Stanley and the Women (29 page)

‘No
problem,’ said Bert with his mouth close to the phone. ‘I told her she had to
be joking at first, then I couldn’t remember anything about it, could I? Well,
it wasn’t all no problem, because it still didn’t look good. But she was over
the moon that morning because Chris Rabinowitz wanted to talk to her about an
idea he’d had. She can be quite agreeable when everybody’s doing what she wants
at once. Remember? Anyway. Was I all right that time? When I look back, it
starts getting a bit vague over the veal.’

‘You
were fine. Not that I was in much of a state to judge.’

‘Not
offensive? … Good. Hang on, I’ll get her. Ah, you … shit,’ he said, his
voice getting louder and further away at the same time, fuzzier too. ‘You
bloody man. Ha … darling,’ he continued with a quite impressive off-mike
acoustic.
‘Darling,
it’s that, er… .

Nowell
came on the line full of simple wonder and pleasure at hearing the sound of my
voice, but changed it to sincere puzzlement when I seemed to think she might
want to be told what Steve had recently been up to, where he was, etc. When I
actually started to tell her she switched again and stopped listening. How she
got that across on a non-visual circuit without saying anything or making any
other kind of noise I had very little idea, but the fact made me realize I must
have seriously underestimated her acting ability in the past. Then something I
said about the flick-knife business evidently broke through, and she came over
all motherly — to me, not Steve.

‘I’m
very glad you’ve told me about this, Stanley. You did quite right. Of
course
it’s an upsetting, disturbing thing, suddenly coming across
a knife
hidden
away like that.’

‘Actually
it wasn’t —’

‘Anybody
who wasn’t upset, even a bit
frightened,
in those circumstances would
have to be rather stupid. Fair enough. But darling, you mustn’t mind me saying
this but it’s really not very sensible to
go on
being frightened because
of it.’

‘I’m
not —’

‘Because
a lot of young boys go in for that sort of thing, you know, having a knife and
so on, it makes them feel big. They’ve no intention in the world of
using
it.
And as for
Steve,
I’m quite staggered you think he might take a cut at
you, or Susan. I mean surely.’

‘I don’t
—’

‘He’s
such a
gentle
creature, always has been. I don’t believe he’d be
actually violent to anybody, however frantic or worked up he got. It’s just not
in him.’

That
was more or less how I felt myself, but hearing her say it almost made me want
to change round. ‘M’m,’ I said.

‘But I
want you to be quite certain of one thing, Stanley,’ she said, and her voice
started to tremble slightly with thick-and-thinness, so that I could visualize
every last millimetre of her expression. ‘If ever you need me, if there should
ever be anything I can do, you only have to say the word and I’ll be there,
depend on it.’

‘It’s
good to know that.’

Speaking
at three times the speed and steady as a rock, she said, ‘You must understand
quite plainly that he’s not coming here, Stanley. I won’t have it, I’ve got to
think of Joanne,’ their daughter, presumably. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on her.
Surely you can see that. I’m sorry but I really have no alternative. Goodbye.’

I got
it almost straight away. Although I was pretty convinced that my last remark
had sounded quite all right, devoid of any hint of malice or sarcasm, I could
always have got it wrong, and in any case from Nowell’s point of view I might
easily have been having malicious or sarcastic thoughts, and I might even have
been getting ready to be foul to her about not going near her son while he was
having a not very good time. Well, this was the sort of thing that helped me to
go on not making any mistakes about my first wife, like spending a few seconds
every couple of months wishing she had not run off with Bert.

The next morning I told Collings
about the potentium stuff and she told me it was normal. That evening Steve
started whispering to himself as he sat watching television, or rather with the
set turned on. From the way he kept pausing and looking attentive I reckoned he
was having a conversation with a voice inside his head. While a journalist on
the screen talked about and tried to illustrate the decline of bits of
Liverpool Steve listened to this other voice, disagreed with what it said,
disagreed quite strongly but consented to listen further, made a couple of
reluctant admissions and finally caved in. For five minutes nothing more happened,
but then he started disagreeing again and I went upstairs for a stiff Scotch.

The
morning after that I drove him over to St Kevin’s as usual. At first he kept
quiet, also as usual, but about half-way there he said or muttered, ‘Leave me
alone,’ not for my benefit. For the rest of the journey he said the same thing
or variants of it every couple of minutes, plus excuses like there was nothing
he could do about it. If he had been on the end of a phone trying to get rid of
a bore he would have sounded completely normal. At last we arrived.

‘See
you tonight, son,’ I said when he was getting out. Twice before when I said it
or something similar he had given me a terrific bawling-out for treating him
like a child and so on, but I found it was impossible to let him just go off in
silence.

Today
was different. He bent down to get a proper look at me and said, ‘Goodbye, dad,’
shut the door and moved off.

I
watched him cross the car park, head slightly forward as always, and pass out
of sight. Should I have gone with him to the ward and to hell with his
objections? Should I now find Collings or that Gandhi bloke and tell them about
the whispering? Well, presumably they knew already or soon would, unless he put
it on specially for me, which I doubted. And it was probably normal anyway.

The
thought of him saying goodbye like that came back to me several times in the
next few hours, especially when I got back to the office after a rather long
lunch break and Morgan Wyndham handed me a slip of paper and told me to ring
that number urgently — the St Kevin’s number with Collings’s extension. He then
took himself off as though the thing was his own idea, one which another time
would have earned him a lot of marks.

I got Collings
in ten seconds flat. ‘Hallo, Stanley,’ she said like a real old pal. ‘What have
you done with that boy of yours?’

‘No
jokes if you don’t mind. What’s up?’

‘Well,
that’s what I was wondering. Where is he?’

‘You
mean he didn’t — I brought him in as usual.’

‘Well,
we haven’t seen him here. Any idea where he might have gone?’

I tried
to think. ‘His mother’s. He went there before once. I told you.’

‘No
reply. Or from your home number. Of course he might be there all the same and
not answering. Anywhere else? … Right, I’ll let you know if anything turns
up.’

‘Hey,
hold it, hang on a minute.’

‘Yes?’

I had
been desperate to prevent her ringing off, but now I could find very little to
say. ‘Er … he will turn up all right, will he? How long?’

‘If he’s
still loose tonight we’ll set things moving in the morning. Don’t worry,
Stanley, they very seldom come to much harm.’

‘He’s
been talking to himself.’

‘Yes,
he has aural hallucinations. Very common with disorders of this kind. Usual, in
fact.’

At
least she had not said normal. ‘He wasn’t doing it or having them before
yesterday as far as I know. I thought he was supposed to be getting better.’

‘He is.
You should have seen him on his first couple of days here.’ This would have
been a good moment for one of her horse-laughs, but it failed to show. ‘Anyway,
I warned you not to expect his progress to be smooth.’

‘You
said he might have a relapse. Is that what this is?’

‘I
simply can’t say at this stage, Stanley, I’m afraid. It depends what he’s
doing. If he’s just sitting in a park somewhere, which he probably is, then
there’s not much to worry about.’

Except
for him being rather wet and cold in the kind of drizzle I could see through my
window. After Collings I rang home. Still no reply, which meant nothing. Before
I did anything else I had to see a punter about a quarter-page. I saw him,
though without result, and got home just on 5.30. When I let myself in the
phone was ringing. I took it in the kitchen.

‘Mr
Stanley Duke?’ a man’s voice asked pleasantly.

‘That’s
me.

‘Oh, it’s
the Metropolitan Police here, sir, Superintendent Fairchild speaking. I’ve got
a young fellow with me who says he’s your son. Name of Stephen. Is that
correct?’

‘Yes.
Is he in trouble?’

‘Well,
I’m very much afraid he is, sir, yes. He’s in our custody at the moment at the Jabali
Embassy, where I’m speaking from now. I have to ask you to come down for a
short interview.’

‘Jabali?
That’s Arabs, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,
sir.’ He gave me an address near Regent’s Park. ‘Just down the road from you,
really. You’ll be making your own way, will you, sir?’

‘Yes —
can you give me some idea of what’s happened?’

There
was a short silence. When the Superintendent spoke again it was in a slightly
different voice, one that made him sound bored stiff with what he was saying. ‘I
have to tell you there are diplomatic aspects to the matter which preclude it
being discussed over the telephone.’

‘Oh. Is
my son all right?’

‘Oh
yes, sir,’ said Superintendent Fairchild quickly and unreassuringly.

I had a
quick drink. Of course I did. Not being a blithering idiot I never even
considered taking the Apfelsine and phoned for a minicab, a quicker bet than a
black cab hereabouts and in the rain. But I was idiot enough not to remember
the flick-knife till the driver had rung the doorbell. No knife, at least
nowhere I looked in my top-speed search. All the way down the hill I told
myself that Fairchild would have taken a different tone over a stabbing, and
got nowhere.

The
embassy turned out to be one of a row of between-wars houses of
upper-bank-manager status, rather small for St Kevin’s but in a similar style.
In a back corner of the hall a uniformed constable was standing outside a
closed door. He let me into a sort of waiting room newly decorated and
furnished in an extremely down-market Western way. There was Steve, presumably
Fairchild, also in uniform, and an Arab in a three-hundred-quid suit.

Steve’s
appearance was a shock, but at the same time a relief after what I had been
imagining. He had the makings of a black eye, a bashed nose and a cut lip and
had probably been crying, perhaps still was in a small way. ‘Hallo, dad,’ he
said, not at all cheerfully.

The
Superintendent seemed about my age, tall when he stood up, with red-grey hair
and a clean-shaven gloomy face, rather a good-looking chap.

After
introducing himself he nodded at the Arab and said, ‘This is Mr Fuad.’

‘Major Fuad.’
The man spoke in a stroppy way. Arab or no Arab, seen close to he looked
incredibly Jewish to me, but who was I to judge?

‘All
right — Major Fuad. Er, Major Fuad would like to advise you of certain
circumstances relating to the present matter, Mr Duke.’ Without actually waving
his arms about, the Superintendent signalled to me that this was something that
would have to be gone along with.

‘I see,’
I said, and sat down on the indicated hard chair and waited respectfully.

In
quite good English, but speaking at a pitch of disrespect no Englishman would
have dared to use in front of another, even to a foreigner, Major Fuad said, ‘You
must realize that under international law this embassy is deemed to be part of
the sovereign territory of the Republic of Jabal and that intrusions upon it
will be treated in the same spirit as intrusions upon the republic itself,’ and
more in the same strain. He had a small moustache which made me wonder about my
own. He also reminded me of somebody, but not because of the moustache.
Superintendent Fairchild watched him with an expression on the far side of
contempt or distaste, more like continuous quiet amazement. I kept nodding my
head at what Fuad was telling me, or rather while he told me. Finally he said, ‘I
call upon you to see to it that your son understands these considerations in
future, because it seems that those of us here have been unable to do so. Will
you undertake to carry that into effect?’

‘Yes,
Major Fuad, I’ll do my best.’

‘You
would be well advised to. Tell your son he may not get off so lightly a second
time.’

‘I
will. Now may I ask what’s happened?’

‘Superintendent?’
Fuad handed the ball over but went on to listen closely to the next part.

‘Well,
sir, it seems in brief that this young man called here earlier this afternoon
and asked to speak to someone in Intelligence. He was taken in to see, er,
Major Fuad’s assistant and told him he had information about the activities of
Israeli secret agents in this country, in London. When questioned about the
source of his information he began to talk wildly, became violent and had to be
restrained by the official and one of the guards here. At this point the duty
PC was called in and he fetched me along.’ Fairchild’s manner sharpened. ‘That’s
not quite all, I’m afraid, Mr Duke. Your son had this in his possession.’