Transcription

by Kate Atkinson

  A Boy was hovering. ‘Miss Armstrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This came for you.’ He held out a piece of paper – not even an envelope, she thought – but it was intercepted by Charles. He snatched it off the Boy and read out loud, ‘Meet me outside. Signed RH. You do lead a mysterious life,’ he said.

  ‘Far from it, I assure you,’ Juliet said.

  ‘Let me walk you to the door,’ Fräulein Rosenfeld said. She was lonely, Juliet realized, grateful for any scrap of company.

  ‘Perhaps we can get a drink one evening, after work, Fräulein Rosenfeld,’ Juliet said.

  ‘Oh, I would like that very much, Miss Armstrong.’ Fräulein Rosenfeld beamed at her. ‘Wonderful.’ How little it takes to make some people happy, Juliet thought. And how much it takes for others.

  ‘Are you leaving early, Miss Armstrong?’

  I checked her watch. ‘By fifteen minutes, Daisy.’

  ‘Perhaps you have a dental appointment,’ Daisy offered.

  ‘Perhaps I don’t.’

  Hartley was waiting for her on the pavement, a cigarette dangling from his lips, looking insufferably insouciant.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked him.

  ‘I thought you might like to go on a flamingo hunt.’

  Did people hunt flamingos? It was a bird Juliet had never given any thought to and now it seemed to be perched on every corner. No, not perched – they didn’t perch, did they? Too big, probably. And the legs would be too long. You needed short legs for perching or you would be unbalanced, especially if you had a predilection for standing on one leg. Juliet sighed and wondered if one day she would think herself to death. Was that possible? And would it be painful?

  ‘Retrace our friend’s steps,’ Hartley said as they entered the Strand Palace. Ghosts leave no footprints, Juliet thought, but she was forgetting that Hartley had always seemed to be intimately acquainted with every member of staff in every hotel and restaurant in London – a useful by-product of his insatiable conviviality and corresponding largesse, she supposed. ‘There isn’t a thing,’ he said, ‘that you can’t find out from an outrageously well-tipped waiter. Threepence on the shilling is my rule of thumb. The pourboire, as the Frogs say.’

  ‘I presume we’re not the only people looking,’ Juliet said.

  ‘Police road blocks. The Watchers are out and Special Branch everywhere. We’re monitoring the air fields, train stations, ports. All the usual. Not a sniff so far. They seek him here, they seek him there. They seek the flamingo everywhere. They want to talk to you, by the way. Debrief. I told them you are innocent of all malfeasance.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And that’s what I told them.’

  Hartley began with the doorman. They had not, the two grey men and their flamingo filling, disappeared into thin air, or even into a waiting car, but had walked out of the front entrance and ‘Straight across the road, sir,’ the doorman informed Hartley, ‘and into the Savoy.’

  His counterpart at the Savoy tipped his hat and said, ‘Mr Hartley, welcome back.’

  The entire staff of the hotel seemed to be on Hartley’s informants’ roster, keen-eyed witnesses to the Czech’s exfiltration. The doorman remembered ‘a queer trio’, and in the foyer the concierge pointed the way towards the River Room and said their quarry had been ‘frogmarched’ towards it down the marble staircase. A willing pageboy (‘Funny-looking blokes, your friends’) diverted them towards the lifts.

  ‘I used to work as a chambermaid in a hotel,’ Juliet said as they made their way through the Savoy. ‘Not a grand one like this though.’

  ‘I had my wedding reception here,’ Hartley said. Hartley had been briefly, and incongruously, married to a Polish countess. The motives of both bride and bridegroom had been unclear.

  ‘Therein lies the difference between me and you,’ Juliet said. ‘You’ve never had to work for the pourboires.’

  A door in the wall opened, a service door, and Juliet caught a brief glimpse of the world behind the scenes – a warped wall with the paint peeling off and a torn, dirty carpet. The door was quickly snapped shut again.

  Their trail of breadcrumbs took them past a cloakroom girl who directed them to the staircase that led them down, past the ballroom, towards the River Entrance, where another doorman hovered, a somewhat lesser variety than his colleagues defending the front barricades. Nonetheless, Hartley’s ridiculously generous ten-bob note secured enough information from him to establish that there had been no car waiting at the back of the hotel and that their ‘friends’ had gone into the Victoria Embankment Gardens. ‘Looked like they were on their way somewhere in a hurry,’ he said.

  How helpful all these witnesses are, Juliet thought. Neatly choreographing the great escape. You would almost think they had been rehearsed.

  ‘So …’ Hartley said when they were standing in the Gardens, trying to conjure up the events of yesterday.

  He was gazing, rather blankly, at the morbidly erotic memorial to Sir Arthur Sullivan. ‘Things are seldom what they seem,’ he murmured. ‘HMS Pinafore,’ he said when Juliet looked enquiringly at him. ‘“Skim milk masquerades as cream”. I’m rather fond of old G and S. My mother—’ He became suddenly speechless, staring fixedly into the middle distance like a stage medium communing with the dead.

  ‘What?’ Juliet prompted, irritated by this theatrical show, itself worthy of comic opera.

  Hartley propelled her out of the Gardens and on to the Embankment. ‘What do you see?’ he said.

  ‘Big Ben?’ she hazarded. ‘The Houses of Parliament?’ The half-constructed Festival Hall sat squatly on the opposite bank of the Thames. London was to be made of concrete now, it seemed. She thought of the architect in the Belle Meunière the other evening. He was a ‘Brutalist’, he said, and for a moment she thought he had been referring to his character.

  ‘No, not buildings,’ Hartley said. ‘The river. They must have spirited him away on a boat from one of the piers on the Embankment. That’s why he wasn’t caught at a road block. Or at the ports. Out into the estuary, and then probably they transferred him on to another boat. Over to France, or Holland. Or to the Baltic. Long gone. The Russians, I suppose,’ he said morosely.

  ‘Well, it’s a theory,’ Juliet said, ‘but not a conclusion.’ This was how people disappeared from history, wasn’t it? They weren’t erased, they were explained away. And what if he had fled of his own accord? Perhaps he had decided that he didn’t want to belong to any of them.

  They were both silent for a while, contemplating the brown water of the Thames. It had seen much over the years.

  ‘Or the Americans,’ Juliet said. ‘Stealing the lead on us, not trusting us to hand him over. Not entirely without justification.’

  ‘The Yanks?’ Hartley mused. ‘Oh, I can’t imagine that. No proof of that, is there? Although anything can be made to look like proof, of course, if you set your mind to it. Talking of Yanks – shall we have a drink in the American Bar? I believe the sun is below the yardarm.’

  ‘It’s nowhere near.’

  ‘Yes, but it is somewhere,’ Hartley said. ‘Moscow, say.’

  ‘Does Perry still work for the Service?’ Juliet asked, once they had settled with their drinks. They had been given the best seats in the bar, the barman deferential towards Hartley as if he carried VIP status.

  ‘Perry?’ Hartley said. ‘Perry Gibbons? I couldn’t possibly say. Although no one ever really leaves, do they?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Did you? And yet here we are.’

  ‘And all that Children’s Hour stuff would be a good cover,’ Juliet said, ignoring this remark.

  ‘Well, we all have a façade,’ Hartley said. ‘Don’t you?’

  After some hesitation, Juliet decided to show Hartley the note. She needed someone to rifle through the Registry and Hartley was the only person she knew who could do that. ‘Someone left me a message,’ she said.

  ‘You will pay for what you did,’ Hartle
y read out loud. He looked at her with interest. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Hard to say. Nothing I’m aware of.’ (Not true!) ‘I think it might be something to do with Godfrey reappearing.’

  ‘The old Toby Jug. Do you owe him something?’

  ‘No, not at all. But I thought perhaps his informants, you know? I wondered if perhaps they had found out about the operation and wanted revenge in some way.’

  ‘You’re not still on about fifth columnists, are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am. Can you look in the Registry for me – see if they have addresses for them?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Alleyne? You can ask him about Perry and the old Toby Jug as well, and this nonsense too,’ he said, handing the piece of paper back. ‘You were Alleyne’s girl, weren’t you?’

  ‘No. Quite the opposite.’

  ‘Don’t look now,’ Hartley said when they had left the Savoy and were making their way down the Strand towards Trafalgar Square, ‘but I believe there’s someone following us.’

  ‘Is it an odd-looking man?’ Juliet said. ‘Quite short, pockmarked skin, one drooping eye? With an umbrella? Or a woman wearing a headscarf and carrying a shopping bag?’

  ‘No,’ Hartley said. ‘Nobody like that at all.’

  Juliet could hear someone invisible singing ‘I Know Where I’m Going’ as she walked along the corridor back to her office. A rather pained contralto, rehearsing presumably for Singing Together.

  ‘I always think, “Do I?” when I hear that song,’ Daisy said, appearing out of thin air abruptly at Juliet’s elbow. She would make an excellent magician’s assistant.

  ‘Do you what?’ Juliet puzzled.

  ‘Know where I’m going.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Daisy said. ‘The real question is, “Do you know where you’ve been?”’

  ‘And where have you been?’

  ‘Helping Perry – with Our Observer.’ (First-name terms now, Juliet noticed. Perry had got himself another girl.) ‘We’ve been rehearsing. And today, the Ides of March, we are here in the Senate awaiting the arrival of Julius Caesar. Why, here is Brutus, and over there I spy Mark Antony.’

  ‘Gosh, how exciting.’

  ‘You’re being sarcastic.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, I’m enthusiastic anyway,’ Daisy said. She followed Juliet back to her office and watched as she pulled on her coat. ‘Where are you going, by the way, Miss Armstrong?’

  ‘I’m doing some research for Looking At Things.’

  ‘Oh, what are you looking at?’ Daisy asked, a little too eagerly.

  ‘A wool shop.’

  ‘Looking At a Wool Shop?’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No.’

  I have a little list, Juliet thought. Of society offenders who might well be underground and who never would be missed. Should Mrs Ambrose be on it? Was Mrs Ambrose telling the truth? Was she really running an innocent wool shop and was it mere coincidence that she had encountered Juliet in Finchley? Or was she part of the conspiracy of the past that was ganging up on her? The gang’s all here. Juliet had been so unbalanced by Mrs Ambrose’s sudden reappearance this morning that she hadn’t thought to ask her if she knew who might have left the note for her. You will pay for what you did. She felt fairly sure that she didn’t owe Mrs Ambrose anything.

  There certainly was a wool shop on Ballards Lane and indeed the sign above the window declared it to be ‘Eckersleys’. Juliet spent some time covertly watching it. Our Observer, she thought. A woman went in. After a few minutes, the same woman came out. So far, so good.

  The bell above the door clanged merrily as Juliet entered, just the way a wool shop’s bell ought to greet a customer, although there was no one behind the counter waiting to serve her.

  It was definitely a wool shop, Juliet thought, looking around at the honeycomb of wooden shelves that lined the walls and which were packed with bee-shaped balls of 2-, 3-, and 4-ply. She expected it made for rather good soundproofing. It was just the kind of place that Philippa Horrocks, if such a person existed, would come to buy wool to knit little Timmy a Fair Isle pullover.

  There were needles in every size and shape. How lethal was a knitting needle, Juliet wondered? There was a till, as big as a church organ, and a counter made of glass that was exactly how Juliet imagined Snow White’s coffin to look. No beleaguered girls or poisoned apples, instead its innards were composed of shallow wooden shelves of embroidery threads and buttons and a multitude of haberdashery items.

  Juliet opened and closed the door again several times in order to get attention. The bell, no longer merry, trembled violently in protest at this assault.

  The place was a thieves’ paradise, if you were the kind of thief who sought circular needles and 4-ply worsted. There was actually quite a lot to look at in a wool shop. It might make a surprisingly good Schools programme. You could start with the sheep, shearing and so on. Lambs. Prendergast would like that.

  ‘Shop!’ Juliet called. Perhaps there was no one here? Or perhaps Mrs Ambrose was lying dead in the back of the shop? A thick chenille curtain provided a barricade to this mysterious realm and Juliet was just wondering if she should investigate beyond the veil when a tightly permed woman emerged from behind the curtain. She was hampered by a skein of wool that was handcuffing her forearms. Juliet was reminded of Houdini. Laughing giddily and holding out her arms in front of her as if she wanted to be arrested, the woman said, ‘Can you?’

  ‘Can I what?’

  ‘Wind it for me.’

  Juliet sighed. She supposed, if nothing else, it gave her a handy captive to interrogate. ‘Are you Ellen? Ellen Eckersley?’ she asked, ravelling up the wool into a ball with long-neglected competence. She had done the same many times for her mother.

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘I think I know your aunt – Mrs Eckersley. Florence.’

  ‘Aunt Florrie?’

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘No, she’s out.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh … somewhere,’ Ellen Eckersley said hazily.

  What a novice, Juliet thought. Not even a dental appointment as an excuse.

  The hank of wool was finally transformed into a ball and Ellen Eckersley was free. ‘Did you want to buy something?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll just take this,’ Juliet said, reaching for the nearest ball of wool – a cream Aran yarn that she took from its honeycomb. ‘Well, I’d best be off,’ she said, once she had paid for the wool. ‘Tell Mrs Eckersley I dropped by.’

  ‘Who shall I say was asking for her?’

  ‘Oh,’ Juliet said airily. ‘Just say someone from her past life.’

  Godfrey’s old house looked lifeless. Its respectably netted windows gazed blindly back at Juliet. This morning Philippa Horrocks had seemed over-rehearsed and brittle. Perhaps Juliet could give her a tap, see if she would crack. But this time no one came to answer the lion’s head knocker.

  Instead, a man, quite elderly, came out of the house next door and said, ‘Hello, dear, can I help you?’ He had a pair of secateurs in his hand and started clipping randomly at a bush.

  ‘I was looking for the woman who lives here – Philippa Horrocks.’

  He paused in his clipping. ‘I don’t think anyone by that name lives there, dear.’ This was the kindly old man in this particular tableau, Juliet thought. The harassed young housewife, the rather distracted wool-shop assistant. All present and correct. (It’s important not to fall prey to delusions and neuroses, Perry said.)

  A man with a dog, an innocuous spaniel, walked past and tipped his hat at both her and the kindly old man. There was always a man with a dog, it was a crucial component in the whole.

  And my place in the plot, Juliet wondered? Heroic young woman in danger? Or the villain of the piece? She felt deep in her coat pocket and touched the sharp point of a small sock needle, liberated from its glass coffin. You
could take someone’s eye out with it, she thought.

  ‘That house has been empty for months,’ the kindly old man said.

  ‘Did you remember someone called Godfrey Toby living here?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, sorry, I’ve never heard that name.’

  ‘How about John Hazeldine?’

  ‘John?’ he said, his face brightening. ‘Nice chap, John, he used to mow the lawn for me. The Hazeldines moved after the war. I think they might have gone abroad. South Africa, I think.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, dear.’

  This would have been an almost perfect encounter, plausible in every way, Juliet reflected as she walked away. And yet.

  She lingered on the street corner again. The kindly old man’s house and its corner garden was hedged with a substantial privet, perfect for a woman to lurk behind and observe Philippa Horrocks flying helter-skelter along the street at the helm of a large pushchair containing Timmy, while two school-age children sprinted behind trying to keep pace. That would be ‘Christopher and Valerie’ then, Juliet thought. By the time she reached her front gate, Philippa Horrocks was gasping for breath.

  The old man, not so very kindly now, was still standing at his gate and said, ‘You’re late. You missed her.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  He must have moved along the path, closer to his house, because Juliet caught only a fragment of what was being said, although they were clearly arguing about who said what to whom. They might at least have got their stories straight, Juliet thought. Amateurs everywhere. Straining to hear, Juliet caught the words ‘abroad’ and ‘rid of her’.

  He got rid of me, Juliet thought? Or they’re going to get rid of me? Two tenses with rather different meanings. Or perhaps it was Godfrey Toby who had been got rid of. Or Godfrey who was going to get rid of her. It was as if a complicated game of chess was being played, but Juliet didn’t know all the rules or where anyone else was on the board. She was clearly intended to be a pawn in this game. But I am a queen, she thought. Able to move in any direction.

  Her route to the Underground took her past the wool shop once more. It was dark inside and a handwritten sign stuck in the window announced ‘Closing Down – Everything Must Go’.