England Made Me (13 page)

‘But of course I do,' Anthony said. He did not hesitate a moment; only a certain vacancy behind his earnest gaze indicated that the mind was away in Buenos Aires, in Africa, in India, in Malaya, in Shanghai adapting an old story to new needs. ‘Why, I remember meeting a fellow once who had been a bodyguard of Morgan himself. It was in Shanghai. He told me they all had them. He told me –' Anthony stopped. ‘Why, it's common sense. Even the film stars have their bodyguards.'

‘But here in Stockholm.  . . .'

‘You've got to move with the times,' Anthony said. He was quite confident now; he was selling himself as he had sold silk stockings and vacuum cleaners; the eyes fixed, the foot inside the door, the rapid patter which never ceased to be that of a gentleman (‘He was quite the gentleman,' they would say in excuse displaying unwanted purchases to their husbands). ‘And you've come to the right person, Mr Krogh. I could show you cups I've won, silver plate.' He did not even forget the touch of pathos which would supply the purchaser with another excuse – ‘Poor fellow, he'd seen hard times'. ‘But I've sold most of them, Mr Krogh. Times when I was on my uppers. I've pawned a lot in my time and dropped the ticket in the nearest dustbin. I've never regretted anything so much as a silver
épergne
I won at the Singapore Club; I had something to compete against there; they were all crack shots. It was a lovely
épergne
.'

‘So you'll take the job?' Krogh asked.

‘Of course I'll take it,' Anthony said.

‘You'll be free as long as I'm at the office, but outside the office I shall want you with me.'

‘You ought to do this thing in style,' Anthony said. ‘Bulletproof glass, steel shutters.'

‘I don't think that's necessary in Stockholm.'

‘All the same,' Anthony said, eyeing the glass walls with undisguised distaste, ‘anyone could lob a bomb into this building. Not that it could do any harm to the fountain.'

‘What do you mean?' Krogh said quickly. ‘Don't you like the fountain?'

‘I ask you,' Anthony said, ‘could anyone like it?'

‘It's by the best modern sculptor in Sweden.'

‘Of course it's highbrow,' Anthony said. He went to the window and scowled down at the fountain, at the green stone dripping with water under the grey sky. ‘It's in a fine situation,' he said encouragingly.

‘But you think – it's bad?'

‘I think it's horrible,' Anthony said. ‘If that's the Swedish type of beauty, give me the Edgware Road type any day of the week.'

‘The best judges,' Krogh said, ‘they've all told me.  . . .'

‘Ah, but they all have an axe to grind,' Anthony said. ‘Ask the common people. After all, it's the common people who buy Krogh's.'

‘You like this ash-tray?' Krogh asked.

‘Oh, the ash-tray's fine,' Anthony said.

‘The same man designed it.'

‘He's good at knick-knacks,' Anthony said. ‘The trouble is, you shouldn't have given him all that stone to play about with. Something smaller.'

‘Your sister likes it.'

‘Dear Kate,' Anthony said, ‘she always was a bit highbrow.'

Krogh joined him at the window. He stared down with gloom into the court. ‘The porter didn't like it,' he said.

‘Of course, if you like it . . .'

‘But I'm not sure. I'm not sure,' Krogh said. ‘There are things I don't understand. Poetry. Something your Minister wrote. I haven't had time for these things.'

‘The same with me,' Anthony said, ‘but I've got a natural taste.'

‘You like music?'

‘I love it,' Anthony said.

‘Tonight,' Krogh said, ‘we have to go to the opera. You will enjoy that then?'

‘I always like a good tune,' Anthony said. He hummed a bar or two of ‘Picking Daisies by Daylight', paused, and to the anxious man who watched him, he waved an airy salute. I'm employed again. Yours truly on the up-grade. Here's pickings. ‘I bet you are busy,' he said. He paused at the door: ‘I shall need some money for glad rags.'

‘Glad rags?'

‘White tie and the rest of it.'

‘Miss Farrant – your sister – will see about that.'

‘Well,' Anthony said, ‘I'll be seeing you.'

3

Ex for All, thought Minty. The school phrases stung his lips, but they were always first to his tongue. It gave him a bitter tormented pleasure to say, not an afternoon free, but Ex for All. He hated and he loved. The school and he were joined by a painful reluctant coition, a passionless coition that leaves everything to regret, nothing to love, everything to hate, but cannot destroy the idea: we are one body.

And he imagines he can sport a Harrow tie and get away with it. No Captain of Games, no member of the Philathletic Club with a bow tie and a braided waistcoat, would have been capable of a more honest indignation. It was only that Minty had more self-control. The twisting of his arm had taught him it, the steel nibs dug into his calf, the spilt incense and the broken sacred pictures. It had indeed been a long and hard coition for Minty; and when the carefully chosen malicious moment had come for requital, after the correspondence with the chemist in Charing Cross Road, the receipt of the plain packets, it had not been Minty who had flinched, but his accomplice. His accomplice stayed, failed to reach the sixth, became something in the City; it was Minty who left, after long hours with the housemaster, not expelled but taken away by his mother. Everything was very quiet, very discreet: his mother subscribed for him to the Old Boys' Society.

Ex for All. There was no need to watch Krogh's now that Farrant was safely inside. Farrant needed money. Farrant sported a false tie. Farrant was safe. But the day, which had begun so well with a letter from the family, must be passed to the best advantage. Tomorrow he would have to remember to keep his mind free from malice and uncharitableness in honour of St Zephyrinus; today he could give full rein to every instinct. St Louis had never done anything to help him. Weak in bed he had prayed to him after he had been drained, but St Louis had not heard; the despised, the forgotten Zephyrinus had replied.

I will see the Minister. And Minty, he told himself with a sly twinkle, what a tease you are. Old enough to know better. A great big tease. He chuckled ingratiatingly to himself, coming out into Gustavus Adolphus's square, his black coat dripping rain; the grey monarch faced Russia, the rain running from his sword-hilt and the umbrellas clustered like mushrooms under the pillars of the Opera House. Minty and one random taxi had the square to themselves. There's no real harm in Minty, he thought, planning how he might get to the Minister past the so-efficient Calloway, the army of young diplomats with broadcasting voices.

Calloway nearly shut the door in his face, but Minty was too quick for him. ‘I've got to see Captain Gullie,' he said. He knew the geography of the Legation well, slipped past Calloway, down a white-panelled passage, into the military attaché's room. The military attaché looked up with a scowl. ‘Oh, it's you, Minty, is it? What the hell do you want now?' Self-consciously he twisted his ginger moustache, shifted his monocle. On the desk in front of him lay the bound volume of a magazine.

‘I'm seeing the Minister,' Minty said, ‘but he's busy for the moment. I thought I'd just pass the time of day. Busy?'

‘Very busy,' Gullie said.

‘I thought you'd be interested to hear that there's another Scotsman come to town. Name of Farrant. Says he's a MacDonald.'

The back of Gullie's neck flushed. ‘Are you sure? Farrant. I don't know the name. You might hand me my clan-book. There it is. Just by your elbow.' Minty handed the little red book of clans and tartans to Gullie.

‘Of course,' Gullie said, ‘we Camerons can't bear a MacDonald. It's as impossible for a Cameron to be friends with a MacDonald as for a Frenchman –'

‘I had the pleasure of meeting your mother the other day,' Minty said, rambling round the room with an air of secret amusement. Gullie flushed again. ‘What a marvellous accent. Really one would never know she was German. But tell me, Gullie, you Camerons – what's your quarrel with the MacDonalds?'

‘Glencoe,' Gullie said.

‘Well, well,' Minty said. ‘What are you reading, Gullie?' He looked over the other's shoulder at the bound volume of a German nudist magazine. ‘Quite a little pornographic library you have here.'

‘You know very well,' Gullie said, ‘that my interest's artistic. I paint ships and the –' he twisted his monocle – ‘the human figure. Damn it all, Minty, there's no Farrant here. The fellow must be an impostor.'

‘I may have got the clan wrong. It may have been Mac something else. All those ships yours?' He waved at the little pictures which hung two deep round the white walls: small ships of every kind, barques, brigantines, frigates, schooners, dancing on bright blue formal waves. ‘Where do you keep the human figure?'

‘I have them at home,' Gullie said. ‘Look here, Minty. The fellow's not a MacPherson, nor a Macfarlane, nor a – is he a straight fellow?'

‘No, I shouldn't think so,' Minty said.

‘He shouldn't go about saying he's a MacDonald.'

‘It may have been Mac something else.'

‘We'll catch him out at the Caledonian dinner. I'll spot his tartan.'

‘I've come to see the Minister,' Minty said, ‘about a Harrow dinner. I'd better be getting along. He'll be impatient. You don't mind if I use your door, do you?' He left a little pool of water where he had been standing. ‘So long, Gullie. Stick to ships. Cut out the human figure.' His teasing tone altered to admit a touch of venom, a scrap of sincerity. ‘It's so ugly, Gullie, all those protuberances.' Before Gullie could stop him, he was through the door behind the desk.

Yes, it was ugly, the human figure. Man or woman, it made no difference to Minty. The body's shape, the running nose, excrement, the stupid postures of passion, these beat like a bird's heart in Minty's brain. Nothing could have more stirred his malice than the sight of Gullie pouring over the photographs of naked breasts and thighs. A gang of schoolboys raced through Minty's mind, breaking up his pictures of Madonna and Child, jeering, belching, breaking wind.

The Minister sat writing among his bric-à-brac at the other end of the deep carpet; Minty closed the door very softly. His eyes were a little dilated. The Minister's sedate white hair, the pink cheeks lightly powdered after their shave, the grey expensive suit, Minty took them in. He was a little afraid of the force of hatred that Gullie had released. To use powder, to take such care with one's clothes, to be so carefully brushed, the hypocrisy of it sickened Minty. The body still remained, its functions were not hidden by Savile Row. To think that God Himself had become a man. Minty could not enter a church without the thought, which sickened him, which was more to him than the agony in the garden, the despair upon the cross. Pain was an easy thing to bear beside the humiliation which rose with one in the morning and lay down with one at night. He stood and dripped at the carpet's edge and thought that at least one need not be so coarse as to love the body like Gullie or hide it under powder and pin-striped elegant suits like the Minister. Hating the hypocrites he waited for the Minister to look up, exposing his shabbiness with a mournful malicious pride. At last he said: ‘Sir Ronald.'

‘Good heavens, my dear fellow,' the Minister said, ‘you gave me a start. How did you get here?'

‘I was calling on Gullie,' Minty said, ‘and as he told me you were not busy at the moment, I thought I'd look in and see you about a Harrow dinner.'

‘What an extraordinary thing for Gullie to say.'

‘Of course you'll take the chair, Sir Ronald?'

‘Why, my dear fellow, it seems such a short time since we had one, and frankly I'm horribly busy.'

‘It was two years ago.'

‘But you can't pretend,' the Minister said, ‘that it was a success. Really, it almost developed into a brawl. And some horrid fellow spilt cigar ash into my port.'

‘It would be a good way of putting over this new appeal they've sent out to old Harrovians.'

‘My dear Minty, there's no one recognizes more than myself your really quite admirable work for the school, but one must draw the line somewhere, Minty. The trouble is there are too many soldiers here. Why can't they learn Russian at home – or in Tallinn?'

‘There's another Harrovian come to live in Stockholm. At least, he wears the tie. Brother of Krogh's woman.'

‘That's interesting,' the Minister said.

‘He's in the business.'

‘Remind him to write his name in the book.'

‘I don't believe he was at Harrow at all.'

‘I thought you said he was?'

‘I said he wore the tie.'

‘What a suspicious fellow you are, Minty. If he wasn't straight he wouldn't be in Krogh's. I'd trust Krogh with my last penny.'

‘Why don't you?' Minty said. ‘They pay ten per cent.'

‘Well, I've had one or two little flutters in that direction,' the Minister said. He leant back and smiled with a certain complacency. ‘It'll pay for my holiday this winter.'

‘But the dinner?' Minty said. He began to plead quite seriously; he made his wet way across the carpet. ‘It's a good thing. It keeps us in touch. One evening in the year when one's not a foreigner.'

‘Damn it all, Minty, this isn't the Sahara. We're only thirty-six hours from Piccadilly. You don't have to be homesick. You can always trot across for a week-end. Look at Gullie. He's always going over. I prefer to wait and go over for a month at Christmas. It's the best time of year in England. Though I may take a few days' shooting. No, you can't pretend we're cut off here.'