‘I what?’
‘…I don’t know, Finch. You act like you’d rather be anywhere else but—’
‘That’s not true.’
‘…Couldn’t wait to tear yourself away.’
He flustered.
‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’
She shrugged a truce and indicated that they should continue walking. He extended his arm and she took it. Just the feel of her touch, even through several layers of clothing, sent a charge, some primeval shock through him.
They strolled for a moment in silence, westwards, the great Palace of Westminster looming up ahead.
‘O sweet, to stray and pensive ponder a heartfelt sang,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Robbie Burns…’
He pointed.
‘…There, the inscription.’
‘Oh… What do you think it means?’
He thought he did, but it suddenly felt wrong.
‘I’m not sure… I mean…’
He shrugged.
‘…I don’t know…’
He felt foolish.
‘…How’s your stay, so far?’ he asked, ridiculously formally, as if he were now supposed to address her differently, and hated it the moment he said it.
‘London? I mean, it’s great, there’s so much to do. So much life… culture. But, I don’t know. I mean, the weather… I guess you get used to it.’
‘The cold?’
‘The cold’s fine. A chilly day and blue sky is all right by me if you’re wrapped up well enough. It’s just… I don’t know… days like today… everything’s so grey.’
‘Grey?’
‘It’s like the greyness, the damp, seeps into your soul, colours your mood. It explains a lot… I mean about you… not you specifically… I mean, the English…’
‘Steady on!’
‘No, no, no, don’t get me wrong. That’s not a negative. I mean it’s how you carry yourself, like you’re always wearing several layers, speaking with your mouths half closed, everything internalised, no external stimuli. Australians, we’re cut from the exact same cloth, and yet…’
‘Psychology? Nurse Jones, I think you missed your calling.’
She failed to laugh.
‘I haven’t been Nurse Jones in a long time, Finch.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m happy, Finch. You want to do something? Be pleased for me.’
He said nothing.
‘And you?… Maude?’ she continued. ‘You didn’t do so badly. She’s beautiful, clever, funny… She’s adorable, Finch.’
He was uncomfortable and she sensed it. She changed the subject and went on for a few minutes about the glories of the Savoy Hotel. Mark Twain was staying there presently, didn’t he know? – Mr Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself. She told him some story, with considerable glee, about the actress Sarah Bernhardt who had also been a guest recently and was rumoured to sleep in a coffin which she took with her everywhere she went.
‘I think Miss Bernhardt has a very good publicist,’ said Finch.
This time she did laugh.
A young married couple strolled past, the man in a striped blazer and boater, humming a tune which made his wife giggle.
Emboldened by the thaw in relations, Finch tried to make amends for his awkwardness by diplomatically enquiring after Edward, feigning enthusiasm as to his very evident success in evidently every field.
The fact that he had just secured some kind of lucrative contract with the Admiralty – the reason he was currently in the Glasgow shipyards – and had further shipbuilding deals about to be brokered in Brooklyn and New Jersey, did not enhance Finch’s mood. It was why they were embarking from Liverpool in a few days’ time, she explained.
The finality of it all forced him to his point.
‘Annie, can I ask you something?’
They had stopped for some reason. She turned and faced him. He wanted to stare at her with impunity, to get lost in her deep-brown liquid eyes, but felt awkward and kept looking away.
‘South Africa… the trouble we got ourselves into… Do you ever…?’
She looked embarrassed. Even though no one was listening, she strained to keep her voice down.
‘How can I not think of it, Finch? We were bloody lucky.’
‘It’s just that—’
‘What, Finch?’
He led her to a bench, her favourite she said, and, on a promise of secrecy, he told her everything that had happened: Pickersgill, Jilkes, the newspaper cutting, the lavender man, his fat-necked friend, Chilcot, Bayswater, Soho, Lulu, Somerset House, everything…
Annie was a good listener. She always had been, like the very first time he had unburdened himself upon her, on the run through the vineyards of Stellenbosch. She didn’t judge. He thought again of the scores of deathbed confessions she must have been party to during the war, dying Tommies reaching out to clutch her hand. After he had finished going through the details, she sat in silence contemplating it all.
‘Well Ursa’s Latin for bear,’ she said matter-of-factly, in the manner of someone nonchalantly tossing off an answer to a too-easy crossword puzzle. ‘You know that, right?’
‘I’m not that stupid. And given Pickersgill’s mention of the Dogger Bank incident, I’m guessing the bear here has something to do with Russia… the country itself, a society, an organisation…?’
A woman walked past with a mournful-looking dachshund. Finch wondered if it too didn’t fit into Annie’s weather theory.
Annie now looked concerned, sad.
‘Finch. Your friend… Jilkes. He’s right, you know. We owe our liberty to staying out of trouble. What happened in South Africa… I never want to go through anything like that ever again… as long as I live. You know what, now that you’ve said it, I don’t like the fact that you’ve told me all this. Now I feel implicated.’
Finch turned apologetic, soothing.
‘Sorry, it’s just that you, Annie… you’re the only person I know who would understand. And you being here… I don’t know, it’s just what… again… fate?’
She stood. Her tone turned brisk.
‘Finch, I don’t know how to say this any other way but let me spell it out. I am a married woman – a happily married woman.’
He could feel himself regretting the words as they left his lips.
‘Annie… South Africa… After you left for Rhodesia… All those letters…’
‘Goodbye, Finch,’ she snapped and stamped off.
Finch cursed himself. He went to go after her but her curt ‘Leave me alone’ and a rejective shrug as he touched her arm was just about the most painful thing another human being had ever done to him. He couldn’t see, but he thought she might be crying.
The heads of the promenaders were turning. They’d been causing a scene. There would be Savoy guests among them. He let her go. But it would not be the end of it, he swore. Somehow, he would see her in the next few days… or write to her… anything… He would apologise and make it right. He’d been an arse.
* * *
When Finch got home to St Albans, Mrs P-A had returned and he felt obliged to sit with her, drink tea and explain the robbery (missing out the part about his own arrest and the fact that the burglar had also been murdered – he didn’t want to cause her unnecessary alarm). He listened to her enthusiastic tales of her trip to Bournemouth. He refused… but then gave into her insistence that she cook him some dinner (bangers and mash but constructed with some unique South American flourish), then waited for her to retire for the predicted early night.
Once he was on his own, Finch dug out his set of Ordnance Survey maps – a fortuitous Christmas gift from a few years back – and which he used for the odd bit of country walking. He found the one for Norfolk. As he studied it, following the line of the coast with his finger, he noticed, on the occasional table, an envelope with a card inside. He knew it must have been delivered by hand to Mrs P-A earlier but that she ha
d had the decency to let him discover it for himself – although it must have agonised her not to foist it upon him when he walked through the door and sit there studying him while he read it.
The lovingly curved hand which had inscribed ‘Ingo’ on the front told him it was from Maude. Inside was a picture postcard, a cross-hatched etching of the ruin – Old Gorhambury – they had sat at just the other day on their bicycle ride. She must have spent a lot of time on the words on the back, and doubtless been through several drafts before committing it to card with little margin for error and little space to fit it all in.
Indeed, what she wrote was quite beautiful in its composition – a baring of the soul, a confirmation of the fact that she cared very deeply for him, with an accompanying, gentle plea that she could forgive him if he would only just explain what had been going on of late (she’d evidently run into Daphne). But, in order for absolution, in order to share herself with him, to love him, she stated, she needed to understand him.
Finch thought about what he might need for his trip and began throwing a few things together. He would slip out at first light.
Chapter Seventeen
Mordecai could just see through the gaps at the bottom of the blinds. By the looks of it, the car was proceeding along the Commercial Road. Yes, they were rounding the Limehouse Basin and going over the Cut. The smell alone told him that they were passing Billingsgate fish market, heading east. Indeed, they soon crossed over the hump of the bridge on the River Lea. Sliding down in his seat he could see, beyond, the huge Victoria and Albert Docks with their miles of quays, an excavation so massive it dwarfed the berths on the Isle of Dogs.
After their initial exchange, the man said little, other than asking him whether he’d had enough to eat. When Mordecai did try to speak, the man raised a palm to indicate he should desist. Mordecai began to view him with contempt – this self-important man with his stupid little dog.
Soon after Billingsgate, the air was charged with another pungent aroma, that of natural gas mixed with the unmistakeable sulphurous tang of human excrement. The man raised a white silk handkerchief to his mouth. They were near Beckton, Mordecai knew, with its gasworks and sewage treatment plant, built on the outskirts of the city before it rolled into the Essex marshland the other side of Barking Creek. There was one last dingy settlement, the village of Creekmouth, built for the workers of the guano works, which yielded another toxic aroma altogether.
The car turned off the main road and began to wind down side tracks. Eventually it stopped, the rear door opened and the man who’d knocked on Mordecai’s door, evidently a sort of manservant or valet, extended a hand for the man with the fur coat to alight, still clutching his minuscule canine.
Mordecai followed. He could see him fully now. He had a rounded belly, the mark of good living. His coat was made from sable, a fur Mordecai recognised. It would have cost an absolute fortune. The gold cufflinks alone would probably keep Mordecai in food and rent for six months.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see,’ said the valet.
Once more, he lofted his umbrella against the fine drizzle – though over his master this time – and led them across a disused yard towards a derelict warehouse. There was no one around. Not a soul.
Again, the bright, shiny, expensive car seemed wildly out of place, this time in an industrial wasteland. It was open and windswept, the breeze whipping in from where the Thames opened out on its course to the North Sea.
There were mangled stretches of chain-link fence around the perimeter. Weeds and nettles and thistles poked up through the cracks in the concrete and patches of gravel, the dents and unevenness pitting it with mucky puddles.
Behind them, upriver, loomed Beckton’s cylindrical gas holders, hundreds of feet high, the giant containers at varying levels of capacity within their ornate steel skeletons.
Their feet crunched across the ground. Mordecai wasn’t forced to follow. He knew he could walk away if he wanted to. And if anyone tried to stop him he could outfight, outrun them easily. He went nonetheless.
The warehouse had holes and missing panels in its corrugated-iron roof with the fine rain cascading down. There were wooden planks absent from the walls and patches of light came in. There was the constant drip of water from a pipe somewhere. Mordecai could see from the equipment – crates, tanks, hosepipes, shreds of netting – that it had once been a plant for processing fish, part of the near-dead Barking trade.
They stopped. Ahead, in the dark, someone was advancing towards them with big shuffling footsteps. When he emerged into the light, Mordecai was taken aback. The man standing before him was not only the most peculiar, but also the most shocking specimen of a human being he had ever seen. He was huge, a man mountain, but powerful-looking, his upper body completely disproportionate to his legs. And his neck… it was as thick… wider than his head…
The man had something in his hand. It was a rifle, British army issue, a Lee–Enfield, Mordecai knew. Mordecai was not a man who gave in easily to fear but he felt a pang of it when the enormous, grotesque man began a slow, deliberate lumber in his direction. His dead, black, close-set eyes were fixed upon him.
He stopped and held out the rifle across his two huge palms – a gesture. Mordecai took it. The man pointed back outside, across the yard. To what exactly, Mordecai did not know. The man did it again. About a hundred yards away was a low wall, about three or four feet high. There appeared to be objects set up upon it – bottles. They were standing in a row, equidistant, probably with water in to weight them against the wind.
The man pointed again. Mordecai deduced that it was an invitation to shoot at them. Mordecai shrugged and turned for a second opinion. The valet nodded his assent.
Mordecai had never fired a Lee–Enfield but had used a Swedish version of a German Mauser and, on examination, the principle was the same. He pulled back the bolt. The box magazine was empty. They had had the good sense not to hand him a loaded weapon right away.
The big man reached in his pocket and tossed Mordecai the bullet clip. Mordecai rammed it into the breech and expelled the charger. It pinged out onto the floor. He was left-handed and tucked the stock under his chin. He wound the webbing of the strap around his right hand and tugged the weapon in tight against his left shoulder.
He was not sure of the gun’s sighting. From an unsteady standing position, it would be difficult to calibrate. He turned deliberately to his left, just a few degrees – so they knew what he was doing. On the ground, some five yards to the left of the wall, was a brick. He closed his right eye and took his time. Slowly, smoothly, he squeezed the trigger.
The bang echoed thunderously around the warehouse. He had forgotten how loud it could get. Out in the yard, a splash kicked up in the puddle just a few inches to the right of the brick.
Mordecai trusted his aim implicitly. Gently, he moved the slide on the rifle’s back sight. He pulled the bolt and ejected the cartridge, which clinked onto the concrete. He took aim again, this time at the end bottle. With the remaining four shots, he shattered bottles unfailingly and sequentially, left to right.
The large man tossed him another clip. With the next five shots he proceeded along the line. He did not miss. They exploded in distant green clouds. Mordecai lowered the rifle.
The valet nodded. There was no need to carry on.
‘Do you love your country, Mr Plavinas?’
‘What?’
‘Do you love your country?’
To Mordecai it was an absurd thing to ask.
‘My country? I have no country,’ he spat. ‘Latvia, she has been stolen.’
The valet showed no reaction.
‘You were a soldier. You fought bravely for Mother Russia. A sharpshooter in Peking. The Boxer Rebellion.’
How the hell did they know?
‘What the fuck Russia doing in China?’ Mordecai snarled, suddenly thrown. ‘I have nothing against Chinese. I had no choice. And now?… We are Jews. We are trea
ted like dirt. We leave. To come here. To England.’
The rich man in his fur coat began laughing. It was as if Mordecai’s outburst was just a twee show, a diversion, the tantrum of a child, something to be humoured. Mordecai felt his blood rising. It must have been obvious. The large man stepped forward in warning.
Eventually, the rich man stopped his splutters, dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief and petted his dog.
‘What if I offered you a chance to correct that?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
The valet nodded and the large man retreated into the shadows at the rear of the warehouse. Mordecai heard a door open. A minute or so later, he was aware of some whimpering, like that of a scared animal.
Slowly hulking into the light came the large man again. But this time he had someone with him. He was dragging them. As they neared, Mordecai could see the person was dressed in ragged trousers and a ripped, collarless shirt. He was filthy dirty. He had bare, bloody feet. He was shackled at the ankles. His hands had been bound behind him. And, over his head, was a sack. The captive was staggering, limping.
As they came closer Mordecai could see the bruises, the blood, the sweat. Around the man’s groin was a large stain of urine. Mordecai recognised the pathetic words that were being mumbled from within the hessian cloth. It was Russian.
‘Pozhalyusta. Net…’ Please. No.
Mordecai recoiled. Whatever this man had done, this treatment was sadistic. The outcome did not look good. Another thought froze him. What if they turned on him…?
The big man yanked the hood off. The captive winced, blinking into the light. His face had been beaten severely. It was bruised, swollen. One eye, within a bulge of dark flesh that looked like the skin of a rotten, black banana, was just a slit. His nose was obviously broken. And he had no teeth, just stubs of them. Blood dripped from his mouth.
The rich man spoke.
‘What if I told you this man was Russian secret police… Okhrana?’
Mordecai did not know how he was supposed to react. Of course he should therefore hate him. It was a given. But here? Like this…?
The Cold North Sea Page 13