by William Boyd
Going through Osborne-Way’s list it’s at once obvious that a significant number of the officers in the Directorate could not possibly have access to all the information in the Glockner letters. However, I’ve decided as a matter of policy and subterfuge to interview everyone – I don’t want to concentrate on any particular group and thereby raise suspicions. Andromeda, whoever he is, mustn’t develop the slightest concern over this supplementary enquiry into Sir Horace Ede’s Commission on Transportation. So, I’ve summoned Tremlett and given him the entire list of interviewees. I begin with one Major H.B. O’Terence, responsible for ‘Travelling claims by land. Visits of relatives to wounded in hospital in France’. He’s going to be a busy man in the coming days and weeks – best to finish with him first.
It has proved to be both a shock and unusually destabilizing to have seen Hettie. All my sex-feelings for her have returned in an instant. Incredible desire. Old images of her naked and what we did with each other. And all my contradictions and confusions about her crowd in as well. Vanora Lasry – I can hardly believe it. And what about Lothar? Your son, your little boy. Again, emotions wax and wane. One second he seems unreal, a product of my imagination, a fantasy – and then, the next, I find myself thinking of this little boy, this baby, living in a suburb of Salzburg with Udo Hoff’s aunt. Does Hettie care? Why wouldn’t she tell her new husband that he has a stepson? I bought Lasry’s book of poems, Crépuscules. Modern nonsense in the main. Free verse is both seductive and dangerous, I can see – it can be a licence to be pretentious and obscure. Lasry often abuses it, in my opinion. I take more care.
SEVENTH CAPRICE IN PIMLICO
The dawn created itself
And turned to see what had been lit.
Rubbish, litter, broken glass and a bit
Of green England, unsmirched, a glance
At something beautiful. Behold the dance:
The girls advance,
The boys decline.
Emerging from the Piccadilly Line
I find the tropic odours of Leicester Square
Beguile and mesmerize.
I roam the streets at midnight. The glare
Of gaslights an artificial sunrise.
‘Les colombes de ma cousine
Pleurent comme un enfant.’
I asked Tremlett to do me a favour and to look up the casualty lists of the Manchester Fusiliers – to check whether a Lt. Gorlice-Law or a Sergeant Foley appeared. He came back with the news that Lt. Gorlice-Law had died of wounds on June 27th and a Sgt. Foley was in a hospital in Stoke Newington. ‘He must be blind, sir,’ Tremlett said, pointing to his patch. ‘That’s where they took my peeper out.’ So Gorlice-Law died the day after our raid into no man’s land . . . I feel I have to try and see Foley and find out exactly what happened that night after I crawled away and left them. Feelings of guilt inexorably creep over me. Was it my fault? No, you fool. You were ordered to bomb that sap to create a diversion. After that the gods of war and luck took over and you were as much subject to their fatal whim as any of the thousands of soldiers facing each other on both sides of the line.
6. Unlikely Suspects
Lysander interviewed the officers of the Directorate over the next three days in the cramped and antiseptic quarters of Room 205. All were conducted in the same tone of apologetic tedium and polite routine – he wanted to make no one remotely suspicious or alarmed. He asked for their understanding – he knew he was wasting precious time – and strove to be as amiable as possible, but the men he saw were uniformly wary and resentful – sometimes even contemptuous. Osborne-Way had obviously been at work preparing the ground.
He ended up with a list of six key names, including the Director, Osborne-Way, himself. All these men were capable, theoretically, of reproducing the specific type of information contained in the Glockner letters. Four of them were responsible for ‘Movement and control of war material and stores to France’. One dealt with control of ports, one with railway material – ‘tanks, road metal, timber, slag and coal’. One was a rare civilian in the Directorate who was solely concerned with the compilation of shipping statistics – so every fact ended at his desk. Apart from Osborne-Way (an unlikely suspect, though Lysander refused to rule him out – unlikely suspects were more suspect in his opinion) the two men who most interested him were a Major Mansfield Keogh (Royal Irish Regiment) who was the Assistant Director of Movements – Osborne-Way’s number two – and a Captain Christian Vandenbrook (King’s Royal Rifle Corps) who supervised the ‘despatch to France of ammunition, ordnance, supplies and Royal Engineers’ stores’.
In principle the Directorate of Movements retained no more responsibility once stores were landed at Le Havre, Rouen or Calais; at that moment the Quartermaster General’s department at headquarters in St Omer took over. However, in practice, there were always problems – trains went missing, ammunition found itself in the wrong depots, ships were sunk in the Channel. Significantly, Lysander thought, both Keogh and Vandenbrook had been to France independently on three occasions in 1915 (Osborne-Way had been twice) to liaise with the Director of Railway Transport and his staff and to supervise the construction of marshalling yards and sidings behind the lines. There was ideal opportunity to discover everything the Glockner letters contained.
Keogh was a quiet, earnest, efficient man who seemed consumed by some private sadness. He was civil and prompt with his answers but Lysander felt he regarded him as a mere nothing – a buzzing fly, a crumpled piece of paper, a leaf on the pavement. Keogh looked at him with empty eyes. By contrast, Vandenbrook was the most open and charming of his interviewees. He was a small, lithe, handsome man with perfect, even features and a fair moustache with the ends dashingly turned up. His teeth – he smiled regularly – were almost unnaturally white, Lysander thought. Vandenbrook was the only person he talked to who asked him about himself and who seemed happy to acknowledge that he’d seen him on stage before the war. Lysander knew his past life was common knowledge in the Directorate – he had overheard Osborne-Way refer to him as the ‘bloody actor-chappie’ more than once – but only Vandenbrook made overt and unconcerned reference to his stage career and Lysander liked him for it.
The War Diary of the Directorate had revealed the facts about Keogh’s and Vandenbrook’s trips to France. Tremlett supplied him with the ledger that detailed all the departmental ‘travelling claims by land’. Keogh had responsibility for the port of Dover; Vandenbrook for Folkestone. Both men visited the ports every few days, where the Directorate kept branch offices, and their expenses – train tickets, hotels, taxis, porters, meals and refreshments – were docketed, copied and filed. Lysander decided to investigate Keogh first, then Vandenbrook, then Osborne-Way. Save the biggest beast for last.
Lysander saw Keogh come out of the Annexe and walk through to Charing Cross. He followed at a safe distance though he thought it unlikely he’d be recognized. He was wearing a false moustache, a bowler hat and was carrying a briefcase. He had chosen an old dark suit and made it short in the arms to expose the frayed cardboard cuffs of his shirt, looking, he hoped, like one of the thousands of clerical workers who spilled out of the great ministries of state in Whitehall at the end of the working day and began their routine journey homewards by the various means of public transport – omnibus, tram, and Underground and Tube railway. He followed Keogh on to the Underground at Charing Cross and sat at the far end of the compartment from him as they rattled along the District Line and over the Thames to East Putney. He watched Keogh plod up Upper Richmond Road and then turn off into a street of semi-detached brick villas. Keogh went into number 26. From inside the house Lysander could hear the faint barking of a dog, quickly silenced. He saw that the blinds of every window were drawn down. It was still light – perhaps he was one of the few London households that observed a proper blackout against the Zeppelin raids, but there seemed little point in that if your neighbours were lax. A death in the family? . . .
He spotted a woman pushing a pram up t
he pavement on the other side of the road and so crossed and came up behind her. Putting on a slight cockney accent he asked if she knew which house Mr and Mrs Keogh lived in.
‘I been knockin’ on the wrong door, missus, it seems.’
‘You want number 26, dear,’ she said. ‘But don’t go asking for Mrs Keogh, though.’
‘Why’s that, then?’
‘Because she died two months ago. Diphtheria. Very sad, terrible shame. Lovely young woman. Beautiful.’
Lysander thanked her and walked away. So, a recent widower – that explained the vacant, indifferent stare. Did that rule him out? Or did the meaningless death of a beautiful young wife provoke feelings of nihilism and rage against the world? He would have to find out more about Major Keogh. In the meantime he would turn his attention to Captain Christian Vandenbrook.
Vandenbrook was rich enough to take a taxi home from work. Lysander sat in the back of a cab at the end of the afternoon outside the Annexe, watched Vandenbrook flag down a passing taxi and followed it to his club in St James’s. Two hours later he emerged, hailed another cab and was driven home to Knightsbridge to a large white stucco house in an elegant sweep of terrace off the Brompton Road. Vandenbrook was doing very well for a captain in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.
Lysander dismissed his taxi and walked up and down the smart crescent of large houses. Through a window he caught a glimpse of Vandenbrook accepting a cut-crystal tumbler from a silver tray held by a butler. Staff, as well. Twenty minutes later another taxi pulled up and a couple – dressed for dinner – descended and rang the doorbell. Lysander returned to his small hotel in Pimlico, conscious that someone with Vandenbrook’s manifest privileges had no real need to turn traitor. Osborne-Way was next.
At the hotel he found he had a postcard, sent from St Austell, Cornwall. It read, ‘Arriving Friday evening. Have booked room at White Palace, Pimlico. Vanora.’
Tremlett fetched him the ledger of ‘Travelling claims by land’ and stood there waiting for further instructions as Lysander flicked through the pages.
‘Colonel Osborne-Way hasn’t filed any expenses claims.’
‘No, sir. He sends his direct to the War Office. He was on the General Staff – seconded here, like.’
‘Seems odd. Can we get them?’
Tremlett sucked his teeth.
‘We can try but it might take a while. We may need you to go yourself with your magic letter.’
‘Thanks, Tremlett, that’ll be all for the moment.’
He looked through Keogh’s claims and noted the dates he’d been to Dover over the past months; then he turned to Vandenbrook and collated their respective journeys – some days they tallied, some days they didn’t. However, he noticed that Vandenbrook very rarely stayed in Folkestone – his accommodation claims were for hotels in Deal, Hastings, Sandwich, Hythe and once in Rye. Probably keen to get some golf in, Lysander thought, leafing through the dockets, or else wanted to be away from the Directorate organization – sensible man.
There was a knock on his door. Lysander put the bottle of champagne back in the ice-bucket and crossed the room, trying to stay calm, and opened the door. Hettie stood there, smiling, as if this encounter were the most natural and normal in the world.
‘What a funny little hotel you chose,’ she said, stepping in. ‘My room’s minute.’ Lysander closed the door behind her, feeling as if his chest were stuffed with hot, rough wool – an ill, constrained breathlessness stopping him speaking. He sensed a weakness flow through him, as though his knees might buckle and he’d fall to the floor.
‘Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?’ Hettie said, unpinning her hat and throwing it on to a chair. ‘Let’s take our clothes off now – then we can drink our champagne.’
‘Hettie, for heaven’s sake –’
‘Come on, Lysander. Race you.’
They kissed. He felt his lips on hers and then her tongue in his mouth. They undressed and Lysander opened the champagne and poured it. He noticed Hettie had kept her hosiery on and her high-heeled shoes and her jewellery. Jet beads at the neck, a cluster of ivory bracelets.
‘Why are we doing this?’ he asked, faintly. ‘This way.’
‘Because I know you, Lysander. Remember?’ she said, almost scoldingly. ‘Because I know what you like.’ She strode around the room, unselfconsciously, checked that the curtains were properly drawn. ‘It’s exciting, isn’t it? To be naked in a hotel room in Pimlico drinking champagne . . .’ She glanced down at him. ‘My – you seem to agree.’
She came over to him and he touched her breasts and drew her close. Again, oddly, he felt like weeping – as if some form of destiny were being fulfilled, here in this unassuming room; that he was here with Hettie in his arms, once more. This was the problem with her, he acknowledged – or, rather, this was his problem with Hettie – it was like being with no other woman. He had never felt this need, this strongly, with anyone else.
She kissed his chest and he put his arms around her. She hugged her small body against his.
She raised her face and whispered, ‘I’ve missed you.’ Then she took him in her hand and led him compliantly to the bed.
7. The Dene Hotel, Hythe
The Directorate of Movements had opened and maintained branch offices in Dover and Folkestone since the end of 1914, the easier to supervise the loading and despatch of the millions of tons of stores that were sent out to France each week. They were staffed mainly with former port authority officials and clerical workers but, every few days, Keogh and Vandenbrook would make a routine journey to oversee the office work or, more likely, sort out problems.
Looking through the departmental memoranda on Monday Lysander saw that two cargo vessels had collided in the Channel, one of them sinking with the loss of ‘600 black labour drowned (approx.)’. Osborne-Way had added a note in the margin in his small crabbed schoolboy’s hand, ‘Attn. Capt. VdenB.’ Lysander asked Tremlett where Vandenbrook was and he came back with the information that he had not come into the Annexe that morning but had gone straight to Folkestone to ‘sort out the steaming mess’.
Lysander told Tremlett to have a railway pass made out for him and he caught a train to the coast from Victoria before noon. At Folkestone he negotiated with a taxi-driver who grudgingly agreed to stay with him until midnight for £5 cash. Lysander thought of the soldiers in the trenches earning their eighteen pennies a day for their unique version of the diurnal grind. Still, the mobility might be essential – he had a feeling Vandenbrook wouldn’t be spending the night in Folkestone.
He had the taxi park a little way up the street from the Directorate offices in Marine Parade and settled down to wait. It turned out to be a long one, Vandenbrook not emerging until seven o’clock that evening. A motor car drew up and he climbed in. They headed out of town, going west along the main coast road towards Hythe. Vandenbrook was dropped off at the front door of the Dene Hotel – a neat brick and hung-tile, two-storey building with a garage at the rear and a modern extension, just off the high street on the lower slopes of the hill that led up to Hythe’s principal church, St Leonards. The car drove away, returning to Folkestone. After five minutes, Lysander followed him in.
The reception lobby was a low, beamed area with doors off to a saloon bar and a dining room and a fine curved oak staircase that led to the bedrooms on the first floor. Far more comfortable than the Commercial Hotel, Folkestone, he was sure, and where Directorate staff usually stayed, so Tremlett had informed him. Lysander saw fresh flowers in a bowl on the reception desk and read the posted menu outside the dining room where he noted a simple but classic choice of English dishes – a roast, a saddle of lamb, devilled kidneys, Dover sole. He felt suddenly hungry – no wonder Vandenbrook preferred to find his own lodgings.
He went into the bar and chose a seat where he had a view of the lobby through the glass-paned door. He ordered a whisky and soda and thought he’d wait until Vandenbrook came down for dinner and surprise him. They would have a laugh abou
t it and at least he’d eat a decent meal before he caught the last train back to London.
He sipped his whisky and lit a cigarette, his mind turning inevitably towards Hettie and the night they’d spent together. She could only stay until morning, she had said, as she had to meet Lasry in Brighton, where they were going to look for somewhere to live – Cornwall was beginning to pall, so far away, and Bonham Johnson was urging them to be closer to London. She promised Lysander that she would come back to London for several days as soon as she could think up an excuse that would appease her suspicious husband. Lysander thought he might rent a small service apartment in a mansion block somewhere central where they could safely spend time together – he was growing tired of hotel life, anyway, and god knew how long he’d be stuck in the Directorate of Movements, searching for Andromeda. He wasn’t anticipating his investigation of Osborne-Way with any great pleasure. He’d have to be exceptionally cautious, take real pains not to be –