by William Boyd
‘Here? He never mentioned it to me.’
‘Why would he? I never mentioned you to him. I assume he hasn’t the faintest idea that you’re my son. That the man with the evidence to hang him is my son,’ she added, a little bitterly. ‘Or even that I have a son. For heaven’s sake – all we talked about was the Fund.’
Lysander supposed that if you are an attractive woman in your very early fifties you don’t advertise the fact that you have a son who is almost thirty. And it was true – nothing in Vandenbrook’s demeanour, no sly implication or hint, had ever given away that he knew his mother was Lady Faulkner.
‘Do you think I might have a drink?’ he asked.
‘Excellent idea,’ she said and rang the bell for the footman who duly brought them a tray with two glasses, a bottle of brandy and a soda siphon. Lysander made their drinks and gave his mother hers. He took big gulps of his. Despite all the denials and the plausible explanations he had a very bad feeling about this connection with Vandenbrook. It was not a coincidence, he knew – there would be consequences. Fucking consequences, again.
‘May I smoke?’
‘I’ll join you,’ she said. Lysander took out his cigarette case, lighting his mother’s cigarette and then his own.
‘Why are you spying on Vandenbrook?’ she asked. ‘I mean, why you in particular.’ She stubbed her cigarette out – she was never much of a smoker. ‘You’re a soldier, aren’t you?’
‘I’m attached to this department in the War Office. We’re trying to find this traitor. He’s causing terrible damage.’
‘Well, you’ve found him, haven’t you?’
‘Vandenbrook is only handing over information because he’s being blackmailed, it seems. So he claims.’
‘Blackmailed for what?’
‘It’s very . . . unpleasant. Very shaming.’ Lysander wondered how much to tell her. ‘He’d be ruined, totally, if it ever came out what he’d done – marriage, career, family. He’d go to prison.’
‘Goodness.’ He saw that the vagueness of his reply was more disturbing than anything explicit. She looked at him again. ‘So who’s blackmailing him?’
‘That’s the problem – it looks very much as if you are.’
12. Autobiographical Investigations
Perhaps I spoke too unthinkingly, too bluntly. She seemed very shaken all of a sudden – not incredulous, any more – as if the shocking but irrefutable logic of the set-up had struck her just as it had struck me. I made her another brandy and soda and told her to go over everything again for me, once more. It started with the first meeting with Vandenbrook at the War Office in September 1914 and subsequent regular contact followed as the Claverleigh Hall War Fund began to generate significant amounts of money. He first came to Claverleigh in early 1915 shortly after his transfer to the Directorate of Movements.
‘Why didn’t he pass on the War Fund to someone else? The work in the Directorate is frantic.’
‘He asked if he could stay on board if he could,’ she said. ‘He was very impressed by what we were doing, he said, and very concerned that any hand-over to someone else would be detrimental. So I agreed without hesitation. I was very happy – we got on very well – he was extremely efficient. In fact I think I even suggested we meet when he came to Folkestone on business – just to make it easier for him. The first hotel I stayed in was at Sandwich. I offered to motor over.’
‘Did you meet him in London?’
‘Yes. Half a dozen times – when I went up to town.’ She paused. ‘I won’t deny I enjoyed our meetings . . . Crickmay wasn’t well and for me these nights away were, you know, a little escape. Of course, he’s an attractive, amusing man, Captain Vandenbrook. And I think we both enjoyed the . . . The mild flirtation. The mildest. But nothing happened. Never. Not even after Crickmay died.’
‘I completely understand,’ I said. ‘I believe you. I’m just trying to see things from his point of view.’
‘It’s because I’m Austrian, of course,’ she said, flatly, almost sullenly. ‘I’ve just realized – that’s the key. That’s why they’ll suspect me. Instantly.’ He felt the depression seize her, almost physically, as her shoulders seemed to bow. ‘When they connect me with him . . . The Austrian woman.’
‘I’m half Austrian too, remember,’ I said, worriedly. ‘Everything’s too neat, too pat . . .’
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘Nothing yet – I have to dig a little more.’
‘What about me?’
‘Carry on as if nothing has happened.’
She stood up, new anxiety written on her face. She seemed as troubled as I’d ever seen her.
‘Have you told anyone about Vandenbrook and what you discovered?’
‘No. Not yet. I don’t want the rest of them blundering in. I have to be very careful what I say.’
She went over to the window again – it was now quite dark and I could hear the nail-tap of steady rain on the glass.
‘You’re making things worse for yourself by not telling anyone,’ she said, quietly and steadily. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘It’s complicated. Very. I don’t want you involved in this mess,’ I said. ‘That’s why I need a bit more time.’
She turned and held out her arms as if she wanted to be embraced so I went to her and she hugged herself to me.
‘I won’t let you be dragged down by this,’ she said softly. ‘I won’t.’
‘Mother – please – don’t be so dramatic. Nobody’s going to be “dragged down”. You’ve done nothing – so don’t even think about it. Whoever’s blackmailing Vandenbrook has been very clever. Very. But I’ll find a way, don’t worry. He can be outsmarted.’
‘I hope so.’ She squeezed my shoulders. I enjoyed having her in my arms. We hadn’t held each other like this since my father had died. I kissed her forehead.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll get him.’
I hoped I sounded confident because I wasn’t, particularly. I knew that as soon as I told the Vandenbrook story to Munro and Massinger then everything would emerge rapidly and damagingly – the Fund, the meetings, the hotels, the dinners. To my alarm, as I began to think through this sequence of events, I thought I could see a way in which even I could be implicated. Which reminded me.
‘I’d better go,’ I said, releasing her. ‘I just need one thing. You remember I gave you that libretto, the one with the illustration on the cover of the girl. Andromeda und Perseus.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, with something of her old wry cynicism returning. ‘How could I forget? The mother of my grandchild with no clothes on.’ She moved to the door. ‘It’s in my office.’ She paused. ‘What’s the news of the little boy?’
‘Lothar? He’s well, so I’m told – living with a family in Salzburg.’
‘Lothar in Salzburg . . . What about his mother?’
‘I believe she’s back in England,’ I said evasively.
She gave me a knowing look and went to fetch the libretto. I glanced at my wristwatch – I was still in good time to catch the last train to London from Lewes. But when my mother came back in I could see at once she was unusually flustered.
‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s the strangest thing. Your libretto – it’s missing.’
Sitting in the Lewes–London train. Brain-race, thought-surge. Her office is a study on the top floor where she does her charity administration. Two desks for secretaries, a couple of white wooden bookshelves with a few books and a mass of files slid into them. She said she was convinced this was where she’d put the libretto. We searched – nothing. Books go missing, I said, it wasn’t important. It was a book I gave to her almost eighteen months ago, after all. Anything could have happened to it.
As I write this, a man sitting opposite me is reading a novel and, from time to time, picking his nose, examining what he has mined from his nasal cavities and popping the sweetmeat into his mouth. Amazing the secrets we reveal about ourselves when we
think we’re not being observed. Amazing the secrets we can reveal when we know we are.
Back in my room at The White Palace I find a small bundle of post is awaiting me. One envelope contains a list from a letting agency of four furnished mansion flats, available for short lease, in the Strand and Charing Cross area. I’m excited by the prospect of having my own place, again – and of Hettie being able to stay with me there, incognito and unembarrassed. Another telegram, to my surprise, is from Massinger. He suggests a rendezvous in a Mayfair tearoom at four o’clock tomorrow. The Skeffington Tearooms in Mount Street.
Later. I’ve spent the last hour drinking whisky from my hip-flask and writing down lists of names in various configurations and placements, joining them with dotted lines and double-headed arrows, placing some in parentheses and underlining others three times. At the end of this fruitless exercise I still find myself wondering why Massinger could possibly want to talk to me.
13. 3/12 Trevelyan House, Surrey Street
Lysander chose the second of the four furnished flats he was shown by the breathless, corpulent man from the letting agency. It was on the third floor of a mansion block in Surrey Street, off the Strand, called Trevelyan House: one bedroom, a small sitting room, a modern bathroom and a kitchen – though the kitchen was no more than a cupboard with a sink and an electric two-ring heater and a bleak view of the white ceramic bricks of the central air-well. In truth, any of the flats would have served his rudimentary purpose perfectly well but there was something newer about the curtains, the carpets and the furniture in number 3/12 that was immediately appealing – no greasy edge to the drapery, no flattened worn patch before the fire or cigarette burns on the mantelpiece. All he needed now, he felt, was something bright and primary coloured – a painting, a couple of new lampshades, cushions for the sofa – to make it more personal, to make it his rather than everybody’s.
He signed the lease, paid a month’s deposit and was given two sets of keys. He had his linen and his household goods from Chandos Place in store and would hire a porter to bring them around to Trevelyan House right away. He could walk to the Annexe from here in under ten minutes, he reckoned – another unlooked-for bonus in his and Hettie’s ‘love nest’. He felt the old excitement mount in him at the prospect of seeing her again – at the prospect of being naked in a bed with her again – and noted how the promise of unlimited sensual pleasure blotted out all rational, cautious advice that he might equally have given himself. Hettie – Vanora – was a married woman, now; moreover, her new husband was a jealous and angry man. Hoff and Lasry: two men with fiery, irrational tempers, quick to take the slightest offence – what drew Hettie to these types? Also, the current complications of Lysander’s own life should have dictated against the introduction of new circumstances that would add to them. ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,’ he said to himself, as if that old adage took care of all sensible matters. He had a new home and, perhaps more importantly, only he knew its address.
The Skeffington Tearooms in Mount Street were unabashed about their striving for gentility, Lysander saw as he approached. Elaborately worked lace curtains screened the tea-drinkers from the curious gaze of passers-by; the name of the establishment was written in black glass in a very flourished white copperplate, tightly coiled curlicues ending in gilt flowerlets or four-leafed clovers. A serving maid in a tiny bonnet and a long white pinny was sweeping the pavement outside. It didn’t seem a Massinger type of place at all.
Inside was a single large long room lit by crystal chandeliers and lined on three walls by semi-circular maroon velour Chesterfield booths. Two rows of highly polished tables with neat doilies and a centrally placed flower arrangement filled the rest of the area. The hushed tinkle of silverware on crockery and a low murmur of discreet conversation greeted him. It was like entering a library, Lysander felt, with a library’s implicit prohibitions against unnecessary noise – quiet footsteps, please, coughs and sneezes to be muffled, no laughter at all.
An unsmiling woman with a pince-nez checked that Massinger’s name had been entered in the ledger and a summoned waitress led him across the room to a booth in the far corner. Massinger sat there, smoking, wearing a morning suit, of all things, and reading a newspaper. He looked up to see Lysander and did not smile, merely holding up the newspaper and pointing to a headline. ‘English County Cricket to be abandoned in 1916.’
‘Terrible business, what?’ Massinger said. ‘Where does that leave us? Shocking.’
Lysander agreed, sat down and ordered a pot of coffee – he didn’t feel like tea; tea was not a drink to share with someone like Massinger.
‘What do you want to see me about?’ he asked as Massinger crushed his cigarette dead – with conspicuous force – in the ashtray, smoke snorting from his nostrils.
‘I don’t want to see you, Rief,’ he said, looking up. He gestured. ‘She does.’
Florence Duchesne stepped up to the table, as if she had suddenly materialized.
Lysander felt a lurch of instinctive alarm judder through him and had the immediate conviction that she was about to pull a revolver from her handbag and shoot him again. He stared at her – it was Florence Duchesne but a different woman from the one he’d last seen on the steamer on Lac Léman. The black weeds and the veil were gone. She had powder and lip rouge on her face and was wearing a magenta ‘town suit’ with a cut-away jacket and a hobble skirt and a little fichu at the neck of her silk blouse. She had a velvet Tam o’ Shanter set on a slant on her head in a darker purple than the suit. It was as if Madame Duchesne’s fashionable twin sister had walked in, not the melancholy widow who lived with the postmaster of Geneva.
She slipped into the booth beside him and, despite himself, Lysander flinched.
‘I had to see you, Monsieur Rief,’ she said in French, ‘to explain and, of course, to apologize.’
Lysander looked at her, then Massinger, then back at her again, quite disorientated, unable to think what he could possibly say. Massinger stood up at this juncture and distracted them.
‘I’ll leave you two to talk. I’ll see you later, Madame. Goodbye, Rief.’
Lysander watched him stride across the room to collect his top hat – he looked like a superior shop assistant, he thought. He turned back to Florence Duchesne.
‘This is very, very strange for me,’ he said, slowly. ‘To be sitting here with someone who’s shot me three times. Very strange . . . You were trying to kill me, I suppose.’
‘Oh, yes. But you must understand that I was convinced you were working with Glockner. I was convinced you had killed Glockner also. And when you lied to me about the cipher-text – it seemed the final clue. And Massinger had ordered me not to take any risks – said you were possibly a traitor, even. Was I meant to let you step ashore at Evian and vanish? No. Especially with all the suspicions I had – it was my duty.’
‘No, no. You were absolutely in the right.’ The irony in his voice made it unusually harsh, like Massinger’s throaty rasp. He recalled Massinger’s schoolboy French blunder. She bowed her head.
‘And yet . . .’ She left the rest unspoken.
‘I wonder if they serve alcohol in a place like this?’ he asked, rhetorically. ‘Probably not, far too plebeian. I need a powerful drink, Madame. I’m sure you understand.’
‘We can go to a hotel, if you like. I do want to talk to you about something important.’
They paid and left. At the door to the tearoom she collected a dyed black musquash coat with a single button at the hip. Lysander held it open for her as she slipped her arms into the sleeves and smelled the strong pungent scent she wore. He thought back to their supper on the terrace of the Brasserie des Bastions in Geneva and how he’d noticed it then – thinking it an anomaly – but now he realized it was a trace of the real woman. A little clue. He glanced at her as they walked along the road in silence, heading for the Connaught Hotel.
They found a seat in the public lounge and Lysander ordered a large whisky and soda for
himself and a Dubonnet for her. The drink calmed him and he felt his jumpiness subside. It was always amazing how one so quickly accustomed oneself to the strangest circumstances, he thought – here I am having a drink with a woman who tried to assassinate me. He looked across the table at her and registered his absence of anger, of outrage. All he saw was a very attractive woman in fashionable clothes.
‘What’re you doing in London?’ he asked.
‘Massinger has brought me out of Geneva. It was becoming too dangerous for me.’
She explained. Her contact in the German consulate – ‘the man with the embarrassing letters’ – had been arrested and deported to Germany. It would only be a matter of time before he gave her name up. ‘So Massinger pulled me out, very fast.’
‘I assume you’re not a widow.’
‘No. But it’s a most effective disguise, I assure you. I’ve not been married, in fact.’
‘What about your brother?’
‘Yes, he’s really my brother – and he’s the postmaster in Geneva.’ She smiled at him. ‘Not everything is a lie.’
The smile disarmed him and he found himself unreflectingly taking in her looks – her strong curved nose, her clear blue eyes, the shadowed hollow at her throat between her collar-bones. He could forgive her, he supposed. In fact it was very easy – how absurd.
‘How are you?’ she asked. ‘I mean, after the shooting.’
‘I have seven scars to remember you by,’ he said, showing her the stigma in his left palm. ‘And my leg stiffens up sometimes,’ he tapped his left thigh. ‘But otherwise I’m pretty well. Amazingly.’
‘Lucky I’m a bad shot,’ she said, smiling ruefully. ‘I can only say sorry, again. Imagine that I’m saying sorry to you all the time. Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
Lysander shrugged. ‘It’s over. I’m alive. You’re here in London.’ He raised his glass. ‘I’m not being facetious – despite everything, I’m very pleased to see you.’