The Judas Boy Page 3

  They did this to me,' Fielding hissed, and pointed at his twisted mouth and bright pink grafted face. They took one of my eyes and turned the other into a tiny red thing, like a pig's.'

  One of the three telephones rang. Tom picked up the wrong receiver, winced, grabbed another at random, turned out lucky.

  'I entirely forgot, dear fellow,' said the voice of the Director of Features (creamy, now, and disarming instead of its usual aggressive squawk), 'to tell you what I really rang up for last time. A minor matter of policy. Just as well you should know about it while you're still at the planning stage.'

  'I thought I wasn't to be bothered with that,' said Tom, while Fielding slunk away to the window again.

  'No more you are, dear fellow. We value your intellectual honesty above everything. But we should be most frightfully grateful... if you could just remember ... that if you do a programme about—er—people who aren't white ... emergent nations and all that sort of thing ... then it would be very nice if you needn't say anything nasty. If you see what I mean.'

  'I am very sympathetic,' said Tom, 'to emergent nations and that sort of thing.'

  'No doubt you are'—the creamy voice reverted to the squawk—'but sometimes the facts aren't.'

  Then in such cases,' said Tom firmly, 'one's sympathy has to be qualified.'

  'Or'—hopefully—'the facts?'

  'You can't qualify facts. You can only establish and state them.'

  'You can also assess them in the light of circumstance,' the Director quacked: 'intellectual honesty requires you to.'

  'If you mention intellectual honesty once more,' said Tom, 'I shall walk out of this building and never come back.'

  And be very glad to do so, he thought, as he put down the receiver and looked at the hunched and sulky shoulders by the window. As for Fielding, he thought, why bother with him? Have I not troubles enough? I have taken on this programme as a duty, because I feel that at last I should try to communicate to the people at large something which vitally concerns all of them—the way in which minute by minute history is being made under their noses. I want to tell them about the living process, and then give them true and powerful examples of the process at work; to demonstrate, above all, how very little, in the end. can come of human aspiration and planning, and how very much more results merely from time and chance, which happeneth to us all This will be a difficult and unpopular message to put over, for it is opposed to all the preconceptions of a society which takes for granted that in this world, man is king. Although I myself am a socialist, dedicated to the progress and betterment of mankind (insofar as these are possible), I am to advance a philosophy of pessimism which will be ill-received at best and the only justification of which must be that it is true. To tell the truth is hard enough, even when one is promised carte blanche; and there are already signs that the promise is not wholly sincere ... for whenever people start talking about 'intellectual honesty', one must reach for a lie-detector. With all this and much more to worry about, Tom thought, I should indeed be happy to quit this Tower of Babel and go straight back to writing my books. But if for the time, at least. I feel myself committed to stay here and try my best, one thing I can do to make life easier is not to employ tiresome and reactionary paranoiacs like Fielding Gray. There are plenty of other people, after all, who would be only too glad to be brought in.

  So Tom Llewyllyn spoke within his heart, and then jutted his chin furiously at the obstinate back by the window. But even as he did so, he knew that he would persevere with Fielding, and this for two reasons. First, Fielding was one of the few able young writers in England who would understand and sympathise with the unfashionable thesis which Tom wished to put over; and secondly. Melding was an old friend who could certainly use the money. He could not.

  Tom knew, be making much from the sale of his novels, despite their success of esteem, and although he also reviewed books, this would bring in peanuts. There was no risk of Fielding's being starved or cruelly pressed, but he had been in London for three years now, unable ever to quit it for more than a very few days, and for the sake of his health and his writing he needed a proper change.

  And so now:

  The money will be very good.' said Tom to the back at the window.

  'Nothing can be very good after what happened to me in Cyprus.' Fielding said without turning.

  'It could even be,' said Tom wearily, 'that you might get a bit of your own back.'

  'How? By throwing bombs about like they did?'

  'That's over now. There's peace. A truce, at any rate.'

  'So there was when they did this to me. An agreed truce of two hours while the bodies were being cleared up. And right in the middle of it ... I tell you those people are scum.'

  'Then get your own back by proving it. That's why I want you to go there. The trouble's over now but there's more coming, because there are forces at work which have not been brought under proper control. The lull at the moment is only temporary because the Greek Cypriots are still up to something—something very unpleasant, by the smell of it. If you can prove to the world—and I mean prove. Fielding— that they're not the sturdy freedom-lovers of liberal legend but just a pack of cruel and treacherous bastards, then you'll have got a bit of your own back.'

  'More likely I'll just get the other eye blown out.' said Fielding, still without turning.

  There was a knock on the door, which was then opened, before invitation could be given, by a stringy young woman with a put-upon face and a sluttish cardigan.

  'Miss Enid Jackson,' she said; 'from Administration.'

  'Yes, Miss Jackson?'

  'You know why I'm here.'

  'I'm afraid not.'

  'Yes, you do. Your National Insurance Card. I've rung you several limes. Now you're employed here we have to have your National Insurance Card.'

  'Yes, yes, I know,' said Tom. 'I'll stamp the thing myself. At home.'

  'You seem to have very rough and ready ideas about social administration, Mr Llewyllyn. It is your employers' responsibility to st—'

  '—And I've just told you I'll do it for them.'

  'You can't,' said Miss Jackson with prim satisfaction. 'I must say, if everyone was as ignorant about welfare procedures as you appear to be—'

  '—Look, sweetheart,' said Tom, stalking round his desk at Enid Jackson, 'I've been a bloody socialist all my life and I don't need you to lecture me on welfare. But I've always been working on my own till now, and if ever I had one of those footling cards I've certainly lost it. So be a good girl, will you, and rustle me up another.'

  'I'm afraid it's not as easy as that. Either you must produce a card fully stamped up to March the twenty-second, which is the day you joined this Corporation, or you must furnish me with a full explanation as to why it is not available.'

  'One or the other you shall have, sweetheart. I promise. But not just this minute ... please.'

  'Very well. But I should add that until the position has been regularised your employment here is not on a satisfactory official basis. Good morning... Mr Llewyllyn.'

  Tom went back to his desk and put both hands through his hair. Huge flakes of dandruff fell, like ashes from a bonfire.

  'Help me, Fielding,' said Tom in a small voice. 'It's so strange here. I didn't want to come and I hate it Help me. Don't refuse to be on my ride now I've asked you.'

  At long last Fielding turned from the window and smiled his grotesque smile.

  'If you put it like that, my dear,' he said: 'after Miss Enid Jackson, I can hardly refuse.'

  'So when will you be off, dear?' said Tessie Buttock that evening in Buttock's Hotel.

  'Two or three days,' said Fielding; 'Tom’s very urgent. But what I can't understand is what he expects me to discover. The trouble in Cyprus is over. They've got their independence, and that must surely be an end of it.'

  'But we've still got soldiers there?’

  'Only in agreed bases on the south-coast—for which we pay a whacking great rent
. They can hardly start trouble about that.'

  'You trust naughty Tom, dear. He's got a nose for dirt.' She scooped up Albert Edward, the hotel dog, who was glumly peeing on the sofa, and settled him in her lap. 'Woozums, woozums,' she cawed: 'woozums remember naughty Tom? He was a bit vague about money,' she said to Fielding, 'but when he did anything he always had a very clear reason. He must have a reason for sending you off like this, and I don't doubt he told you.'

  'Yes,' said Fielding, remembering what Tom had said after the departure of Enid Jackson; 'but I'm not convinced.'

  'Tell us, dear, anyway. Albert Edward needs his mind taking off his poor old bladder.'

  'Well, he started by looking back a bit. He said that Colonel Grivas devised a terrorist strategy—chucking bombs at civilians and so on—because he couldn't hope to win on a straightforward confrontation. He just hadn't the weapons or the men. But even so, Tom said, Grivas was a brave man with a fine war record, and it must have gone against his nature to play it so dirty. By instinct and upbringing he was a soldier and not an assassin.'

  'Nasty little runt he always looked in the papers.'

  'But nevertheless a fighter—as the Germans found out in the forties. So Tom's theory is that he didn't want to adopt terrorist methods—or at any rate not against unarmed civilians—but in the end was persuaded into it.'

  'I'm not one to speak against Tom.' Tessie said, 'but if you ask me, all you need do is look at that Grivas's face in his photos and you've got all the explanation you need. We wouldn't have him staying in our hotel, would we, woozums?'

  'I agree with you, Tessie. But if Tom is right—and he's been right before about this kind of thing—then we're left with an interesting question.'

  'You mean, who talked the little bugger into it?'

  'Right. And where did he come from to do the talking?'

  'Russia,' said Tessie, for whom all evils had only one source: 'bloody reds, wanting us done out of our empire.'

  'The reds aren't the only people, Tessie, who want us done out of our empire. But leave that on one side, whoever did persuade Grivas (on Tom's theory) may still be around getting ready to do some more persuading. There are a lot of young Cypriots who tasted blood in the last affair, and once young men have tasted blood they're bored by the idea of going back to be peasants—or even pimps, which in Cyprus is the only alternative. Which leaves them nothing to do except sharpen their knives and listen to anyone who wants to stir up trouble.'

  'Like the Russians.' said Tessie, unshakeable.

  'As to that,' said Fielding, 'we shall see. But I still think the whole thing's just been thought up out of nothing by Tom,'

  'So,' said plump, kind Maisie in her Shepherd's Market flat, 'this is the last time before you go off?'

  ' 'Fraid so, Maisie,' said Fielding: 'let's make it nice and slow, to remember.'

  'It's you that's always so quick, duckie. Try the nineteen times table. They say it helps you to hold it back.'

  'Nineteen ... Thirty-eight ... Fifty-seven ... Sorry, Maisie, it's no good.. .'

  'Never mind, dearie. You can have that one on the house. Just get your breath back first, then have a look at these pictures, and we can do it again when you're ready.'

  'No one else coming?'

  'Not for an hour or so. And the fact is, lovie, I want to tell you something. You've been coming here—how long is it now?—'

  '—Three years—'

  '—So we're old friends, really, and now that you're going away for a bit, I want to tell you something before you go.'

  Maisie waddled comfortably to the wardrobe and came back with a split of champagne and two glasses.

  This is on the house too,' she said, 'just this once. Now tell me, Fielding Gray: this Cyprus business—is it dangerous?'

  Whenever Maisie called him 'Fielding' or 'Fielding Gray' instead of 'dearie' or 'lovie', he knew there was something unusual coming. So now he put aside the photographs and gave Maisie his best attention.

  'Dangerous?' he said. 'Why should you ask that? I thought you were going to tell me something.'

  Maisie scratched her naked bottom and plonked it down beside him on the bed.

  'Dangerous or not,' she said, 'you're going to Cyprus to try and dig up dirt. Which means that there's a certain kind of person you'll be dealing with. Always the same kind when there's dirt to be buried or dug up again, and I know that kind, because I had a lot of 'em in and out of this flat some years back, using it as a post office for that racket of Salvation's. And what I found out, Fielding Gray, was this: they're poison all right, but they can't do you much harm provided you remember just one rule, which is what I'm going to tell you now.'

  She paused, took a gulp of champagne and fiddled briefly with his hair.

  'One rule, Maisie? Only one?'

  'Only one. Don't let them know anything at all about the real you.'

  'As if I would.' What a miserable mouse, he thought, this mountain has brought forth.

  'But you do, darling, you do all the time. We all do, unless we're on our guard. Even if you just go to a restaurant with someone, at the end of an hour they know what you like to eat and drink—something about the real you. Not very important, but something. I know something much more important: what you're like when you do ... this.' She tweaked him gently. 'It's safe with me, but their kind 'ud use it all right if they knew. And there are more important things still—the things in here.' She held two pudgy hands over her embosomed heart. 'If you let them know what you've got in here. Fielding Gray, they'll have you cold.'

  'But why should I let them know?'

  'Because it's always coming out without us noticing ... in front of people we think we can trust. And the next thing you know it comes whirring back at you like a bloody boomerang and slices off your nut. So you make sure, Fielding Gray, that what you've got in there'—she traced a little circle round his left nipple with her finger-nail—'stays there good and tight. Promise?'

  'I promise. Thank you, Maisie.'

  'That's my good boy. Now you drink up that fizz, and have a look at those nice pictures, and in no time at all you'll be feeling like the Albert Memorial.'

  Gregory Stern, who was Fielding's publisher and also Tom's, brought his wife Isobel, who was the younger sister of Tom's wife Patricia, to see Fielding off at Victoria Station.

  'All I can say,' Stern said, is that this is a mistake. You've let yourself be soft-soaped into this nonsense of Tom's instead of staying responsibly at home and writing your next novel for me.'

  'Don't be such a boring old Jew,' said Isobel: 'you're only jealous because Tom's paying him so much more than you can.'

  'Gadding about in Cyprus,' grumbled Stern, 'thinking, you're Paddy Leigh Fermor. You're old enough to know better.'

  'It's only for a short time,' said Fielding, anxious to reassure Stern, who for three years now had been a generous publisher and a loyal friend.

  'A short time, he says.' Gregory Stem turned his eyes up to the roof and ran his fingers over his waistcoat buttons as though he were typing a letter of complaint on them. 'A short time. So why are you going by the train, which is three days to Athens, instead of by the aeroplane, which is three hours?'

  Since his marriage to Isobel the hitherto impeccably Etonian Stern had tended more and more to adopt a Yiddish idiom. This he did, in Fielding's view, in order to annoy his wife and make her unkind to him; for Gregory was something of a masochist (they said) and enjoyed being bullied.

  'That's right,' Isobel said now, inflating her huge breasts at Gregory and hopping from one thin leg to the other: 'go and poke your snout into everyone else's business. Why shouldn't he go by train if he wants to?'

  'It's just that I like trains,' Fielding said to Gregory, 'and if you'll excuse me. I think it's time I got on this one.'

  'No hurry, my dear. I've got something for you.'

  Unnoticed by Isobel. who was now busy leering at a sailor, Gregory drew Fielding on one side.

  'For luck,' Grego
ry said. He produced a cylindrical metal case about an inch long and one-quarter of an inch in diameter at the ends, from one of which he now prised out a tiny roll of parchment. 'We call it a Mezuzah,' he explained: 'on one side is written a text, on the other the divine name, Shaddai. The case with the parchment inside it must be fastened to the outer door of a man's house. But if he travels, why should he not take one with him?'

  He re-inserted the roll and handed the little tube to Fielding.

  'Thank you very much, Gregory,' said Fielding, touched. 'But why should you think I need luck?'

  'Don't we all, my dear?'

  'Yes. But you've made this somehow special.'

  'You are special to me, Fielding Gray. I want you back in one piece to write more novels.'

  'That sailor's a pansy,' Isobel said: 'he isn't taking any notice of me.'

  'So he isn't taking any notice. So he doesn't like fat breasts and thin legs,' said Gregory. And then to Fielding, 'But why are you taking the train? They're very boring these days, you know. No one uses them, so there aren't any more madonnas of the sleeping-cars or anything jolly like that.'

  'Precisely. I shall have three days of entire privacy. No one, no one at all, can get at me or ring me up or dun me or make demands. I shall be sealed off in a travelling womb, without guilt or responsibility of any kind.'

  'I wish I could come with you,' said Isobel, 'and be a madonna of a sleeping-car.'

  A door was slammed by mistake farther down the platform, and a group of Americans flew into a screeching panic. In the midst of them one face suddenly stood out: a face like Mr Punch's, with a chin that curved up to meet the tip of a long, hooked nose, this being surmounted by spectacles which were glinting, from fifty yards away, straight into Fielding's eyes. I've seen that face before, he thought It knows me and I know it. What's more, it's watching me. Who? Why? Where have I seen it before?

  'Anything the matter, my dear?'

  'No...'