Winston's War
Page 39
“Aren't you supposed to say something like 'excuse the mess'?” Mac suggested.
“What do you mean? I only cleared up last week. You want a drink or a debate about personal hygiene?”
“I'll stick to the whiskey.”
Two huge tumblers appeared and Burgess sat down at the harmonium which stood outside the bedroom, layered in a guano of old candle wax. He began playing, not with any great skill, and accompanying himself in a voice that had more of the qualities of the jungle at dusk than the concert hall. Soon there came a banging from upstairs. “Tweedie,” Burgess advised. “Old Scots army buffer. From Perth. Hates music you can't march to. But it'll take his mind off his troubles.” He took up the music once more. More protests. Suddenly Burgess began playing the National Anthem and singing at the top of his voice. The protests from beyond the ceiling stopped. Burgess played all six verses of the anthem—Mac had only ever believed there to be one—including the final phrase at full volume: “May the sedition hush / And like a torrent rush / Rebellious Scots to crush / God save the King!”
With a final flourish Burgess slammed shut the harmonium's lid. “Ha! It always gets him. That old bastard Tweedie'll be by his bed, standing to attention with his pajamas tumbling round his ankles and his cock limp as lettuce, not knowing whether to salute the King or reach for his claymore.” Burgess reached for his drink. “It's bollocks anyway, all this God-Save-the-King nonsense. Written by a Frenchman, sung for a Royal Family that are all sodding Germans. Wonderful, ain't it?”
“What is?” Mac asked from the chair he had commandeered after sweeping it with his sleeve. He still had on his overcoat.
“Why, patriotism. Kicking foreigners. Knowing that we Brits are best and that all foreigners are second-class wops.”
Mac sipped his whiskey. Even with his newfound drinking habits he couldn't keep pace with Burgess. The other man was clearly trying to provoke him, but Mac chose to rise to a different challenge. “Tell me something, Mr. Burgess. Why do you punish yourself so much?”
An uncharacteristic silence.
“You mock your neighbors, your country, your King—but most of all yourself. I wondered why.”
“Who the hell are you, Freud's brother?” Burgess snapped.
“No, a Jew,” Mac replied placidly. “We make an art of punishing ourselves. Four thousand years of practice. And also I punish myself because I hate to love, and when I throw love back in the faces of those that offer it I hate myself even more. The camps did that, I suppose. Teach you to survive, on your own, only Number One. But you aren't a Jew, Mr. Burgess, haven't been to the camps…yet sometimes I think you are on a mission to torment yourself. Why?”
“You wouldn't understand. You never went to Eton.”
“Ah, but I went to a different finishing school.”
“Yeah. Long live the revolution.” Burgess threw back the remains of his glass and reached for the bottle.
“You always seem to be fighting—but for what?”
“For what I believe in.”
“That is good.” Mac nodded like a schoolmaster in class. “Every man should have beliefs. I miss not having beliefs, very much. Sometimes I find myself missing not having a country, either. I never used to miss anything except breakfast, but so many things have changed for me over this last year. Would you miss not having a country, Mr. Burgess?”
“Totally.”
“Yet you mock your King and country.”
“Not my country, Mac. As countries go, this isn't a bad one. Dammit, I even go to bed in my MCC tie.”
“MCC?”
“Cricket. Love it. And the rest—Shakespeare, Dickens, Constable, strawberries, and summer evenings in Kent. Love my country, I do. What I hate is the stinking system.”
“Ah, the System. I know all about the System. Learnt all about that at Solovetsky. But in this country I thought Eton was the System.”
“Precisely. Now you know why sometimes I hate myself. And why I drink to forget.” Burgess wrapped his arms around himself tightly, and began rocking backwards and forwards. The words of a refrain began to stumble through his lips. “So I called to the barman to pour me another / Me soul was fair bleeding for want of a wet / And the good resolutions I made to my mother / Are the good resolutions I drink to forget.” He smiled self-consciously. “Something I picked up at Cambridge. Amongst many other things. Somehow seemed to make a habit there of breaking resolutions, along with my mother's heart. But it all seemed so simple then. The young would rise up and overthrow the stinking self-serving system, there'd be liberty and food for all, and we could get first-class degrees in fornication. God, but it seemed simple. That's why a lot of my friends went off to fight in Spain. Damn few of them came back. And you know what the rest of us did?” He took a huge slice off the top of his drink. “Absolutely nothing. Fuck-all. Sat on our self-contented arses and did absolutely nothing. Could have done, could have stopped it. But we were too busy scratching ourselves and bickering about who was going to be our bloody king. So now it's happening all over again, in Poland.”
“And Finland.”
For a moment Burgess faltered. “I think maybe that's different. But I take your point.”
“You think there's a difference?”
“Of course there is!” Burgess replied heatedly. “Russia is being pig-ignorant, but that's nothing compared with the barbarism that Hitler is promising. Not just inflicting it through a war but promising it as a deliberate act of policy. Read it. It's all in Mein Kampf.” Mac shrugged. “Perhaps you're right. I know what's happening in Poland, Mr. Burgess. Particularly to the Jews. I read they are being rounded up and put on trains. Just because they are Jews. Sent to work camps, where they will be purified through their work. I, too, have been on cattle trains that took me to work camps. Believe me, they were not pure. But perhaps you're right, perhaps there was a difference between then and what's happening now. Me and most of the other pupils, we were sent to the camps not so much because of what we were, or even for what we had done. I was never charged or tried, I simply got caught up in things. It was almost as if we were sent there by accident. I don't think what is going on in Poland is an accident.”
“So, we are on the same side.”
“Perhaps. I have been wondering about that. And I've been wondering why you're in what we might call—the information business.”
“Journalism, you mean.”
“Mr. Burgess. I am a barber, not an imbecile. I've read some of the material I supplied to you from the Home Secretary's bin. You would have been arrested if you had published it, and I should almost certainly be arrested for providing it.”
Burgess held his tongue and, uncharacteristically, didn't reach for his glass.
“I worry that this information—forgive me, I search for my words carefully—might not be helping the war effort.”
“War effort? What bloody war effort? That's the whole stinking point!” Burgess had leapt to his feet, unable to contain his emotions. “Don't you see, Mac, it's all happening again.
That…"—he spat out the words—"provincial ironmonger we call a Prime Minister tries to beat his blasted umbrella into a flaming sword while the Nazis are planning to turn this country into a footnote of the Thousand-Year Reich. My God, if only there were a war effort.” Burgess wrung his hands in unmistakable anguish. “I drink myself to sleep, I fuck myself to sleep, I do anything I can to take my mind off what's going on in Europe. But I can't, Mac, even in my sleep. I have nightmares. I see the bodies. They're all being piled up like a factory of death—the women, little children, babies, even my mother. She always comes into it. They're all broken, like dolls. And at the bottom of this huge pile there are my friends from Spain, barely more than boys. And somewhere, buried right in the center, I know I'm there. Except I'm not dead like the rest, I'm just slowly suffocating under their weight…Then I wake up and discover it's not a dream after all, it's happening right now. And to stop that, Mac, I'd do anything. Anything it takes.”
His blue eyes had dissolved and were openly weeping. “It seemed so much simpler when I was at Cambridge. The world was black and it was white—yes, and a little red, too—and it was all going to get sorted out the day after tomorrow. But now I foul my own pants because I'm so very afraid that the day after tomorrow we'll wake up and discover that the whole of Europe is nothing but one huge pile of broken bodies, and that stupid prig Chamberlain won't care a damn so long as he's got someone to help him straighten his wretched collar.”
“So what is the answer?” Mac asked softly.
“I don't know, Mac—God, wish I did!” He slumped back into his chair, exhausted. “All I know is that I've got to do what I can, as best I can.”
“Which is?” But Mac provided his own answer. “Information.” Burgess wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You are Freud's sodding brother. What's this all about, Mac?”
“It's about a lot of things, I suppose. My own fears, like yours, my own inadequacies. Not knowing what I want, and what I ought to do. There's the lady you know about. I like her very much, you see, and she likes me, too. Couple of great kids. I ought to be very happy but somehow I just don't seem able to…It's commitment, that's the problem. That's what lies between me and her. And between me and you, Mr. Burgess. Loving something or someone so much more than myself. Something I've spent my whole life running from, like it's a plague that's pursuing me from my past. Yet you? You embrace it with such passion. I wanted to try to understand your commitment. To see whether it's infectious.”
“And is it?”
Mac considered the question for a long time. “You asked why I came, what this is all about. It's about this.” From beneath his thin overcoat Mac drew out a briefcase. “Belongs to my last customer this evening. Left in a hurry to get ready for a formal dinner. Haven't opened it, but…You see, about a hundred yards down the road from the barber's shop in Curzon Street is the headquarters of MI5—regular customers, they are—and my customer this afternoon is a very senior officer. He's off at his dinner this evening and may not notice his briefcase is missing until he gets back—perhaps not even until tomorrow morning. Then he'll panic. And eventually he'll think of Trumper's. He'll be waiting outside the front door as soon as we open at nine.” Mac held out the briefcase. “It's yours. Until seven tomorrow morning. If you want it.”
“Do you know what you are doing, Mac?”
“I think it's called commitment. Thought I might give it a try.”
She lay back, the smell of leather filling her nostrils, looking up at him with a mixture of bewilderment and growing fear. The evening had started out so positively, all the sort of things that satisfied her about being with him. Bracken had been so attentive. Drinks at the Savoy's American Bar—in her honor, he had announced with a flourish—and dinner in the Grill, where he had strolled between the tables, acknowledged by everyone—although some had expressions that suggested they had just bitten on a chunk of pure gristle. Since the outbreak of war “dear Brendan” seemed to have grown in stature. Still in the shadow of his master, of course, but that master now bestrode the world from port to far-flung port. At times Bracken was genuinely shortsighted and had difficulty recognizing those who paid him court, at other moments his shortsightedness was entirely deliberate, repaying old scores. One dining table was occupied by a banker who had once refused Bracken a loan. The banker's face beamed, his hand shot out. Very loudly, so that other tables as well as the banker's guests could hear, Bracken had told him to bugger off. And he had wandered on, a prodigal's progress, discussing affairs of state and of finance and of war, while Anna clung to him and smiled.
He had been particularly unrestrained in his descriptions of the resignation of Hore-Belisha, how the War Secretary had come to his room—well, Mr. Churchill's room, if one insisted on being pedantic—and the great matters of the moment were resolved. He had not been flattering about H-B's manners and emotions, Bracken's arms flailing with every new exaggeration, but no one seemed to mind or wished to contest the matter. Their attentions seemed to give him an exceptional energy, as though he occupied the spotlight on a stage, the meal becoming one sustained monologue, and as the last formalities of dinner were washed down he had suggested that they drive to Hyde Park and watch the moon above the Serpentine. Bracken was driving himself, in the Bentley, and the Savoy had provided a bottle of Pol Roger for companionship. Soon they had found their way through darkened and largely deserted streets to the lake that spread like a tongue across the center of the park. They were alone, the world seemed entirely theirs.
And he had started once again on his story of “little Leslie,” as he called him, elaborating to the point where H-B was in tears and vowing to rip the Government apart, had it not been for Bracken's own wise counsel. By the time the bottle of Pol Roger was half empty, almost entirely courtesy of Bracken, it sounded as if he had saved the civilized world single-handed from the depredations of the vengeful Jew. His tales were largely nonsense, everyone knew that, but he imparted them with such relish and self-conviction that by the time he was finished most people almost believed him, and those who couldn't somehow didn't seem to care.
“But Brendan, darling, what does this all mean, Mr. Belisha going?” Anna asked.
“Mean? It's bloody obvious. Apart from Winston he was the only man in Cabinet with the balls for war. That's why they got rid of him. That and his propensity for antagonizing everyone from the King to the Archbishop. But my God, if only we could have set him at Hitler, what damage he might have done!” The window was open so that he could flick the ash from his cigarette, allowing the cold air to pour in. Soon the windows were completely misted and the moon was nowhere to be seen. “What it means, dear girl, is that so long as Mr. Neville Chamberlain is our leader, this country will never fight. He'll duck and dive and avoid a conflict so long as Hitler leaves him any half-open exit. Sometimes I think he only declared war so as to throw everyone off the scent. We thought the world was about to come to an end, yet here we are almost six months later and still we've done nothing but try to bore the bastards into submission. Oh, but that won't last long, though.”
“What won't last, Brendan dear?” She nibbled his ear as though this were of far more interest to her provincial American taste than the fate of the world.
“Peace. This Phoney War. The public don't like it, the French don't like it.” Another pull on his cigarette. “Something's got to be done. I was discussing it with Winston just this morning. It's going to change.”
“But how? Where?”
“Norway! Somehow we're going to start a war in Norway. About the iron ore.” His hands were waving once again. The remnants of the bottle were knocked over but he either didn't notice or didn't care. “Chamberlain doesn't want it, Halifax hates it, but Winston is determined. Cut off the iron ore then throttle the Hun into submission!” And suddenly his waving hands were upon her, at first over her blouse, and then inside, searching hungrily.
She tried to protest but he was kissing her, his mouth full of the taste of tobacco and champagne. She tried to move away but succeeded only in falling back across the large leather bench seat and he threw himself at her in a way he had never done before. It was something to do with the war, with the drama of public affairs and the way that everyone now listened to him, looked up to him, even as he was looking down on them. As though he were leading a cavalry charge, and taking no prisoners.
Even as she fell back, he pursued her, his lips and tongue upon her, his hands, too, and he seemed deaf to her protests. One breast was uncovered, the draught of cold night air cascading across it, and she could feel him firm, pressing into her. He was muttering stupid endearments, fumbling with himself as well as with her, then his hand was between her legs and she could feel him forcing himself ever closer. She could scarcely catch her breath, pressed down by both his weight and the surprise, telling herself this couldn't possibly be happening to her, until she felt him naked pushing up between her thighs. Flesh upon flesh.
As the car door slammed behind her, Bracken was left feeling befuddled and angry, and not solely from the drink. He had been in mid-performance, one of his best and most intense, yet suddenly his audience had got up and left. It was perplexing, deeply hurtful, yet Bracken was not a man to allow such irritations to stand in his way. The show must go on.
Shepherd Market was but a short walk from the fringes of the park, still closer if you were driving a custom-built Bentley, no matter how erratically, and it was not long before Bracken was there. He had been to this place a couple of times before—there was something about the danger of getting recognized or being found sinning in public that spurred him on—but he found the Market engulfed in the blackout with every doorway so dark he could scarcely have recognized his mother. And when, at last, he had found what he was looking for and she had taken him up the stairs to her squalid room, he expressed no surprise when he discovered that she had a figure that was almost matronly, a little like his mother's. He would always remember that day as a ten-year-old when he had run back home to tell her of some unmerited punishment from his swine of a schoolmaster, tearfully wanting her comfort and affection, and had burst in only to find her standing naked on the hearth, drying herself off from her bath, all dark nipples and sagging flesh and repulsive hair-hidden secrets. Instead of comfort and affection he had received the soundest thrashing she had ever given him, still naked, which had left welts like tram tracks across his back until he had run back out through the door where she could not follow him.