Double-Barrel (21 page)

Nobody was out at this time – it was after eight-thirty – but the juvenile delinquents. And they weren't on the streets. They would be gathered in their café in the village, the motor-bikes in an untidy heap outside and the gramophone getting with it.

I walked through the ‘suburbs' of the little town. A patchwork straggle, trying to keep up with the housing shortage and never succeeding; the same picture one finds everywhere in all Dutch towns, all German and Italian and Czech and Polish and … Streets half-finished, the raw beginnings of a park; skeletons of flats; piles of bricks and roof-tiles lying around the muddy verges; warped wooden stringers and rusty scaffolding tubes lying about in between to be tripped over. Every now and then the reminder how much of a frontier town this still was struck sharply. Streets neat and trim and lived-in collapsed into rank moorland. There were fields of curly kale between the patches where foundations had been excavated and black square pits of earth lay half full of black water. A raw church of staring brick, no bells yet hanging in the
gawky tower, was surrounded still on three sides by grazing cows.

Sensibly, the bog had been drained and landscaped at the start with dragline excavators, creating little hillocks and artificial lakes. Once these were clothed with a little greenery, they would be attractive, doubtless, but the clamour for housing was such that the plan had been patchworked, without continuity. Builders had thrown up streets where roofs were already on while the pumps were still throwing dirty water out of the foundations, the workmen lurching stickily about in gumboots, the contractors struggling vainly to keep up with the five-year plan that was to raise the population of Zwinderen to twenty thousand.

The streets were temporary affairs; zigzag courses of brick hammered in over a vaguely levelled belt of coarse rubble. Sketchily founded, half-drained, they were pitted and jagged like a moon landscape. Full, too, of greasy black puddles, sudden death to high heels and an unmerciful hammering to anything but a Land Rover or a Citroen. I was accustomed to all this by now, threading a way with automatic sidesteps where the blue or orange glare of a sparse street lamp warned one of the deepest, most treacherous pits.

Everything was still and quiet; I passed one elderly man walking his dog, and was passed in turn by one ancient bicycle, its loose back mudguard rattling on the bumps, its uncertain front light wavering drunkenly. An erratic wind, wet and cold, gusted at me from all quarters, broken into a thousand draughts at every corner; the landscape was as eerie as the middle of a forest. I stopped suddenly, alert. What was that? Who was dodging about there? Nothing and nobody – a tarpaulin over a pile of builders' material was flapping to the gusts. Frolic wind, I told myself sarcastically, Zephyr with Aurora playing; ha.

The quotation suddenly clicked into place, giving me a reference I had been groping for – a book that had made
some stir in the thirties. I remember it because I had picked it up off a second-hand stall in a little old-maidish Surrey town where we had been billeted in wartime; it had made an amusing change from the army.
Frolic Wind…

There had been a poet who had gone for a bath in the lily-pond during a thunder shower; lovely. And three dotty old sisters, one of whom lived in a tower which she kept locked because all the walls were covered with obscene pictures she had painted. Lady Athaliah, that was it.

I leaned against a pile of bricks and fastened the binoculars on a block of flats a hundred metres off. Top corner flat; first and second windows at the northern angle. Lady Athaliah's tower? I twisted the wheel delicately and a brightly lit interior sprang into focus. Ha. I could see a head, and wanted to see more. But I was too low; even at this distance I couldn't see much of a second-floor room.

I looked about. Everything was dark and deserted where I was; nothing here finished yet – this was the programme for next spring and summer. That second-floor window, with its patch of uncurtained lemon light, looked out upon a moon landscape. No passers-by. Except me, with my little peep-glass. I crossed the road and walked into a house that had a roof but no windows and no door. I hoped there would be floors. I smelt the acrid reek of wet cement, unseasoned wood and white-lead priming paint, and groped up a little steep staircase, coming out in a cell of bare unplastered brick with a metal window-frame stuck in the middle of it. Smell was the same, enriched by the builders who had been piddling in the corner; they would. But the four metres up from street level made all the difference to my sight line; Peeping Tom had now an admirable view of the tower.

No satyrs or nymphs, alas, capering across the walls. Quite the contrary. The very ordinary, very conventional living-room of an unmarried woman living alone, who is fairly well off but frugal. No taste, plenty of neatness,
tidiness, fussiness. A limp picture of sheep grazing on a moor, a few frilly ornaments, a neatly polished radio with a vase of flowers standing on a square crochet mat. The inevitable tray with painted coffee-cups and ornate biscuit-tin. A calvinist interior, bare, impersonal, dull. No books to be seen, no frivolities. She led, of course, an active life, her evenings occupied with pieties, committee-sitting, visiting newly-settled families, bringing them into the fold, enlisting them too in charitable social works.

But no committee was sitting this evening.

What on earth was Lady Athaliah wearing?

There were streaks and blurs of condensation on the window; a whole panel of the view was obscured by the potted plants ranged on the sill, but when she moved I could see down to the waist – mm, reminiscent of one of the early films of Brigitte Bardot. I moved into the corner of the window-frame, stubbed my elbow, cursed, shifted the glasses carefully, and leaned out to get a better view, oblivious to everything but that extraordinary robe affair.

Watching a person through binoculars – even if that person is simply cleaning his teeth under the kitchen tap – creates a strong emotion. You are ashamed and excited. You are afraid, too, for it is like being in the ring, watching the gloves that have hurt you and will hurt you again, watching the eyes that may or may not tell you the truth. And like looking over the sights of a rifle: look it lives and laughs, unconscious of my presence; it struts about, and one minute twitch of my finger will knock it ludicrously arse over tea-kettle into eternity and that dung-heap. With binoculars you are the submarine commander, the assassin, the preacher in the pulpit. God. As well as, always, the pornographer. A strong hot emotion.

Looking at Miss Burger through binoculars was porno less perhaps because of that ridiculous filmy
neglige
thing, that reminded one of nothing so much as a brassiere
advertisement in a women's magazine, than because it was so sad, and anything porno is so hatefully sad.

She was very painted – her mouth and especially her eyes, and that in itself was shocking. The clean scrubbed face of a Dutch woman – and only a very few years ago only whores, in Holland, were made up – has no affinity to paint, and she had done it badly, of course, over-dramatically in colours that were far too bright. After the painted face the naked body was less shocking.

She was floating about, a cigarette in her mouth in a long holder. I wondered what she was doing. I could see no other person in the room, but her face was animated by speech; her lips moved. She looked arch and grotesquely coquette. Then I saw it was a seduction scene. A solitary seduction. I understood suddenly that in another five minutes she would be making love to herself. And I was watching her from a dark empty house with binoculars.

Something very villainous happened to me at that moment. I wanted to see her. To see her below the waist I would have to climb on the roof. There would be a builders' ladder lying about, no doubt; I was, suddenly, in a tearing hurry to hunt for it.

To get to see her below the waist I was ready to hunt for a ladder and climb on the roof, was I? Now that was laughable.

The temptation of Saint Anthony was removed suddenly by a voice. Pretty rough voice at that, and quite unsympathetic to the pornographic instincts.

‘Hey,' it bellowed.

Considerably startled, the pride of the police lowered the glasses and glanced downwards. With mixed feelings, I surveyed a uniformed policeman, standing burly and menacing beside his bike. He was surveying right back, not at all with mixed feelings. Stupid of me not to realize that of course they would patrol out here as well, where
naughty people often come to pinch the builders' materials.

‘Caught red-handed, by god,' said the rough voice. ‘Just what we've been looking for these six months.' There was a snort – as near as a country policeman will get, in Holland, to a chortle, whatever that is – of self-congratulation. I felt quite regretful that I would have to spoil the fun. I took stock of my present situation, and felt extremely foolish.

‘I'll come down the stairs,' I said reasonably.

‘No you don't. Have you dodge out the back and make a run for it, eh? You stay there.' To reinforce his argument he lugged his cannon into view. He didn't exactly point it at me, but it was enough to make a fairly desperate criminal, like me, realize that he meant what he said.

‘Now throw the glasses, clever fellow – underhand, gently. Thanks. That's evidence, see? And now you drop down to the ground. It's not high; you won't hurt yourself. Not that I'd care if you did.'

There was no earthly use in talking. I gripped the sill meekly, swung my legs out, lowered, loosened, and did a parachutist's jump on to sodden earth. The grimy black ground stuck disagreeably to my palms, and I wiped them on the corduroy trousers. That would irritate Arlette, who would doubtless otherwise think the whole thing extremely funny. To be pinched for a peeper by the municipal constabulary!

‘And now march. I'm right behind you. I need one hand to wheel my bike, but I won't hesitate to fire if you break.'

I marched. At the corner of the main road into the town a police Volkswagen van came touring past.

‘Hoi,' went my guardian angel.

The van stopped and a head poked out.

‘What you got there?'

‘Just guess.'

‘Not the one that set the builders' hut on fire?'

‘Nix hut, nix fire. The sex maniac.'

‘Ho.'

‘Pinched him in the act, spying in an empty house.' He waved the binoculars triumphantly.

‘Ho,' impressed. ‘We'll hear all about it when we get back.'

‘March,' said the angel.

I sniffed the familiar police-bureau smell with affection. This had its comic side; I was beginning to enjoy myself.

‘Now,' said the duty brigadier pompously, settling a form between his elbows. ‘Name? … Christian names? … Address? … Profession?'

‘Inspector of Police.'

‘You'd better not try to be funny.'

‘Have a look in my pocket,' I said reasonably, and got at once a sinking feeling – I had changed, and hadn't emptied my pockets. ‘No; I've just realized I haven't my identity papers on me.'

‘Haw.'

‘I'm serious.' It was less funny; I had to make an effort. Really, it took Van der Valk.

‘You can send the van round and ask my wife to give you the papers.'

‘Why bother? You're staying here; you're for the cell.'

‘Look, if I'm kidding you you'll hit me on the head with a pistol, and it does me no good. I know perfectly well you'll keep me here. But when you don't check my identity, and I'm not kidding, you'll be in trouble.'

‘Police where?' – sceptical. ‘Fairyland?'

‘Central Recherche Amsterdam.'

‘Haw. What happened then? Go for a walk in the dark and lose your way, or what?'

Anything I said would have added to the comedy, so I kept my mouth shut and gave him my big frank open grin. He looked me up and down very carefully then. I could see that he wasn't only studying me, but listening attentively to the sound of my voice. Then he reached for the mobilphone transmitter key and buzzed it.

‘Jan? Whereabouts are you? … Well, tour over to the Mimosastraat. Number twenty-five. If there's a woman there you tell her that her husband's held here, and to give you his identity papers – and they'd better be convincing. Right? … Yes, straight away.'

There was a wait of a quarter of an hour. The brigadier doodled on the back of his form. My angel breathed heavily through his nose. Nobody stopped me smoking. We didn't have any light chat to make to one another.

I could hear the noisy motor of the minibus, a squeal of brakes, followed by exaggerated door-slamming. Arlette, possibly, had been sarcastic and they were taking it out on the auto.

There she was in person, looking determined, marching in advance of a faintly ruffled bodyguard.

‘What d'you bring her for, Jan?'

‘She brought us.'

‘Oh.'

‘I'm sure all the neighbours are delighted?' I asked, catching the pocket-book she tossed me.

‘Hanging out of the windows, buzzing like a beehive.'

‘Bitte sehr,' I said, presenting the desk man with my police identity card and my extra-duty authorization, signed by the Procureur-Général. He read all this, chagrin tinged with awe.

‘Sorry.'

‘Not your fault. I changed, forgot my pocket-book, and you saw me in peculiar circumstances.' I gave the company commander's look of stern authority, taking in, in the semicircle, four open-mouthed policemen.

‘Look – sir – I'll have to ring up the inspector and tell him.'

‘Yes. He'll have to know straight away. And I'll have a bit of business for him myself, I rather think.'

With no great enthusiasm, the desk man reached for his telephone.

‘Case is finished,' I said to Arlette. ‘I'll stay here, now I am here, because there'll be a lot of paperwork. I'll have to explain straight away to the inspector here, now, what's been going on. Got a bit out of hand. Do you mind – going' back to the Mimosastraat, I mean?'