Paris Spring

by James Naughtie

  His destination amused him, because it took him close to the apartment where Jeffrey Hoffman had produced his birthday coup and he could see that the long curtains in his salon were pulled back. A shadow moved across a white wall on the first floor. Hoffman was alone again.

  Five minutes later he was in a shady street away from the traffic, in a bar where it was difficult from the door to establish how many customers were drinking in its darkness. There were two women on stools at the bar, but they showed no interest in him. He moved through the gloom and there, sitting against a striped curtain nailed to the back wall, was Kristof.

  ‘You call this dinner?’ Flemyng said, looking around.

  ‘My little joke. When were you last in East Berlin?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve eaten. I knew what to expect. But I’m glad we’re here. We have to talk.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Kristof said. ‘Why the hurry? I had expected to wait a week, perhaps longer, since we met outside your apartment. And suddenly you turn up with a note. Our signal, as we arranged. Am I allowed to know why? This is not a complaint. I am glad to see you.’

  The barman shouted towards them in the dark, waving like a conductor. Flemyng called back to him, ordering drinks.

  ‘You see what I mean,’ Kristof went on. ‘This is new. You are making the running.’

  Flemyng shook his head. ‘I want you to explain yourself, that’s all. I’ve nothing to give. I need to know what you have for me. Us, I should say.’

  He noticed a change in Kristof. Flemyng had looked again that afternoon at the sketch he had made after their first conversation, and now he saw that the craggy outline of his companion – the edges that gave him an older look – was giving way to a face that he could see had taken on a youthful mobility, dimpled and soft. Even in the gloom of the bar he could see that Kristof’s eyes weren’t on the move, but steady. It was remarkable that there was no symptom of alarm.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘As I said, I have learned about your brother.’

  ‘And I told you that there’s nothing for you there. If you think he would play games with your people, you are a fool.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Kristof. ‘If I told you that there is evidence that suggests the opposite, what would you say?’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  Kristof laughed. ‘Mr Flemyng…’

  ‘Will, please.’ Their drinks arrived, and there was a moment of quiet, Flemyng’s acquiescence sealed. But in the first burst of intimacy he showed his anger for the first time. ‘What the hell do you want?’

  ‘I want to help you. In return I may ask for something, but I can tell you this. The favour would be personal. It would involve no danger for you, no betrayal. That is my promise.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ Flemyng knew a threat when he heard one and his face was hard.

  ‘Because you have no choice. Just in case. We are going round in circles, are we not?’

  Flemyng said that he could walk out of the bar, leave Kristof alone, and the curtain would fall. It would be over.

  ‘How do you know? I have a note written by you – at the Hotel Meurice, I see. Careless. Perhaps I had someone watching you from a window when you delivered it. A Russian friend, who can say? Or on the metro when you followed me the first time. I repeat, how do you know? We are together now, Will.’

  Flemyng’s stiffness remained, but his voice was softer. ‘My colleagues are now aware of you. I have done nothing to break their trust.’

  ‘Then you are remarkable in our business, wouldn’t you say? Can I assume that you have told them everything, or not?’ He smiled.

  Before Flemyng could reply, he went on, ‘I understand you, because I’ve broken my own trust. I will not tell you now what I can give you, but allow me to tell you this. I don’t want to jump, to take a train and a fishing boat to England and hide from my people. There are things I can tell you, but it will take time.’

  Flemyng’s answer accepted the change of key in their conversation. His voice was still soft, but his anger seemed to have passed. ‘OK. You don’t want to come over. So what do you want? Money, to help us?’

  ‘You are not as good as you should be, you know,’ Kristof said. ‘When I was trained, that question would have caused laughter. Maybe more. Take what you can get…Will. Don’t try to pull in the fish too soon. He might get away.’

  Flemyng wore the same expression as Freddy Craven had seen in the afternoon. He was quite still, with his features fixed, and Kristof took it as acceptance. He resumed. ‘I will arrange for us to meet again and we can talk about what I might have. And perhaps what you might give in return.’

  Flemyng jumped up from his seat, without a word, but before he could move towards the door, Kristof stood and pulled him back, quite roughly, so that their heads came together. He whispered a sentence or two before he let go.

  Flemyng remained rigid.

  A few seconds passed, then he pulled back and walked quickly away from the table, almost stumbling towards the door.

  Kristof signalled to the barman, who’d watched him leave. No need to worry; he would pay.

  Outside, it was dark in the curved street that led away from the bar. The wet cobbles shone. Flemyng walked as if he had drunk too much and was taking no care, but his mind was clear. His thoughts were speeding – to Freddy Craven’s office, to home where Mungo would be in his study catching the last of the light on the loch below, to Bridger commanding a lunch table, Bolder in Whitehall, then to Washington and Abel. The closeness of family and the companionship of his secret friends overwhelmed him for a moment, and he felt adrift.

  Climbing into the taxi home, Kristof’s last whispered word was a dismal echo in his head.

  Quincy.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Guilty?’

  Maria asked the question without turning round. She sat on the edge of the bed, and ran both hands high through her hair before rising to step, naked, towards the bathroom.

  Quincy was propped up on one arm and laughed after her.

  ‘Hardly. We’re in Paris.’

  Maria was standing under a shower that produced only a feeble flow and she worked hard to build up a lather. She sang a little. Drying herself a few minutes later on a thick yellow towel she called through the open door, ‘You surprised me. Do you mind me saying that?’

  Quincy had dressed quickly. ‘You didn’t,’ she said. ‘Not at all.’ She was strapping on her watch, which showed nearly eleven o’clock. It was dark outside. ‘I’m glad. I get little enough affection on the road, and I need it.’ She was smiling into the mirror, buttoning up her powder-blue denim shirt. Her blonde hair was back in place, and she smoothed herself down. Maria came up behind her, wrapped in a long robe, and placed one hand on her back.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Quincy. Her shoulders relaxed and she reached behind her to touch Maria.

  Always aware of the need for explanation, Maria said, ‘These are bad days. Maybe that’s it. Wildness everywhere.’

  Quincy said she was proud not to have become a full romantic, though her life had given her the chance, and she was sometimes moved by the idea of such connections. ‘The cards fall and that’s it. Tomorrow they’ll tell a different story.’

  Maria recognized the defences of the woman whose passions she had so easily roused, and made no challenge. Instead, she allowed Quincy to take command. ‘I guess we’ll see each other around town this week. Who should I meet at Nanterre?’

  Maria gave her some names – ‘you’ll like Danny’ – and suggested they make a trip together. Wednesdays were good; there was usually a strategy meeting, a rambling and disorganized affair in the canteen, where anyone could turn up. A week from May Day there would be a crowd. ‘It’s chaos. Two strangers won’t make any difference, even Yanks.’

  ‘OK, we have a date,’ Quincy said.

  She turned away to the corner where she had stowed her bag. Alongside, in a brown leather case, was the portable Smith-Corona that tra
velled with her. Her story machine, which she played like a piano. She placed it on Maria’s dresser. ‘I’m going somewhere tonight where I don’t want to take this. Can you hold it here till tomorrow? I’ll call when I can.’

  ‘Sure. You’ll feel naked without it.’ They both laughed.

  ‘You’re right, but there are places where I don’t want to take it. Too precious. Watch it for me.’

  Maria picked up the typewriter and they both stepped into her living room, where she placed it in the bottom drawer of her desk, under lock and key. ‘Your friend is safe with me.’

  Quincy said, ‘A companion I trust.’

  Three days before, Maria had never met her, not seen her. She was a name beyond reach, a distant star in a trade that still cherished glamour and a feeling for the untouchable. But in the whirl of one long weekend they had been thrown together and – so Maria saw it – had drawn energy from each other. She knew, as well, that the speed of it all couldn’t last. The pulse was too fast. Her experience told her that there would never be another afternoon like this one. They might try, and perhaps re-create some of that mood. But not for long. She knew herself too well. Like Quincy, she was a gypsy travelling on.

  She attached no sadness to the thought. The pattern had long since shaped her life, and she had absorbed the lesson years before. Moments of surprise, even hints of ecstasy, then the days would resume their familiar flow, with no promise of a next time. It was why, Maria well knew, she had been first attracted to a secret life. Her most precious possession was the thrill of concealment, and the excitement of the dark.

  She said to Quincy, ‘Grace. Why are you here?’

  A sudden question. Quincy stiffened before she laughed, and put on a quizzical face. ‘I love Europe. Barricades going up east and west. Where else would I be right now?’

  ‘At home,’ Maria said, watching her from the sofa.

  ‘You sound suspicious,’ said Quincy, putting out her arms. ‘Why?’

  She was standing in the middle of the room, holding her ground. ‘For wanderers like you and me there’s always the road. It pulls at you, takes you away. Right?’

  ‘I know it,’ said Maria, ‘but I sense that it’s different for you. This time, I mean.’

  Quincy had a serious expression, and she had picked up Maria’s change of tone. For a moment, she was hard.

  ‘Today wasn’t about you getting under my skin, for God’s sake, was it? Getting questions answered. Tell me it wasn’t.’ Her smile had gone.

  Maria saw how easily her fragility had revealed itself.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t. It’s been one of my best days. Truly.’

  Before Quincy could reply, she went on, ‘And I’ve got a feeling that you’re working on something out of the ordinary. I may be able to help, who knows? Even in our trade, that’s possible.’ She laughed, and Quincy responded.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m tense… maybe the reason for this was…’

  ‘Don’t explain. That’s better,’ Maria said.

  Quincy shook her head. ‘No, I do want to tell you something. I need your promise, though…’

  ‘Of course.’ Maria put both hands on the low table in front of her as if she was preparing to turn over all her cards.

  ‘Maria.’ It was the first time she had used her name that afternoon, and signalled a change of voice. Maria stood up. They spoke as if they were facing each other across a desk, perhaps one of them picking at a typewriter and the other lighting a cigarette, with a chattering office around them. Their eyes were dancing.

  ‘You’re right,’ Quincy said. ‘You’ve seen it, because I guess you know the signs. I do have something in the wind. Taking shape in the storm, I’d say.’

  ‘Big.’ Maria wasn’t asking a question, but making a statement.

  ‘I’d say so,’ said Quincy. ‘Certainly.’

  Maria waited.

  ‘I’m tempted to say I can break a story that will change our lives. But that’s fantasy, as we know.’

  ‘How often do we say that?’ Maria said. ‘The thought that keeps us going.’

  ‘I know. This is different.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By telling us how little we know. How very little.’

  Maria stood up and walked across the room to the window. She turned to face Quincy. ‘We can talk some more, if you want.’ Quincy shook her head to signal that it was too soon. ‘But something strikes me right now,’ Maria said. ‘Is this dangerous?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Quincy, and smiled at Maria. ‘But not for me.’

  TWELVE

  No car awaited him at Heathrow, because Craven had told no one in London of his coming. He took the airport bus to Cromwell Road, and it was empty enough for him to settle himself on the back seat in the shadows and finish his whisky discreetly, without appearing to be a man with a habit. Checking his watch as the other passengers got up, he confirmed that there was time for a quick supper at his club before he had to make his connection. He took a taxi to Pall Mall, enjoying the rattle down Constitution Hill and the faint glow from the ring of lamps that marked out the edge of the park in the dusk. He had his black leather Gladstone bag held between his feet on the floor, and out of a habit formed in Paris he clung firmly to the strap hanging by his head. As the cab slowed down at the steps of the club, he reminded himself that he should replenish his flask for the night ahead.

  The porter took the flask from him and said it would be ready when he got a taxi an hour and a half later. Craven hung his coat, scrubbed up at the schoolboy sinks downstairs, tightened his tie and headed to the bar.

  He concluded quickly that he had probably avoided the danger of an office encounter. A Monday night – slower than ever, said Dilys across the counter – gave him a good chance of anonymity. He had an easy story ready if required, but a scan of the five others in the cramped basement room reassured him that it wouldn’t be needed. A Treasury panjandrum of long ago was entertaining two friends of his own generation, and the two others who were passing the time together had none of the signs of office men. They didn’t recognize him. Smiling, he gossiped with Dilys for a few minutes over a schooner of sherry. ‘Still travelling, sir?’ she said, which was as far as she would go.

  ‘As ever,’ said Craven.

  He didn’t ask whether Sandy Bolder had been in. Part of him wished, for the sake of wickedness, that Sandy had taken the risk. He realized that the thought was a measure of his unexpected exhilaration, as if one secret journey was a release from all his woes, and wondered if he was rediscovering his taste for excitement.

  During supper, which he took in a corner table in a sparse room with the diners spread out to avoid intimacy, he assembled his thoughts. He made no notes, but reviewed events of the last forty-eight hours and made his plans.

  The waiter, who greeted him warily and whom Craven was surprised to see – he had evidently survived the spicy clubland scandal that had entertained the members for months – knew better than to open a conversation. He brought trout and a steamed pudding and poured wine for Craven, paying no heed to the dusty glasses.

  In his mind, Craven began with Flemyng. Will had been troubled rather than excited by his first conversation with Kristof. Why?

  Knowing Flemyng from his green days in Vienna, he had recognized much of his old self – the nose for the chase, a love of the game. So why was his boy cast down by the possibilities? His love life with Isabel had been rocky, but Paris promised them thrills to come. And for Flemyng, the politics of the street had always been a tonic. Why the nervous gloom? And Bolder, although frothing with excitement, was behaving oddly. An unannounced trip to London, and a Sunday-night dinner with Flemyng where they’d apparently discussed nothing of substance, with Bridger stirring the pot in the background. Craven twitched with curiosity, giving him more satisfaction than distress. He was being lured back into the field. Time for a brandy in the smoking room.

  Collecting his flask from the porter, he stepped into the hall feeling the retu
rn of the energy that had drained away in recent weeks. The question that he knew would linger with him through the night was the most familiar of all: what didn’t he know?

  ‘Farewell,’ he said to the porter as the door was pulled open for him. ‘A lovely trip ahead.’

  ‘The driver knows it’s King’s Cross, sir’, and Craven ducked into the cab.

  On the side of the train he found his name on the passenger lists gummed to the window of each sleeper carriage and checked the number of his berth. There were no other names that he recognized. Settling into his tiny compartment, he took in the familiar accoutrements as if they came from a corner of the family home – hairy blankets, the china chamber pot that slid out of sight beneath the sink, the blue nightlight that would stay on, and the temperature control that he expected not to work. He sniffed the metallic warmth of the steam from the heating system, and let memories flood back. Placing his flask on the little shelf that folded down from the wall, he hung his watch on the hook at the side of his bunk, and allowed the blind on the window to ride up to see the moment of departure. Just as the whistle blew and the whole train creaked into life, the attendant knocked at his door to check off his name on the list and take away his ticket.

  ‘Breakfast, sir? I’m assuming an early cup of tea.’

  Craven thanked him.

  ‘Good night, sir. Edinburgh by half past seven. Windy, but a fine day all the same, so I’m told.’

  *

  He was awake before they crossed the border, and let the low eastern sun stream in. Mist on the fields and a landscape that seemed free of any movement.

  He reached for the jumbled, garish dream just gone. He had imagined himself in Vienna, in wild and easy days. Flemyng had flitted across the scene like a dancing wraith, and there was no sense to the pictures that had flashed in his mind. He and Flemyng were their other selves: it was Craven who’d been stabbed in a bar, Flemyng who’d waited for him to come home and bathed his wound. Bolder, who’d never served in Vienna, was an itinerant street singer who seemed to have a lute, and Sam Malachy appeared as a pantomime ambassador, wearing a blue sash with a sword at his side. Bridger was pouring drinks, wearing a waiter’s jacket, his arms up in the air in a gesture of welcome to the crowd. Mad. Straight from a school play, thought Craven. A torrent of nonsense and topsy-turvy memories. But the picture of Flemyng’s serious face was sharp, watching him in his distress through the dream. As he cleared away some of the mist on the inside of the carriage window with a handkerchief and looked to hills splashed with sun, Craven imagined that face reflected on the glass, questioning and anxious. The more seriously he pictured Flemyng, the more mysterious his face appeared.