by Alec Waugh
‘Do you expect me to believe that? What about all my predecessors; didn’t you say the same things to them?’
‘There were no predecessors.’
‘There weren’t? What do you call them then? I know your answer. They were “bits of nonsense”. I was the real thing: that’s what you said to me, then. And what did you say to this wretched woman that you’ve got into trouble; that marriage is one thing, love another; that man is polygamous by nature; with a wife there is habit, security, a home, respect and mutual interests; but love, the corner table and the shaded lights, the stolen moments, that’s another thing, glamour, romance, poetic not prosaic living. I know, I know. With me it was that way once; but use and wont; the gilt comes off the gingerbread.’
Her voice rasped on. It was his turn now to listen and to wait. He let her talk; waiting for a chance to interrupt. He had half-forgotten his own trouble in the need to quiet her. He had forgotten his own self-doubt in the confident foreknowledge that he could quiet hers.
When at last she let him speak, his voice was full and firm and tender.
‘You can say what you like, and I don’t blame you for being suspicious, since I can’t tell you why it is so desperately important for me to get away, but you must trust me in this because this is true, you are the only woman in my life; by that I mean that you are the only woman I’ve made love to.’
‘What …’ she hesitated. ‘You always let me imagine that …’
‘I may have done, but that was vanity. You know what young men are. You know how they boast about their conquests; all those films and novels; all these articles in the magazines. A man is not supposed to be a man until he’s had a woman. All this modern psychology about the dangers of inhibitions. A man’s ashamed to confess that he’s a virgin.’
‘But you, Basil, I can’t believe …’
‘How could you be expected to; there’s so much talk about this, but … I don’t say that I’m entitled to a halo. It’s probably only luck, the way things turned out; I never had any city life. As soon as I left school I did my military service: I was posted to the Canal Zone where there were only veiled Moslem women and the dreariest kind of brothel. I went in once to have a look. … It was squalid; they were all so gross. I vowed to wait till something that was different from that came my way; then up at Oxford, I was working hard. So were the girls at Somerville and St. Anne’s. We were good friends but that was all. Sometimes I’d think it was time I did something about it, but … there was so much else in life. And that one sight of that Egyptian brothel had made me think. The first time, anyhow, it mustn’t be like that. I’d feel inquisitive and restless but there was plenty of time, I’d tell myself: then when I got a job with Pearl I was posted to the Middle East again; I only saw veiled women and equivalents for that Egyptian brothel. I won’t say it hadn’t begun to be a strain, but I’d made a vow with myself. It was something worth waiting for. I wasn’t proud of it. I wasn’t ashamed of it. Not to myself at least, though I’d have been shy of letting the other men know; I used to talk big; I gave the impression that I was an insatiable wolf; I sometimes wonder how much of men’s boasting isn’t simply talk. But all the time at the back of my mind I had the feeling, lovemaking is everything or nothing. It’s going to be everything for me. I wouldn’t have dared to confess that to anybody else. I’d have been laughed at as an old-fashioned Victorian. It isn’t fashionable nowadays to have ideals about that kind of thing.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’
‘For the same reason. I was shy. I’d have felt embarrassed. I was afraid that you’d despise me, think me half a man.’
‘But you, in your case, you …’
‘I know, I know, or at least maybe I do guess now, but then I was afraid. You might have refused to marry me.’
‘Oh darling, how absurd.’
‘But you can understand, can’t you, how I felt that way?’
‘Perhaps I can. At the start, but later, why didn’t you tell me later? You’d have made me so happy if you had.’
‘Perhaps I was keeping it up my sleeve as a trump card, guessing I’d need it some day, as I do tonight.’
Later in the dusk she said, ‘Now I’ll believe everything you ever tell me, everything but everything for ever.’
3
Next morning a letter from the familiar typewriter lay upon Basil’s desk. Was it a cheque? If it was one, should he sign? As well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. Four signatures to three. Did it matter much? But it was a chess problem. He set the pieces out. ‘Report interview Forrester.’ For a moment he was puzzled. Then he remembered. The V.I.P. He had told, in his last report that he had been asked by the policeman for an account of Reynolds’s visit. He had reckoned that it was the kind of useless information that would acquire him credit without doing any damage; but the Indian was more interested in this than in the other items he had given. Reynolds was due tomorrow. He himself was going into Kuala Prang the following week. He would call in and see him. He had a legitimate excuse for calling. He was anxious to know how the land lay there.
Forrester received Basil with his habitual bland geniality. As always the policeman gave the impression that he had nothing to do except talk to visitors.
‘Good, good, I was expecting to see you soon. I read that our V.I.P. had been down to see you. How did he strike you? He’s a pleasant fellow, isn’t he?’
‘Very pleasant.’
‘Did he show an intelligent interest in what you showed him?’
‘He’d been round camps before. He seemed to know the essential facts.’
‘I wonder why he wanted to go round this one. Did he ask many questions?’
‘A few. Mostly about the men who worked for us: what proportion were Chinese, things like that.’
‘Did he mention the attempt on Miss Marsh’s life?’
‘He wanted to see exactly where it happened.’
‘And how it happened?’
‘Yes, how it happened.’
‘Did he say anything that particularly struck you, something that seemed unusual?’
‘I listened very carefully as you asked me to, but I didn’t notice anything.’
‘The slightest thing may be important. That’s the curious fascinating thing about this game of mine. You can’t tell till the very end what is going to prove a clue and what isn’t.’
‘I don’t see how the visit of a man like Reynolds who has no connexion with the place could provide you with a clue.’
‘That puzzles me. I don’t see why there should be, but there may be. Perhaps I’m wrong. I don’t know; I’m getting old. Are you keeping a check on Pearl employees who go racing?’
‘I’m doing my best; but it isn’t easy. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘Exactly, but if enough people are looking for that needle, one of them may prick his finger on it. So much of police work is routine. That’s what the public has learnt from the Maigret stories. It still is one man’s brain against the criminal’s, but the detective gets his spade-work done by a whole team of sleuths and specialists. There’s a murder or a burglary and at once there starts an elaborate checking of bars and restaurants and hotels; of turning up files and photographs and fingerprints. It’s very necessary and very boring and then something happens, and you know that what you have been doing makes real sense. It’s waiting and watching; you’re in the dark most of the time, even when you know exactly what you’re after, whom you’re after. Look at that filing cabinet; I’ve got twenty cases there that are like so many pots simmering on a kitchen stove. One of them will come to the boil suddenly. The public imagines that when a big case is on a police officer concentrates exclusively upon that; but it isn’t so. His minor cases are still there. They can’t be dropped. There’s no one he can hand them over to; and they can’t wait.’
He spoke slowly, in a rhythmic lulling monotone. He had had constructed outside his window a screen of brushwood on to which water drippe
d slowly through a tap above. It was a device he had seen used in the Middle East. It cooled and freshened the air that came in from the streets. Basil watched a drop drip from the upper twigs, run slowly along a lower one, then drop on to the one below. The slow dripping of the water had the same mesmeric effect as Forrester’s voice.
‘I’ll tell you something else that’s curious,’ said Forrester, ‘about one’s having all these cases running at one time; sometimes a criminal gets off through that. There are only twenty-four hours in the day; people forget that. I’ve sometimes had a couple of important cases on my hands with two or three others pending: then something happens that strikes me as peculiar. I don’t quite like the smell of that, I think. But I haven’t time to give it my attention. If it really is serious, I assure myself, there’ll be a sequel to it; there isn’t, so I let the matter drop, but I wonder afterwards whether I haven’t missed a trick.
‘It works the other way too, of course. I may have an idle stretch; I often do; then something comes in that strikes me as slightly odd; not very, only slightly. If I was quarter occupied, I wouldn’t bother: but because I’m idle, I look into it; I look into it very thoroughly. I not only check up the man’s own character, I check up on all his friends, and then what happens? There are very few of us who would like to have all our secrets examined, to have every private letter read. None of us know what our friends are doing in their spare time. If you start investigating a man in one direction, you may catch him in another; or one of his friends. I remember a case of that during the war. I was suspicious about some hashish smuggling. I was mistaken, but while I was stumbling down that blind alley, I caught up with a very clever case of tax evasion. It pays to keep out of the police records. By the way, you are a chess fan, I remember. I wonder if you can solve this one for me.’
He pulled back a screen: behind it were two boards with the men set on them.
‘I’m like a schoolboy with a crib under my blotter. It wouldn’t be good for discipline if my staff saw the boards out in the open. Now look at this, white to play and mate in three moves. I’ve been on it for two days and made no progress.’
Basil looked at the board. It was very crowded.
‘There seem a great many pieces on the board,’ he said.
‘That’s what I feel myself.’
‘Where did you get hold of it?’
‘From a friend in England. We have a kind of tournament with one another.’
Basil studied the board. He could see no sign of an attack developing.
‘Could I take down the positions and try to work it out when I get back?’
‘I wish you would.’
On his return he arranged the pieces and took out his code book. ‘Situation dangerous lie low,’ he read.
4
Angus Macartney tried in vain to concentrate his attention on a novel. His father had caught another cold and he had come out from Kuala Prang in the early afternoon. He had expected Lila to telephone that morning, but she had not. ‘It’s difficult for me at times,’ she’d say. He couldn’t see why it should be. She had no work to occupy her. Her house was full of telephones. The exchange was so busy at the Residence that the telephone girl would have no time to check on private calls, it had been difficult for Blanche, yet Blanche had always managed. But then it had been different with Blanche. She had arranged her whole week round her visits to Kuala Prang. She had planned her routine in terms of them. Lila only came when she was in the mood, when there was nothing more amusing for her to do. She would ring him up at the last moment. If it was impossible for him to see her she was not in the least put out. ‘Better luck next time,’ she’d say, not a trace of disappointment in her voice. Sometimes she would ring up when he was out. ‘Too bad,’ she’d say next time she called him. ‘I was in the mood last Thursday. No, no, I can’t do anything today or tomorrow, on Wednesday possibly.’
She refused to make dates in advance. ‘That would be a bore. I might not be in the mood. If one’s going to have free love, let’s at least have it free.’
The mood, the mood. That was her perpetual refrain. She would drive him half-mad with her procrastination, her elusiveness. She would call him up every other day only to tell him she was not in the mood. She did not seem to care whether she ever saw him again. There were times when he’d decide that it was more than he could stand. There was no point in it. She only rang him up to tell him that she was busy. And then when he had reached breaking point, she’d be in the mood. ‘Will you be free in half an hour’s time? O.K. then, I’ll be round.’ And it would be a delirium of the senses of which he had not believed himself capable, that he did not know life had for giving.
Next day the pattern would be resumed: the delays, the evasions, the broken dates; and always there was this recurrent necessity to come down into the country to see his father.
‘If you don’t get me at my office, or at the flat, do ring me in the country.’
‘What’s the good of ringing you if you’re in the country?’
‘I’d come into town.’
‘That would take longer than I could wait.’
‘But you could call me a little earlier; you’d surely know two hours ahead.’
‘Oh, I don’t know; how can I tell? My life’s so occupied.’
‘With what?’
‘So many things, a woman’s things.’
‘But will you try?’
‘Oh yes, I’ll try.’
‘You’ve only got to give me ninety minutes’ warning. I’ll be where you like, when you like.’
‘That’s what I like to hear.’
She had laughed, light-heartedly, and rung off. That had been three days ago. It was eight days since he had seen her. If she rang him up this evening at his flat and got no answer would she call him here or would she shrug her shoulders with a ‘That’s too bad’ again? Why on earth wouldn’t she let him call her up? Why shouldn’t they admit a friendship? This wasn’t 1859. Friendships between men and women were accepted nowadays. They could go riding together, they could play golf together; there were a hundred and one alibis they could devise, but no, she had to play it her way. So here he sat, trying to concentrate upon a novel while his father lay in his long chair, breathing wheezily, his eyes half-dosed, struggling for breath, while his own ears were strained for the ring of the telephone. How long would it go on this way? He could not see an end. Eight days since he had seen her, the longest they had been apart. In terms of human friendliness—on that lowest level—she could not, how could she hold him off much longer.
His straining ears caught the crunch of car wheels on the gravel. It puzzled him. Visitors were rare. He rose, walked out into the hall. Through the door of a venerable family Chevrolet, shuffled a small shrivelled figure, bent like a monkey. Forrester.
‘Looked in to see how your father was; heard he’d caught another cold; silly of him you know; he ought to be more careful. Is he visible, as our French cousins say? Fine, and as he’s a rich man, I’m sure that he won’t neglect this old confederate. Yes, you’ve guessed right; and for heaven’s sake no ice in it. I’m not a Yank.’
Forrester curled up in a long chair and swung up his legs. He gave the appearance of having settled down for a long visit.
‘I’m too old for this job, yet I’ll be sorry to quit it,’ he said. ‘I’m curious to know what’ll happen next. There are so many questions to which I’ll never have the answer. I feel as though I were reading simultaneously half a dozen strip cartoons that can’t have an end because as soon as I’ve got to the end of one set of characters, another group will pick up the threads. A continual stream. You didn’t realize that when you were young, because there’s so much time and so many of the people you are meeting are older than yourself; you know that in their case you’ll see how it all turns out: but when you are as far down the course as I am and half your friends are half your age, you know that you are never going to see how stories finish. I find that tantalizing.’
&n
bsp; He was in a garrulous mood. Angus watched him closely. He was sufficiently familiar with Forrester’s routine to know that he never left his office except for a specific reason. Forrester had come here specially to see his father. Why? He was talking now about the political situation in Karak.
‘For instance, I’d give a lot to know how it’ll work out here. But within a few months of retiring I shall be out of touch. I shan’t see confidential reports, and the men who see them won’t keep me in the picture. Why should they bother? Anyway, it would be very wrong of them if they did. I’ve no longer a right to that kind of information. So I shall sit in a Sussex village, shivering before a fire, wondering what’s happening out here in the heat; and very occasionally there’ll be a little paragraph about Karak in the paper. Probably about some V.I.P. looking in here on a tour of the Far East or the Crown Prince having a son and heir. Nothing that will really tell me anything. Then one day Karak will be in the news; the balloon will go up. There’ll be a revolution, or an attempted revolution, somebody’ll be murdered: there’ll be a leading article explaining the background to the situation; there’ll be questions in the House; for three, four days Karak will be a topic of general conversation; then there’ll be some fresh sensation. Karak won’t be news, and nobody will think about it except the dozen or so men and women who once lived here.’
He paused, ruminatively. He might have been talking to himself.
‘I’d give a lot to know exactly what it will be that brings Karak into the news and when. I’ll tell you what I’d like to do. I’d like to choose half a dozen of the leading notables and ask them to write down what they think will happen in the next five years; then put their prophecies into sealed envelopes that are not to be opened until Karak hits the headlines. I wonder whose guess would come the closest?’
‘Yours should be,’ Macartney said.