The Confidential Agent (2 page)

The siren shrieked again and suddenly out of the fog, like faces looking through a window, came ships, lights, a wedge of breakwater. They were one of a crowd. The engine went half speed and then stopped altogether. D. could hear the water slap, slap the side. They drifted, apparently, sideways. Somebody shouted invisibly – as though from the sea itself. They sidled forward and were there: it was as simple as all that. A rush of people carrying suitcases were turned back by sailors who seemed to be taking the ship to pieces. A bit of rail came off, as it were, in their hands.

Then they all surged over with their suitcases, labelled with Swiss Hotels and
pensions
in Biarritz. D. let the rush go by. He had nothing but a leather wallet containing a brush and comb, a tooth-brush, a few oddments. He had got out of the way of wearing pyjamas: it wasn't really worth while when you were likely to be disturbed twice in a night by bombs.

The stream of passengers divided into two for the passport examination: aliens and British subjects. There were not many aliens; a few feet away from D. the tall man from the first class shivered slightly inside his fur coat. Pale and delicate, he didn't seem to go with this exposed and windy shed upon the quay. But he was wafted quickly through – one glance at his papers had been enough. Like an antique he was very well authenticated. D. thought without enmity: a museum piece. They all on that side seemed to him museum pieces – their lives led in big cold houses like public galleries hung with rather dull old pictures and with buhl cabinets in the corridors.

D. found himself at a standstill. A very gentle man with a fair moustache said, ‘But do you mean that this photograph is – yours?'

D. said, ‘Of course.' He looked down at it; it had never occurred to him to look at his own passport for – well, years. He saw a stranger's face – that of a man much younger and, apparently, much happier than himself: he was grinning at the camera. He said, ‘It's an old photograph.' It must have been taken before he went to prison, before his wife was killed, and before the air raid of December 23 when he was buried for fifty-six hours in a cellar. But he could hardly explain all that to the passport officer.

‘How old?'

‘Two years perhaps.'

‘But your hair is quite grey now.'

‘Is it?'

The detective said, ‘Would you mind stepping to one side and letting the others pass?' He was polite and unhurried. That was because this was an island. At home soldiers would have been called in: they would immediately have assumed that he was a spy, the questioning would have been loud and feverish and long drawn out. The detective was at his elbow. He said, ‘I'm sorry to have kept you. Would you mind just coming in here a moment?' He opened the door of a room. D. went in. There was a table, two chairs and a picture of King Edward VII naming an express train ‘Alexandra': extraordinary period faces grinned over high white collars: an engine-driver wore a bowler hat.

The detective said, ‘I'm sorry about this. Your passport seems to be quite correct, but this picture – well – you know you've only to look at yourself, sir.'

He looked in the only glass there was – the funnel of the engine and King Edward's beard rather spoilt the view – but he had to confess that the detective was not unreasonable. He did look different now. He said, ‘It never occurred to me that I had changed so much.' The detective watched him closely. There was the old D. – he remembered now: it was just three years ago. He was forty-two, but a young forty-two. His wife had come with him to the studio; he had been going to take six months' leave from the university and travel – with her, of course. The civil war broke out exactly three days later. He had been six months in a military prison – his wife had been shot – that was a mistake, not an atrocity – and then. . . . He said, ‘You know war changes people. That was before the war.' He had been laughing at a joke – something about pineapples: it was going to be the first holiday together for years. They had been married for fifteen. He could remember the antiquated machine and the photographer diving under a hood; he could remember his wife only indistinctly. She had been a passion, and it is difficult to recall an emotion when it is dead.

‘Have you got any more papers ?' the detective asked. ‘Or is there anyone in London who knows you ? Your Embassy?'

‘Oh no, I'm a private citizen – of no account at all.'

‘You are not travelling for pleasure?'

‘No. I have a few business introductions.' He smiled back at the detective. ‘But they might be forged.'

He couldn't feel angry; the grey moustache, the heavy lines around the mouth – they were all new – and the scar on his chin. He touched it. ‘We have a war on, you know.' He wondered what the other was doing now: he wouldn't be losing any time. Probably there was a car waiting. He would be in London well ahead of him – there might be trouble. Presumably he had orders not to allow anyone from the other side to interfere with the purchase of coal. Coal used to be called black diamonds before people discovered electricity. Well, in his own country it was more valuable than diamonds, and soon it would be as rare.

The detective said, ‘Of course your passport's quite in order. Perhaps if you'd let me know where you are staying in London . . .'

‘I have no idea.'

The detective suddenly winked at him. It happened so quickly D. could hardly believe it. ‘Some address,' the detective said.

‘Oh, well, there's a hotel, isn't there, called the Ritz?'

‘There is, but I should choose something less expensive.'

‘Bristol. There's always a Bristol.'

‘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 country.'