The Night of Wenceslas (13 page)

‘I
WILL
come right to the point, Mr Whistler,’ Cunliffe said. ‘The formula you brought back is incomplete. We don’t know how or why this should be but the fact remains – Mr Pavelka, would you mind showing him the – the object – all that it makes is this.’

Pavelka, who had been sitting massive and dejected in his chair, came slowly to life and handed over a piece of glass he had been clutching in his hand. It was part of a hollow blown sphere, cut to show the thickness. It was green and opaque. As a piece of glass, it was of quite exceptional ugliness.

I licked my lips and looked from it to Pavelka. I had known the moment I came in the room that something was wrong. Pavelka looked back at me sombrely, but said nothing.

‘Mr Pavelka feels,’ Cunliffe said after a moment, ‘that the only explanation must be that the formula was written in a
hurry. There were several apparent inconsistencies that puzzled our chemist, but one of them – perhaps you would elaborate, Mr Pavelka.’

‘Golombek is a bloddy idiot,’ Pavelka said heavily.

‘I don’t think,’ Cunliffe cut in smoothly, ‘that Mr Whistler needs to know …’

Ά bloddy idiot! ‘Pavelka repeated.’ In 1937 once I nearly dismissed him. I should have done it,’ he said bitterly. ‘He lets me down after all this planning! There is too much iron,
yoh
?’ He was pointing one banana-like finger at the glass in my hand.

‘Iron, Mr Pavelka?’

‘Iron oxide. The green is iron,
yoh
?’

‘Ah.
Yoh
. Yes.’

‘This proportion cannot be. It is a useful glass but we are not making beer bottles. Perhaps he has transposed it with the dolomite – I wonder,’ he said, his great St Bernard’s face creasing suddenly. He remained in intense thought for several minutes.

Cunliffe broke the silence. ‘What it amounts to, Mr Whistler, is that the formula is very nearly right, but not quite. Mr Pavelka feels it would be possible to go ahead with research here on the basis of it, but this would almost certainly cost a great deal in money and time …’

‘
Yoh
, money and time!’ Pavelka said darkly. ‘That bloddy idiot! When you go back you will take him a personal letter …’

‘If you please, Mr Pavelka,’ Cunliffe said sharply. ‘Mr Whistler will do nothing of the sort when he returns. We have headaches enough …’

‘When I what?’ I said, the lunatic suggestion suddenly breaking through.

‘When you return,’ said Cunliffe. ‘To Prague. To Mr Pavelka’s factory. As I was trying to point out, research here might involve a considerable investment and it would almost certainly be cheaper and quicker for you to return to Prague immediately. You could do this very simply and without bother …’

‘Oh, I couldn’t, Mr Cunliffe,’ I said. I had come bounding
out of the chair, still clutching the piece of glass, and was now wringing it urgently. ‘I really couldn’t. There’s nothing simple about it at all. You don’t understand …’ As I spoke I had the clearest possible recollection of all the heart-thudding, mouth-drying, sick-making hours I had gone through, of Vlasta, of Galushka. ‘There’s Galushka,’ I said. ‘Galushka, for a start, would see through it. You’ve no idea how dangerous …’

‘Galushka?’ said Pavelka. ‘What has Galushka to do with it?’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Cunliffe, and took out his cigarette case. ‘I’m afraid I took the liberty of omitting what you told me about Mr Galushka. He annoys Mr Pavelka intensely.’

‘Galushka?’ said Pavelka again, breathing heavily, his massive brows beetling. ‘Galushka isn’t anything. I sacked Galushka years ago.’

‘Well, he’s back now, Mr Pavelka,’ I said loudly. ‘Times have changed. He runs the factory. He’s a very sharp man. We’d never get past him twice with this. You’d much better press on with your researches and later on maybe …’

Pavelka was staring at me thunderstruck and now began to swear horribly in Czech. ‘That agitator runs my factory! What can a man like that … You told me Golombek!’ he said to Cunliffe.

‘I assure you Golombek is our man,’ said Cunliffe patiently, offering his case. ‘This is really very foolish. I thought we had agreed that it was very much better that Mr Whistler should not know any of the arrangements. I really do not share your apprehensions,’ he said to me. ‘The Czechs are interested only in trade. It is entirely natural that you should return urgently after discussion with your principals. From what you have told me, they expect it.’

‘But what in hell am I going to talk about? I was in deep water several times …’

‘You will be adequately briefed, I assure you. But this is really a matter between you and Mr Pavelka,’ he said, sitting back and shrugging his shoulders. ‘You have done the job you were asked to do – and very well, too, if I may say so. It is certainly not your fault that this has occurred.’

This calming statement and the absence of the previous sort of pressure certainly put the matter in a different perspective. I sat down and looked at Pavelka. He was still smouldering over the revelation of Galushka.

‘We’d use the Norstrund again?’ I said.

‘Why not? Nobody suspected it the first time. They will be used to seeing you with it.’

‘And used to my forgetting it on Galushka’s desk?’

‘Really, Mr Whistler,’ said Cunliffe mildly. ‘Whoever noticed you leave it last time? But if it would make your mind easier, don’t forget it. Merely ask to leave it. Say you don’t want to carry it round the factory with you.’

‘Why should I want to see round the factory again? They’ve shown me it once.’

‘Yes,’ Cunliffe said, and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I’ll have to arrange for you to see one of the processes again.’ He scribbled on his pad. ‘He could be quite a useful young man, this one,’ he said to Pavelka without looking up.

‘Of course,’ said Pavelka. ‘I saw right away.’

There was silence for a while after that. The thing was not after all so fantastic. Pavelka had undoubtedly owned and run very successfully an enormous factory. I had seen it. He could do the same thing here. I said, ‘You consider it essential for me to go back again for this formula, Mr Pavelka?’

‘Certainly. Naturally,’ he said. ‘It would shorten our work. Come back quickly with it. We have a lot to do.’

‘When would I need to go?’

‘Well,’ Cunliffe said, looking dubiously at the clock. ‘I’ve been trying to expedite matters, but I doubt if you could get away before Friday. I spent a perfectly dreadful day rushing about yesterday.’

‘How long would I be away?’

‘If you went Friday, you could go to the factory on Saturday and be back on Sunday afternoon. Less than three days in all.’

Less than three days, I thought. I should surely be able to cope with that.

Later on, I saw Maura and told her as much as was necessary. She said, ‘Oh, Nicolas! You will try and be back in time on Sunday.’

Of course I will. I’ll be back at tea-time. We can buzz off right away.’

‘I’d hate anything to interfere with that. I’ve been so looking forward to going there and seeing your mother and everything.’

‘Well, you will’

‘I’d feel superstitious about us if it didn’t come off now.’

‘That’s because you’re a silly little thing.’

‘You’ll write to me while you’re away?’

‘I’ll only be gone three days.’

‘Three whole days.’

‘And I’ll see you on two of them.’

‘Write anyway. Write in the aeroplane, and write when you get there, and write on the way back. And post them. Then I’ll know you were thinking of me.’

‘Don’t you trust me?’

‘No. Oh, Nicolas, I do love you. I love you so much. Do you love me?’

‘No.’

‘Nicolas, truly.’

‘Well, a bit.’

‘How much?’

‘As much as this. And this. And this.’

Quite a lot of this was going on lately.

She saw me off on the Friday morning. Cunliffe had not been too taken with this idea, but there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her. He sat waiting in his car opposite while we shuffled our feet in the entrance hall. I was carrying in my case a brand new Norstrund that he had given me that morning, and had been mildly troubled in case the flyleaf might be bulky with Pavelka’s threatened letter. Cunliffe had laughed me out of that one.’ Have no fears, Mr Whistler. His bark is always much
worse than his bite. You’ll be carrying nothing at all on the way there – the return cargo is the point of this operation.’ And indeed the flyleaf was immaculate. If I hadn’t known it had been specially prepared for easy opening and re-sealing it would have been impossible to tell.

Maura had not told them at the office that she was taking time off, and was tending to make a Departure of it. She clung silently to my arm, her face white and dramatic, eyes large and staring. This nerve-racking performance was giving me an acute and unexpected attack of the jim-jams.

We moved at last, mercifully, and in the queue she gave me a quick kiss and dug in her bag. She had brought me a present, wrapped in a brown paper bag.

I said, ‘What is it?’

‘Something to read. Maybe it will keep you out of mischief,’ she said with a feeble smile, and gave me a little nudge up the steps.

I spared a quick glance for Cunliffe and got in the bus, and hoped to God it would move quickly for Maura was rooted to the spot outside like one of the women in a pit disaster.

Presently the bus did move and I turned and waved to her, and saw Cunliffe still sitting in his car. And then all that was over and I sat jolting in the seat with only that curious unease of the stomach that is a part of every departure.

We were at the Chiswick roundabout before I opened the brown paper bag to see what Maura had brought me and I had drawn it half way out of the bag before I was sure. I said quietly, ‘Oh, Jesus Christ, no!’

My neighbour on the seat, an immense business man with a blue chin, horn-rimmed glasses and a valise, said,
‘Pardon
?’

‘I’m sorry. It was nothing.’

But it was something. Maura had bought me a Norstrund. A brand new Norstrund.

The implications of this second Norstrund were borne in on me as the bus turned up the Great West Road. A man who appeared habitually with a Norstrund might or might not arouse suspicion. A man who had another Norstrund tucked away in
his case was quite a different proposition. My room at the Slovenska had possibly been searched once. It would possibly be searched again.

There was also the chance of the two copies becoming mixed up. One could always mark one of them. But better, far better, to leave Maura’s behind, to deposit it somewhere, lose it.

I tried to do this. I looked out of the window and let the bag bounce off my knee. My blue-chinned neighbour picked it up. I tried kicking it under the seat when we left the bus. The driver came running up with it twenty minutes later as we streamed out on to the tarmac.

It was an ill omen. The trip had started with complications. I stuffed Maura’s gift in my raincoat pocket and glanced at the bulge every few minutes.

By the time we touched down at Prague all the butterflies were back in my stomach.

At the Hotel Slovenska I had been given the same room, and on all sides there were welcoming smiles. The intense receptionist nodded quite gaily, the ancient porter grinned and gawked and hawked. On the second floor, Josef awaited me with darkling fervour.

‘What pleasure to see you back, Pan Whistler. We didn’t hope for such a quick return.’

‘No, well. Business, you know.’

‘The
pane
thinks trade is beginning to move?’

‘I hope so, Josef.’

‘That’s good news. We miss the business men. I hope you are the first of many. Can I bring you something,
pane
?’

‘Beer, please, Josef.’

I went in and had a shower. This familiar action and my reemergence into the green and gold splendour for my beer had a calming effect on the butterflies in my stomach. I took the beer out on the balcony and looked down on the Vaclavske Namesti. It was hot and steamy and rain had fallen, but nothing had changed. The crowds still streamed in the heat. The queue still waited outside the automat. The trams clanged up and down. Wenceslas strode his iron horse far down the street. And from
his perch above the road junction, Lenin still stared down on his disciples. ‘Every hand, every brain for the building of socialism.’

It did not seem, as it had a fortnight ago, to be a different world. London no longer seemed so remote. And the task had not the unknown dangers. Even the formidable Galushka, now that I was here, seemed not quite so frightening. There was only the complication of the Norstrunds.

I came in from the balcony, got them both out and compared them. There was no doubt about it; they were alike as two peas. Only when you looked hard could you see slight differences. Maura’s was an earlier edition, 1950. Cunliffe’s was 1953. I thought I had better mark it up to avoid confusion, and went to get my pen out of the jacket in the wardrobe.

The room phone rang.

I jumped about a foot. The two Norstrunds were spread out on the table. Here was where confusion could start. I swore out loud, let the phone ring, and marked a small dot in the top right hand corner of Cunliffe’s copy. Then I stowed both books in my case. The damned phone hadn’t stopped ringing. I picked it up with sweating hands.

‘Hello.’

It was Svoboda, from the Glass Board, hoping he wasn’t disturbing me.

‘Not at all.’

‘There were things in your telegram we could not grasp, Pan Whistler. Do we understand you are empowered to conclude a deal on this visit?’

‘Not exactly. We wanted reassurance on some matters, and my principals desire quick action. We thought it more convenient for me to make another personal call at the Zapotocky works.’

I was tending to shout with nervousness, and Svoboda drew his own conclusions. ‘Of course. Naturally. Do not misunderstand me. We are delighted you should return. Please tell me of any way we can help. Perhaps you wish for immediate Discussions? I can send a car right away.’

I had an instant vision of the giantess of Barrandov standing in stormy silence by the car outside the hotel. ‘No. No, thank you. It won’t be necessary.’