by Len Deighton
I pressed the bell.
Marjorie liked the house. She had an idea that one day, when we grew up, we’d be living in plastic and hardboard scaled-down versions of it. She stroked the door. It was set into an elaborate sea-shell canopy. On each side of it there was a lighted coach lamp. The burning leaves scented the night air. The Notting Hill traffic was no more than a soft purr. I knew that Marjorie was storing this moment in her memories. I leaned close and kissed her. She clutched my arm.
The door opened. I saw Ferdy, and behind him his wife Teresa. Out spilled the tinkles of music, laughter, and ice-cubes colliding with Waterford glass. It had everything, that house: suits of armour, stags’ heads and gloomy portraits. And servants with lowered eyes who remembered which guests had hats and umbrellas.
There is a particular type of tranquil beauty that belongs to the very very rich. Teresa Foxwell had grown-up children, was on the wrong side of forty and gathering speed, but she still had the same melancholy beauty that had kept her photo in the society columns since she was a deb. She wore a long yellow and orange dress of marbled satin. I heard Marjorie’s sharp intake of breath. Teresa knew how to spend money, there was no doubt of that.
Ferdy took my coat and handed it to someone off-stage.
Teresa took Marjorie’s arm and walked her off. She must have seen the storm warnings.
‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ said Ferdy.
‘Yes …’ I said. ‘Well … good.’
‘You left early and there was a bit of a scene right after.’ He turned to a servant who was standing motionless with a tray of champagne. ‘Put the tray on the hall stand,’ said Ferdy.
‘A tray of champagne,’ I said. ‘Now that’s what I call hospitality.’
Ferdy picked up two glasses and pushed one upon me. ‘Schlegel was rude,’ said Ferdy. ‘Damned rude.’
I took the top off my champagne. I could see I was going to need it. ‘What happened?’ I said.
And out it came: all the anxieties and resentments that Ferdy had been storing for goodness knows how long hit me in one long gabble of plaintive bewilderment.
‘He doesn’t have to come over the speaker with it, does he?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But perhaps you’d better take it from the beginning.’
‘Schlegel came through on the yellow phone, as soon as I put those MADs into the Kara. Did I mean the Barents, kid. No, Kara, I said. You know where the Kara is, Ferdy kid, he says. You know where the Kara is.’
Ferdy sipped some of his champagne, smiled, and as he continued slipped into his devastating impression of Schlegel’s accent. ‘And those Mallow flying boats – you’re making crushed ice out there, sweetheart, that’s all you’re doing – check those ice-limits, baby, and take another look at the Kara. Will you do that for me.’
Again Ferdy sipped his drink, by which time I’d almost drained mine. Ferdy said, ‘I didn’t reply. Schlegel came through on the loudspeaker, shouting, Are you reading me, Foxwell kid, because if you’re giving me that old time limey high-hat treatment I’ll move your tail out of that chair so fast your tootsies won’t touch the ground, got me.’
I said, ‘Schlegel was probably getting a bad time from those CINCLANT admirals.’
Ferdy putting those huge flying boats down on the ice was probably what was really worrying Schlegel. If the big computer showed them as landing safely, a lot of the Arctic strategy would have to be rethought, but meanwhile, Ferdy might wipe the floor with Schlegel’s two VIPs.
‘What would you have done?’ asked Ferdy.
‘Kicked him in the crutch, Ferdy.’
‘Zap! Pow! Wallop!’ he said doubtfully. ‘Yes, look here, drink up.’ He took a glass of champagne off the hall stand and handed it to me.
‘Good health, Ferdy.’
‘Cheers. No, the little swine was angry because we got a contact. And because he was being such a little bastard I put three atomic depth charges in a tripod off the coast of Novaya Zemlya. I wiped out two subs. Schlegel was so angry that he tore the print-out off the machine and stalked out of the Control Room without saying goodnight.’ Ferdy spilled some of his drink without noticing. I realized he was a bit drunk.
‘What will happen now, Ferdy?’
‘There you are. I’m dashed if I know. I’m expecting the little swine any minute.’ He leaned over to pat the dachshund. ‘Good Boudin! There’s a good little chap.’ But the dog backed under the hall stand, baring its teeth, and Ferdy almost overbalanced.
‘Here?’
‘Well, what was I supposed to do – run after him and cancel the invitation?’ He spilled some champagne on his hand and kissed away the dribbles from it.
‘Stand by for flying glass.’
‘Little swine.’ He held the brimming glass at chest height and lowered his head to it. He was like a great untidy bear and had all the clumsy strength of that much maligned creature.
‘What were Blue Suite doing: two subs close together like that?’
Ferdy gave a knowing smile. He wiped his mouth with a black silk handkerchief from his top pocket. ‘Schlegel buttering up the admirals. Telling them how to win the game.’
‘Do yourself a favour, Ferdy. What happened today was just Blue Suite at their most typically inept. It wasn’t Schlegel. If he decides to cheat on you, he’s not going to muff it like that.’
‘Machine failure, then?’ said Ferdy. He allowed himself a grin.
‘That’s about it, Ferdy.’ I drank some more champagne. Machine failure was our way of describing any of the more stupid sort of human errors. Ferdy shrugged and raised a hand to usher me into the drawing-room. As I passed him he touched my arm to halt me. ‘I’ve lost that damned Northern Fleet battle order.’
‘So what? You can get another.’
‘I think Schlegel stole it. I know he came into Red Ops while I was at lunch.’
‘He gets his own copy. He’s only to ask for a dozen if he wants more.’
‘I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’ He patted his hair, then he picked up his drink and swallowed the whole of it before putting the glass down.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said.
‘Boudin, Boudin.’ He crouched down and called the dachshund but it still didn’t come to him. ‘Don’t you see that it’s just a devious way of getting me kicked out?’ His voice came from under the hall stand.
‘By inventing some sort of security stunt?’
‘Well, it would work, wouldn’t it?’ He spat out the words and I knew that he’d not completely eliminated me from the conspiracy. Perhaps telling me was only his way of complaining to Schlegel.
‘Life’s too short, Ferdy. Schlegel’s a bastard, you know that. If he wanted to get rid of you he’d just have you in the office, and give it to you right between the eyes.’
Ferdy took another glass of champagne and handed it to me, taking my empty in exchange. He said, ‘I keep telling myself that.’
The doorbell sounded. Ferdy looked anxiously at the front door. ‘Kick him in the crutch, you say?’
‘Mind he doesn’t grab your ankle.’
He smiled. ‘It’s all right, I’ll attend to the door,’ he called. He picked up his drink and finished it. ‘We’re having drinks in the library. See yourself in, will you? I think you know everyone.’
It was a curious evening and yet there is no easy way to convey the atmosphere that was generated. Anyone might have guessed that attention would be on Schlegel. Not because he was Ferdy Foxwell’s boss – not everyone present knew that, so perfunctory were Ferdy’s introductions – but rather owing to Schlegel’s personality. It was not entirely Schlegel’s profligate expenditure of energy. Nor was it his resonant voice, that made shouting unnecessary. It was an atmosphere of uncertainty that he generated, and seemed to relish. For instance, there was what Schlegel did to the wood carvings.
Schlegel walked around the library, peering close at the engravings and the furniture and the ornaments and the bookcase. When he got to the medie
val wooden pilgrim that stood five feet tall in the corner, Schlegel rapped it with his knuckles. ‘Damn nice, that,’ he said in a voice that no one missed.
‘Let me give you a drink,’ said Ferdy.
‘Is it real?’
Ferdy gave Schlegel another drink.
Schlegel nodded his thanks and repeated his question. ‘Real, is it?’ He rapped the priest on the arm as he’d so often rapped me, and then he cocked his head to listen. Maybe he’d been checking on whether I was real.
‘I believe so,’ said Ferdy apologetically.
‘Yeah? Well, they sell plaster jobs in Florence … just like that, you’d never tell.’
‘Really?’ said Ferdy. He flushed, as if it might be bad form to have a real one when these plaster ones were so praiseworthy.
‘Fifty bucks apiece, and you’d never tell.’ Schlegel looked at the Foxwells.
Teresa giggled. ‘You’re a terrible tease, Colonel Schlegel.’
‘So maybe they are a hundred bucks. But we saw a couple of dandy angels – ninety-eight dollars the pair – beauts, I tell you.’ He turned and started to examine the Chippendale long-case clock. And people began talking again, in that quiet way they do when waiting for something to happen.
Marjorie took my arm. Mrs Schlegel smiled at us. ‘Isn’t this a wonderful house.’
Marjorie said, ‘But I was hearing all about your beautiful thatched cottage.’
‘We love it,’ said Mrs Schlegel.
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘that thatched roof is beautiful. And it’s real, not plastic.’
‘I should think it is real.’ She laughed. ‘Chas did ninety-five per cent of that roof with his own bare hands; the local thatcher works in a factory all the week.’
It was then that the butler came to tell Teresa that dinner could be served.
I heard Schlegel say, ‘But as they say in the Coke commercials, you can’t beat the real thing, Mrs Foxwell.’ She laughed, and the servants folded back the doors of the dining-room and lit the candles.
Schlegel’s midnight-blue dinner suit, with braid edge collar, showed his athletic build to advantage, and Mrs Foxwell wasn’t the only woman to find him attractive. Marjorie sat next to him at dinner, and hung on his every word. I knew that from now on I’d get little sympathy for my Schlegel horror stories.
There were enough candles on the table to make the silver shine, the women beautiful, and provide light enough for Schlegel to separate pieces of truffle from the egg, and line them up on the edge of his plate like trophies.
There was still a full decanter of wine on the table when the ladies were banished. Each of the men filled his glass and moved along the table nearer to Ferdy. I knew them all. At least, I knew their names. There was Allenby, a young professor of modern history from Cambridge wearing a lacy evening shirt and a velvet tie. He had a pale skin and a perfect complexion, and preceded most of his earnest pronouncements with, ‘Of course, I don’t believe in capitalism, as such.’
‘Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals,’ Mr Flynn had told us in the soft accent of County Cork. ‘Grown, processed and exported from the USSR.’
The Flynns built harpsichords in a refurbished Shropshire rectory. And there was the taciturn Mr Dawlish, who eyed me with the steely predatory stare that I’d once known so well. He was a high-ranking civil servant who never finished his wine.
The elegant Dr Eichelberger had found literary fortune, if not fame, after writing a scientific paper called ‘The physics of water layering and temperature variations in northern latitudes’. All his subsequent literary output being printed, classified, and circulated to a select few by the underwater weapons research department of the US Navy.
Finally, there was the vociferous guest of honour: Ben Toliver, Member of Parliament, businessman and bon viveur.
His low voice, wavy hair, piercing blue eyes and well-fitting girdle had earned Toliver a starring role in British politics in the late ’fifties and early ’sixties. Like so many ambitious British politicians, he used slogans from John F. Kennedy as his passport to the twentieth century, and expressed belief in both technology and youth. Toliver had long ago discovered that a well-timed banality plus a slow news day equals a morning headline. Toliver was available for any programme from ‘Any Questions’ to ‘Jazz at Bedtime’, and if he wasn’t at home someone knew a number where you’d find him and don’t worry about the holding hair spray, he had a can of it in his briefcase.
I suppose all those ‘BT for PM’ buttons have been put into the attic along with those suits with Chinese collars, and the hula-hoops. But I still hear people talking about how this Peter Pan, who runs his father’s factories at such big profits while expressing loud concern about the workers, might have made the greatest PM since the young Mr Pitt. Personally, I’d sooner dust off the hula-hoops.
‘Full bodied for a Pauillac, and that’s what deceived me,’ said Toliver, swirling his wine and studying its colour against the candle flame. He looked around inviting comment, but there was none.
‘Space research, supersonic travel and computer development,’ said Professor Allenby, resuming the conversation that Toliver had interrupted. ‘Also grown and processed in the USSR.’
‘But not yet exported?’ Flynn asked, as if not sure that he was right.
‘Never mind all that crap,’ said Schlegel. ‘The simple fact is that it takes five per cent of us Americans to produce such big food surpluses that we sell grain to the Russians. And the Russians use twenty-five per cent of their population in food production and screw it up so bad they have to buy from the United States. So never mind all that crap about what’s cultivated in Russia.’
The young professor tweaked the ends of his bow tie, and said, ‘Do we really want to measure the quality of life in output per cent? Do we really want to …’
‘Stick to the point, buddy,’ said Schlegel. ‘And pass that port.’
‘Well, Russians might want to measure it like that,’ said Flynn, ‘if all they had to eat was American grain.’
‘Look here,’ said Professor Allenby. ‘Russia has always been beset by these bad harvests. Marx designed his theories round the belief that Germany – not Russia – would be the first socialist land. A unified Germany would provide a chance to see Marxism given a real chance.’
‘We can’t keep on giving it a chance,’ said Flynn, ‘it’s failed in half the countries of the world now. And the West Zone will swallow the East Zone if they unify. I don’t like the idea of it.’
‘East Zone,’ said Ferdy. ‘Doesn’t that date you?’
‘The DDR, they call it,’ said Toliver. ‘I was there with a trade delegation the summer before last. Working like little beavers, they are. They are the Japs of Europe, if you ask me, and equally treacherous.’
‘But would the socialists support a reunification, Mr Toliver?’ said Flynn.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Toliver. ‘Simply because in the present climate of talks it looks like a sell-out. It’s a deal between the Americans and the Russians, out of which will come a bigger stronger capitalist Germany – no thanks. Those West German buggers are trouble enough already.’
‘And what’s in this deal for us Yanks?’ Schlegel asked sarcastically.
Toliver shrugged. ‘I wish I could answer that, but it won’t be any comfort for us British, and that you can be sure of.’ He looked round the others and smiled.
Professor Allenby said, ‘The official text says federation, not reunification. In the context of history, Germany was born out of a miscellany of principalities gathered around the royal house of Brandenburg. This is nothing new for them. Reunification is a dynamic process of historical reality leading inevitably to Marxism.’
‘You sure use fifty-dollar words,’ said Schlegel, ‘but don’t talk about historical reality to guys who carried a gun from the beaches to Berlin. Because you might get a swift kick in the principalities.’
The professor was used to flamboyant hectoring. He smil
ed and continued calmly. ‘The common language of the two Germanys is not a lubricant but an irritant. Most of the East–West tensions are simply extended, amplified versions of purely parochial arguments. Reunification is inevitable – lie back and enjoy it.’
‘Never,’ said Flynn. ‘A reunited Germany that moved closer to the West would make the Russians very nervous. If Germany moved closer to the East they’d make us nervous. If, and this is more likely, Germany decided to play man in the middle, the worst days of the cold war could be remembered with nostalgia.’
‘The Russians have made up their minds,’ said Toliver. ‘The Americans don’t care. There’s not much chance for anyone else. The mere fact that the Russians have agreed to talk in Copenhagen shows how keen they are.’
‘Why?’ asked Flynn. ‘Why are they so keen?’
‘Come along, George,’ Ferdy coaxed, and everyone turned to look at Dawlish.
‘My goodness,’ said the elderly grey-haired man, who had so far said so little. ‘Old codgers like me are not privy to such secrets.’
‘But you were in Bonn last week and Warsaw the month before,’ said Ferdy. ‘What are they saying?’
‘Being there and being told anything are two different matters,’ he said.
‘A diplomatic offensive,’ said Toliver, availing himself of Dawlish’s reluctance to explain. ‘A small group of Russian whizz-kids have pushed these proposals. If the unification goes through it will be such a triumph for that faction that they’ll assume command of Russian foreign policy.’
‘Surely it should have been debated,’ said Ferdy.
‘The Germans have debated it,’ said Eichelberger. ‘They want it. Is it right that foreigners should interfere?’
‘You can’t trust the Germans,’ said Toliver. ‘Let them all get together and they’ll be electing another Hitler, mark my words.’