"Spy Hook" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

7

'We could have bought a microwave oven,' said Gloria suddenly and spontaneously.

'Is that what you want? A microwave oven?'

'With the money this damned flight is costing us,' she explained bitterly.

'Oh,' I said. 'Yes.' She was making a list in her head. She did this sometimes. And the longer the list got the more bitter hatred she had for the air line and its management. Fortunately for the air line's management none of them were sitting in the seat next to Gloria on the flight to Nice. I was sitting there. 'It's a rip-off,' she said.

'Everyone knows it's a rip-off,' I said. 'So drink the nice warm café, unwrap your processed fromage and enjoy the ambiance.'

The Plexiglass windows were scratched so that even the dense grey cloud looked cross-hatched. Gloria did not respond, nor eat the items set before her on the tiny plastic tray. She got nail varnish from the big handbag she always carried, and began doing something with her fingernails. This was always a dire portent.

I suppose I should have told her, right from the beginning, that our journey was made to fulfil a promise I'd made about finding Lisl Hennig's sister. I should have realized that Gloria would be angry when the truth was revealed, and that I'd have to tell her sooner rather than later.

Looking back on it, I don't know why I chose the airport departure lounge to tell Gloria the real reason for the trip. She was unhappy to hear that this was not actually the 'mad lovers' weekend' that I'd let her think of it as. She called me names, and did it so loudly that some people on the next seat took their children out of earshot.

It was at times like that I tried to analyse the essence of my relationship with Gloria. My contemporaries – married men in their forties – were not reluctant to give me their own interpretations of my romance with this beautiful twenty-two-year-old. Sometimes these took the form of serious 'talks', sometimes anecdotes about mythical friends, and sometimes they were just lewd jokes. Oddly enough it was the envious comments that offended me. I wished they would try to understand that such relationships are complex and this love affair was more complex than most.

Sitting on the plane, with no work to do and nothing to read except the 'flight magazine', I thought about it. I tried to compare this relationship with Gloria to the one I'd had with Fiona, my wife whose fortieth birthday would be coming up soon. She'd always said she dreaded her fortieth birthday. This 'dread' had begun as a sort of joke, and my response was to promise that we'd celebrate it in style. But now she'd be celebrating it in East Berlin with Russian champagne no doubt, and perhaps some caviar too. Fiona loved caviar.

Would I have got as far as London Heathrow with Fiona and still been trying to pretend that we were embarking on some madcap romantic escapade? No. But the fact of the matter was that such a romantic escapade would have had a very, very limited appeal to my wife Fiona. Wait a moment! Was that true? Surely the real reason I wouldn't have told her that this was a 'surprise getaway' was that my wife would not have believed for one instant that a sudden invitation to fly to Nice would be a romantic escapade. My wife Fiona knew me too well; that was the truth of it.

But at Nice the sun was shining, and it did not take very much to restore Gloria to her usual light-hearted self. In fact, it took no more than renting a car for our trip to the last known address of Inge Winter. At work Gloria had seen me dictating and conversing in German, and sometimes my imperfect Russian was used too. So she was ill-prepared for my halting French.

It went wrong right from the start. The beautifully coiffured young French woman at the car rental desk was understandably irritated when I tried to interpose news about my need for a car into a private conversation she was having with her female colleague. She didn't hide her irritation. She spoke rapidly and with a strong Provencal accent that I couldn't follow.

When finally I appealed to Gloria for help in translating this girl's rapid instructions about finding the vehicle, Gloria's jubilation knew no bounds. 'No compree!' she said and laughed and clapped her hands with joy.

Despite Gloria's uncooperative attitude we found the car, a small white Renault hatchback that must have been sitting in the rental car pound for many winter days, for it did not start easily.

But once away, and on to the Autoroute heading west, all was well. Gloria was laughing and I was finally persuaded that it had all been very amusing.

It was only a few minutes along the Autoroute before the Antibes exit. On this occasion, determined not to provide more laughs for Gloria I had a handful of small change ready to pay the Autoroute charge. Now, with Gloria bent low over a map, we began to thread our way through the back roads towards Grasse.

Once off the Autoroute you find another France. Here in this hilly backwater there is little sign of the ostentatious wealth that marks the coastline of the Riviera. Rolls-Royces, Cadillacs and Ferraris are here replaced by brightly painted little vans and antique Ladas that bump over the large pot-holes and splash through the ochre-coloured pools that are the legacy of steady winter rain. Here is a landscape where nothing is ever completed. Partially built houses – their innards skeletal grey blocks, fresh cement and ganglia of wiring – stand alongside half-demolished old farm buildings. Ladders, broken bidets and abandoned bath tubs mark the terraces of olive trees. Heaps of sand – eroded by the rain storms – are piled alongside bricks, sheets of galvanized metal and half-completed scaffolding. The fruit of urban squalor litters the fields where the most profitable cash crop is the maison secondaire.

But 'Le Mas des Vignes Blanches' was not such a place. Here, on the south-facing brow of a hill, there was a Prussian interlude in the Gallic landscape. The house had once been a place from which some lucky landowner surveyed his vineyards. Now the hillsides were disfigured with a pox of development, an infection inevitably rendered more virulent by the thin crescent of Mediterranean which shone pale blue beyond the next hill.

The house was surrounded with a box hedge but the white wooden gates were open, and I drove up the well-kept gravel path. The main building must have been well over a hundred years old. It wasn't the grim rectangular shape that northern landowners favoured. This was a house built for the Provencal climate, two stories with shuttered windows, vines climbing across the facade, some mature palm trees-fronds thrashing in the wind – and a gigantic cactus, pale green and still, like a huge prehensile sea creature waiting to attack.

At the back of the house I could see a cobbled courtyard, swept and scrubbed to a cleanliness that is unusual hereabouts. From the coachhouse jutted the rear ends of a big Mercedes and a pale blue BMW. Behind that there was a large garden with neatly pruned fruit trees espaliered on the walls. I noticed the lawns in particular. In this part of the world – where fierce sunshine parches the land – a well-tended lawn is the sign of eccentric foreign tastes, of a passionate concern for gardens, or wealth.

On the small secluded front terrace there was a selection of garden furniture: some fancy metal chairs arranged around a large glass-topped table and a couple of recliners. But despite the sunshine, it was not really a day for sitting outside. The wind was unrelenting, and here on the hill even the tall conifers whipped with each gust of it. Gloria turned up her collar as we stood waiting for someone to respond to the jangling bell.

The woman who answered the door was about forty years old. She was attractive looking in that honest way that country people sometimes are, a strong big-boned woman with quick intelligent eyes and greying hair that she'd done nothing to darken. 'Frau Winter?' I said.

'My name is Winter,' she said. 'But I am Ingrid.' She opened the door to us and, as if needing something to say, added, 'It is confusing that I have the same initial as my mother.' Having noted our cheap rented car, she gave all her attention to Gloria and was no doubt trying to guess our relationship. 'You want Mama. Are you Mr Samson?' Her English was excellent, with an edge of accent that was more German than French. Her dress was a green, floral-patterned Liberty fabric cut to an old-fashioned design with lacy white high collar and cuffs. It was hard to know whether she was poor and out of style, or whether she was following the trendy ideas that are de rigueur at smart dinner parties in big towns.

'That's right,' I said. I'd written to say that I was an old friend of Lisl, a writer, researching for a book that was to be set in Berlin before the war. Since I would be in the neighbourhood, I wondered if she would allow me to visit her and perhaps share some of her memories. There had been no reply to the letter. Perhaps they were hoping that I wouldn't show up.

'Let me take your coats. It's so cold today. Usually at this time of year we are lunching outside.' Her nails were short and cared for but her hands were reddened as if with housework. There was an expensive-looking wristwatch and some gold rings and a bracelet but no wedding ring.

I murmured some banalities about the winters getting colder each year, while she got a better look at us. So there was a daughter. She didn't look anything like Lisl, but I remembered seeing an old photo of Lisl's mother in a large hat and a long dress with leg-of-mutton sleeves: she was a big woman too. 'How is your mother?' I asked while Gloria took the opportunity to look at herself in the hall mirror and tease her hair out with her fingertips.

'She goes up and down, Mr Samson. Today is one of her better days. But I must ask you not to stay too long. She gets tired.'

'Of course.'

We went into the large drawing room. Several big radiators kept the room warm despite large windows that provided a view of the front lawn. The floor was of the red tile that is common in this region; here and there some patterned carpets were arranged. On the wall there was one big painting that dominated the room. It was a typical eighteenth-century battle scene; handsome officers in bright uniforms sat on prancing chargers and waved swords, while far away serried ranks of stunted anonymous figures were killing each other in the smoke. Two white sofas and a couple of matching armchairs were arranged at one end of the room and an old woman in a plain black dress sat in the ugly sort of high chair from which people with stiff joints find it possible to get up.

'How do you do, Mr Samson?' she said as her daughter went through the formalities with us, and studied Gloria carefully before nodding to her. Lisl's sister was not at all like Lisl. She was a slight, shrivelled figure, with skin like speckled yellow parchment and thinning white hair that looked as if it might have been specially washed and set for this visit. I looked at her with interest: she was even older than Lisl, goodness knows how old that would make her. But this was a woman who had come to terms with ageing. She hadn't dyed her hair or painted her face or stuck on to her eyelids the false lashes that Lisl liked to wear if visitors came. But despite all the differences, there was no mistaking the facial resemblance to her sister. She had the same determined jaw and the large eyes and the mouth that could go so easily from smile to snarl.

'So you are a friend of my sister?' Her words were English, her pronunciation stridently American, but her sentences were formed in a mind that thought in German. I moved a little closer to her so she did not have to raise her voice.

'I've known her a long time,' I said. 'I saw her only a couple of weeks ago.'

'She is well?' She looked up at the daughter and said, 'Are you bringing tea?' The younger woman gave a filial smile and went out of the room.

I hesitated about the right way to describe Lisl's health. I didn't want to frighten her. 'She might have had a slight stroke,' I said tentatively. 'Very slight. Even the hospital doctors are not sure.'

'And this is why you have come?' I noticed her eyes now. They were like the eyes of a cat; green and deep and luminous. Eyes of a sort I'd never seen before.

This old woman certainly didn't beat about the bush. 'No,' I said.

'But it means she'll have to give up the hotel. Her doctor insists it's too much for her.'

'Of course it is. Everyone is telling her that at some time or other.'

'It was your father's house?' I said.

'Sure. It has many wonderful memories for me.'

'It's a magnificent old place,' I said. 'I wish I could have seen it in your father's time. But the entrance steps make it difficult for Lisl. She needs to live somewhere where everything is on the ground floor.'

'So. And who is caring for her?'

'Have you heard of Werner Volkmann?'

'The Jew?'

'The boy she brought up.'

'That Jew family she hid away on the top floor. Yes, my sister was completely crazy. I was living in Berlin until 1945. Even me she never told! Can you believe that from her own sister she'd keep such a thing secret? I visited her there, it was partly my house.'

'It's astonishing,' I said dutifully.

'So the Jewish kid she raised is looking after her.' She nodded.

'He's not a kid any more,' I said.

'I guess not. So what's he getting out of it?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'He feels he owes it to Lisl.'

'He figures he's going to inherit the house. Is that it?' She gave a malicious little chuckle and looked at Gloria. Gloria was sitting on a carved wooden chair: she shifted uncomfortably.

'Not as far as I know,' I said defensively. So bang goes the whole purpose of coming all the way here. Did this vituperative old woman deliberately manoeuvre me into that denial? I couldn't decide. I was still thinking about it when the daughter arrived with tea and that sort of open apple tart in which the thin slices of fruit are carefully arranged in fanlike patterns.

'Ingrid made that,' said the old woman when she saw the way I was looking at it.

'It looks wonderful,' I said, without adding that after the 'light meal' on the plane almost anything would look wonderful. Gloria made appreciative noises too and the daughter cut us big slices.

During tea I asked the old woman about life in Berlin before the war. She had a good memory and answered clearly and fully but the answers she gave were the standard answers that people who lived under the Third Reich give to foreigners and strangers of any kind.

After forty-five minutes or so I could see she was tiring. I suggested that we should leave. The old woman said she wanted to go on longer but the daughter gave me an almost imperceptible movement of the head and said, They have to go, Mama. They have things to do.' The daughter could also show a hard edge.

'Are you just passing through?' Ingrid asked politely while she was handing our coats.

'We are booked in to the big hotel on the road this side of Valbonne,' I said.

'They say it's very comfortable,' she said.

'I'll write up my notes tonight,' I said. 'Perhaps if I have any supplementary questions, I could phone you?'

'Mama doesn't have many visitors,' she said. It was not meant to sound like an encouragement.

When we reached the hotel it was not the 'honeymoon hotel' that I'd described to Gloria. It was at the end of a long winding road – broken surfaced and pot-holed as are all local roads in this region – and behind it there was an abandoned quarry. In a bold spirit of enterprise someone seemed to have fashioned a car park gate from two cartwheels, but on closer inspection it was a prefabricated plastic contraption. A few genuine old wine barrels were arranged across the patio, and in them some rhododendrons and camellias were struggling to stay alive. The hotel was a pink stucco building with shiny plastic tiles.

At the far end of the car park there was an out-building in which some derelict motor vehicles of indeterminate shape and marque were rusting away undisturbed by human hand. We parked beside a new Peugeot station wagon and a van that carried advertisements for a butcher's shop in Valbonne. A large sign said that all cars were parked at owner's risk and another pointed the way to an empty swimming pool which was partially repainted in a vivid shade of cerulean blue.

But once inside everything looked up. The dining room was clean and rather elegant, set with starched cloths and shining glass and cutlery. And there was a big log fire in the bar.

Gloria went straight upstairs to bathe and change but I went into the bar and wanned my hands at the fire and tried the Armagnac that the barman said was especially good. Gloria didn't enjoy alcohol: she preferred orange juice or yogurt or even Seven-Up. It was another manifestation of the generation gap I suppose. Concurring with the barman's verdict I took a second Armagnac up to our room, where Gloria had just finished taking her bath. 'The water is hot,' she called happily. She walked across the room stark naked and said, 'Have a shower, darling. It will cheer you up.'

'I'm cheered up already,' I said, watching her.

All the way from Le Mas des Vignes Blanches to the hotel, she'd kept quiet, giving me time to think about the Winter woman. But when I said, 'So what did you think of her?' Gloria was ready to explode with indignation.

'What a cow!' said Gloria, dabbing herself with a towel.

'If I have to be knocked out in the first round it's a consolation to know it's done by a world champion,' I said.

'She trapped you.'

'And you have to admire the skill of it,' I said. 'She sensed what we'd come for even before we started talking. It was quick and clever. You have to admit that.'

'What a vicious old moo,' said Gloria.

'Are you going to put some clothes on?'

'Why?'

'It's distracting.'

She came and kissed me. 'You smell of booze,' she said and I stretched out my arms to embrace her. 'Well, that's very reassuring, darling. Sometimes I think I've lost the art of being distracting.'

I reached for her.

'No no no! What time's dinner? Stop it! There's no time. I said what time's dinner.'

'It's too late to think of that now,' I said. And it was.

Afterwards, when we were sitting quietly together, she said, 'What are you, Bernard?'

'What do you mean?'

'Are you English, or German, or nothing? I'm a nothing. I used to think I was English but I'm a nothing.'

'I used to think that I was German,' I said. 'At least I used to think that my German friends thought I was a Berliner, which is even better. Then one day I was playing cards with Lisl and an old man named Koch, and they just took it for granted that I was an Englishman and had never been anything else. I was hurt.'

'But you wanted it both ways, darling. You wanted your English friends to treat you like an Englishman, while your German friends thought of you as one of them.'

'I suppose I did.'

'My parents are Hungarian but I've never been to Hungary. I grew up in England and always thought of myself as one hundred per cent English. I was a super-patriot. Being English was all I had to hang on to. I learned all those wonderful Shakespeare speeches about England and chided anyone who said a word against the Queen or wouldn't stand up for the National Anthem. Then one day one of the girls at school told me the truth about myself.'

'Truth?'

'You Hungarians, she said. All the other girls were there watching us, I wasn't going to let it go. She knew that. I told her I was born in England. She said, if you were born in an orange box, would that make you an orange? The other girls laughed. I cried all night.'

'My poor love.'

'I'm a nothing. It doesn't matter. I'm used to the idea now.'

'Here's to us nothings,' I said holding the last of my Armagnac aloft before drinking it.

'We'll miss dinner unless you hurry,' she said. 'Go and have a shower.'