The Judas Boy Page 4

'Then don't forget to go and see Detterling as you pass through Athens. I wired him and he'll be expecting you ... Are you listening, Fielding? I was saying about Detterling—'

  '—Yes, yes. I heard. Any messages?'

  The spectacles had gone now. One moment they had been there, glinting straight at him. He had turned his bead, only for a second, in response to Stern's insistence, and now that he had turned back they were gone. Where their owner had been, there were simply two wailing women, still under the impression that they were being treacherously left behind by the train, savagely jostling each other to get through a door.

  '... And tell Detterling,' Gregory was saying, 'not to worry about the Cavafy memoirs. I haven't yet found a translator, and anyhow I'm already doing too many bugger books this year.'

  More doors slammed, this time in earnest. Fielding backed towards the train. He didn't offer to kiss Isobel, though he had known her well for some time now, but she darted on to him and landed a great splosh on his little twisted mouth. Gregory looked on benignly, then himself came forward to kiss Fielding's cheek.

  'God bless you, my dear. Keep the Mezuzah carefully.'

  'Of course, Gregory ... I nearly forgot—where's Detterling staying?'

  The Grande Bretagne. I ask you. The firm is paying, so he stays at the Grande Bretagne.'

  'He would have done anyway,' said Isobel; 'and you're just a dreary, cheese-paring yid.'

  Gregory blushed so much with pleasure that his scarlet face shone as clear as a traffic lamp on the platform until the first bend chopped it from sight.

  2: En Route

  The man with the spectacles made himself known at Munich.

  Fielding had seen nothing of him on the boat from Dover to Ostend, nor at dinner in the restaurant-car that evening, nor at breakfast the following morning. But just as the train was moving out of Munich, and as Fielding was walking along the Athens coach on his way to lunch, a figure advanced at him down the corridor, jutting its upturned chin and flashing its glasses like morse lamps.

  'I was just coming,' the figure said, 'to suggest you joined me for a spot of food.'

  The figure put up a hand to smooth the very scant hair above its deep and pallid forehead, a precise yet nugatory gesture which at once prompted Fielding's memory.

  'Percival,' he said, 'Leonard Percival. Göttingen, 1952. Wessex Fusiliers.'

  'I'm flattered,' said Percival, 'to be so accurately documented. Members of humble line regiments are easily forgotten.'

  'But you weren't, as it turned out, quite what you seemed at the time.'

  'Neither were you. Who would have thought that the pampered and pouting captain of Earl Hamilton's Light Dragoons would turn into a distinguished novelist?'

  'Not distinguished yet.' said Fielding, smug nevertheless.

  'You might be if you stick to it. And if you don't waste time,' Percival said, lightly but very clearly, 'meddling with what doesn't concern you. Come on, we're blocking the corridor.'

  They walked through to the restaurant-car, where Percival ordered the cheapest menu at five Marks and Fielding the most expensive at fifteen, along with a bottle of Spätburgunder Walporzeim 1951.

  'Always the best of everything,' said Percival, 'for Earl Hamilton's Light Dragoons. The gastronomic menu, the priciest wine on the list—and travelling by wagon-lit, but of course. A compartment to yourself, the attendant tells me.'

  'The BBC's paying,' Fielding looked at Percival's exquisitely cut suit and manicured nails. 'You don't look exactly ground down, come to that.'

  'I'm just mean,' said Percival slyly. 'I travel second class to save money ... and because I know my place as an ex-officer of one of the dowdier regiments.'

  'For God's sake stop harping on the Army. I've been out for over three years. And you were never really in it. You were a spy in Fusilier's clothing. Still spying ... Leonard?'

  Percival said nothing while he was served with consommé and Fielding with crayfish in mayonnaise. Then:

  'I still retain the knack.' Percival said.

  'The knack of hanging around sleeping-car attendants scrounging for information?'

  'Paying for it. That's why I can only afford the cheapest lunch.'

  'It surely can't have cost much just to learn that I had a compartment to myself.'

  'Five Marks,' said Percival severely; 'or the equivalent of one good-size glass of that Spätburgunder Walporzeim.'

  Then allow me to recompense you.' said Fielding, pouring for them both from the bottle, 'and also to enquire why you were so keen to find out. Are you hoping that I shall invite you to move into the upper bunk?'

  The waiter thumped down a debased Hamburger in front of Percival and obsequiously presented Fielding with a veal steak smothered in cream on a lordly silver dish. When the subsequent ceremonies were concluded, Percival said:

  'As it happens, you could do a lot worse. For the whole point is, Major Fielding Gray, that an empty bunk can be filled. Anywhere between here and Athens.'

  'Not if I've booked the entire compartment.'

  'The attendant, as we already know, is venal If he supported the interloper, pleading, let us say, some obscure regulation about the priorities of travellers on official business, you'd be done for, wouldn't you?'

  'It would be disagreeable, certainly.'

  'Very disagreeable, I should say. if your companion suddenly pointed a long knife at you in the middle of the night and started asking rude questions about your interest in Cyprus.'

  Although this picture was melodramatic and absurd, there was a grating quality in Percival's voice which compelled Fielding to take him seriously.

  'Why on earth should he behave like that?'

  'Because.' said Percival patiently, 'his standard of manners would not be that of Earl Hamilton's Light Dragoons and he would be eager to have your answer.'

  'Which would be that I'm going to get material for a television programme on how the gallant Cypriots achieved independence and what they propose to do with it.'

  'As you very well know,' said Percival, 'neither topic will bear much examination. I think—don't you?—that your hypothetical bedfellow would want more convincing proof of your good will.'

  'Such as?'

  'An immediate readiness to get off this comfortable train and take one going the other way. Quite unthinkable, of course: one doesn't take orders from foreigners.'

  Fielding crossly waved away a rich pudding, which Percival re-captured from the waiter.

  'I'll have some more of that Spätburgunder, if you don't mind,' Percival said, and poured a brimming glass.

  'Is any of this in the least likely to happen?'

  That's just what I was spending all those Deutschmarks to find out. Were you to be alone, I enquired of the attendant. for the whole journey?'

  'And was I?'

  'Of course. The English gentleman had booked the whole compartment. The expected, the inevitable answer.'

  Then why pay five Deutschmarks for it?'

  To observe the way in which it was made. Very much too glib. Not reassuring, I'm afraid.'

  Fielding hesitated before answering. He had last seen Leonard Percival ten years ago, when they were both serving, though in very different capacities, in the same barracks at Göttingen. What little he had then known of Percival he had not much liked, and it had subsequently appeared that Percival had been playing a discreditable role in a discreditable business. Nevertheless, that business had had official sanction at a high level, and there was no reason at all to doubt Percival's professional competence or (if one allowed for the obliquity which that profession involved) his present good faith. That Percival's motives were devious and, ultimately, quite unconcerned with Fielding's welfare, was probable; but here and now, if Percival was warning him, he would do well to listen.

  'All right,' Fielding said: 'then why not move in with me? That should settle any nonsense. I'm told that I snore rather badly, but even so a free bed for two nights should appeal to your sense of eco
nomy.'

  'A charming offer. But unfortunately I'm not much loved in Yugoslavia, so I must leave the train in Austria this afternoon. A pity: we could have talked about the dear old days in BAOR.'

  It was a measure of the ascendancy which Percival had obtained over Fielding during their conversation that Fielding, faced with this unexpected news, felt suddenly and totally vulnerable. Although the dining-car was grossly overheated, he found himself shivering as if he had been stripped to the skin.

  'But... what shall I do?'

  'Do, my dear fellow? Read your books. Look out of the window. Eat delicious meals ... the restaurant-car which comes on at the Yugoslav frontier, by the way, is the best on this trip—or so I used to think when I was still allowed in it. The regime considers it a good advertisement, you see.'

  'Leonard. If, as you suggest, someone tries ... to get at me... what shall I do?'

  'Keep a stiff upper lip, old chap, and remember the honour of the regiment.'

  'Leonard—'

  '—Don't tell me that an officer of Lord Hamilton's Horse is getting into a funk.'

  'I simply,' said Fielding, pulling himself together, 'want to know what course of action you recommend.'

  'Very simple. Tomorrow evening you will have a choice. Either you can eat an early dinner, at about six o'clock, in the Yugoslav dining-car before reaching the Greek frontier; or you can eat later on in the Greek car, which will be put on at the frontier station. Which will you choose?'

  'The Greek one. I hate dining too early.'

  'You just don't listen, do you? I have already told you that the Yugoslav dining-car provides the best meals on this whole run. Take my tip. Major Gray: do you stomach and yourself... a favour.'

  Percival rose to his feet.

  Ten per cent for service, isn't it?' he asked.

  'You should know. You're so familiar with this line.' Percival counted five Marks and fifty Pfennigs, checked them carefully and put them on the table.

  'The Greeks charge ten per cent too,' he said, 'and the Yugoslavs fifteen. But you're not the man to bother yourself about an extra five per cent, now are you?'

  Smiling, Percival backed away down the aisle and raised a hand in farewell.

  'Anyway,' he said, 'it's being paid by the BBC.'

  As Fielding re-entered his compartment after lunch, a face rose to meet him: his own. It was a clear second before he recognised himself in the looking glass over the hand-basin, and during that second a thick sweat of fear gathered in his groin. He had failed to know himself, as he realised when he was calmer, because Leonard Percival was still so much the same that he, Fielding, had been carried back in time and had forgotten, if only for a few moments, how he himself had changed. The face he had expected to see in the mirror was that of ten years ago: clear eyes widely set, Greek nose, voluptuous mouth and becomingly cleft chin. Now all that remained from that time was his hair, still thick and glowing auburn, better, he thought, than Percival can show or ever could. He stroked it fondly with both hands, watching them in the glass; my beautiful hair, he thought. And then, what shall I do? I'm already starling at my own shadow; what shall I do if ever the threat is real?

  The trouble was, he thought, as he sat down by the window, that Percival's communication was on the one hand (if one thought about it properly for two seconds together) wildly improbable and yet on the other hand so authoritative. Its authority it derived from something in Percival's manner which had procured him Fielding's respect; and however laughable, however inconsistent what Percival actually said, Fielding felt somehow compelled to puzzle at it until it made sense. It was like being faced with a corrupt passage in a classical author: the words, as they stood, might be gibberish, but since they had been written by a great man there must be some way of emending and construing them so that their message would at last become clear.

  What, then, had Percival been trying to say? And why couldn't he have come straight out with it? Even his manner, although it had won Fielding's reluctant attention, had been ambiguous. Perhaps he had been spying for so long that he was now incapable of doing anything directly: an occupational debility like tennis elbow or housemaid's knee. But this was no time for random speculation. Analyse: what had Percival said and what did he mean?

  If one ignored the jokes about money and class, what it seemed to amount to was a series of warnings, each of a nature—and here was the confusion—to invalidate the one which preceded it. Percival had started by warning him off the whole project: stick to your work, he had said; don't meddle with what doesn't concern you. Having thus expressed his disapproval, however, Percival had then gone on to offer assistance or at any rate advice on the plain assumption that Fielding would see the journey through ('one doesn't take orders from foreigners'). He had told Fielding to be on his guard against a possible intruder, who might corner him in his compartment, with the connivance of the wagon-lit attendant, and start asking awkward questions. Leave aside the vagueness of all this (who would the intruder be? where and what his nation?), leave aside its sheer implausibility, one then came to the biggest non sequitur of all. For when asked what action should be taken to deal with the mysterious stranger, Percival had merely told him to dine, on the evening of the next day, not in the Greek restaurant-car but in the Yugoslav one. Percival evidently regarded this as a simple and obvious precaution, but how it could help to thwart malicious intruders from getting into one's sleeping compartment was more than Fielding could compute.

  Outside his window, April sparkled among the passing pine-trees. A stretch of lake, a village with church and tower, onion-topped, a green field with cows. Another stretch of lake, another village with church, another field ... As the countryside unrolled strictly repetitive like the background to an early Disney cartoon, Fielding's head began to nod forward. Who had sent Leonard and why? Would he turn up later, or did his assignment end when he left the train in Austria? Where in Austria? If only Leonard had been more plain ... but here he was in the compartment, now was Fielding's chance to get things straight. Tell me, Leonard ... But Leonard wasn't listening; he was looking into the mirror, stroking his hair, which had grown thick and curly and auburn, just like Fielding's. 'Do you like my hair?' Leonard said. I've been using an expensive new lotion—rather presumptuous in a member of the middle class, but then I was envious of yours. Why should you Dragoons always have the best?' He turned to face Fielding, and he had Fielding's face as well as his hair. Fielding's face as it had been ten years ago, in Göttingen, where the sun sparkled among the pine-trees in the spring. 'I love you,' said Leonard-Fielding, the ghost-Fielding from Göttingen, 'I love you so much, please give me a kiss.' But Fielding knew that it was dangerous to be kissed by ghosts and he shrank up against the window, while the ghost-Fielding held out his arms and smiled wider and wider, obscenely inviting, a living corpse cackling with laughter, its face splitting into great sores of PUS PUS PUS, red and yellow like a Turner sunset, POX POX POX.

  Fielding woke to the heavy knocking on the door.

  'No,' he screamed, 'no.'

  The door was flung open and a huge man thrust himself through the narrow entrance.

  'Gruss Gou, mein Herr,' said the man reproachfully: 'Austrian customs, please.'

  Tom Llewyllyn and his wife Patricia lived in an angular flat in Southwell Gardens. At about the time Fielding's train passed over the German-Austrian frontier, Tom returned home from the Television Centre, sat down in front of the gas-fire, and said:

  'Is the water hot? I need a bath.'

  But Patricia had forgotten to turn on the immersion heater.

  'It's hardly tea-time yet,' she wailed.

  'I couldn't bear that place a second longer. Anyhow, I have asked you always to turn it on by three. Just to make sure.'

  But Patricia had been out shopping, she explained, and she had had to take Baby, their two-year-old daughter, to the dentist, and she had been distracted later by a long telephone call from her sister, Isobel Stern.

  'What was
Isobel on about?'

  'She and Gregory went to see Fielding off at Victoria yesterday.'

  Patricia hesitated, then picked Baby off the filthy carpet and began to change her nappies.

  'It can't,' said Tom, 'have taken Isobel very long to tell you that.'

  'She'd had ... one of her feelings.'

  Tom shrugged.

  'Fine. Isobel's had one of her feelings and there's no hot water. And another thing,' he said: 'when you change that child you ought to wash and powder her.'

  Patricia, who before her marriage in 1959 had kept house immaculately for her father, Sir Edwin Turbot, and had been remarkable for strength of character, had changed in the last three years. She had become sluttish and inefficient. Tom thought that this was the result of her strong attachment to Sir Edwin, who from being a prominent statesman was now rapidly going ga-ga: Patricia, that was to say, was declining in her behaviour out of an unconscious wish to share the old man's predicament. In which case, Tom could only hope that Sir Edwin would very soon die and so release Patricia from the need to emulate him: though of course it might work the other way—Patricia might develop an unconscious wish to share his coffin. Tom sighed heavily. It was all too complicated, would indeed have been insupportable had he not loved her very much.

  Meanwhile Patricia had clumped reluctantly away to the bathroom with Baby and was now clumping back.

  'No hot water, of course,' she said, 'so I couldn't wash her. But,' with an air of pride, 'I've turned on the immersion heater.'

  Baby began to dribble on Patricia's lap.

  That child smells,' said Tom.

  That was what Isobel said,' remarked Patricia impenitently, 'about Fielding Gray.'

  'Rubbish. There isn't a more fastidious man in England.'

  'Not literally. It was all part of Isobel's feeling. There was, she said, a smell of death.'

  'She's just dramatising as usual.'

  All the same, Tom thought, I wish this hadn't come so soon after what I heard this morning. For that morning he had been visited by a man from the BBC department which handled sound-broadcasting in the Near East He had heard, the man said, that Tom was sending a man to think up a programme about Cyprus. While it was no affair of his, and he did hope Tom wouldn't think he was interfering, he felt he ought to say that the time was ... ill chosen. Why. Tom had replied: there was no sign of present trouble, and if trouble should suddenly come, so much the more interesting for his writer on the spot. It wasn't as simple as that, the man observed: there wasn't going to be any trouble—not for some time—but there were—sensitivities. In that case, could not the Cypriots have given the BBC a polite but firm warning to stay away for the time being? It wasn't so much the Cypriots who were being sensitive, the man said, as ... somebody else. Who and why? It was impolitic, the man opined, to ask such crude and direct questions about so very sensitive an area; after which cryptic pronouncement he had glided out of Tom'$ office.