Mexico Set

by Len Deighton

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  ‘Of course he is.’

  ‘I’d like to be good friends with you, George,’ I said. ‘Good friends with you both.’

  ‘Why?’ said George.

  ‘Why?’ I repeated.

  ‘We’re not exactly blood relations, are we? We only met because we married two birds who are sisters. You don’t care about me, and I don’t care about you. Why should you want to be friends with me?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said angrily. ‘So let’s not be friends. But I’m not screwing your wife and I’ve got no plans to try. And if you’re too bloody dumb to appreciate what I’m trying to say, you can go to hell.’

  ‘Dark-blue tiles in the dining room,’ said George, opening a sliding door and stepping through it. ‘Imported from Italy. Some people say tiles make a room too noisy. But in a dining room I like a bit of a rumpus. We’ll keep the same dining table. It’s an old piece of Victorian junk but it was the first piece of furniture my parents ever owned. My Dad bought it when they got married.’ He pushed his glasses up with his forefinger. “Course getting rid of the house in Hampstead won’t be any picnic. The property game is tough right now. I’ll lose money on it.’

  ‘I’m sure you explained that to the people you bought this place from,’ I said.

  He gave a quick, appreciative grin. ‘Ah, you’re right. Property is always a good investment, Bernard. And when the market is depressed a sensible man should buy the most valuable things he can afford. I’ll drop anything up to twenty-five grand on the Hampstead place but I reckon I’m getting this at about eighty grand less than it would go for in normal times. And I’ll do it through my own company’s pension fund and save a lot on tax.’

  ‘Tessa thinks you don’t love her any more.’

  ‘She’s led me a dance, Bernard. No need to tell you that. She’s been a rotten wife.’

  It was true. What could I say to him. ‘Perhaps things could be different. She feels neglected, George. Perhaps you give too much time to your work.’

  ‘My business is all I’ve got,’ he said. He raised the tape and measured the dining-room window for no reason except to have something to do with his hands. ‘She’s a cruel woman. You don’t know how cruel.’ He stepped through the doorway into the kitchen and his voice echoed in the smaller space. ‘I’m putting self-cleaning American ovens in here. The bloody fool who’s supplying them was practically telling me the German ovens were better.’

  ‘And are the German ovens better?’

  ‘I don’t care what they’re like; don’t expect me to buy anything German. My Dad would turn in his grave. Bad enough selling bloody Jap cars. Anyway, that idiot didn’t know an oven from a vacuum cleaner. You don’t think I go into a shop and ask the opinion of the people selling the goods, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘It would be like expecting someone to come into one of my showrooms asking me what’s the best sort of car. The best sort of car is the one that pays me the biggest mark up. No, the Americans are the only people who can design self-cleaning ovens.’ He sniffed. ‘She’s suddenly decided that she can’t drink anything but champagne. It’s costing me a fortune but I don’t stop her – she’s only doing it to make me angry. She thinks it’s very funny.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. She drinks champagne at my house too.’

  ‘She drinks it at a lot of houses but it’s always my champagne she drinks.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ I said.

  ‘She needn’t have made such a show of it,’ he said sadly. ‘She could have been discreet. She didn’t have to make me a laughing stock, did she?’ He opened the door of the highlevel oven and looked inside. ‘She’s a good cook, Tessa. She likes to pretend she’s a bad cook but she can make use of a decent kitchen.’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t realize…’

  He closed the oven door and then studied the complicated array of dials and the clock that controlled the cooking. ‘She realized. Women realize everything, everything to do with love affairs and those antics. Women realize that, all right. She realized that she was hurting me. Don’t make any mistake about that, Bernard.’ He said it without any rancour, as if discussing some particular feature of the oven.

  ‘I didn’t know you felt so bitter,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not bitter. Look at this apartment. Does it look as if I’m bitter?’

  ‘Tessa is worried that you went to Italy with someone else,’ I said tentatively.

  ‘I know she is. Let her worry.’

  ‘If it’s serious, George, you should tell her. It would be better for both of you.’

  He sighed. ‘My brother Stefan and his wife were on holiday in Rome. We spent a couple of days in the same hotel. Got it?’

  ‘So when Tessa asked for Mrs Kozinski the hotel thought she meant your sister-in-law? Why don’t you tell Tessa that?’

  ‘She never asked me,’ said George. ‘She lectures me and argues. She never asks me anything.’

  ‘Women are like that,’ I said. ‘You’re not thinking of a divorce, then?’

  ‘No, Bernard, I’m not thinking of a divorce.’ He stepped into another small room that had obviously been used as a laundry room. Even the plumbing for the washing-machine was still in the wall. The room was painted white with a grey-tiled floor and a central drain. ‘This would make a nice little darkroom, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  ‘But Tessa says she’d like a little room for sewing. Sounds a funny idea to me, having a room just for sewing, but that’s what she wants, so I said okay. There’s a bathroom that I can make into a darkroom. In a way it’s a shame to use a room with a good window for photography when I can easily make do with one of the inside rooms.’ He moved into the next room and tried the switch, even though he knew that there was no electricity. ‘The feelings I had for her have died, of course. There’s no love that can survive the battering that a constantly unfaithful wife gives.’ The daylight was disappearing and his face was rimmed with a reddish-gold line. He looked out of the window to get another glimpse of his parked car.

  I said, ‘It sounds like a grim prospect, George, living with someone you don’t love.’

  ‘Does it? It would to you, of course. But I’m a Catholic.’ Of course, how could I have forgotten? I felt a fool for having mentioned divorce, and George must have known that, for he quickly added, ‘No crucifix in the living room, no gold cross dangling round my neck, but I’m a Catholic and my faith is important to me. I’m up before six in the morning, so I can be at seven o’clock mass and not be late for work. My Dad and Mum were the same. Until Dad fell into the hold of a ship and smashed his legs and spent the rest of his days in the wheelchair. After that she took him to a later mass. Back in Poland both my mother’s brothers are priests. I wasn’t brainy enough for the priesthood but my faith is strong.’ He smiled. I suppose by now he knew how surprising such announcements could be to people who thought of him as a cockney capitalist who would bow only before Mammon. ‘It will be easier for me here. I’ll go to mass at Farm Street. I am Jesuitical…’ He smiled. ‘Always have been. And it’s only a few steps along the road. It’s a wonderful little church and I’ll get an extra few minutes in bed every morning.’ He smiled artfully but I couldn’t imagine anyone for whom an extra few minutes in bed would make so little difference.

  ‘She’s insecure,’ I said. ‘Tessa is insecure.’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’

  ‘She’s very vulnerable, George. She needs reassurance. You surely realize that all that flamboyance conceals a terrible lack of self-confidence. Fiona always said it was the second-child syndrome. And now I see it happening with my own children too. Tessa grew up in the shadow of a brilliant, strong-willed sister.’

  ‘You missed out the domineering father,’ said George. He took his hat from the ladder where he’d left it and said, ‘You’ve thought about it a lot, I can see. Perhaps we married the wrong sisters. Perhap
s you could have stopped Tessa going off the rails in a way that I failed to do.’ It was difficult to know if he was being sarcastic or serious.

  ‘And you could have stopped Fiona going off the rails in a way that I failed to do. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said George.

  ‘I’m beginning to think Fiona hates me,’ I said. I don’t know why I suddenly confided to him something I’d admitted to no one else, except that George had the dispassionate manner of a highly paid medical specialist. And of, I suppose, the confessor.

  ‘You’re a reproach to her,’ he said unhesitatingly. Perhaps he’d thought about it before. ‘You make her feel small. You make her feel cheap.’

  ‘You think that’s how she sees it?’

  ‘Betraying your country is like betraying your partner. And when a marriage breaks up it can’t count as a success for either party; it’s a mutual failure. How can Fiona bear to think of you continuing, business as normal with the job, the kids and the home. It makes her look silly, Bernard. It makes her look like a spoiled little girl playing at politics, no better than any of these loud-mouthed film actresses who like to pretend they’re political activists. Of course Fiona hates you.’ He had been toying with his hat but now he put it on his head, as a signal that he wanted to change the subject. ‘Now if you’d still like a drink, let’s go round to the Connaught. I prefer hotels and a comfortable place to sit down. I’m not very keen on pubs for pleasure. I see too much of them when I’m doing business. A sandwich too, if you like. I’ve nothing to go home for.’

  ‘It was my invitation,’ I reminded him. ‘Let me buy you dinner, George.’

  ‘That’s very decent of you, Bernard. I see you’re still running that old Ford. I wish you’d let me fix you up with something better.’

  ‘As a prospect, George, I’m a pushover.’

  ‘Good. Good. There’s nothing I enjoy more than selling a man a car,’ said George, and he seemed quite serious. He was relaxed now; a changed person now that our difficult conversation was over. Perhaps he’d been dreading it as much as I had. ‘And I’ve got a set of wheels that would be right up your street, Bernard. A couple of villains bought a car from me and got her ready for a big payroll hold-up. The brakes and steering are superb and she gave me a hundred and sixty up the motorway without a murmur of complaint. She’d come cheap, Bernard. Interested?’

  ‘Why cheap, George?’

  ‘The bodywork’s in poor condition and it’s not worth my while to do anything about that. When people come to buy cars they don’t want to know about brakes and steering, and not one in ten wants to look at the engine, Bernard. I buy and sell bodywork. I tell all my workpeople that.’

  ‘I’m interested.’

  ‘Of course you are. A battered-looking car that will kick sand into the face of a Mercedes 450 is just your style. Come and have a look at it some time. I’ll keep it for you.’

  ‘Thanks, George.’

  ‘I’ve had a funny sort of day today,’ he volunteered. ‘The police phoned up this morning and said they’d recovered a solid-silver wine cooler we’d had stolen. Not so very old, but it’s a lovely piece, very ornate. I thought I’d never see it again. A youngster who used to work for me as a mechanic had tried to sell it to an antique dealer at the Portobello Road market. The dealer guessed it was stolen and told the police.’

  Tessa’s ‘ice bucket’ was George’s ‘wine cooler’, I noticed. It was the same with so many things. They seemed to have so little in common that it was a wonder they’d ever got married. ‘You were lucky to get it back,’ I said.

  He took a last proud look at his new apartment before double-locking the front door and then turning the mortise lock as well. ‘The kid thought it was silver-plated Britannia metal; he didn’t recognize it as solid silver. Stupid, eh? That would make anyone suspicious. He was a good little worker too, only nineteen years old but I was paying him a very good salary. Strange thing to do; to steal something from a man’s home, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  But the ‘Jesuitical’ George debated against himself. ‘On the other hand, I exposed him to temptation, didn’t I? I invited him to a house with such valuable things on show. I have to bear some measure of guilt. I told the police constable that.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t get into a discussion about ethics and morality; he had quite enough trouble trying to understand the law.’ George laughed. ‘Criminal activity is one per cent motivation and ninety-nine per cent opportunity. You must have heard me say that, Bernard.’

  ‘It sounds familiar, George,’ I said.

  23

  The prospect of returning to Mexico – even without Dicky – was daunting. I wanted to stay here; to see more of the children, get a bellyful of home cooking and an earful of Mozart. Instead I was headed for a round of plastic hotels, ‘international cuisine’ and Muzak.

  I got home before midnight, having spent a pleasant evening dining with George. He’d gone on about what he described as exactly the right car for me: ‘Shabby appearance but a lot of poke under the bonnet.’ Was that what George felt about me, or subconscious reflections upon his own shortcomings?

  I couldn’t go to bed until the duty messenger arrived with my airline tickets. Feeling sorry for myself. I wandered into the nursery and fingered Sally’s ‘Joke Book’: ‘How do you catch a monkey? – Hang upside-down in a tree and make a noise like a banana.’ And in Billy’s book of children’s verse I found Kipling:

  Five and twenty ponies,

  Trotting through the dark –

  Brandy for the Parson,

  ‘Baccy for the Clerk;

  Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

  Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

  And I’d promised to get batteries for their radio-controlled racing car and try to mend Sally’s Donald Duck alarm clock. I’d missed both their birthdays this year and now they were packed off to Tessa’s cousin. I felt guilty about them, but I couldn’t refuse to return to Mexico. I needed the department’s backing.

  If I said goodbye to the department I had no qualifications that would get me a comparable pay packet elsewhere. The department wouldn’t fix a job for me. On the contrary, there would be those who’d say my resignation showed I was implicated in Fiona’s activities. That had been made clear enough at the meeting. There was no choice but to be an exemplary employee of the department, a reliable professional, who produced solid results while the others produced empty rhetoric. And if, as I did my job without fear or favour and cleared myself of suspicion, some of the department’s more outstanding incompetents got trampled underfoot, that would suit me fine.

  The doorbell rang. 11.45. My God, but they took their time. There had been no sound of a motorcycle, and that was unusual for deliveries at this time of night. Bearing in mind Werner’s ominous warnings about KGB hit teams, I opened the door very cautiously and stood well back in the shadows.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Samson. What’s the matter?’ It was Gloria Kent. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were expecting a motorcycle messenger, were you?’

  She was damned quick on the uptake. ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Can I come in for a moment? I’m on my way home from seeing my boyfriend.’

  ‘You’ve missed your last train,’ I said sourly. ‘Yes, come in.’

  She was wearing a fur hat and a tan suede coat, trimmed with brown leather. Its big fur collar was buttoned up to the gold-coloured scarf at her throat. The coat was cut to emphasize her hips, and the flare of its hem meant you couldn’t miss the shiny leather boots. I noticed the McDouglas Paris label as I took the coat from her to hang up. It was lined with some expensive-looking fur. It wasn’t a coat you could afford on the salary of a Grade 9 executive officer. I supposed those people in Epsom must have had very well-cared-for teeth.

  She sat down without invitation. She had a small case with her and she kept this by her side
. ‘I wanted to say thank you,’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For not sending me back down to Registry. For letting me stay upstairs and help your secretary. I thought you’d be angry. I thought you’d get rid of me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to suffer for my error of judgement,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Could you spare a very small glass of that delicious brandy I had last time? Martell, I think it was.’

  ‘Sure.’ I poured small measures into two glasses and gave her one. ‘Did you leave some bath oil here? Secret of Vénus?’

  ‘Oh, good. Did you find it?’

  ‘My sister-in-law did.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Gloria laughed and drank half of her brandy in one go, and then all but coughed. ‘It’s cold tonight,’ she said. She put the glass down and got the case on to her knees. ‘I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened. I felt the least I could do was to make up for the damage I did.’ She opened the case. It contained men’s undershirts and underpants, all new and in transparent wrappings.

  I wasn’t going to let her make a fool of me a second time. I wondered if some of the other girls in the office were in on the joke. ‘It’s not my size,’ I snapped.

  She looked dismayed. ‘But it is. “Marks and Spencer’s; Cotton; Large.” I noticed when I was…when I was cutting them up. I’m terribly sorry about that, Mr Samson. It was a childish thing to do.’

  ‘We were both childish,’ I said. She didn’t smile, but I was still uncertain about her.

  ‘But I was the one who did the damage.’

  ‘I’ve replaced them. I don’t need them.’

  ‘I thought about that. But Marks and Sparks are very good at changing things. They even let you have cash refunds…’ She looked at my face as she took a large manilla envelope from the case. ‘Your tickets for Mexico City are here, and there’s three hundred pounds in traveller’s cheques. The tickets and cheques are made out in the name of Samson but I could change them first thing in the morning if you are on some other passport. If you want to use them, the traveller’s cheques should be signed right away; the cashier’s office hates letting them go out of their hands blank like this. Your secretary wasn’t sure about what name or passport you’d be using. She said you preferred to keep that sort of information to yourself.’