Gently Continental (7 page)

She's the younger. She doesn't know. The war, everything, it was over. She doesn't remember being poor.

GENTLY

But you remember.

FRIEDA

Oh yes.

GENTLY

You wouldn't want to be poor again.

FRIEDA

That's in the past, we have money now. We work hard, but we have money.

GENTLY

And Trudi will marry some Stephen Halliday.

FRIEDA

Trudi will marry who will have her.

GENTLY

She's lucky.

FRIEDA

(Says nothing, does nothing, is still.)

GENTLY

Let's see . . . your rooms adjoin. You'll know if she was in her room Tuesday night.

FRIEDA

Will I?

GENTLY

Well?

FRIEDA

I'm not her keeper. She went to bed, that's all I know.

GENTLY

She went to bed before you.

FRIEDA

She has no responsibilities.

GENTLY

Long before?

FRIEDA

At half-past ten. Tennis makes her tired, no doubt.

GENTLY

And you?

FRIEDA

At nearly midnight, and I didn't go to kiss her goodnight. But she was in. I had locked up, and she was there in the morning.

GENTLY

You were last to bed.

FRIEDA

Yes.

GENTLY

After all the others, you alone.

FRIEDA

(Shrugs.)

GENTLY

And it was quiet.

FRIEDA

Just the sea. There's always that.

GENTLY

Yes, the sea through an open window on a warm night in July. Even there at the back you'd hear it, standing by your open window.

FRIEDA

(Stirs.)

GENTLY

Looking through the window. Across the courtyard. To the other wing. Where your mother sleeps. Was there a light?

FRIEDA

No!

GENTLY

You saw nothing?

FRIEDA

Nothing.

GENTLY

Of course, it was a dark night.

FRIEDA

I tell you, there was nothing to see!

GENTLY

But he'd be dead then, your American, smashed, bleeding, below the cliff. When you were standing at the window.

FRIEDA

No!

GENTLY

He was certainly dead by then.

FRIEDA

Oh God, I don't know anything.

GENTLY

A quiet night.

FRIEDA

I don't, I don't!

GENTLY

The sound of the sea, on a quiet night.

FRIEDA

Ask someone else – not me!

GENTLY

Who, Miss Breske?

FRIEDA

Stop going on at me! Oh . . . you make my head swim. If I knew, wouldn't I tell you?

GENTLY

Would you?

FRIEDA

Oh, just let us alone. We didn't kill him.

GENTLY

Yet he's dead.

FRIEDA

I know, I know.

GENTLY

And not only dead, Miss Breske.

Frieda, Miss Breske, moans, covers her face with her hands. Gently watches the sea, the sea which is blue fire. Across the sea slowly crawling goes a white-painted trader, far out, a sea-myth, drowned and witching in the sea. And the sea spans convex, a half-moon of blue blaze. And in a straight line which is a curve goes the trader across the moon. And the moon's voice sounds along the unpersuaded shore. And Miss Breske moans, her face covered with her hands.

GENTLY

Of course, he had a secret. A very valuable secret. He was tortured for the secret. Tortured, then killed. He may have taken the secret with him or he may have given it up. But giving it or keeping it couldn't save him, he was marked for killing.

FRIEDA

That was his business, not ours!

GENTLY

He came here to be hidden.

FRIEDA

What of it?

GENTLY

Perhaps nothing. I'm trying to warn you, Miss Breske.

FRIEDA

He was a stranger, a complete stranger. He picked this hotel from the
Good Food Guide
. That's all we know of him, all we want to know. I wish to God he'd gone elsewhere.

GENTLY

(Shrugs.)

Well. But remember what happened to him.

FRIEDA

Am I likely to forget it?

GENTLY

His secret was dangerous, may be still.

FRIEDA

Oh, you just make my head swim!

Gently looks at her, she at him. Her grey eyes front his warily. Her lank hair clings to her shiny forehead. Her pallid mouth is set straight. Nothing further, Miss Breske, he says, nothing further. Now. She says nothing, rises heavily. She walks with the long stride of a man.

S
HELTON, SQUEEZED INTO
the glass-panelled office, flanked by Sergeant Walters and Sally Dicks, the latter a straight-mouthed, straight-haired female who, nevertheless, has some adequate measurements: Shelton has released his seventh victim, a building contractor from Ashton-under-Lyne: and he frowns, and thinks, and watches Sally as Sally skims through her shorthand notes. Shelton's thoughts are some part with the contractor, some part with Gently, some part with Sally. The contractor, because he was uncivil: Gently, because he has overwhelmed Shelton. As for Sally, the heat in the office had caused her to take off her tunic, and so to expose, with greater definition, the generous lines of her bosom. Shelton evaluates these automatically while more consciously perusing his first and second subjects. He is also aware of the contradiction between Sally's bosom and Sally's face. Sally is grim to her neck. Sally is about to bite someone. Her retroussé nose is needle-sharp, she has haughty eyes and a fresh complexion. Properly, the rest of her should be niggardly, stringy, two boards clapped together: her face says so, is full of injury, has been struck, and would strike. Yet the rest of her is voluptuous, even muffled in a uniform. How did nature make the slip? Sally's bosom aggrieves Shelton. He snaps: You've got that down – looking for a moment as grim as she. Sally scribbles something, nods. Sally has only one expression. Then she sits straight, picks up a razor-blade, begins trimming a pencil, looking not at Shelton or Walters: in disdain of all the world. Perhaps she's queer, Shelton thinks, but takes no comfort in the thought. Meanwhile, he's let that Hutchins cheek him, which the Chief Superintendent would hardly have done . . .

Precisely then he sees the Chief Superintendent passing by in the hall. He dispatches Walters. Gently hears him, turns aside to Shelton's Aquarium. You have something? Not very much, sir (asked after like that, it seems less than nothing!) – but the last fellow, his name is Hutchins, had a conversation with the deceased. Did he, Gently says, that's progress. What did he talk to him about? About America, sir, about New York, about the real-estate racket. Hmn, Gently says, that's interesting. Yes, sir. Hutchins had been to New York. He's a building contractor in the Midlands, he had something in common with Clooney. Do you have a transcript? Gently says. I can read it back, sir, says Sally Dicks. Gently takes Sally in with a glance. Sally turns back two pages, face redder than usual. She reads, with breaks: I met him in the bar . . . Tuesday night in the bar. He was alone. I'm fresh back from the States, I asked him what part of the States he came from . . . Then, I don't know, he was in real estate, we got talking about that. They run a price-fixing racket out there, the deceased knew the ins and outs of it . . . names? He mentioned one I knew, a firm called American Homes, Inc. . . . I don't know, I forget the connection . . . No, he didn't say he worked for it . . . Well, yes, for my money, and don't forget I've just been over there . . . He had an accent, I don't know what, but they're all foreigners in New York . . . look, I said I don't know. Just an accent, right? Eyetie, Jerry, Swede, Pole, take your pick. He wasn't Irish . . . Yes, how many more times? He was a yank . . . he knew New York . . . knew my hotel there was fresh-built . . . the streets, places . . . he couldn't kid me. Then he shut up and cleared off . . . why? Well, he just did. I didn't talk to him again . . . no, I tell you, he seemed to avoid me. Sally Dicks stops reading. Hmn, Gently says, yes, very interesting. It proves a point, sir, Shelton says, now we know we're dealing with an American. An American with an accent, Gently says. Well, Hutchins is right about that, sir, Shelton says, they're all sorts of nationalities in New York. You only have to look at some of their names. Gently shrugs, says, Well, carry on, see if you can get any more impressions. Then he turns his broad back and walks out of the Aquarium. Was it, after all, something that Shelton had dug out of Hutchins? Now Shelton isn't certain. He can't interpret that last shrug. He finds himself staring at Sally Dick's bosom without any emotion, for or against it.

Gently continues through the hall and across the drive and across the lawn. Trudi and Stephen Halliday are sprawled on deck-chairs, laughing, languid, moist with sweat. They sit in the shade of a gnarled oak tree, an oak tree stunted by the east wind, a witch tree, with its seaward boughs each one turned back to point landward, full of bunchy, broomy twigs and little freak pink leaves: beneath it they sit, or droop, in the deck-chairs, rackets thrown down on the short, parched turf. Trudi wears a broad blue ribbon to secure her silver-blonde hair. She has the oval family face, but it is fined and free from heaviness. It has width across the cheek-bones, a delicacy in the nostrils, a decisive line in the jaw, a lighter rounding of the chin. Also the eyes, still showing kin, have had the grey distilled out of them, are a distinct, grave blue, frank eyes, ready to smile. Trudi, surely, has inherited her portion of the Viennese fiddler's charm. The lumpish Tichtel genes have been held at bay here. Her body, too, though strong, like Frieda's, has a grace and lightness not like Frieda's, is long-limbed, poised, flexible, handsome in whole and in part, showing well now, thrown down carelessly, beside the doctor's nephew's sturdier form. By any standard, Trudi is beautiful. She has beauty that needs no bush. It needs no painting, no dressing, no calculated concealment. Let her only lie sprawled and sweating, a panting tomboy, and she is beautiful. She is beautiful, as it were, even beyond sex, to a degree (seen in actresses), suggesting sterility: as though reaching a line drawn by nature, beyond which development may not go. Frieda may have children, Trudi has her beauty. It is a means which has suffered perfection and so passed into an end. The lust which drab Frieda can stir may not readily imagine possessing her sister.

They stop laughing as Gently approaches, but don't bother to stop sprawling. Shelton, in similar circumstances, might have felt an intruder; Gently seems not to notice. He smiles, pulls up a chair, glances at the guests lounging within earshot. The guests feel an impulse to move away, and unobtrusively implement it. Miss Trudi Breske, Gently says. Trudi says coolly, Yes. Congratulations on your game, Gently says, this business hasn't put you off your stroke. Trudi quietly re-spaces her legs but doesn't feel obliged to make a comment. Why on earth should it put her off her stroke, Stephen Halliday says, Trudi is fab, nothing puts her off. Gently shrugs, says nothing. She's a right to play if she wants to, Stephen Halliday says. She needs something to take her mind off things, that's what I'd have thought. And why not tennis? Gently nods. Yes, why not? Especially with such gifts for concentration. But that's why she's so good, Stephen Halliday says, because she can empty her mind when she plays. Yes, Gently says, I was watching, I noticed. Well then, Stephen Halliday says, what's so unusual about that? Trudi is frowning, not smiling. Her frown is beautiful too. It scarcely marks her smooth forehead or produces a sensible tilt of her brows: merely grows, like grass growing, or a haze passing over the sun. I'm sorry, she says, if I enjoyed my tennis. But Mr Clooney was really nothing to us.

GENTLY

He lived seven weeks under the same roof.

TRUDI

Oh, I know, I'm sorry for him. I wouldn't want anybody to, well, die like that. But he was just a guest, you know, a complete stranger to everyone. I can't really feel about him as I would if I'd known him well.

GENTLY

He didn't play tennis.

TRUDI

Good Lord no, nothing like that. But that's not all. I mean, a lot of people don't play tennis. He was just, well, he didn't try. He didn't offer to make friends. If you said something to him it stopped there, he wasn't interested in you.

GENTLY

Not in you?

TRUDI

Oh well! There are things that men always say.

STEPHEN

They say them to Trudi, in any case.

TRUDI

One doesn't pay attention.

GENTLY

But you spoke to him.

TRUDI

I suppose so. I couldn't very well not, could I? I arrange the entertainments – games, shows, competitions. But nothing of that sort amused him. I soon gave up asking. He was – I don't know – absorbed in himself, we didn't mean anything to him.

GENTLY

We?

TRUDI

Well . . . the rest of us. We try to make people feel they belong here. The personal touch, you know? But not him. He didn't come for that.