The Untouchable (50 page)

“It was dreadfully sad,” I said. “It seems she starved herself to death. Refused to eat, just turned her face to the wall, as they used to say. Such desperateness to die! She wouldn’t let them send for me; said I should be left in peace. She was always more considerate than I; braver, too. The funeral was yesterday. I am still a trifle upset, as you can see.”

Why, with death attendant upon me at every moment, tirelessly prowling the rickety defences of my life, am I still surprised when it makes a kill? I had always taken it for granted that
Vivienne would outlive me. And yet when Julian telephoned, I knew, before he said it, that she was gone. We stood for a long moment, listening to each other breathing through the ether.

“It’s better this way,” he said.

Why do the young always think it better that the old should be dead? The question answers itself, I suppose.

“Yes,” I said, “better.”

She had requested to be buried by the Jewish rite. I was astonished. When we were married first she used to take the children to church services, especially when she was in Oxford, but that, I realised now, must have been merely to annoy her mother. I never knew she cared for the God of her fathers. No accounting for people, no accounting. There were more surprises at the funeral. Nick wore a yarmulke, and so did Julian, and during the prayers, the Kaddish or whatever it’s called, I saw Nick’s lips moving as he joined in with the cantor. Where did all this devoutness come from all of a sudden? But obviously it was not sudden.

The cemetery was on the outer fringes of north London. It took us more than an hour to get there, despite the indecent speed at which the hearse cut its way through the northbound traffic. It was a harsh, blustery grey day with squalls of rain and a gash of infernal, yellowish light lying along the horizon. In the car I sat in the back seat, feeling shrivelled and cowed. Beside me Blanche sobbed to herself, her face all blotched and swollen. Julian sat stiffly upright at the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road. The empty seat beside him was lugubriously symbolic of his mother’s absence. Nick travelled alone, with his chauffeur. At one stage in the journey, when we were briefly on the motorway and our two cars drew level, I saw that he was working, papers and gold pen in hand, the Ministerial red box open beside him on the seat. He felt my eyes on him, and looked up at me unseeingly for a moment, remote, expressionless, his thoughts importantly elsewhere. Even now, when he is in his seventies, corpulent, bald, his face all fallen and his eyes rheumy and pouched, I can still see in him the beauty he once was; is it real, or do I put it there? That was what I was for, that was always my task, to keep his image in place, to kneel before him humbly with
head bowed and hold the mirror up to him, and in turn to hold his image up to the world’s inspection.

As we were pulling in at the gates of the cemetery, Blanche made a fumbling attempt to take my hand, but I pretended not to notice. I do not care to be touched.

For a second I did not recognise Querell. It was not that he had changed very much, but he was the last person I had expected to see here. What cheek! He was thin-haired, a little stooped, yet still possessed of a watchful, sinister elegance. Or no, not elegance, that is not the word; just sleekness, rather, at once devilish and tawdry, and an air always of malevolent anticipation, like that of an expert swimmer, say, calmly looking on as a clumsy novice ventures flounderingly out of his depth. He carries the aura of his fame with ease. I was always jealous of him. When the ceremony was finished he came and shook my hand perfunctorily. We had not seen each other for more than a quarter of a century, yet he carried off the moment as if we had been in the habit of bumping into each other every day.

“Trust the Jews,” he said, “they always come back to their own in the end. Just like us—Catholics, I mean.” He was wearing a padded windbreaker over his suit. “I feel the cold more, nowadays. My blood has gone thin from living so long in the south. You don’t look too bad, Victor; perfidy keeps one young, eh?” I could not recall him ever before using my first name. I introduced him to Blanche and Julian. He gave them each in turn a keen, long look. “I knew you when you were in your cradles.” Julian was curtly polite. I do admire his reserve, so rare a thing those days. “You have your mother’s eyes,” Querell said, and Julian gave that stiff little nod of his, which to me always seems to be accompanied by a phantom clicking of the heels. My poor, lost son. Querell had turned his attention on Blanche. She was all of a quiver, flustered in the presence of such a celebrity. She withdrew her hand from his as if his touch had burned her. I wonder if they know about Querell, she and Julian? It is not the kind of thing one asks one’s children, even when they are grown up.

“When do you go back?” I said.

Querell gave me a stare.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

The spring wind gusted in the still-bare trees and a handful of rain spattered the wall of the marble temple behind us. Julian attempted to slide a supportive hand under my arm but I shook him off violently. For a moment I clearly saw Vivienne walking toward me, weaving her way among the headstones in her tubular black silk dress and flapper’s high heels. Nick had already sped off in his car, without a word to anyone. Querell was talking about taxis.

“Oh, no no,” I said, “let us give you a lift.” Julian opened his mouth but said nothing. Querell frowned. “I insist,” I said. One can have fun even at a funeral.

We fairly dashed back into the city, Querell and I in the back seat now, and Blanche and Julian in front, the two of them sitting like effigies, listening intently to the silence behind them. Querell watched with narrow-eyed interest—ever the novelist— the dreary suburban streets going past, the corner groceries, the launderettes, the brand-new but already dingy shopping malls with their garish window displays and blown litter.

“England,” he said, and snickered.

At St. Giles Circus we were brought to a halt by a traffic jam. It was as if we had blundered into the smouldering centre of a herd of big, shiny, shuddering animals.

“Listen, Querell,” I said, “come for a drink.”

How like the old days it sounded! Querell gave me an ironical stare. Julian was already edging the car towards the kerb. On the pavement the wind swirled about us callously. While Querell was doing up the complicated zipper of his coat I watched the car nose its way back into the traffic, brother and sister leaning toward each other now in animated talk. Those are the really secret lives, the lives of one’s children.

“Anxious to be away,” I said. “We have become the tedious old.”

Querell nodded.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “my mistress is younger than your daughter.”

We turned into Soho. The day had brightened, and now a strong sun appeared, shouldering its way out of the clouds, and the sky above the narrow streets seemed immensely high and
somehow vigorously in flight. The wind swooped and lunged, wringing the necks of the daffodils in the Square. On the corner of Wardour Street a crone in cocoa-coloured stockings and a shroudlike coat was shrieking abuse at the passers-by. White flecks on her lips, the grief-maddened eyes. The sun flashed suddenly, outlandishly, on a sheet of glass on the back of a lorry. Two club girls went past, in fake-fur coats and three-inch heels. Querell eyed them with sour amusement.

“London was always a parody of itself,” he said. “Ridiculous, ugly, cold country. You should have got out when you could.”

We walked down Poland Street. After Boy’s flight, Leo Rothenstein had sold the house. The upper storeys had been converted into offices. We stood on the pavement looking up at the familiar windows. Why can’t the past ever leave off, why must it be forever pawing at us, like a wheedling child. We walked on, saying nothing. Miniature wind-devils danced on the pavement, lifting dust and scraps of paper in swaying spirals. I was feeling quite light-headed.

The old pub had a pinball machine now. It was noisily attended by a gang of shaven-headed young men wearing broad braces and lace-up boots. Querell and I sat in prostatic discomfort on low stools at a small table at the back and drank gin, watching the boot-boys about their raucous game, the vague old daytime topers at the bar. Ghosts glimmered in the shadows. Phantom laughter. The past, the past.

“Would you come back?” I said. “Do you not miss it, any of it?”

He was not listening.

“You know,” he said, “Vivienne and I had an affair.” He glanced at me quickly and away again, frowning. He turned his cigarette this way and that in his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was when you were first married. She was lonely.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.” He stared, in gratifying startlement. I shrugged. “Vivienne told me.”

A bus went past outside with an elephantine blare and made floor and seat and table faintly shudder, and stark pale faces on the top deck gaped in at us fleetingly in what seemed a sort of amazement. Querell with pursed lips expelled a thin quick cone
of smoke towards the ceiling; there were patches of whitish stubble on his badly shaved old turkey’s neck.

“When?” he said.

“What?”

“When did she tell you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

His hands, I noticed, were trembling a little; the smoke as it rose from his cigarette wavered in the same rapid rhythm. The smoke was blue before he inhaled it, and afterwards grey.

“Oh, a long time ago,” I said. “The day after Boy defected. The day after you and the others decided to betray me to the Department.”

An argument had started at the pinball machine, and two of the young men were engaged in a mock fight, feinting and jabbing and making dangerous-looking little kicks at each other’s shins, while their companions jeeringly urged them on. Querell drank his drink and exhaled a sort of whistly sigh. He took our glasses and went to the bar. I looked at him in his vulgar padded coat and suede shoes. The mystery of other people yawned before me, as if a door caught by the wind had been flung open on to dark and storm. Another bus went by, and another set of dull, astonished faces looked in at us from on high. Querell came back with the drinks, and when he was settling himself on the stool again I caught a whiff of something off him, an internal emanation, cheesy and raw; perhaps he is sick, too. I certainly hope so. He frowned into his glass, as if he had spotted something floating in it. A patch of pink, the size of a shilling, had appeared high up on each of his cheekbones; what was it—anger? excitement? Surely not shame?

“How did you know?” he said, in a thickened voice. “I mean, about…”

“Vivienne, of course. Who else? She told me everything there was to know, that day. She was my wife, you see.”

He drank deep and sat bending his glass this way and that, watching the last silver bead of liquor rolling around the bottom.

“I wanted to keep you out of it, you know,” he said. “I wanted
to give them Rothenstein, or Alastair Sykes. But no, they said it would have to be you.”

I laughed.

“I’ve just realised,” I said, “this is what you came back for, isn’t it. To tell me about you and Vivienne, and about… this. What a disappointment for you, that I should know it all already.”

His lips, contracting with age, had acquired tiny, deeply etched striations all along their edges, which gave his mouth a spinsterish cast. That is how I must look, too. What would those young men have seen, if they had turned on us their menacing attention? A pair of sad old withered eunuchs, with their gin and their cigarettes, their ancient secrets, ancient pain. I signalled to the barman. He was a slender, pale youth, a Bronzino type, drawn and somewhat debauched-looking; when I paid for the drinks I brushed his cool, damp fingers with mine, and he gave me a wan glance. In the midst of death, life. Querell was regarding me with a grim eye, feeling along his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. I tried to imagine him and Vivienne together. He blinked slowly, old saurian eyelids drooping. I smelled his mortal smell again.

“We had to give them someone,” he said.

Well, I was always able to see that, of course. There had to have been a London end to the operation, someone to receive the material MacLeish and Bannister were sending from Washington and pass it on to Oleg. It was the least the Department would have expected; the least they would have settled for.

“Yes,” I said, “and you gave them me.”

Abruptly the dangerous young men departed, and the abandoned pinball machine seemed to take on a hurt, puzzled look, like that of a dog with no one left to throw sticks for it. Talk, smoke, the desultory clatter of glasses.

“I suppose you were in before me?” I said.

He nodded.

“I had a cell going when I was at Oxford,” he said. “I was still an undergraduate.”

He could not keep the boastful note out of his voice.

I stood up. Suddenly I wanted to be away from him. It was not
anger that was spurring me, but a kind of impatience; something else was finished with.

“I really am sorry,” I said, “that you didn’t get to see me squirm.”

Outside, on the pavement, I felt dizzy again, and thought for a moment I might fall over. Querell was waving for a taxi; could not get away quickly enough, now that his attempt at revenge had backfired on him. I put a hand on his arm: papery flesh under his coat, and a thin old bone, like a primitive weapon.

“It was you,” I said, “wasn’t it, who gave my name to that fellow who was writing the book—the one who was going to expose me?”

He stared at me.

“Why would I do that?”

A taxi pulled up. He moved toward it, trying to shake off my hand, but I clutched him all the more tightly. I was surprised at my own strength. The taxi driver turned with interest to watch us, two half-sozzled old geezers furiously grappling.

“Who, then?” I said.

As if I didn’t know.

He shrugged, and smiled, showing me his old, yellowed teeth, and said nothing. I released him, and stepped back, and he stooped and got into the taxi and pulled the door shut behind him. As the taxi drove away I saw his pale long face in the rear window, looking back at me. He seemed to be laughing.