England Made Me (29 page)

2

Hall bought a paper and carried it unread across the brown autumn square. He wondered whether he had made a mistake about the cuff-links; he might have bought a ring, or a cigar-case, or a paper-weight. No one seeing him scuffing up the dead leaves, with his small dead eyes fixed on his toe-caps, could have guessed the devotion which lay on him like a heavy responsibility. For it wasn't just a present, it was a pledge and an appeal. Hall as much as any young man in the idealistic stage of love wanted to be remembered.

A cigar-case? A silver bracelet? It wasn't too late.

He opened the paper to look for the jewellers' advertisements and saw Krogh's name written large across the sheet. He didn't read on because in an electrician's window he saw a green table lamp shaped like a naked woman. That's pretty, he thought, and remembered with uneasiness the fountain in the courtyard. He strode on down the Fredsgatan muttering to himself: no taste, they have no taste. At a corner waiting for the traffic to pass he looked at the paper again: ‘Erik Krogh to marry English Secretary.'

Hall grunted, took no notice of the traffic, stepped between the cars, moved like a marked bullet to his object. Through the gate, not looking at the fountain, saying nothing to the porter, the brown-gloved hands deep in his overcoat pockets, he moved in a bitter dream of his own making: no use any longer for Hall, skirts on the board, petticoat government. He went straight into Krogh's room without asking leave.

‘I brought you a present,' he said.

Krogh said: ‘I'm glad you've come. I wanted to talk to you. Will you go out to New York for us?'

‘On the board?'

‘Yes, on the board.'

It was what he had always wanted, but now his only thought was: They want to get rid of me, new ways here, I'm not respectable. He evaded answering. He said: ‘I saw these cuff-links in a shop. I said to myself they'd do nicely with my new pin-point. But somehow they don't go. Bit too grand for me. Too many jewels. Thought I'd give them to you as a wedding present.'

‘Wedding present?'

He laid the paper on the table and the cuff-links beside them.

Krogh said: ‘I never authorized this.'

‘Ah,' Hall said, ‘then I know who's done that. He's been going round among the clerks talking.'

‘Farrant?'

‘Why did you have him here, Mr Krogh?' Hall said. ‘Why did you have him here?'

‘I needed a bodyguard.'

Hall's terrier face twitched. ‘There's me. You could have sent someone else to Amsterdam. That fellow gave me the willies the moment I saw him. Like passing under a ladder. What good was he the other night?' He took up the stained little leather case and laid it down again.

‘He doesn't mean any harm,' Krogh said sadly. ‘I liked him. But I'll send him home.'

‘Does Miss Farrant know about the sale to Batterson's?'

‘You can trust her, Hall.'

But Hall trusted nobody. He stood by the window and filled the room with his suspicion, his jealousy and his devotion. Against his integrity everything had to be measured; the bright modernity, the chic perverted shapes were tarnished beside the genuineness of his brown Strand-made suit. He had never minded appearing vulgar (the wasp waist), sentimental (the trinket on the watch-chain), foolish (the paper nose at Barcelona). He didn't flicker like a fashion, he didn't change his standards like good taste, he was just Hall.

There was nobody who would not have been diminished by his devotion. Krogh hesitated, looked at the cuff-links, repeated sadly: ‘We'll send him home.'

‘Mr Krogh,' Hall said, ‘you don't understand these fellows. Leave him to me. I'll fix him up.'

‘We'll give him his ticket.'

‘Listen, Mr Krogh,' Hall said. ‘You can't do that. He's been poking around, talking to the clerks about short-term loans. How does he know anything about our loans?'

‘It must be from his sister,' Krogh said.

‘And how much more does he know? Suppose he goes home, can't get a job, goes to Batterson's. We've got to keep him here a week.'

‘Well, he seems to know the Press here.'

‘We can fix the Press here.'

‘All right,' Krogh said, with sudden cheerfulness, ‘we keep him. That's easy. He doesn't want to go. He won't make trouble while he's being paid.'

‘You'd better say a word to Miss Farrant,' but Hall twisted away at the sight of her; he couldn't bear the thought that she was trusted: a skirt. He left it to Krogh to explain: ‘Your brother's been talking to the Press.'

‘You've found it out already,' Kate said.

‘Hall has.'

‘Ah, our Mr Hall.'

‘It's got to stop.'

‘Don't worry,' Kate said, ‘he's going back to England tomorrow. I've given him the money.'

‘To England? Why to England?'

Hall turned back to them. His hands came a little way out of the pockets in a movement of solicitude which remained unfinished. ‘Don't
worry
, Mr Krogh.' He was like an old nurse whose charge has grown up, who wants to comfort in the old way of the clasped arms and the big breasts but knows her charge has outgrown it. ‘You've no cause to worry. I can fix everything.'

‘He's got a girl there,' Kate explained, but her anxiety to convince them that it was all right, that there was nothing to fear was too obvious. She said sadly: ‘He's in love'; her explanations demanded a hearing, they beat like a bird against the blank pane of Hall's inattention and fell at its base. There was something admirable, pathetic, vicious in his love: he had completely surrendered himself. He was as much Krogh's as the block of stone in the courtyard, the marked ash-tray, the monogrammed carpet (he said: ‘We can frame him like we framed Andersson'), and Krogh's for that very reason was his. It was marked with his cheapness, his particular brand of caution, his irresponsible ferocity; it was Hall-marked.

‘No,' Kate said, ‘you can't do that.'

‘We'll frame him,' Hall repeated.

‘Then don't blame me,' Kate said, ‘if he talks. He's not a fool.'

‘You mean he knows about the sale?' Hall said. ‘Does the whole office know about the sale?'

He watched her with fierce anger, dislike and suspicion, but he respected her too much to waste any time. They had the same ideas, neither had cared a hang what happened to Andersson; the only difference was that they did not work for the same man. He had no time to think, but there was one line along which his brain easily and rapidly ran. He said: ‘Does he play poker?'

‘Yes,' Kate said.

‘Does he play it well?'

‘He plays nothing well.'

‘I've known a card debt before now,' Hall said, ‘keep a man off a skirt. You'd better have a game tonight, Mr Krogh. He can't go back to England.'

‘We're going out tonight, Tony and I,' Kate said.

‘It's that or a frame-up,' Hall said, ‘he can't leave Stockholm.'

He was like a little pillar of brown bitter smoke. His malevolence came out of his suède shoe-caps, lay like scurf over his overcoat. ‘I'm not worrying,' he said, ‘and I'll see that Mr Krogh doesn't worry.'

‘So you'll have dinner with us tonight?' Kate asked, with irony.

‘I'll be there,' he said. ‘You can bet your boots I'll be there.' He stood there brown and bitter, narrow and ferocious, the self-appointed defender of the great glass buildings, the works at Nyköping, the log-mills in the north.

3

Hall got up and shut the windows, pulling down the great double panes to keep out the damp late air. Anthony pushed forward two crowns, Krogh four. Kate said: ‘I'll put down. I haven't had a hand tonight.' Hall came back to the table. Innumerable poker hands had perfected the mechanism of his approach; it was hardly bluff he used; there was no acting in his performance, he merely withdrew his interest from his cards completely. He would bid quickly and then relapse into his patient suspicious silence. ‘I double you,' and his eyes met Anthony's across the table with absolute indifference to the other's hand. He had other things to think about, and when his turn came to discard his cards, he discarded without relation to the cards he held (two tens of spades, a four, and two of diamonds, a six of clubs). ‘One card,' he said, and threw away the six. He played with a complete disregard of the poker-player's table of chances, with indifference; he depended recklessly on the weakness of his opponents; he was careless of consequences. If he met a really strong hand he was beaten, but against an average hand or a weak hand he always won. He hardly troubled to look at the card he had taken, a three of hearts.

Gullie said: ‘I'll have three.' He became jovial under the influence of cards; he was convinced that he could read anyone's bluff. ‘The military attaché gets reckless,' he said, ‘ha, ha,' and flashed his monocle like a small revolving light from face to face. ‘The military art of camouflage, ha, ha,' and was momentarily disconcerted by Hall's lack of response.

‘I'll double,' Hall said.

Kate went to the window, passing behind Anthony. She could see his hand, three nines, a knave, a two, a weak strong hand. He played as he believed judiciously, never bluffed to a high figure, but always supported his hand for a little more than it was worth; he was either called at once or laid down his cards before Hall's high bids. He had only won one hand.

‘Well, well,' Gullie said, laying an elaborate smokescreen about his intentions, ‘this calls for thought.'

‘Double again,' Hall said. She watched him from the window; one hand was flat on the table, one hand held his cards in a tight pack on his lap; he was staring at Krogh. Every time a bid was made Gullie looked at his hand.

A steamer went by outside, its lights lying thinly along the surface of the low grey mist; it slid by below the reflections of the card-players, driving into the night past Hall's face. The lit windows in the workers' flats lay in tiers, like a liner's portholes, on the opposite shore.

‘The Minister's taking a holiday?' Kate asked.

‘He always goes up to Scotland for the First,' Gullie said. ‘This is where I drop out. Do you shoot, Farrant?'

‘Oh,' Anthony said, avoiding Kate's eye, ‘I hope to have a few days.'

‘Going across?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘You'll have a rough passage,' Gullie said. ‘Good sailor?'

‘Not very.'

‘Give a man a horse he can ride,' Gullie said. ‘I've never wanted a boat to sail, ha, ha. Puffin Travers invited me across the other day. He's taken a moor.'

‘Double again,' Hall said. He took no notice of the conversation which wavered round him, he smoked cigarette after cigarette with the same concentration he had shown in the lavatory of the airliner, the yellow nicotinous smoke blew through his nostrils.

‘I'll go down,' Anthony said.

Krogh said: ‘I'll call you.' Hall laid down his cards, the two tens side by side, the rubbish in a pack beside them.

‘I've got two queens,' Krogh said.

‘And yours truly is stung again,' Anthony said, pushing his money over to Krogh. He lit a cigarette, beaming happily at nothing, or at everything: the thin spray of smoke, the cards Hall gathered from the table for a new deal.

This, Kate thought, is a tune to remember: Tony here, Tony happy, the boat going by outside, the lights turned off one by one over the lake in the workers' flats. The wind stirred the low mist, drove it up from the water till it stood a man's height round the lamp-posts; very faintly through the double panes the sound of hooting cars. This tune to remember. Sink it deep.

‘Have the
smörgåsbord
before we deal again,' Kate said. She pushed the dumb-waiter over to the table and poured out the glasses of schnapps. They all helped themselves, except Hall, to the thin buttered slices laid with ham, sausage, smoked salmon. Hall lit another cigarette and shuffled the cards. ‘
Skål Skål, Skål
.' This tune to remember.

‘That's a fine wireless set,' Gullie said.

‘Yes?' Krogh said. ‘I never play it.'

‘Half-past nine,' Anthony said. ‘The last news in London.'

Kate turned the pointer. ‘A depression advancing from Iceland,' a smooth anonymous voice said and was cut off.

‘Good old London.'

‘There's Moscow,' Kate said, swinging the pointer; ‘there's Hilversùm, Berlin, Paris.  . . .'

‘The Duke of York, opening the new premises of the Gas Light and Coke.  . . .'

The voices went out one by one like candles on a Christmas cake, white, waxen, guttering in the atmospherics over the North Sea, the Baltic, the local storms on the East Prussian plains, rain beating on Tannenberg, autumn lightning over Westminster, a whistle on the ether.

‘You can always tell Paris,' Anthony said, ‘
aimer, aimer, aimer
.'

‘Your deal, Mr Farrant,' Hall said.

‘But it was a good voice,' Gullie said reverently, ‘a good voice.'

‘I'm out of this,' Kate said. ‘I've lost enough. Do you sing yourself, Captain Gullie?'

‘Among friends, just among friends. I'm trying to get up a little opera company among the English here. Nothing difficult.
The Mikado. Merrie England
. All good propaganda.'

‘Eena, meena, mina, mo,' Anthony said, dealing four cards. ‘Stand behind and bring me luck, Kate. Cross your fingers, twiddle your toes, that's the way the money goes. I'll join you at the workhouse after this deal.'