After the Cabaret (34 page)

‘Betty came straight up. She just said, “If you're staying, I hope you've brought your ration books.” Can you imagine it? She must have been keen to get rid of Gisela, who would have spoiled the image she was trying to present. She didn't offer them a cup of tea, even. They only stayed an hour or so, and when they left, Miss Trotter went with them, saying that now Gisela had her mother back she would no longer be necessary. This didn't please Betty.

‘Anyway, Sally, Claudia and Gisela, with the cat in a sack, got back to the railway station in the furniture van, by now in good spirits. Incidentally the arrangement at Glebe House didn't last long,' Bruno said. ‘Harry Jackson-Bowles couldn't stand his home being taken over and full of Gideon's political friends, and Betty was cultivating the county people, who rather looked
down on him. He sold Glebe House and bought a small place in the village. Miss Trotter returned as housekeeper and they spent the rest of his life together. They went abroad a lot.' Bruno observed, ‘He was a nice man. When he died he left Miss Trotter all his money. Betty wanted to challenge the will, but Sally wouldn't. In the end Gideon Cunningham was not even elected. There was an enormous Labour Party victory that year and the Cunninghams, in disgust, emigrated to South Africa. Betty and Sally never met again.

‘Anyway, for the time being Gisela, Claudia and Sally all lived together in Sally's house. There was still no news of Simon. I don't think there ever was.

‘Then one day – and here comes Pym again, like a stage villain – Sally came back unexpectedly to her house. The war against Japan was not over so she was still at the munitions works. But that day the power had failed. She found Claudia in tears in her room, trying to pack. It was just as well that Sally turned up when she did – a fluke – for in another half-hour Claudia and Gisela would have left the house.

‘Of course, Sally wanted to know what was going on. Then, to her enormous surprise, Pym emerged, saying, “Claudia and the child are going to the Soviet Union. All the papers are ready.”

‘There was, of course, a problem with Claudia. All countries were reluctant to take in sudden influxes of displaced persons. The war in Europe had just ended and millions were in transit, trying to get back to places that no longer existed, trying to find somewhere to live. There
were procedures, health checks, investigations. Claudia had been through none of these. She had been abducted from under the nose of the American Army and smuggled into Britain.

‘They were starting to sort it out – it would all have worked in the end, but Claudia's nerves were out of order. She had Gisela to worry about and was terrified that once again they would be separated. Imagine what she'd been through. So when Pym came along, with all the right papers, a job fixed for Claudia in Leningrad and many threats about how she would become a stateless person if she stayed in Britain, that she and her child would be flung back into the European tide of refugees, she believed him. Pym had fixed it with the Soviets. Claudia was going east.

‘What a row there was! Sally knew that what he was doing was wrong. All right, politically she sided with the Soviets, but instinctively she knew it was wrong for Pym to use Claudia, in the state she was in – and Gisela, of course – as pawns in his game.

‘Sally got a message to Ricardo and Antonia and they arrived. As anarchists they had no love for the Soviets, who had betrayed them in the Spanish Civil War. The row raged round the house, Claudia in tears, saying first one thing, then another, Pym threatening her, Gisela bewildered and frightened.

‘Sally phoned me at the hospital. Thinking the easiest thing to do was remove Claudia and Gisela from the house, at least until the plane left, she asked me to get hold of Briggs's car. It was an emergency, she said. Well,
I couldn't get the car because Briggs had taken it to work. I didn't know what was happening so I rang Briggs and said there was a crisis at Sally's and he went round quickly. He didn't know what Pym was up to and was surprised – horrified, I think, though he tried to hide it – when he found out what was happening

‘I arrived a bit later. Claudia was saying that no, she would not go to the Soviet Union, Pym was yelling at her that if she didn't she'd be a stateless person, back in a camp with Gisela, did she want that? Gisela was huddled in the corner with her precious cat wrapped in a blanket and struggling to escape.

‘Now, theoretically Briggs ought to have been in favour of sending Claudia to the Soviet Union. He argued, weakly though, that she should go. The situation was shaping up for a scandal – Sally was ringing Winston Churchill, her old war-time supporter, out of office now but still powerful. And I think, to do him justice, Briggs disliked the whole thing – a woman in a nervous breakdown, a little child and Pym.

‘The doorbell rang and Sally ran for it, shouting to Pym, “That's someone from Winston Churchill's office—” But it wasn't. She came back into the room, radiant, arm in arm with Eugene, in uniform and still carrying his kit-bag.

‘Explanations were made – shouted – and Eugene went over to Claudia. He said, “Wait. Don't do anything now. It's too soon.” That seemed to calm her.

‘Pym yelled into her face, “So you want to be a displaced person, without a nationality, a passport? You want your
child to grow up in a camp?” He turned to Briggs, “You tell her.”

‘Eugene said to Briggs, “Are you going to let Pym bully this woman into going to Russia where we don't know what will happen to her?”

‘“She shouldn't go to America to assist their war effort,” he managed to bring out.

‘“Hell, Briggs, she doesn't have to go anywhere,” Eugene told him.

‘“I'm surprised you're backing a country where there's no justice for your race,” argued Pym.

‘“I'm surprised to see you putting pressure on this woman to make decisions she's in no state to make. I know where she was a couple of months ago,” Eugene retorted.

‘Pym, of course, guessed that after Sally's phone call to Churchill back-up would arrive so he quickly put his hand into Briggs's pocket, where he knew he always kept his car keys, and pulled them out.

‘Then he picked up Claudia's suitcase, put it under his arm, went over to Gisela and grabbed her round the waist. Gisela screamed at being held and because Pym's sudden move had startled her into dropping the blanket containing the struggling cat. Her scream was overwhelmed by Claudia's. Claudia howled and leaped forward. She could not endure the sight of anyone about to lead her child away.

‘I was outraged. Eugene looked at me and our eyes found Ricardo's. We all three moved forward in a group. Eugene grabbed Pym, who struggled a bit then gave
up. Gisela ran back to her mother, who clutched her, sobbing. We bundled Pym along the passageway and out of the house.

‘And that was how Claudia missed the plane to Moscow. They went to Israel, eventually.' Bruno sighed. ‘So that was Pym. What a devil that man was – is.'

He continued, ‘Sally and Eugene married, you know. That was why you could find no records of her. She had changed her name again. I'm sorry, dear boy. There were reasons why I couldn't tell you. But now you know everything and my story's over.

‘I'm tired now,' he said. ‘I'm going to get Fiona to take these tapes to your flat.'

Greg drove fast back to London. Around him were silent, peaceful fields, farms, small villages with smoking chimneys, all places, he guessed where people – other people – were enjoying Christmas. While he himself was on the near-empty motorway, furious and humiliated. An innocent academic, with nothing more on his record than a few speeding tickets and a drunk-driving charge from his student days, under a deportation order. The might of the law of this strange little worn-out country had descended on his head. It didn't seem credible. It was a joke – if he hadn't been so angry he'd have laughed. Suppose he didn't comply and just stuck around until he'd finished his work. Would they really arrest and deport him? Would they risk the international scandal, boosted by the return of Pym, that such an action would create?

What wasn't so funny was Katherine's part in all this. How could she have sided with her uncle, with Sir Peveril Jones, with the whole, stinking rotten lot of them, against
him? Just for a bit of promotion, if it came, and to keep their dirty names clean. And he'd believed in her. What a fool.

In this mood he entered Everton Gardens and took the narrow stairs up to his flat.

There was a package in a Jiffy-bag on the doormat outside. Bruno had been as good as his word. Thanks, Bruno, he thought, and here's hoping the contents will be good enough to make up for all this.

And he remembered, as he threw his travel bag into the clammy bedroom, that Sir Peveril had told him Sally was alive and that Bruno knew where she was.

Shivering, he lit the gas fire, and turned on the recorder. For the next hour and a half Bruno's voice filled the small room. When the tape ended Greg stood up, went to the window and stared out, sightlessly, over the bare trees of the square opposite. Then he hit his head, walked round the room, poured a whisky, sat down, stood up and shook his head. So that was it then, the whole story. What a book it would make, he thought. What a book! He was suddenly exhilarated. So what if he was under a deportation order? So what if he'd been betrayed by his girlfriend? For all he knew the SAS, under the instructions of one of Sir Peveril's minions, was about to raid the building, grab him, drive him to the Essex marshes and execute him. And he didn't care now. He felt weak. Then he felt strong – he felt hungry. It was almost five and all he'd had since morning was a slice of toast and a glass of whisky. He needed to eat and he needed to see Bruno. There was no food in the flat.
He'd go out, try to get something at a 7–Eleven, then go straight to Bruno's. He called and left a message on his answering machine.

Then he went to the bedroom to change out of the suit he'd put on for the drinks party that morning and noticed a page hanging from his fax machine. He read it. The Atlanta lawyers representing Mr Courtney Hamilton, the nephew of Mr Eugene Hamilton, about whom Mr Phillips had enquired, had been instructed to inform Mr Phillips that Mr Eugene Hamilton had died in London three years earlier. Mr Hamilton, wrote the lawyers, had preferred to live in Britain with his family and in 1950 in order to secure the privacy he desired he had handed over responsibility for dealings connected with his artistic work to his brother in the United States. Mr Hamilton's brother had now died, so this responsibility had been assumed by his son, Mr Courtney Hamilton.

The letter went on. On receipt of Mr Phillips's enquiry Mr Courtney Hamilton had, as a matter of courtesy, contacted his uncle's widow and to his surprise this lady, who had up to that time chosen to maintain a distance from anything connected with her late husband's work, had stated that she would be prepared to meet Mr Phillips. Mrs Sarah Hamilton's address in London was given below. A copy of this letter would follow by post.

Greg looked at the address of Mrs Sarah Hamilton on the fax. A broad grin spread across his face. He remembered his first visit to Bruno. ‘Mrs Bulstrode. Mrs Bulstrode,' he said aloud. ‘Oh, yes. Mrs Bulstrode. Yes, yes, yes.'

He did not stop to change but raced from the flat and drove like a maniac through empty streets to 11, Cornwall Street. Somebody who had once owned that house ‘on the wrong side of the park' had fallen on hard times and sold it to Bruno Lowenthal. That somebody had been involved in wartime espionage, had probably told the authorities what she knew about Adrian Pym in the 1950s when he had fled. Then she had gone to ground, hiding out to enjoy a happy private life.

That somebody was still there, still living in the same house …

Greg parked, went down the basement steps and banged heavily on the door.

A tall, brown-skinned young woman of about his own age opened the door. She looked at him and smiled. ‘Bruno said you'd come.' She nodded him in.

There was an internal lobby, then a long room where a lighted Christmas tree stood. At a table, at which Christmas dinner had evidently been eaten and on which still stood cheese, fruit and the remains of a Christmas pudding, sat eight people, two couples in their fifties, and a young man who, by his appearance, seemed to be the brother of the woman who had let Greg in. Near the end of the table was an untouched place, with a full complement of knives, forks and glasses. At the head of the table was an old woman, bright-eyed, heavily made up and smiling. Beside her was Bruno, who stood up.

‘Welcome, Greg, we saved a place for you,' he said.

The old woman now also got up. She was wearing a
black beaded dress. She held a gold-tipped black cigarette holder. Bright-eyed, wreathed in smoke, Sally Bowles cried, ‘Darling! I've heard so much about you! Come and sit down. Will someone open a bottle of champagne?'

HILARY BAILEY
was born in 1936 and was educated at thirteen schools before attending Newnham College, Cambridge. Married with children, she entered the strange, uneasy world of '60s science fiction, writing some twenty tales of imagination which were published in Britain, the USA, France and Germany. She has edited the magazine New Worlds and has regularly reviewed modern fiction for the Guardian. Her first novel was published in 1975 and she has since written twelve novels and a short biography. She lives in Ladbroke Grove, London.