The Quest

by Christopher Nicole

  “Yes.”

  The labrador, having arrived on the verandah, began to shake vigorously; he had been in the sea and deposited water as well as sand.

  “Felix! Stop that,” Martina commanded.

  “What a splendid chap,” Berkeley remarked.

  “He is our sentry,” Savos said.

  “Do you need one?”

  “Ah!” Savos led the way inside. “You’ll take a drink? Schnaps? Just like in the old days? Martina, schnaps.”

  The woman obediently went to the little bar and poured.

  “Sentries,” Savos mused, gesturing Berkeley to a chair. “Oh, yes, everyone needs sentries.”

  “Do you think you are being hunted?”

  Savos gave a brief laugh. “By my wife.”

  Berkeley glanced at Martina, who was returning with a laden tray. She had been in earshot all the time, but did not look the least discomfited.

  “Oh, she knows she is not really my wife,” Savos said. “But we have a marriage certificate and she is wearing a ring. That was necessary, you understand, for the English authorities.”

  “And your real wife?”

  “Well, when we left, she was living in Belgrade. She had no idea we were leaving of course. We just slipped away and left the country.”

  Leopards, Berkeley reflected, never do change their spots.

  “So you think she may be looking for you?”

  “I am sure of it. I was retired, of course, only a few weeks, but it will not have taken her long to find out that Martina left with me.”

  “But this was presumably more than a year ago.”

  “An injured woman never gives up,” Savos pointed out.

  “I assume you made some provision for her?”

  “Why should I do that? Let her family care for her. They always made my life a misery anyway. I drink to your health.” He raised his glass, as did Martina.

  Berkeley drank also. He needed it.

  “Now let us talk about you,” Savos said. “About your daughter. Did you find her?”

  “No,” Berkeley said.

  “But that is very bad. Did you find the kidnappers? That man Antonov?”

  “I found Antonov.”

  “Ah,” Savos said. “And anybody else who was involved?”

  “I avenged my daughter, Alexandros. But that did not help me find her.”

  “I know. It is damnable. Listen, if I can ever help you, you know you have but to call on me.”

  Berkeley gave one of his savage grins. “It may mean breaking your agreement with the British Government.”

  “For you, I would risk even that. But I think, if you need me, it will not be in England, eh?”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then I will not be breaking my agreement. Together, my old friend, you and I can take on the world.”

  That was actually a reassuring thought. He had the makings of a private, if elderly, army: Savos, Lockwood and himself.

  But who were they going to fight?

  Meanwhile, he had to come to grips with retirement. With his severance grant and the proceeds of the sale of the Sabac house carefully invested, and his quite adequate pension, he was comfortably off if by no means wealthy. But there was absolutely nothing to do, except contemplate international affairs in which he had for so long played so important, if anonymous, a role.

  Long walks, and a private composition of his memoirs – quite unpublishable if he was not going to risk prison for betraying state secrets – and a look forward to the Christmas holidays, when the children would be home.

  Meanwhile . . .

  “You know that Julia has remarried?” his mother asked.

  “I know she was toying with the idea.”

  “Some fellow named Hudson. In the FO, just as Braddock was.”

  Berkeley nodded. “She told me about him, too. So she’s back in London, is she?”

  “As a matter of fact, she isn’t.”

  “She’s not here?” he asked in some alarm.

  “No, no. She’s in Berlin.”

  “Come again?”

  “Her husband has been appointed under-secretary or something at the embassy there.”

  “And the best of British luck,” Berkeley said.

  At least she was several hundred miles away. But in fact, before the children returned from school, there was some distinctly interesting news from Germany, if not from Berlin. For Hitler had attempted his coup in Munich, with the assistance of no less a personage than General Ludendorff, the second most famous German general – after Hindenburg himself – of the Great War.

  The Nazis, with the general to the fore, had solemnly marched on the town hall – obviously apeing Mussolini’s march on Rome the previous year – intending to take over the Bavarian Government. They had been met by armed police, who had opened fire, and there had been several casualties. No German policeman was going to shoot at General Ludendorff, but the Nazis were not so popular. Amongst the wounded, Berkeley saw, was his old friend Hermann Goering. While Hitler, if not apparently seriously hurt, had been arrested and was to be tried for sedition.

  So much for the little man’s grandiose dreams, Berkeley thought.

  He studied the list of those hurt or those arrested, looking for Lipschuetz, but Frederika was not there. She had had the sense to keep clear.

  In the New Year came the news that Hitler had been sentenced to five years in prison. So maybe the German judges were not so right-wing after all.

  It was in the New Year that Berkeley decided to drop his advertising campaign. It had been running a year with absolutely no result, and was a drain on his limited finances. Anna was either dead, or she had vanished into a nether world which he could not penetrate. As he had told his children, it was better for all of them that she should be forgotten, in so far as it was possible.

  “I think you should marry,” his mother said.

  “Why?”

  “Well . . .” she flushed. “Don’t you feel the need, well . . .”

  “I’m all off sex.”

  She blew her nose; she had always wished he wouldn’t be so blunt, using in conversation words she would never normally have permitted in her drawing room.

  “What about the children? They need a mother.”

  “They regard you as their mother.”

  “I am very flattered. But Berkeley, I am going to be seventy next month. I will not always be here. What happens then?”

  “Hm,” he commented. “I assume you have a bride in mind?”

  “Well . . . what about the Horsfall girl? She’s pretty, well-educated . . . and has some cash behind her, I believe.”

  “My dear Mother, the Horsfall girl is twenty-two.”

  “Well?”

  “I am forty-five.”

  “Lots of men marry women half their ages.”

  She was perfectly serious. And having considered the matter, Berkeley realised that it would be very pleasant to have a woman on a permanent basis. He had never actually enjoyed that before. His marriage to Caterina had been bedevilled from start to finish by the fact that she and her mother were committed terrorists who had no intention of changing their ways, and by the fact that he was committed – by the British Government – to going along with them. But now that he was retired . . . suppose he talked in his sleep? He never had, so far as he knew, but there was always a first time. In any event, the girl would want to know about his past life. Well, he had been a soldier who had undertaken certain secret missions for the British Government. That should satisfy her.

  But what of the girl herself, vis-à-vis himself? And would a twenty-two-year-old really wish to take on two half-grown children, who had backgrounds so very different to her own?

  The whole concept was absurd, if intriguing, and he reminded himself that a certain reconnoitering might be amusing while committing him to nothing. Over the Christmas holidays he wrote her a letter – she lived with her family in Northampton itself – inviting her to accompany him to
the New Year’s Eve Ball at the town hall.

  To his utter surprise, she accepted.

  The Assassin

  One of the first things Berkeley had done on retiring had been to take driving lessons to fill the one gap in his expertise. Then he had bought himself a small car, like his father’s, and thus was able to pick up Lucy Horsfall himself. He had of course met her on several previous occasions, at things like church fêtes and the odd party, and remembered her as a tall, slender young woman, with good features and a wealth of curly dark hair. Now he realised that in an evening gown she was extremely attractive.

  “Berkeley Townsend,” her father said, offering him a scotch and soda. “I’m told you’ve left the Army.”

  Disconcertingly, he was only a year older than Berkeley himself.

  “Didn’t seem much point in staying,” Berkeley said. “No more wars, eh?”

  He said goodnight to the elder Horsfalls, and ushered Lucy out to the car.

  “Are you required to be home by a certain hour?” he asked as he cranked the engine and got in beside her.

  “My dear Colonel Townsend, I am twenty-two years old, and it’s New Year’s Eve. I suppose my parents would start to worry if I were not in bed by dawn, or soon after.”

  “I apologise. That wasn’t a very bright beginning, was it?”

  “You’re old-fashioned,” she said. And added, “I like old-fashioned men.”

  The evening having been retrieved, it turned out to be one of the best of Berkeley’s life. By their third dance he had her calling him Berkeley, and she was not averse to several glasses of champagne. The only remaining jarring note was that she seemed to know almost everyone there, and he knew almost no one.

  “You should get out more,” she told him.

  “Then I shall. Do you ride?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. We have always been town people.”

  Her father was a solicitor.

  “Well, then, do you walk?”

  “I’m very fond of walking.”

  “Then we’ll walk.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Confining yourself to walking with me isn’t going to enlarge your circle.”

  “I don’t want to enlarge my circle,” he told her. “I just want to include you in it.”

  She digested this, and then said, with some relief, “The music’s starting.”

  He was hurrying too fast, living in the past. He could never forget that Caterina and himself had needed but an hour in each other’s company to know they were going to sleep together, which in her society meant they were also going to marry – but he had never been absolutely sure whether she had fallen into his arms because she had found him as attractive as he had found her, or whether she had been acting on instructions from her mother. In any event, that was seventeen years ago, which meant that he was seventeen years older. When he had first held Caterina in his arms this girl had been five. There was a daunting thought.

  And this was an entirely different society.

  Yet he was finding the prospect of perhaps holding this girl naked in his arms increasingly exciting.

  By four in the morning, after all the enthusiasm of seeing in the new year, Berkeley was exhausted. Dancing was not a sport he regularly practised, and he felt as if he had been involved in one of his more enervating adventures.

  As Lucy could see. “You look all in,” she remarked.

  “Senile decay.”

  She grinned. “That fellow over there wants to dance with me.”

  “Go right ahead,” Berkeley said.

  He watched them spin into a waltz, Lucy’s skirt held high in her right hand. She grew more attractive by the moment.

  “Would you like to call it a day?” she asked when her partner had returned her.

  “Bit early, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, we don’t have to go home. But if you’re really all done dancing . . .”

  “You must think I’m awfully wet.”

  “Not at all. I’d like to talk with you. Without the music and the other people.”

  He was being incredibly fortunate, although he reminded himself that she had had rather a lot of champagne – and also that this was England, not Serbia. She was not to be touched without a very definite invitation.

  “Where would you like to go?” he asked, when they had got into the car.

  “I know just the place,” she said. “I’ll direct you.”

  He drove as she told him to, and eventually came to a lane, off which there was another lane, which led them to a gate set in a stile.

  “This is as far as we can go,” she said.

  “Snug.”

  With the motor switched off, they immediately became aware of how cold it was. Lucy hugged her fox-fur coat tightly about her, and Berkeley turned up the collar of his topcoat.

  “I’m jolly glad this car has a roof,” she remarked. “So many young men nowadays seem to find it necessary to own a drophead.”

  “But I’m not a young man.”

  “If you say that again I shall bite you. I may bite you anyway. Do you have a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “I should’ve guessed that. Do you mind if I do?”

  “Go ahead.”

  She had a packet of cigarettes and a silver-plated lighter in her handbag, and a moment later gave a sigh of contentment, while the tip of her cigarette glowed in the darkness.

  “Sure you wouldn’t like to try?”

  “Sure.”

  “I suppose you don’t approve. Of women smoking. Or maybe, of smoking at all.”

  “I’m a great believer in people being allowed to do whatever they wish, as long as they don’t make themselves a nuisance to other people.”

  “Am I being a nuisance to you?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “So tell me about yourself.”

  “There’s not a lot to tell.”

  “Oh, but there is. You are quite a man of mystery. Father thinks you’re a spy.”

  “Does he now?”

  “I hope you are. I’ve never been out with a spy. Never even met one, till now.”

  “Whatever I am, it is was. I’m retired.”

  “Oh.” She might have been disappointed, but he couldn’t see her expression clearly in the darkness. “You’ve been married.”

  “Some time ago.”

  “But you have children.”

  “Two. Hardly children, any more; they’re both teenagers.”

  “Wasn’t there . . .” she bit her lip, and stubbed out her cigarette.

  “Yes,” Berkeley said. “She died.”

  “Oh,” she said again. Obviously she knew that Anna had disappeared. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “Thank you. It was several years ago. Aren’t you freezing? I know I am.”

  “It is cold,” she agreed. “Would you like to go home?”

  “I think we have to.”

  “There is another alternative.”

  He put his arm round her shoulders and held her against him. They couldn’t actually get body to body because of the handbrake, but she still felt good, and when he kissed here he smelt the tobacco on her breath. He rather like that. It created a sense of intimacy, like kissing someone who has just eaten garlic. Caterina had been very fond of garlic.

  “If we hang around,” he whispered. “We are going to do something very stupid.”

  She pulled her head back. “Would it be very stupid?”

  “Any action undertaken without due reflection and positive decision is liable to be stupid,” he said.

  “Spoken like a soldier,” she said.

  When they got back to the house he kissed her again.

  “Would you like to come in?” she asked.

  “I would. But I’m not going to.”

  “Because it might lead to something stupid?”

  “It almost certainly would. But I would like to take you walking, and perhaps home to meet the children. Do you think you would enjoy th
at?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I would.”

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” he said.

  Because suddenly an idea had become a possibility. It occurred to him that he knew as little about this girl as she knew about him. She was certainly one of the new breed of emancipated young women who were dominating the headlines. Did that mean she wasn’t a virgin? And did it matter? Caterina had been brutally raped by Austrian soldiers when she was twelve. If it had caused her to hate, eternally, it had not affected her ability to love, both physically and mentally. If Lucy Horsfall had had sex with anybody, it would undoubtedly have been of the most gentle and mutual variety.

  There was the point. Lucy was a pathway back to normality. He had never been offered such a path before. Julia might have supposed she could provide it, but she knew too much about him, about what he really had done for most of his life. Sharing secrets of that magnitude did not make for true intimacy, only suspicion.

  And incredibly, Lucy seemed interested. Of course this might be merely because, as she had said, he was a figure of mystery and she was at an age to find mysteries, even dark mysteries, romantic. That would have to be investigated.

  But equally, did that matter? If she thought she would be marrying a darkly romantic figure, well, he supposed that was what he was. Or had been. And she could make him happy, he had no doubt about that, as well as restoring that precious commodity, normality.

  And love? He didn’t know about that. A remarkable admittance, he thought, for a man who had ricocheted from woman to woman throughout his life. But most of those had hated. He had fallen deeply in love with Caterina, certainly physically, had been willing to overlook the obvious faults in her character . . . but that had not enabled him to save her life. And by the time she had died her hatred had rendered her unloveable. Lucy Horsfall might well be loveable. If that were to happen it would be an enormous bonus. But it was far more important that the children went for her.

  “I think Miss Horsfall is awfully nice,” Little Alicia confided, after Lucy had spent the day at the Townsend house.

  “I’m glad. I think she’s nice too,” Berkeley said.

  “Are you going to marry her?” John asked.

  “Hold on,” Berkeley said. “We’ve only just started seeing each other. But suppose I did marry her, would you object?”