by Lawton, John
‘It was my father’s,’ he said.
‘Yeah—my old man had one just like it. You know what it is?’
Troy shook his head. He had an aversion to guns at the best of times.
‘It’s German. It’s a Mauser 1896 Conehammer. A semi, a machine pistol—kinda like a hand-held machine gun.’
This meant nothing to Troy. It might as well have been a Howitzer.
‘My Dad had one in the Civil War. Shot his way across Siberia with the damn thing—least that’s the way he told it.’
‘Maybe that’s its purpose in life. It lends itself to legend. My father claimed to have shot his way onto the last train out of Russia in 1905.’
‘Don’t you believe him?’
Troy shrugged. He had never known how much to believe of anything his father told him. If his life turned out to be one colossal work of fiction, Troy would not be surprised. And, unlike his brother, he would not be offended.
‘A train, perhaps. The last train, I doubt. Shot his way through, I doubt that too. Talked his way would be more in character. He may well have waved the gun around a bit while he talked. Just for show.’
Tosca flipped out the magazine, checked it was empty and pushed it back into place in front of the trigger-guard.
‘It’s a cavalry pistol,’ she said with all the enthusiasm of a trainspotter. ‘It’s got a side-mounted hammer. You’re supposed to have it in a saddle holster. Then when you have to draw it, you roll it over your thigh, which cocks the hammer, so the gun comes up ready, like this.’
So saying, Tosca stood on one leg, raised her right thigh and cocked and levelled the gun at him in a single action. He found himself looking down the barrel of a gun yet again.
Then there was silence, then there was stillness. Neither of them knowing what to do next, both of them rendered uneasy by the presence of a weapon, Tosca perched on one leg like a dwarf flamingo. A burst of pheasant’s rattle from the garden broke the silence. She lowered the gun and her leg, blushing a little and clearly feeling as silly on her end of the gun as he did on his. He took the gun from her awkwardly and put it back on its wooden pegs, in the mind’s eye seeing some burly Russian soldier teaching a little girl how to fire a lethal weapon, and wondering at the nature of paternal wisdom.
‘Best place for it,’ said Troy.
‘Sure,’ she said softly.
In the green room—sage panels lined in deeper green—stood the Bechstein his parents had shipped from Vienna in 1911. He had spent hundreds of hours at this learning from his mother.
Tosca ran a finger over the lid and came up with a crown of fluff.
‘You don’t play any more?’
‘Of course I play. I just haven’t played this particular piano for a while.’
He opened it and played a quick scale.
‘Still in tune,’ he said. ‘Any requests?’
‘One of the old guys. Cole Porter or Gershwin? I always loved Gershwin.’
‘Yip Harburg?’
‘You mean like “Over the Rainbow”?’
‘No, I mean like . . .’
He played the opening five chords that spelt out ‘April in Paris’. She smiled and he began again. He gave it his best shot, and when he saw that she was still smiling, propped against the piano, her chin upon her hands, her eyes closing, he risked all and let his hands tinkle forth Monk’s interpretation, every angular note adding, as he thought of it, to the romantic pull of the song, giving all and taking nothing. She let him get all the way through before she opened her eyes. He had half dreaded the protest of a purist.
‘Gee—but that’s beautiful. Even the bum notes work.’
‘I think you might have stumbled on a definition of Jazz. Bum notes that work.’
‘What’s new?’
‘What’s new?’
‘I mean new new. Really new. Like hot off the press. You get so starved for new in Russia. Old we got plenty of. It’s new we don’t get. The hottest thing when I left Moscow was Judy Garland singing to Clark Gable’s picture. “You made me love you, didn’t wanna do it, didn’t wanna do it.” Now how old is that?’
‘I don’t know. Donkey’s years, I should think.’
‘That figures. We got plenty of donkeys too.’
Every so often Rod would make a trip to America, fulfilling his duty to party and country, taking, as he saw it, his life in his hands, and flying in one of the huge new airliners: Comet, Constellation, Caravelle, that sort of thing, they all seemed to begin with C to Troy. The hero of the Battle of Britain firmly maintained that the aeroplane was not meant to be bigger than a six-seater and that the bigger they were the more likely they were to crash. All the same he did it, and never forgot the souvenirs for his family, button-fly blue jeans for the teenagers, records for Troy. Among the last batch Troy had found on top of the gramophone in the study was a record for which new seemed almost inadequate as an adjective.
‘OK,’ he said, and began to play.
A little more than two minutes later he had finished, delighted that he had kept to the tempo—it was a fast and difficult tune—and breathless from singing, which was not his forte, but without which the song seemed less than complete.
She stood before him, mouth open, eyes wide. Horror or fascination, he could not tell.
‘Is that it?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘What don’t you get?’
‘Well—who is this Daisy woman?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Why does she drive him nuts?’
‘Not nuts, crazy.’
‘And who is Sue and what does she know how to do?’
‘I’d be guessing.’
‘And the words. I couldn’t understand half of them. Awobbly dobblynobbly—what the heck is that?’
‘Know what you mean. Took me a while. Look, why don’t we take it a phrase at a time?’
‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘Awop,’ he said tentatively.
‘Awop,’ she echoed, and there was the beginning of a look in her eye that made him suspicious.
‘Awopbop.’
‘Awopbop.’
‘Awopbopalubop.’
‘Awopbopa—what?’
‘Lubop. It’s lubop.’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘God knows, but it’s pronounced Awopbopalubop.’
‘OK—Awopbopalubop.’
‘Awopbopalubopalopbamboom.’
‘Awopbopalubopalopbamboom.’
She slammed the flat of her hand onto the piano.
‘Awopbopalubopalopbamboom! Goddam it Troy, you know what that is? It’s straight out of some goddam Mississippi juke joint. Goddammit Troy, it’s nigger music!’
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘I believe they call it Rock’n’Roll.’
A polite cough was heard behind her. Troy looked up, Tosca turned on one ankle, her elbows on the piano, one leg slightly raised, her toes tucked in behind the knee, looking as though she’d just finished a smoky rendition of ‘Cry Me A River’. Rod stood in the doorway, and behind him Nikolai, and just behind him Sasha and Masha, and behind them Hugh and Lawrence, and behind them . . .
Tosca eased herself off the piano.
‘Well,’ she said, and in her heavy Muscovy accent, ‘Это что ли пис-толет у тебя в карнмане, или ты просто рад меня видеть?’
§32
They pleaded the wear and tear of a long journey, left Rod and the sisters at the table to see in midnight, drinking and squawking round the debris of the meal. Lawrence and Masha seemed on good terms. Hugh and Sasha, Troy concluded, were in the midst of another row and had diplomatically reached a truce for the evening. Nice of them—he had known occasions when they would not, but their rows never lasted long, and pretty soon Hugh would revert to his self-deluding, obliviating view of his wife’s virtues. Rod would get drunk, have a hangover and regret it. Sasha and Masha would get drun
k and appear magically unscathed in the morning, immune to the ravages of booze, or the criticism of husbands. Nikolai had excused himself before the coffee. Cid climbed the stairs with them, pecked them each on the cheek, smiled and said nothing. More than most, Troy thought, she would appreciate the dilemma of joining a tribe.
When she had gone their awkwardness remained.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘What do you make of it all?’
‘Tutti frutti,’ said Tosca.
And they went to their separate rooms.
Hours later, it seemed, he was awoken by the door of his room opening. Someone climbed into the bed, next to him, inches away, not touching.
‘Y’awake?’
‘Stupidest question in the world. Supposing I said “no”?’
‘But you are.’
He half turned to face her, and her hand pushed him back.
‘No, don’t move. Just stay still. We’ll go to sleep now.’
‘Before you do I have a question.’
‘Okey dokey.’
‘You rehearsed that bit of Mae West, didn’t you?’
‘Sure. Be yourself, you keep telling me. Takes practice. I been somebody else for years, I been several somebodies else—being me takes a lot of practice. Besides, it did no harm. He didn’t have a gun in his pocket and he was pleased to see me.’
When he finally decided that she was asleep, he squirmed around as carefully as he could and stretched out a hand. Before he could reach anything a sleepy, hoarse, bedroom whisper said, ‘Don’t touch.’
§33
In the morning she was still there. It was familiar and unfamiliar. He had not woken up next to Tosca in years. Not that he would or could forget it. Christmas Day 1948. But the unfamiliar troubled him. For the moment he could not quite put his finger on it.
It was early still. He lay and mused for a while, watched the sun dance behind the curtain, flapping gently in the open window, and listened to the birdsong. Then it dawned on him. He had last woken up in this bed next to someone in April. Or was it March? The week the sisters had forced him into getting a television. He had not seen his mistress in . . . weeks . . . months? He’d get hell for this. He could hardly put it off much longer.
The telephone rang. He reached over and picked it up before it rang twice, but Tosca had not stirred.
‘Hello, Troy?’ said Anna’s voice.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about you.’
§34
Troy and Anna always met at the Café Royal, in the Quadrant of Regent Street. It was pretty well midway between his office at Scotland Yard and her surgery in Harley Street, and her husband, who scavenged half the watering holes in London, had never, to their knowledge, been sighted in the Café Royal.
‘I’ve pushed my afternoon appointments on a bit,’ said Anna. ‘We’ll be OK till about half past two.’
Anna had begun as a pathologist, assisting Kolankiewicz. With the commencement of the National Health Service she had moved into general practice—struck a bargain with the striped trousers and fancy waistcoats of Harley Street and helped a bunch of incomprehending old men into the post-war world and a practice that combined treating those who could pay with treating those who no longer had to. Troy missed her skill at making sense and peace out of Kolankiewicz, but admired the idealism.
‘I thought we should meet,’ she said.
‘It’s been a while,’ he agreed.
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you.’
‘Me too. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. A bit of news, I suppose.’
‘Rightie ho—shall I go first?’
‘If you like,’ he said, sensing an imminent bollocking.
‘Angus is back.’
Angus was her husband. A preposterous drunk, a daring drunk, as decorated as Rod for the same reasons. A do-or-die RAF flyer who had done and had not died. But then he had not put the war behind him with the scarless aplomb that Rod had achieved. His benders were notorious. It had occurred to Troy that the real reason he was not seen at the Café Royal was that they wouldn’t let him in.
‘I didn’t know he’d been anywhere.’
‘It was a metaphor, Troy. I mean that he’s back with me. I mean that I’ve taken him back.’
Angus had never actually left the marital home. He had simply moved all that mattered about him to the planet Angus—and not for the first time.
‘You mean he’s sober?’
‘I think I do.’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘He says he wants to make a go of it.’
‘And that if he does he’ll stay sober?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’
‘You know Angus.’
‘I know that you can’t believe a word he says where booze is concerned.’
‘I know.’
She paused in a sadness that Troy could not fathom. Anger was so often more her modus operandi.
‘The thing is, you see, I want to believe him.’
‘Yeees . . .’
‘The thing is, I want to make a go of it.’
‘I see.’
‘I’m thirty-eight. We could still start a family. It’s not too late.’
‘Quite.’
‘It’s not as if we were passionate about one another.’
The ‘we’, he realised, referred to himself.
‘You and I never worked up much in the way of passion, did we?’
‘I suppose not,’ he agreed.
‘I mean—we came together sort of in the spaces in between.’
Indeed they had. It was a tune played only on the black notes of the keyboard. They had known one another since the second year of the war. It had been late 1949 before they had tumbled into bed, and perhaps for both their sakes they should have done it sooner, but the possibility had been inherent from the start—only her loneliness and his fecklessness had ever led them across the line he knew existed. He rather thought she knew it too.
‘If you like,’ he said.
‘I want to make this work, Troy, really I do. And for God’s sake stop saying “if you like”.’
She was crying quietly. Her handkerchief came out to dab at her eyes.
‘If you’d seen him when I married him . . .’
They hit silence. This was not a line he would pick up, not a sentence he ever wanted to hear the end of. Troy waited while she found composure. It was unlike her to show quite so much feeling. What they had in common, he had long thought, was the tearless cynicism of people who made their living in death.
‘It’s all right,’ he said at last. ‘I understand.’
‘Could you try to be a bit less understanding?’
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind. Why don’t you tell me your news?’
‘My news?’
‘Yes. You said there was something you wanted to tell me.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how to tell you this.’
‘Just spit it out. It can hardly be as deadly as what I’ve just told you, now can it?’
She smiled through the glaze of tears.
‘I got married the other week,’ he said simply.
The smile vanished. Slate clean.
‘Troy—you shit. You complete and utter fucking shit!’
§35
One Friday morning at Goodwin’s Court, late in July, Troy was cooking breakfast for the two of them. He had heard Tosca get out of the bath, her feet slap on the floorboards above, and begun to fry the bacon and heat a saucepan for the scrambled eggs. She had been an age in the bath. The scent of bath salts had drifted down the stairs, the sound of her rhythmical, rather flat and raspy singing had come with it, floating into the kitchen: ‘Gonna wash that man right outta my hair.’ He hoped it meant nothing. ‘And send him on his way.’ He was sure it meant nothing. He flicked on the wireless in time for the news. A best Home Service voice crackled forth.
‘It was announced in Alexandria last night that Egypt is
to nationalise the Suez Canal. Colonel Nasser has declared his intention to reject the terms of the 1888 agreement whereby Britain and France retain control of the canal until 1968. This is believed to be a response to last week’s withdrawal by Her Majesty’s Government of financial aid for the Aswan Dam project . . .’
The telephone was ringing. It had to be Rod. It was a Rod moment.
‘Mr Troy? Bill Bonser. Detective Inspector, Portsmouth CID.’
Troy moved the bacon off the hob.
‘How can I help you, Inspector?’
‘I was wondering if you could find a few hours to come down to Portsmouth. We’ve found the body.’
‘The body?’
‘Well . . . I say the body. I’m not one hundred per cent sure it’s him.’
‘Who?’
‘Him, sir. The Portsmouth spy.’
‘I hope I’m not being dense, Inspector, but what exactly has this got to do with me? It doesn’t sound like a typical case for the Murder Squad.’
‘No—it’s not. But it would seem you were the last person to see him alive.’
‘To see who?’
‘The spy, sir.’
The merest hint of exasperation was beginning to creep into his tolerance of rank.
‘I still don’t get it. When am I supposed to have seen him?’
‘Oh . . . How shall I put this without seeming rude. Have you by any chance been out of the country for a while? Away from the papers?’
‘As it happens I have. Most of June.’
‘Ah . . . then you won’t have heard. HMG named the spy about four weeks ago. Cockerell. Lieutenant Commander Arnold Cockerell, RN, retired.’
The name meant nothing to Troy. Then a mnemonic flash. Suede shoes. Suede shoes. The weaselly bloke, with the Ronald Colman moustache, the navy blazer and the suede shoes.
‘As I said, sir, we’ve a body. Fished out of the sea, over Chichester way on the far side of Selsey Bill yesterday morning. But we’re having a little difficulty getting a positive ID.’
‘Sorry, Inspector. I was being slow, but I’m with you now, and I can tell you that I wasn’t the last person to see him alive. Ex-Sergeant Quigley saw him after me, and he’s right on your doorstep.’