The Hothouse by the East River (8 page)

They
are walking along the path at the edge of the wood. Helmut has newly arrived at
the Compound. He is called simply Kiel, where Claus Kiel is always known as
Claus. Not that either name is the man’s own; but both at the beginning, after
they secretly volunteered for separate batches of the German prisoners of war,
and were tested, and vetted, and eavesdropped upon for months on end, opted for
the cover name of Kiel. Claus Kiel is a gentle ill-favoured boy with puny limbs
all at odds with each other, pale, thin and nervous, with a vague and tentative
leaning towards artistic appreciation. In any other fighting nation but Nazi
Germany he would have been rejected for military service, and this is plainly
why, when the opportunity arose, he took refuge with the British cause, lest
he should be sent back to Germany when one of the periodic exchanges of
prisoners should take place, and so be obliged to engage once more in the
physical nightmare of combat.

Helmut
Kiel is a different concept altogether.

According
to Allied information gathered in the course of the months preceding his
acceptance for British secret service, he was the wild bad boy of his German
training unit.

Helmut
Kiel joined the defectors’ Compound a few weeks before Paul Hazlett. They have
a fight. It starts with an argument over their work, something trivial. The
real cause is Elsa. They knock each other about in a field behind the Compound.
Not Kiel, but Paul is rebuked, on the grounds that Paul has the unfair
advantage over Kiel in that he is not a prisoner of war. The affair is passed
off as one of those explosions of nerves that occur in the Compound and in the
billets.

In the
house where Elsa is quartered she is in trouble. The room she occupies is large
enough for two beds, but she has refused to share the room with another girl.
The elderly women who administer these affairs send for her to come to them in
their bottle-green office in London. Greying print dresses hang over their
drooping figures. They hunch over their desks. One of them tells her, ‘It’s the
regulations that girls under thirty have to share a room. Only women of thirty
and more are entitled to a room to themselves.’

‘I need
a room to myself,’ Elsa says. ‘I won’t share.’

‘There’s
a war on,’ one of these draped billet-administrators reminds her in a voice
which cracks like a scratchy gramophone needle on an old record.

‘But,’
says Elsa, ‘it wouldn’t be possible for me to share with another girl. It
wouldn’t be comfortable for the other girl. I see things.’

‘What?’
says the one. ‘You what?’ says the other. Elsa swings her bare brown legs in
the chair. Her clothing coupons do not run to stockings for everyday
occasions.

‘Well,
yes,’ she says, ‘I am really a bit uncanny. I have supernatural
communications.’ There is a large round government clock stuck up on the wall,
its size hideously magnifying the importance of working hours and seconds.
Underneath it, a poster, unaccountably weather-beaten, bears the motto,
‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’.

The
billet-administrators, who have been up to now, to all appearances identical,
invisibly separate themselves, hearing Elsa’s explanation, into senior official
and less senior. The senior draws Elsa’s file towards her, puts on her reading
spectacles, and begins to read the details set forth on the first folio, while
her lesser-paid colleague cranes forth her head over her desk and says
probingly to Elsa, as if interviewing her for her qualifications in the field
of aberrant sex, ‘Do you use an instrument?’

‘No, it
isn’t necessary,’ says Elsa, ‘for spiritual communication.’ She is looking at
the large clock-face and noting that she is late for her appointment with
Paul. This is their second leave together in London. She says, ‘I can’t wait
too long. I must go, I’m afraid. I’m on leave, actually, you know.’

Nobody
is put to share her room. Elsa is rather disliked on this account, her only
friend being Poppy Xavier who has the best room in the house to herself as a
matter of course.

‘Peter
Pan,’
says Paul Hazlett to his son. ‘Is that what
you called me over here to discuss?’

‘You
were not called over by me. You said you wanted to come.’

‘Garven
is getting me down. A psychoanalyst working in my house as a butler. He’s
determined to document her case history. Our lives will be an open book.’

‘Why
don’t you go away?’

‘I
can’t leave your mother. What are you saying? What are you telling me?’

‘Walk
out. Leave her alone with Garven.’

‘Is
that what she wants?’

‘I
wouldn’t be surprised.’

‘I
couldn’t do a thing like that,’ says Paul. ‘I couldn’t walk out and leave your
mother in difficulties. She was in difficulties with Kiel. Now if she gets in
difficulties with Garven—’

‘Something
new,’ Pierre says.

‘What?’

‘Her
difficulty with Kiel,’ Pierre says. ‘You never said before she was in
difficulty with him.’

‘Well,
she was. She’s a difficult woman, and he was a spy. Do you know what he did? He
got himself taken prisoner by us, then he got himself a job with our
intelligence unit on the pretext of being anti-Nazi. After he’d been
broadcasting for our outfit six months he picked a fight and got himself sent
back to the prison camp. Three days later he went on the air in a prisoners of
war exchange-of-greetings programme. He sent a simple message to his mother
and sister. But his voice was recognisable, you see. He’d been broadcasting for
us. We were supposed to be an authentic underground German station. His voice
was recognisable. We weren’t sure, but it was definitely possible that Kiel did
it deliberately to betray our identity.’

‘Why
was he allowed to do it? Wasn’t there any security?’

Paul
says, ‘You might well ask. Our security slipped up.’

‘Well,
it was a long time ago,’ Pierre is saying as he flicks through the bound pages
of a script lying on his knee.

‘Your
mother was in difficulty with Kiel. She was suspected of having an affair with
him. I had to get her out of that difficulty. And I did.’

‘You
put Kiel in jail after the war?’

‘I was
instrumental. Everyone else thought he was just a wild boy. But he was an
agent, all right. I tracked him down as an S.S. man. He’d been in the S.S. all
along. He started operating in the East after the war. I got him out of there.
He did some damage but we got him in the end.’

‘Well
he’s dead now,’ Pierre is saying. ‘Poor old Kiel.’

‘He’s
here in New York,’ says Paul.

‘No, he
isn’t,’ says Pierre.

‘Princess
Xavier thinks so.’

‘Does
she? I thought she didn’t.’

‘Sometimes
she does,’ says the father, ‘and sometimes she doesn’t. You can’t trust women.’

‘Mother
doesn’t think it’s Kiel. She thinks he looks too young.’

‘It
depends,’ says Paul, ‘what she’s feeling like. One week she’ll say yes and the
next week she’ll say no. I say yes.’

‘I say
no,’ says Pierre. ‘I went and established it. He died in jail.’

‘The
records are wrong. He must have had a body substituted for his.’

‘Why
don’t you forget it?’ says Pierre.

‘My life’s
in danger,’ says Paul. ‘Messages on the soles of shoes.’

‘Katerina
says he’s a shoe store man, nothing more.’

‘Your
sister Katerina’s a liar. She hasn’t been near him.’

‘She
says she has.’

‘Yes,
she says. She’s no good. She says anything.’

‘What
does it matter? Spies don’t matter any more,’ Pierre says. ‘There isn’t any war
and peace any more, no good and evil, no communism, no capitalism, no fascism.
There’s only one area of conflict left and that’s between absurdity and
intelligence.’

‘Oh,
for God’s sake,’ says the father. ‘What are you trying to do to me, you and
Katerina together? My life’s in danger. Look at your mother, she’s in
difficulties.’

‘Her
shadow falls the way it wants,’ Pierre says.

‘Stop!’
says Paul. ‘I won’t hear it!’

‘You
think I haven’t noticed it?’

‘You
must be crazy,’ says Paul. His throat beats with a throbbing that reaches his
ears; help me, help me, cries the throb.

‘Peter
Pan,’
says Pierre, ‘is going to be a very big
success. We aren’t changing a word of it. We have permission to put it on; we
have a contract. We didn’t tell the J. M. Barrie trustees that everyone who’s
acting in it is over sixty. The age doesn’t come into the contract. They can’t
stop us. It’ll be a riot.’

‘If we
could get rid of Garven,’ Paul says, ‘I’d raise the money or the best part of
it and help you. It sounds obscene, though.’

‘Peter
Pan
is a very obscene play. Our presentation will
only help to direct attention to that fact,’ says Pierre, looking cornerwise at
his father. ‘Our talent will reveal the absurdity of the thing. The show will
be a success, a big success.’

‘If we
could get rid of Garven,’ Paul says.

‘And
Kiel? You still want to get rid of Kiel?’ says his son.

‘Of
course. That’s the most urgent factor, Kiel.’

‘And
Garven?’

‘Garven
has to go.’

‘Set
them one against the other,’ says the son.

‘How?’
says the father. ‘That’s what I ask. You think I haven’t thought of it?’

‘Money,’
says Pierre, ‘is how things are done.’

‘Not
everything,’ says Paul, ‘that’s what you of the younger generation don’t
realise.’

‘I’m
not of the younger generation,’ Pierre says. ‘I’m only younger than you. The
younger generation is a whole generation away from mine. Nothing to do with
me.’

‘I have
to go,’ says Paul, clinking the ice at the bottom of his glass, then draining
what liquid remains in it. He looks at his very flat gold wrist watch. ‘I have
to go,’ he says.

‘To
your analyst,’ Pierre says.

‘What?’

‘You
have to see your analyst.’

‘Who
told you that?’ says Paul.

‘The
name of my informant,’ says the son, ‘is —let me see … what was it? … the
name of my informant … the name of … the name. The name escapes me.’

‘Your
informant has made a mistake.’

‘Oh
no,’ says Pierre. ‘Oh no, nothing escapes my informant.’

‘What
have you heard, what on earth have you heard?’ says Paul. ‘What’s this about me
and an analyst?’

‘Well,
of course she’s all right. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t do as you
please. Do as you please.’ Pierre’s right hand turns on his wrist permissively
while his left hand flicks the neatly-bound acting script which lies now on a
table by his chair. His long legs sprawl before him. ‘Rather narrow, ‘he says.
He pats the script. ‘I mean she’s rather narrow to look at, I feel. One of
those narrow-hipped, narrow-faced women who are just born that way and die
that way. The effect is just simply narrow, except from the side where they
protrude in a few places, nose, breasts, backside and feet. But her voice is
just so awful. How can you stand it, Father? It’s so absolutely yak-yak-yak.
It’s a poor way to spend one’s money in my view, but of course, that’s quite
your business. Entirely your business.’

Paul is
standing now. His eye is on the playscript. His hand goes to the inside pocket
of his coat.

‘Tell
me about your production of
Peter Pan,’
says Paul.

‘I’ve
told you.’

‘You
need money for it.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll
need a few days. Maybe I could give you something in advance, though.’

‘Right
now?’

‘Yes,
now. You did wrong to trail me. You shouldn’t have your father followed.’

‘I
didn’t trail you at all. She trailed me. Very badly. She drew herself to my
attention, did your narrow, narrow analyst.’

‘God
help me!’ says Paul. ‘Your mother mustn’t hear of it.’

‘That
is quite my point,’ Pierre says.

‘It’s
blackmail, of course,’ Paul says.

‘Everything’s
blackmail. But in fact it’s a good idea, good business, this production of
Peter
Pan.
We’re not changing a word. It’ll be a riot. Everyone over sixty.
That’s to say, if possible. We might have to settle for an actress around
fifty-four to play Wendy.’

‘Is this
what you brought me over here to tell me?’ the father says.

‘You
suggested coming yourself. It was your idea.’

‘Sooner
or later you would have told me all this.’

‘Oh,
quite soon.’

‘But
I’m sorry I came.’

‘Want
another drink?’

‘I need
more ice.’

Pierre
is chucking two little blocks of ice into his father’s glass while he says,
‘Need you call it blackmail, anyway?’ The father has not produced any cheque
from his pocket. His hand is withdrawn from it, empty.