'I detest oysters.'
He smiled at her, tolerantly, as if she were a sulky child, but this time not showing her his white teeth.
'Then I will show you how to make an oyster edible.'
The restaurant was called Le Tire Bouchon and Lucas Romer did indeed show her how to make an oyster edible (with red-wine vinegar, chopped shallots, black pepper and lemon juice with a roundel of cold-buttered brown bread to follow it down). In fact Eva enjoyed oysters from time to time but she had wanted to dent this curious man's immense self-assurance.
During lunch (sole bonne femme after the oysters, cheese, tarte tatin, a half bottle of Chablis and a whole bottle of Morgon) they talked about Kolia. It was clear to Eva that Romer knew all the relevant biographical facts about Kolia – his age, his education, the family's flight from Russia after the Revolution in 1917, the death of their mother in China, the whole saga of the Delectorskis' peripatetic journeying from St Petersburg to Vladivostock to Tientsin to Shanghai to Tokyo to Berlin, finally, in 1924, and then, eventually, in 1928, to Paris. He knew about the marriage of Sergei Pavlovitch Delectorski to the childless widow Irene Argenton in 1932 and the modest financial upturn in the family's fortunes that Madame Argenton's dowry had produced. He knew even more, she discovered, about her father's recent heart problems, his failing health. If he knows so much about Kolia, Eva thought, I wonder how much he knows about me?
He had ordered coffee for them both and an eau-de-vie for himself. He offered her a cigarette from a bashed, silver cigarette tin – she took one and he lit it for her.
'You speak excellent English,' he said.
'I'm half English,' she told him, as if he didn't know. 'My late mother was English.'
'So you speak English, Russian and French. Anything else?'
'I speak some German. Middling, not fluent.'
'Good… How is your father, by the way?' he asked, lighting his own cigarette, leaning back and exhaling dramatically, ceilingward.
Eva paused, uncertain what to tell this man: this complete stranger who acted like a familiar, like a cousin, a concerned uncle eager for family news. 'He's not well. He's crushed, in fact – as we all are. The shock – you can't imagine… I think Kolia's death might kill him. My stepmother's very worried.'
'Ah, yes. Kolia adored your stepmother.'
Eva knew all too well that Kolia's relationship with Irene had been strained at the best of times. Madame Argenton thought Kolia something of a wastrel – a dreamer, but an irritating one.
'The son she never had,' Romer added.
'Did Kolia tell you that?' Eva asked.
'No. I'm guessing.'
Eva stubbed out her cigarette. 'I'd better be getting back,' she said, rising to her feet. Romer was smiling at her, annoyingly. She felt that he was pleased at her sudden coldness, her abruptness – as if she had passed some kind of minor test.
'Haven't you forgotten something?' he said.
'I don't think so.'
'I'm meant to be chartering four steamers from Frellon, Gonzales et Cie. Have another coffee and we'll sketch out the details.'
Back in the office Eva was able to tell Monsieur Frellon, with complete plausibility, the tonnage, the timing and the ports of call Romer had in mind. Monsieur Frellon was very pleased at the outcome of her protracted lunch: Romer was a 'big fish', he kept saying, we want to reel him in. Eva realised that Romer had never told her – even though she had raised the matter two or three times – where, how and when he and Kolia had met.
Two days later she was on the metro going to work when she saw Romer step into her carriage at Place Clichy. He smiled and waved through the other commuters at her. Eva knew at once this was no coincidence; she didn't think coincidence played much part in Lucas Romer's life. They exited at Sèvres-Babylone and together they made their way towards the office together – Romer informing her he had an appointment with Monsieur Frellon. It was a dull day, a mackerel sky, with odd patches of brightness; a sudden breeze snatched at her skirt and the violet-blue scarf at her throat. As they reached the small cafe at the junction of the rue de Varenne and the boulevard Raspail, Romer suggested they pause.
'What about your appointment?'
'I said I'd pop by sometime in the morning.'
'But I'll be late,' she said.
'He won't mind – we're talking business. I'll call him.' He went to the bar to purchase the
jetons
for the public phone. Eva sat down in the window and looked at him, not resentfully but curiously, thinking: what game are you playing here, Mr Lucas Romer? Is this a sex-game with me or a business-game with Frellon, Gonzalez et Cie? If it was a sex-game he was wasting his time. She was not drawn to Lucas Romer. She attracted too many men and, in distorted compromise, was attracted herself by very few. It was a price beauty sometimes exacted: I will make you beautiful, the gods decide, but I will also make you incredibly hard to please. She did not want to think about her life's few complicated, unhappy love affairs this early in the morning and so she took down a newspaper from its hook. Somehow she didn't think this was a sex-game – something else was at stake, some other plan was brewing here. The headlines were all of the war in Spain, of the Anschluss, of Bukharin's execution in the USSR. The vocabulary was scratchy with aggression: rearmament, territory, reparations, arms, bluster, warnings, war and future wars. Yes, she thought, Lucas Romer had another objective but she would have to wait and see what it was.
'No problem at all.' He was standing above her, returning to the table with a smile on his face. 'I've ordered you a coffee.'
She asked him about M. Frellon and Romer assured her that M. Frellon couldn't be happier about this propitious encounter. Their coffees arrived and Romer sat back, at his ease, liberally sugaring his
express,
then stirring it assiduously. Eva looked at him as she re-hung her newspaper, contemplating his dark face, his slightly smirched and crumpled soft collar, his thin, banded tie. What would one have said: a university lecturer? A moderately successful writer? A senior civil servant? Not a ship broker, for sure. So why was she sitting in this cafe with this perplexing Englishman when it was something she had no particular desire to do? She determined to put him to the test: she decided to ask him about Kolia.
'When did you meet Kolia?' she asked, taking out a cigarette from a pack in her handbag, as casually as she could manage and not offering him one.
'About a year ago. We met at a party – someone was celebrating the publication of a book. We got talking – I thought he was charming -'
'What book?'
'I can't remember.'
She continued her cross-examination and watched Romer's pleasure grow: he was enjoying this, she saw, and his enjoyment began to anger her. This wasn't some pastime, some idle flirtation – her brother was dead and she suspected that Romer knew far more about Kolia's death than he was prepared to admit.
'Why was he at that meeting?' she asked. 'Action Française, for heaven's sake: Kolia wasn't a Fascist.'
'Of course he wasn't.'
'So why was he there?'
'I asked him to go.'
This shocked her. She wondered why Lucas Romer would ask Kolia Delectorski to go to an Action Française meeting, and wondered further why Kolia would agree, but could find no quick or easy answers.
'Why did you ask him to go?' she asked.
'Because he was working for me.'
All day in the office, trying to do her work, Eva thought about Romer and his baffling answers to her questions. He had abruptly ended their conversation after this declaration that Kolia was working for him – leaning forward, his eyes fixed on hers – and which seemed to say: yes, Kolia was working for me, Lucas Romer, and then announced suddenly that he had to go, he had meetings, my goodness, look at the time.
In the metro on her way home after the office had closed, Eva tried to be methodical, tried to put things together, to make the various extraneous pieces of information mesh, somehow, but it wasn't working. Lucas Romer had met Kolia at a party; they had become friends – more than friends, obviously, colleagues of a sort, with Kolia working for Romer in some unnamed capacity… What manner of work took you to a meeting of the Action Française in Nanterre? And at this meeting, as far as the police could determine, Kolia Delectorski had been called out to answer a telephone call. People remembered him leaving in the middle of the main speech, delivered by Charles Maurras, no less, remembered one of the stewards coming down the aisle and passing him a note, remembered the small upheaval of his departure. And then the gap of time of forty-five minutes – the last forty-five minutes of Kolia's life – to which there were no witnesses. People leaving the hall (a large cinema) by the side entrances had found his twisted body in the alleyway running along the cinema's rear, a thickening lacquered pool of blood on the paving stones, a serious wound – several heavy blows – on the back of his head. What happened in the last forty-five minutes of Kolia Delectorski's life? When he was found his wallet was missing, his watch was missing and his hat was missing. But what kind of thief kills a man and then steals his hat?
Eva walked up the rue des Fleurs, thinking about Kolia, wondering what had made him 'work' for a man like Romer and why he had never told her about this so-called job. And who was Romer to offer Kolia, a music teacher, a job that would put his life in danger? A job that had cost him his life? As what and for what, she wanted to know? For his shipping line? His international businesses? She found herself smiling sardonically at the whole absurdity of the idea as she bought her usual two baguettes and tried to ignore Benoit's eager responsive smile to what he took to be her levity. She became solemn, instantly. Benoit – another man who wanted her.
'How are you, Mademoiselle Eva?' Benoit asked, taking her money.
'I'm not so well,' she said. 'My brother's death – you know.'
His face changed, went long in sympathy. 'Terrible, terrible thing,' he said. 'These times we live in.'
At least now he can't ask me out again for a while, Eva thought, as she left and turned into the apartment block's small courtyard, stepping through the small door in the large one and nodding hello to Madame Roisanssac, the concierge. She walked up the two flights of stairs, let herself in, left the bread in the kitchen and moved on through to the salon, thinking: no, I can't stay in again tonight, not with Papa and Irene – I shall go and see a film, the film playing at the Rex:
Je Suis Partout -
I need to have a change in routine, she thought, some room, some time for myself.
She walked into the salon and Romer rose to his feet with a lazy welcoming smile. Her father stepped in front of him, saying in his bad English, with false disapprobation, 'Eva, really, why are you not telling me you've met Mr Romer?'
'I didn't think it was important,' Eva said, her eyes never leaving Romer's, trying to keep her gaze absolutely neutral, absolutely unperturbed. Romer smiled and smiled – he was very calm – and more smartly dressed, she saw, in a dark blue suit, a white shirt and another of his striped English ties.
Her father was fussing, pulling a chair forward for her, making small talk – 'Mr Romer was knowing Kolia, can you believe it?' – but Eva only heard a stridency of questions and exclamations in her head: How dare you come here! What have you told Papa? What nerve! What did you think I would say? She saw the glasses and the bottle of port on the silver tray, saw the plate of sugared almonds and knew that Romer had engineered this welcome effortlessly, confident of the solace his visit would bring. How long had he been here? she wondered, looking at the level of the port in the bottle. Something about her father's mood suggested more than one glass each.
Her father practically forced her to sit; she declined the glass of port she dearly wanted. She noticed Romer sitting back, discreetly, one leg casually crossed over the other, that small calculating smile on his face. It was the smile, she realised, of a man who was convinced he knew exactly what was going to happen next.
Determined to frustrate him, she stood up. 'I have to go,' she said. 'I'll be late for the film.'
Somehow, Romer was at the door before her, his fingers on her left elbow, restraining.
'Mr Delectorski,' Romer said to her father, 'is there anywhere I can speak privately with Eva?'
They were shown into her father's study – a small bedroom at the end of the corridor – decorated with formal, wooden photographic portraits of Delectorski relatives and containing a desk, a divan and a bookshelf full of his favourite Russian authors: Lermontev, Pushkin, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov. The room smelt of cigars and the pomade that her father used for his hair. Moving to the window Eva could see Madame Roisanssac hanging out her family's washing. She felt suddenly very ill at ease: she thought she knew how to deal with Romer but now alone in this room with him – alone in her father's room – everything suddenly had changed.
And, as if he sensed this, Romer changed too: gone was the overweening self-confidence, now replaced by a manner more direct, more fiercely personal. He urged her to sit down and drew a chair for himself from behind the desk, setting it opposite her, as if some form of interrogation was about to begin. He offered her a cigarette from his battered case and she took one before saying, no, thank you, I won't, and handed it back. She watched him refit it in his case, clearly mildly irritated. Eva felt she'd won a tiny, trivial victory – everything counted if that vast easy confidence was to be even momentarily discomfited.
'Kolia was working for me when he was killed,' Romer said.
'You told me.'
'He was killed by Fascists, by Nazis.'
'I thought he was robbed.'
'He was doing…' he paused. 'He was doing dangerous work – and he was discovered. I think he was betrayed.'