Autumn in Oxford: A Novel

by Alex Rosenberg

  Liz turned to the Russian. “You know?”

  For the second time Feklisov blinked a glistening eye. “Enough. From following her closely for several weeks. One does not visit an oncologist alone or purchase morphine in quantity without reason.”

  Tom Wrought picked up the Thomas Cook Continental Timetable and began studying it carefully.

  Twenty-five minutes later the telephone rang. Tom and Liz looked at each other. Tom picked up the phone and waited. At the other end Alice began, “Hello, Tom, did you just get there?”

  “Yes, the tube up to St. John’s Wood was slow tonight. We almost got off at Maida Vale and walked.” Liz smiled at his creativity. “I’ll put Liz on.”

  “Are you still at the office, Alice?” Liz began.

  “Yes, just on the point of leaving,” she replied. “Be there in half an hour. Please feed the cat.”

  “Alright. We’ll have a cup of tea waiting when you get here.”

  “Cheers,” Alice replied, and Liz immediately rung off.

  In the sitting room on Hamilton Terrace, Alice put down the receiver and looked at the syringe and the three vials of morphine on a side table. Are you sure they’ll make it out? Nothing is ever sure, Alice. Can you do any more? No, I can’t see how. Well, then? Isn’t this the time to bow out? She rose from the chair, swept the vials and the syringe into her hand, and mounted the stair to the bedroom. She took off the men’s clothes and ran her hands over the dozen or so suits she had enjoyed wearing in court, in chambers, wherever a solicitor, but not a woman, was expected. You know perfectly well which one you’ll choose—the steel-blue one. Once she was wearing it, standing at the full-length mirror, she knew it was right for the occasion. Silly thing to concern yourself with! She laughed at herself out loud. Get on with it!

  Dispassionately she watched herself push the needle through the rubber top of the vial. She stopped to monitor her hand for a tremor—a sign that her body was rebelling or anxious or unprepared. No, the grip was steady. Then she pulled the piston up and watched the cylinder fill. She let another spasm of pain course through her. It was as good a time to go as any. Taking off the tailored jacket, she rolled up her sleeves, injected the full syringe, put the coat back on, and staggered onto the bed, where she managed to straighten the skirt just as oblivion arrived.

  “Here’s my coat.” Beatrice Russell handed her coat and hat to Liz. As she did so, she guided Liz’s hand into the pocket and closed it over a piece of paper, but held it there to prevent Liz pulling it from the pocket. She turned to the Russian. “We’ve got a bit of a ride to Oxford, Mr. Feklisov. Shall we make a start?” He nodded, taking the coat and hat Tom had given him and turning off the lights in the office. Both made a display of leaving by the front door, which they pretended to lock, and walked round two corners to the back lane, where Liz and Tom could see them get in the car and turn on the engine. In a moment they had driven away.

  Tom looked at Liz as if to say both “what now?” and “where to?” Without answering, Liz took out the piece of paper Beatrice Russell had hidden in her coat pocket. “Tom,” Liz said, “Beatrice put a note in her coat before she gave it to me.” Tom pulled a match from the matchbox and lit it. Both began to read.

  Alice was right not to trust our people or the Americans. But you can’t trust Feklisov either. Don’t go to any channel port. My uncle, William Daven, lives in Lowestoft. He owns a herring trawler and used to smuggle liquor from Holland and France. I will call to alert him you are coming. He’ll get you to the Continent safely. Go to the South Pier midjetty, the trawler Louise-Marie. Uncle William will take the Russian’s car in payment and perhaps even give you something for it.

  Good luck,

  Beatrice

  Tom looked up to Liz in the light of a second match. “Any idea where Lowestoft is?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s where Beatrice is from. There’s an Abbey National branch there. But I don’t think we’ll give the branch a visit, do you?” She squeezed his hand, and they rose. “Let’s go.”

  It was fifty miles of good roads from London to Oxford, but 130 much more difficult miles to Lowestoft, and after Ipswich, single-track lanes up the Suffolk Coast.

  Beatrice Russell and Alexandr Feklisov were companionable but said little on their drive to Oxford and rail journey back. They parted in friendship on the Paddington quay long before Tom and Liz were even near their objective. She knew she’d have plenty of time to alert Uncle William to his unexpected passengers. Suddenly Beatrice realized, what if he were at sea? She waited while Feklisov sought the Bakerloo line. Then Beatrice found a call box that could not be seen from any stairway to the underground. Two rings, and then she heard the welcome words, “Bill Daven here.”

  Lowestoft was dark and quiet as Liz drove through the high street. The south pier was easy to find. It was just across the bridge from the railway station in the small harbour mouth of the Waveney River. Daven was waiting at the jetty gate when the Wolseley pulled up. Liz and Tom came out of the car, stretching and yawning, to find a thickset man in a pea jacket and a bowler hat, standing with his back to a dozen trawlers and three times as many winches rising from their bows and sterns. His silhouette was backlit by a low full moon reflecting in the iridescent current of a calm estuary.

  “Captain Daven?” Tom offered his hand, but William Daven only had eyes for the car.

  “Can I have the keys?” were his first words, and then, “Don’t suppose you have the registration.” Tom shook his head. “Well, Beatrice said I wasn’t to ask any questions. Come aboard.” He turned and walked up the jetty fifty yards to a pier extending out to the left. The trawlers tied alongside looked seaworthy enough, though their decks were crowded with netting and they bore an aroma strong from decades of herring catches. Showing surprising agility, the large man vaulted over the side of his trawler and reached down to help Liz aboard. Tom declined the hand and scrambled over the hemp padding at the quayside. Daven led them to the wheelhouse, where a slight young man dressed much the same as the elder one was leaning on a bulkhead. At the noise of the door opening, he stood.

  Daven turned to his crewman and said, “Make ready to cast off. Quiet like.” The man nodded and went forwards, slipped off the bowlines, and then headed to the stern. The captain turned a switch, and the low rumble of a diesel engine began to vibrate the entire ship. A wave of the hand from the young man at the stern, and the captain spun the wheel away from the jetty, pushing forwards the throttle at his left. The boat quietly moved away from the quay and out into the river mouth. Round the quay it bore to starboard and soon was leaving the town behind it, heading due east.

  Only then did William Daven push his bowler back from his brow and appear to relax somewhat. He lit a Player’s cigarette and offered the packet to Liz and Tom, who both accepted. “You both best go below. In a few minutes, you will be very seasick.”

  “Where are you going to land us, Captain?”

  “Where would you like? Holland or Belgium?”

  “We are at your disposal, sir. What do you advise?” As he spoke, Tom felt the first pangs of nausea.

  “If we go into Zeebrugge, you might as well have taken the Harwich ferry. I suppose there was a reason you wanted to avoid crossing that way.”

  Liz nodded, but suddenly brought one hand to her mouth and grasped a bulkhead with the other.

  Daven indicated the gangway from the pilothouse to below decks. “Better get to bed. Leave it to me.” They did as instructed.

  The berths were unmade, dishevelled heaps of coarse blankets and grey-striped uncovered pillows. Towards the stern was a head, with a door that would not close. An electric light in a wire cage above their heads was connected to no switch they could find. Tom and Liz threw themselves on the beds, becoming sicker with each passing swell. Each was now seeking oblivion, without much interest in the fate of the other, so completely seasick had they become. Despite all that had occurred that day, sleep did not come easily on the current of the North Sea. In va
in they sought relief from the cramps and dizziness, first lying on their stomachs, then their sides. Finally they surrendered to the nausea, prostrate on the bunks, waiting indifferently for the voyage, or their lives, to end.

  To Tom’s surprise he was woken by a shaft of sun breaking through the crack in the top of the hatch cover above their berths. He realized that he had finally found sleep. He turned to Liz and was relieved to see she too had slept. There seemed to be no particular roll in the craft, and he wondered whether he had found sea legs in a few hours sleep. Climbing back to the pilothouse he joined Daven, who was watching a fleet of similar herring trawlers, all plying a route towards a landfall on the port side.

  Daven gestured. “Vlissingen, on the Scheldt. We’ll come in with their trawler fleet. No one will notice.” He looked up, and Tom followed his glance to the Dutch maritime flag wafting from a guy-wire. Daven withdrew a wad of bills from his pea coat. “There’s some Dutch guilder and French francs there. About a hundred quid. Tell Beatrice I gave you a fair price for a hot Wolseley.” He smiled. “From here there’s a train into Antwerp every hour. Be on the first one this morning.”

  And so they were. As the train approached the outskirts of Antwerp, Dutch customs and Belgian customs sauntered down the aisle of the second-class carriage. With world-weary nonchalance, they were asking for passports and goods to declare. It was the first test of Alice Silverstone’s handiwork, and not a very severe one. Each officer—first Dutch, then Belgian—saluted with two fingers as they handed the passports back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sitting in the station buffet of the Antwerp railway terminal, Liz and Tom took stock.

  “Let’s see.” Liz was laying out the British bank notes. “About eight hundred quid between what Alice gave us and what I had.”

  “Here’s what’s left from what Daven gave me for the car.” Tom added the Dutch and French currency. “So, what now, my dear?” He grasped her hand and smiled warmly. Suddenly in the vastness of the glass ceiling and the arching dome above them, Tom felt free enough to think beyond the next few moments and hours.

  Liz’s smile turned to a laugh. She drained her café au lait. “I think I’ll have another. You?” He nodded, and she raised a hand. The waiter, caparisoned in a starched apron, was instantly before them. They had already, between them, eaten two complete petite dejeuners, croissants, pan raisin, and tartines, along with all the butter and three little pots of jam and preserves. Without asking, he put another basket of croissants before them and glided away. The morning rush hour had subsided, and they could enjoy the view of bright polished marble floor stretching down the broad staircase all the way to the booking hall.

  “Seriously, Liz, what shall we do now?” Tom was full of half-baked ideas about where to go, what to do, how to live, eager to try them on for size. But he wanted Liz to at least suggest a general direction.

  She was still thinking only about the next few hours. “Very well. We are going out of this station to find the first decent hotel in the square, where we will check in. On arriving in our room, we will hand over every stitch of clothing we are wearing for washing and dry cleaning. Then we will both spend an inordinate amount of time in a bath. After that we will pass the hours awaiting our clean clothes in that room. Understood?”

  “Every stitch of clothes? Does that include our hats?” Tom asked. Each smiled, and they both thought a moment about the hats they had exchanged with Beatrice Russell and Alexandr Feklisov.

  Looking at Tom as they walked across the large square, Liz stopped. “Let’s just stop at a chemist’s before the hotel. We need a razor, a couple of toothbrushes, and a few other things before shutting ourselves away.” The smile was frank.

  When the bellman came to the door, Tom reached his arm out with the laundry sack and a Dutch banknote. The man could see he was wearing nothing but a towel. In French Tom apologized. “Sorry, no Belgian currency.”

  The man replied, “No difficulty, Monsieur Silverstone. I live in the suburbs, across the Nederland border.” Tom almost corrected the man, till he realized that for the moment he was indeed Monsieur Silverstone.

  Taking the trilingual DO NOT DISTURB sign from the inside door handle, he put it on the hallway side, double-locked the door, and padded past the double bed into the bathroom. There he sat beside the tub, watching Liz splash round the soapy water. He had not seen her body for more than a month, and he was ready to enjoy just the visual pleasure it provided him for as long as she chose to luxuriate in the warmth. She looked up at him, then down at her body with pleasure.

  “Liz, where are the kids?” Tom’s sudden anxiety completely displaced the relief, happiness, and pleasure that had surfeited him once the hotel room door had closed behind them. Silently, he condemned himself.

  “I sent the kids to Trevor’s brother in Birkenhead before I went to America. Afterwards they stayed; I wanted them out of any danger. Keith’ll get them to my parents in Toronto.”

  “But how will you—how will we get them back?”

  “As soon as we’ve settled down somewhere.” She rose from the bath, dried, but did not cover herself. He relished the grace with which she moved across to the dressing table, picked up her purse, and moved to the window seat. Looking down three storeys to the street, she pushed the sheer drape aside and sat. As she pulled a cigarette packet from her bag, the play of muscles in her shoulder and the rise of the one breast visible to him brought desire rising in him again. She threw the packet towards him and began to look for her lighter.

  Tom said, almost to himself, “Yes, but where will we get the kids back?”

  Searching her hand round the inside, she felt a card at the bottom of the bag and slowly pulled it out. Unfolding and uncreasing it on her knee, she read the words,

  PHILIPPE D’ALEMBERT

  AGENT IMMOBILIER

  OLORON-SAINTE-MARIE, BEARN

  “Tom, what do you think of somewhere in the Pyrenees?

  PART VI

  February 1961

  Pays de Bearn

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Saturday was market day in the jardin publique of Oloron-Sainte-Marie. It wasn’t like the summer, with the plane trees shading the stalls from the powerful sun. In fact, each tree had been severely pruned the previous fall into a neat filigree of branches. They would take the shape of an almost perfect cube when the leaves came back in April. But now the market required no protection from the weak sun and the fierce blue sky. The previous two market days had been cold and wet, so today the stalls were doing well. Some provisions were by no means seasonal: goat cheese, olives, saucisson, braids of garlic pegged above tables covered in thyme and tarragon, still clamouring for attention against endive, leeks, Brussels sprouts. There were only a few sorts of lettuce, no tomato worth haggling over, but the dried mushrooms, gigot of lamb, pig’s face, and duck all showed their Béarnaise provenance.

  Liz came out of the boulangerie with a tarte in a boite tied with a thin ribbon they would present to their friend Philippe D’Alembert at lunch that afternoon. Having greeted her by name, the boulanger repeated the salute as she left, “A la prochaine, Mme. Silverstone.”

  She began looking for the children, now fluent enough in French to make their own way through the market stalls, with their own pocket money. Eventually she saw them engaged in a pickup soccer game on the half-grass/half-barren margin of the park beyond its central fountain. There was plenty of time. She’d let them play.

  Liz turned back to wander again through the market stalls, smiling nods of recognition to the other townspeople and to those merchants she favoured, until she was before the café where she had arranged to meet Tom. There he was with a manila envelope before him on the table, a broad smile on his face, and what looked like a cognac in his hands. Not like Tom to drink before noon on a Saturday morning.

  Liz put down her bags on an adjacent seat. “You’re beaming, Tom. Have you won the lottery?” The waiter came up, and she ordered a café crème.r />
  “Better, I think.” He passed an envelope to her. It was addressed to Mr. David Silverstone, Poste Restante, Oloron-Sainte-Marie, France. Liz held it before her and studied it for a moment. There was no return address, but she recognized Beatrice Russell’s handwriting.

  Then she opened it, and two neatly scissored newspaper cuttings floated down to the table. Before she could pick one up, Tom spoke. “Those are our tickets back to Britain, Mrs. Spencer—or will it be Mrs. Wrought?”

  She began to read the first clipping. It was a small, narrow column and evidently came from a broadsheet newspaper, not a tabloid.

  January 7, London. The Home Office announced today the arrest of two persons charged with being Soviet agents. Mr. and Mrs. Peter and Helen Kroger were taken into custody in their home in Ruislip, where incriminating communication equipment was also found. The Krogers have been identified as Morris and Lona Cohen, Americans, who had previously been Soviet agents in the United States but disappeared in 1950. A Russian diplomat, Aleksandr Feklisov, Commercial Attaché at the Soviet embassy, has also been declared persona non grata and asked to leave the country immediately.