Solomon Gursky Was Here (26 page)

The most recent addition to the file concerning Sir Hyman was actually no more than a typed memo from a researcher, requesting a comment regarding an interview Guy Burgess had given when he had surfaced in Moscow only the day before.

“The Bolshie who did a bunk?” Sir Hyman had said. “I hardly knew Burgess and, furthermore, I do not appear on television.”

The file included magazine articles about Sir Hyman's country estate not far from Bognor Regis on the Sussex coast. The estate, its art treasures and antiques, its garden statuary, had been featured in both the
Tatler
and
Country Life
. Lady Olivia was an accomplished steeplechase jumper. She also bred corgis.

Moses longed to see the estate, but, as things turned out, he was summoned to Sir Hyman's flat in Cumberland Terrace. Moses arrived punctually at four and was shown into the library by the butler.

Left alone, Moses scanned the shelves encountering, for the first time, names that would come to be embedded in his soul:

Sir John Ross, Hearne, Mackenzie, Franklin, Back, Richardson, Belcher, M'Clure, M'Clintock, Hall, Bellot.… Then Moses drifted over to take a closer look at a painting that hung over the fireplace. An Eskimo primitive. Against a stark white background a yellow ball of sun bled red rays. Below, a menacing raven plucked at a floating human head.

“Ah,” Sir Hyman said, entering the library, “I see that you've been seduced by the deceitful raven.”

“Is that what it is?”

“Once a raven swooped low over a cluster of igloos and told the people that visitors were on the way. If the people did not encounter the travellers before nightfall, he said, they were to make a camp at the foot of the cliff. The visitors did not turn up and the people built new shelters at the foot of the cliff, as instructed. When the last stone lamp in the igloos was put out the deceitful raven flew straight to the top of the cliff that loomed over the igloos. On the summit, perched on an enormous overhang of snow, he began to jump, run, and dance, starting an avalanche. The trusting inhabitants below were buried, never to waken again. The raven waited for spring. Then, when the snows melted, revealing the bodies of the unfortunate people, he amused himself emptying their eye sockets. According to legend, the raven did not lack for tasty provisions well into summer. What would you say to a sherry?”

“Would you mind if I had a Scotch instead?”

“Of course not.”

They were interrupted by Lady Olivia. Considerably younger than Sir Hyman, blonde, with a daunting jaw, she held up a map of their dining-room table on a clipboard, flags protruding from each setting. “Henry's secretary just phoned to say he's iffy for tonight. The House will be sitting late.”

“Then we'll simply have to do without him.”

“But don't you see? That means I'd have to sit Rab next to Simon.”

Sir Hyman glanced at the flags. “What if you moved Rab over here?”

“I've seated Lucy there. She'll love it. After all, it's a coronet she's shopping for over here, isn't it?”

“Lucy Duncan?”

“The little Canadian girl.”

“Oh, Gursky. Couldn't we discuss this later?” Sir Hyman asked, indicating Moses. “I shan't be very long.”

Moses was reading a book that lay open on a pedestal.
The Diaries of Angus McGibbon, Hudson's Bay Company Chief Factor, Prince of Wales's Fort:

A young white man who is unknown to the Compy. or opposition is living with a wandering band of Esquimaux in Pelly Bay and appears to be worshipped by them as a manner of Faith-healer or shaman. He goes by the name of Ephrim Gor-ski, but possibly because of his dark complexion and piercing eyes the Esquimaux call him Tulugaq, which means raven in their lingo.

A half hour later an irritated Lady Olivia was back, clipboard in hand.

“Our problem is solved, daring,” Sir Hyman said. “Mr. Berger will be joining us for dinner. He's also a Canadian. He met Lucy when he was a child.”

That was hardly sufficient for Lady Olivia.

“He's at Balliol. A Rhodes scholar. His father is a poet.”

“Oh, how sweet,” Lady Olivia said. “I didn't know they had any.”

Three

Lucy.

Their first morning together Moses came to shortly before noon, trying to sort out whose silken sheets he was lying on, when he isolated the sound that must have wakened him. It was the sound of retching and flushing. Surfacing, but still far from shore, he pried open his eyes and followed the sound through an open door to where a nude Lucy reclined on her knees before the toilet bowl. She struggled to her feet, wobbly, touchingly thin. “What would you like Edna to bring you for breakfast?”

“Black coffee. Oh, and a vodka with orange juice would be nice.”

Still nude, Lucy pressed a button embedded in the wall and then stood on her scale. A fat, surly black lady drifted into the room without knocking. Lucy didn't bother to turn around. “Bring us a huge pot of black coffee, a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice and two yogurts. Oh, and Edna, this is Mr. Berger. He's moving in with us.”

Moses waited until Edna left before he said, “Am I?”

“Well, if you don't remember you can bloody well leave right after breakfast.”

“No, I want to stay.” And have Aunt Jemima bring me the newspapers and a yummy yogurt in bed every morning.

“I've gained three-quarters of a pound.”

He could, if he chose, count her washboard ribs. “I figure you weigh no more than a hundred.” Maybe one ten, he thought, if she was wearing her jewellery.

“You don't understand. They need you to be thin. Or don't you remember anything about last night?”

“I most certainly do.”

“Then who am I testing for this afternoon?”

“Manchester United.”

“Ho ho ho.”

“Remind me, then.”

“Sir Carol Reed.”

“It was on the tip of my tongue.”

“So was I for a good part of last night.”

Moses blushed.

“You'll find I can be rather coarse, but I come by it honestly. A satyr's daughter, they say. Do you own a dinner jacket?”

“Of sorts,” he said, figuring he could borrow money from Sam to rent one.

“Good. You'll need it tonight.” They were, she explained, going to the opening of a new play at the Royal Court and then on to a blacktie party at Sir Hyman Kaplansky's place. “Can you stay sober until I get back?”

He promised.

“Ken Tynan will be there and Oscar Lowenstein and Joan Littlewood and Peter Hall and God knows who else. Hymie invited them all for my sake.”

Once she was gone, Moses immediately poured himself a straight vodka and then wandered about her bijou flat. Her bookshelves were crammed with play texts, actors' memoirs, studies of Hollywood greats and near-greats. A wicker basket overflowed with old copies of
Stage, Variety, Plays and Players, Films and Filming
. Moses decided that just one more little vodka, say three fingers, wouldn't do any harm, and then he collapsed into a velvet-covered wingback chair. Something bit into the small of his back. He pulled out a pearl necklace, long enough for a fishing leader, which he reckoned must be worth thousands of pounds. Suddenly aware that he was being closely watched from a kitchen porthole, he sent it clattering into the nearest ashtray.

“Can I get you anything, Mr. Berger?”

“No, thank you.”

Lucy returned in a foul mood. “If it ever comes down to a choice between me and some tart in a bed-sitter, she gets the part. I'm being punished for being rich.”

The play, a kitchen-sinker, proved interminable. Charged with significance. If, for instance, somebody turned on the radio it was never to catch the Test Match results or a weather report. It was unfailingly Chamberlain announcing peace in our time or somebody snitching that they had just dropped it on Hiroshima. Outside, her driver waited in the Bentley. Harold drove them to Sir Hyman's flat, which was awash with important producers and directors, all of whom Lucy pursued relentlessly. Moses, who didn't know anybody there, retreated to the library and pulled out a familiar title, the book which convinced him that Ephrim (Gor-ski, or Tulugaq, had been fruitful during his sojourn in the Arctic. It was a first edition of
Life with the Esquimaux, A Narrative of an Arctic Quest in Search of Survivors of Sir John Franklin's Expedition,
by Capt. Waldo Logan. Logan, a native of Boston, had set sail for the Arctic on the whaling barque
Determination
on May 27, 1868. A month later, entering Hudson Strait, he wrote: “The next day, June 29th, we once more stood in toward the land, but it still continued foggy, and we were unable to get near until about 4
P.M
. having just before again sighted the
Marianne
. At the time two Esquimaux boys were seen coming at full speed toward us. In a few moments more they were alongside, and hoisted—kyacks and all—into the ship. Their names were ‘Koodlik' and ‘Ephraim,' each 5 foot 6 inches in height, with small hands, small feet, and pleasing features except that both had some of their front teeth gone. These boys had brought an abundance of salmon, caplins, sea-birds, &c. and eagerly began to trade with us. Speedily we were on the most friendly terms, and merry-making was the order of the day. On entering the cabin to supper their conduct was most orderly. But Ephraim, the younger one, would not eat before salting his bread and mumbling a blessing over it. I couldn't catch most of it, but I did learn that the Esquimaux word for bread is
lechem
.”

Drink betrayed Moses yet again, the print doubling on him. He replaced the book on the shelves and went to a mullioned window, worked it open, and sucked in the night air. Then, feeling marginally better, he wandered over to examine the picture that now hung over the fireplace, displacing the deceitful raven.

“It's Prince Henry the Navigator.”

Startled, Moses turned around to find that Sir Hyman had come up behind him once again.

“How old are you now, Moses?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Well now, in 1415, when Prince Henry was twenty-one, he severed all connections with the court and became the Navigator. He retired to Cape Vincent, Portugal's Land's End, and from that promontory he sent out ships to chart the coast of Africa, but, above all, to seek the legendary Kingdom of Prester John. But you must be familiar with the story.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Ah, the mythical kingdom of the just, a veritable earthly paradise. A realm of underground rivers that churned out precious stones and the habitat of an astonishing breed of worms that spun threads of the most exquisite silk. It was purported to lie somewhere in the ‘Indies', and it was said that Prester John combined military acumen with saintly piety and that he was descended from the Three Wise Men. It was anticipated that he would help to conquer the Holy Sepulchre as well as defend civilized Europe from the Anti-Christ, the hordes of cannibals to be found in the lands of Gog and Magog. News of the kingdom was first circulated in a letter supposedly written by Prester John in 1165 and sent to the Byzantine emperor of Rome. Unfortunately the letter proved to be a forgery. There is no just kingdom, but only the quest for one, a preoccupation of idiots for the most part, wouldn't you say?”

An agitated toothy Lady Olivia cantered into the library. “There you are, Hymie! Everybody's asking for you.”

“Coming, my dear.” He paused at the door and turned back to Moses. “I'm sure you appreciate that Lucy is a troubled young lady. Do be kind to her.”

T
O BEGIN WITH
, they were actually kind to each other, playing house together, tended to by Edna and Harold and provisioned by Harrods, Paxton and Whitfield, Fortnum & Mason, Berry Bros. & Rudd.

Looking after each other was a game they came to cherish. Lucy, for her part, astonished that she could be concerned for anybody else's welfare and Moses gratified that somebody gave a damn. Teasing, cajoling, abstaining from wine, she seduced him into abstinence. After he had gone without a drink for a fortnight, lying to her, pretending he didn't miss it, she pleaded with him to resume work on his study of the Beveridge Plan and the evolution of the British Welfare State.

Out with Harold one afternoon, flitting from Harrods to Asprey's to Heal's, she purchased a box of the creamiest bond paper available; an electric typewriter; file cards that came in a darling velvet case, each drawer with a brass pull; a leather armchair; and an antique desk with a tooled leather top. Then, while Moses was out for an afternoon stroll, counting each pub he passed, his own Stations of the Cross, she had her sitting room made over as a study. He found it all more than somewhat pretentious, but he was also pleased, especially by the Fabergé humidor filled with Davidoff cigars. There were, he figured, only two things missing. A portrait of M. Berger, Esq., pondering the mysteries of the cosmos, enduring its weight, and of course cork lining for the walls.

Lucy, he discovered, had come to London (on the first overseas flight anywhere out of Idlewild with her lucky seat number five available) immediately following the breakup of her affair in New York with a South American Grand Prix driver. Her next lover, a beautiful boy encountered at the bar in Quaglino's, absconded with a necklace of gold, diamonds, and pearls that had once belonged to Catherine the Great. RADA wouldn't have her, neither would the London Academy, so Lucy stitched together a school of her own. She took acting lessons from a dotty disciple of Lee Strasberg, dance and movement from a drunk who had once performed with Sadler's Wells (a bitchy old queen, whom Moses enjoyed having lunch with occasionally) and singing from a one-time tenor with La Scala, who claimed to have fled Mussolini, but more likely, Moses thought, scathing reviews. A McTavish Distillery executive arranged for her to be represented by a reputable agency before he realized that she was not Mr. Bernard's daughter, but Solomon's, and that he needn't have bothered.