Authors: David Roberts
‘But you’re not friends?’
‘As I said, we get on but he’s one of those arty types. Not me at all.’
‘What’s your idea of a perfect day?’
Younger’s eyes brightened. ‘Cricket in the summer but, just recently, I’ve been going down to Brooklands most Saturdays.’
‘You race cars?’
‘I drive a bit but it’s the aeroclub there I’m interested in. I’m learning to fly so that, when the war breaks out, I can join the RAF – no questions asked. I think it’s the nearest I get to being happy when I’m flying. The glorious thing about it is that one feels a perfectly free man and one’s own master as soon as one is up in the air.’
‘I know what you mean. I did a bit of flying in Africa.’
‘Did you really, sir?’ The boy looked at him with eager eyes.
‘Isn’t that expensive – learning to fly?’
‘Yes, but the RAF helps a bit. They seem to have woken up to the idea that they are going to need chaps like me when the balloon goes up.’
The junior secretary, Miss Williams, was the antithesis of Miss Hawkins. She wore as much make-up as she dared and her little blue dress was not designed to hide her charms. She was twenty and it was borne in on Edward that there must be many girls like her for whom the war might prove a welcome adventure. He wondered how she had got the job in Lyall’s department.
‘You wanted to see me, my lord?’
Edward groaned inwardly. It was obvious she intended to flirt with him so he must be as dull as possible.
‘Yes, thank you, Miss Williams. I’m just trying to discover if anyone in the department noticed anything which might explain Mr Westmacott’s absence.’
Jane looked at her inquisitor regretfully. ‘I can’t think of anything, my lord.’
‘You share an office with Miss Hawkins, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Or rather – perhaps you recall, my lord, – my office is separated from Miss Hawkins’s by a screen.’
‘Yes, I remember. Forgive me, Miss Williams, if I sound impertinent but it strikes me that you must find life in the department quite dull. Why did you apply for this particular post?’
‘I’m good at my job,’ she said defensively.
‘I’m sure you are but don’t you find it a bit boring here? There are no other young people – except Mr Younger, of course.’
‘He’s a dear,’ the girl said, going pink, ‘but I’m not his girlfriend or anything if that’s what you’re suggesting. He says he doesn’t have time for girls – what with there being a war coming. Do you think there will be a war, my lord?’
‘I hope not,’ he prevaricated. ‘So you don’t find it dull here? What about Mr McCloud?’
‘What about him?’ she said, thrusting out her chin.
‘He doesn’t attract you? I promise anything you say to me won’t be repeated.’
‘No, he doesn’t. To be honest, I tell them – both the boys – that I’ve got a boyfriend already . . . in the RAF.’
‘But you don’t?’
‘No, but I might have one day.’ She sounded so arch Edward wanted to spank her but then he thought, who was he to feel superior? A little fantasy makes the days go by that much quicker and it gave her status, too. No one wants
not
to be wanted.
‘So you like the job?’ he persisted.
‘It’s a job and it’s quite well paid . . . and people are impressed when I say I work in the Foreign Office.’
‘I’m sure they are and quite right too.’
She smiled and Edward thought that, behind the make-up, the bobbed hair and the chatter, lurked a rather sweet girl and he hoped she would find the man to make her happy.
‘So you like the people here?’
‘They’re all right. The truth is Mr Lyall’s a friend of my father’s. I did a secretarial course and my father didn’t want me to go into anything . . . anything common, so he wrote to Mr Lyall and it just happened they were looking for a secretary, so here I am,’ she ended brightly.
‘And do you live at home – with your parents?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is that?’
‘Camberwell, my lord.’
‘Now, tell me about Mr Westmacott. As you know, we’re very worried about him. Is there anything you can think of which might help us find him?’
‘No,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I don’t have much to do with him. Miss Hawkins does his typing and Mr Lyall’s of course. I work for Mr Younger and Mr McCloud.’
‘I understand but did you happen to notice if Mr Westmacott looked worried or upset in the days before he disappeared?’
‘No, not really,’ she said slowly. ‘He looked the same as always but, as I say, I have very little to do with him. He hardly knows my name,’ she added ruefully.
Edward tried another tack. ‘Would you have noticed if any files had gone missing?’
‘I wouldn’t. Filing isn’t my responsibility. Miss Hawkins keeps a record of any file taken out of the office. I don’t have much to do with them myself unless . . . unless Mr Younger or Mr McCloud asks me to get one for them or sort some file out.’
‘Yes, of course. So, no files are ever left lying about?’ Miss Williams looked puzzled. ‘I mean, could anyone go into Miss Hawkins’s office – say when she was out of the room – and take a file from her desk without being seen by you or anyone else?’
She thought for a moment and then said slowly, ‘It is possible. I can’t see the whole of her office from where I sit. No one could take anything out of the filing cabinets – I would hear them being opened. They make quite a noise. But off Miss Hawkins’s desk . . . perhaps. But why should anyone . . . ?’
‘What happens to returned files? Are they put straight back in the cabinets?’
‘Not if Miss Hawkins is busy. They sit in the in-tray until she has time to put them away.’
‘You don’t put them away for her?’
‘No, I’m not allowed.’
‘Well, you have been most helpful.’
Jane looked troubled. ‘You don’t think anything bad has happened to Mr Westmacott do you, sir?’
‘I very much hope not, Miss Williams. I very much hope not.’
It was not until he reached Brooks’s, his club in St James’s Street, that Edward remembered why the photograph of Lyall’s son had rung a bell with him. He had seen the young man arm-in-arm with Guy Baron in Gerda’s photograph of Republican soldiers which included David Griffiths-Jones. He was almost certain of it. As is so often the case, a person in your mind suddenly materializes. Feeling he had earned a break, after a late lunch – potted shrimps, kidneys and bacon, washed down with a passable claret – he had called on Mr Berry to ask his advice on laying down a burgundy of which he had heard good things. Then, feeling much better, he had gone into Sonerscheins and, on a whim, bought an Etruscan two-handled vase the colour of the many suns which had baked it. It was hideously expensive but Edward had found himself unable to resist adding it to his small collection of ancient art. As he was leaving with his new treasure, he literally bumped into Gerda.
He apologized and raised his hat with one hand while clasping the vase tightly with the other. She was just about to move on, not appearing to have recognized him, when he said, ‘Miss Meyer, it’s me . . .’
Gerda raised her eyes and a pink flush came into her cheeks. ‘Lord Edward, I’m so sorry. I was thinking of . . .’
‘André?’
‘No, not André. I was thinking of . . . something else. How is your eye? Did you put a steak on it?’
‘I did, thank you, and the swelling has all but gone, don’t you think?’
She looked at him critically. ‘Yes, but it stills spoils the image.’
‘The image?’
‘You know, “the man-about-town”. What’s the word? The
flâneur.’
‘That’s how you see me?’ He was hurt.
‘No, that’s how you
try
to appear but it’s not you at all.’
Edward was wise enough to take this as a compliment. She changed the subject. ‘What have you been buying?’
‘Oh, this? It’s a vase – an amphora – very old and very beautiful. I say, why not come back to Albany with me and I’ll show you. It’s much more fun, when you’ve bought yourself a present, opening the parcel with someone else. Otherwise it’s a bit like drinking on your own – a vice more than a pleasure.’ Suddenly realizing he was being pretentious or at least over-elaborate, he changed tack. ‘Anyway, you look as though you could do with a cup of tea.’ He saw a look of doubt in her face and added quickly, ‘But, of course, you must be very busy.’
‘Where’s Albany? Not New York, I presume.’
‘No, it’s where I have rooms, round the corner in Piccadilly, don’t y’know.’ He was stuttering now and aware he was sounding rather an ass. ‘I expect you think I’m the most awful idiot boring you with all those stories of Africa at that awful dinner after the exhibition. I must have had too much wine. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have stayed.’
‘Was the exhibition awful as well?’
‘It was rather – not the pictures but the people. The Comrades en masse always give me the heebie-jeebies, but I did like your photographs.’
‘André’s, you mean?’
‘No, yours.’
Gerda, pleased, relented. ‘I don’t think you are nearly the ass you would like people to believe. You know, André was beastly to me when we got home after the party. He said I had made a spectacle of myself and . . .’
‘And befriended a useless appendage of Verity’s who could not appreciate his art.’
‘Something like that,’ she conceded, grinning. ‘I’ve just finished at the gallery and, yes, I would like a cup of tea. Thank you.’
They made an odd couple as they walked into Piccadilly: Edward, tall, hawk-faced, clutching his parcel, covering the ground with long strides, Gerda half-running after him, her red hair escaping from under a small triangular-shaped hat.
‘Could we walk a little slower?’ she begged him. ‘I’m pooped.’
‘I’m so sorry!’ he said, slowing down. ‘Verity always complains about the speed I travel but she’s smaller than you.’
‘How did you meet Verity?’
‘In a car crash. In fact, I sometimes think our relationship, if that is what it is, is a sequence of car crashes. Sorry! I’m talking nonsense again. I know what you’re going to say – we make an odd couple. She’s a red-hot Communist and I’m a . . . well, she calls me a superannuated member of a class consigned to the dustbin of history. Quite accurate, don’t you think?’
Gerda laughed. ‘But you are a . . . couple . . . like André and me?’
‘How do you mean? Oh, I see. Well, that’s a rather difficult question to answer. I love her and I think she . . . cares about me but she’s a war correspondent – and a very good one, as you know – so she doesn’t have time for marriage or any of that kind of thing – bourgeois and redundant she calls it. And then, of course, it’s not very pleasant for her – being a Communist – to have to spend time explaining me away to the Comrades.’
Gerda laughed again. ‘I don’t know Verity as well as you do but she has a reputation for liking to have her cake while eating it. Isn’t that the expression? But I’m sounding catty.’
‘No, but that’s what we all like, isn’t it? But most of us can’t quite manage it. You’re American – aren’t you?’
‘I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, but I have lived all over since I ran away from home when I was fifteen – mostly in Paris and Berlin until it got unbearable, and now England.’
‘And Spain?’
‘Yes, Bandi – André, I mean – we go there to take photographs but you can’t stay there all the time. It’s . . .’
‘It’s bad, I know. Verity’s told me some of it. She was at the siege of Toledo. Of course! You were there too. You told me.’
‘Yes, Bandi and I. There were a lot of press there who had been invited to see the good guys capture the Alcázar but, as you know, it didn’t work out that way. Didn’t Verity tell us you and she had been in Spain at the outbreak of war?’
Edward was absurdly pleased to discover Verity sometimes talked about him to her friends. ‘Yes, but after a few weeks I came home. I decided it wasn’t my war after all.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it’s very much Verity’s war. It is not just any old war. It means something special to her. She can literally stand up and fight for what she believes in. Sorry, I’m not being very clear. Look, for you and Verity the rights and wrongs are quite obvious. You are fighting the “good fight” – good against evil – but I think it’s more complicated than that. I had a brush with the SIM – the secret police – when I was in Spain and I realized Stalin and his minions are about as interested in seeing a free Republican Spain as . . . as Hitler is. Don’t get me wrong, I share the Party’s hatred for Franco and his Nazi friends but, if the Communists are the cure, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the disease. I don’t expect you to agree with me – Verity doesn’t – but I find the Communist tyranny almost as frightening as the Nazi tyranny.’ Gerda looked shocked and he saw that he had gone too far. ‘No, of course I don’t mean that. We are all going to have to fight the Nazis before we start fighting among ourselves.’
‘But to beat Hitler there is no room for amateurism. Only Stalin can do it. The Western democracies are finished and my country won’t intervene in Europe again. Stalin is the only hope.’
They had arrived at Albany and, when they were in the apartment, they tacitly decided to change the subject.
‘I just love these rooms,’ Gerda enthused. ‘Oh, now show me your vase.’
Gently, Edward unwrapped it and set it on a side table where it glowed. They stood back and admired it. ‘It’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed.
‘It is, isn’t it? To possess something so old and so fragile gives me hope that perhaps what we value can survive despite everything.’
Fenton came in and served them tea and cucumber sandwiches. Gerda started giggling as soon as Fenton had closed the door behind him.
‘Forgive me, but this is all so
Importance of Being Earnest.
I remember cucumber sandwiches and . . .’
‘Yes, Jack lived in Albany. But I’m not Oscar Wilde.’
‘No, I didn’t think you were,’ she said, putting her hand on his knee.
‘Gerda,’ he said, getting up hurriedly and spilling some tea, ‘you . . . shouldn’t do that.’
‘Why? Because of Verity? I thought that was why you brought me back here.’
‘Yes . . . no. I’d feel so . . . so beastly if we . . . I mean, I think you are . . . wonderful but afterwards . . .’