The Trinity (40 page)

Crowley walks out, and though he doesn’t know Aberdeen, he makes the car hug the sea. He drives around until he sees a roundabout, which points him to Clarence Street.

He sees them, sure enough, these girls of the night. They are not as garish as he expects, not as garish as they are portrayed in American television programs and movies, nor are they as destitute as the ones who have crossed his path, pockmarked addicts seeking confession, which he always obliged, imposing the stiffest penance he could muster.

No. The half-dozen girls he sees as he drives slowly down this industrial road are indeed fuller-figured than he would imagine, and more modestly dressed. It’s the makeup and hair that gives them away, the heaviness of the eye shadow, the dark scarlet of their cheeks, and their hair large upon their heads. As he drives the block several times, their attention becomes rapt and they follow his car with turns of their heads, their eyes sizing him up. The car is unfamiliar, and under the streetlamps, the figure he cuts behind the wheel is very much unlike a cop. He seems to be just another punter.

He stops. A girl approaches him, speaks to him in a thick brogue that he tunes his ears to understand. He tells her she wouldn’t be for him, but he wants her for the following evening, her and a friend. She tells him that would be expensive. He says that doesn’t matter.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Jane, and yours?”

“Alex. Can you get to Montrose? I’ll pay you extra for the cab fare.”

“Sure.”

He scribbles the name of the George Hotel on a piece of paper that he retrieves from the floor of his car. The George Hotel is an elegant looking place that he has poked into once or twice. It has a nice bar and restaurant downstairs with hotel rooms upstairs. He will let two for tomorrow evening. He also gives her two fifty-pound notes, promising the balance tomorrow upon the conclusion of her duties.

“You’re not some sort of pervert, are you?”

“No—not the kind you need to worry about.” He tells her the situation; she is only needed to terminate someone’s virginity.

“That’s it?” she asks. “I really don’t like virgins. It’s so awkward and painful, and they always need directions.” She rolls her eyes, which are barely visible underneath the bangs of her dark brown hair.

“That’s it,” he says, disinterested in her commentary on virginity. “Be at the George around eight o’clock tomorrow night. Who’s your friend going to be?”

“I dunno. Margo, maybe, but she’s not here. See you tomorrow?”

“You will see me tomorrow, but just for a minute. I have no interest to stay and watch.”

With that, he drives away, back to his cottage, back to his wine and records.

Friday morning comes and Crowley discusses the use of the chapel for Easter services with Chaplain Lambert. That is, Lambert tells him his needs for the Protestant services and Crowley works around him. Crowley barely speaks more than a word in reply to Lambert’s questions. His mind is elsewhere. There are just two weeks until the deadline arrives. The Jews must leave Scotland or the sky will be hazy from the smoke of Jewish flesh and the streets will be red from Jewish blood.

Lambert watches Crowley’s face change, smile and scowl, smile and scowl, entirely out of context with their conversation.

“Lieutenant, is there something I’m saying that you find amusing?”

Crowley’s mind returns to the chapel. “No, sir. I was just recalling past Easters. There are a lot of memories, always a wonderful time for the Church.” He is lying. He hates Easter, as he hates Christmas. In his youthful, zealous days, he prayed constantly throughout the Lenten season. Not only would he deny himself meat; he also abstained from sugar, caffeine, and watching television.

They return to their respective offices after the chapel schedule is set. Lambert’s desk is covered in paper, his desktop calendar in appointments and notes.

Crowley’s desk is nearly bare, save a cup full of pens and pencils and a single yellow legal pad with unblemished pages.

Quietly, Crowley calls Hinckley in the supply depot and instructs him and Chris to take a cab to Montrose this evening, to the George Hotel, and to be there before 8 p.m. He tells them to wear nice clothing. Their years of waiting are over.

“Waiting for what?” Brad asks.

“You’ll see. Remember—Montrose, the George Hotel, before eight.”

Brad finds Chris in their room when he gets off work. Chris is sitting on his bed, reading the
Stars and Stripes
and listening to his radio. The sound of news always causes some anxiety, in case there is talk about the attacks on the synagogues or the murder of the cab driver.

Brad tells Chris about Father Crowley’s phone call and tells him to be ready. Chris is concerned that there may be another task for them to do, but Brads tells him no, they’re laying low until the deadline.

They shower and get dressed in silence and hang out in the room for an hour without really talking. Chris is thinking about what he’s been waiting for years for. Only one thing comes to mind: a girlfriend.

“No, that can’t be it,” he thinks to himself, and as the hands of his watch arrive at seven, he and Brad walk across the base to the gate. They find a row of taxis in Friday night formation.

They are deposited at the George Hotel, as elegant an establishment as Chris has ever been to in his life. Most pubs he’s been to have been cloaked in semi-darkness, but the bar area of the hotel is well lit in soft light, exposing clean upholstered booths and a wood bar with brass trim.

They find Father Crowley alone at the bar, drinking a glass of red wine with an uncorked bottle at his elbow. He is wearing black slacks that Chris or Brad have never seen, a black turtleneck, and his black leather coat, which he leaves on to hide his pear-shaped body and his protruding stomach.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, sit down. I suggest you start drinking right away. You will need to be as relaxed as possible within a few hours. I would hope.”

“What’s going on, Father?” Chris asks, clearing his throat.

“You shall see, you shall see.” He pats Chris’s shoulder and allows his hand to linger. Brad and Chris take barstools on either side of the priest. They receive their pints and Brad asks Chris for a cigarette. Chris takes an unopened pack and throws it on top of the bar. Brad helps himself without saying thank you.

Father Crowley removes two keys from his coat pocket, each with a keychain indicating a room number. Crowley points upstairs and hands Chris and Brad each a key.

“For later. For the end of an era in your lives.”

They drink in silence. Chris starts to feel the alcohol. Again, he gets that peaceful and warm feeling, drinking with friends across the world from home. At this moment, he is at peace, the threats to the Jews far from his mind.

They remain at the bar until quarter past eight. Crowley’s bottle is empty and he doesn’t replenish it. He checks his watch constantly, and his face grows tense.

Then suddenly as he checks the front door, his face softens and his forehead smoothes.

Two girls walk in. One is Jane, whom he met in Aberdeen, and the other, similar in appearance except for hair that is frosted blonde, is Margo.

“Hello, hello.” Crowley offers the two girls stools, Jane next to Chris and Margo next to Brad. He chooses to stand in the center. “Drink?” he asks, tilting his empty hand toward his mouth.

“Vodka and fresh orange,” both girls say, nearly in unison. The bartender shuffles off, eyebrows raised. Not the usual Friday night crowd assembled in front of him.

The bar is nearly two-thirds full, containing mostly members of the Montrose elite. The Americans don’t belong, and the girls look entirely out of place. The fact that they are not from Montrose is obvious to all the patrons.

With a wave of his head, Crowley walks outside, indicating that Jane should follow. He shakes hands with Chris and Brad. “Do what comes natural and do what feels good. That is what life is all about.” Just a few years ago, he never would have dreamed of uttering those words.

Brad has a goofy and awkward and sporting grin, as if he is just understanding what is supposed to happen.

Chris looks pale and terrified. He
is
terrified. He wants his virginity to end, but not in this fashion, not at what seems like gunpoint.

Crowley and Jane go outside and walk down the cement steps, clutching onto the ornamental stair rail. He hands her another two hundred pounds. “If I hear all goes well, I will find you and give you more. I will be in Aberdeen during the week.”

She takes the money without comment. She snatches it from his hand and places it in her purse. Crowley watches her walk up the stairs and back into the George Hotel. He can’t take his eyes off her large, jiggling buttocks, stretching the skin-tight black pants that end just above her ankles. He finds her repulsive. He scratches his head as he has all his life about the base attraction men feel for women. He hops in his car and drives to a pub that stands alone on the road between Montrose and Lutherkirk, where he will sit ignored by all as he watches two young men compete in snooker, a game he can’t comprehend. He will return to his cottage of near perpetual solitude and get lost in his current recurring daydream, a fantasy where he is lauded in Valhalla as the Valkyries carry him on their elegant wings after plucking him from the field of battle that he imagines to be somewhere outside of London, as his conquest for Britain comes to a close. Odin welcomes him with open arms, his solitary eye twinkling through the shadow of the brim of his hat.

Jane returns to the bar, where she finds Margo and Brad and Chris sitting in silence. And that’s how the remainder of the hour will go, save casual small talk initiated by the girls. They ask the two where they are from and how big America must be and aren’t they homesick?

Chris does try—after his tongue is set loose by a few pints—to make conversation. He asks Jane her age, as he can’t tell behind her makeup, which makes her look like something out of a science fiction movie.

“Nineteen,” she says. Chris thinks at least they have that in common.

“Why do you do what you do?” he asks.

She shrugs her shoulders. “Why do you do what you do?”

Brad, too, after the passage of time and alcohol, becomes verbally freer, but in an obnoxious sort of way. “Do you really fuck for a living?” he asks Margo, who sits as far from him as possible. She nods. “And Father paid you to do me?” She nods again.

“Is he your father?” she asks. She receives no answer.

“See, Chris? I told you he was all right!” Brad shouts over Margo’s head. Chris nods, embarrassed.

There is more drinking and small talk and a few more crass remarks from Brad, but somehow he manages to swing the conversation towards Nebraska football, and he tells Margo, who understands nothing of it, the long and successful tradition of Cornhusker football.

“I see me playing ball someday,” he says to Margo, meaning to impress. “After I go to school when I get out of the Navy, I can walk right on the team.”

“That’s grand,” she says. She asks Brad for a cigarette, who in turn gets two from Chris.

“Well, then,” says Jane, staring at the clock above the bar. Although Crowley has retained her for the night, she knows her presence won’t be necessary long after the ritual is performed. “Are you boys ready for bed?”

“Hell, yes!” Brad slaps the bar.

The bartender presents them with their tab.

“I thought Father took care of it,” Brad says to Chris. “I ain’t got no money. Can I pay you back in the room?” Chris nods, wondering where Brad’s money goes.

They walk up the red-carpeted stairs to the lone hallway that contains all the rooms of the George Hotel. Their rooms are adjoining. Sheepishly, Chris unlocks his door. Brad opens his in a rush.