Talking to Strange Men (41 page)

He pulled the door behind him and closed it. The greenhouse was now quite tightly sealed up. He got off the saddle, still holding the handlebars, lightly twisting the grips. Already the fumes were strong. Gingerly he leaned the bike against the shelf, keeping the engine running, moving his hands rhythmically on the grips, staring out at the fading orange of the sky. He stared hypnotically at the sky, his hands rolled the grips automatically, he breathed in the choking chemical vapour. A dizziness began.

It was then that he heard the footsteps.

He didn't take his hands from the handlebars. He didn't even wonder who it might be, he knew who it couldn't be. Slowly he turned his head and saw coming out of the side way, walking towards him, Flora the tree girl. An immediate onset of panic must have made his face appear aghast, he was aware of his eyes becoming wide and staring. She flung open the greenhouse door as he snatched his hands off the grips and the engine stalled.

‘What on earth were you doing? This place is a gas chamber. You could have gassed yourself.'

He muttered something about only putting the bike away.

‘Are you sure?' She was looking penetratingly at him. ‘You weren't trying to . . .? You weren't, were you, John?'

The very fact that he knew what she meant implied the truth of it. ‘Oh, no,' he said. ‘No, of course not.' And he hadn't been, had he? He hadn't really meant to kill himself. When the fumes got too strong he would have got out, wouldn't he? He had only perhaps killed the capsicum. ‘I haven't done the plants much good.'

He was outside now, breathing clean evening air. Had she saved his life, this bright-faced curly-haired tree expert, or only provided him with an evening's company?

‘Did you come to see the monkey puzzle?'

She sounded shocked, dazed. ‘I was out looking at flats – well, bedsits really, somewhere to live. Then I remembered about Geneva Road and
Araucaria
and I came down this
way. I haven't seen the tree.' Her eyes went to his face, then up at Cherry's bedroom window. ‘Do you live all alone here?'

He nodded, still thinking, did I really? Might I be dead now? Shall I be glad one day that she came in the nick of time or shall I convince myself . . .? ‘I've got two spare rooms,' he found himself saying, and then, ‘Come on, I'll show you the monkey puzzle.'

HAVING SLEPT ON
it, Mungo knew what he must do. First though he went to the flyover drop to pick up the message from Dragon, his agreement to a meeting later that day. Somehow and without making a drama out of it, he knew he would never come here again, never pick his way among the copse of metal posts or attach a message to the inside of the central upright. Angus would say it had happened, what he predicted. Mungo didn't much care what Angus said.

There was a new Yves Yugall coming out in September. Actual copies hadn't appeared yet but a poster advertising it was up in Hatchard's window:
Lion Loot,
‘his scintillating new bestseller'. Mungo thought it was a rotten title or was it perhaps just that he was fed up for the moment with that kind of fiction? He crossed Nevin Square, not bothering to see if Lysander Douglas was holding anything, into Hill Street, into Church Bar. Graham had said he was going to the new pool out at Ruxeter with Ian and Gail, they were all swimming mad, but he would be back by lunch. His father's car was half-in half-out of the garage, he had finished his morning calls early and had no surgery on a Friday afternoon.

Mungo let himself in by the side door and went downstairs to the kitchen. Fergus was seated at the table, reading
The Times
and drinking a cup of his famous cocoa. He offered
to make Mungo a cup but Mungo, as always, as they all did, said no thanks.

‘I didn't know Graham smoked,' Fergus said, his forehead all creased up.

‘Didn't you?'

‘He must have been very secretive about it, not to say deceitful. I had no idea. It's disturbed me very much.'

Mungo had a dreadful desire to burst out laughing, though it wasn't funny, none of it was funny. The irony . . .!

‘He thought I was out, I daresay. There he was, down here smoking a cigarette. The great majority of smokers begin as teenagers. It's in adolescence that addiction starts. Did you know that, Mungo?'

‘I did as a matter of fact.'

‘Do you ever smoke Graham's cigarettes?'

‘No,' said Mungo, and because the simple negative wasn't enough, ‘I don't smoke any cigarettes. I don't like the smell.' Fergus was looking searchingly at him. ‘Excuse me, Dad, there's something I have to see to.'

He only knew the music drifting down was Albinoni because Angus had often told him so. A respected Venetian composer of over forty operas admired by Bach, Angus said. Mounting the stairs, Mungo thought of Angus's old friendship with Guy Parker, a friendship he had vaguely heard about, dimly remembered. Had Angus betrayed Guy Parker, reneged on him? Or was it nothing like that? Was it the other way about? He would never know. The door, as usual, was wide open. The allegro stopped and Angus was changing sides to the adagio, a book held in his left hand.

‘The death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths,' said Angus. ‘You don't happen to know who said that, do you?'

‘Me? No, I don't know. Why would I?'

‘What d'you fancy for lunch? I told Mum I'd go out for takeaway. She phoned, she's got an emergency. How about Greek?'

Mungo, who hardly ever swore, said violently, ‘Not bloody Greek, anything but that,' and he saw, quite plainly, one of what Ian would call his visions. He was standing on the hillside, on the viewing point, about to expound his
solution to the code, but Angus hadn't stayed to hear, he had turned and said something about living life instead of playing games, said it angrily, and before Mungo spoke again was crashing down the slope among the scented herbs, between the olives and the cypress trees. Mungo looked at his brother, at his puzzled kindly face, and the vision melted like mist from the Shot Tower. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘You know me, it's always Indonesian for me.'

Up the stairs went Mungo towards his own room. He stationed himself at the little round window under the roof. I shall have to take up collecting something. Take up fencing again maybe. Or just read a different sort of book. Graham and Ian and Gail were coming along from the Hill Street end. The others had their swimming things in a Sainsbury's carrier but Graham held his rolled up under his arm. He extinguished his half-smoked cigarette just before they vanished from Mungo's sight between the pavement and the side gate. Presumably that was what his father meant by deceitful.

Mungo came out of his room and went slowly down the top flight. Ian and Gail wouldn't come up, they would go down to the kitchen and make themselves the coffee they everlastingly drank. Mungo stood on the landing outside Graham's door, noticing that Angus had gone out. That was the only time Angus's door was shut – when he wasn't inside.

His hair still damp, plastered down like black paint over the crown of his head, Graham came up the stairs two at a time. He had the old tee-shirt on, the one with the octopus motif. Mungo said:

‘Can we talk?'

He saw all the light and all the enthusiasm die out of Graham's face. Graham pushed open his bedroom door and let it slam softly behind them. They stood facing each other.

‘You're the mole, aren't you?' Mungo said. ‘I know you are, so don't try and deny it.'

‘I wasn't going to deny it.'

‘I ought to have known that time I made a mistake about the number of the
Armadillo Army
story, but I didn't. I was stupid. It was a genuine mistake. I told you “eight” when I meant “seven”. That was why Moscow Centre couldn't
break that code.' He felt a fool talking about Moscow Centre, as if it were real, as if it weren't all pretence. ‘I wonder why you never told them where the safe house was. Or maybe you did and they didn't care. I never cottoned on. I trusted you.'

Graham lit a cigarette. ‘It's only a game, isn't it?'

‘What difference does that make?'

He didn't expect an answer and he didn't get one. ‘Why?' he said. ‘Why? If it was only a game' – he spoke carefully – ‘and after all we're young, we're still at school – I mean, you can't have been offered anything. Not money, not a bribe. Unless –' An idea came to Mungo. ‘You weren't black-mailed, were you?'

Graham shook his head. He was tall but he still had to look up to Mungo. ‘What would anyone blackmail me about, Bean?'

‘Don't call me that. Only my brothers call me that.'

The scorn made Graham go red. ‘It was for – the hell of it. Oh, God – it was for fun.'

‘You betrayed me for fun?'

There was silence. A long way downstairs a door slammed. Mungo thought he knew what that thing Angus had said to him meant, about the death of a mouse being the whole sack of whatever it was. He went to the door of his room and opened it, for he had heard voices on one of the lower flights. Behind him Graham said:

‘I'd better tell you. I was waiting for an opportunity to tell you. I'm leaving Rossingham, I'm starting at Utting next term.'

Angus's head appeared above the top of the stairs. ‘Charles Mabledene is here, Bean. He says he's supposed to see you at one.'

Once Mungo would have said with some pomp: Show him up. ‘OK,' he said. He had forgotten all about the appointment with Dragon. ‘He can come up here if he wants.'

Who had made the appointment, Charles Mabledene or he? Mungo couldn't remember, still less why it had been made. He stood aside, holding the door open, leaning against it, to let Graham pass through. He kept his head averted,
not daring to look at Graham because he was afraid of these unknown untried emotions that might make him do something he would later be ashamed of. The room stank of cigarette smoke. Charles Mabledene came in sniffing, turning his head and sniffing like some small fastidious animal.

‘Hallo.'

Mungo nodded, silent.

‘I've got some things to ask you.' The voice was still a treble, though a breaking one. He looked impossibly neat and clean as if bathed and polished up at that hairdresser's his mother had. ‘Some questions.' Charles Mabledene hesitated before going on. Mungo didn't let him go on.

‘I'm resigning,' he said. ‘I'm giving up as head of London Central.'

A small pink tongue came out and moistened Charles's lips. ‘Ah,' he said, and then, ‘I suppose Medusa will be taking over from you?'

Mungo uttered a violent ‘No!'

They looked at each other. Fergus's voice called from downstairs that lunch would be on the table in five minutes. Mungo said:

‘I thought you might care to . . .?'

‘Yes,' said Charles. ‘Yes, I would.'

‘That's settled then.'

‘You're going to have your meal, so I'll go now. I can see myself out.'

He had suddenly started talking like someone of forty. But he had always been a bit like that. After he had gone Mungo just stood there in the middle of the room. He had a curious feeling he might as well stand there for ever – well, for hours – empty, rather cold, pretty depressed really, for there seemed nothing else to do and as if there never would be. But presently he moved, screwed up his eyes, shook himself and soldiering on, went down to have his Indonesian lunch.

IT HAD BEEN
a near thing. Charles remembered just in time that he couldn't really ask Mungo those questions as to why he had been tested in that way, why he had been sent as decoy or prey to Peter Moran. He was a murderer, after all, and subject to the law. It was not something he was ever going to be able to talk about to anyone or even hint at.

He didn't mind. He could live with it. Probably he was going to go on dreaming of Peter Moran falling backwards down those stairs, hearing the sickening crunch, seeing that bloody jaw flop backwards – and waking up with a yell. His mother or father came rushing in, concerned. They said it was the onset of puberty. He could live with it, anyway. He could live with anything now he had got what he wanted: Charles Mabledene, alias Dragon, Director General of London Central.

They would see some changes now. Mungo-style scruples – relaxed inexplicably only in the matter of Peter Moran – would have no place in the new regime. When you considered what could be accomplished with scruples, all that planning information, the Ralston car affair, the retrieval of property, the rearranged invitations, how much more was possible when scruples were discarded? That code nonsense should go. It had always been artificial. What was the phone for? The ban on what Mungo rather naïvely called ‘dishonesty' that must be the first to go. A kind of Mafia, Charles decided he had in mind, but run by the cream of a rising generation, the country's best brains, a youthful public school elite, headed by one who had already killed his man . . .

A beautiful day: three minutes past one and twenty-four degrees. Charles crossed Hillbury Place towards the salon where his mother would be about to take her lunch break.
About to entertain her son to lunch, he corrected himself. He pushed open the door and as she turned round from her conversation with a client, he smilingly drew from one of the overhead driers a clutch of painted eggs and a fluffy blue rabbit. He would have liked to produce a flock of doves but he hadn't learned how to do that yet.

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