The Longest Pleasure (36 page)

'Relax,' Wendy said. "You'll see it again. As St. Ives.' She followed th
e other three into the valley. ‘
You kno
w where I'd like to take you, B
onzo? To the Channel Islands. Ever heard of them?'

'No.' He caught them up, walked at her shoulder.

'Well, they're British, although they're nearer the French coast than this one. Tucked away behind the Cotentin Peninsula. And do they have tides. Thirty feet is nothing. The water goes out and out and out, and uncovers all sorts of rocks and wrecks, and then it comes in and in, and what looked like a lot of islands turns out to be nothing but water. It's quite a sight'

'I should like to see that,' Galitsin said.

'Mind you, as Jerry said, you have to be careful with tides like those. Even with the tides we have around here. If you get cut off, that's it It may sound an awfully stupid thing, but lots of people get cut off every year. You know, they wander out from the shore, far out, at low water, and they assume everything is going to be all right, because they can see the sea in front of them, and surely when the water starts to come in again, all they have to do is walk a bit faster. Trouble is, it doesn't come in, just like that
.
Sometimes the bottom is uneven, especially where there are offshore banks, or rocks and things. And then you can be walking along a nice dry stretch of sand, and all the while the sea is coming round behind you, filling up the holes and ditches, and so when you decide to come back, bingo. It's too late.'

'Like a well-conducted battle,' Galitsin said.

'There's an apt simile.' She glanced at him.
‘I
guess, once a soldier, always a soldier.'

'Anyway,' he promised, 'I will remember about the tides.'

'Um.' She plodded onwards, down the road, gaze fixed on the tar stretching for ever in front of her. 'Talking about tides, did you ever read Shakespeare?'

‘
No. But I have seen one of his plays in Moscow. It was called
Hamlet.'

"Bully for you. Do you know, I have never seen a Shakespeare play on the stage? I saw the film of
Hamlet,
though. Anyway, didn't he say something about there being tides in the affairs of men?'

‘
Not in
Hamlet'

'Must have been in something else. Shakespeare certainly wrote it Do you believe it? You know, we English are inclined to accept his little bits of advice as the absolute goods. Go against old Will and you're in for certain disaster.'

'He was a man who observed life. Perhaps he observed it more closely than other men, and thus he was a good writer.'

'Could be. But do you believe it? You know, about things happening, and you have to grab hold of them as they happen or they don't wait for you, and they don't ever happen again?'

'Perhaps in some things. But I am alive now, and enjoying myself with you, and I should have died twice already, at least.'

'Are you enjoying yourself, Bonzo? With me?' 'I am more relaxed than I have ever been in my life, Wendy.'

‘
Yes, but how long will it last? You know, you were anxious about the future back at the airfield.' 'Your future.'

Tou must worry about your own.'

Galitsin shrugged. 'I do not think I have a future. I think maybe that at least one of those times I mentioned, when I should have died but didn't, was a mistake.'

'I don't think it was or I would never have met you. But I know how you feel, Bonzo. Suppose, just suppose, there was a future, wouldn't you like to grab it, quickly?'

'Who knows. It is difficult to decide how one would react in a given set of circumstances. Things are never quite as you imagine them.'

'Because,' she went on, as if he hadn't spoken, 'I came across this advertisement in yesterday's
Times,
and I remembered that you had told me you had a sister named Helena, and your name is Alexander, isn't it, and I thought, No, I won't show it to him, because all that is in the past, and he's happy now, with me, with all of us, and if I show him that it'll spoil everything, and then I got to thinking, no human being has the right to make any decision for any other human being. I mean, that's why I'm here, isn't it? And Jerry, and Bill, and Janet. We wanted to make all the decisions for ourselves. And here was I, trying to decide what was best for you.' She stopped, turned to face him. 'And I decided that was wrong.'

Galitsin gazed at her. Perhaps it was the mist, sweeping upwards from the valley, but her face had suddenly gone fuzzy at the edges. 'You had better let me see it.'

She reached behind her, into the knapsack, gave him the folded paper. He scanned the Personal Column.
'Alexander
, for Mother's sake, help me, Helena. I am in the East.' 'Is it for you?' Wendy asked.

Galitsin nodded. 'But it is not my future. It is my past'

'Then let's forget it. Look, the others are nearly out of sight'_

Galitsin crumpled the newspaper into a ball. 'Perhaps we are all wrong. Perhaps it is not possible to turn your back upon the past'

'It means your sister is in trouble?'

'It means that my comrades are using her to regain contact with me.'

'Your comrades! Anyway, it doesn't tell you how to get in touch with her.'

'Yes, it does. The East is a codeword for a house. The headquarters of the Fourth Bureau in England. I know where to go.'

'Alex! You can't go back to them.'

'I think, this time, I must. I set off to do so a month ago, and ins
tead I found you. But this time, I
must not let myself be stopped.'

Wendy's, face tightened, and then relaxed. 'Is it far?'

'From here, yes.'

'Then you'll need money.' She unhooked the knapsack, placed it on the ground, put her hand down the side and pulled out ten one-pound notes. 'My nest-egg.'

'Then I
cannot take it.'

'Don't be a jerk. I can earn that again in one night. And you can always pay me back. Because you're going to come
back, Bonzo. You deserve to. And I've a notion that people who deserve things always get exactly what they deserve. Maybe it's a myth, but it's my philosophy, and without it things would be pretty desperate.'

'Then you must go on believing that. But it may take a little while. "Where should I come back to?'

'C
ome back in the summer, Alexander Galitsin. Then all you have to do is follow the sun.' She pulled the knapsack on to her shoulders, stretched out her hand and rested it for a moment on his cheek, turned and set off after the other three,

'We'll have one Scotch and one bourbon,' Alan Shirley told the bartender. 'Both with soda, the bourbon with ice.' He
Stood
up, held out his arms. You look marvellous.'

'Well, I
don't feel marvellous.' Nancy C
onnaught did not tan easily, but this morning her complexion was brown, and there were flecks of skin peeling off her nose. She wore a blue linen suit and a pale blue blouse, took off her glasses to be kissed on the forehead.

'So St. Tropez hasn't changed all that much?'

She sat down, accepted a cigarette. 'I don't think St. Tropez has changed at all, at least for the better. When last were you there?'

'I've never been there, sweetheart. I'm a civil servant, remember, not one of the idle rich.'

Nancy Connaught filled her lungs with air, released it again, smiled at the waiter as she took her drink, looked around the bar, listened to the roar of traffic on Regent Street only half a block away. 'I guess there's no place like home. London is all the home I have now. Guess what. I've sold the cottage.'

'Never.'

'The letter was waiting for me when I got back. I haven't lost as much as I thought I was going to, either.'

'I thought that was where you were going to write the great novel.'

'Not there. Never there, Al. And the great novel has bit the dust.'

'Ah, that's because you've been trying to write in that poky little flat. You're not the writing-in-garrets variety, Nan.'

'So maybe when it gets a bit warmer I'll take a pencil and a pad and go sit in Hyde Park.'

'Too noisy. I think you need an enormous room, lined with books on two walls. The wall behind the desk would have double doors, opening into another large room, a beautifully furnished drawing room, I think, so that you could double' the space whenever you felt the urge. In the drawing room would be a large refrigerated bar.'

'I'd rather have the bar nearer home, if you don't mind.'

'That would be a mistake. You only want to have
a
drink when you really feel the urge, if you're working. And that means when the urge to get up and cross two rooms and open doors is greater than the urge to remain sitting at your desk. And then, wait for it, in front of your desk would be a pair of enormous french doors, opening on to
a
terrace, and, beyond the terrace, a small meadow would slope down to a lake, with one of those Japanese-type houses on the edge, and on the far side of the lake a copse of trees. Doesn't that sound attractive?'

'It sounds like something out of a novel, not somewhere novels are written. By the time I could afford a place like-that I wouldn't have to work any more.'

'It's a scandal, isn't it? I mean the inequality of wealth. Would you settle for a very large number of pigsties and a duckpond?'

'Beggars can't be choosers. Do you possess a large number of pigsties?'

'My sister does. And they even have pigs in them. You've never met my sister, have you? Name of Agnes.'

'I thought it might be. You've kept all your various mistresses from the good half of the family, I'm sure.'

'She wants you to visit with her.'

'And she has all those pigs already?'

'Well, her husband has. Down in Wiltshire. He's a farmer.'

'I would never have believed it. You don't write a novel over a weekend, you know, Al.'

'She's expecting you for the summer.'

Nancy Connaught finished her drink, took off
her glasses and polished them,
replaced them on her nose. 'I remember once, us talking about your enormous willpower. You know, that thing of iron you turn on and off...'

There's Been a short circuit In the system.'

'My round.' She beckoned the waiter. 'I guess all you in--telligence types are trained in bribery and corruption. It does sound too good to be true. No strings?'

'Well, dinner once a week. You'll need to escape once
a
week, and I'll bring you back up here and treat you to
a
show. Agnes is expecting you this weekend, by the way.'

'I've the faintest suspicion that I'm being railroaded. To tell you the truth, coming into London this morning I could feel my heart sinking, deeper and deeper, lower and lower. I could just kick that Russian bastard. If only I knew what had happened to him.'

'Forgetting Alexander Petrovich is your number one priority, sweetheart. Come on. The free dinners start tonight.'

'It's going to cost you. I'm ravenous.' She stood up, frowned at him. 'You know, there's something about you that's been puzzling me since I came in. Something not quite right. And I've just figured out what it is. You're carrying a rolled newspaper in your pocket, and you've never done that
before. See? I'm even thinking
like a novelist. Full of irrelevant observations.'

'I'd forgotten it was there. Actually, I brought it along for you to have a look at, just in case you didn't like the sound of Agnes and the pigs. And me once a week, of course.
The Times
is full of fascinating alternatives.'

'So what's happening in the news? Let me have
a
look. Even if nothing is wrong with the world, the Personal Column always whiles away a moment or two.'

‘
You,' Alan Shirley said, 'are brushing the dust of London, and the problems of the world, from your fevered brow until you've finished your book.' He dropped the newspaper into the wastepaper basket. 'It was yesterday's paper, anyway.'

III

The station said 'Leigh'. Galitsin dragged the door open, stepped down. The journey from London had been absorbing, in the general dreariness of the scenery, the q
uaintness of the names: Vange; B
enfleet Marsh; Hadleigh, with the ruined castle away to the left And always there had been the bleak emptiness of Canvey Island on his right. Canvey Island and the hurrying waters of the Thames Estuary. And the churning emptiness of his own mind.