Frances saw: it was a big new bottle of Glenfiddich from a tall cylindrical case, 86 per cent U.S. proof, out of the nearest duty-free air terminal or American base. It burned her throat as she sipped it.
At last he sank down into the chair opposite her, breathless from his exertions. So far as she could remember, she hadn’t yet said a single coherent thing to him, least of all to ask where Paul Mitchell was—why the Dower House was Paul’s new headquarters.
‘Relief, my dear! The blessed relief of seeing you… And I know all about you now, too. All about you!’
That was a conversation stopper. Frances burned her throat again, speechless.
‘I’ve been so worried about you. I haven’t been so worried since the weather report they gave us before D-Day—“Shall we go or shall we stay?” I never admired Ike more than then, that was’his moment. We’d discussed it, of course—every probability, every possibility. The state of the beaches, and so on. But I was to be one of his men on the spot, so I had to put my money where my mouth was, it was no problem for me—if I was wrong I wouldn’t be there afterwards to worry about it. But he had to make the decision, and then sit around and wait to see how it turned out—I felt for him. But I really thought I’d guessed what that was like, but do you know I hadn’t at all, not at all!
Not until I started to worry about you, young lady.’
In spite of the fire outside her and the malt inside her, Frances felt a chill shiver her.
‘I’m sorry—‘ she croaked, the chill and the Glenfiddich interacting.
‘And so you should be. You told the Death Story!’
‘The Death Story?’
‘Yes. And then you didn’t die. Such effrontery! When we strolled over to the pond—and you were as cool and calm and collected as though you were about to feed those beastly birds with bread—-I was much more frightened than on Sword beach. I thought you were going to take me with you—absolutely petrified I was, I can tell you!’
‘I’m—I’m sorry, Professor. You’ve quite lost me now,’ said Frances.
‘I suppose I should still be worried, for it’s still on the end of your finger—‘ He stopped suddenly. ‘Unless you’ve killed somebody already, of course. Have you killed anyone during the last twenty-four hours, by any chance? You don’t look as if you have, but one can never tell these days…’
‘Killed anyone?’ The chill was an ice-block now.
‘Or presided over a death, perhaps?’ Crowe looked at her hopefully. ‘Or even seen a death? An accident would do, so long as you were nearby. Have you pointed at anyone?
Or touched anyone deliberately?’
Frances thought of Rifleman Sands. He was old enough, and frail enough. But he had done all the touching. And she very carefully hadn’t pointed at the young man in the petrol station—Paul’s inexplicable advice had been loud in her brain then.
‘No.’
‘Well, we’ll have to leave it to Jack Butler. Perhaps that’ll qualify.’ He blinked at her uneasily.
The Death Story.
‘I—am sorry. Professor. But just what is the Death Story?’
‘My dear…’ She watched the scholar take over from the old man with his memories of Sword Beach and Eisenhower ‘… your so-called fairy story—the ugly princess and the blind prince—have you no idea what you really did?’
She knew exactly what she had done: she had told a fairy story—Granny’s creepy fairy story—to take the heat off herself in the Common Room of the new English Faculty Library. And although there had been a bomb just under her feet, no one had died after that—Horrors, though: she had also told it to Robbie that last time, to get him searching for its origin among his books—to get his mind off going to bed with her.
Successfully, too.
And then Robbie had stepped off the pavement, and tripped over his big feet, three days later as the armoured pig was passing.
Was that success, too?
It wasn’t possible. It was pure fancy—as accidental and coincidental as Sir Frederick’s wild idea that she had some special wild skill in picking right answers. It was no more than some aberrant mathematical figuring by men who ought to know better.
All the same. ‘The Death Story?’
Crowe nodded. ‘Yes … I’ve been checking up on it, as a matter of fact. A lot of fairy stories can be explained in terms of very simple psychology. For example, little girls like fairy stories because of their oedipal problems—they can identify with beautiful princesses held captive by jealous step-mothers because that makes them unavailable to a male lover, which is their father. All of which is not something I like to go into, because it mixes up quite normal enjoyment of good stories with the most terrible pubertal situations. One ends up with Walt Disney’s Snow White as a really frightful story of sexual jealousy … and, frankly my dear, I won’t have that. Academics must be careful when they find they’re playing with fire.’
He gazed for a moment into the heart of the fire, and then came back to her. ‘But your story is different—with a different root. But it also seems to … play with fire, as it were.’
‘I don’t see how.’ Frances took a firm grip on her imagination. Robbie’s death was an accident. Accidents happened all the time. That was the beginning and the end of it. ‘It’s just a fairy story. With a happy ending, too—a eucatastrophic ending. Professor.’
‘Hah!’ For a moment he twinkled at her for being an attentive student, then he was serious again. ‘Your story is. My story isn’t.’
‘Then tell me your story. I’m not superstitious.’
‘Bravely said! And the ritual challenge, too: where did you pick it up?’
Frances sighed. ‘As usual. Professor, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I don’t think you have to know. You are your Grandmother’s grand-daughter, I suspect!’
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘So I am! Forgive me…. Very well. But first I will demolish your story, my dear.
Forget about the three princes. There is only one—the third, of course. The other two are medieval accretions. Or, more accurately, bowdlerisations of a sort.’
‘A dirty fairy story?’
He ignored her irreverence. ‘One prince, then. He comes upon a hideous old woman, but because he’s blind that doesn’t matter to him. He makes her young again by kissing her; she was a beautiful young thing all the time, just bewitched. And they lived happily ever after. Presumably he was bewitched too, and the moment he gives the kiss he receives his sight in exchange?’
‘That wasn’t in my story.’
‘Good. Forget the bewitching too, anyway. But then what do we have.’
‘No story.’
‘We have a hideous old woman—a real woman. Once she was young and beautiful, like you. Now she is old, and nothing works properly any more—Candide’s “old woman” to the life: “My eyes were not always sore and bloodshot, my nose did not always touch my chin…. My breast was once as white as a lily, and as firmly and elegantly moulded as the Venus de Medici’s.’” He shook his head sadly. ‘It happens to all of us, except those- the gods love, who die young, before they know the humiliation of missing a train because they are afraid to run that last fifty yards, as I am now.’ He smiled at her. ‘And I swear I clipped two seconds off the 220 record on Sword Beach that morning, running in boots on sand, armed cap a pied—I wasn’t sure that the gods didn’t love me, I suppose!’
It was Rifleman Sands all over again, thought Frances. It was one weakness that women didn’t have, because they’d always missed battle and sudden death—this remembering with advantage their deeds of daring.
Crowe held up his finger. ‘Can she be delivered from all this? Of course she can! One kiss—and no more ugliness, no more aches and pains. No more remembrance of all that’s been lost, and all that might have been but never was. One kiss—and either nothing, or youth and beauty again for ever and ever. Happy ever after!’
He nodded. ‘I
t’s pre-Christian, of course. Or pre-medieval Christian—they were the ones who made the Prince himself ugly and frightening, before them he was a god, and a beautiful and merciful god in his own right. And a god who rewarded you if you played the game properly.’ Crowe pointed at the Glenfiddich bottle, and then at Frances herself. ‘Valhalla is good whisky and pretty women. No one who offers that can be ugly—it’s against reason!’
He stared at her, for all the world as though imprinting her specification on his memory, with the Glenfiddich, for future reference.
‘The trick, my dear, is to call the Prince up when you want him. If I’m right … your Grandmother—she knew it. Pass the story on, and die—that’s the Neapolitan version of it. When you’re tired of fighting, tell the story—and summon the Prince of Death!’
He frowned suddenly. ‘But the trick has a catch to it: once you’ve told the story you have to pay the score. Because if you don’t, then someone else will have to. It’s as though you’ve summoned him—it’s actually called “The Summoning Story” in one version—and he’s not going to go away empty-handed. The Neapolitans say that the Grandmother has a choice—she can point at someone who is dear to her. Or she can let him choose at random, in which case he’ll choose someone dear to her, so it amounts to the same thing.
He likes the youngest and best, for choice.’
It was totally insane. It was an old man’s macabre game, nothing more than that. He had read his own book on superstition too often.
‘Fortunately—very fortunately—you are not a grandmother yet, so it may not work for you like that. And also Colonel Butler may be able to provide you with a substitute, it now seems likely.’
‘What?’
‘Haven’t you been brought up to date?’ He smote his forehead. ‘No—of course! You haven’t seen your young man yet—the dashing Mitchell. But David Audley will be able to put you in the picture.’
‘David’s here—now?’ Frances sat up.
‘Very much so. Though … I gather … unofficially.’ Crowe glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece above his fire. ‘He should be back here—I thought he was you, at the door.
Except he doesn’t knock, he always barges straight in. He hasn’t changed one bit over the years…. Anyway, he went off to find young Mitchell, I think, to ascertain from him the whereabouts of his friend Colonel Butler.’
Frances frowned at him. ‘What did you mean—“Colonel Butler may have a substitute”?’
‘I think so. He’s about to catch that fellow O’Leary—he thinks he’s going to catch him alive, but David believes otherwise.’ He looked at her, eyes bright with excitement which he probably hadn’t felt for years, thought Frances—maybe since he had sprinted across his Normandy beach. Teaching students English literature for half a lifetime would be no substitute for that drug, at a guess.
‘You know a lot that’s going on. Professor?’
‘That I shouldn’t, you mean?’ He twinkled again happily. ‘Well, you started it, my dear… Or you started it again, I should say. I was half in your line of business after the war, but they were making such a fearful mess of it that I got out of it as soon as I decently could, before I was too old to do anything else. That would be about the time Jones did the same thing—R. V. Jones … though I wasn’t in his class, of course…. Helping to win a war is one thing—it’s rather stimulating, actually. But losing a peace can be intolerably frustrating.’
He regarded her mildly.
‘I’ve kept in touch to some extent, but I’m really no more than an interested spectator.’
Frances counted up to ten, for the sake of good manners. ‘Colonel Butler is going to catch O’Leary?’
‘That is my impression. You seem surprised?’ She didn’t know how to answer that.
For some reason she was surprised: the reason lay in the atmosphere of ants’ nest disaster she had left behind her here only forty-eight hours earlier. Yet even then.
Colonel Butler had been in the middle of the nest, but not part of its confusion, she remembered.
‘He is a man with great drive and will-power, your Colonel Butler.’
The spectator’s detachment was evident.
‘And, what is rarer with that conjunction, of some intellect, I fancy—though he is at pains to conceal it under a khaki manner.’ Crowe contemplated Colonel Butler’s virtue for a moment. ‘So … we have had much excitement here, these last twenty-four hours. Already one of my staff in the Library has been detained. And one of our post-graduate students is … helping the police with their inquiries, as the saying goes.’
Frances frowned with the effort of recollection. There had been Dixon and … and Collins. And Penrose and Brunton—Brunton the Great American Novel seeker, who had been unveiling his girlfriend when the Minister was scheduled to unveil the new Library. And if that, in retrospect, was too good an alibi to be true, she would have staked her reputation on both Collins and Dixon.
‘Now you are surprised,’ said Crowe. ‘But you must accept, my dear, that life goes on, and great events occur, even when you are not there to observe them. Remember the Youth in Crane’s Red Badge’, his armageddon was only a skirmish, and the real battle was being lost and won on another part of the field. That is a very important lesson to learn—‘ He looked up, and past her, over her shoulder ‘—wouldn’t you agree, David?’
Frances stiffened. As she swivelled in the direction of the Professor’s look her bare shoulder reminded her of her relative state of undress, and of Marilyn’s appalling hair, but there was nothing she could do about her appearance.
‘The whole bloody battle can be irrelevant,’ said David Audley. ‘Battle of New Orleans—January, 1815. Peace Treaty of Ghent—December, 1814. Everything’s a matter of communication. Or lack of communication, in this instance.’ He acknowledged Frances with an incurious blink, without a second glance. She might just as well have been stark naked, or dressed as a nun, for all he cared, the blink indicated. ‘Hullo, Frances.’
Come to that, he looked decidedly rough himself, Frances noted. The good suit was creased and rumpled, the shirt was well into its second day, and the unspeakable Rugby Club tie—thin magenta and green stripes on yellow, ugh!—revealed his top shirt button, which was undone, even though the tie itself was savagely pulled into a tiny knot. He hadn’t shaved either, and altogether he didn’t look like a would-be emperor, even of a dying empire.
‘They’ve both gone hunting with Jack Butler, Hugo. The whole damn place is crawling with Special Branch—it’s like the Fuhrer’s bunker, the Science Block, there’s no way I can get into it. I was able to talk to Jock Maitland for a moment or two, thank God—he can be trusted to hold his tongue if no one asks him any questions, but he didn’t know much. How the hell Jack bamboozled the University into installing all that equipment, I’ll never know.’
‘Money, dear boy. Your people stopped their mouths with gold, it never fails; Applied Science is king at the moment, and they’ve been offered all sorts of grants to turn a blind eye to it. Besides which your Jack can be very charming, you know.’
‘I don’t know—not with me, he isn’t!’ said Audley feelingly. ‘The long and short of it is … I don’t know what the hell’s going on out there, anyway, Hugo. Except that Jack’s busy routing out an old KGB contact of his somewhere.’
‘They are about to ensnare O’Leary—I told you, dear boy,’ said Crowe.
‘Not alive, they won’t. The information they’ve got is false—he may be regular KGB, but he’s not Russian either—he’s Irish. And I had that from those Irish madmen in the CIA. He’s a bloody kamikaze pilot, that’s what he is.’
‘So you said,’ murmured Crowe mildly. ‘So they will kill him.’
‘That’s not what I’m afraid of—‘ Audley caught himself up short and looked at Frances. ‘Bad manners. I’m sorry, Frances. I’ve got a headache. And part of a hangover … which has been dosed by a crazy pilot in the United States Air Force with an old Indian recipe of hi
s, so the part of me that isn’t hung-over now feels as if it’s been bitten by a rattlesnake…. On top of which I’ve got jet-lag, and I don’t know whether it’s Monday or Christmas. It feels like Monday.’
‘It’s Friday,’ said Frances. That was one thing she really did know. ‘Friday, the eleventh of November. In the afternoon. Hullo, David—good afternoon.’
‘And good afternoon to you, Frances. Although it isn’t.’ He removed his rain-smeared spectacles, wiped them with a grubby handkerchief, put them back on, and stared at her out of eyes like blood-oranges. ‘Why, incidentally, are you partially unclothed?’
‘She got wet, dear boy,’ said Crowe. ‘Like you.’
‘Eh?’ Audley looked down at his jacket: ‘I see—yes. It’s raining, isn’t it!’ He brushed ineffectually at his shoulders.
Frances felt herself smiling. The longer David was away from his wife, the more like a tramp he became. It was hard to imagine him as the source—or, rather, to imagine his abilities and his unpopularity—as the source of all their recent troubles.
He gave up brushing. The blood-oranges came back to her again.
Frances decided to get her information in first. ‘You know I’m responsible for calling you back?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve talked to Jake Shapiro. He was at the base waiting for me, the bastard.’
But how was she going to say it? He was back, and now she didn’t need him. He would roast her, and Sir Frederick would also roast her in due course. And then she would resign, and that would be that. But the inevitable outcome, which no longer worried her at all, did not solve the problem of how to break it to him now.
‘No need to be scared, love.’ Audley misconstrued her silence. ‘You did the right thing.’
‘I did?’ He wasn’t making it any easier.
‘Fred Clinton had you figured right, as my CIA buddies would say.’ Suddenly he was grim. ‘Fortunately.’
She stared at him. ‘What?’
‘You and Mitchell between you. A perfect recipe for disobedience. Or initiative, as Horatio Nelson applied it.’
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