A Lily of the Field

by John Lawton

  It was as though a bomb had exploded in the room—a blinding light and a roaring silence, and with them possibilities that whilst not infinite folded in upon themselves with a dazzling complexity.

  Kolankiewicz knocked back his second shot.

  Troy went into the kitchen and returned with a glass.

  “I think I’m beginning to realize why you buggers drink this.”

  §133

  “I think we have to go over it all again,” Kolankiewicz was saying. “We have to reconsider.”

  Troy was shaking his head at this.

  “No,” he said. “Viktor killed himself. I have no doubts about it.”

  “All that from a dusting of his piano?”

  “I found the last person to play that piano. His mistress. Méret Voytek. I rather think she interrupted Viktor in his preparations for death. He had in all probability wiped down most of the apartment. She turned up unexpectedly. He saw the opportunity for one last request and she played the piano for him. As soon as she left, he wiped the keys and did the deed with the sound of her playing still ringing in his ears. Your nose for woman did not deceive you.”

  “And?”

  “The wiping of the fingerprints was Viktor’s way of protecting her, protecting her reputation.”

  “Why so fussy? When you have it in mind to kill yourself, why think of anything else? Who would give a shit about the living?”

  It seemed to Troy to be yet another strand in a conversation half the world wanted to have with him. Why did he do it? Was he the type to do it? And it was so far off the mark.

  “How many suicide notes have you and I read over the years? Think of the things they wrote about that still bothererd them, things that they still had to act upon only moments before death. The tying up of a lifetime of loose ends. Neither you nor I will know what passes through the mind of a dying man until it’s too late. It has its own logic, and in this case he was protecting the person he cared most about.”

  “And Skolnik?”

  “Well, he certainly wasn’t protecting Skolnik. I’d bet you a penny to a quid Skolnik never set foot in that apartment. A hip flask is the kind of thing you pass around outdoors. The fact that you found it inside Viktor’s overcoat surely confirms that?”

  This gave Kolankiewicz pause for thought. What he said next gave Troy pause for thought.

  “And has the opposite occurred to you?”

  The idea took shape even as he spoke.

  “It’s occurring to me now,” Troy said.

  “That Viktor Rosen might have killed Skolnik?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he the type?”

  The same, unending conversation again. The type to kill. The type to die—well, we were all that. And the certainties of Arthur Kornfeld flashed through his mind, “I can say without doubt that Viktor wasn’t that type.”

  Troy could not say that. Troy said nothing.

  Kolankiewicz pressed on, “And this mistress . . . ?”

  “Méret Voytek.”

  “Is it possible she knows about Skolnik?”

  “Dunno,” said Troy. “I’ll ask her.”

  §134

  He thought of it as the return bout. She had taken him to hear the sitar—for all her advocacy he thought it had pleased neither of them—he would take her to hear the jazz saxophone . . . the jazz saxophone as played by Ronnie Scott (tenor) and John Dankworth (alto) at Club II.

  He was not at all sure whether the club was a place or an idea. It was a moveable feast, but had premises quite close to Piccadilly Circus in Great Windmill Street—which now found itself home to England’s only nude revue, at the Windmill Theatre, and only bebop-based jazz club, at Club II, certainly the only jazz club to be run by the musicians themselves. He’d been once or twice to the Wednesday night sessions and found they could be sparsely attended. The Saturday he took Voytek the place was packed.

  “Bebop?” she said. “Is nonsense word.”

  “Possibly,” said Troy.

  “Is new?”

  “Ish,” said Troy. “I’d say it’s been around in bits and pieces for close on ten years, but we couldn’t hear it. Swing smothered everything. After all, people wanted to dance not just the night away, but the war away. After the war the bits and pieces seemed to come together.”

  “And swing is dance music? Swing is Fred and Ginger?”

  He was slightly surprised that she knew this.

  “Among others . . . and it tended to favor the big bands—Dorsey, Goodman . . . and their English equivalents . . . except that there is no equivalence . . . such as Roy Fox and Lew Stone. Most of whom had a singer fronting them, if only intermittently. Helen Forrest, Peggy Lee, Al Bowlly, Elsie Carlisle. Bebop is bands or groups, not orchestras. Sextets, octets, sometimes as small as quartets. And I’ve never heard one yet with a singer.”

  “And what is different about it?”

  He didn’t know. Well he did. Sort of. He could hear it. Anyone could hear it. What he didn’t have was the technical vocabulary to explain it. How to say anything about a tune like “Salt Peanuts” without sounding ridiculous? He would be lost talking about diminshed this ascending that. It was a style led by sax and trumpet, by men like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, but the root differences were in the rhythm section, at bass and drums where bassists like Charlie Mingus and drummers like Kenny Clarke and Max Roach led from the rear.

  “Why don’t we just listen?” he said.

  The John Dankworth Quartet took to the stage. Dankworth seeming impossibly young, impossibly slim, all but swaddled in what looked to be an army demob suit topped out with a splash of colour in the shape of a wide, florid tie.

  Bebop could be frantic. Particularly in the hands of a musical anarchist like Dizzy Gillespie. Troy feared there might be no tune to recognize and that Voytek would be alienated and he would find himself forced into explanations or, worse, apologies. But Dankworth played like a mellow dream—American standards laid back to the edge of the horizon, music that rolled out to the skyline . . . “Lover Man,” “Body and Soul.” And it was clear to Troy, watching her out of the corner of one eye, that she was rolling with it, closing her eyes and swaying almost imperceptibly to the mellifluous line of the saxophone.

  As they broke for the interval Troy just heard her say “Is beautiful,” before the audience volume rose and drowned out anything more she might have uttered.

  Out of nowhere a tall, stoutish bloke with a mass of wavy hair appeared and plonked himself down at their table.

  “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Au contraire,” said Troy. “I’ve never known you to listen to anything but Mozart. You’re the last person I’d expect to find in a jazz club.”

  “Yes. Me, too. I rather think I’ve surprised myself. The booze is expensive . . .”

  He held up what seemed to be a quintuple scotch in his left hand.

  “But the dope’s cheap enough.”

  A reefer held up in his right hand, a quick pull on it and his voice vanished into the back of his throat.

  “Are you going to introduce me, old man?”

  “Of course,” said Troy. “Méret Voytek—Guy Burgess. Guy Burgess—Méret Voytek.”

  Sober, good manners would have prompted Burgess to stand for a lady. Drunk, stoned, little would prise him up.

  “A pleasure,” he said to Voytek. “I haven’t heard you play, but I live in hope. Have you heard Troy play?”

  “No. And I hardly dare to hope.”

  Troy did not understand the look she gave him, nor the one that passed between her and Burgess.

  There were three Burgesses at least: there was Guy sober, a diminishing phenomenon; Guy pissed; and, Troy had concluded, Guy hamming up being pissed for whatever reason entered his unfathomable mind. Troy often thought the key to Burgess was boredom. He bored more easily than any man he knew. His kitten’s curiosity demanded to be fed, and if it wasn’t he poked at things, physically, verbally, critically and to find the thi
ng broke from being poked was simply the revelation of its true nature and hence, being pissed, sarcastic, offensive required no apology afterwards.

  Jazz saved them. Ronnie Scott’s Boptet took to the stage. Troy counted to see how many boppers made a boptet and concluded it was seven, but the jazz mind being what it was it might be eight next week and six the week after. Scott’s appearance marked the evening growing old, letting its hair down—no jacket, baggy pants, stripped down to red braces, tie at half-mast, and his collar stud popped. The nature of the evening changed with him—his bebop was more raucous than Dank-worth’s and he launched into Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From the Apple” fit to lift the roof off the room.

  Burgess held out the lit reefer to Troy. Troy shook his head assuming Burgess would just withdraw the offer. Instead the arm extended as he leaned over Troy and Voytek took it in her left hand, put it to her lips, inhaled, and grinned. Troy tried not to see it as a taunt by both of them, a flaunting of illegality in front of an off-duty copper.

  In the next break, Troy said, “What are you doing with yourself these days, Guy?”

  Whatever Guy might say would be at best an approximation of the truth. The last time they’d met he’d been a foreign-office appointed private secretary to the deputy foreign secretary—whose name escaped him—all of which merely spelt “spook” to Troy. Whatever it was was drowned out by Ronnie Scott saying, “And now the ‘52nd Street Theme’ by Thelonious Monk,” and the music beginning again.

  “Who?” Troy yelled in Burgess’s ear.

  “Some monk. I couldn’t grasp anything else. Monk, that’s all I got.”

  Leaving, out in the dank, chilly streets of London, Burgess said, “It’s hardly late. Only just past midnight. Fancy going on somewhere?”

  He was the sort of bloke who’d always say that. It was a favorite phrase of Troy’s old pal Charlie, another spook in sheep’s clothing, “Are we going on somewhere?” It was pathetic, hollow, bored, and boring. The night was never young enough. At worst, a recipe for propping up the bar in a dismal Soho clip joint and paying over the odds for drinks—the pleasure of the company of other bored, hollow men. At best, they’d end up at the Coconut Grove or the Gargoyle Club. Either way, the night would end in the same shabby manner, with Troy picking a paralytic Burgess off the floor and being politely asked to take him home or impolitely thrown out by bouncers. He prayed she’d say no and she did.

  “Thank you. But I am tired and I have to rehearse tomorrow.”

  Burgess went north and they went west. Troy flagged a cab in Piccadilly and was thinking he’d just put her in and bung the cabbie half a crown when she said, “Take me home, Troy. That’s all. Just take me home.” And he got in beside her.

  It might be the last opportunity, so he asked. “I have another lead on Viktor. Or, rather, something I think might be a lead. Did you know a man by the name of André Skolnik?”

  She stared ahead. No particular expression on her face.

  “There’s something about the name. I cannot help thinking I have heard it before.”

  This didn’t help—Skolnik’s name had been in all the London papers and most of the nationals.

  “A friend of Viktor’s?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Skolnik?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought as far as Hyde Park Corner.

  “No. I am certain. I have never met anyone of that name.”

  At Clover Mews, she said, “Come inside. Just until I fall asleep, that’s all. Until I fall asleep.”

  She tucked her legs up under her in the armchair once more. And from her handbag took a fat, rolled reefer. A flick of a match, Bogart-style, against her thumbnail and it was lit and in her mouth.

  Troy said, “If I may ask, where did you get that?”

  “At the club. In the ladies. A woman was selling them.”

  “How much?

  “Seven and sixpence each. I haggled. Three for a pound. You want?”

  “No,” said Troy. “I no want.”

  Reefer begat two types in Troy’s experience. Gigglers and sleepers. Burgess was a giggler. A quarter of an hour later Voytek was fast asleep. He took the remains of the reefer from her fingers, stubbed it out on the tiles in front of the hearth, threw a blanket over her, and went home.

  It was a pity. He could get to like bebop. In particular, he could get to like the music of this Monk person. But he’d have to be very careful about going to the Club II again. It was one thing to be around people who smoked reefer/pot/hay/hemp/maryjane/hashish/tea/weed/ whatever—quite another to be caught in a police raid when the inevitable happened and the plods from Vice stormed in. It was a pity, but it had been nice while it lasted.

  He wondered about meeting Burgess. It could be coincidence. It probably was coincidence. If they wanted him or Voytek followed they’d have sent someone else, someone Troy would never have noticed, not someone guaranteed to blow it all in the first five minutes. On the other hand, supposing the spooks had sent Burgess . . . it would be typical of Burgess to want to fuck it up by sitting at the same table as Troy. And who was he sent for? Troy or Voytek? None of it seemed plausible. All the spooks knew was what Troy had told them. It was coincidence. It had to be coincidence.

  §135

  Not long afterwards.

  Another night alone with books and the wireless for company.

  Leafing through the Radio Times, he turned to the BBC’s venture into high art, the Third Programme. It had been going a couple of years now. Almost since the end of the war. He doubted anyone would have found time or inclination during the war for a station devoted to classical music and talk so arch it was sleep inducing at best and bloody irritating at worst. Up against Kenneth Horne, Arthur Askey, Tommy Handley, and a bunch of catchphrases that had never struck Troy as remotely funny, it would not have stood a chance. But tonight, at seven thirty p.m., just minutes away, the BBC were doing their bit for Viktor Rosen. God knows, Troy thought, Rosen had done enough for them.

  He turned on the set, watched the unfailingly pleasing glow on the Bakelite grill as the valves warmed up, and tuned to the Third.

  “We come now to a recording made last winter in the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. It’s broadcast in memory of Viktor Rosen who died last month, and features Rosen on piano accompanied by Méret Voytek on cello, playing Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in D-minor, op. 58. This piece, together with Debussy’s Suite Bergamesque for solo piano, comprised the second half of the concert. It was recorded on February fourteenth.”

  The usual coughs and shufflings followed. A round of applause. The players took the stage. Silence. One recalcitrant cougher. A tweak and a scratch or two of the bow as Voytek tuned a string. Troy dashed to the piano, searched hurriedly among the sheet music littering the top and retrieved the score of the sonata just as Viktor struck the first chord. He’d no idea why he had this particular score—he didn’t know any cellists he could play with—he wished he did—but he had and it would be fun to follow the score as they played.

  Fun and an education. At the end of the first page, Troy found himself reaching for a pencil and trying to note the variations . . . the ways in which Viktor and Voytek deviated from the “script.” It didn’t ruin the piece, it was nothing if not subtle, but he could not see/hear what it added. It was as though they were overinterpreting, almost improvising . . . but to what end?

  And then he realized what the relationship had been between Viktor Rosen and André Skolnik.

  §136

  On Monday morning he called the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes, asked for someone who knew about Debussy, and was put through to “our Mr. Mapperley.”

  “Do you know if there’s a variorum edition of the Debussy Cello Sonata? I have your edition from 1922 and, well, . . . it differs.”

  Mapperley did not ask from what it differed. He said simply, “Variorum?”

  “Well, take the Schubert E-flat Trio. There are two different four
th movements for that. Some trios play one, some the other, and some bung in both.”

  “Ah, I begin to see what you’re getting at. And the answer’s no. To the best of my knowledge there has only ever been one published version and one manuscript version. Hence, no room to differ. They’re identical. No need to ‘bung in’ anything.”

  Troy looked up the name of the producer of Saturday’s concert in the Radio Times—one Anthea Cridlan. He rang her at Broadcasting House.

  “Do you still have the recording or has it been wiped?”

  “Wiped? Mr. Troy, this is the BBC, we don’t wipe recordings!”

  “Then I need to hear it again. Can you fit me in at ten?”

  “This morning?”

  “This morning.”

  “Is this official Scotland Yard business, Inspector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I suppose I’ll have to fit you in. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Viktor Rosen’s death would it?”

  But Troy had ten years’ experience and endless ways of dodging questions like that.

  §137

  She was a pint-sized redhead about his own age. She was looking at him intensely through round spectacles rimmed with pink plastic.

  He found himself staring.

  “You’re staring,” she said.

  “Well,” he said lamely. “Pink specs . . .”

  “All the better to see you with. And to be precise, Mr. Troy, National Health pink specs.”