The Confidential Agent, Page 2

  ‘Not in England.’

  ‘Well, where do you suppose somebody like myself would stay?’

  ‘Strand Palace?’

  ‘Right.’

  The detective handed back the passport with a smile. He said, ‘We’ve got to be careful. I’m sorry. You’ll have to hurry for your train.’ Careful! D. thought. Was that what they considered careful in an island? How he envied them their assurance.

  What with the delay D. was almost last in the queue at the customs; the noisy young men were presumably on the platform where the train would be waiting, and as for his fellow-countryman – he was convinced he hadn’t waited for the train. A girl’s voice said, ‘Oh, I’ve got plenty to declare.’ It was a harsh voice: he had heard it before demanding one more in the bar. He looked at her without much interest; he had reached a time of life when you were either crazy or indifferent about women, and this one, very roughly speaking, was young enough to be his daughter.

  She said, ‘I’ve got a bottle of brandy here, but it’s been opened.’ He thought vaguely, waiting his turn, that she oughtn’t to drink so much – her voice didn’t do her justice: she wasn’t that type. He wondered why she had been drinking in the third class; she was well dressed, like an exhibit. She said, ‘And then there’s a bottle of Calvados – but that’s been opened too.’ D. felt tired; he wished they’d finish with her and let him through. She was very young and blonde and unnecessarily arrogant; she looked like a child who has got nothing she wants and so is determined to obtain anything, whether she likes it or not.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘that’s more brandy. I was going to tell you if you’d given me time, but you can see – that’s been opened, too.’

  ‘I’m afraid we shall have to charge,’ the customs officer said, ‘on some of these.’

  ‘You’ve no right to.’

  ‘You can read the regulations.’

  The wrangle went interminably on. Somebody else looked through D.’s wallet and passed it. ‘The London train?’ D. asked.

  ‘It’s gone. You’ll have to wait for the seven-ten.’ It was not yet a quarter to six.

  ‘My father’s a director of the line,’ the girl said furiously.

  ‘I’m afraid this is nothing to do with the line.’

  ‘Lord Benditch.’

  ‘If you want to take these drinks with you, the duty will be twenty-seven and six.’

  So that was Benditch’s daughter. He stood at the exit watching her. He wondered whether he would find Benditch as difficult as the customs man was finding his girl. A lot depended on Benditch; if he chose to sell his coal at a price they were able to pay, they could go on for years. If not, the war might be over before the spring.

  She seemed to have got her own way, if that was any omen; she looked as if she were on top of the world as she came to the door which would let her out on to the bitter foggy platform. It was prematurely dark, a little light burned by a bookstall, and a cold iron trolley leant against a tin advertisement for Horlicks. It was impossible to see as far as the next platform, so that this junction for the great naval port – that was how D. conceived it – might have been a little country station planked down between the dripping fields which the fast trains passed.

  ‘God!’ the girl said, ‘it’s gone.’

  ‘There’s another,’ D. said, ‘in an hour and a half.’ He could feel his English coming back to him every time he spoke: it seeped in like fog and the smell of smoke.

  ‘So they tell you,’ she said. ‘It will be hours late in this fog.’

  ‘I’ve got to get to town to-night.’

  ‘Who hasn’t?’

  ‘It may be clearer inland.’

  But she’d left him and was pacing impatiently up the cold platform; she disappeared altogether beyond the bookstall, and then a moment later was back again eating a bun. She held one out to him, as if he were something behind bars. ‘Like one?’

  ‘Thank you.’ He took it with a solemn face and began to eat: this was English hospitality.

  She said, ‘I’m going to get a car. Can’t wait in this dull hole for an hour. It may be clearer inland’ (so she had heard him). She threw the remains of her bun in the direction of the track: it was like a conjuring trick – a bun and then just no bun at all. ‘Care for a lift?’ she said. When he hesitated she went on, ‘I’m as sober as a judge.’

  ‘Thank you. I wasn’t thinking that. Only what would be—most quick.’

  ‘Oh, I shall be quickest,’ she said.

  ‘Then I’ll come.’

  Suddenly a face loomed oddly up at the level of their feet – they must have been standing on the very edge of the platform: an aggrieved face. A voice said, ‘Lady, I’m not in a zoo.’

  She looked down without surprise. ‘Did I say you were?’ she said.

  ‘You can’t go – hurtling – buns like that.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said impatiently, ‘don’t be silly.’

  ‘Assault,’ the voice said. ‘I could sue you, lady. It was a missile.’

  ‘It wasn’t. It was a bun.’

  A hand and a knee came up at their feet: the face came a little nearer. ‘I’d have you know . . .’ it said.

  D. said, ‘It was not the lady who threw the bun. It was me. You can sue me – at the Strand Palace. My name is D.’ He took What-was-her-name by the arm and moved her towards the exit. A voice wailed in disgust through the fog like a wounded sea animal, ‘A foreigner.’

  ‘You know,’ the girl said, ‘you don’t really need to protect me like that.’

  ‘You have my name now,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, mine’s Cullen, if you want to know: Rose Cullen. A hideous name, but then, you see, my father’s crazy about roses. He invented – is that right ? – the Marquise Pompadour. He likes tarts too, you see. Royal tarts. We have a house called Gwyn Cottage.’

  They were lucky over the car. The garage near the station was well lit up – it penetrated the fog for nearly fifty yards, and there was a car they could have, an old Packard. He said, ‘I have business to do with Lord Benditch. It is an odd coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Everybody I ever meet has business with him.’

  She drove slowly in what she supposed was the direction of London, bumping over tram-lines. ‘We can’t go wrong if we follow the tram-lines.’

  He said, ‘Do you always travel third class?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I like to choose my company. I don’t find my father’s business friends there.’

  ‘I was there.’

  She said, ‘Oh, hell! the harbour,’ and switched recklessly across the road and turned: the fog was full of grinding brakes and human annoyance. They moved uncertainly back the way they had come and began to climb a hill. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if we’d been Scouts we’d have known. You always go down hill to find water.’

  At the top of the hill the fog lifted a little; there were patches of cold grey afternoon sky, hedgerows like steel needles, and quiet everywhere. A lamb padded and jumped along the grass margin of the road, and two hundred yards away a light came suddenly out. This was peace. He said, ‘I suppose you are very happy here.’

  ‘Happy?’ she said. ‘Why?’

  He said, ‘All this – security.’ He remembered the detective winking at him in a friendly way and saying, ‘We’ve got to be careful.’

  ‘It’s not so rich,’ she said in her immature badly-brought-up voice.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. He explained laboriously, ‘You see, I come from two years of war. I should go along a road like this very slowly, ready to stop and get into a ditch if I heard a plane.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you’re fighting for something,’ she said. ‘Or aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t remember. One of the things which danger does to you after a time is – well, to kill emotion. I don’t think I shall ever feel anything again except fear. None of us can hate any more – or love. You know it’s a statistical fact that very few children are being born in our cou
ntry.’

  ‘But your war goes on. There must be a reason.’

  ‘You have to feel something to stop a war. Sometimes I think we cling to it because there is still fear. If we were without that, we shouldn’t have any feeling at all. None of us will enjoy the peace.’

  A small village appeared ahead of them like an island – an old church, a few graves, an inn. He said, ‘I shouldn’t envy us if I were you – with this.’ He meant the casualness and quiet . . . the odd unreality of a road you could follow over any horizon.

  ‘It doesn’t need a war to flatten things. Money, parents, lots of things are just as good as war.’

  He said, ‘After all, you are young . . . very pretty.’

  ‘Oh, hell!’ she said, ‘are you going to start on me?’

  ‘No. Of course not. I’ve told you . . . I can’t feel anything. Besides, I’m old.’

  There was a sharp report, the car swerved and he flung his arms up over his face. The car came to a stop. She said, ‘They’ve given us a dud tyre.’ He put his arms down. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I do still feel that.’ His hands were trembling. ‘Fear.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of here,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He carried the war in his heart: give me time, he thought, and I shall infect anything – even this. I ought to wear a bell like the old lepers.

  ‘Don’t be melodramatic,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand melodrama.’ She pressed the starter and they moved bumpingly forward. ‘We shall hit a roadhouse or a garage or something before long,’ she said; ‘it’s too cold to change the wretched thing here.’ And a little later, ‘The fog again.’

  ‘Do you think you should go on driving? Without a tyre.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said.

  He said apologetically, ‘You see, I have important work to do.’

  She turned her face to him – a thin worried face, absurdly young: he was reminded of a child at a dull party. She couldn’t be more than twenty. That was young enough to be his daughter. She said, ‘You lay on the mystery with a trowel. Do you want to impress me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s such a stale gag.’

  ‘Have so many people tried it with you?’

  ‘I couldn’t count them,’ she said. It seemed to him immeasurably sad that anyone so young should have known so much fraud. Perhaps because he was middle-aged it seemed to him that youth should be a season of – well, hope. He said gently, ‘I’m nothing mysterious. I am just a business man.’

  ‘Do you stink of money, too?’

  ‘Oh no. I am the representative of a rather poor firm.’

  She smiled at him suddenly, and he thought, without emotion, one could call her beautiful. ‘Married?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘You mean separated?’

  ‘Yes. That is to say, she’s dead.’

  The fog turned primrose ahead of them; they slowed down and came bumpingly into a region of voices and tail lights. A high voice said, ‘I told Sally we’d get here.’ A long glass window came into view; there was soft music: a voice, very hollow and deep, sang, ‘I know I knew you only When you were lonely.’

  ‘Back in civilisation,’ the girl said gloomily.

  ‘Can we get the tyre changed here?’

  ‘I should think so.’ She opened the door, got out and was submerged at once in fog and light and other people. He sat alone in the car; now the engine wasn’t running it was bitterly cold. He tried to think what his movements should be. First he had been directed to lodge at a number in a Bloomsbury street. Presumably the number had been chosen so that his own people could keep an eye on him. Then he had an appointment the day after next with Lord Benditch. They were not beggars; they could pay a fair price for the coal, and a profiteer’s bonus when the war was over. Many of the Benditch collieries were closed down: it was a chance for both of them. He had been warned that it was inadvisable to bring in the Embassy – the Ambassador and the First Secretary were not trusted, although the Second Secretary was believed to be loyal. It was a hopelessly muddled situation – it was quite possible that really it was the Second Secretary who was working for the rebels. Anyway, the whole affair was to be managed quietly; nobody had expected the complication he had encountered on the Channel boat. It might mean anything – from a competitive price for the coal shipments to robbery or even murder. Well, he was somewhere in the fog ahead.

  D. suddenly felt an inclination to turn off the lights of the car. Sitting in the dark he transferred his credentials from his breast pocket; he hesitated with them in his hand and then stuffed them down into his sock. The door of the car was pulled open and the girl said, ‘Why on earth did you turn out the lights? I had an awful business finding you.’ She switched them on again and said, ‘There’s nobody free at the moment – but they’ll send a man . . .’

  ‘We’ve got to wait?’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  He came cautiously out of the car, wondering whether it was his duty to offer her dinner; he grudged every inessential penny he spent. He said, ‘Can we get dinner?’

  ‘Of course we can. Have you got enough? I spent my last sou on the car.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. You will have dinner with me?’

  ‘That was the idea.’

  He followed her into the house . . . hotel . . . whatever it was. This sort of thing was new since the days when he came to England as a youth to read at the British Museum. An old Tudor house – he could tell it was genuine Tudor – it was full of arm-chairs and sofas, and a cocktail bar where you expected a library. A man in a monocle took one of the girl’s hands, the left one, and wrung it. ‘Rose. Surely it’s Rose.’ He said, ‘Excuse me. I think I see Monty Crookham,’ and slid rapidly sideways.

  ‘Do you know him?’ D. said.

  ‘He’s the manager. I didn’t know he was down this way. He used to have a place on Western Avenue.’ She said with contempt, ‘This is fine, isn’t it? Why don’t you go back to your war?’

  But that wasn’t necessary. He had indeed brought the war with him: the infection was working already. He saw beyond the lounge – sitting with his back turned at the first table inside the restaurant – the other agent. His hand began to shake just as it always shook before an air raid. You couldn’t live six months in prison expecting every day to be shot and come out at the end of it anything else but a coward. He said, ‘Can’t we have dinner somewhere else? Here – there are so many people.’ It was absurd, of course, to feel afraid, but watching the narrow stooping back in the restaurant he felt as exposed as if he were in a yard with a blank wall and a firing squad.

  ‘There’s nowhere else. What’s wrong with it?’ She looked at him with suspicion. ‘Why not a lot of people? Are you going to begin something after all?’

  He said, ‘No. Of course not. . . . It only seemed to me . . .’

  ‘I’ll get a wash and find you here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  As soon as she had gone, he looked quickly round for a lavatory: he wanted cold water, time to think. His nerves were less steady than they had been on the boat – he was worried by little things like a tyre bursting. He pursued the monocled manager across the lounge; the place was doing good business in spite of – or because of – the fog. Cars came yapping distractedly in from Dover and London. He found the manager talking to an old lady with white hair. He was saying, ‘Just so high. I’ve got a photograph of him here – if you’d like to see. I thought of your husband at once . . .’ All the time he kept his eye open for other faces; his words had no conviction: his lean brown face carved into the right military lines by a few years’ service in the army was unattached, like an animal’s in a shop window. D. said, ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t sell him to anyone.’ He swivelled round and switched on a smile as he would a cigarette lighter. ‘Let me see. Where have we met?’ He held a snapshot of a wire-haired terrier in his hand. He sai
d, ‘Good lines. Stands square. Teeth . . .’

  ‘I just wanted to know . . .’

  ‘Excuse me, old man, I see Tony,’ and he was off and away. The old lady said suddenly and brusquely, ‘No use asking him anything. If you want the w.c. it’s downstairs.’

  The lavatory was certainly not Tudor; it was all glass and black marble. He took off his coat and hung it on a peg – he was the only man in the place – and filled a basin with cold water. That was what his nerves needed: cold water on the base of the neck worked with him like an electric charge. He was so on edge that he looked quickly round when someone else came in – it was just a chauffeur from one of the cars. D. plunged his head down into the cold water and lifted it dripping. He felt for a towel and got the water out of his eyes. His nerves felt better now. His hand didn’t shake at all when he turned and said, ‘What are you doing with my coat ?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the chauffeur said. ‘I was hanging up my coat. Are you trying to put something on me?’

  ‘It seemed to me,’ D. said, ‘that you were trying to take something off me.’

  ‘Call a policeman then,’ the chauffeur said.

  ‘Oh, there were no witnesses.’

  ‘Call a policeman or apologise.’ The chauffeur was a big man – over six feet. He came forward threateningly across the glassy floor. ‘I got a good mind to knock your block off. A bloody foreigner coming over here, taking our bread, thinking you can do what . . .’

  ‘Perhaps,’ D. said gently, ‘I was mistaken.’ He was puzzled: the man, after all, might be only an ordinary sneak thief . . . no harm was done.

  ‘Perhaps you were mistaken. Perhaps I’ll knock your bloody block off. Call that an apology?’

  ‘I apologise,’ D. said, ‘in any way you like.’ War doesn’t leave you the sense of shame.

  ‘Haven’t even got the guts to fight,’ the chauffeur said.

  ‘Why should I? You are the bigger man. And younger.’

  ‘I could take on any number of you bloody dagos . . .’

  ‘I daresay you could.’

  ‘Are you saucing me?’ the chauffeur said. One of his eyes was out of the straight: it gave him an effect of talking always with one eye on an audience . . . and perhaps, D. thought, there was an audience. . . .