The Prize (33 page)

Krantz was writing furiously. ‘Anything else on that?’

‘I am sorry, but no more. Except this afternoon—this afternoon, Professor Stratman visited the Southern Hospital a third time. I can only presume this was for further treatment, necessitated by the excessive excitement of the week and tomorrow’s Ceremony.’

‘What else?’ demanded Krantz.

‘Little else, I am afraid. His activities in this city have not been unusual. He is rarely without his niece beside him. I believe his affection for her is genuine, but there seems some indication that he feels a moral obligation to care for her, some debt he owes her father, his brother—’

‘We know about that,’ said Krantz impatiently.

‘With one exception,’ said Daranyi, ‘the people here whom Professor Stratman has seen are people well known to Scandinavian science or officials of the Academy. The exception is this. In the early afternoon of December fifth, Professor Stratman lunched at Riche with a Dr. Hans Eckart. I made an effort, in my limited time, to learn something of this Eckart, but current biographical dictionaries have nothing on him. A prewar dictionary listed him as a German physicist. I then checked the Bromma Airport and learned that he had disembarked from a Czech aeroplane that had taken off from East Berlin. I do not know if this has any value—’

‘None,’ said Krantz sharply, massaging the back of his neck.

‘I only mentioned it because this was the one person with whom Professor Stratman had met who was not known to me.’

‘Unimportant,’ said Krantz. ‘What else?’

‘That is all I have on Professor Stratman.’

Daranyi could see the flashing dip of disappointment on Krantz’s features, through the leaves of the plant, and instinctively, he comprehended that the object of his entire assignment had been to research this one man. All the rest had been camouflage. One man: Stratman.

Daranyi revelled in his secret knowledge, and tried to retain his professional, non-committal demeanour. ‘This brings us to the last name,’ he said. ‘Professor Stratman’s niece, who is Miss Emily Stratman.’

‘Go on.’

‘The contact you suggested to me, Miss Sue Wiley, the American journalist, proved helpful in gathering this brief dossier. There is not much, of course.’ Daranyi had made the decision to withhold his most dramatic find for the very end. It would make his bargaining position the stronger.

He ran a finger down his jottings. ‘Miss Stratman resides with the Professor in a bungalow in the city of Atlanta. Several days a week, she works, as a nurse’s aide, without salary, in the Lawson General Hospital, a government establishment where American war veterans are kept. This appears to be her principal outside interest, except an occasional film and the social affairs she sometimes attends with her uncle. You have seen her, so you know that she is beautiful. Yet, she has never been married. And she has not been engaged. She has not been seen alone in the company of men. It is Miss Wiley’s opinion that she is a virgin.’

‘It takes one to know one,’ said Krantz grumpily. ‘How has this niece behaved in Stockholm?’

‘Exactly as I told you when I discussed Mr. Craig. She has been seen in his company. Apparently, they do have interest in one another. She has seen no one else alone, to the best of my knowledge. I do not think Professor Stratman would permit it. As I have indicated, he is over protective. In the case of Mr. Craig, I should imagine that Professor Stratman would trust a fellow laureate. This is her record here. I have been thorough, Dr. Krantz. I know of her movements up until a quarter to five this very afternoon. That was when she left the hotel on foot, by herself, and walked across Kungstr
ن
dg
ه
rden, and crossed Hamngatan, and went into Nordiska Kompaniet, along with all the other late shoppers. . . .’

Emily Stratman had been sitting at the table beside the window, in the fourth-floor grill-room of the Nordiska Kompaniet department store, for five minutes, waiting.

Suddenly, now, she had an impulse to run.

She could not go through with the embarrassment of this meeting, she told herself. She should not have agreed to it. Her mind was a turmoil. She had cried herself to sleep last night, and her eyes were a fright. And worst of all, she felt inadequate for the encounter.

Why had she consented?

Nervously, her hand kneaded the handbag on the table, almost knocking off the menu, as she recalled the telephone call.

Only a few hours ago, she had lain listlessly on the sofa of the hotel sitting-room, trying to read, when the telephone behind her rang. She had taken up the receiver, still reclining and still morose.

‘Yes?’

‘Miss Emily Stratman, please.’ The voice on the other end was young, female, possibly Swedish, and unfamiliar to Emily.

‘This is she.’

‘I am Lilly Hedqvist,’ said the voice.

The name had already been branded distinctly in Emily’s mind since Andrew Craig’s confession, but the reality of hearing the name spoken aloud by its possessor was paralysing.

So disconcerted that she was at a loss for words, Emily could not reply. Her knuckles whitened on the receiver, but her vocal chords were mute.

Apparently, her silence had disconcerted Lilly Hedqvist, too. ‘You know of me, I believe?’ asked Lilly.

Emily’s response was automatic, unsteered by thought. ‘Yes, I know about you.’

‘Mr. Craig came to me last night to speak of you, and to tell me what happened between you. You may believe it is none of my business, but it has been on my mind today, and I believe it is some of my business. This call is not easy for me to make, Miss Stratman, but my conscience tells me I must make it. I do not know you, but I do know Mr. Craig, and if he thinks highly of someone, then I tell myself that someone must be a good person. I would like to meet you for a few minutes today, Miss Stratman.’

Emily did not know what to say. The voice sounded younger and cleaner and more simple than she had imagined it in her fantasies. After Craig’s revelation, the name Lilly Hedqvist had become the name of all on earth who were abandoned and wanton and experienced. But this was not Lili Marlene or Cora Pearl or M
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rta Norberg. This was a girl.

‘I—I don’t know—I don’t know if it’s possible,’ said Emily. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say to you.’

‘You do not have to say a thing,’ said Lilly. ‘I want you to see me. I want you to hear me. For a few minutes. And that is all.’

At once, Emily was recklessly tempted. She did wish to set eyes on a girl who could give Andrew Craig kindness and love with nothing in return. She did want to see this girl and to hear her. But it was less these desires than another that was now influencing Emily. Above all, she wanted to find out about herself, why she still was as she was, and why yesterday had happened, and Lilly might be her fluoroscope. And then one more faint thought. If she said no to Lilly, that was the end of it forever. On the other hand, the Swedish girl was a part of Craig now, and to see her would be to see Craig one bitter time more.

‘All right,’ she said suddenly, and it was as if another person had uttered the sentence on herself. ‘All right, I’ll see you. Where and when?’

‘I work in the Nordiska Kompaniet, the biggest department store, only a few blocks from your hotel. You turn to your right when you leave the hotel, and follow the pavement, and go across the park diagonally, and it is the seven-storey store on the other side of the street. It is only a few blocks. If you are lost, ask someone for En Ko—that’s how Swedes pronounce NK—and they will direct you. Inside, there is an escalator in the centre. It will take you to the eating grill—
lunchrummet
. You pick a table if you are there first, and I will come. Can you be there at ten minutes to five?’

‘Yes.’

‘I will sneak off from my work at ten minutes to five, and we will have coffee and talk a little.’

Emily began to panic. ‘I still don’t know what we can possibly say—’

‘Then we will say nothing,’ said Lilly. ‘But the meeting will be good. Good-bye, Miss—oh, wait—one thing I almost forgot. How do you look?’

‘How do I look?’

‘So I can find you.’

‘I—I’m a brunette—bobbed hair—and—I don’t know—I’ll be wearing a jacket, a suede jacket.’

‘If I am first, you will see me with blonde hair, also a white sweater and blue skirt. We will find each other.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good-bye then, until ten minutes to five.’

All the interminable time after that, Emily had meant to call the store pronounced En Ko and ask for Miss Hedqvist and cancel the meeting, but in the end, she had not. And now here she was in the half-filled grill-room, at the table beside the window, with her red eyes and suede jacket, and her desire to run from here, quickly and far away.

It was four minutes to five, and she told herself: I will give her one more minute and that is all.

‘You are Miss Stratman?’

Emily’s head tilted upward with genuine alarm, and there was a child of a girl, with golden hair, long and caught by a blue ribbon, and alive blue eyes, and a young mouth and attractive beauty mark above it. She wore a thin white sweater that hung straight down from her breast tips, and a pleated dark blue skirt, and low-heeled shoes, and she extended her hand and said, ‘I am Lilly Hedqvist.’

Emily accepted the firm grip, but briefly, for this was the hand that had caressed Craig, and then watched with wonder as the Swedish girl, so fresh and flaxen and blue like the Swedish flag, matter-of-factly took the place opposite her.

‘You have ordered?’ inquired Lilly.

‘No—’

‘I will order. Is there anything with the coffee?’

‘No.’

Lilly waved to a passing waitress, who appeared to know her, and called ‘
Kaffe
,’ holding up two fingers.

Now she returned her attention to Emily, leaning elbows on the table, cupping her chin with her hands. She considered Emily frankly. ‘You are very beautiful,’ she said.

‘Well, I—well, thank you.’

‘It does not surprise me. I knew you would be beautiful, but I did not think in this way.’

‘In what way?’

‘Like the lovely fawns I have seen in V
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rmland. They are delicate and withdrawn. And besides, you look like you are nice. I thought you would be more bold and sure.’

Had she not been so tense, Emily might have been amused, remembering as she did, after the phone call, her first imagined image of Lilly as the one who might be bold and sure.

‘Now it is easier to understand,’ Lilly went on, ‘because you are beautiful.’

The irony of it came to Emily’s mind—we are always, she thought, not what we are through our eyes, but only as we are to other eyes—for she felt anything but beautiful. In fact, she felt more inhibited than ever by Lilly’s peach-coloured natural freshness, and it seemed incredible that Craig could have been so attentive to her after spending time with this bursting, outdoor child, and suddenly she was glad that Craig could not see them together like this.