“Perfidious Albion?” I said.
He didn’t think that was funny. He didn’t answer or even look at me. He just sat there with his face tight, his eyes watery and his big hands clenched together so tightly that the knuckles whitened.
I’d never seen him in such a state before. Whether it was concern for Zena or a burning hatred for Frank, it was eating him up. I watched him biting his lip with rage and I worried about him. I’d seen men wound up this tight before; and I’d seen them snap. “I’ll see what I can do,’I said, but it was too late for such offers.
Through gritted teeth Werner said, “First thing tomorrow morning I’m going to the office. I’ll find the D-G and make him do something. Make him”
“I wouldn’t advise that, Werner,” I said anxiously. “No, Werner, I really wouldn’t.” The idea of this black-bearded Werner shouting and struggling in the lobby of London Central with the redoubtable Sergeant-Major Gaskell trying to subdue him, and the questions that would inevitably be directed at me in consequence, was something I didn’t care to contemplate. I tipped the rest of the Meursault into my glass. It was warm; I suppose he’d not put the bottle back into the refrigerator. All in all, Thursday was not a good day.
I have always been a light sleeper: it’s a part of the job. But it wasn’t the low rumble of the motorcycle that awakened me they come roaring past at all hours of the night - it was the silence that followed its engine being switched off. By the time the garden gate clicked I was fully awake. I heard the footsteps -high heel boots on the stone paving - and I rolled out of bed before the brief ring of the doorbell awakened Gloria. “Three thirty!” I heard Gloria say sleepily as I went out of the bedroom. She sounded surprised; she had a lot to learn about the demands the Department made on its middle management. I went downstairs two steps at a time, to answer it before Doris and the children were disturbed. But before I got to the bottom of the stairs the caller tried again: more insistent this time, two long rings.
“Okay okay okay,” I said irritably.
“Sorry governor, I thought you hadn’t heard.” The caller was a tall thin young man dressed entirely in shiny black leather like some apparition from a bad dream. “Mr. Samson?’ Over his arm he had a black shiny helmet, and there was a battered leather pouch slung from his neck.
“Yes?”
“Have you got something to identify yourself, sir?” he said, without saying what I was supposed to produce. That was the way regulations said it should be done, but I’d got used to a more vernacular style from the messengers I knew. So it was a new man. “What about this?” I said and, from behind the half-open door, I brought the Mauser 9mm into view.
He grinned, “Yeah, I reckon that’ll do,” he said. He opened the pouch and from it took one of the large buff envelopes that the Department uses to circulate its bad news. “Samson, B,’I said just to get him off the hook. “Any verbal?”
“You’re to open it right away. That’s all.”
“Why not,” I said. “I’ll need something to help me back to sleep.”
“Goodnight, governor. Sorry to disturb you.” “Next time,” I said, “Don’t ring the bell. just breathe heavily through the letter-box.”
“What is it, darling?’ asked Gloria, coming downstairs slowly like a chorus girt in a Busby Berkeley musical. She was not fully awake. Blonde hair disarranged, she was dressed in the big fluffy white Descamps; bathrobe that I’d bought her for Christmas. She looked wonderful.
“A messenger.” I tore open the big brown envelope. Inside there was an airline ticket from London Heathrow to Los Angeles International by the flight that left at nine am - that is to say in less than six hours time - and a note, curt and typed on office paper bearing the usual rubber stamps:
Dear Bernard,
You’ll be met on arrival. Sorry about the short notice but the Washington office works five hours later than we do, and someone there arranged with the Deputy that this one should be down to you, and only you,
Yours apologetically,
Harry (N.D.O. Ops.)
I recognized the sprawling handwriting. So poor old Harry Strang was still on the roster for night duty in Operations. I suppose he must have felt sorry for himself too for he’d scribbled on the bottom of the note “Some people have all the lucky I suppose for someone sitting up all night in Operations and listening to the rain, the prospect of immediate transportation to sunny California must have seemed attractive. To me it didn’t. At least it didn’t until I recalled Werner’s threat to go into the office this morning, and tackle the D-G head-on.
“They can’t make you go,” said Gloria, who had leaned over my shoulder to read the note.
“No,” I agreed. “I can always start drawing unemployment benefit.”
“It doesn’t even say how long you’ll be away,” she said, in such a way as to leave me in doubt about how she would respond to such a peremptory command.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You promised to look at the garage door.” “It just needs a new hinge,” I told her. “There’s a place near Waterloo Station. I’ll get it next week.”
“I’ll pack your bag.” She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “It’s not worth going back to bed.” “I said I’m sorry,” I reminded her.
“The weekends are the only time we have together,” she said.
“Why couldn’t it wait till Monday?”
“I’ll try and find something exciting for Billy’s birthday.” “Bring yourself back,” said Gloria and kissed me tenderly. “I worry about you ... when they send you off on these urgent jobs with that damned “Briefing on Arrival” rubber stamp, I worry about you.”
“It won’t be anything dangerous,” I said. “I’ll be sitting beside a pool aft weekend.”
“They’ve specifically asked for you, Bernard,” she said. I nodded. It was not a flattering assumption but she was right. They hadn’t asked for me on account of my social contacts or my scholarship. “I’ll wear the water-wings and stay away from the deep end,” I promised.
“What will you do when you get there”
“It’s “Briefing on Arrival”, sweetheart. That means they haven’t yet decided.”
“Seriously. How will you recognize them?” “It doesn’t work like that, darling. They’ll have a photo of me. I won’t know them until they come up to me and introduce themselves.”
“And how will you know that person is the genuine contact?”
“He’ll show me my photo.”
“It’s all carefully arranged,” she said with a note of approval in her voice. She liked everything to be well arranged. “It’s all in the Notes and Amendments,” I said. “But always the same airline, Bernard? That seems bad security.”
“There must be a reason,” I said, “How about making me a cup of coffee while I pack my bag?”
“Everything’s clean. Your shirts are on hangers in the wardrobe, so don’t start shouting when you find the chest of drawers empty.”
“I won’t shout about shirts,’ I promised, and kissed her. “And if I do, rip more buttons off.”
“I do love you, Bernard.” She put both arms round me and hugged me tight. “I want to have you for ever and ever.” “Then that’s the way it will be,” I promised with the sort of unthinking impetuosity that I am prey to when rudely awakened in such early hours of the morning. For a moment she just held me, crushing me so that I could hardly breathe, then into my ear she said, “And I love the children, Bernard. Don’t worry about them.” The children missed their real mother, of course, and I knew how hard Gloria worked to replace her. It wasn’t easy for her. Cambridge, just unremitting hard work, must have been an attractive prospect at times.
Almost every seat was taken in First Class. Wide-awake young men, with well cut suits and large gold wristwatches, were shuffling papers that came from pigskin document cases, or tapping at tiny portable computers with hinged screens. Many of them declined the champagne and worked right through the meal service: reading reports, ticking at accounts and underlining bits of “projections” with coloured markers. The man in the next seat to mine was from the same mould but considerably less dedicated. Edwin Woosnam - “a Welsh name although I’ve never been there: can you believe it?” - an overweight fellow with thick eyebrows, thin lips and the sort of nose they create from putty for amateur productions of Julius Caesar. My desire to catch up on lost sleep was frustrated by his friendliness.
He was, he told me, the senior partner of a “development company” in Glasgow. His firm was building eight 600-room hotels in towns around the world and he told me all about it.
“Outdoor pool, that’s important. The hotel owners need a picture on the brochure that makes it look like the weather is good enough for swimming all year round.” Throaty chuckle and a quick sip of champagne. “Penthouses at the top, leisure centres in the basement and en-suite bathrooms throughout. Find a big cheap site - I mean really big - and after the hotel is up, shops and apartment blocks will follow. The neighbourhood is upgraded. You can’t go wrong on an investment like that. It’s like money in the bank. As long as the local labour is cheap, it doesn’t matter where you site the hotel, half these idiot tourists don’t even know which country they’re in.” But otherwise Mr. Woosnam. proved a congenial companion, with an endless supply of stories. “ . . . You can’t tell the Greeks anything. I showed this foreman - Popopopolis, or something, you know what those names are like - I showed him the schedule, and told him the eighth floor should be all complete by now. And he got angry. It was complete, he shouted. He shook his fist and waved his arms and went rushing along the girders, jumped through a doorway and fell all the way into the basement. Eight storeys! Killed of course. We had terrible trouble getting a new foreman at that time of year. Another month and it wouldn’t have mattered so much.” He took a drink.
“Ha ha ha. Some people just won’t listen. Perhaps you find that in your business too,” said Woosnam, but before I could agree he was off again. “I was with one of our site surveyors in Bombay and he was laughing and making jokes about the way the Indians build their lashed-up wooden scaffolding. I told him that he’d be laughing on the other side of his face when he put up steel scaffolding and the heat of the sun twisted it into a corkscrew and his project collapsed. Bloody architects! They come straight from college, and they know it all. That’s the trouble nowadays. I’ll give you another example . . .”And so it went on. He was good entertainment but his affability precluded all chance of slumber.
“Travel much?” he said as I began to doze.
“No,” I said.
“I travel all the time. Flying across the Atlantic is exciting for you of course, but it’s just a bore for me.’ He looked at me to see my reaction.
“Yes,” I said and tried to look excited.
“And what line are you in? No, don’t tell me. I’m good at guessing what people do for a living. Insurance?” “Chemicals.” I usually say that because it’s so vague and also because I have a prepared line of chat about pharmaceuticals should my bluff be called.
“All right,” he said, reluctant to admit to error. “Not a salesman though. You haven’t got the pushy temperament you need for the Sales side.”
“No, not Sales,” I agreed.
“Keep an eye on my briefcase while I go to the toilet will you? Once they start the meal service everyone will jump up and want to go. It’s always like that.”
The toy meal came and went. The captain’s carefully modulated voice recited the names of places that were hidden far beneath the clouds. The great aluminium tube droned on, its weary cargo of unwashed, red-eyed travellers numbed with alcohol and crippled with indigestion. Duty-free baubles were interminably hustled by stewardesses who went, eyes averted, past bawling babies and harassed mothers. Over the public address system came more names of equally invisible towns.
The shutters were closed against the daylight and the cabin darkened. Blurred ghosts of tiny unrecognizable actors postured on the pale screens while their strident voices assaulted the inner ear from plastic tubes. We raced after the sun and chased a never-ending day. Tortured by the poker-red glare of the sun, dazzled by the white clouds, one by one the heads of the passengers lolled and bent as they succumbed to their misery, and sought escape in fitful sleep. “This is your captain speaking.
We’d arrived in Los Angeles: now came the worst part, the line-up at US Customs and Immigration. It took well over an hour standing in line, disconsolately kicking my baggage forward a few inches at a time. But finally I was grudgingly admitted to America.
“Hi there! Mr. Samson? Did you have a nice flight?” He was chewing gum, a suntanned man about thirty years old with patient eyes, stretch pants, a half-eaten hamburger and a half-read paperback edition of War and Peace: everything necessary for meeting someone at LAX. We walked through the crowded concourse and into the melee of cabs and cars and buses that served this vast and trainless town.
“Buddy Breukink,’ the man introduced himself He flicked a
finger at the dented, unpainted metal case that I’d wrenched
from the carousel. “Is this all your baggage?” If everyone kept
saying that to me I was going to start feeling socially disadvantaged.
“That’s right,” I said. He took my bag and the corrugated case. I didn’t know whether I should politely wrest it from him. There was no way to discover if he was just a driver, sent to collect me, or a senior executive who was going to pick up the bills and give me my orders. The US of A is like that. He marched off and I followed him. He hadn’t been through the formalities but I didn’t press it. He didn’t look the type who would regularly read and update the Notes and Amendments. “Hungry? We have more than a hour’s ride.” He had a sly gap-toothed smile, as if he knew something that the rest of the world didn’t know. It wasn’t something to be taken personally. “I’ll survive,’ I promised. My blood-sugar wasn’t so low that I wanted an airport hamburger.