Second Violin (22 page)

The woman was watching. One hand buried in the mass of black ringlets, her upper body weight on one elbow. Troy could see her out of the corner of his eye. The teat of the condom hung on his
cock, opaque and glutinous like a strand of toadspawn.

‘Am I your first?’

Troy said nothing.

‘You can tell me, you know.’

‘Did it feel that way?’

‘Just a bit.’

Then the other hand snaked out, plucked the condom off him and let it drop. The hand regripped his cock.

‘Everybody has to start somewhere.’

‘You’re not the first. Really you’re not.’

The hand began to work life back into him.

‘But there haven’t been many?’

‘No there haven’t.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s get some practice in shall we?’

After the third bout, he was exhausted. There was nothing left to come, and he hoped she had wrought some pleasure out of him. He hoped even more she did not want a fourth.

Now she seemed coolly chatty. Not all passion spent perhaps, but all urgency gone from her voice. She lay on her side, stroking his thigh with one hand – it seemed perilously like
affection – musing far from idly.

‘Who was the old man you were sitting with on the train?’

‘My father.’

‘Oh . . . I see . . . well, I don’t really . . . what language was that the two of you were speaking?’

‘Russian. My father’s an emigré from an old revolution.’

‘Ah, I get it . . . he’s sort of an Alex Troy figure.’

‘No, not sort of.’

‘How not sort of?’

‘He
is
Alex Troy.’

She propped herself up on both elbows. Belief and disbelief competing for the expression in her eyes. A quick shake of her head as though clearing cobwebs from the mind, her hair brushing his
chest, only to be swept back again with the upward jerk of her chin.

‘You know I think I’ve been rather stupid.’

‘How so?’

‘Did you not recognise the man I’m travelling with?’

‘No more than you recognised my father. I just assumed . . .’

‘Assumed what, Mr Troy? Assumed what?’

‘That . . .’

‘That I was a gold-digger and he was my sugar daddy?’

‘Yes, that’s pretty well word for word what I thought.’

‘Well, half-right, he is my sugar daddy. Of course, he is. It’s just that I’m not digging for gold. And he’s also my boss by-the-bye.’

‘Boss of what?’

‘He runs the low-temperature physics lab at Cambridge. I am, as you can readily deduce I’m sure, a low-temperature research physicist.’

‘Chilled to the marrow already.’

‘Quite. But there’s more. He’s also a whatnot to a politician.’

‘Whatnot?’

‘Advisor, consultant, expert. That sort of thing.’

‘And his name?’

‘Gustav Lindfors.’

Now Troy felt stupid. He should have recognised Lindfors as surely as she should have known his father.

‘Ah, Churchill’s expert on the price of chewing gum and the level of German jackboot production.’

‘Quite. As you say, a bit of a Poo Ba . . . a Lord-High-Everything-Else. And we’ve both been stupid. Your father is here to meet Lindfors. And they got us both out of the way by
giving us a tanner each and sending us to the flicks, didn’t they?’

‘Some flick. But as you say there’s more. They’re not here to meet one another, they could have done that in London. On the train they ignored each other. It was as though
they’d never met. No, they’re here to meet a third party. And you and I are the cover.’

‘Bloody hell. Wonder who? Not – !!?!?’

‘Of course not . . . he’s rather busy invading Poland.’

‘Then who?’

‘Do you really need to know?’

‘Need be damned. I want to know. I thought I was going to Monte for a dirty weekend . . .’

‘I think you’ll find you’re having that right now.’

‘. . . Not to be his . . . his . . . fig-leaf.’

‘Well, my dad’s not leaving any clues.’

She flopped down on top of him. Hunger struck.

‘I could eat a horse.’

‘Don’t ask. They’d probably serve you one,’ Troy replied. ‘But I have a better idea. An old favourite of my father’s. Champagne with scrambled eggs and crisp
bacon. Perfect after-midnight munching.’

‘Sounds rather sybaritic to me.’

‘Even more so when prepared by someone else and consumed in bed. Let me call room service.’

‘OK. I believe you now. You have done this before.’

A quarter of an hour later there was a tap at the door. Troy answered it in his dressing gown – his, as yet, nameless lover discreet behind the bathroom door – and the waiter wheeled
in a trolley. Veuve Clicquot in an ice bucket, bacon and eggs under silver hoods. Standing in the doorway to sign for the meal, Troy saw the next door down on the opposite side open. A small man in
a grey suit emerged from his father’s suite. The waiter and the stranger passed each other in the corridor, just as the woman, wrapped in a bath towel peeked over his shoulder.

‘Don’t dawdle – the smell’s driving me wild.’

‘Look,’ said Troy, and she leaned out.

‘Do you know him?’

‘Not from the back I don’t.’

‘He just came out of my father’s room.’

Then the door to his father’s suite opened again, and Lindfors stood in the doorway, speaking softly to a face still hidden in the room, and she ducked back with a muttered, ‘Oh hell
. . . close the door.’

She dropped the towel and ran naked for the bed. Troy closed the door. She lay back like an Ingres odalisque, feet crossed at the ankle, one arm raised high across the pillow to set both breasts
quivering.

‘Indulge me, Mr Troy. Indulge me.’

Troy lifted the lids on the dorm feast.

‘You like close shaves, don’t you? You like danger.’

‘Bloody hell. Who doesn’t? Don’t tell me you don’t.’

‘I’m . . . not indifferent . . . that’s not the word . . . but I take it as an occupational hazard.’

‘My God . . . I’d never have guessed. You’re in the army!’

Troy shoved a piece of crisp, smoked bacon into her mouth.

‘No comment.’

‘Alright, then the RAF or the Navy . . .?’

Troy twisted the bottle of Veuve Clicquot and eased the cork out with a gentle hiss.

‘Still no comment.’

Troy and his father breakfasted together. He scarcely heard a word his father said for the roaring of last night’s woman through his veins. She started off somewhere in
his groin, sped to the head and all but deafened him to the outside world.

She passed him, almost as closely as she had done on the train, arm in arm with Lindfors. She did not acknowledge him, Lindfors and Alex ignored each other just as steadily. It was, Troy
thought, just a bit farcical. But whilst he spoke not, he thought too soon.

As they left the dining room the other man, the ‘Third Man’ as Troy had come to think of him, was descending the staircase from the mezzanine. He was dressed outlandishly, like a
parody of an English country gentleman, tweedy plus fours and a matching, far-from-fetching baggy jacket. The factotum behind him lugged a set of golf clubs. Alex and he passed without a word.

Now, Troy thought, they were even dressing for a farce.

All farces involve a bedroom as a necessary setting. A farce is incomplete without one. If at all possible the protagonist should lose his trousers.

More scrambled eggs, more crispy bacon, more chilled Veuve Clicquot. No trousers. A second night together.

‘You do realise I don’t know your name?’

‘You do realise you haven’t asked? And besides, all I know is Troy, Mr Troy.’

Troy bit on the bullet. Toted the burden his parents had lumbered him with in a fit of madness one day in 1915. Felt her fingertips trail lazily down his chest.

‘Frederick.’

Her hand stopped in its tracks.

‘Frederick. You mean you’re a Fred? I don’t do it with Freds!’

‘Quite. As an old school chum of mine put it, “You can ruin anything with the word Fred”.’

‘What’s it to be then, Fred or Frederick?’

‘At home I’m Freddie. Anywhere else I find Troy suffices. One syllable is quite enough. And you?’

She was toying with a strand of her hair, head down close to his chest, enunciating slowly, stringing out the word.

‘Is . . . a . . . bella.’

Head up, eyes smiling. Mischief.

‘Is that three or four syllables?’

‘Four, I think, but you can call me Izzy.’

He knew she was lying, but he couldn’t care less. Izzy it was. And Izzy Who really didn’t matter.

‘When are you going back to England?’

‘As soon as Lindfors and your father are through. And you?’

‘We’re going on to Siena. I was wondering . . . when I get back . . . it would be nice to see you again.’

Izzy buried her face in the pillow. A muffled voice said, ‘You’re making plans. It’s been nice. But for God’s sake don’t make plans.’

Troy decided that he could probably, given the choice, spend every warm evening the calendar had to offer for the rest of his life sitting in the Campo in Siena, with a glass
of rich, red Vino Nobile di Montepulciano in one hand – but, then, what choices was he not given? Given the head start in life of being the son of a wealthy man – none of whose children
needed employment for its own sake, he had chosen to be a copper and live in the middle of London. In his other hand was
Il Giorno
, with which he struggled and failed. At least pictures,
names and titles required no translation. The man on page two was captioned ‘Count Ciano’, husband of Edda Mussolini, son-in-law of Il Duce and Italian Foreign Minister. He was also the
man Troy had seen emerging from his father’s room in Monte Carlo. The man he’d seen setting out for the golf course the morning after.

His father was gazing at the palazzo tower on the southern side of the Campo, outlined in burnished gold against a sky so vividly blue Troy could not think of an appropriate shade to describe
it. It was a reverie of sorts, the sort all the Troy men were prone to. It seemed a shame to break it, but he would do it all the same.

He put down the paper and tapped on Ciano’s picture.

‘You could have told me,’ he said.

Alex only glanced at the photograph before resuming his gaze into the night sky, his Campari and soda untouched on the table.

‘Knowledge of this kind can be a burden. I merely chose not to burden you.’

‘I know anyway.’

‘You spied on me?’

‘He came out of your room about two in the morning. I didn’t recognise him. And I saw him setting out the next morning, looking like an extra in
Laurel and Hardy Go Golfing.
I
didn’t recognise him then either.’

‘Let us hope you were not alone in your ignorant condition, my boy Golf was meant to be his . . . what is the word . . .?’

‘Cover?’

‘Cover? Quite. I was thinking of something a little more elaborate . . . the red herring . . . he is golf crazy and golf boring after all. Anyone who saw him in Monte might readily have
concluded he was there for the golf. There is a British ex-pats’ golf course just above the city on the French side, just as there is in Rome.’

‘Why not meet him here?’

‘Then everybody would have recognised him.’

‘And the real purpose? The real reason you and Lindfors met with him in secret?’

Alex looked at his son at the mention of Lindfors’ name, but let it pass. A brief sigh, the merest hint of exasperation and Troy knew the old man was going to tell him.

‘To talk. I saw no harm in talking one last time. The lack of talk is how we got into this mess after all. There is still a possibility Italy will stay out of the war. Ciano is not
pro-war. Who knows, he may have some influence? He may persuade Mussolini to let Hitler go it alone. I can even see advantages for Hitler in going it alone.’

‘Such as?’

‘They would benefit from Italian neutrality . . . they would have a trading partner whose ships we would not sink, whose airfields we would not bomb. And as a bonus . . . he would not be
called upon to bail out the Italians when they cock up their war – as they surely will.’

‘But will Ciano persuade Mussolini not to invade his neighbours . . . to stay out of Greece and the Balkans? Invading Albania was a pretty poor precedent for peace . . . and hardly
evidence for them cocking up their war.’

‘That is where our talks broke down. But, I still say it was worth the attempt.’

‘Hardly a pleasant experience – talking to a fascist, I mean.’

‘“Jaw jaw is better than war war” as Winston is apt to say. But he is scarcely the exemplar of his own wisdom – he will not talk to Labour . . . they are little short of
Bolsheviks . . . he will not talk to Russia . . . they
are
Bolsheviks . . . he will not talk to rebels in his own party if they do not agree with him almost word for word . . . and for
whatever reason he would not talk to Ciano. He sent Lindfors. Whether he sent Lindfors because he knew I would be there, I did not ask. I have known Ciano since the Twenties. I’ve no idea
whether Winston and Ciano have even met and I have not had the occasion to ask. He is not speaking to me and may not again.’

‘Since when?’

‘Since my editorial on Russia . . . but let us not ruin a beautiful sunset with talk of Mr Churchill. We will be hearing quite enough from him, however indirectly, in the months and years
to come.’

‘Do you really think this war will last years?’

Alex was gazing at the darkening sky again. He looked at his son, shot him an ancient mariner’s fixing glance and said, ‘Tomorrow will be beautiful. Why don’t we stroll down to
the botanical gardens before luncheon, and then perhaps a visit to the Duomo in the afternoon? I believe there is a Donatello of one saint or another.’

Whichever saint Donatello had carved for the cathedral in Siena, Troy never got to see. In the morning at breakfast Alex showed him a telegramme:

‘Would you mind terribly if we missed Amalfi? I would like to be there. It is a chapter in my life. So many chapters lack a sense of an ending. I would like to be there
when this one ends.’