The Yellow Glass (11 page)

“Evening, Arnold.
 
How are you?
 
Lovely to see
you.
 
Must dash.”
 

She swept me past him and out onto the pavement of a
quiet street.
 
There was a smear of good,
old London smog in the air and dusk had crept in while I’d been having fun and
games with ‘Uncle Tristram’, the spy.

“D’you come here often, Rosa?”
 
I asked.

“Me?
 
No, only
the second time ever.
 
I just remembered
his name.
 
You know how it is.”

I didn’t really, but then my memory is downright
ordinary, however much I’ve tried to train it for my job; not like Rosa’s.
 
She remembers everything - and I mean
everything
- from the names of folk
she’s barely met to the variety of cake I was eating when we first ran into
each other back at the Varsity office in college.
 

Rosa sighed.
 
“I’m dog tired, Magnus.
 
I can’t
tell you!
 
You don’t have a car, by any
chance?”

“Wish I could afford one, man.
 
Where’ve you got to get to?”

“Good question.
 
I’ve just got out of hospital, actually,” she said, airily.
 
“I can’t go back to my flat in
Battersea.
 
I’m avoiding my uncle, so I
can’t go to my aunt’s house.
 
I was
staying with some friends on a house-boat next to Hammersmith Bridge, but it’s
an awfully tight squeeze and I can’t offer to pay any rent because I haven’t
got a job . .”

“You can come back to mine, if you like,” I tried to
say it nonchalantly, but it came out right gruff and unwilling.
 
I don’t think Rosa noticed, either way.

“Oh, Magnus, that’s
so
sweet of you.
 
I might
take you up on that another time, but I think I’ll go home to my parents in
Kent for a bit.
 
Most of my things are
there, you know?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got to re-coup.”

“Yeah?
 
What
about a drink?
 
We could do some
re-couping together.”
 
I wrenched my eyes
off her and looked around for familiar landmarks, taking stock.
 
“Where are we, anyhow?”

“Waterloo, but we’re supposed to keep schtum about the
location of HQ.
 
I expect you signed the
Official Secrets Act?”

“Funny you should ask that,” I said, and changed the
subject.
 
“Well, if we’re in Waterloo, I
know a tidy little place off The Cut, stays open all hours and plays some great
jazz.”

“You would!
 
I
thought the area was a wasteland, apart from the Old Vic.”

I tapped my nose, “Gotta be in the know, man!
 
Let’s scoot!”

 
I hustled Rosa past the Old Vic with
difficulty because the lass was mad for theatre and remembered whole
performances from curtain-up to the last bow, and I mean
whole
performances: every single word of them, including who said
what when and what they were holding at the time.
 
She was going on that much about Richard
Burton in Hamlet
[24]
,
I thought I’d have to strangle her.

“I can’t think why, but he made me
shiver
just watching him because one
never knew what he might do next, somehow, even though I
know
Hamlet from cover to cover and Claire Bloom, well, she was so
unbelievably
beautiful and I think she
might be Jewish, like
me
, although
Ophelia
is
a bit of a drip however
she’s performed and . .”

“Give it a rest, Rosa,” I said.
 
“I thought you were tired, man.
 
This is the place, look.
 
The Black Box.”

——

  
Down the stairs, snoop.
 
I’ve got you.

——

Rosa tripped down the stairs in her green heels, still
all starry-eyed and in a world of her own about Richard bloomin’ Burton.
 
She’d start acting the whole of Hamlet out,
there and then, if I didn’t distract her and get a drink down her neck,
fast.
 
I suggested she find us a table
and pushed my way to the front of the bar for a couple of pints and some
Smiths’ crisps.
 

The Black Box wasn’t one of those swank, West End
joints, all red plush banquettes and men on the door who made you wear a tie; I
steered
well
clear of them.
 
(I wasn’t sure I still owned a tie, to be
honest.)
 
Those places attracted visiting
Jazz royalty from the States, but you could always buy those cats’
records.
 
The Black Box was just a dim,
little cellar, a bit spit and sawdust, but
authentic
.
 
You got a right mix of clientele, from
be-boppers to some local gangland types (as I said;
authentic
), but
 
somebody
there
did
know their jazz and, if you
struck lucky, you could see some storming live sets.
 

No-one was playing when we came down the stairs, they
just had some Bird on the turntable (not that there’s any ‘just’ about it -
nobody
did bebop like Charlie Parker,
God rest his soul)
[25]
.

“Here are, Rosa,” I handed her a pint, “get that down
you.”

——

 
I set the boy to wait across the street, all fired up
because I’d bought him a new pair of shoes.
 
Idiot boy.
 
Morons, the pack of
them.
 
Cretins everywhere you look.
 
Not got the faintest how bloody serious this
is.

——

She looked a bit dubious about the pint, but I hadn’t
wanted to patronize her with a half and, besides, that amount of fluid should
drown Richard Burton, good and proper.

“Now, what’s all this about hospital?
 
Have you been ill?”

“Oh, it was only a little uranium poisoning; nothing
to worry about.
 
I shouldn’t think I’m radioactive,
or anything,” she breezed.
 
“When it gets
darker you can tell me whether I start to glow.”

My beer sloshed all over the table.
 
Uranium poisoning?
 
They’d mentioned a bit of spying in an office
and a swim across the river, but nobody had said anything about uranium.
 
What the hell had ‘Uncle Tristram’ got her
mixed up in?

“Are you telling me you’ve been exposed to uranium,
Rosa?”

“Yes, but I don’t think I can divulge any more if you
haven’t signed the Official Secrets Act of 1939.”
 
She took a big swig of her beer and rummaged
through her crisps for the blue bag of salt.
 
“Why were
you
at HQ, then?”

“I don’t know . . I thought I knew; I thought I’d got
to them politically.
 
Through the
mag.
 
But now I’m not sure that was
it.
 
I think, maybe, your uncle wanted to
check my credentials.”

“Why?”
 
She
laughed, gaily.
 
“To see whether you were
suitable marriage material for his lovely niece?”

I felt my cheeks flush, but she was oblivious;
crunching crisps and learning the beer mats by heart.

“I don’t think so, Rosa.
 
Though he did seem dead interested in my
family.”

“Really?
 
I’m
interested in your family, too.
 
Tell me about them, Magnus.”

“
You’re
interested in everything!”
 

I downed the remains of my pint that weren’t dripping
off the edge of the table and fumbled in my pockets, hopefully.
 
By some miracle, I’d enough for a couple more
and the bus fare home for two.
 
I’d have
to make the next drink last.

“Hey!”
 
Rosa
noticed me counting coins.
 
“Let me.
 
I’m not completely broke, you know.”

This was good news and I began to relax, fetching my
tin of Old Holborn out of my coat pocket and my papers.
 
The joint was filling up nicely; a group of
laid-back West Indian men had come in and some office girls were pretending not
to notice them and the vibe was mellow.
 
And then somebody behind the bar replaced Bird with Chet Baker and the
Gerry Mulligan Quartet’s ‘My Funny Valentine’ and I was done for.
 
I paused with my rollie paper stuck to my
lip.
 
Man, oh man!
 
Chet’s trumpet solo came sliding off the street
and into the Black Box - so apparently simple - starting off plain, so you’d no
idea that he was about to gather up the strings of your heart, one by one, and
pick you up like a balloon and send you flying into the sky.
 
Why didn’t everybody shut up?
 
Couldn’t they get what the cat was at?
 
It was romance without the cheese; stripped
of show-tune baloney until it was nothing but a pure stream of air -
trumpet-air, Chet-breath - circling your head and heart and binding them with
sadness.
 
So much sadness.
 
Then Rosa Stone came back to the table in her
red dress and green shoes, two pints of best bitter in her hands and I looked
up at her and it dawned on me how bloody lost I was.

——

 
Fred clocked me at the bar and he came over.

“Not just yet, Fred.
 
I’ll get ‘em in a bit later.”

They were drinking pints.
 
What was the betting she was a
lightweight?
 
Bide my time ‘til she’d had
a skinful.
 
Look at the state of her.
 
Yid snoop.
  
Bide my time at the bar, then peel them apart; skim her off like fat
from a pan of gravy.

——

“I’ve been thinking . .” she said, “thinking how
unfair
this has all been.
 
I mean, I was a fine undercover agent; I bet
they’ve learnt all
sorts
of important
things from my de-briefing.
 
Uncle
Tristram said that would be the case, actually.
 
But now I’m not going to know what any of those things are.
 
They’re leaving me out in the cold and none
of it’s my fault.”
 
She glared at me,
accusingly, as if
I’d
had summat to
do with it.

“So the dose of uranium hasn’t put you off, then?”

She made a scoffing sound and downed some more beer.

“Can I have your crisps, Magnus?”

“Feel free, man.”

A trio of musicians had arrived and were getting
themselves sorted out in the corner, just a couple of yards from our table and
a crowd had built up all of a sudden, leaning over our pints and using my
ashtray.
 
Soon we’d not be able to hear
ourselves talk.
 
I thought about her
uncle and what he’d said about her running away.
 
It was true; for somebody so persistent, she
wasn’t half elusive.
 
She edged closer.
 

“I’m just going to have to go it alone,” she
confided.
 
“I think my country needs
me.
 
I really do.”

“Oh Rosa.
 
I’m
not sure that’s such a good idea, man.
 
This stuff is dangerous;
 
you
could get yourself in all kinds of trouble.
 
Real,
grown-up
trouble.”

She smiled, so close to my face, I could have kissed
her, just like that.

“I
am
grown-up, Magnus.”
 
Her big, brown eyes
crossed, ever so slightly.
 
“I’m also
rather drunk.
 
Uranium with a beer chaser
may have been a bit silly.
 
Got any more
crisps?”

A man leant over us and tapped me on the shoulder.

“’Evening Magnus.
 
Not seen
you
here for a
while.”

It was my Uncle Reg - my father’s younger brother, my
London uncle.
 
He’d got his hat and
shades combo on and a wide, black scarf wound round his neck, like a genuine
hepcat.
 
I wasn’t that surprised to see
him there; his office was in the vicinity and I’d run into him at the Black Box
before.