PM_E_441 - Cold Snap

by Francis King

  ‘Is he all right?’ Christine asked. From the next-door bedroom the horrible coughing reverberated like a powerful machine that could not be switched off.

  ‘I’ll go and see.’

  As Michael opened the bedroom door, they now heard sounds of violent retching.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Klaus was supporting himself against the edge of the washbasin, his head bent over it. The blond hair at the back of his neck was dark and damp with sweat. He straightened and attempted a smile. His face, recently so flushed from the effort of coughing, now had a greenish tinge around eyes and mouth. One hand went out to the tap and turned it off. Water swished round the basin as he said in German: ‘ Now I feel better. Much better. I’m sorry to have made such a scene.’

  Michael noticed the single drop of bright arterial blood, high up on the basin, where the water had not reached it.

  ‘Have you been coughing blood?’

  Klaus gave a reassuring smile. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Klaus – have you been coughing blood?’

  ‘A little. But I’m better now. See, I’m all right. It’s always like that.’

  ‘What? Does this often happen?’

  ‘Not often. But when I cough badly, then I spit a little blood, and then I feel better. Nothing to worry about. Only my wound.’

  ‘Of course it’s something to worry about it. You’re ill. Ill. I told you that you were ill. Oh, you’re so stupid, Klaus. You must go straight back to the camp and see the doctor. At once!’

  Klaus was bewildered and fearful. ‘But there’s nothing wrong with me. I told you. I’m quite well, Michael. You mustn’t worry so much.’

  ‘Oh, don’t argue! I told you, told you not to smoke that cigarette. You’re just a child. You don’t know what you’re doing? A crisis of illness always flustered and exasperated Michael, as no other crises did.

  Klaus hung his head, as though about to burst into tears.

  ‘Well, let’s get moving.’

  ‘All right, Michael … Michael – I’m sorry.’

  ‘Klaus’s not at all well. He must get back to the camp and see the doctor. Michael reverted to German as he turned to Klaus: ‘Wrap that scarf of mine around you. He pointed to where it hung from a peg on the door. ‘And put on my overcoat.’ He pointed again, and then himself rushed over to fetch it. Klaus stared at him in incredulity. ‘Do as I tell you! It’s madness your going about in this weather without even a sweater. I’m going to order a taxi and take you back myself.’

  ‘But, Michael …’ In his amazement Klaus all but dropped the coat just thrust at him. ‘There’s no need for a taxi. I can walk.’

  ‘In this weather? Are you crazy? Of course you can’t walk. Do you realise how many degrees below zero it is?’

  ‘But I tell you, Michael, there’s nothing wrong with me! I’ve had this cough for many weeks now and I’ve been working every day in the fields – eight or nine hours. Tomorrow morning, if you wish, I’ll see the doctor. He’ll give me some medicine –’

  ‘You’re going to see him now!’

  ‘But that’s impossible. Unless it’s urgent, very urgent, we’re not allowed to see the doctor except in the morning.’

  ‘I’m going to take you to see him at once. I’m going to go with you in the taxi to the camp and I’m going to see that you get the urgent attention you need.’ Michael crossed to the telephone and began to ring for the taxi.

  Klaus turned to Thomas: ‘What’s he doing? What does he mean? How can he come to the camp? It’s forbidden. I’m not ill. Tell him, Thomas, tell him.’

  ‘Michael knows what he’s doing. You must trust him. He’ll see that you get the best treatment.’

  ‘I’m not ill Klaus repeated in a flat, peevish voice, more to himself than to Thomas. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not ill.’

  Michael put down the receiver. ‘Come on, Klaus! The taxi will be round straightaway.’ He turned to Thomas and said in English: ‘You’d better come with us. You might as well save yourself the walk.’

  Thomas hesitated. ‘OK. Thank you.’

  Michael now turned to Christine. ‘Sorry to leave you like this. But you do see …’

  ‘Of course. Is there nothing I can do?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, thank you.’ Then with a fierceness that he rarely displayed, he went on: ‘ I’m going to kick up such a hell of a fuss that they’ll have to send him straight to hospital. It’s outrageous that he should be working in his condition. Fortunately the Commandant was also at Winchester – though not in my house. I’ve met him once or twice at ghastly old boy dinners. He wants to get his son into the college.’

  Thomas crossed over to Christine. ‘ Goodbye, Christine. I’ll see you tomorrow? Blenheim?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow, of course. Everything as we arranged.’

  Now Klaus crossed over to her. He held out his hand, eyes lowered and a look of utter wretchedness on his face. ‘ Auf Wiedersehen,’ he muttered.

  Suddenly, on an impulse, she turned to Michael: ‘Oh, Michael, before he goes, do please tell him how beautiful I think that model of the red two-decker bus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell him in German for me. He won’t understand in English.’

  Exasperated – idiot woman, he thought, to hold them up at a moment like this – he hurriedly delivered the message.

  Transformed, Klaus raised his head, beamed at her, and then, laughing with delight, rushed over to throw his arms around her. ‘Danke, danke, danke!’

  ‘Now come on! Let’s get going!’

  Reluctantly Christine stepped back. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Klaus. Good luck!’

  His face had resumed its anxious, harried expression. She looked at him and gave a coaxing smile, as to a child in fear or distress. But he would not smile back. ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ he eventually returned, as though uncertain of her identity. With his left hand he jerked Michael’s expensive scarf over his mouth. Then he turned away and hurried to the door. With a look of intense impatience, Michael had been holding it open for him.

  Chapter Ten

  When, on her return from Michael’s disastrous tea party, Christine hurried out of the cold into the warmth of the Wellington Square house, Mrs Albert’s son halted on his way up the stairs and stared down balefully at her through the horn-rimmed glasses always worn low on the bridge of his nose. ‘Is that you, Miss Holliday?’

  Ever since Thomas had started to visit the house, Ralph’s attitude to Christine had changed from jaunty friendliness to glum hostility. He now rarely said good morning to her, often failed to pass on messages and on one occasion had deliberately slammed the front door shut when she was about to enter behind him.

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘A blokes been asking for you. I told him he could wait in your room. Called Maxwell. I thought it safe to allow him in. I’ve met him once or twice at the Model Railway Club.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘That’s OK.’ He continued up the stairs, whistling horribly out of tune to himself.

  When, puzzled as to who this unexpected visitor might be, Christine entered her sitting room, it was to find a bulging rucksack on one of the two armchairs, a pile of books on the other, and Bill lying full length on the sofa, his feet up. He was reading a copy of Lillipùt, picked up off her desk.

  ‘Oh, its you! My landlady’s son told me that someone called Maxwell was waiting for me and I had no idea who it was, since I remember you only as Bill.’ She stared at him. ‘You’ve shaven off your lovely moustache.’

  ‘Removing it was part of my effort to come to terms with the peacetime world. I can’t be a perpetual fighter pilot. I hope it’s all right my popping in unannounced. Damn cheek, I’m afraid. But I was passing this way on my journey up from the station and I suddenly thought, well, I might look up such an attractive girl. I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I ought really to have given you some war
ning. I’ve been wanting to come ever since I played such havoc with your feet on the dance floor at Branksome.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you?’ As she began to take off her coat, he rushed forward to help her.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t sure if you’d welcome a visit.’ Having hung up the coat, he went across to the armchair on which the rucksack was resting. She cried out: ‘What have you done with your shoes?’ She had now noticed for the first time that he was in only his socks.

  ‘They got soaked in the slush – just in the short walk from where I parked the old bus to the house. I hope you don’t mind. Regard their removal as an act of respect, as in Japan.’ He began to rummage in the rucksack. ‘ I’ve brought you a birthday present.’

  She laughed. ‘ But its not my birthday! Not until August – a long time away.’

  ‘Never mind. Think of it as an unbirthday present. Or – if you prefer – you can keep it unopened until August. Dash it! Where’s the bally thing got to?’ He pulled out two crushed shirts and a pair of slippers, downtrodden at the heels, and dropped them to the floor. ‘It must be somewhere here. I’ve been up to London. I meant to go for the weekend, that’s why I took up all this clobber, but then I suddenly remembered that I had an essay to write for Monday. Well, I didn’t remember, I knew all along, but my conscience pricked me – belatedly. Is your conscience like that? It’s like having a stone in ones shoe. At first it doesn’t worry one but then gradually …’ He was still rummaging in the rucksack. ‘Ah, here it is!’ He held up a small object untidily swathed in tissue paper. ‘ I hope you’ll like it.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it and see.’

  Having pulled off the tissue paper, Christine peered down. ‘It’s very beautiful. What is it exactly?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how truthful the chap in the Kensington Church Street antique shop was being when he sold it to me, but he told me it was a Ming period snuff bottle. Who knows? Anyway I bought it. Do you really like it? I thought it suited you. Beautiful. Elegant.’

  She turned it over in her hands. ‘ But I – I couldn’t possibly …’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, we hardly know each other.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that! Anyway – what possible use can it be to me? I’ve nowhere to put it.’

  ‘Oh, come on! It’s not all that large.’

  ‘As soon as I saw it, I wanted to buy it not for myself but for you. And as for the money, I’m for once wonderfully rich. You see they pay me for my lost leg – not a lot but something – and then I have my grant. Again not a lot but something. Cheques for both came in last week.’

  ‘But you should be saving. You seem to be terribly extravagant.’

  ‘My last girlfriend came from a banking family and had oodles of cash. But she was terribly mean. Not that that was why our relationship ended. She met an actor johnny and, understandably, she thought him a better bet than me.’

  ‘What a sad story’

  ‘Yes. But, strangely, I wasn’t sad for long.’ He perched himself on the arm of the sofa, swinging his feet in their furry woollen socks. ‘I’m not going to have you refuse my birthday present. It’s very rude and hurtful of you. In any case I once borrowed some money off Ben in a pub and never had the chance to bung it back. So I’m trying to do so now.’

  ‘Well, in that case … Thank you, thank you so much.’ She stared at him. ‘You know, I can hardly believe it’s the same person. And I don’t mean the death of the moustache. You’re so different from last time.’

  ‘Worse, you mean?’

  ‘No, of course not worse. Just … different.’

  ‘I have my ups and downs.’ He fastened the straps of the rucksack, looked up and grinned. ‘Which of us hasn’t? But mine are more extreme than most people’s, I imagine.’ He again perched on the arm of the sofa. ‘Today – don’t ask me why – I feel on top of the world. Tomorrow – who knows? … Mind if I smoke my pipe?’

  She shook her head.

  He felt in his pockets. ‘No matches.’

  She fetched him a box of Swan Vestas from the mantel-piece. ‘Here you are.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He began to light the pipe. ‘Know anything about Gower?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. No sensible person would. He’s the chap I’ve got to write my essay about. You know, after two years in a prison camp, reading non-stop, I thought I knew all about English literature. And then I came here and found that these professor johnnies had discovered a whole gaggle of writers I’d never even heard about. Gower! Oh, blast Gower!’

  He attempted to lob the box of matches back on to the mantelpiece, misaimed, and hit the snuff bottle, which tottered and then crashed on to the tiled hearth below. ‘Oh, lordy, lordy!’ he groaned as it shattered. Then he burst into laughter. ‘Eight pounds gone west!’

  Christine stooped to pick up the fragments. She held some out on the palm of her hand. ‘I’m afraid it can’t be mended. Oh, dear! It was such a lovely thing.’

  ‘People are always saying, ‘‘Something will always come along.” But it would be more truthful to say, ‘‘Something will always go.” And the more you value that something, the quicker the going happens.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a pessimist.’

  ‘Well, then, let me be an optimist and invite you out to dinner.’

  ‘Dinner? When?’

  ‘No time like the present. Tonight. Now. Why not? Are you doing something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Great. Poppet awaits us.’

  ‘Poppet?’

  ‘My jeep. I thought we could drive out to a place I know. On the river, near Abingdon. How about that?’

  ‘Won’t it be very cold?’

  ‘No colder than the gardens of Branksome. When we arrive we can have lots and lots to drink. In fact, we can have lots and lots to drink before that. I have a whole bottle of Scotch in Poppet.’

  Christine hesitated.

  ‘Oh, do say yes!’

  ‘All right.’ The idea was crazy, with the temperature once again several degrees below zero; but she welcomed a possible relief from the depression that had enveloped her after the tea party.

  When Bill had helped her up into the jeep and had arranged a tartan rug about her, he produced the promised bottle of Scotch. ‘I should have a good swig now.’

  ‘Neat?’

  ‘That’s the best way.’

  She took a gulp and at once gagged and began to cough. Perhaps it was the coughing that reminded her of Klaus. All at once she was again thinking of him: where was he now, how ill was he, would he recover? Her own mother had died of TB, only a few months after a famous Scottish consultant, noted for his frankness as much as for his skill, had made the brutal diagnosis. The bottle still in her hands, she stared out at the few leafless trees around the Wellington Square gardens, while Bill attempted to start up the jeep’s engine by hand, the snow falling around him. Poor Klaus! But if she continued to think about him, remembering above all that bleakly muttered ‘ Auf Wiedersehen’ as he had said goodbye to her, she would spoil the whole evening. Once again she put the bottle to her lips, threw back her head, and this time took gulp after gulp.

  ‘Bravo! Good girl!’ Bill, having at last succeeded in starting the engine, was now clambering into the jeep beside her.

  In a miraculously short space of time, even as they were quitting the outskirts of Oxford, all her nagging thoughts of Klaus, Thomas and the other prisoners had been anaesthetised. Bumping and swaying through the February night, she even began to feel exhilarated.

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘No, not in the least. It’s wonderful, absolutely wonderful.’

  ‘I’m going to let Poppet have her head.’

  As they roared down a straight, glimmering avenue of silver birches, Christine began to shout: ‘Faster, faster, faster!’ Her hand went out from under the rug and gripped his arm.

  At last they drove into the silent, deser
ted yard of the ‘place’ that Bill knew. ‘Well, well! Not a single banger in sight,’ he commented. Christine swayed as they began to walk up the narrow path to the entrance. She giggled: ‘Oh, dear, I think I’m a little tipsy. And this path’s so slippery, isn’t it? Oh, hell!’ Her high heel had just splintered the ice sealing a puddle and water had splashed up over her ankle. ‘This keeps happening to me in this hideous weather.’

  ‘You’d better let me help you.’

  She suffered him to put an arm round her waist, experiencing in this proximity of their two bodies a vague arousal.

  In the summer this pub by the river would be crammed with people, many of them undergraduates. Cars would be parked, nose to tail, in the yard, in the lane and along the riverbank. But now, except for a subdued buzz of voices from the public bar and a solitary white van, blazoned ‘Wilson and Daughter Quality Butchers’ by the entrance, there was no sign of anyone.

  Since the open fire in the dining room had not been lit, the elderly waitress, in black dress, white frilly apron and mob cap, laid their meal for them in the saloon bar, tenantless except for a single old man, who slept in a corner, with a half-drunk pint on the table before him. He opened an eye as they were shown in, and then went back to his snoring.

  Gradually, as she made her way through a plate of roast duck, Christine sobered, and Bill’s high spirits ebbed. Their conversation trickled, an all but exhausted spring, then dwindled and dried up. There followed a long silence, unbroken except by an occasional voice raised in the public bar and the sounds of their own dogged eating. Glancing up, as he removed a splinter of bone from between his teeth Bill noticed the look of abstraction on Christine’s face. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’