The Confidential Agent (7 page)

‘What else happened?' He said suddenly, pointing at the picture, ‘La es un famil. Un famil gentilbono.' The door opened and Dr Bellows looked in. ‘Excellente, excellente,' he said, smiling gently and closed the door again. Mr K. said, ‘Go on.'

‘I took her car. She was drunk and wouldn't go on. The manager of the roadhouse – a Captain Currie – followed me in his car. I was beaten up by L.'s chauffeur. I forgot to tell you he tried to rob me in the lavatory – the chauffeur, I mean. They searched my coat, but of course found nothing. I had to walk. It was a long time before I got a lift.'

‘Is Captain Currie . . . ?'

‘Oh no. Just a fool, I think.'

‘It's an extraordinary story.'

D. allowed himself to smile. ‘It seemed quite natural at the time. If you disbelieve me – there's my face. Yesterday I was not quite so battered.'

The little man said, ‘To offer so much money . . . Did he say what – exactly – for?'

‘No.' It suddenly occurred to D. that the man didn't know what he had come to London to do – it would be just like the people at home to send him on a confidential mission and set other people whom they didn't trust with a knowledge of his object to watch him. Distrust in civil war went to fantastic lengths: it made wild complications; who could wonder if it sometimes broke down more seriously than trust? It needs a strong man to bear distrust: weak men live up to the character they are allotted. It seemed to D. that Mr K. was a weak man. He said, ‘Do they pay you much here?'

‘Two shillings an hour.'

‘It isn't much.'

Mr K. said, ‘Luckily I do not have to live on it.' But from his suit, his tired evasive eyes, it wasn't probable that he had much more to live on from another source. Looking down at his fingers – the nails bitten close to the quick – he said, ‘I hope you have everything arranged?' One nail didn't meet with his approval; he began to bite it down to match the rest.

‘Yes. Everything.'

‘Everyone you want is in town?'

‘Yes.'

He was fishing, of course, for information, but his attempts were pathetically inefficient. They were probably right not to trust Mr K. on the salary they paid him.

‘I have to send in a report,' Mr K. said. ‘I will say you have arrived safely, that your delay seems to have been accounted for . . .' It was ignominious to have your movements checked up by a man of Mr K.'s calibre. ‘When will you be through ?'

‘A few days at most.'

‘I understand that you should be leaving London at latest on Monday night.'

‘Yes.'

‘If anything delays you, you must let me know. If nothing does, you must leave not later than the eleven-thirty train.'

‘So I understand.'

‘Well,' Mr K. said wearily, ‘you can't leave this place before ten o'clock. We had better go on with the lesson.' He stood up beside the wall-picture, a little weedy and undernourished figure – what had made them choose him? Did he conceal somewhere under his disguise a living passion for his party? He said, ‘Un famil tray gentilbono,' and pointing to the joint, ‘Vici el carnor.' Time went slowly by. Once D. thought he heard Dr Bellows pass down the passage on rubber-soled shoes. There wasn't much trust even in the centre of internationalism.

In the waiting-room he fixed another appointment for Monday and paid for a course of lessons. The elderly lady said, ‘I expect you found it a teeny bit hard?'

‘Oh, I feel I made progress,' D. said.

‘I am so glad. For advanced students, you know, Dr Bellows runs little soirées. Most interesting. On Saturday evenings at eight. They give you an opportunity to meet people of all countries – Spanish, German, Siamese – and exchange ideas. Dr Bellows doesn't charge – you only have to pay for coffee and cake.'

‘I feel sure it is very good cake,' D. said, bowing courteously.

He went out into Oxford Street: there was no hurry now: nothing to be done until he saw Lord Benditch. He walked, enjoying the sense of unreality – the shop windows full of goods, no ruined houses anywhere, women going into Buzzard's for coffee. It was like one of his own dreams of peace. He stopped in front of a bookshop and stared in – people had time to read books – new books. There was one called
A Lady in Waiting at the Court of King Edward
, with a photograph on the paper jacket of a stout woman in white silk with ostrich feathers. It was incredible. And there was
Safari Days
, with a man in a sun helmet standing on a dead lioness. What a country, he thought again with affection. He went on. He couldn't help noticing how well clothed everybody was. A pale winter sun shone, and the scarlet buses stood motionless all down Oxford Street: there was a traffic block. What a mark, he thought, for enemy planes. It was always about this time that they came over. But the sky was empty – or nearly empty. One winking glittering little plane turned and dived on the pale clear sky, drawing in little puffy clouds, a slogan: ‘Keep Warm with Ovo.' He reached Bloomsbury – it occurred to him that he had spent a very quiet morning. It was almost as if his infection had met a match in this peaceful and preoccupied city. The great leafless square was empty, except for two Indians comparing lecture notes under the advertisements for Russian baths. He entered his hotel.

A woman whom he supposed was the manageress was in the hall – a dark bulky woman with spots round her mouth. She gave him an acute commercial look and called, ‘Else! Else! Where are you, Else?' harshly.

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘I will find her on my way up.'

‘The key ought to be here on its hook,' the woman said.

‘Never mind.'

Else was sweeping the passage outside the room. She said, ‘Nobody's been in.'

‘Thank you. You are a good watcher.'

But as soon as he was inside he knew that she hadn't told the truth. He had placed his wallet in an exact geometrical relationship to other points in the room, so that he could be sure. . . . It had been moved. Perhaps Else had been dusting. He zipped the wallet open – it contained no papers of importance, but their order had been altered. He called ‘Else!' gently. Watching her come in, small and bony with that expression of fidelity she wore awkwardly like her apron, he wondered whether there was anybody in the world who couldn't be bribed. Perhaps he could be bribed himself – with what? He said, ‘Somebody
was
in here.'

‘Only me and—'

‘And who?'

‘The manageress, sir. I didn't think you'd mind
her
.' He felt a surprising relief at finding that, after all, there was a chance of discovering honesty somewhere. He said, ‘Of course you couldn't keep
her
out, could you?'

‘I did my best. She said as I didn't want her to see the untidiness. I said you'd told me – no one. She said, “Give me that key.” I said, “Mr D. put this in my hands and said I wasn't to let anybody in.” Then she snatched it. I didn't mean her to come in. But afterwards I thought, well, no harm's done. I didn't see how you'd ever know.' She said, ‘I'm sorry. I didn't ought to 'ave let her in.' She had been crying.

‘Was she angry with you?' he asked gently.

‘She's given me the sack.' She went on hurriedly, ‘It don't matter. It's slavery here – but you pick up things. There's ways of earning more – I'm not going to be a servant all my life.'

He thought: the infection's still on me after all. I come into this place, breaking up God knows what lives. He said, ‘I'll speak to the manageress.'

‘Oh, I won't stay – not after this. She' – the confession came out like a crime – ‘slapped my face.'

‘What will you do?'

Her innocence and her worldly knowledge filled him with horror. ‘Oh, there's a girl who used to come here. She's got a flat of her own now. She always said as how I could go to her – to be her maid. I wouldn't have anything to do with the men, of course. Only open the door.'

He exclaimed, ‘No. No.' It was as if he had been given a glimpse of the guilt which clings to all of us without our knowing it. None of us knows how much innocence we have betrayed. He would be responsible. . . . He said, ‘Wait till I've talked to the manageress.'

She said with a flash of bitterness, ‘It's not very different what I do here, is it?' She went on, ‘It wouldn't be like being a servant at all. Me and Clara would go to cinemas every afternoon. She wants company, she says. She's got a Pekinese, that's all. You can't count men.'

‘Wait a little. I'm sure I can help you – somehow.' He had no idea, unless perhaps Benditch's daughter . . . but that was unlikely after the episode of the car.

‘Oh, I won't be leaving for a week.' She was preposterously young to have such complete theoretical knowledge of vice. She said, ‘Clara's got a telephone which fits into a doll. All dressed up as a Spanish dancer. And she always gives her maid the chocolates, Clara says.'

‘Clara,' he said, ‘can afford to wait.' He seemed to be getting a very complete picture of that young woman; she probably had a kind heart, but so, he believed, had Benditch's daughter. She had given him a bun on a platform: it had seemed at the time a rather striking gesture of heedless generosity.

A voice outside said, ‘What are you doing here, Else?' It was the manageress.

‘I called her in,' D. said, ‘to ask who had been in here.'

He hadn't yet had time to absorb the information the child had given him – was the manageress another of his, as it were, collaborators, like K., anxious to see that he followed the narrow and virtuous path, or had she been bribed by L.? Why, in that case, should he have been sent to this hotel by the people at home? His room had been booked; everything had been arranged for him, so that they should never lose contact. But that, of course, might all have been arranged by whoever it was gave information to L. – if anybody had. There was no end to the circles in this hell.

‘Nobody,' the manageress said, ‘has been in here but myself – and Else.'

‘I told Else to let nobody in.'

‘You ought to have spoken to me.' She had a square strong face ruined by ill-health. ‘Besides, there's nobody would go into your room – except those with business there.'

‘Somebody seemed to take an interest in these papers of mine.'

‘Did you touch them, Else?'

‘Of course I didn't.'

She turned her big square spotty face to him like a challenge: an old keep still capable of holding out. ‘You see, you
must
be wrong – if you believe the girl.'

‘I believe
her
.'

‘Then there's no more to be said and no harm done.' He said nothing: it wasn't worth saying anything – she was either one of his own or one of L.'s party. It didn't matter which, for she had found nothing of interest, and he couldn't move from the hotel: he had his orders. ‘And now perhaps you'll let me say what I came up here to say – there's a lady wants to speak to you on the telephone. In the hall.'

He said with surprise, ‘A lady?'

‘It's what I said.'

‘Did she give her name?'

‘She did not.' He saw Else watching him with anxiety; he thought – good God, surely not another complication, calf-love? He touched her sleeve as he went out of the door and said, ‘Trust me.' Fourteen was a dreadfully early age at which to know so much and be so powerless. If this was civilisation – the crowded prosperous streets, the women trooping in for coffee at Buzzard's, the lady-in-waiting at King Edward's court, and the sinking, drowning child – he preferred barbarity, the bombed streets and the food queues: a child there had nothing worse to look forward to than death. Well, it was for
her
kind that he was fighting: to prevent the return of such a civilisation to his own country.

He took off the receiver. ‘Hullo. Who's that, please?'

An impatient voice said, ‘This is Rose Cullen.' What on earth, he thought, does that mean? Are they going to try to get at me, as in the story-books, with a girl? ‘Yes?' he said. ‘Did you get home safely the other night – to Gwyn Cottage?' There was only one person who could have given her his address, and that was L.

‘Of course I got home. Listen.'

‘I'm sorry I had to leave you in such questionable company.'

‘Oh,' she said, ‘don't be a fool. Are you a thief?'

‘I began stealing cars before you were born.'

‘But you
have
got an appointment with my father.'

‘Did he tell you so?'

An exclamation of impatience came up the wire. ‘Do you think father and I are on speaking terms? It was written down in your diary. You dropped it.'

‘And this address too?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd like to have that back. The diary, I mean. It has sentimental associations with my other robberies.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' the voice said, ‘if only you wouldn't try . . .'

He stared gloomily away across the little hotel hall – an aspidistra on stilts, an umbrella rack in the form of a shell-case. He thought: we could make an industry out of that, with all the shells we have at home. Empty shell-cases for export. Give a tasteful umbrella stand this Christmas from one of the devastated cities. ‘Have you one to sleep?' the voice asked.

‘No, I'm just waiting to hear what you want. It is – you see – a little embarrassing. Our last meeting was odd.'

‘I want to talk to you.'