Saturn Over the Water (27 page)

I was still staring at him. ‘How do you know I promised my cousin Isabel I would look for Joe?’ Because so far I’d never mentioned it, and though Mitchell might have guessed something, he couldn’t be certain.

‘I know,’ Barsac replied carelessly, ‘because I have had the scene described to me. Up there, in the Blue Mountains, thousands and thousands of miles away from London.’

‘It happened in Cambridge, not London.’ And then, still wondering how anybody could have described my visit to Isabel, I told him how it all began and how important the list of names Joe scribbled had soon become. I was just about through when Rosalia arrived, sleek and dark and smiling, wearing a silk shirt, pale Chinese vermilion, I’d never seen before. After she’d greeted Barsac, whose sunken eyes glowed with approval, she said: ‘I’ve packed, Tim darling. And you haven’t, and I daren’t do it for you, not after you told me yesterday you always wanted to do it yourself.’

‘Quite right,’ I said. ‘Every man should do his own packing. But I didn’t know we were going.’

‘I think you must,’ said Barsac gravely. ‘I am taking you to my sister’s bungalow in these mountains. This is important – not a social call. And you may not be able to come back here.’

‘Then I’ll pack and put all our stuff into the car.’ I paid the bill too while I was on the job, and it was well after twelve when I returned to the seat between the poplars. Rosalia and Barsac were now going full speed in French, sounding shrewd and witty as people always do in that deceptive language. Talking to a good-looking girl in his own tongue had taken about ten years off Barsac. As for Rosalia, I’d never seen her before in this particular role, as a social charmer, and I thought she was surprising and delicious.

They’d made a plan about lunch. Rosalia had started it, by declaring she couldn’t eat any more steak and eggs with tomato sauce, but really I think she wanted to give Barsac a treat. Two or three miles away, on the road to the Blue Mountains, Sydney’s most
chi
-
chi
restaurant had just opened a small branch establishment, and there, Rosalia decided, we must go. We drove up there about one. It was a corner place, just out of the paint pots, in mimosa yellow and dark grey, and not very big. All the tables in the main room were either occupied or reserved, so we were taken to a smaller room upstairs, which we had to ourselves except for one or two ladies tripping to and from their Powder Room in the corner. The windows overlooked the entrance, and I was idly staring down, while drinking a martini, when I saw two cars arrive. Out of the first, with a chauffeur at the wheel, came Magorious and Lord Randlong. Out of the second, which she had been driving, came Nadia, Sir Reginald Merlan-Smith and General Giddings. Before Rosalia and Barsac, who heard me cry out, could see for themselves, the five of them had vanished, heading for their reserved table below.

‘They cannot know we are here,’ said Rosalia. ‘But that bitch of a countess may come up to powder her beautiful nose. And from what Tim does not tell me,’ she said to Barsac, ‘I think she wants him for herself. She doesn’t have him, not for two minutes.’

We sat down as a waiter came up with menus that might have been full scores of Beethoven’s
Choral Symphony
. I said that anything that hadn’t been near tomato sauce would do me, but nobody listened. Rosalia and Barsac stared so long at their menus that the waiter began translating its French for them, all with a strong Hungarian accent. Then when he left with our orders, somebody else came up the stairs. It was Nadia.

My impression of that encounter is that during the first twenty-five seconds of smiles, greetings and the introduction of Barsac, war between Rosalia and Nadia was declared again, was fought, was ended by an armistice. Then I took over. ‘I saw you arrive, Nadia. Four of ’em downstairs. You only need Steglitz.’

‘And he flies here this afternoon,’ said Nadia wearily. ‘He telephoned Sir Reginald this morning. Something important – and very bad – has happened at Charoke. But I do not know what it is. I am not told things now. What happened to the nice little German – Rother – who escaped with you from Osparas, Tim?’

I told her. She listened dry-eyed but more life seemed to drain out of her face, sharpening and ageing it. Whatever may have happened since I last saw her at Osparas, I felt that nothing had gone right for her.

‘Nobody would think,’ she said when I had done, ‘that there could be any resemblance between that odd little German chemist and me. But he spoke of his life sometimes to me. And his life and mine had much in common. They began promising everything and soon came to nothing. Perhaps we were born under the same stars.’

‘Countess,’ said Barsac with great earnestness, ‘you are a beautiful woman – of a type I have always admired – essentially European. No, I am not offering you compliments. Please listen to me.
Do not work any longer with these men. I am very serious about this. I know – in a way you would not understand, but please believe
me – I
know
that great disasters are coming to these men – challenges they cannot meet. Their time is running out. Leave them.’

She looked at him across the table – he was still standing up – and she didn’t speak, only kept on searching his eyes, for what was probably only a few moments but seemed an astonishingly long time. I had the feeling, as I told Rosalia afterwards, that during those moments a whole relationship between them, rich and deep while it lasted, was created, enjoyed, wistfully renounced, as if they’d met now in the wrong age. I ought to add that if I was beginning to feel this sort of thing, as I certainly was, then that was because Barsac had brought with him a different and very curious atmosphere. It was an atmosphere that would thicken and darken and become stranger before we had done with it.

‘I believe you, Monsieur Barsac,’ Nadia said. ‘But I think nothing can be done. Now I will warn you.’ She took in all three of us. ‘Sir Reginald and the others do not know you are here, and of course I shall not tell them. But they know you are in this neighbourhood – this is important for you, Tim. If you have a car that is easily recognised, be careful when you leave here. Now I must say good-bye.’

She went along to the Powder Room, and returned while we were being served. I just had a glimpse of a small secret smile before she hurried downstairs. I never saw Nadia Slatina again.

The lunch was better than the muck we had been eating but the bill, which I paid (after scowling Rosalia away from her handbag), came to about twelve pounds due to the high cost of
chi
-
chi
. As soon as we’d finished eating, Barsac brought out a map and pointed out a little place called Hendon, about fifteen miles to the north and high among the Blue Mountains. It was a large-scale map and he showed us the exact location of his sister’s bungalow, on a ridge overlooking a great valley. We then agreed that Barsac and I should slip out by any back way we could find and start walking up the road, where Rosalia in the car would catch us up. She thought that if she tied a silk scarf round her head, pulling it forward as far as she reasonably could, she could go downstairs and hurry out unrecognised by Giddings and Merlan-Smith. Lord Randlong and Magorious didn’t know her, she said. So Barsac and I went down the service stairs, and then found a side door there leading to a back yard. Quarter of an hour later, Rosalia picked us up in the Mercedes. That car had every virtue except the one we most needed now, for it was anything but inconspicuous, not only because of its size and lines but also because it was pale blue, which made it about as inconspicuous as an Indian princess at a Wolverhampton whist drive.

We must have gone about eight miles before all three of us were sure we were being followed. So a new plot, no masterplan and one I was soon to regret, was now hatched between us. Rosalia was to speed up round the first bend in the road, drop Barsac and me at some easily described spot, drive to the nearest place of any size (I think it was called Richmond but I wouldn’t swear to it), and there find a taxi or whatever was available and send it back for us. Meanwhile she could stare our pursuers boldly in the face, putting them off for the afternoon. Obviously I can’t even describe this plan without making it seem clumsy and tedious. I think the lunch was at work on us.

Rosalia did her speeding up, and we had some road to ourselves. She dropped us off where there were three fat gum trees together, then blasted off to Richmond or whatever the place was. Barsac and I took cover and then saw what was obviously a police car go by. We spent the next half-hour arguing how and why the police should be following us. I claimed this was Major Jorvis, the helicopter and short wave wizard, putting out one of his feelers for me. Barsac repeated what Steglitz had told me about him at Charoke – that he was under increasing suspicion in Sydney, where the security people had already questioned him twice and he was threatened with being thrown out of work. Where we did agree was in believing that this idiotic atmosphere of fear and suspicion and spying, contemptuous of reason and proof, was itself a deliberate creation, the work of men who knew what they were doing and knew that most other people didn’t. It was Steglitz’s salesmanship and personnel management methods really doing their stuff.

The youth had a lot of freckles and red hair and could have been only a few years older than the car he’d brought to take us to Rosalia. He said he’d left her outside his father’s garage, reading the paper he’d given her. Two silly bastards in a police car had come up, taken a look at her, then pushed off. Which is what we ought to be doing. But there was no Rosalia and no car waiting for us at the garage. Nobody knew where she’d gone. She’d had the Mercedes filled up just after she arrived, and paid for that and for this car of ours there and then. Ten minutes later she’d gone. My explanation was that she’d dashed off on one of those sudden shopping expeditions that suggest themselves to women just at the wrong time. Barsac thought that for some reason or other she’d gone ahead of us to his sister’s bungalow. We hung around for about twenty minutes, then we hired the freckled youth to take us up to the bungalow. Barsac’s sister had married in France, years ago, but then her husband had brought her out to Australia, where he’d started a business, importing those fancy French accessories sold in
boutiques
. I wouldn’t be meeting Delor himself because he’d gone to Perth. They had a flat in Sydney but when Delor was away Barsac’s sister liked to stay up here in their bungalow. In his deep sad voice, Barsac told me all this and a good deal more, which I didn’t really take in partly because it was dull and partly because I was still wondering and worrying about Rosalia. Meanwhile, the freckled youth’s car was taking a beating on the long climb.

What with one thing and another we’d used up most of the afternoon, and only the glowing end of it was left when we arrived at that bungalow, which looked like a thousand others we’d passed on the road. As soon as Mrs Delor opened the door we asked her if Rosalia was there, then bang went Barsac’s theory of her disappearance. Now if she hadn’t gone off on some idiot shopping spree, then she’d been arrested or kidnapped or she’d just got tired of us. Mrs Delor favoured the shopping theory. She didn’t resemble Barsac in the least. She was plump and dumpy, and a rather smarter, more
boutique
, version of all those middle-aged Frenchwomen in black who take the money in restaurants. She led the way to a biggish sitting-room, more windows than walls, at the back of the bungalow. We seemed to be out in space.

‘I hope you will admire this view we have here, Mr Bedford,’ she said, and then left me to it.

I seemed to be staring at something that was half the Promised Land and half Doomsday. The scale was stupendous. A white house below looked like a child’s toy that had been tossed on to a thick green-and-brown rug, actually miles of forest, along the floor of the valley. A rounded hill down there, which had been picked out by a shaft of light, was a dazzling light chrome green, of an unearthly tint and brightness, like a hill in some old German fairy tale. Beyond and high above it were slopes and peaks of cobalt and monastral blues, darkening in the high valleys to deep ultramarine, prussian blue, indigo. And higher still the warm grey and sepia masses of cloud were piling up before the last glimpses of the afternoon sky, patches of the palest cerulean, fading cobalt greens, faint washes of emerald. Staring at all this and a great deal more I can’t describe, I felt that a lot of strange things were beginning to creep out of the back of my mind. These Blue Mountains turned into the mysterious and beckoning
Blue Mtns
on Joe Farne’s list. The creepy items were really arriving. I was ready to meet the incredible more than halfway.

‘You admire this view, Mr Bedford?’ said Mrs Delor, who must have gone out while I was staring out of the window and had now just come back.

‘It’s been shaking me to bits,’ I said as I turned. ‘And now I’m trying to pick up the pieces.’

She laughed. Barsac was with her but he just kept on looking solemn and mysterious. ‘Now we have a nice surprise for you,’ she said. ‘Please be patient a moment.’

I thought Rosalia was here, after all. But it was a man who came in. It was Joe Farne.

17

Mrs Delor, a tactful woman, took Barsac away, so that Joe and I were alone, sitting near those big windows, as if we were in a space ship hovering over a strange blue planet. It was up to me to talk first, because of Isabel, and I told him how she’d sent for me and how I’d promised to find him, to tell him that she loved him and would have gone to Chile herself to look for him if it hadn’t been for the leukæmia. Though obviously moved, he took it quietly and calmly, and when I’d done he explained why.

‘I knew it already, Tim,’ he said. ‘Which doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. You know I am. I’ll never forget what you’ve done – ’

‘Joe, I’ve done nothing but arse around. I may have done my best
but it’s never been good enough. It’s always been other people – ’

But he wouldn’t have that, eagerly breaking in. ‘No, that’s wrong. I know. If you hadn’t gone to Osparas – and don’t tell me you weren’t chancing your arm doing that – I’d never have got out as I did. And if you hadn’t brought that chap Jones with you, I’d have been taken to Argentina somewhere, to be given a bit more of the same treatment. Instead of which, as I was told afterwards, Pablo Mandoza took me to Puerto Montt with him.’

‘I was laid up for some time, Joe. Then when I finally got back to Lima, you’d been and gone – ’

‘By that time I’d recovered, Tim, though still feeling very shaky. I had some money in a bank there, drew it out, flew up to Panama City, then went to Colon and was lucky enough to get a passage in one of those ships that go from England to Australia by way of the Panama Canal. I knew Barsac was here, probably in Sydney teaching. That’s how I come to be up here. And that’s how I know what happened between you and Isabel. You see, Tim, there’s a woman here – you’ll be meeting her – a Mrs Baro – she’s a Polish woman married to a Hungarian – and she’s some sort of clairvoyante.’ He looked at me appealingly. He’d changed a lot from the Joe Farne I’d known when he’d been working in the bio-chemical lab at Cambridge, a pleasant but dullish chap, pretty sure of himself and everything else in a dullish sort of way. Of course he looked very different from what he’d done in that dining-room at Osparas – he just had his neat moustache again, and was quite spruce – but he was a long way from being the Cambridge type I’d known as my cousin Isabel’s husband. ‘If these things happen,’ he went on, ‘you can’t close your eyes to them, pretend they aren’t happening. And that was partly my trouble. Did you have any talk with Rother at Osparas?’