A Long Silence

by Nicolas Freeling

  So that he had no interest in the rough clash of the transmission and the squeal of the tyres pulling away in haste. He was down on his face in the dead leaves. He knew that he was dying and was pleased that he knew, and could say the words he wished to say – very simple words.

  And a few simple thoughts. He had never been afraid of dying, and least of all now. He had had a life, married a wife, raised children, dug ground and planted a tree, sailed a boat and ski’d down hill, eaten and drunk and made love. He was ready for what came next. He felt his life spilling out on the ground and turned his head a little. Bereitsein ist alles. He thought of Arlette without disappointment and without pain.

  It wasn’t a bad place at all to die. With a last flick of recognition for this world he remembered Stendhal saying there was no disgrace in dying in the street, when not done on purpose. And he had …

  Van der Valk began to study his long silence but was interrupted. He was dead.

  *

  ‘The trouble with public-spirited witnesses is that they’re such infernal busybodies.’ Arlette would remember the phrase. Others too; light-hearted or disillusioned, even slightly soured.

  ‘One definition of aristocracy is a person who does not stop to gawk at a street fight.’ In one of the villas to the side of the road, beyond the strip of sodden poached dog-infected grass, beyond the cycle-path and the row of leafless trees, lived a public-spirited person. He had been in a first-floor front room, and he hadn’t had the television on, being absorbed at the moment in his stamp collection. The coppery bonk of pistol shots at thirty yards, however dulled by the saturated air, had startled him, and he had run to his window and jerked the curtain – but he had not seen much through the wavering fine rain which coarsened the grain of the air, so that what he had seen was a worn old gangster movie of the early thirties, made by Warner Brothers. Van der Valk had enjoyed them greatly. George Raft and James Cagney, Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson; the young Bogart. A man lying face-down in the rain, and the dark-coloured car accelerating away. Probably with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in the back.

  Arlette was not a woman of such imagination. She saw the scene quite differently, because she had lived through it as a girl of fifteen, drinking a cup of coffee on her way home from school. A street corner in Toulon in blinding dusty sunshine, deserted. The spit and snap of an automatic pistol and the squeal of a car furiously driven. Running police and a white képi fallen off and rolling through the heavy lazy air. Most vivid of all the café owner with the big belly, ducking with such unexpected agility.

  ‘A plat ventre tous – on est en train de se faire flinguer.’ The young girl as well as everyone else à plat ventre in a heap – these episodes sometimes involved unpleasantly indiscriminate machine-gun fire.

  Most ironic of all, for twenty-five years she had steeled herself for that telephone call from a potato-filled police mouth embarrassed into lumpish incoherence. Since the beginning of the desk job – in the civil service as it were – in The Hague of all places (that most civil-service-minded of all prim Dutch towns) she had told herself that at least there was that no longer to be afraid of. And fatally the call had come, and fatally she had not followed the rules she had long rehearsed that would govern her behaviour. The car started as though it had been waiting whetted for this moment, and she had driven ridiculously, convinced of her sedate sober mind, congratulating herself on behaving well. The deux-chevaux braked skidding to a stop. So silly to have hurried; of course she was much too late, she knew that perfectly well, for a lot of time had of course passed and there was not just a policeman gesticulating in the rain, but a whole knot of cars. And the ambulance. And a group of careful middle-aged gentlemen in raincoats with their hats on because it was still raining. The body was still in place. She did not worry about that or think anything silly like ‘he’ll get wet’. She knew about the measurements and the photographs and the conscientiousness displayed by all, even the press. Everyone made way for her politely, and she did not do anything in the least absurd like going down à plat ventre.

  But being in shock she did not remember properly anything much of what happened, and her next accurate recollection was of sitting in her flat in daylight, dried, dressed, combed, politely pouring a drink for the district commissaire of police. She could not place the time very well, but thought it must have been about midday. So silly a feeling … almost as though she were pouring the usual midday drink for her husband, but in that case why was she being so formal and polite?

  ‘I needn’t tell you how I feel,’ he was saying. ‘Thanks, Mevrouw, no more for me. And if I may permit myself the remark, you shouldn’t be drinking whisky.’

  ‘I know. It has no effect upon me whatever.’

  ‘But it might later,’ worried.

  ‘That’s as may be.’

  ‘Yes. Er – I need hardly say … when we lose a man … we don’t give up.’

  ‘No,’ said Arlette, knowing that this meant they had found nothing.

  ‘We have – er – the skidmarks, which will tell us what kind of car it was. And – er – ejected cartridge cases, which will give us the gun. When we recover the bullets …’ He had better not dwell on that detail, he was thinking plainly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Arlette, knowing that the car would have been stolen and the gun ditched.

  ‘We are of course going to examine everyone with whom he may have had, er, dealings and who might have, er, felt a grievance. It may take a long time. We will neglect nothing.’

  ‘Quite,’ brightly. ‘When can you let me have my husband back?’

  ‘We were thinking, er, the funeral…’

  ‘I don’t want to seem rude, Commissaire, or ungrateful. He didn’t belong here. He came from Amsterdam, but he has no family left there. I know that you will be extremely kind, and that you will want to come, and send big wreaths and everything – forgive me please. I’m afraid I don’t want that. I’m sorry but I want to leave as soon as I can, which is as soon as you’ll let me.’

  ‘But where will you go?’ asked the commissaire, worried. ‘If it’s the press …’

  ‘No. He had, you see, a little house in France, for retiring to – you understand? And that is where I’m going, and that’s where he’s going, and I want to ask you only one thing, which is that you’ll please help me with that and see that I have no trouble, with the customs or whoever is responsible for taking dead people across frontiers. I feel sure that they’ll be very worried about whether the proper taxes have been paid.’

  ‘Try not to be bitter,’ gently.

  She drank some more whisky and it made her shudder.

  ‘You’re quite right. I promise I won’t be tiresome or troublesome at all.’

  He found this humility touching: he also felt uneasy. A frightening woman in a sense; one didn’t know what she mightn’t be capable of.

  ‘We won’t let you down,’ he said, and really meant it.

  Part Two

  ‘Neil’s Son of Woeful Assynt’

  It was at this point that I found myself involved in this story. I must explain myself: the writer is of course always ‘involved’ but he detaches himself as much as possible. This is partly because gossips, and ignorant people – and sometimes malicious people – will invent anything they think makes a crackly bit – a crunchy read in the salted-peanuts section of the press. Thus I have heard, and read, that Van der Valk was nothing but a vehicle for my own little fads and whims – whereas the truth, if it has to be spelt out, is that of course we were friends, we had quite a lot in common, and we had a good deal not in common. That he was Dutch, whereas I am English (‘mais si peu’ as the malicious tongues insist) is only the start. He insisted naturally on being disguised a bit; who blames him? I added several fictional details, clumsy, no doubt, and blundering and often unconvincing: I don’t claim to be a very practised magician, Willy Maugham or something. But as I became more experienced at the trade of novel-writing the border between fact and fiction b
ecame more blurred as well as more subtle.

  Simon – but everyone called him Piet, a more down-to-earth Dutch name that suited him better – was a friend, or better said a ‘copain’; a grand drinking companion, a lot of fun at all times, sometimes infuriating and often irritating, with whom one could quarrel violently without any bloodshed. I did not agree by any means with all his ideas, I found him sometimes crude, barbarian and offensively ‘Dutch’ – I let myself get teased sometimes into losing my temper, which amused him: this kind of teasing is a Dutch national characteristic. I have never mentioned how I came to meet him. I am not going into details now – they would be of no interest - but briefly, at a time when I was poor, in fact broke, and working as a cook in a Dutch restaurant I got pinched for taking home food (a thing, of course, all cooks do but the manager, who disliked me, chose me as a sacrifice). Van der Valk, amused by the situation – I was less amused; I served three weeks in jail – was the local detective officer in the Amsterdam district in question whose responsibility was to type up the dossier after asking me a great many silly questions. His ill-concealed mirth at my being the fall guy, the pigeon, the patsy, made as one says my blood boil.

  But later he showed me kindness. He took the trouble to call on my wife while I was in jail to reassure her and show her how she could draw a ‘social security’ benefit. Later, during the three years I lived in Holland, we became friends. We were invited to eat one of Arlette’s meals, with a good many bad jokes about my being a cook and a severe critic. He was interested that a cook who wanted to ‘become a writer’ should be floating about in his district – and as a policeman he was discreetly keeping an eye on me, as I afterwards realized. We became friends. When I began to write stories with a slightly fictionalized ‘Piet’ as hero he got extremely indignant, but with his own brand of detachment was also amused, and would not have allowed himself to interfere with me. I got my own back for his sniggering by inventing discreditable situations for him to get into. When I came to live in France I saw less of him, but it happened that he had bought a country cottage not very far from me. It is nearly an hour and a half’s drive, about forty-five miles on some very twisty roads, but I buy wine near there, and make the trip fairly often. In the holidays we saw quite a bit of one another, and I generally got a book out of it.

  Arlette is a different pair of shoes. I am very fond of France, and get on well with the French – from time to time, like most people. I spent much of my childhood here, I have emotional ties, it is easy for me. But I have never been much attracted by French women – their wit, esprit, their great funniness and vitality are fine for a few hours, but to live with … mm, I am not so sure. There have been times when I actively disliked her.

  My wife, too, was irritated by her. Too French, too noisy, too opinionated – too much in general, even of a lot of good qualities. Perhaps there may even have been a streak of jealousy hereabouts; not that I have ever seriously been accused of over-familiarity with Arlette – she herself would have had none of that, quite apart from anything else. But her gaiety and vivacity, her intelligence and wit, her strong character as well as her bold, sharp good looks made her an attractive personality, but one who occasionally became a bit too overwhelming.

  Well, of such stuff are friendships made. The two women liked, trusted and respected one another. So did Piet and I. He got extremely indignant with me now and again, especially after I had ‘made a fool of him’ as he thought it, until his humour got the better of him and he saw the comic side of one of my fictional episodes. At least, he said, nobody in Holland would ever recognize him, so that he could not be compromised. And I got annoyed with him too: though always pleased to see him, and enjoying nothing more than a night’s boozing together, I quickly had enough of crude Dutch jokes and earthy extrovert backslapping – he enjoyed making me cross, laughed uproariously, and was delighted when I got more vexed than ever with his obstreperous ways. He trod with heavy feet upon little egotisms and preciosities of mine – and I learned to value that. He would blow in with his heavy feet and wind-reddened face, his awful tweed suits and his crude but sensitive hands (there is a drawing somewhere by Picasso of Igor Stravinsky’s hands which reminded me of him) and bruise my complacent priggeries with a few kicks. ‘I can’t help being fond of old Piet,’ I hear myself announcing to my wife, in sentimental tones.

  *

  I was touched at Arlette’s coming to see me. I had read of Piet’s death in the Dutch daily paper. I had rung her up and stammered out the usual limping and wooden phrases, but I had thought, with no very good reason, that she would be avoiding me for some time, at least, and was very pleased to see her. I found her changed, less buxom, slower moving, more thoughtful. But her striking Phoenician looks were the same; the tall proud carriage – they have such a good walk – the chignon of fair hair, the bony high-bridged nose, the splendid large eyes of clear bright brown. All that is a familiar enough sight on Mediterranean coastlines, but had always so disconcerted Holland that in nearly thirty years she never felt at home there. Come to that, Holland disconcerted her; she never really understood the place or the people, and did not always make enough of an effort.

  She poured out all her tale to me, and very confused it was, and hereabouts I have an apology to make for my own narrative, and an explanation of the technically awkward break in the middle of it. This was her suggestion. When all was finished it was Arlette herself who wanted me to unroll Kai Lung’s mat. She wanted me to make a tale of Piet’s last adventure, but ‘leaving me out of it’. This was manifestly impossible. So that I have split the tale in two, and used her as narrator of the second half. She made a great fuss at first, but shrugged finally and gave in. I have felt myself, in a sense, more involved personally, and this too needs pointing out. I ‘arrived upon the scene’ half-way through the tale instead of after it was finished, and it was to me that Arlette came for help in puzzling out the notebooks. As she remarked, blandly, with a slightly false naïveté, ‘I was a writer,’ I kept notebooks myself. I am no detective, but I did I suppose contribute something to her detective work.

  *

  Arlette had sent telegrams to the boys, but it would take them a day or two to come, and in trouble and solitude it was to Ruth she turned, and Ruth who gave her consolation and support. A good deal to her surprise: like all adopted children – and adopted quite late in childhood – Ruth was not an easy child, full of frightful knots and tensions, and had caused much upheaval and heartbreak in her new home. Still, that was comprehensible enough. She had never known her father, her mother had been something of an oddity, and both of them had died by violence. Coming to Piet and Arlette at around twelve years old she had brought a lot of this violence with her. Now in her mid-teens she had gone in a great deal lately for subterranean adolescent smoulderings, and very tiresome they had found it.

  But when Arlette broke her the news she changed as it were in a breath, and the cliché is almost accurate for once.

  ‘Ruth darling – forgive my blurting it out. But you of all people will understand.’

  The girl – so hard this last year and so fierce – had been so simple with her, so gentle. Of course she understood. Her own mother had died with her stomach shot to pieces.

  ‘Ruth – I’ve nothing left.’

  ‘I know. Then, I had you. Now you’ve me. That’s nothing much I know – but I’ll do my best.’ She said no more – she didn’t, much – and she did not cry – she never did – but she cuddled Arlette. And it helped: she stopped pulling herself to pieces. Odd, she thought; we’ve changed places, and now I am the girl of fifteen. The girl helped her find her balance.

  ‘I can’t stay in this awful place,’ she told the boys. They were strangers now, both in their twenties, though both were still in some vague way students. Both had hotfooted it out of Holland. She did not know what they did, any more than what they thought. They were complete strangers, although she knew instinctively that in another few years she would again kno
w them better. One was in Bologna, something legal, and the other in Besançon, electrical engineering of a particularly incomprehensible nature. They did not have much time to spare.

  ‘Leave this to us,’ they said with authority. Limply, she did, and a day or two after found herself translated, transfigured – transmogrified – in the little house which he had chosen and bought, where she was full of him, surrounded by him, with some tea-chests full of junk, and a coffin.

  So there they buried him, in a small awkward little cemetery squeezed up against a sharp slope of hill and surrounded by rusty railings, smelling of dead leaves. And all the other right things, thought Arlette – metal wreaths and plastic flowers; so economical, so French. A grave lined with spruce branches. Bundles of chrysanthemums, a flower he had always liked the smell and shape of, clumsily and touchingly brought by the boys. A great crown of spring flowers, astonishingly yet characteristically bought, picked and made by Ruth. An immense wreath of flowershop flowers with a Dutch tricolour ribbon, brought soberly and so kindly by two local gendarmes in carefully pressed parade uniforms ‘for a confrère’ – hand of the Dutch commissaire of police, but they themselves had taken much trouble too. And her own small, silly ‘thing’, a handful of little dark-yellow roses in tight bud, the kind that hardly unfurl at all, which she had wanted, and which she now threw into the grave. The curé with a hand protecting the pages of his missal from the spots of rain that were falling again; the garde-champêtre, that French village figure who is also road-mender and grave-digger, standing professionally at ease with his shovel, and the gendarmerie as professionally at attention and the salute. He would have enjoyed them. He had always liked French military ceremonial, and would greatly have liked a bugler to sound ‘Aux Morts’ … For a second Arlette was standing as she had often stood as a child on Armistice Day, during the awkward silence before the tatty, ragged – but somehow the more ennobled clash of the Marseillaise. She had fallen, she realized, into a trance. She glanced at the two boys, standing bowed with hands clasped, in the attitude of resigned embarrassment with which boys in their early twenties attend a funeral: they themselves are going to live for ever and it is all rather unreal as well as folklore. Ruth, head well up, eyes shut and lips moving through the multiplication table, was thinking of her mother, at whose grave she and Van der Valk had stood side by side. A gang of village schoolchildren on their way home to dinner, gazing through the railings and whispering. Arlette was holding everybody up.