The Night of Wenceslas (12 page)

There was a pause as he fiddled with the straps of his case, and I wondered if I should ask about the money yet. It was, plainly, Pavelka’s money, and he hadn’t got the formula in his hand yet. There was also the point that I was, so to speak – Pavelka had as good as told me – already in his employ.

Cunliffe looked up, smiling. ‘But we still have a little business to transact.’ He got up and opened his safe and took out a packet and tossed it lightly on the desk. Inside were four bundles of ten
fivers. The full sum, I saw, with elation and astonishment, two hundred pounds.

‘And these,’ said Cunliffe. He had taken out of the safe also the two copies of the loan agreement. ‘One a little bit torn, I am afraid,’ he said wryly. ‘There are no hard feelings?’

‘None at all.’

‘You understand it was necessary to manufacture some – some inducement?’

‘Absolutely. The trip sounded a lot more frightening than it was. I’ve no complaints at all. When will Mr Pavelka be back?’

‘Within a very few days. He’s not the most predictable of men.’

‘I’d better keep in touch then.’

‘I’ll get in touch with you. He’ll undoubtedly want to see you as soon as he comes back.’

‘Well, fine,’ I said, my head fairly singing with relief and good fortune. The danger was all over now. Ahead lay the boundless future with Pavelka.

Cunliffe had picked up his briefcase and was waiting for me to go. I thought there was one thing I might get sorted out, and said, ‘There’s just one point. This – this person who’s been watching me. You don’t feel inclined to tell me who it is now?’

‘I’m afraid – not yet, Mr Whistler,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘There are still some little secrets until everything is fixed up.’

‘Not even if I named a name? I’ve a pretty shrewd idea who it is.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘All right,’ I said, a bit put out, and went.

Outside in the car, I thought I might have made a more determined effort and decided to wait until he came out. When he didn’t appear after a few minutes, however, I began to feel a bit of a fool, and since it might look as if I was waiting to see where he went, I started up and turned round in the road and buzzed back up Francis Street. Outside the Fuller’s tea shop on the corner, I saw Bunface standing wrapped in thought, and gave her a honk. She came out of her trance and dropped me a swift bob and walked quickly down the street.

It didn’t occur to me until later that she might have been seeing me off the premises.

One day’s indolence very easily breeds another. It was a beautiful time in London then, fine golden days, cooler than Prague, freer than Prague, and I awaited Pavelka’s pleasure. I had a fitting for the suits I had ordered. I messed around with the car. I ran out one day to the river and tried all the pubs from Laleham to Old Windsor and slept under a tree near Runnymede.

It was a brainless time, an undemanding time, and I didn’t want it to stop. But on Thursday I woke up with a mild sense of worry that something should be happening and by mid-day all the old apprehensions had returned.

I wanted to ring Cunliffe, but I knew he would have no news for me. I wanted to ring Imre and Maminka, but there was nothing I could tell them. I wanted to ring Maura, but the situation here was still obscure.

I wondered how she had managed to get into my room that night. Had she somehow got hold of my key and had it copied? And why hadn’t she come to see me again? She would know I was back. It must have occurred to that busy brain that I might have tumbled her. You would expect her to put out a feeler or two.

Puzzling over this, I thought there was at least one thing I could clear out of the way, and I waited that afternoon for Larkin to come home. He was a queer old man, very reticent and aloof, in a world of his own with his deafness. He took his meals alone and I had not seen him since my return.

I waited in my room and heard him come in and go into the lounge with his paper as he usually did. I went downstairs and opened the lounge door and saw him buried behind his paper in an easy chair and I said, ‘Afternoon, Mr Larkin.’

‘Afternoon,’ he said, without putting the paper down.

I felt a flush starting up from my neck and I closed the door slowly behind me and said, ‘Mr Larkin.’

He lowered the paper then and looked irritably and I saw the wire dangling from his ear. Mr Larkin had got himself a natty little hearing aid.

I rang Cunliffe five minutes later from the call box on the corner. He seemed glad to hear my voice but there was no news, and I said, ‘Mr Cunliffe, I know how you feel about this, but it’s become very important to me just now – it’s this person who’s watching me.’

‘Oh, now, Mr Whistler. You know I can’t say anything about that. It’s all past and done with, just a prudent step I was bound to take before we knew each other.’

‘Yes, I know. I understand perfectly. I don’t mind in the least. It’s just – I’ve got to know,’ I gabbled rapidly, as he tried to interrupt, ‘if it’s my girl friend, Maura Regan. I wouldn’t let her know, or hold it against her or anything. It’s just that I haven’t the faintest bloody idea how to talk to her…’

He had been going to say something else, but choked suddenly on the phone. ‘Your – your girl friend! Oh, dear me, no! Oh, my dear Mr Whistler,’ he said, laughing heartily, ‘I feel perfectly safe in assuring you that it isn’t. I’m dreadfully sorry. I wouldn’t for anything in the world want to interfere with your love life. I had no idea …’

So that was that, and I put the phone down, a bit light-headed and with my heart banging, and picked it up again and put more pennies in the box and phoned her office. It was twenty-past five; just in time to catch her.

She said, ‘Hello,’ and I said, ‘Guess who,’ and there was a pause for a moment and I could imagine her lopsided smile coming on.

‘Is it Nicolas?’

‘Who else?’ I said and grinned in the mirror, and she hung up.

I couldn’t believe it. I rattled the phone. I said, ‘Operator.’ I hadn’t any more pennies. I hopped out of the box, muttering like a madman, and stopped people in the street, and telephoned her again. They said she’d gone.

I got out of the box and stood in the street for a minute, muttering obscenely under my breath and wondering what in God’s name this lot was about. But I knew all right; knew in an instant, the trip to Prague and the four golden days vanishing into oblivion as I found myself back in the continuous situation with Maura.

We’d parted in a queer sort of way. Quite enough for her to be miffed about in that alone. And I hadn’t written, not a line, not a postcard. And she’d probably seen the car back, had almost certainly seen the car back, had probably tooled round regularly to see when it came back.

I thought, oh Jesus Christ, experiencing the familiar enervation at the course of wooing now called for, and started off to wait outside her digs.

I waited an hour and a half before realizing that she must have gone off somewhere right from the office. She evidently meant me to work at it a bit harder than that.

Next day, Friday, I telephoned her in the morning, and was told by a breathy, giggling girl that she wasn’t there. So at lunch time I went to wait outside the office.

She came out at one sharp, in a hell of a hurry, with another girl, and I said, ‘Hello, Maura,’ and she said, ‘Sorry, Nicolas, can’t stop. We’re off shopping,’ and the pair of them jumped on a 25 bus.

I stared after this bus, swearing, and said to myself wearily, Right, well, one more go and that’s your lot, and was outside the office again at twenty-past five.

I stood at the opposite side of the street in a deep doorway so that I would see her first, and I told myself that if she came rushing out merrily with another girl, she could continue right on.

But she was alone when she came out, at twenty to six, and she wasn’t smiling and she wasn’t in a hurry. She looked quickly up and down the street and didn’t see me, and began walking slowly to the Tube station, looking so like a little girl, lost and miserable, that my heart began bumping and I crossed the road
and fell into step beside her. She looked at me and jumped but said nothing.

I said, ‘Hello, Maura.’

‘Hello.’

We continued slowly and in silence to the Tube station.

‘Like to stop for a cup of tea?’

‘No, thanks. I must get back.’

‘You’ve got every right to be angry with me, Maura, but you don’t know what’s happened.’

‘I don’t want to know.’

I stopped in the street and said, ‘Ah, for God’s sake, Maura,’ with a haggard look I’d been practising all afternoon. ‘I’ve got so much to tell you. I’ve been waiting to for so long and couldn’t.’

She wasn’t really able to resist this, but followed me very coldly as I turned into the tea shop. I found an empty table and we sat down and I told her all that was good for her to know.

I told her the trip to Prague was a brilliant success. I told her I might be leaving the Little Swine and going into an enormous project with a big-time manufacturer. I told her all this was so secret that I had been sworn to silence and had not dared to get in touch with her lest I be tempted to reveal some minute part of it.

She listened in silence, looking down at her tea, completely enchanting in her small girl pride, and when I had finished, said, ‘Do you mean it, Nicolas, about wanting to tell me?’

‘Of course I do, Maura.’

‘And you still can’t tell me any more about it?’

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this.’

She stirred her tea slowly. ‘Everything’s going to be all right, though, now, is it?’

‘I hope so, Maura. I’ve just got to wait for a man to come back from – from somewhere.’

She looked up and said, ‘Well!’ and the lopsided smile came on across the table. ‘Oh, Nicolas, don’t ever do that to me again. Give me some warning. I’ve been through torture. I couldn’t stand that again.’

She was pressing her leg hard against mine under the table, and I groaned inwardly, thinking of all that bottled-up melodrama, all the hours and hours of it, wondering how a girl with such attractions and so much of the right stuff could be at the same time so bloody irritating.

We ate, rather late, in Soho and had a bottle of wine; and later waxed somewhat melodramatic on the seat under the tree. But with that out of the way our relationship blossomed wonderfully, progressing indeed so rapidly on Saturday (in Epping Forest) and on Sunday (in my room while Mrs Nolan graced The Musketeers) and in so enjoyable a fashion that I thought, Pavelka, or no Pavelka, I would soon have to do something about it.

I took her out to lunch on the Monday, and decided that I would definitely ring Cunliffe when I got back to start some action. I didn’t have to start any. When I returned there was a note in Mrs Nolan’s indelible pencil on the plush tablecloth. It read:
Mr Whistler. Please telephone Victoria
63781. And underneath, a later addition,
Please ring your mother
.

I went down the stairs two at a time and out whistling into the street. I called Cunliffe first and Bunface answered, and I dropped her a quick bob in the mirror and asked to be put through.

‘Oh, Mr Whistler, we have tried to get you. Mr Cunliffe is out just now. He is out with Mr Pavelka. He asks will you come for a meeting at eleven in the morning.’

I let out my breath, grinning stupidly in the mirror. ‘Certainly. Absolutely. Tell him yes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank
you
,’ I said, and put the receiver down and went out into the street, still grinning. I was half way back before I remembered about Maminka, and returned to the phone, having no wish for Mrs Nolan to overhear this conversation either.

It was unusual for Maminka to telephone me. I wondered if
Imre, with his talent for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, had suddenly decided to tell her about Bela, and when he came to the phone, felt a wave of irritation, and said quite brusquely, ‘Hello, Uncle. What is it? Maminka rang me?’

‘It was I, Nicolas. I called you. How are you, my boy?’

‘I’m all right. Is there any trouble?’

‘No trouble. Certainly not. I was worried about you. You were so downcast when you were here.’

‘You haven’t, by any chance, told Maminka about Bela?’

‘I haven’t The heat is not good for her. She walks always in the sun without a hat and is naturally fatigued. It is totally impossible to reason with her,’ he said, breathing noisily.

‘Well, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t bother to tell her just yet, Uncle. I’ll explain later.’

‘You are not still angry with me?’

Of course not. Everything’s O. K. Don’t worry. I’ll come and see you soon.’

‘Oh, I am glad,’ he said, and sounded it ‘I thought maybe you didn’t wish to talk with me.’

He sounded so helpless and contrite, the old booby, I wondered for one mad moment if I dare tell him, just a hint; but thought better of it instantly. There’d be time for that after I’d seen Pavelka. Only a few hours more, another night of discretion, and then I would be able to take steps in several directions.

I was not able, however, to exercise this discretion with Maura. Embracing her that night on our trysting seat something seemed, as they say, to snap inside me and I found myself asking her to marry me. I was completely unable to prevent myself; the words seemed to be washed out of me on this swelling tide of good fortune. And after a moment’s silence in the dark, Maura clutched me tighter and said, ‘Oh, yes, Nicolas, please. I want to. I want to,’ and that was that settled.

She asked me no questions, the lovely creature, but when an tour later I said good night at her gate, she said, ‘Can I come with you to tell your mother, Nicolas? I’d like to be there then.’

I said, ‘Of course, Maura.’

‘Perhaps we could pop down on Sunday and stay overnight so that I can get to know her a little. We could come back early on Monday morning.’

‘That’s a splendid idea, Maura. I’d like that very much.’

And so I left her and walked back through the dark squares rejoicing to Mrs Nolan’s, thnking how wonderful Sunday night would be, and how much I wanted to introduce Maura to Maminka; which, of course, I would have done and with much pleasure, if Sunday night had chanced to find me in Bournemouth, instead of, as it did, in Barrandov, in bed, with Vlasta.