‘What do you have there?’ I asked. ‘A small snub-nosed, pearl-handled .22 automatic?’
‘No, I’ve got that tucked in my garter. In here I have the flare pistol.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you like for lunch?’
In London with a beautiful hungry girl one must show her to Mario at the Terrazza. We sat in the ground floor front under the plastic grapes and Mario brought us Campari-sodas and told Jean how much he hated me. To do this he had to practically gnaw her ear off. Jean liked it.
We ordered the Zuppa di Lenticchie and Jean told how this lentil soup reminded her of visits with her father to Sicily many years ago. They had friends there, and each year would coincide their visits with the Feast of San Giuseppe on 19th March.
On that day the wealthier families provide gigantic amounts of food and open house to the whole village. Always the feast begins with lentil soup and spaghetti, but on St Joseph’s day no cheese must be eaten, so, instead, a mixture of toasted bread-crumbs, sardines and fennel is sprinkled over the dish.
‘Those days in the hot sun were as perfect as anytime I remember,’ Jean mused.
We ate the Calamari and the chicken deep in which the butter and garlic had been artfully hidden to be struck like a vein of aromatic gold. Jean had pancakes and a thimbleful of black coffee without mentioning calories, and went through the whole meal without lighting a cigarette. This showed virtue enough, she must have some vices.
Mario, deciding that I was on the brink of a great and important seduction, brought us a bottle of cold sparkling Asti ‘on the house’. He filled and refilled Jean’s glass then turned with the bottle still in his hand. He pointed the neck at me. ‘Is good?’
It certainly was. The wine and Jean had conspired to produce in me a gentle euphoria. The sunlight fell in dusty bars across the table-cloth and lit her face as she grinned. I watched her image inverted in the clear coolness of the wine in her glass. Outside, the driver of a wet fish van was arguing violently with a sad traffic warden. The traffic had welded itself into a river of metal, and from a taxi a few yards up the road two men paid off their cab and continued their journey on foot. The glass of the cab permitted only a momentary glimpse, then the traffic moved together; closing like the shutter of a camera.
One of the two men had the build of Jay, the other Dalby’s style in shoes. I was suddenly very wide awake.
1 Director of Special Operations: State Dept. Counter Intelligence Corps US Army.
[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) This can be a week of scrambled emotions. Seize any opportunities that come your way and be prepared to change your plans.]
On the filing cabinet was a vast jugful of yellow daisies, my new carpet had been tacked into the dry rot, and the window was open for the first time in months. Below in the street a couple of young men, collegiate in a Cecil Gee way, were hammering the neighbourhood eardrums with their motor scooters. There was a colliery brass band in the dispatch office with a xylophone that made my daisies quiver. Alice sent Jean out on some errand or other, then brought me the real file on Jean Tonnesen. A thick foolscap loose-leaf book held together by a brown lace bearing a small metal seal with a number on it.
It followed the transfer card roughly, although this wasn’t always the case with all our people. There was the Zurich business – an affair with a man named Maydew, who had some connection with the US State Department. Her brother in Yokohama worried the author of this file – some anti-nuclear warfare activity, declarations, letters to Japanese papers, etc, but that was all pretty standard stuff nowadays. A brother missing 1943 in German-occupied Norway. On the last summary page there was the word Norway followed by a mathematical plus sign. This meant that she should not be involved in work that would call into question her loyalty to the Norwegian Government, but was recommended for anything involving Norwegian co-operation. It was all straightforward.
‘I say – like a look see at the latest? New set of figures you might just …’
I groaned, ‘No time now, I’m afraid.’ I just didn’t want any more of Carswell for a long time, but I just couldn’t raise the energy to transfer him. In any case, lose him, we’d lose Murray, and I wanted to hang on to the only muscular intelligent adult male we had.
Carswell came nearer and dusted off the old velvet cushion. ‘How’s things?’ I asked. I capitulated.
He lowered his creaking bones into my wicker chair.
‘Very fit, very fit indeed. Plenty of exercise and fresh air, that’s the secret – if you don’t mind me saying so, you could do with a little of the same. Overdoing it a bit, old chap. Can see it; dark here!’ He ran a finger under his large red staring eyes.
The door opened noiselessly and Alice came in to collect Jean’s file. I was getting used to having my own department. My history books, notes and unpaid bills were scattered through our only light clean office in such profusion that I had almost forgotten the rigorous tidiness it had enjoyed when it was Dalby’s domain. Alice hadn’t, however, and was constantly straightening files and hiding things in places where ‘Mr Dalby keeps them’. I found the crossword puzzle I had been working on. Alice had completed it. I had got ten down correct. It was EAT. ‘Not so funny, rheumatism,’ Carswell was saying. DITHYRAMBE had been quite wrong. I don’t know why I’d ever thought it otherwise … ‘With white horse oils,’ Carswell was saying, ‘and go straight to bed.’
I wished Carswell would stop talking and go home. He smoked his cigarette with a nervous concentration taking it compulsively out of his mouth, but never more than three inches away. Alice watched Carswell as he scratched his shoulder blades upon the carved uprights of the guest chair. She knew, as I did, that he was settling in. She gave me the rolling eyes and screwed face of sympathy. I pretended I hadn’t seen the completed puzzle.
At that moment Chico was pressing button A.
My outside phone rang. And everyone began talking.
‘Where are you speaking from? Yes, where are you now? What the hell are you doing in Grantham?’
‘Let me talk to him, sir. There are the film requisitions, he hasn’t done anything about them and they must go off today.’
‘Well, you’ve no business in Grantham. Who signed your travel form? Oh, did you? Well, you needn’t think you’re charging it on expenses.’
‘Murray,’ Carswell was going on relentlessly. ‘A dashed good trooper, mind you, without your confidence, nothing. I appreciate it. Working very closely, restraining the impulse to guess hastily. Thoroughness is the essence of a statistical operation.’
‘Just what do you think my role is in this drama of your life?’
‘Yes, sir, I know, sir, the commanding officer, sir, but when I saw …’
‘Right, Chico, that’s right, you’ve got it right for once. That’s what I am, the, and more immediately, your commanding officer. But that doesn’t worry you, does it? Would you have just minced off into the blue if Dalby had still been in charge here – would you?’
‘I’ve seen Dalby, sir, spoken with him. I’m seeing him again this evening.’
Carswell spread some sheets of paper across my desk. He said, ‘These figures I’ve brought along here are only the briefest possible extract, I don’t want to worry you with the nuts and bolts. What you want is results, not excuses, as you are always saying. There’s a lot more work if they are to be made convincing. I mean really convincing. At this stage it’s more of an analytical hunch.’
‘You have no business seeing Dalby.’