Madrigal

by John Gardner

  Madrigal

  John Gardner

  © John Gardner 2014

  John Gardner has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 2001, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1967 by Frederick Muller Ltd.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd

  For Susan

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgment

  Part One: The Last Liquidation

  Chapter One: Warbler

  Chapter Two: Nightingale

  Chapter Three: Shark

  Chapter Four: Dragon

  Part Two: Grimobo

  Chapter Five: Pigeon

  Chapter Six: Cat

  Chapter Seven: Owl

  Chapter Eight: Dolphin

  Part Three: Madrigal

  Chapter Nine: Corgi

  Chapter Ten: Fox

  Chapter Nine: Python

  Extract from The Secret Houses by John Gardner

  Tell me where is fancy bred,

  Or in the heart or in the head?

  How begot, how nourished?

  Reply, reply.

  It is engender’d in the eyes,

  With gazing fed; and fancy dies

  In the cradle where it lies.

  Let us all ring fancy’s knell:

  I’ll begin it,—Ding, dong, bell.

  All: Ding, dong, bell.

  Shakespeare, a madrigal from The Merchant of Venice

  Acknowledgment

  I should like to acknowledge the invaluable help and data given to me by Captain E. Mercer, DFC, Mr. Hugh Miller, Miss Miranda Riley, and Mr. Jon Tremaine, the mind-reader, part of whose act is described in Chapter Seven.

  Especially I am deeply indebted to Mr. Simon Wood, without whom this entertainment would never have been written.

  Part One: The Last Liquidation

  If you like it…Straight?

  Chapter One: Warbler

  Made poetry a mere mechanic art;

  And ev’ry warbler has his tune by heart.

  Cowper, Table Talk

  ‘Ach, Herr Oldcorn, it is good to see you again.’

  Boysie Oakes, yet to get used to his cover name, looked about him to see if the small man was addressing somebody else. Then, remembering that he was Oldcorn: ‘I don’t think’—Boysie stopped himself from finishing the sentence—‘we’ve met before.’

  ‘Nice to see you, Herr Warbler,’ he said instead.

  ‘Come. I have transport outside.’ Warbler, his face a picture of benignity, hustled Boysie to the Berlin hotel’s car-park exit like a smiling sheep dog.

  Warbler was a small man in whose conception Groucho Marx and Norman Wisdom could both have had a part. Like most of the foreign boys whom Boysie met in the field, Warbler was conspicuous. It seemed to have become a trademark. Gone were the days when operatives merged into the crowd, skulked black in the shadows, clad traditionally in belted raincoats. The secret sixties was a time for individuality. Perhaps it was the influence of the CIA. Warbler wore a long, checked gabardine and a cap to match. His age was indefinable, due mainly to the drooping and decidedly thin moustache that fell from his upper lip in an oval of wispy hair. His eyes, though shielded by gold-rimmed and thick glasses, flickering brown and merry, reminding Boysie of childhood winter evenings spent reading The Wind in the Willows.

  Warbler’s transport was a decrepit VW which looked as though it had been used as a practice vehicle for either stock-car racing or inexperienced panel beaters. Boysie’s nose turned up. ‘Got mine over there,’ he said cheerfully, pointing to the bullet-proof Jensen standing proud, aloof, and snobbish twenty yards away.

  Warbler’s eyes glistened. ‘We go in mine. I could not possibly handle a beast like that. Not in Berlin traffic.’ He chuckled.

  Warbler, thought Boysie, is a joker. The interior of the VW was as beat-up as the exterior. Bits of wire protruded from the rear off-side seat.

  ‘There are many birds in the spring in England,’ said Warbler from behind the wheel.

  ‘Yes,’ said Boysie, lost. There was a pause.

  ‘I said, “There are many birds in the spring in England.”’

  ‘And I said “yes.” Oh Lord.’ Boysie’s shuffled memory caught on the code-pass sequence. ‘Yes. And the cuckoo sings loudly. Who the hell thinks up those things?’

  ‘It is rumoured,’ said Warbler, putting the car in gear and starting off with a series of short kangaroo hops, ‘that it is the same person who writes slogans for film advertising. I’m sorry to rush you out like this but it is better that you should know the plan straight away. And it is safer to talk in the open.’

  He was negotiating the traffic with accomplished dash, causing Boysie’s stomach to whir like an egg whisk. They flushed out a covey of pedestrians bent on crossing the Kurfürstendamm and narrowly missed shunting a Merc 220. Boysie closed his eyes and rendered himself up to St. Christopher, whose medal hung from the dashboard. Warbler grinned and flicked the silver disc with his left forefinger. ‘I got that by accident.’ He chuckled.

  Boysie finally opened his eyes to see a sign that read Des Juni Strasse. ‘Where are we going?’ A plea more than a question.

  Another grin from Warbler. ‘The Reichstag, a suitable place for conference. Well, not exactly the Reichstag but near enough. The Platz der Republik in front of the Reichstag. It is good open ground and we will not be overheard. After, we can see the sights and enjoy ourselves.’ An all-embracing smile and a quick flick of the wheel to avoid a weaving cyclist.

  Boysie did not like to say that the last thing he wanted—at least until Griffin arrived—was to enjoy himself. Already the alternating hot and cold sweats were invading his nervous system. It had taken all Mostyn’s and the Chief’s charm, heavily impregnated with threats, to get Boysie as far as Berlin. Mostyn had promised it would be the very last ‘pressure.’ Boysie was the only person who could do it, the Chief had said. There would be an outstandingly large bonus—ten thousand pounds, Mostyn had said. (At this point they had handed out more drink.) Elizabeth’s jeer about growing up was still lingering in Boysie’s ears. Eventually he had come to the conclusion that, in his mid-forties, it was time to face the inevitable. This state, and the heavy alcoholic intake, had combined to suppress any marks of neurotic fear. Again, he had shown considerable resistance when they had outlined the circumstances of the forthcoming kill and the identity of the target. Boysie had never been one-up in the bravery stakes, and the thought of crossing the Berlin Wall, going right into the core of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, and disposing of his former mistress-enemy, Irish MacIntosh, had not appealed strongly. (Another round of drinks.) However, Mostyn had pointed out that even though Boysie held only a technical rank they could court-martial him in camera on a number of charges ranging from direct disobedience to cowardice in the face of the enemy. On reflection, Boysie had realised that this was all a load of old horse feathers. But the heat was on and the protesting Boysie had been driven by force of circumstances into the pipeline.

  *

  It had been just after ten o’clock on that damp evening when Boysie Oakes had brought his new silver-grey Jensen FF to a spectacular standstill outside the building which housed his flat off Chesham Place. He slid from behind the wheel and slammed the door viciously. Big, muscular, on the wrong side of forty, Boysie’s usually placid good looks showed signs of irritation. Getting out of the lift cage, he nearly trapped his hand, an incident that caused a spurt of foul language.

  Once inside, Boysie made straight for the bar, trickled a good quarter of a pint of Courvoisier into a balloon glass, and tripped the stereo switch on the Dynatron. Sinatra swooned ‘Memories of You’ across the palatial living room. Boysie pursed his lips and gazed at hi
mself in the mirror. He looked frightened, angry, and sweaty. He was frightened, angry, and sweaty—hair deranged and a mild pallor showing through the even sunlamp-inflicted tan. The reflection blurred. Boysie screwed up his eyes and the vision cleared. Too much booze. The eyes stared back from the mirror, watery, red-rimmed, not recognising what they saw. He stepped back to take an objective look. The set of the dark maroon tie was not right, flying one wing low. A stain slewed down one of the watered-silk lapels of his dinner jacket. Boysie lifted his chin, viewing the left profile—the Mona Lisa side. The corner of his mouth twitched in a spasmodic nervous tremor. Frank had swung into ‘I’ll Be Around.’ Boysie took a throat pull at the brandy and walked, as though through a mine field, to his favourite leather armchair and picked up the telephone. He misdialled, then got it right, rocking the chair to and fro as the signal brut-brutted at the far end of the line. The rocking motion fell into step with the signal. It went on and on, then the hollow clunk as the receiver was lifted. Heavy breathing. Someone had used a lot of energy getting to the telephone.

  ‘Hello?’ Elizabeth’s voice, whispering as though half MI5 was at her elbow.

  ‘It’s me. It’s Boysie.’ Taking up the whisper and trying to sound cheerful.

  ‘Boysie.’ Exclamation. Irritation. ‘What’s the matter? It’s nearly half-past ten and you know the situation. Sandy’s ill.’

  ‘Wanted to talk to you, Liz. Miserable, Liz. Please come home. Need help. Personal column. Come home all is forgiven love Boysie.’

  ‘Well, phone Suicides Anonymous or whatever they call themselves. You are drunk.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. I need you. Come over. Please.’ A staccato urgency, prerecorded in the brain while the telephone signal had been ringing.

  ‘Boysie, I can’t. You know I can’t. Sandy’s really poorly. She mustn’t be left. Doctor says I’ve got to stay with her.’

  ‘She’s only got flu.’

  ‘Only got.’ Internal combustion. ‘Yes. You only had flu last month. You were bloody dying, weren’t you? The last rites. Talk about Mimi.’

  ‘Liz, for Christ’s sake, I’m in trouble. In a jam. And who the hell’s Mimi?’

  ‘Bohème Mimi, you selfish oaf.’ Pause, followed by a slight change in tone. ‘Your jam, is it work?’

  Boysie’s reply did not come too quickly. He could never lie easily to Elizabeth. ‘You’re rotten. It’s Sandy, she’s been getting at you again.’

  ‘Is it work?’ Insistent.

  ‘Partly work. A jam.’

  A long silence this time. Elizabeth knew what Boysie meant by a jam; she had been on the fringes of so many that she was fully case-hardened. Elizabeth held the record as Boysie’s ‘London steady.’ At twenty-five she was his junior by almost a score, but three years previously a wet night, a film première, and a shortage of taxis had paired them off.

  Boysie, she was convinced, often thought lasciviously about that night, for he was never done confiding in her that despite a full life she had been his first virgin. She never had the heart to tell him that he had not seduced her. If anything, it was the other way round, and from the beginning she suspected that Boysie was no born seducer. His girl friends were usually available ladies. Yet since that first night, whenever Boysie was stationed in London, Elizabeth could usually be found at the scene of her undoing: the flat off Chesham Place. Otherwise she returned, for companionship, to the digs in Hammersmith shared with a fellow secretary at the Board of Trade—Sandy, a straight-laced Presbyterian minister’s daughter, who borrowed her underwear and stockings, read her long lectures about the inadvisability of being at the beck and call of a man like Boysie, and subscribed to both the Spectator and New Statesman.

  Elizabeth let the moralising slide swiftly in through one internal auditory meatus and out of the other. She knew exactly what Boysie meant to her. As a man he was an open book with which she was wholly familiar. Boysie’s foibles, fears, insecurities, fads, pomposities, and nightmares she had explored in depth. What remained unknown to her was the manner in which he kept himself in comparative luxury. He had something to do with Defence: he held a military rank and spent a great deal of time in Whitehall. She knew his immediate boss was a man called Mostyn—a figure able to put the hex on Boysie quicker than anything or anybody. Time and again he returned to Chesham Place angry and frustrated, hurling abuse and obscenities against the man. Once, at a West End first night, Boysie had pointed him out, a smooth-looking Mephistopheles with tight curls and the infuriating manner of one in high authority.

  From time to time Mostyn would call Boysie away on business. Always Boysie left like a man in some fearsome trance returning often to terrifying dreams. But Elizabeth never pried. She got her cut of the loot, in kind if not in cash, with a great deal of care, tenderness, and consideration thrown in. In return she tried to steer Boysie into those moments of peace and tranquillity which she knew lay at the vortex of his whirling life. Sometimes, lying awake in the restless early hours, she worried at the recurrent thought that he had somehow got into a quicksand not of his own making, a swirling clutching morass from which he could never be extracted and which would eventually suck him into oblivion.

  When Boysie was out of London, or even out of touch with her, Elizabeth sensed that he was often lost even to himself. There was also a stockpile of evidence which told her that she was far from being the only woman in his life. It was a great wonder to her that again and again he was pulled back, from luscious, sensual and sophisticated creatures, to her own dumpy, snub-nosed, ordinary workaday mind and body. Yet, in a befuddled world, Elizabeth felt that her relationship with this big, secretive, handsome, nervous, middle-aged clown was something to be envied. Whatever he did, she had the best of him; something she shared with nobody else.

  At the moment Elizabeth was absent from the Chesham Place flat only to nurse Sandy through a particularly vile bout of influenza. Boysie’s ‘jam’ could be one of three things—an urgent summons abroad on business, a clash with the infamous Mostyn, or the age-old problem. Elizabeth’s eyes were fully open to the fact that, once they were separated, it was a safe bet on Boysie’s being off with the first girl who showed interest.

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, a modest impression of an angry rattlesnake, ‘who is she? And how is it going to help if I come back?’

  Boysie swallowed, switching on his sincere voice. ‘Honestly, Liz, I’m sorry. I try. You know. I don’t mean to—’ He could not keep things like this from Elizabeth. ‘Oh hell, yes, I’m a bit pissed. You were away. I was lonely and fed up. I had the afternoon off.’

  ‘What else did you have off?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Do I know her or is she a public woman?’ Witch voice.

  ‘No. Nobody knows her. Except—oh hell, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘What’s her name?’ Patience screwed to the top of her head.

  ‘Susan Scrivinas.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I met her in Hatchetts.’ As though that excused the whole thing. ‘Quite accidentally.’

  ‘How accidentally? She dropped something and you picked it up, I suppose?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Liz. Truly she’s not that sort of—’

  ‘Girl. I know. None of them are.’

  ‘I knocked over her pink gin.’

  ‘Her pink gin—how absolutely devastating for you, and in Hatchetts.’

  ‘An accident. Truly.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And we had lunch together, then came back here.’

  ‘Original.’

  ‘Then I took her to the Whimsey.’ Shamefaced.

  ‘I never get taken to the Whimsey.’ Bristle.

  ‘You don’t like it. You hate the Whimsey. You told me.’

  ‘I hate you.’ It was the best repartee Elizabeth could manage.

  ‘Liz.’ Wheedling.

  ‘Where’s the trouble? All this is infantile. You�
�ve laid somebody else and now you’ve got drunk and maudlin and guilty.’

  ‘No. You haven’t heard the worst. We were having dinner and she suddenly started on the marriage line.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Truth. The love-at-first-sight bit.’

  ‘Serve you right. So?’

  ‘So, when was I going to meet Mummy and Daddy and they would adore me just as much as she did and how furious Mummy would be if she knew what had happened and her uncle would be especially livid—’

  ‘Her uncle?’

  ‘Her uncle. A colonel. Something very hush-hush. Name of Mostyn. Uncle Jimmy.’

  Elizabeth began to gurgle. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Left her at the Whimsey. Paid the bill and pretended to go to the loo.’

  ‘You walked out on her? You’ve done it proper, darling. She’ll have your—’

  ‘Liz.’

  ‘No, Boysie. Screw off. Isn’t it time you bloody grew up? You’re a rabbit, love. A dirty, great, middle-aged buck rabbit.’

  The line clicked dead. For a moment Boysie sat staring at the receiver clutched in his large paw. It was all Mostyn’s fault. Everything. When you traced trouble to its logical source the first cause always turned out to be Colonel James George Mostyn. Had not Mostyn conned him into the job? Offered him the golden carrot? The eternal Pools winner. In exchange for what? Death? A hundred deaths? It was Mostyn who had suggested a life of glamour, riches, and gloss. Ten years ago. Ten years of living it up. But the ball had become interspersed with horror, and with the horror Boysie was slowly declining into intense hatred. As far as British Special Security was concerned, for the best part of ten years Boysie Oakes had been their unofficial killer. The man with the code letter L—L for Liquidator.

  Boysie set the telephone back into its cradle. Almost immediately it started to ring.

  ‘Hello,’ said Boysie gingerly.