alan. In his dressing-gown, hair sleek, Black Russian in holder, he looked rested and mature.
‘Did she spend the night here?’ he asked. Hillier made a mouth and shrugged; no point in denying it. The brother had done murder; the sister had been initiated. ‘Well,’ said Alan, ‘you’ve certainly shown both of us how the other half lives.’ He tasted, like Sad News, the ineptness of that last word. ‘She came,’ he said. ‘She woke me up to tell me. It seemed rather small stuff really. I hope that doesn’t sound callous.’
Very ill at ease, Hillier said: ‘He reached Byzantium first.’ He could then have bitten out his tongue. Alan looked at him gravely, saying:
‘You’re what I’d call a romantic. Poetry and games and visions.’ To Clara he said: ‘She’s behaving as I knew she would. Terribly ill after telling everybody the news. Blinding headache. Prostrate with grief. She said it was up to the Captain to see to everything. Get him off the ship. Bundle him out of sight. It upsets the passengers, having a dead body on board. They paid for a good time and by God they’re going to have it.’
‘You must leave everything to me,’ said Hillier. ‘You’ll want to travel back with him. You can fly BEA from Istanbul. I’ll sort it all out for you, the least I can do. I’ll get dressed now and go and see the purser. I ought to radio your solicitors, his I mean. They can meet you at London Airport.’
‘I know what has to be done,’ said Alan. ‘You’re too much of a romantic to be any good at real things. I notice you don’t say anything about flying to London with us. That’s because you daren’t, isn’t it? Some of your pals will be waiting for you, other romantic games-players in raincoats with guns in their pockets. You talked about looking after us, but you daren’t even set foot in England.’
‘Things to do in Istanbul,’ mumbled Hillier. ‘One thing, anyway. Very important. Then I was going to suggest that you both meet me in Dublin. At the Dolphin Hotel, Essex Street. Then we could decide about the future.’
‘Our future,’ said Alan, ‘will be decided by Chancery. Wards in Chancery, Clara and Alan Walters. A stepmother has no legal obligation. I suppose you’ll start talking about yourself having a moral obligation. And all that means is our skulking in Ireland with you. Neutral territory. Opting out of history—that was your expression. That means the IRA and gun-men and blowing up post-offices. No, thank you. Back to school for us.We want to learn slowly.’
Hillier looked guiltily and bitterly at the two children. ‘You didn’t always think like that,’ he said. ‘Sex-books and dinnerjackets and ear-rings and cognac after dinner. You talk about me playing games—’
‘We,’ said Alan with something like sweetness, ‘are only children. It was up to you to recognise that. Games are all right for children.’ Then his larynx throbbed with anger like an adult’s. ‘Look where your bloody games have landed us.’
‘You’re not being fair—’
‘Bloody neutrals. That bitch with the grief-stricken headache and filthy The odorescu and grinning Wriste and you. But I suppose you feel very self-righteous and very badly done to.’
‘There are no real martyrs,’ said Hillier carefully. ‘One should always read the small print on the contract.’
‘Oh, you even have to make a game out of that,’ sneered Alan. He took out of his dressing-gown pocket a much-mauled piece of paper. ‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘This is that message you gave me to de-code.’ Hillier took it. The paper was quite blank. ‘No come-back there,’ said Alan. ‘They play the game well.’
‘Seven-day vanishing ink,’ said Hillier. ‘I might have known.’
‘It would be lovely if everything could vanish as easily. Conjuring tricks. Games. Oh, let’s get back to the real world.’ He made as to leave. ‘You coming, Clara?’
‘In a minute. I just want to say goodbye.’
‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’ And, with no farewell to Hillier, he left. His mature smoker’s cough travelled down the corridor, perhaps to a boy’s tears in his own cabin, the natural self-pity of a newly-made orphan. Hillier and Clara looked at each other. He said:
‘A kiss wouldn’t be in order, would it? Too much like love.’
Her eyes were bright as from dexedrine. She lowered them bashfully. ‘It doesn’t look as if you’re going to get any morning tea,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you lock the door again?’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ she said, raising her eyes to him. How often had he seen those eyes before.
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Go on. Out.’
‘But you seemed to like it—’
‘Out.’
‘You’re horrible.’ She began to cry. ‘You said you loved—’
‘Go on.’ Blindly he pushed her out on to the corridor.
‘Beast. Filthy filthy beast.’ And then, as she too made for her cabin, it was just tears. But tears, however public, were in order. Hillier settled in his wretchedness to the bottle of Old Mortality.
HILLIER HAD three days to wait in Istanbul. His hotel was pretentiously named—the Babi Humayun or Sublime Porte—also misleadingly, since it was nearer the Golden Horn in the north than the Old Seraglio in the south-east of the city. But it suited Hillier well enough. The final act to be performed accorded better with fleas, foul lavatories, stained and carious wallpaper, than with the grand asepsis of the Hilton. His room was shady and smelt shady: the bed had surely known gross and barbaric gesta, the paint scratched from its iron by strong and cruel fingers from the hills, fingers unwashed from dipping in rank stews of goatmutton. Bearded phantoms shuffled the floor in the night in greasy slippers, muttering last words before the striking down for a little bag of coins ill-concealed under the bursting mattress: shadows of murderous thieves danced on the walls in the dim light from the three-in-the-morning street. The room had a balcony long uncleared of Turkish cigarette-ends, old cobwebs thick with white dust; the one chair was rickety. But Hillier liked to sit there and take his early breakfast of yoghurt, figs, unleavened bread and goat-butter, thick syrupy coffee and foul Brazilian cigars, looking into the clear glimmer of the morning Bosporus. He reflected, naked under his dressing-gown, on how wrong he had been about things, believing too much in choice and free will and the logic of men’s acts; also the nature of love.
On Cumhuriyet Caddesi he had watched, half-hiding like some native of the city up to no good, the loading of the flourking’s coffin on to the closed BEA van, later the boarding of the flour-king’s orphans, two pale and elegant children, with the rest of the passengers on Flight BE 291, and he had waved feebly as the coach ground off to Yesilköy Airport. He had gone to the address given to him by The odorescu and found it a decent bundle of business offices. At the enquiry-desk he had asked if there were anything for Mr Hillier; a Mongol-looking woman with hair streaked white had given him an envelope. A note inside merely said: FAIL WHOLLY TO UNDERSTAND BUT WILL BE THERE. It was signed T.
And then to wait. Breakfast, the first raki of the day, fried fish or kebab for lunch, raki going all the time. Sleep or a restless wandering of the city, cocktails at the Kemel or the Hilton, a European dinner, then a raki-crawl and early bed. Istanbul disturbed him with its seven hills, as though Rome had tried to build herself on another planet. The names of architects and sultans rang in his mind in dull Byzantine gold—Anthemius, Isidorus, Achmet, Bajazet, Solyman theMagnificent. The emperors shrilled from a far past like desolate birds—Theodosius, Justinian, Constantine himself. His head raged with mosques. The city, in cruel damp heat, smelt of wool and hides and skins. Old filth and rusty iron, proud exports, clattered and thumped aboard under Galata’s lighthouse. Ships, gulls, sea-light. Bazaars, beggars, skinny children, teeth, charcoal fires, skewered innards smoking, the heavy tobacco reek, fat men in flannel double-breasteds, fed on fat.
In the early evening of the third day, Hillier arrived back at the Babi Humayun from a trip to Scutari. He was damp and tired and his head ached. His pulse raced when he saw in the entrance hall a small pile of good leather luggage. Someone had arrived from somewhere. Who? He did not dare ask the squinting bilious-skinned porter. He took the lift (old iron for export) to his floor, went to his room, stripped, and checked the Aiken and silencer before loading. He hid the weapon among his few remaining clean shirts in the top drawer of the dressing-table. He drank raki from the flask by the window. Dressing-gowned, towel round his neck, he went out to the bathroom, feeling slightly sick, eyes focusing badly; he noted the tremor of intent in his fingers as they reached for the bathroom door. He knew what he would see inside.
Miss Devi stood under the shower’s cold trickle. He surveyed her nakedness as coldly as she suffered his gaze. Fronds and dissolving islets of water flowered and fell upon the baked skin; the tar-black bush glistened. She had hidden her hair in a plastic cap; her face seemed more naked than her body. The nipples were pert after the shock of the douche; like eyes they met his eyes. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Is he here?’
‘Later. He has things to do. He found your message very mysterious. He will not trick you, of course. No tape recorder. But his memory is very good.’
Mine too, thought Hillier. His flesh crawled as it remembered that night in her cabin. Was it proper now to feel desire? That past desire had been used to betray him; this time it would be different. Shatter that child’s body; those scents that lingered in his nostrils and the feel that was stitched into the whorls of his hands could only be exorcised by the ranker contacts of a knowing, mature, corrupt routine. Hillier said: ‘Would you now? I take it there is time.’
‘Oh, there’s time. Time for the vimanam and the akaya-vimanam. Mor and the taddinam and the Yaman.’
‘Yaman? That’s the god of death.’
‘It’s just a name. My room is 47. Wait there.’
‘Let’s go to mine,’ said Hillier.
‘No. I have the instruments of the Yaman. Wait for me there. I must perform the triple washing of the vay.’ Hillier noticed that she had a little waterproof bag on the chair by the bath. There would be other engines there than those of the Yaman. He went to her room. It was as seedy as his own, but her presence rode it strongly, sneering at the accidents of decay. He washed himself in cold water from her basin and briskly dried himself. Then he got into her bed (the sheets must be her own: crisp black linen) and waited. In five minutes she came to him, plunging into the bed naked from the very door.
‘It’s no good,’ said Hillier, after the simple movements of the vimanam. ‘I want something too direct and easy and tender for you. I want a simple tune, not a full orchestra. It’s just the way I am.’
She went cold and stiff beneath him. ‘A little English girl,’ she said. ‘Blonde and trembling and talking about love.’
‘She never talked about love,’ said Hillier. ‘She left that to me.’
With a swift muscular convulsion she rejected him. He was not sorry to be rejected. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘You’d better go.’ The voice was glacial. ‘Mr Theodorescu said something about business first, dinner after. He’ll see you in your room as you requested. He asked me to see that you have drinks sent up. Not raki. It can go on his bill, he told me to tell you. And now get out of here.’
Hillier sat in his room waiting. The marine sky insinuated itself, through phases of pink and madder, into a velvet transformation. Stars over the Golden Horn, its gold in darkness now like the gold of Byzantium. On the table by the balcony were whisky, gin, cognac, mineral water, ice, and a box of cigarettes whose paper was like silk and whose tobacco tasted like burnt cream. Hillier checked his gun once more and placed it in the right-hand pocket of his moygashel jacket. He waited.
Theodorescu entered without knocking. He was in a lounge suit and silk shirt; he smelled of an ideal Orient, not the gamy real Asia that started here east of the Bosporus. He was huge; his baldness was massive smoothed stone; he was urbane, genial, saying: ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait, my dear Hillier. There were things in Athens that had to be seen to. Miss Devi entertained you, I take it? No? You seem very serious, glum almost. This is not the naked Hillier I knew and respected on shipboard.’ There were chairs on either side of the drink-table. Theodorescu took a whole gill of whisky; ice clinked in with the tones of a tiny celeste.
‘You respect me no longer?’ said Hillier. ‘Now that I’m going to give you something for nothing? Now that I’m going to give you everything for nothing?’
‘My trade is a crude one. I’m used to buying and selling only. I doubt if anybody’s ever genuinely given me something for nothing. Presents, bribes—those are different. There’s a tag, isn’t there, about dona ferentes? You say you have things to give me.What do you want in return?’
‘Release,’ said Hillier. ‘I’ve a burden to jettison. A general confession that justifies my staying alive. Do you understand me?’
Theodorescu shone both eyes full on him. ‘I think I do. You’re turning me into a priest. I’m honoured, I suppose. And now I have to take the burden over. I see. I see. I see why you wanted no mechanical recorders. Well, go slowly—that’s all I ask.’
‘A confession,’ said Hillier. ‘But also a gift horse. I’ll take my own time.’
‘Begin, then. Bless me, father, for I have sinned—’ Hillier did not answer his smile; Theodorescu ceased smiling.
‘That’s not for you. But this is, these are.’ And he started. ‘The identity of Avenel is H. Glendinning of Seyton House, Strand-on-the-Green, London. Abu Ibn Sina, known to the Baghdad police, runs the radio station known as Radio Avicenna. The three international saboteurs who call themselves the Adullamites are Horsman, Lowe, and Grosvenor; you will know the names, I think.’
‘Indeed. Hypocrites.’ He took another gill of whisky. ‘Pray continue.’
‘Operation Aegir is to be mounted near Gellivare six months from now. H. J. Prince, at Charlinch near Bridgwater, Somerset, England, is in charge of a training school for subversion called Agapemone. A pocket television transmitter called, for some reason, Nur-al-Nihar, is in process of development at a station near El Maghra, south-west of Alexandria. Twin missiles named Aholah and Aholibah are near completion on the Jordan border, east of Beersheba. The assassin of Sergei Timofeyevich Aksakov is in retirement at Fribourg; he goes under the name of Chichikov—a pretty touch. T. B. Aldrich, an importer, runs our station at Christinestad; he is in radio contact with GRT, as it’s called, which is in the Valdai Hills, south of Staraya Russa. The scheme known as Almagest is already being mounted at Kinloch on Rhum Island. Escape route Gotha starts three miles north-west of Cöpenick. Barlow, Trumbull, Humphreys and Hopkins, a so-called pop-group named the Anarchists, have plans of the San Antonio installations in a villa outside Hartford.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘One can never be totally sure. They may have other things too. That’s why there’s been no pounce as yet.’
‘I doubt if I shall remember more than a fraction of all this. You’re a hard man, Mr Hillier.’
‘C. Babbage is in charge of the Cambridge team which is developing the Zenith PRT calculator. A very corruptible man. John Balfour of Burley leads the Cameronian sect with its headquarters in Groningen—mad but potentially dangerous. The Nero Caesar cryptogram has been broken by Richard Swete in Taranto. The sea-trials of the Bergomask have been indefinitely postponed. Watch very carefully the activities of the Bismarck Group in Friedrichsruh. The Black Book of the Admiralty has disappeared: don’t try and sell that to the press. Rolf Boldrewood is forging roubles in Bolt Court off Fleet Street, London. The air-exercise known as Britomart will be photographing the base at Varazdin. An atomiser-gun provisionally named Cacodemon is being tested at Gonville Hall. The French nuclear scheme is phased according to the revolutionary months. Completion stage is designated Fructidor. At present the Thermidorian tumbrils are coming—that was the message received.’
‘Good God.’ Theodorescu had finished three-quarters of the whisky.
‘Watch Portugal. Leodogrance has, we gather, seen plans of an ICBM called Lusus. But Leodogrance was raving from the cellars at Santarem. Watch Spain. There are rumours of what is known as a Pan-Iberian doctrine being drafted underground at Leganes. There are some very strange installations at Badajoz, Brozas, and in camps in Southern Pontevedra.’
‘That I knew.’
‘That you knew. But you didn’t know that Colvin was in Leningrad as a fur-buyer. Nor that a certain Edmund Curll is fabricating indecent photographs to compromise Kosygin. His shop is on Canonbury Avenue, London, N.1.Our agents in Yugoslavia are at Prijepolje, Mitrovica, Krusevac, Novi Sad, Osijek, Ivanic and Mostar. They all give English lessons. The password till September 1 is Zoonomia.’
‘Please spell that.’
‘The UAR call their long-term anti-Israelite attrititive scheme by the Koranic name of Alexander the Great—Dhul’karnain. Hence arms-dumps are indicated by the sign of the two horns. Johann Döllinger has recently been expelled from the underground neo-Nazi Welteroberungs-bund. He drinks all day in a rooming-house on Schaumkammstrasse, Munich. The Druidical movement in Anglesey is not to be laughed off: it is financed by Böltger and Kandler, late of Dresden. Laurence Eusden was seen with a Moorish boy in Tangier.’
‘I have photographs.’Having finished the whisky, Theodorescu started on the cognac.
‘Give me some of that,’ said Hillier. His brain was becoming a jumble of names. He drank. He must push on. He said: ‘Miniature nuclear submarines called Fomors are to be launched secretly off Rossan Point, Donegal. Gabriel Lajeunesse is the codename for the graminicidal experiments to be carried on south of Carson City, Nevada. Joel Harris is the official executioner of J24, at present residing in Lübeck. Godolphin still seems to be at large: Hodgson reports having seen a man answering to his description in Zacatecas.’
‘Very small stuff.’
‘Perhaps. Remember that this is a team of gift horses.’
‘Jades. Nags. Rocinantes. But I see I’m presenting myself as ungrateful and discourteous. My apologies.’ He looked at his watch, a flat gleaming Velichestvo. ‘Do continue. Or, if you can, conclude.’
‘Watch Plauen, watch Regensburg, watch Passau. America looks east with new-mark 405 installations. Ingelow has been sent to Plovdiv in time for the Dzerzhinski visit. There’s an American military mission, disguised as travelling evangelists, visiting Kalatak and Shireza. The Kashmir business is being forced into blowing up again soon: those packing-cases in Srinagar contain flameguns.’
‘Yes yes yes. But you know what I really want.’
Hillier sighed. ‘What you really want. But you’re not entitled to anything. You bloody pederastic neutral.’
Theodorescu laughed. ‘Would you address your priest so? I suppose you could. We shrink to our offices, or expand.’
‘Evil,’ said Hillier between his teeth, ‘resides in the neutrals, in the uncovenanted powers. Here it all comes, then—what you really want.’ Theodorescu leaned forward. ‘Number One Caribbean Territories is F. J. Layard,’ said Hillier, all his instincts telling him to be sick, faint, gag. ‘Savanna la Mar, Jamaica. The office is at the rear of a bicycle-store called Leatherwood’s. Layard goes under the name of Thomas North.’
‘Come nearer home.’
‘Number Two (Operations) is F. Norris, on six months’ leave, living with his aunt at Number 23, Horne Road, Southsea.’
‘Never mind about the Caribbean. It’s London I want.’
Hillier retched, then swigged some cognac. ‘Headquarters in Pennant Street—Shenstone Buildings, tenth floor, Thaumast Enterprises Limited. The Chief—’
‘Yes yes?’
‘Sir Ralph Whewell. Albany and a house called Trimurti, Battle, Sussex.’
‘Old India man, eh? Good. Never mind about other names. Just give me the frequencies you work on.’
‘On the Murton scale, 33, 41, 45.’
‘Book codes?’
‘Very seldom.’
‘Thank you, my dear Hillier. You said I was evil a minute ago. I quite probably am. But I’m honest, you know. I couldn’t stay in this business if I cheated. When I place that envelope on the table in Lausanne, when I say: “Gentlemen, this contains the name of the Chief of the BES” or “Here is the exact location of Intercep”, my potential bidders never doubt that I’m telling the truth. And they know I never sell the same information twice. I’m honest, and I’m fair. You insisted, out of your generous heart, on giving me all those titbits, dry and succulent alike, for nothing, so I would never insult you by offering a token gift in return. But I took something of yours—or rather Miss Devi did—and I insist on giving a fair price. Shall we say two thousand pounds?’ From his inner pocket he extracted the bluescrawled Roper manuscript and waved it. ‘She stole this, my dear Hillier, while you waited in her bed just now for the ecstasies some block of guilt prevented your consummating. You’ll probably regard me as greedy and ungrateful, but I always take what I can when I can how I can.’
‘You knew I had it?’
‘Not at all. Routine rummaging, you know. I was rather pleased. I first heard of the libidinous Sir Arnold Cornpit-Ferrers from a young lady in Güstrow. She had some little secrets to sell and was put in touch with me—pathetic rags and tatters of information they were, picked up while she worked as a prostitute in London.’
‘Brigitte.’ A letter to Roper. One of these days.
‘Was that her name? You’re remarkable, Hillier. Is there anything you don’t know? Evidently you too have been interested in the Roper case. But why not? Our world is small. I always take a very special interest in defectors—they’re endlessly corruptible. Well now, will you take a cheque on my Swiss bank?’
‘I’ll be fair too,’ said Hillier, drawing out his silent Aiken. ‘I may give without taking but—I can’t say I’m sorry about what I’m going to do now. You’re the enemy, Theodorescu; you straddle the Curtain jingling the joy-bells in your pocket. Unlike Midas, I didn’t even blab to a hole in the ground. I blabbed to nothing.’ And he fired.
Theodorescu laughed through the harmless smoke. Hillier fired again, and again. Nothing happened. He could almost hear the sudden bursting of sweat all over his body.
‘Blanks,’ grinned Theodorescu. ‘We knew we’d see that delightful little Aiken again. Miss Devi effected the exchange in your brief interim of sad lecherous waiting. A very useful girl. And handsome. I wish sometimes I could be attracted to her sex. But we remain what greater powers make us. Ultimately we’re impotent. Life is, I suppose, terrible.’
Hillier hurled himself but was hurled back by a single gesture of the arm. Theodorescu marched towards the door, laughing. Hillier clawed at him, but his nails turned to plastic. ‘If you’re going to be a nuisance,’ said Theodorescu, ‘I shall have to call on my friends down-town. I have some work to do in Istanbul and I don’t like little people getting in the way. Be a good fellow and sit over a nice drink looking out at the Golden Horn. You’ve done your work. Rest, relax. Go and see Miss Devi again—her nature is forgiving. For my part, I’m going out to dinner.’ And he went out laughing.
Hillier dashed to the dressing-table. His syringe and ampoules were still in their resting-place under handkerchiefs, apparently untouched. He cracked open two ampoules and filled the syringe; he had to be quick. When he got out on the corridor he found the lift already creaking ferrously down, a slow song of rust, and fancied he heard Theodorescu laughing in it. Hillier tore down the stairs, all worn hazardous carpet, past huge Byzantine pots of dead plants, a stately Turkish couple coming up to their room, a tooth-sucking waiter in filthy white. He stumbled on one of the treads, cursing. He saw, down the liftwell, the cage approaching ground-level, its top laden with fruit skins and cigarette-packets, even rare condoms. He would, he thought, just make it.
A man in a cloth cap, perhaps Theodorescu’s driver, read with gloom a Turkish newspaper near the lift-gates. Hillier pushed him aside, saying ‘Pardon’. Theodorescu was opening the flimsy lattice-work of the cage, the only passenger. ‘Allow me,’ said Hillier, taking hold of the knob of the outer gate. He pulled, allowing only a narrow chink between gate and slotted gatepost. Impatiently, Theodorescu tried to push, fine strong ringed white hand in the opening. Hillier pushed the other way with all his strength, jamming the hand so that its owner cursed. To have that hand at his mercy for just five seconds—The cloth-capped Turk was not happy; he was going to get away from here. The force which Theodorescu exerted was formidable; it was time for Hillier to swing round, change his hand-position, and pull. He did this athletically, finding a good foothold in the worn tiles of the floor; he gripped a wrought-iron rod of the outer gate and heaved. The hand itself seemed to curse, flashing all its rings like death-rays. Hillier took the syringe from his breast-pocket, uncapped the needle with his teeth, then jabbed hard into the veins of the thick wrist. Theodorescu yelled. Two old men coming down the stairs looked frightened and turned back. There were noises as of hotel staff clattering down coffee-cups offstage, preparing to consider whether to see what was happening. ‘This won’t hurt,’ promised Hillier, and he pressed the plunger. The vein swelled as the viscous fluid went in, its overflow mingling with the needled gush of black blood. ‘That will do,’ said Hillier. He left the syringe sticking in, like a lance in a white bull’s flank, then let go of the outer gate and fled.
He cowered in the shadows by the ill-lighted entrance of the hotel. Soon he heard singing. Theodorescu, whom nothing could make drunk, had been made drunk. The song sung was the anthem of a minor British public school: ‘Porson was founded in days of old, When learning was in flower, And mighty warriors strong and bold Brought England peace and power.’ The organtones of the voice had been somehow diluted to the reediness of a harmonica, though there was still much strength there. Theodorescu, trying to remember the second verse, then saying ‘Dash it’, then merely humming, appeared at the hotel entrance, smirking sillily in the globe-light above against which moths beat, his left arm around a decay-mottled barley-sugar pillar, his right hand dripping blood. ‘A jolly nice night for a bit of fun,’ he told the street. ‘Hey, you fellows there,’ he called to a knot of Turks in old brown suits, ‘let’s go and write dirty words on Form Five’s blackboard.’ He began to stagger off now to the right, towards the maze of dirty streets which at length led to uncaulked craft bobbing on the water, thieves, little food-stalls. He sang a maturer song of school, naughty: ‘We’re good at games like rugger And snooker and lacrosse, And once aboard the lugger We are never at a loss. Look at the silly sod, pissed on half-a-pint of four-half.’ He roared with boyish laughter, zigzagging on the greasy cobbles. Hillier followed well behind.
From a ramshackle raki-stall came thin Turkish radio-noise, skirling reeds in microtonal melismata with, as for the benefit of Mozart, gongs, cymbals, jangles. Theodorescu cried loud his contempt of foreign art: ‘Nigger-stuff. Bongabongabonga. Chinks and niggers.’ And, like a true Britisher, he rolled seawards, Istanbul possessing three walls of sea and one wall of stone. Lowly people of various inferior races stared at him, but with neither fear nor malice: this big man was lordly drunk, Allah or the shade of Atatürk forgive him. The time, thought Hillier, had come to steer him whither it was proper for him to be steered. As he lessened his following distance, he was suddenly turned upon by Theodorescu, though jovially. Theodorescu called: ‘Ah, Biggs, you little squirt, if you try and pin that insulting filthy card to my back I will have you. I know your nasty tricks, you boily son of a cut-price haberdasher.’
‘It’s not Briggs,’ said Hillier.
‘Oh, isn’t it?’ said Theodorescu. Three filthy children, Turko- Graeco-Syrian or something, were capering round him for baksheesh. Theodorescu tried to cuff them off, but his co-ordination was bad. Still, they ran to an alley of foul dark, jeering. ‘No, it’s not Briggs,’ agreed Theodorescu. ‘It’s Forster. Well, Forster, is it to be war or peace?’
‘Oh, peace,’ said Hillier.
‘Jolly good,’ said Theodorescu. ‘We’ll fare forward together. In peace peace peace. Arm in arm, Forster. Come along, then.’ Hillier was up to his side, but he resisted the fierce and podgy embrace that was offered. ‘You say peace,’ said Theodorescu, tottering downhill along a sinuous mock-street, ‘but you told Witherspoon that I was a dirty foreigner.’ The street seemed full of torn posters advertising long-done Turkish entertainments, though one showed two American film-stars embracing grimly among words umlaut-spiked. A gas-lamp flickered like a dying moth. A fat woman with creamy Greek skin suddenly peered out from a derelict shop, calling hoarsely. ‘I am a true-born Englishman,’ said Theodorescu, ‘despite the name. I will make the second eleven next year, so Shaw said. The eye and the hand.’ He began to demonstrate batting strokes but nearly fell.
‘Let’s go down,’ said Hillier, ‘for a breath of the old briny.’ A ghastly odour of decaying water-rack came up to them on the warm breeze. With a finger-tip prod he impelled Theodorescu to descend a wider street with food-and-drink shops open to the night. Here radio music of various kinds contended; a plummy, somehow Churchillian, voice read through farts of static the news in Turkish. There was the hissing of nameless fish and meat being dropped into hot fat. Theodorescu sniffed hungrily. ‘Old Ma Shenstone’s fish and chips,’ he slavered. ‘The best in town.’ There were knots of merchant seamen about, some quarrelling over money. Hillier could swear that he saw, for an instant only, a woman thrust a fat white belly over the window-ledge of an upper room; she was dressed only in a yashmak. Hadn’t Kemal Atatürk forbidden yashmaks? Then her light went out.
‘Theo,’ said Hillier, ‘you’re a dirty young squirt. What have you been doing with the younger boys?’
‘It was Bellamy,’ cried Theodorescu in distress. ‘Bellamy did it to me. They all stood around in the prefects’ room. The door was locked. I yelled and nobody came. They only laughed.’
‘You have the habits of a dirty foreigner,’ said Hillier. ‘I know what you did with that little boy in the choir.’
‘I didn’t do anything with anybody. Honest.’ Theodorescu started to cry. An unshaven sailor, streaked with hold-dirt, stood outside a food-hell called Gastronom. He belched on a long and wavering note. Theodorescu decided to run. He did this clumsily, crying. ‘They’re always on to me,’ he yelled. ‘I only want to be left alone.’ He Charlie-Chaplin-turned the corner. Two linked seamen swerved out of the way of his impending bulk, calling strange words.
‘Easy, easy, Theo,’ soothed Hillier, catching up with him. ‘You’ll feel tons better after a lovely sniff of sea.’ They were on a minor wharf, its stones broken or slimy. The Bosporus lapped orts of shipping. Two youths, hairy and dark under a faint working-light, one of them unshod, were trying to open a packing-case with an old iron bar. Seeing Hillier and Theodorescu, they ran off with unsure Turkish guffaws. There were crates lined up against dismal sheds, rat-scufflings behind. A gull somewhere seemed to cry out at a bad dream. ‘I say,’ said Hillier, ‘we could have a jolly good bit of fun here. Let’s go aboard one of these boats.’ Father out, small merchantmen did a dance of dim lights; there was a party going on somewhere—cries of joy that sounded Scandinavian, desperate under the euphoria. Hillier led Theodorescu to the quay’s edge. It was green and slippery. ‘Careful, careful,’ said Hillier. ‘Don’t want to fall in, do we?’ Theodorescu’s eyelids were drooping; Hillier peered at the sagging mass of the face, all fat nobility dripped off. ‘You’re a bloody foreigner,’ he said, ‘not British at all. I dare you to jump on that barge with me.’ It was a coal-barge emptied of coal; only its residue of dark dust, film everywhere, mole-mounds of it here and there, glistened under the thin rising slip of a Turkish moon. The empty vessel rocked over a subdued glug of water, its lip not more than three feet from the quay.
‘Can’t, said Theodorescu, looking seaward with filming eyes. ‘Not like warrer. Ole Holtballs no blurry good. Took us to the baths, not teach swim proper. Wanner go ome.’
‘Coward,’ jeered Hillier. ‘Dirty dago coward.’
‘Fishin ships. Ole Ma Shenshtin.’ Hillier reached up and slapped him on the left jowl. He tried not to think. Ah God God God. Was he so much the ultimate villain? He could have taken all that information that time without asking, without paying out dollars. Even the identity of, the location of. Free will, choice: he had spoken of those things. ‘Choose now, Theodorescu,’ he said into the sea-breeze. ‘Go in now. A narrow bed, it will just hold you.’
‘Murrer send big cake for dorm. Bellamy buggers eat the lot.’
‘Five shillings, Theodorescu. I bet you five whole bob you daren’t jump after me.’
‘Five?’ It had shaken him awake. ‘Not supposed to gamble. Old Jimballs will be in a hell of a wax.’
‘Watch this.’ Hillier gauged keenly. There was a wooden ledge a foot or so down from the gunwale. That would be all right. ‘Now then, Theodorescu.’ It was an easy leap. Panting only slightly, Hillier looked up the brief distance to the quay’s edge, where Theodorescu swayed doubtfully. ‘Come on, coward. Come on, foreign dirty dago coward. Come on, you flaming neutral.’
‘British,’ said Theodorescu. He stood erect, as to the National Anthem. ‘Not neutral.’ He too leaped. The water was so shocked by the impact of his weight that it launched to the air curious ciphers of protest: ghostly caricatures of female forms, Islamic letters big enough for posters, samples of lace curtaining, lightning-struck towers, a wan foam-face of dumb and evanescent horror. Its chorus of hissing after the splash was for an outraged audience. Theodorescu was between quay wall and unpainted barge-side, gasping: ‘Rotter. Beastly rotter. No right. Know I can’t.’
‘You forgot to give me the absolution,’ said Hillier. And, he remembered, the Roper manuscript. That tale of betrayal was being fast soaked down there, along with wads of money. A fortune was going down in the Bosporus. Theodorescu’s rings gleamed dimly as he tried to scratch his way up the weedy stonework. Howling, he tried to keep himself afloat by, in a crucified posture, pressing both walls of his gulped and glupping prison. The barge moved its skirts away from his grope, tuttutting. He cried out again and a fistful of dirty water stopped his mouth. ‘Bellamy,’ he choked, ‘bou fwine.’ The prefects were teeheeing all about him. Oh God, thought Hillier: finish it off. He clambered into the barge well, searching. He found only a heavy shovel. He climbed up with it, hearing before he saw Theodorescu fighting the wet, the solids of stone and wood. He foresaw himself, in a cannibal breakfast, tapping that skull-egg, seeing the red yolk float on the water. It wouldn’t do. But there was the drug, the drug was still working. Theodorescu seemed to fold his arms, like a stoic placed in the Iron Maiden. He said something in a language Hillier didn’t understand, then he visibly willed himself—eyes tight shut, lips set firm—to go under. He went under. Odd burps and glups, as of marine digestion, rose after him. Then the water settled. After a short while, Hillier flawed the air with a Brazilian cigar. Then, puffing, he minced along towards the prow of the barge. At that point, on the quay wall, a worn lifebelt had been fixed as a sort of buffer. By means of this he was able to climb with ease on to the wharf. Now, with his work finished (though suddenly, briskly, Cornpit-Ferrers danced in, thumbing his nose, going Yah like a schoolboy), he could go home. But, as he walked through the odorous Turkish evening, he wondered again where the hell home was.
*Clara and Alan calmer now but sent to bed with a couple of sleeping tablets each. The Polyolbion throbbing away from Yarylyuk towards Istanbul. I have sent a radio message to the address given by T, namely Cumhuriyet Caddesi 15. Another steward answered my ring, sayingWriste unaccountably not reported back to ship. I sit here with the crabbed royal blue script of Roper and a new bottle of Old Mortality. All right, Roper, let’s hear all about it.
*Oh no, Roper. You never even did that at school.
*You sentimental self-pitying bastard, Roper. You’ll be back in the Devil yet, you mark my words.
*They should have been most willing to help, shouldn’t they?
†Cut out the frills, Roper. Not your line at all.
*Oh no, Roper. No no NO.
*From what pretentious TV play did you pick that up?
†Sir Arnold Cornpit-Ferrers, as he now is? The dawn breaks, Roper.
*Watch it, watch it.
†And again.
‡Do try.
*?
†Knocknoise, distant.
‡Wherewhatwhowhy?
§Oh, please, please, please. He’s dead, I tell you. It’s all over. Alan won’t wake up.
**Eh? Clara in dressing-gown, weeping. She came in to tell me, triumphant almost. He’s dead. Oh, what do we do now?