Any Human Heart (57 page)

I paid the bill and stood up to leave.

‘Nice to have met you,’ I said.

‘Oh no,’ Petra said, smiling. ‘We come to Zurich with you, Mountstuart.’

Conversation with John Vivian.

‘They’re what?’

‘Coming with me.’

‘Why, for fuck’s sake?’

‘I don’t know. And they’ve got guns. I want out of this, Vivian.’

‘They haven’t got guns — they’re winding you up.’

‘This isn’t anything illegal, is it?’

‘You’re a 75-year-old man on a European holiday.’

‘Seventy-one.’

‘What?’

‘A 71-year-old man.’

Silence. Then, ‘Go to Zurich with them and when you make contact there—’

‘Who with? With whom?’

‘Someone will approach you. “Mogadishu” is the password. Do your business and dump the girls. And don’t worry about this guns nonsense. This isn’t dangerous.’

‘I’m running out of money. These girls say they’re broke.’

‘I’ll wire you another hundred at Zurich American Express. Use your credit card.’

‘I haven’t got a credit card.’

‘Then economize.’

Petra, Ingeborg and I travelled very uncomfortably by train — overnight, third class, smoking compartment — from Hamburg to Stuttgart, changed and then journeyed on to Zurich, during which time I managed perhaps two hours of uninterrupted sleep and inhaled the smoke of perhaps two hundred cigarettes. I insisted that we split up for customs and immigration checks — my old NID training awakening in me, I noted with quiet pride. We found the American Express office and I collected another $100, which I changed into a laughably small amount of Swiss francs. Then we checked into the Hotel Horizont — modern, over-used, anonymous — and were provided with a room containing a double bed and a kind of unfolding metal lounger with a rubber mattress: this was for me. No comment was passed by the hotel staff on the sleeping arrangements: clearly quite demure by the Horizont’s standards. The girls immediately went to sleep, curled under the duvet, removing only their shoes and coats — like escapees on the run, the thought came to me. Somehow all my sexual fantasies had dwindled away — now I felt like a put-upon uncle with a couple of disaffected, bolshie nieces.

I telephoned John Vivian at 6.00.

‘I need more money.’

‘I sent you a hundred yesterday, for Christ’s sake.’

‘This is Switzerland and now we are three.’

‘All right, I’ll send more. Have a ball, mate.’

‘And I’ve got to get back, remember.’

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘And by the way, I resign.’

‘What from.’

‘From the Socialist Patients’ Kollective. From Working Circle — Direct Action and Working Circle — Communications. From the Napier Street Mob. Once I get back, that’s it. Finito. Kaput.’

‘You’re being over-dramatic, Mountstuart. We’ll talk when you’re home again. Take care.’

That evening I dragged the girls out of bed and we found a pizza-parlour on a square somewhere. The girls seemed both sullen and edgy, eating their pizzas without talking. When they finished they asked if they could have some money to buy some ‘hash’ — they said they wanted to get stoned. I said no, and they withdrew into their moody silence again. We wandered around, an odd and uncomfortable trio, looking in shop windows until Ingeborg saw a bar up a side street and suggested a drink. I thought this a better idea and so we ventured in. A cocktail list was proffered but the drinks were shockingly expensive so we settled for marginally less expensive beer. The girls bought cigarettes and I was offered one. I declined.

PETRA: Don’t you smoke, Mountstuart?
ME: No. I used to, but not any more — too expensive.
INGEBORG: Fuck — you’ve got to have some fun in your life, Mountstuart.
ME: I agree. I love fun. I’m having fun now.

The girls spoke to each other in German.

ME: What did you say?
PETRA: Ingeborg said maybe we shall shoot you and take your money.
INGEBORG: Ha-ha-ha. Don’t worry, Mountstuart, we like you.

Once we returned to the hotel the girls became annoyingly coy and insisted I wait in the corridor while they prepared themselves for bed. When they were ready they called me in.

I changed into my pyjamas in the bathroom and on emerging provoked squeals of laughter. Now I felt like a curate in charge of a party of Brownies. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ I snarled at them, and eased myself into my creaking cot. I tried to sleep but they insisted on chatting and smoking, ignoring my complaints and curses.

The next day [Thursday, 13 October] I woke early with a sore back. The girls were deeply, profoundly asleep, Petra snoring slightly, Ingeborg with the duvet thrown aside, exposing her small breasts. I dressed and went down to the dining room for breakfast, where I drank coffee, ate boiled eggs, ham and cheese in the company of three verbose Chinese businessmen, talking very loudly. I made up a couple of extra rolls with ham and pickled cucumbers, wrapped them in paper napkins and stuffed them in my pockets: breakfast for the girls or lunch for me.

I picked up another $100 from American Express (thinking I must be draining the SPK’s funds alarmingly) and went for a wander, not taking much in, aware only that many church bells seemed to be ringing — a dull, flat, increasingly irritating sound that reminded me of Oxford. After about ten minutes I became aware I was being followed — by a young guy in a buckskin jacket and jeans. He had shiny long hair and a Mexican-style moustache. I turned a corner and stood in a patch of mildly warming sunshine, waiting for him.

‘Hi. Mogadishu,’ he said.

‘Mogadishu, I’m Mountstuart.’

‘Jürgen. What in fuck hell are those girls doing with you?’

‘They insisted on coming. I thought it was part of the plan.’

‘Shit.’ Jürgen swore some more in German. ‘Do you have the money?’

‘Not on me.’

‘Bring it to that café there. In one hour.’

So I plodded back to the hotel, where I saw the girls sitting in the glassed-in sun porch off the residents’ lounge, reading magazines and, it goes without saying, smoking.

‘What’re we doing today, Mountstuart?’ Petra asked.

‘It’s a free day,’ I said. ‘Amuse yourselves.’

‘In Zurich?’ Ingeborg scoffed. Thank you so very much, Mountstuart.’

‘Have fun. Remember?’

In the room I packed my bag and came down the stairs instead of the lift, but there was no need for caution — the girls had gone. I settled the bill and went to meet Jürgen at the appointed café. He arrived ten minutes late, carrying a small suitcase.

‘This is for you,’ he said, handing it over. It was quite heavy. I gave him the envelope with the dollars and for the first time he managed a smile, though he insisted on counting the money, laboriously. When he was satisfied he stuffed it in a pocket and shook my hand.

‘Tell John we’re ready,’ he said. ‘Good luck.’

I caught a tram to the railway station and bought a ticket to Grenoble. From there I planned to head north to Paris and cross the Channel back to England via Calais. John Vivian had been insistent that I use a different port of entry for my journey back.

That night in Grenoble I sat in the bar of a hotel near the station watching the evening news. A Lufthansa jet had been hijacked at Palma Airport. The hijackers — four Arabs, two men and two women — demanded the release of all political prisoners held in West German gaols.

I lay in bed that night and wondered what Petra and Ingeborg — my girls — would be doing. I felt a bit of a cheat running out on them that way but I was only following John Vivian’s instructions. But in any event, I reasoned, they were too volatile and unpredictable — for all I knew they might have insisted on coming back to London with me. Imagine: life in Turpentine Lane with Petra and Ingeborg
⁹
…

The suitcase Jürgen had given me was not only heavy but also securely locked.

The next morning, with the aid of a small screwdriver and a bent piece of wire, I opened Jürgen’s case. It was filled with an assortment of second-hand clothes and forty sticks of what I took to be gelignite. Each stick was marked: GOMMEL ASTIGEL DYNAMITE, EXPLOSIF ROCHER, SOCIÉTÉ FRANÇAISE DES EXPLOSIFS. USINE DE CUGNY. I closed the case and thought about what I was going to do. I had about £70 of French francs on me, enough to keep me going for days on my frugal standard of living and allow me to reach home. I obviously couldn’t afford to stay in hotels: perhaps if I bought a tent and a sleeping bag campsites would be the answer? Then I remembered where I was — France. I owned property in this country. I picked up the phone and put in a call to Noel Lange’s office in London.

Friday evening. I was in Toulouse and stayed at the cheapest hotel I could find. Saturday morning. I caught a bus to Villefranche-sur-Lot. The newspaper I bought was full of news about the Lufthansa hijacking. The plane was now in Dubai and the demands were more detailed: the release of eleven Baader-Meinhof gang members, two Palestinians gaoled in Turkey and a ransom for the hostages on board of $15.5 million.

I took another bus from Villefranche along the valley of the Lot to Puy I’Évêque, where I would find the office of the
notaire,
Monsieur Polle, who had the keys to Cyprien’s house in Sainte-Sabine. Monsieur Polle, a genial man with stiff cropped grey hair, offered to drive me the forty kilometres or so south to Sainte-Sabine. We travelled through rolling wooded country along minor roads, the sun appearing from time to time through large, rapidly moving clouds, heading eastward on a stiffish breeze.

The house, my house, was called Cinq Cyprès and had been on the market since I had learned it was bequeathed to me. I was soon to find out why no one had made an offer. The five cypresses themselves were as old as the house, planted when it was built, I imagined, in the last decade of the last century. They were towering, shaggy mature trees, some forty feet high, and strategically positioned around the house and its sole outbuilding, a stone barn, considerably older. The house was semi-derelict, its unattractive nineteenth-century provincial features more or less hidden by smothering growths of ivy and Virginia creeper. It was set in the middle of a small park with many mature deciduous trees — chestnut, oak, plane — which was reached through rusty old gates, fixed open, only a plastic red and white chain notionally barring passage to the property.

Monsieur Polle opened the front door and led me in, handing me a thickly labelled bunch of keys and muttering, ‘Felicitations’ as I symbolically took possession. Old terracotta tiles clicked underfoot as I looked in on a large ground-floor room containing two leather armchairs, some moth-ravaged curtains and a boarded-up fireplace. I put down my grip and my suitcase filled with dynamite and listened as Monsieur Polle explained that there was no water or electricity connected and he could recommend an excellent hotel in Puy I’Évêque. No, no, I said, I intended to spend the night here before I returned to England. ‘Comme vous voulez, Monsieur Mountstuart.’ I liked the way my name sounded in French. Monsieur Polle dropped me in Sainte-Sabine, which was only a kilometre away, and I found a little supermarket there where I bought some bread, a tin of pâté, red wine (screwtop), a bottle of water and some candles. I walked slowly back through the gathering dusk to my new home.

In candlelight I ate my bread and pâté and drank my bottle of wine. I pushed the two leather armchairs together and lay there under my overcoat, watching the light from the candle flame wash over the ceiling and listening to the absolute silence. Absolute until I blew out the candle, when in the impenetrable darkness I began to hear the tiny crepitations of rodents and insects and the strange shiftings and creakings that any old house produces as the temperature drops. I felt very secure.

I spent another two days and nights in Cinq Cyprès pottering around, acquainting myself with the house and its grounds. It was far from beautiful, this
maison de maître,
three storeys high, covered in a grey
crépi
with an out-of-proportion ornamental wrought-iron balcony on the first floor. Built by some prosperous burgher relative of Cyprien who wanted to impress his neighbours, no doubt. Nature had softened its outlines by the overwhelming growth of creeper and ivy — many of the shuttered windows higher up were completely hidden. The ground floor was in reasonable repair — it needed a good clean more than anything else — but as you climbed higher through the house you could see the damage inflicted by damp and mould. There was obviously a bad leak in the roof, and one window had a shutter missing and panes broken that had been letting in the weather for years. The rooms were dark from all the mature trees round about, and it was impossible to tell where the lawns merged with the meadow that surrounded the property. Beyond the meadow, oak woods loomed on three sides and behind the house, slightly offset, was the old stone barn with a small two-roomed labourer’s bothy attached.

I found the key to the barn and, poking around inside, discovered some rickety spades and hoes amongst other ancient rust-rotted farm implements. I took a spade and dug a hole in the small overgrown orchard behind the barn and buried my suitcase of gelignite there. I did not mark the spot. Then I walked into Sainte-Sabine for more provisions.

Sainte-Sabine possessed a main street and a small square around which stood a church (badly restored), a post office, a
mairie
and the Superette. In side streets off the square were a couple of bars, a couple of pharmacies, a couple of butchers and a couple of bakers. There was a medical centre with a doctor’s consulting rooms and a dentist’s surgery; there was a newsagent and a taxi service that doubled as an undertaker’s. Just about everything, in fact, that a village of three hundred people might need. The denizens of Sainte-Sabine could feed themselves, run their affairs, be tended when they fell ill, and be disposed of when they died. The main square, place du 8 Mai, was shaded by ruthlessly pollarded plane trees whose leaves were ankle deep on the ground as I walked through it, heading for the Superette. When I was paying for my goods, the woman at the till said, ‘Vous êtes le propriétaire de Cinq Cyprès?’ I admitted I was and we shook hands. ‘Je suis Monsieur Mountstuart,’ I said.
‘Je
suis écrivain.’ I don’t know what made me add that last sentence, but I suppose I thought that if word about me was travelling that fast then I might as well establish my credentials.