A Pocketful of Rye (20 page)

‘And now, would you like coffee?' Lotte had assumed full charge of the party. ‘No. Then if I may have your passports and boarding cards I will show you specially to the plane.'

At least she was taking them off my hands.

‘You see,' she went on, ‘since I was here to welcome your arrival I think it is only polite to send you away.'

They had begun to move towards passport control when I felt the tug on my arm. I bent down, he was pulling hard.

‘I want you to take me to the wash room.'

It shook me. At the last gasp, was he going to have another haemorrhage?

‘Come quickly then.'

I took him down the short flight of stairs beyond the coffee bar into the Men's Room.

‘In there.'

He still had my arm and he pulled me into one of the cabinets with him and shut the door. He was trembling all over.

‘Hurry,' I said. ‘ Get your shorts down.'

‘I don't need to go, Laurence. But I had to tell you. I couldn't bear to leave you and perhaps never see you again and have you feel that I didn't like you enough to tell you my secret.'

In sheer surprise I sat down on the pedestal. He came close to me, his quick breath on my cheek.

‘This is exactly how it happened with my father. For weeks, as the big building was being finished, he became very upset. He always took some whisky but now he drank much more, and at home he would get angry, even shouting, that by rights the building and all the new development should have belonged to him.'

He took a quick sobbing breath.

‘On the Saturday afternoon when he took us up to show us, Mother didn't want to go. He'd had a lot to drink at dinner time. But we went. At the top he began again, about how it had all been lost. Then he shouted “I can't stand it, and I won't. I'll show them.” Mother saw what was coming and tried to hold him, but he broke away, that's how her dress was torn, and jumped. Oh, it was horrible to see him turning over in the air.'

Again that sharp, pained sob. Riveted, I could scarcely breathe myself.

‘Of course everyone thought he had slipped, at least at first. Canon Dingwall has always been our friend, we went to him at once, to ask if we should speak. He heard it all, and said the best thing was to be silent, not to make Father a suicide, which would be a big scandal in the church, but to give him what he called the benefit of the doubt. And for another reason too. There was no money left, absolutely nothing. But there was an insurance policy taken in his name by Grandfather Davigan for two thousand pounds, and meant for my education …' he faltered, ‘and with a suicide it would have been no good at all.'

A prohibitive suicide clause in the insurance policy and Davigan, absolutely blameless, had taken all that suspicion and blame to get the money for Daniel's education. He would never need it now. How did I feel? It is worth a guess.

He was crying now as he put out his hand. I took it and held it. I think he wanted to kiss me but that I couldn't bear. I would have felt like Judas in reverse. Suddenly from the grille in the ceiling the loud-speaker of the public address system screamed at us:

‘All passengers for Swissair Flight 419 to London will now leave by Gate 8.'

‘Hurry,' I said.

He was still holding on to me as I rushed him upstairs. Lotte had left his passport at the Control. I picked it up, hurried him down, and through the lower lounge. They were waiting for us at Gate 8.

‘You want to miss the flight?' Lotte said.

I shook hands with Higgins and Jamieson, then I had to face up to Davigan. Now that expression had become terribly thin, I was afraid she couldn't hold it. Yet she did; the effort, though, was wearing her out, yes, it was killing her. God, she did look old, pale, drawn and sick. We shook hands, just for the look of it. She had it all ready for me.

‘Thank you for all you've done for Daniel, Dr Carroll.' She fumbled in her Swissair overnight bag. ‘It's been quite an experience knowing you. As we'll not be meeting again I'll give you this. I've been keeping it for you for quite a long time.' She handed me a brown-paper-wrapped package. ‘ That morning you left me to go to your ship, you left this in my room as well.'

I accepted it, stupidly, having no idea what it might be. Then they went through the Gate. I stood there watching them go.

‘Wait for me,' Lotte called over her shoulder.

I sat down in the lounge and looked at the parcel. What was it? A time bomb? It didn't tick. I was not ticking too well myself. Anyway, what did I care? I opened it. Anticlimax. It was a book, the book Dingwall had pressed on me the day of Frank's ordination. I had walked off without it early that morning when I took off for the boat. I put it in my pocket, Lotte was coming back through the Gate.

‘Now, Laurence, what have you to say for yourself? You've been up to some tricks. I want big explanations before we come together again.'

‘I've nothing to explain …'

‘That poor woman is breaking her heart to leave you. The moment she was in the plane the tears began. And terrible tears …'

‘Not for me. The little boy is ill.'

‘Still?'

‘Yes.'

‘There is more. I think you sleep with her.'

‘I told you, that's ancient history. You think I sleep with anybody. And what about you?'

‘Could you blame me if I do? When you leave me so long. But I do not. That is the difference between us. Well, never mind. I still like you much and now we are together for a nice cosy time. I must be on duty till six o'clock – a charter coming in from Helsingfors. But here, take the key of the flat, go there and wait for me.'

I took the key.

‘Mix the cocktails for six-thirty.' She gave me that wide seductive smile.

When she had gone I had a sudden feverish longing to go out on the open terrace to watch the plane take off, to see the last of them, but I shoved it down to that strange pain under my ribs and stifled it, swung round, made fot the exit, cadged a lift from one of the Swissair bus drivers, and in twenty minutes was set down at Lotte's flat.

For five minutes I hesitated, although I cannot explain why, walking up and down outside the entrance, then I let myself in and switched on the lights. It was at least a relief to be off the cold damp street with the dirty banked snow on either side. The apartment was as neat, warm, and hygienic as ever. She had said to mix cocktails at six-thirty. I needed one now. I went to the trolley where a handful of left-over ice cubes were still stuck together in the Thermos container, broke them up and put the gin and vermouth in. If I try to describe my state of mind you may not believe me for now that my troubles were over and I was free as air, I was sunk in the worst depression that had ever blighted me. The way I had built up the case against Davigan, totally misjudged her, and packed her off like a crate of damaged goods, would be hard to live down. For the first time in many a year I felt compunction, made worse by the thought that here, straight away, I had come up to go to bed with that honey-eyed Swedish troll. No, no, that was pushing remorse too far. Pull yourself together, Carroll, you need relaxation, a bit of fun, a taste of good living. No point in worrying over what has now slid away into past history. You are well out of a particularly nasty situation. And what could you do? You want to charter one of Lotte's jets and overtake them in mid-air, to say, please, I'm sorry, let's kiss and be friends? Forget it.

As I sat down and sipped my drink, I felt the bulge in my side pocket. Dingwall's book: Collected Poems of Francis Thompson. I vaguely remembered it: a nice volume, in a green leather binding, the pages slightly fogged from age, the typical prize they dish out to seminarians. I glanced at my watch. Almost an hour to wait and, in an effort to ease my mind, I looked for the poem Machiavelli had marked for me. That is how I thought of him now, beating the suicide class, because the end justified the means. I found it with the help of the holy picture he used as a bookmark – the Simone Martini favourite of my early years, he must have chosen it specially – and the title, which I had forgotten, was:
The Hound of Heaven.

I took a quick look at the first few lines.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
and shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed

after.

I stopped abruptly as it all came back to me: the empty church after Frank's ordination where I sat and read the poem through. The incident had passed completely from my mind and now I took up the book and began to read again more slowly. The more I went into it, the more I tried to stop. This was not my line in literature and not, especially, at the present time. If I had been low before, now I was sinking deeper. But I had to go on, and when I had finished it I sat there, absolutely still, stricken and bound by its beauty and mystery.

Now it was clear to me, the genesis of that phobia, my intermittent torment, that mysterious unremitting pursuit from which there was no escape. In the empty church the day of the ordination, in a highly receptive state, I had run through the poem simply to kill time, barely conscious of its meaning, and without obvious effect. My mind was filled with other problems but my subconscious had seized it, buried deeply the theme of the sinner endlessly pursued through the labyrinthine ways of life by the Man. The symbol of the Hound had stuck too, to become the signal of release. Yes, I could rationalize it all. Somehow, that did not help. It did not seem fully to be the answer, since I, too, now felt myself
defenceless utterly, grimed with smears, standing amid the dust of years, my mangled youth dead beneath the heap.

I had left my drink half finished. Mixed hurriedly, it had done nothing for me. You can never improve a bad cocktail by adding gin. I needed another, fresh and strong. I got up slowly, passed through the bedroom to the bathroom and emptied the glass. As I came back, wholly absorbed, still feeling myself
of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot
, my eye caught the fly end of necktie showing over the edge of a shut drawer in Lotte's neat little Swedish chest. Absently, I fancied it must be mine. One of the pair I had bought not so long ago at Grieder's. I pulled the drawer.

It was not my tie. Despite my aspirations towards the higher life, I cannot afford Countess Mara ties and both ties now visible were thus handsomely marked with the distinctive coronet and the initials C.M. Also in the drawer were two superfine silk shirts, with fresh laundry bows, very chic and hand made, with the embroidered monogram C. deV. and the neat little tab back of the collar:
Brioni. Roma.
I stood examining these de luxe accessories like a kleptomaniac in a department store. Maybe that ‘de' intrigued me. Of course I had occasionally been a trifle suspicious of Lotte, yet at the same time always flattered myself I was the only current bed-fellow. I closed the drawer and took a step towards the built-in wardrobe. It was full of her lovely clothes, possibly, I now reflected, from C.deV., and also her lovely smell. However, one hanger at the end provided a svelte if jarring note: a grey pinstripe suit of the finest quality. Vulgar curiosity made me hurt myself more. I looked at the tab in the inside pocket:
D. Caraceni. Via Boncompagni, 21. Roma:
the best tailor in Italy, probably in Europe. C.deV. must be a prince, or some dirty profiteer. I had always promised myself that if ever I had real money and went to Rome to call on the Pope I would have Caraceni make a suit. Now I saw the exact suit. Alas, it was not mine.

I pushed the door to and went back to the living-room. Now I made myself a real hard drink, merely breathing the martini across the gin, and put it straight away down the hatch. When I had mixed another of the same I took it with me and sat down. I had taken no more than a sip when I heard the turn of a key in the Yale lock. How many keys has she, I asked myself, as Lotte breezed in?

‘Well, that is pretty.' She stopped short, displeased. ‘ The guest is drinking before the hostess arrives.'

‘You're not a hostess now. You're a V.I.P. receptionist.'

‘Don't be so smart or I shall be more cross with you. Then you will be less easily forgiven.'

‘Forgiven for what?'

‘You will hear.' She came forward, threw her shoulder bag and uniform kepi on the couch, and sat down showing, as usual, that beautiful extent of beautiful leg. But tonight it did not bother me. ‘Now give me a quick one before I bathe and change.'

I poured her the slightly watery remains in the glass mixer.

‘Yes.' She sipped and made a face. ‘I must know about your woman Davigan. Although I cannot believe it, you were sleeping with her.'

‘Why can't you believe it?' I didn't want to know, only to irritate her.

‘Because, although it is clear she is badly in love with you, she is so unattractive. Such a little bag of woman.'

‘She's not in love with anyone. And she's not a bag.'

‘You are wrong. She is gone upon you. As for looks, she is quite worn down. Don't you notice these lines under the eyes?'

‘That poor woman has had a rough life.' Illogically, but for some unaccountable reason, I was beginning to get angry at this denigration of Davigan. ‘Especially lately. Yet it may interest you to know that at your age she was a damn sight better fitted out than you are.'

‘Thank you for the compliment, my Scottish gentleman.' Her face and neck reddened deeply. That's the worst of these total blondes, when they flush they look coarse, like the butcher's daughter with the peroxide hair. ‘But let us keep to the point. Did you let me down with that woman?'