‘Him too,’ Craven said. ‘Remember that. He’s shaking like a leaf.’ They may have been boys together, he said, which made their later struggles worse, but the time for pain had passed. ‘Surely?’
Flemyng didn’t answer directly. ’You say I’m a man for a party, but I’m not looking forward to this one. You’re kind to lay it on – don’t misunderstand me.’
‘All the more reason for my having it,’ said Craven. ‘We need to clear the air.’
‘I can’t see it working. I’m obviously driving him up the wall,’ Flemyng said. ‘He also seems to think that Sandy’s off his head.’
Craven replied very quietly. ‘And what do you think about that?’
Flemyng showed his embarrassment. ‘We still haven’t got to the bottom of his London trip. But steady on. He tends to get overexcited. That’s his style.’
Flemyng threw himself into work for the rest of the day, avoiding Bridger’s office, and writing an assessment of what the government in Paris thought of the students and their plans, how the French communists would react to unpredictable interlopers on their turf and where the weight of the unions would fall. Having done that, he used NATO as another diversion and read the latest cables from Brussels. But on Tuesday, after a night disturbed by unexpected dreams of Quincy, he sent a message to the language school in Hertfordshire for the attention of Sam Malachy, attending an office course, on leave from Vienna.
Would Sam like to make a short trip to Paris? It would be good to see him, and, anyway, Freddy Craven was having a party.
He heard the bells sound the hour. It was May.
NINETEEN
Abel’s message was passed to Maria after she walked in the early light to rue de Nevers and rang Washington. He had left for London, and wanted her to come to him. The answer was no. There was trouble, and it was the worst moment for her to disappear. Could he come to her? She hoped for an answer before the day was out.
Taking a route to the office that cut through Place de la République she saw dozens of union banners on poles already propped up against the high statue like lances ready for a joust, and a body of marchers swelling up in the streets around the square. The men around whom the early crowd clustered were wearing dark suits and ties, or black leather jackets to show a little extra fight, and she noticed that the hundreds of students, most of them sitting on the ground, were keeping to themselves on the far side. They presented a more vivid picture. Their flags were a riot of red and black, painted anti-war placards were everywhere, and people were singing. She saw Edward Abbott listening at a table outside the café they’d colonized. He smoked as he wrote smoothly in his thin notebook, ignoring the noise, as if he were in a library instead of the street. There might have been no one else in the square.
She paused at another café near the metro to watch. There were faces that she knew from Nanterre, but she kept her distance. As she drank her coffee standing at the bar, where a few old men moved away from her, a loose procession began to form – orderly at the front, with an established hierarchy lining up behind the first banners and, farther back, a mass of followers that stretched out of the square and grew to fill every opening as she watched. It would take time, but they’d be marching within the hour, and she could join them further along the route.
When she reached her office, they were looking at wire service pictures from a memorial service for Quincy in New York which her colleagues had decided to arrange quickly. Two withered parents were on the church steps, the faces around them making up a tableau of writers and editors whom Maria recognized. But the family’s glamour had gone, to be buried with their daughter when the French had finished their business with her. Quincy’s mother shielded her eyes from a cruel sun, and the scene was bare and painful. On the wires, the stories repeated what everyone knew, that the Paris authorities hadn’t yet found a trail that might lead to her killer. And how she had died, no one knew.
She went into the glass box where the teleprinter had spewed out the morning news, and picked up the phone to Flemyng.
‘Are you marching?’
They both laughed. ‘Believe it or not, I’m going to a party.’
‘Well, I’ve just been in République and I see trouble. Our friends from Nanterre aren’t at home with the old guard, especially the ones with dark glasses. They’re going to be trampled. I’ll let you know.’
Flemyng said he was going to get a bird’s eye view from the apartment of Freddy Craven. ‘You know who I mean, don’t you?’
Maria said that it was painful to hear the name. ‘Quincy asked me the same question, on the last day we spoke…’
‘What did she say about him?’ Flemyng’s voice was quite calm.
‘That he was a legend. I said I knew of him, like any reporter who’s knocked around Europe, but that was all. She bought that. There wasn’t much else.’
Flemyng said, ‘I’m sorry to push you, but nothing?’
And Maria, feeling his anxiety, said she thought they should talk it through. ‘In the evening? I can come to you.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ Flemyng said. ‘Freddy’s party’s going to be quite a trial. Come at eight.’
He put down the phone. It was an embassy holiday, with Wemyss as duty officer sitting alone in Bridger’s office, and Flemyng had been reading in his apartment. He put his book away and sat at a narrow desk at the window, going through a routine that he enjoyed. He took two sheets of writing paper and unscrewed his fountain pen, which he used when he was trying to think hard. He began to write a list of questions. Some of them were scratched out immediately, as if it would be dangerous to leave anything misleading on the page, and others were underlined. Alongside he had a list of names, and as he began to juggle the fragments in front of him like pieces of a jigsaw, looking for connections that might be hidden, he started on a second page. At the top he wrote the names of Freddy Craven and Grace Quincy, and underneath began a second list of questions. But they were a mess. He was sowing confusion where he should have been clearing it away.
Taking a clean sheet, he wrote another name. Abel.
No connections worked.
So he found himself picking up a pencil and drawing faces, adding an ornate gravestone to represent the cemetery, with Quincy’s ambiguous smile dominating the page. But there was no shape that made sense. He was out of ideas.
Restlessly, he got ready for the party, slamming his bathroom door in irritation as he thought of the two Bridgers waiting for him. He had a grey linen jacket and he chose a red tie, knowing it would prick Bridger. He took a bottle of Côte du Rhône from his store in the lobby cupboard, found a brown paper bag and set off. Craven’s apartment was less than a mile away and he walked, with the bottle under his arm.
Some streets were blocked off, and CRS troops were lounging on their own barricades, smoking in the sun. Flemyng could see trucks that looked like prison vans in the side streets, with helmeted heads moving at the windows, and packs of motorcycles ready to run. There was a flow of people heading eastwards towards République, where he imagined the traditional march was about to set off. Many of the women were carrying lily of the valley, the traditional May Day decoration. He checked his watch and walked a little faster. Freddy would be expecting him.
Craven’s apartment was on the top floor of a block that gave a view of the river, one that was two steps up from Flemyng’s in the embassy pecking order to reflect the old man’s seniority. There was a concierge in a uniform, who called the lift, and when Flemyng arrived upstairs he saw that Craven had stationed a waiter at the door of the apartment holding a tray of cocktails, to give the party a touch of holiday glamour. From inside, he could hear Bridger’s commentary.
‘I’m told they always claim a million on May Day. Fantasy, I’d say. Nonetheless, my friends predict that this will be rather impressive. Worrying, of course, in its way. Freddy – are you listening? I imagine it reminds you of the Red Square parade.’
‘Hardly, Pierce. There aren’
t missiles pointing our way.’
Craven saw Flemyng come in, and pulled him over.
‘Now, Will, let’s have a wee game you and I. How much trouble?’
They played along for minute or two, Flemyng regurgitating Maria’s phone call and wondering aloud how the students would rub along with the old disciplinarians whom they had to follow. Bridger passed on a story from the interior ministry that there was a degree of panic about the unpredictability of the young leftists.
‘We’re accustomed to thinking that communists need order. There has to be a structure. That’s what the whole business is about, after all. But this new crowd – none, apparently. Very odd.’
Craven said that perhaps Bolder could explain. He’d served more time in the east than any of them.
‘Half of them are Maoists,’ Bridger said. ‘Heaven help us.’
Flemyng could see that Sandy was out on the balcony, with Grizelda.
Mrs Bridger was tall and fairly broad, a natural partner for her husband. But with her sturdy beauty came a natural elegance, flowing from the confidence with which she moved. More than any other woman of her height that Flemyng knew, she seemed comfortable. Her hair was a golden red, and long, organized in tresses. He often thought it was because she was German by birth that he imagined her on the opera stage in a heroic role. In her bearing and the timbre of her deep voice there was simmering drama. And from the unlikely combination of her size and her gracefulness there came a surprising lightness of touch in conversation. Their acquaintance was slight, but he enjoyed her.
When she and Bridger had met on his UN posting in New York, she had been a translator for the secretariat and at his young age there had been no social barrier to their liaison. Early on, he had secured his ambassador’s blessing. Their walking-out was notably happy and quick, and they married in the episcopal church on Fifth Avenue with the British mission cheering them on, and Grizelda’s German relatives from Cincinnati putting together an oompah band for the celebrations afterwards. If she turned out to be heavy going at the dinner table, as he thought she did, she was usually forgiven because her brain and her loyalty to Bridger were assets that he was rightly proud to have. An imperious hostess was always an advantage. Wherever they might be sent, Grizelda would cope.
Swivelling away from Bolder, who was leaning over the balustrade, she stretched out an arm as she stepped back from the balcony. ‘Will Flemyng. We have seen too little of you since we arrived. Have you visited our house yet? I can’t quite remember.’
‘No,’ said Flemyng, as she smothered him in her arms.
‘We have some dinners arranged before the Parisians decamp for the summer, to their various boltholes here and there. Pierce has established himself quickly, I think I can safely say, in the right places. I shall ensure that you are on the list, and high up.’
‘You’re very kind, Grizelda.’
She turned towards Bolder, still on the balcony and standing on tiptoe because he was leaning over the iron railing towards the street. ‘Sandy is a friendly soul, don’t you think?’
‘Always,’ Flemyng said.
‘Perhaps a little unsure of his place… his status, however.’ She was watching Flemyng for a sign of agreement. There was none.
He said, ‘I really shouldn’t worry about Sandy if I were you, Grizelda. His is sometimes a lonely furrow, but he does plough it thoroughly.’
Craven came behind them, as if he had been given a cue, and gave Grizelda an old-fashioned gentleman’s bow. ‘My dears. The party is taking shape. And the march is getting close. Shall we watch?’
They crowded on to the balcony, much as they would line up for morning prayers. Bridger was in the centre, with Craven next to him and Grizelda at his shoulder. When the first rank of the march appeared, thirty-men-wide with a forest of red flags behind them, the watchers absorbed a little of the festival atmosphere. Grizelda had a lily of the valley pinned to her dress, and Bridger even raised a toast, tilting his head to the sun. ‘Paris – how we love her.’
Flemyng laughed, and pointed to the phalanx of students who were appearing on the boulevard towards the back of the crowd. Different chants came through the hubbub, and they watched as someone set light to a Stars and Stripes. It was snatched by one of the stewards and the flames stamped out. There was some scuffling.
‘Do you notice,’ Flemyng said, ‘how different the younger ones are from our own, let alone the Americans?’
Rows of pale young men in shirts and ties walked with arms locked, well-turned-out girls beside them. Pullovers and sober jerseys were more common than ragged T-shirts, and many wore black polo necks, like refugees from a jazz club.
‘I was expecting a scene from Grosvenor Square,’ Bridger said. ‘It’s surprisingly old France, is it not? Reassuring in a way. Where are all the jeans?’
Craven said that he didn’t know whether to be thankful or not.
Grizelda leaned over them and said that the students seemed unlikely allies of the Viet Cong.
‘Or the unions,’ said Flemyng, pointing to a fight that had broken out not far from the front of the column. Four or five students were on the ground, and as the marchers moved forward they could see that they were bloodied. Fists and feet flew for a minute; then it was over. The injured were dragged on to the pavement and some students signalled to an ambulance parked at the end of a side street. The crew responded lazily, making clear as they crossed the road that they considered the fracas a fuss over nothing.
The march moved forward without a break at its established walking pace, as if nothing had happened. They would soon pass into Concorde and move towards the Champs-Élysées, where a vast tricolour was swinging to and fro under the arch in the distance.
Inside Craven’s apartment, someone had put jazz records on his rickety turntable and Janet was watching two of the secretaries dancing together. Bolder had positioned himself in Craven’s chair by the high bookshelf and was reading, with a dry martini in his hand. There was a conclave of junior chancery men in a corner. Bridger broke them up. ‘I must speak to Wemyss. Will someone rouse him, please?’
He was handed the phone, and spoke as if he were addressing morning prayers. ‘Wemyss, what news?’ After a brief pause to listen, Bridger added, ‘I do, however, have some for you. There has been an altercation here between students, I assume from Nanterre, and some of the old guard who organize this march each year and therefore think it to be theirs. Perhaps you should check the news wires, Reuters and so forth, and write a telegram simply noting the violent event, making clear that I have observed it personally, and telling London that I shall write a considered note in the morning. This may be the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand that will one day fill the sky. Thank you, Wemyss, as ever.’
He turned away, satisfied.
And Craven appeared at his shoulder.
‘You may be right, Pierce. I have some information from a friend.’
Bridger frowned at him. ‘I’ve just informed Wemyss of what we saw. He is composing the embassy telegram.’
Craven said there might be more.
‘Well,’ said Bridger. ‘Perhaps you’d favour me with whatever morsel you have in your knapsack. I won’t ask whence it came.’
‘They’re closing down the university tomorrow,’ said Craven.
*
Flemyng walked home after two hours in Freddy’s apartment, crossing to the Left Bank with students who were carrying their marching flags and pushing into cafés that were already overflowing. Waiters in their long aprons were trying to control the crowd outside, black-suited cowboys circling a runaway herd. He cut away from his usual route, went towards rue de Tournon and found a space in a favourite café, where the atmosphere was high. There were clusters of police on the corner outside and a crowd of students under the awning, guarding the door, but he squeezed into a place at the bar and listened for a while to the talk shooting past him. Word of coming trouble had spread, and they spoke of where they would meet the next night.
There would be a crowd coming in from Nanterre and they’d be together to face the police. Someone shouted one of the slogans, and a chant was taken up. In Café Tournon, the patron had given up on propriety. It was the way of things.
His woman – no one knew if they were married – had a lurid wig which everyone said she had worn since the end of the war, because her head had been shaved as the penalty for consorting with Nazi officers in the night. Afterwards nothing had grown back, making her punishment eternal. She was behind the bar, shouting at everyone.
Walking away, Flemyng found himself outside the barracks of the Garde Républicaine along the street and as he passed he heard the prisoners sending out their nightly message, playing with spoons on the iron bars at their windows. Their cells were turned into a grotesque xylophone, and the ringing followed him down the street.
In his apartment, with windows propped open to keep the warm air moving, he thought of Maria and put some wine in his little fridge to cool. He cleared the papers from his desk, and watched Quincy’s face torn in two as he ripped them up. There was nothing to see, nothing to keep.
She arrived on time, and they touched cheeks. Quincy’s death had granted them more intimacy.
Opening a bottle, laying out some pieces of ham and breaking bread, he spoke to her of the parade. Maria had seen more trouble between students and older marchers for whom May Day was as much a part of their year as Mardi Gras, and as unchanging.
Then they began.
‘Quincy and Freddy,’ Flemyng said, straight out.
‘I was surprised when she mentioned him.’ Maria had come prepared.
‘I’ve no reason to think that she had any idea why I should know him. She thought I might make guesses about these people, that’s all. She’s been spook-watching for years, like all of us. I speak as a reporter.’ She laughed.
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