The Unfortunate Englishman
Page 34
§169
At Grünetümmlerstraße Erno was still awake. Still at work. He glanced up as Wilderness came in. Looked at the mess he was in, but asked no questions. Flipped his eyepiece back down and hunched over his desk.
“You look as though you might need stitches, Joe.”
“I’ll live, Erno. Where is everybody?”
“Frank has not been back since you threw him out. Who knows, if we are lucky he may never come back. Eddie phoned from the Kempinski a while ago. No one can get any sleep, so Alleyn has taken Eddie on at chess. I wish him luck. I was never able to beat Eddie at chess. And Nell left you this.”
Wilderness turned the envelope over in his hands.
“And this is what exactly?”
“I believe it is her address, the one she has always made me promise never to give you. I wonder what you said to change her mind, but I shall not ask.”
Wilderness looked at the three letters on the envelope as though they were written in Linear B . . . J-O-E. Quite incomprehensible. He stuffed it in his pocket, kicked off his shoes, slewed off his mac, and fell onto the sofa.
“And Mr. Masefield, Joe?”
“At large. That’s as much as I know and right now as much as I care.”
“So . . . Yuri saw sense?”
“Yuri saw nothing. He was dead when I got there.”
This made Erno pause. The pen went down, the eyepiece hinged to his spectacles went up.
“Natural causes I hope?”
“Yep. His heart gave out.”
“I wonder . . . is this sadness I feel at the passing of a total bastard? And is bastardy ever total?”
“He had his good points. They’ll be interred with his bones.”
“You know how I met him? At the end of the war. May ’45. He was the lover of Nell’s mother, and when she died he was Nell’s protector. One of us will have to tell her he’s dead.”
“Yeah. One of us. One day.”
“He never asked for anything in return, never laid a hand on her. At a time when everything had its price and the price of everything was sky-high. That was rare.”
“Yeah. Well . . . could we save the total bastard’s wake till morning? I am totally knackered. Erno, I am the walking dead. I have to sleep.”
“Take the bed, Joe. I will be up most of the night finishing your passport.”
“You got everything you need. Photo and so on? Stuff . . . ?”
“Yes. I have stuff. But you set me a task with all the names. Why so many?”
“Just a whim.”
He lurched into the bedroom. Felt the onset of dream or delirium, asleep and awake at the same time. Numbed desire as a muttered mantra
. . .
I
need
sleep.
I
need
sleep.
I
need . . .
. . .
Wilderness slept.
Nell Burkhardt tumbled through his dreams.
An age rolled over.
He woke to find himself clutching the unopened envelope.
And clutching the photograph of Joan and Molly that he kept in his wallet. He’d no memory of taking it out. He propped the envelope and the photograph up side by side on the bedside table. Joan was grinning like an idiot, Molly staring quizzically down the lens with a po-face worthy of Nell Burkhardt.
There was no rush to do anything today . . . if today was the day after and he had not slept two days or a week. There was no rush . . . he might open the envelope later.
After breakfast.
There was no rush . . . he might never open it.
§170
The Irish Sea: December 23
On the ship, Deirdre of the Sorrows, crammed with people going home for Christmas, an hour or so out of Liverpool, Alleyn looked at his passport again. It wasn’t hard to guess why Joe Holderness had “made” him Irish—he must have rambled on far too much, told Holderness far too much . . . all those visits to his wife’s family among the protestant ascendancy, the kith and kin that ran south from Killiney bay all the way to Cork. It was a simple cover and simple covers were to be relished. But why so many names? James Vincent O’Flaherty de Lanier Wilde? Was this Holderness’s joke? The plain English of James, the pure Irish of Vincent O’Flaherty, the touch of Norman French in de Lanier . . . the utter outrageousness of Wilde.
Try as he might he could not seem to remember them in the right order.
He tried a mantra—penetrating repetition . . .
James
Vincent
O’Flaherty
de Lanier
Wilde
And back again . . .
Wilde
de Lanier
O’Flaherty
Vincent
James
Much as he had done twenty years ago with
Bernard
Forbes
Campbell
Alleyn
Alleyn
Campbell
Forbes
Bernard.
Now, on a whim, he was Wilde.
The moment he was dreading never came. He passed silently and swiftly through customs, to find there was still no passport control. No need at all to recite his list of names.
He stepped out into the Dublin streets, sheathed in all the anonymity of a fake passport and a gabardine mackintosh. A new identity, another identity to add to those he already had.
It was coming on to rain, a grim sky overhead.
“Taxi, sorr?”
He found himself facing a cabbie. Why not?
He climbed in.
The cabbie slung his suitcase in the front rack, and as he slipped into the driving seat leaned over to ask, “Now, sorr, where to?”
Alleyn looked back at the roughly pleasant, smiling face, felt the whiff of whiskey on his breath.
All he knew was what Holderness had told him, that when Kate had finally walked out on him after the trial she had done as she had promised, and taken the girls back to Ireland with her. Holderness had written her address down on a piece of paper for him. Alleyn had not asked how he had obtained such information. Nor had he read what was on the paper. He kept it tightly folded in his wallet. A Pandora’s box. All he knew was what Holderness had told him, that Kate and his girls were somewhere in Ireland.
“Where to, sorr?”
“I don’t know,” Alleyn said. “I really don’t know.”
Tomorrow.
He’d read the address tomorrow.
Pandora’s box.
He’d face her wrath tomorrow.
The cabbie stared at Alleyn.
Alleyn stared at the envelope.
“Are you lost, sorr?”
“Yes,” said Alleyn. “I do believe I am.”
There was no rush . . . he might never open it.
§171
London: December 24
Wilderness answered the doorbell not long after breakfast. A bloke he’d never seen before—Aquascutum overcoat, cashmere scarf, pigskin gloves, not a hair on his young head out of place—was standing by a black cab. The engine was still running, a plume of exhaust trailing in the Christmas cold, a grumpy-looking cabbie stacking cardboard boxes on the doorstep.
“Mr. Holderness? I am Anatoly Ruslanovich Dobrynin. Soviet embassy. Would you sign here please?”
“What is it?”
“I believe it is eighty bottles of Mouton Rothschild ’29. There is a note. Here.”
Wilderness opened the note.
Shall we consider this account settled?
Arkady Vasilievich Anakin
The cabbie gave out one of those contrived London cabman’s theatrical sighs that implies that the
tip cannot possibly be big enough. The last box was torn at the corner. Wilderness signed the receipt, bent down and pulled out two bottles of claret. Gave one to each of them.
“Please convey my thanks to Arkady Vasilievich, and report that my answer to his question is ‘yes.’”
The cabbie hefted his bottle.
“Mowt . . . mowt . . . wot is it?”
“Russian beer, best drunk by the pint. Knock it back as quick as you can and don’t let it touch the sides on the way down. It’s traditional.”
“Right you are, guv’nor, very kind I must say. A merry Christmas to you.”
As the cab disappeared at the end of the lane the postman wheeled his bike to Wilderness’s door.
“Mornin’, Joe. Half a dozen for the missis and just the one for you.”
“Has Judy given you your Christmas box?”
“Nah. Not yet.”
“Then help yourself to a Russian beer.”
“Russian beer, eh? Funny-shaped bottle. What’s it taste like?”
“Brown ale.”
Wilderness opened the one letter addressed to him.
A Christmas card depicting a wintry scene in Pennsylvania.
Just done my annual week in the shelter to find out if everything works. Claustrophobic and depressing as sin, but I’m ready. Oh boy, am I ready. Armageddon? Bring it on!
Jack Dash
On the mantelpiece stood a clock that had not ticked in years. It still served a purpose. Wilderness stuck letters, postcards and the odd unpaid bill behind it—things he was ignoring yet not quite ignoring. Judy never looked there. She was physically incapable of not opening and answering at once anything addressed to her. It was his mail that sat for days.
Jack Dash’s postcard joined a growing stack. He picked up the one right at the back. Plain and brown. His name in Nell’s writing. Plain and brown and unopened.
He picked it up. It crossed his mind to open it. Was there ever a time to poke around in the dark recesses of the heart or the dark recesses of Berlin?
He put it back.
Unopened.
A domani.
Stuff
Khrushchev
Not for one minute do I think Nikita Sergeyevich was present when Frieda Schulze jumped on September 25, 1961 . . . but he does say in the second volume of his memoirs (published in the seventies) that curiosity got the better of him and he took a secret tour of West Berlin at about that time. He isn’t precise about the date. He concludes, “I did not get out of the car.” Yeah, right.
Sillamäe
I’ve bent the chronology but not by much. It was another twenty years before the plant produced reactor-grade enriched uranium, but it had been producing uranium oxide since the end of the war and by 1950 was a major source of U3O8 and by the time of perestroika, and the independence of Estonia, had produced almost 100,000 tonnes of the stuff.
Chelyabinsk
It was a closed area at that time. Nuclear cock-up in the late fifties. It has been termed “the most polluted place on earth.” No sooner had I started looking into Chelyabinsk than it was struck by a meteorite. As if they didn’t have enough problems. It was, and may still be, a major site for the production of zinc and in the sixties was at the heart of an atomic weapons complex that stretched for miles.
LBJ
I’m deliberately vague with the timetable here. He did visit Berlin just after the wall went up. Robert Caro, a biographer at work on what must be the biggest biography ever written of an American president, doesn’t mention the visit . . . hence I felt free to improvise. Chroniclers of the Wall give differing versions; some say he did get to Potsdamer Platz, some say he didn’t . . . and one really does have the line about him skipping out on the US Army’s parade to go shopping . . . so I improvise.
U-2
The USA began to fly U-2 spy planes over the USSR in 1956. Ike managed to keep that a secret for four years before one was shot down. The USA keeps its secrets well . . . er . . . not as well as the UK. For two months over 1959–1960 the flights were out of Turkey and piloted by the RAF. We managed to keep this under wraps until 1997. My heart swells with national pride . . . we can keep a secret, we’re still on top . . . zzz . . . zzz . . . Britannia Rules the . . . whatever . . . Last Night of the Proms . . . zzz . . . zzz . . . yawn.
Wine
I could not have got the wine remotely right without the assistance of someone who knows a damn sight more about the subject than I do—Tim Hailstone, whose knowledge of vintage claret is only exceeded by his knowledge of Bob Dylan and the Who.
Austin-Healey Incident
This actually happened—twice. Not at Invalidenstraße, but at Checkpoint Charlie. And in an Austin-Healey Frogeye Sprite rather than the model I deploy . . . already forgotten which . . . as I know absolutely nothing about cars and have not attempted to drive one since 1966 . . . all those knobs and pedals . . . so confusing . . .
Indium
Eventually a use was found for indium. It’s what makes touch screens possible. At the time of writing there is thought to be between two and five years’ supply left, mostly in China. At 0.052 parts per million it is number 16 on the British Geological Survey’s 2012 risk list. Prices fluctuate, but, again, at time of writing, I reckon Geoffrey’s stash of indium to be worth about $36,300,000.
Acknowledgements
Gordon Chaplin
Sam Redman
Marcia Gamble Hadley
Nick Lockett
Allison Malecha
Tim Hailstone
Elizabeth Graham-Yooll
Sarah Burkinshaw
Peter Blackstock
Elizabeth Cochrane
Morgan Entrekin
Cristina Zadi
Amy Hundley
Claus Litterscheid
Clare Alexander
Joaquim Fernandez
Matias Lopez-Portillo
Stanley Moon
Lesley Thorne
Sarah Teale
Gianluca Monaci
Deb Seager
Cosima Dannoritzer
George Spigot
Sue Freathy
Daphne Meacham
Angela & Tim Tyack
Antonella Piredda
Briony Everroad
Fran Owen
Sue Freathy
Ivo Bufalini
Zoë Sharp
&
Ion Trewin
1943–2015—my editor for over twenty years, who plucked me off the scrap heap, and who died just as I finished this book.