A Spy in the Family

by Alec Waugh

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Knotted bootlaces or with hairbrushes.’

  ‘Which side of the hairbrush?’

  ‘The prickly side. At home when I had a hot bath at night, I used to beat myself and I’d arrange my father’s shaving mirror so that I could see the reflection. It was exciting to see the blood come.’

  ‘The blood?’

  ‘It’s very near the surface after a hot bath.’

  ‘But blood, didn’t it hurt a lot?’

  ‘Not in the least; it barely stung. I told you that we used to sit on the hot water pipes before we got a caning.’

  ‘When you beat yourself in the dormitories were you naked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That must have made a difference then?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘It must have been more exciting, seeing the effect, the marks, how the muscles would contract.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And you think that all that, when you were only twelve, did have something to do with sex?’

  ‘I’ve wondered that.’ He hesitated. ‘There was a kind of prurient curiosity about it all. We were so innocent at that particular school. I’m wondering if it wasn’t a natural development, a normal prelude. I’ve noticed that old-fashioned school stories used to pander to that prurience. A friend of mine was doing an article on Edwardian school stories. He showed me some of Desmond Coke’s. They came out in The Captain in 1909 or so. They had very luscious descriptions of boys being beaten. And the publishers reissued after the second war a school story called Teddy Lester’s Chums that came out in 1906—chock full of it. I’m sure it had a sexual undertone—a premature interest in what doctors call erogenous zones. We used to talk about canings in the furtive way that at public schools we discussed normal cases. Look at this now as an example. As I told you we knew nothing about the machinery of fatherhood. One day when we were in the changing room, about three or four of us, and we were talking about beatings, one of us lifted his shirt and called our attention to himself. He was in a most rampant state. He said, “Isn’t it funny that I get like this whenever I talk about beatings?” ‘

  Myra chuckled. ‘It seems to be having that effect on you right now.’

  Myra slept late next morning. She fixed her breakfast before she took her bath. She was still sipping her coffee when Lena came into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m afraid I have bad news,’ she said. ‘I shall have to leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My sister is getting married to a German. She is going to live in Hamburg. That means that my mother will be all alone.’

  ‘Are you going to live with your mother?’

  ‘Oh no, that wouldn’t work at all. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s not an invalid. She’s not fifty yet. She’s not infirm. But she’s a widow. She’s lonely. She does need a daughter that she can talk to on the telephone, whom she can run-round to at a moment’s notice, who’ll be five minutes away if she’s not feeling well.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘She wants to have someone she can do things for.’

  ‘I can see that too. You will be missed though. You don’t need telling that.’

  ‘I’m sorry to go. I’ve been very happy here. You’ve been most kind to me. I love the children.’

  ‘What about Anna? Is she going too?’

  ‘She said she would.’

  It was what Myra had expected. She did not feel that it was any use trying to persuade Anna to stay on, but she made the attempt. She waited till they were alone together.

  ‘I don’t suppose it is any good my asking you to stay on with us?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I believe you do.’

  Once again there flashed between them a look of understanding, almost a conspiratorial look. They could talk in shorthand. ‘If things change for you, if you were alone, if ever you should want to come back…’

  ‘I’ll write, don’t worry.’ There was a wistful expression in her face. ‘I’d like to think I had a harbour here.’

  ‘Yes, think of it that way.’ There was no hurry about their leaving. They would stay on till after Myra’s return from her tour of the Middle East. In the meantime Anna was going to try to find another Swedish couple.

  ‘Do you think they’ll be such a team as those were?’ Victor wondered.

  7

  The plane was late getting into Beirut. There had been a delay in Cairo. Every seat was occupied, three seats on each side of the aisle. Kitty was next to Myra. As the plane circled over the airport, she whispered into Myra’s ear, ‘They say it’s the wickedest city in the world. This has taken on from where Tangier stopped. It looks so little from here. Think of all that’s concealed beneath that stretch of rooftops.’

  They had been due to arrive soon after lunch, but it was five o’clock before they landed.

  ‘Time for a quick look round anyhow,’ said Kitty.

  There were some two hundred passengers aboard. They had been split up among the various hotels; the four of them had been booked into an old Turkish building on the waterfront. It was a very long way from the best or the smartest hotel but it had a cachet. It looked Oriental. It had a large central hall with small rooms opening off it. Rugs hung upon the walls. There were large leather cushions on the floor. There was no air conditioning, but fans were circling from the ceiling. Below the ceiling ran a first-floor gallery off which a series of small doors opened. The porters were dressed in Moorish uniform, with short-cut red jackets, skull-caps, and baggy trousers. A courier from the tour had met them at the airport. He had seen their luggage through customs, their passports through immigration; he now arranged their accommodation at the desk. The suitcases of the group were stacked together while they sat and waited. It was all very restful. They had every bit as much privacy as if they had travelled independently. And they had saved so much on the fare that they could afford to order à la carte.

  ‘The St. George is the hotel,’ said Kitty. ‘Let’s go there as soon as we’re unpacked.’

  Myra had read of the St. George. It had appeared in so many wartime reminiscences, in so many espionage novels. It had a wide terrace, on the waterfront. Sand stretched below it. A mighty range of mountains flanked it. It was still hot and humid. But the St. George’s terrace caught the mountain breeze. It was crowded and polyglot and many-coloured. There were dark-skinned, dark-haired men; there were very pale girls with shining black hair lying low upon their shoulders; there were those who looked like film stars. There were Muslims in long white robes, their head scarves held in place by gold and black fillets. There was an air of wealth and elegance.

  ‘Now this is the place where we must come tomorrow, by ourselves, when we can dodge the boys. We must make friends with the head barman. He can tell us what it is we need to know.’

  What was it that she needed to know, Myra wondered. Kitty certainly had something on her mind.

  They dined on the terrace under the stars. This was the kind of place that in books and films had typified for Myra the glamour and glory of the East. Well, here she was at last. And all she could do was worry about a boutique along the waterfront where she would collect a parcel, and how she was to find the time to get it. That was her main problem: how to get away from Kitty?

  Directly after the last course, before the coffee, Kitty was on her feet. ‘Myra and I are going to case the joint.’ But she was not in search of the powder room. ‘I’ve got to locate that barman.’

  There was no difficulty about that. He had the magisterial, apostolic look of a man who has listened to confessions and offered solicitude and guidance for a quarter of a century. He was tall, handsome, clean-shaven, olive-skinned, with hair smooth and shining. A sharkskin suit fitted closely over his ample shoulders. He was the complete, the perfect Levantine. ‘I bet he’s called Pierre. Every smart Mediterranean barman is called Pierre. Let’s
go.’

  They perched themselves on stools in front of him. ‘Two Cherry Heerings, please.’

  She raised her glass to him. ‘So many people have told me about you. I must introduce myself. I’m Kitty Severod; this is Myra Trail. We’re only here three days. We want to make the most of them. You’re the man who can tell us how?’

  He bowed politely. ‘I am flattered to have been recommended by your friends.’ His voice was unctuous. His accent was neither American nor English.

  ‘We won’t bother you now. You are very busy.’

  ‘I am, alas, always busy, but never too busy to be able to succour a charming lady.’

  ‘When are you least busy?’

  ‘Just after the evening begins, and just before it ends.’

  ‘We’ll remember that. Back to those men of ours, Myra. By the way,’ she said as they slipped off their stools, ‘have you ever been inside a brothel?’

  ‘Heavens no, have you?’

  ‘Not really. Not a proper one. That’s what I’m looking for. If I can’t find one here, where can I?’

  So that was what Kitty had on her mind.

  Their hotel was only a quarter of a mile from the St. George. They strolled back along the waterfront. The noise of pop dance tunes welled up from a dozen doors. Uniformed porters importuned custom. Small boys held out their hands for money. Horse-drawn open cabs clattered down the middle of the street. Myra noticed the restaurant Saad’s that she had been given as direction post. She counted the shops past it. Yes, there it was. Valentina; but it was closed now. Of course it was. But she knew where it was. She would slip in there tomorrow.

  Or at least she hoped she would. Next day there was an excursion to Baalbek. They started soon after breakfast. They took a while collecting the tourists from the other hotels. It was after ten before they started. They lunched at Stoura, at a charming little restaurant beside a stream, where they were served Lebanese dishes and arrack, the white liquid onto which water was poured and which turned cloudy; it had a flavour of licorice, but went well with the small savoury-type dishes that were served with it, radishes, white cheese, anchovies, olives. You sipped arrack slowly; you did not like the taste of it. But it induced a sensation of well-being.

  The lunch was too copious. That was the trouble about package-tour meals, so Victor had assured her, but it was quite good and the wines that went with it, though by Victor’s Odde Volumes standards they might be negligible, were adequate to her. Musicians played to them as they ate. The river supplied a satisfactory undertone.

  Kitty sat beside her. The moment they were alone, Kitty reverted to her topic. ‘When I asked you if you’d ever been in a brothel,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean a bistro where there are tarts whom men take home, but a maison—where men buy women on the spot. I’ve always felt curious about that. There’s a place outside Casablanca called the Sphinx; they’ve changed the name of the town, I forget what they call it now. It had a great sphinx in lights over it. I made Martin take me there. Could I have been more disappointed? It was a brothel, right enough. There were girls and there were men; the men could take the girls upstairs, but they couldn’t take upstairs the wife or the girl that they had brought with them.’

  ‘What would have been the point of that?’

  ‘The whole point: to see what goes on. Haven’t you ever felt inquisitive about that? To know what married couples are like when they are alone. Don’t you want to know what other people are like together, what other people do together? Don’t you? I do. Shall I tell you what I’d choose if a genie came wreathing out of a vase and asked me to name a wish?’

  ‘What would you choose?’

  ‘To be invisible. The Ring of Gyges. A lot of people might ask for that so that they could steal. I wouldn’t. I’d like to see what other couples do together. Do you remember your saying at the Odde Volumes dinner how it gave you a kick to see Victor standing up with that medal around his neck, looking so solemn and self-important, and to be able to reflect on what he was going to be like in three hours’ time? You remember saying that.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘It gave me quite a jolt your saying it. I thought, Little Myra has grown up. She’s much more sophisticated than I thought. She’s become my kind of woman. I felt inquisitive about you and Victor. Three hours later I found myself wishing I could be invisible in your bedroom.’

  Myra chuckled. You might have been surprised if you had been, she thought. Or would she? Had Kitty a secret weapon too?

  ‘Even so,’ Myra said, ‘I don’t see what you’re going to get out of going to a brothel.’

  ‘Don’t you? Why, the looking on of course. Seeing what the girls do together. Seeing … oh damn, here are those men back again.’

  The conversation was broken off, but it was resumed the moment they were alone together. At the day’s end it seemed to Myra that she had listened to an uninterrupted monologue.

  ‘Doesn’t it give you a thrill to see things being done?’

  ‘I never have.’

  ‘Then believe me you’ve missed something. Haven’t you ever arranged a mirror so that you could see yourself and Victor in it? You haven’t? Oh, but it’s quite a thing.’

  Myra remembered how Victor had arranged his father’s shaving mirror so that he could watch the blood run down his legs. There might be a kick to that.

  ‘In some brothels they have glass roofs fitted to the beds. And some beds have glass sides so that you can see yourselves endlessly repeated. That would be wonderful.’

  ‘Are there such places now?’

  ‘That’s what I must find out. There used to be. An uncle of mine told me about one he went to in the war, in Asmara, the old Italian colony. There was a place they called “The Glass House.” Of course eventually the British authorities closed it down. So much has been closed down. Have you ever seen a blue film?’

  ‘I haven’t, no.’

  ‘I have, in Bangkok: it wasn’t really very good. That same uncle told me about a place there used to be in Nice. The room in which they showed the films was lined with mirrors. He used to watch the reflections in the mirrors. He said it was more exciting that way, although you couldn’t see the action so completely. It was more real. You seemed to be spying on something.’

  ‘Your uncle seems to have been quite a person.’

  ‘He certainly was. He told me a lot. I fancy he got a special kick out of it: a kind of incest.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘Alas no.’

  ‘I’d have liked to meet him.’

  ‘He’d have liked you too, too much perhaps; it might have made me jealous. The things he told me. I sometimes feel I was born twenty years too late. The thirties were the time. Still there must be something left. If it isn’t here, where is it?’

  They got back from Baalbek in the early evening. It was the time when Myra had planned to call on Valentina. But there was no getting away from Kitty.

  ‘Now’s the time for our conference with Pierre. Let’s take a quick shower, not put on anything special; the men are sure to want to read their papers. Then we’ll come back and get dressed up.’

  They were planning to go to the casino. They would be dining very late. ‘Hurry up,’ she urged. ‘Not longer than twenty minutes.’

  As Pierre had promised them, there was no one in the bar. The bathers had gone to their rooms, the diners were not ready yet. ‘So now we’ve got you to ourselves,’ said Kitty. Pierre inclined his head. ‘Tell us, Pierre—your name is Pierre, isn’t it?’

  ‘That is what many people call me. There was a famous Pierre here during the war.’

  ‘Were you here then?’

  ‘Madame, we are talking about 1942.’

  ‘Weren’t you in Beirut though then?’

  He inclined his head. He did not commit himself. ‘I did not start to work here until ‘56.’

  ‘Beirut must have been very different in ‘42.’

  ‘From what my friends have t
old me, yes.’

  ‘There was a lot of fun going on here then.’

  ‘It was a leave centre. You know what troops are like on a two weeks’ leave. They had nothing to spend their pay on in the desert.’

  ‘There were houses where they could find girls, weren’t there?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What has happened to them now?’

  ‘Alas, what has happened to all such places now.’

  ‘There’s not one left, you mean?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘But surely, surely …’

  ‘If I knew, madame, I would surely tell you. It is as a matter of fact a question that I am rather often asked.’

  ‘And I’ll bet,’ Kitty said afterwards, ‘that he knows the answer. Only he’s not telling somebody he scarcely knows. We ought to have had a proper, or rather an improper, letter of introduction. There must be places. Look around you.’

  They had taken their cocktails onto the terrace. The sun had gone down. It was beginning to crowd up again. ‘Think of all the money that is represented here. What proportion of the world’s black market does not send its one-tenth of a per cent here? This is where money changes hands. There must be every kind of accommodation for the men—and women too who bring in that kind of money. Somebody must know the answer. What about the hairdressers? They often know. I think I’ll have my hair done tomorrow.’

  It was what Myra had planned herself. It would give her an opportunity to escape from Kitty. Now she would get her opportunity, but not of having her hair done.

  ‘I want to buy some brocades. I’ll join you afterwards for a cocktail and learn your news.’

  At last she was alone in Valentina’s. It was a very ordinary shop, catering to the casual tourist. There were cigarettes, there were chocolates, there were scents and liqueurs. It was perhaps a little cheaper than the large shops, but Myra questioned that. It was made to seem cheaper, that was all. Probably it was more expensive. There were three or four customers in the shop. There was only one saleswoman. She was a nondescript Lebanese, cumbersomely middle-aged. She might have been attractive once. Myra idled her way along the shelves. She picked up one or two objects and replaced them. She asked the saleswoman if she had any Kodak films. ‘Of course, over there.’ But she did not go to the shelf where the films were stocked. Instead she crossed to the shelf where there were various packets of cigarettes. She knew that the saleswoman was watching her. She picked up a packet of Camels. She held it up so that she could see it. Then she returned to the counter. ‘I want to try a Turkish cigarette. Do you have one?’