World War Two Will Not Take Place

by Bill James

  SB had climbed back from collapse, had he? He’d become constructive again. Baillie’s theory that a stoic’s breakdown would be total and final didn’t fit. He hadn’t disintegrated like the abused apartment armchair. No? Mount wondered. This sudden focus by SB on fantasized secret bargaining between Berlin and Moscow might, in fact, be a symptom of that total and final breakdown forecast by Baillie, mightn’t it? Was SB’s assessment of things improbable, unsubstantiated, half-cracked, hurried, desperate? Please, please, get to Berlin and dig me out of this hole, Marcus. Mount hadn’t liked hearing him ask for help. He was SB, a rock.

  But Mount would try to dig him out of the hole. Viewing that group of people near the entrance to Toulmin’s apartment block, Mount found himself recalling cliché shots from thriller films, when extras clustering around the doors of a building signalled tragedy inside. Now, he considered getting out of sight. If Toulmin were the tragedy, it might be foolish to approach. Perhaps there’d soon be a swarm of police, as well as this swarm of sightseers. In their thorough way, police would possibly start asking who knew anything about what had happened, and about whom it had happened to. Stanley Charles Naughton of Steglitz and London must not appear in police notes, even as someone entirely unable to help as a witness now. Nobody could tell where that might lead. Perhaps a passport check? Vamoose, Stanley Charles Naughton? Walk phoney businesslike, but unhurried, in a different direction and disappear?

  Then, though, the strong needs of the operation took hold, and perhaps the disciplines of the job. He had come here to find if Toulmin was OK. Tag on to this group now and he might discover something, though probably not that he was OK: crowds gathered because someone was not OK, not because he or she was. Spying always involved a lot of tagging on, attempted merging, attempted blending.

  Mount didn’t bolt, but approached the gathering. A woman was addressing them. In a while, he thought he caught the word plattenbauten and then Splanemann-Siedlung. He slowed. He heard: ‘Amsterdam.’ He realized he was listening to an educational lecturette on this accommodation block, built with the plattenbauten – those concrete slabs – and part of the renowned Lichtenberg Splanemann-Siedlung development, completed a few years ago. Although very influential, it was not completely original, but part copied from a suburb in Amsterdam. She’d generously admitted the debt. Perhaps there had been no tragedy, after all. A kind of seminar under way? The woman said that the plattenbauten here were made from ‘locally cast slabs’.

  At the end of the woman’s briefing, two men did a translation summary, one into English, one into French. Mount decided the crowd must be local-authority housing experts from other parts of Germany and Britain and France, here to see and learn, in case the Splanemann-Siedlung example could be followed on their own patches. Several people were making notes. There might be a tour inside. He sidled up to the outer edge of the audience and gave pretty good attention to some costing details, average construction times, and detailed specifications of the slabs’ dimensions, weight, tensile and compressive strengths. God, but this was interesting! He’d hook on. He’d blend with them.

  He had a copy of Baillie’s drawing with him for double-checks and brought this out of his pocket now, folded it vertically and laterally to make a pad, with the sketch inside, and jotted quite a few figures and that phrase, ‘locally cast slabs’, on the blank reverse. ‘The slabs, and therefore the properties, have their own aesthetic,’ the woman had concluded. Mount agreed. To hell with Nick Baillie’s snobbish comments. She shouldn’t have sounded so defensive.

  ‘Excuse me, but I couldn’t help seeing just now what you’d written. I think you’ve put your finger on it there,’ a man standing next to Mount said in English – English English. He spoke quietly, so as not to interfere with the French translation, just underway.

  ‘The measurements and so on? They’ll slip from my mind otherwise,’ Mount said.

  ‘Not those so much, but “locally cast slabs”. Important, conferring a sort of wholeness and homeliness on the project: a means of providing not only flats, but work in the vicinity. Useful, given the unemployment figures in England now. But the words “slab, slabs”. Ugly? Something lost in translation there, surely. Plattenbauten sounds acceptable. And the French equivalent: “maisons à panneaux”. But “slab, slabs” . . . Off-putting, wouldn’t you say? Not just unpoetic: anti-poetic. “Panels”, better? Or “tablets”? Too Mosaic? “Lozenges”? There’s a classical justification for that: isn’t lozenges from the Latin, lausiae, slabs?’

  Mount’s Oxford Greats degree was founded on Latin and Greek. ‘True.’

  ‘But “locally cast lozenges” not quite right, perhaps.’ He was tall, aquiline, very thin, friendly looking. He wore a long off-white raincoat and an off-white silk scarf. For each point he made he nodded his long head sharply once, as if to state: ‘We agree on that, yes, no argument needed, surely?’ It might be a technique brought over from town council meetings. Some polite aggression would be necessary there. ‘Wolverhampton,’ he said.

  ‘Tottenham,’ Mount replied.

  ‘I’m impressed, so far.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘I don’t think I saw you at the hotel when we assembled last night.’

  ‘I was delayed,’ Mount said.

  ‘Mainwaring.’

  ‘Naughton.’

  ‘Clifford.’

  ‘Stanley.’ They shook hands dispassionately.

  ‘Yes, impressive but . . . It’s odd, isn’t it, Stanley, that one wonders how, in the event of war, these buildings would stand up to bombing – ironically, bombing by the very country that taught us how to erect them? Should one ask the lady how strong the plattenbauten are – not so much in themselves as individual plattenbau, which is unquestioned – but at the join points, where they are put alongside one another and on top of and under one another in the metal framework? Ultimately, although these plattenbauten achieve a kind of unity and form a wall, each plattenbau remains separate, discrete, a unit, and therefore perhaps liable to become inchoate.’

  ‘It’s quite a question.’

  ‘Do you think there’ll be a war?’

  ‘There are a lot of factors to be considered in that regard.’

  ‘Well, yes. Which?’

  ‘Many,’ Mount replied.

  ‘Some back home obviously think there will be: Winston Churchill, for instance, and Lionel Paterin, the Cabinet Minister. They don’t try to conceal their bleak, alarming assessments of things. I’ve met Paterin, as, perhaps, you have, Stanley.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘When he was a minister concerned with housing. I found him very sensible, very balanced. He’s not one to overdramatize.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him, naturally,’ Mount replied.

  ‘People like Paterin and Churchill as well, they often have information beyond what is generally available, and they feel a duty to pronounce on it.’

  ‘All kinds of competing information these days. It’s rather baffling.’

  Mainwaring said: ‘I ask myself, and possible you ask yourself, Stanley, might they – I mean, the Germans – want us to put up this kind of block because they know it will be easy to knock down in a blitzkrieg raid, causing civilian casualties in a “softening up” strategy? Consider a sequence where a couple of plattenbauten are pushed out of connection with each other by high explosive. What happens? Aren’t these plattenbauten by their nature extremely interdependent, although separate? If two plattenbauten go askew, isn’t the whole structure likely to shift and disintegrate?’

  ‘Flattenbauten,’ Mount said.

  He nodded once and gave a smile-grimace and suppressed retch. ‘These plattenbauten look and are heavy and strong. Because of their function, they must be. But, in a collapse, the very strength and weight of the plattenbauten become a danger to those living in the apartments, surely. When falling they might give an occupant quite a whack, probably fatal. I imagine Luftwaffe officers consulting their maps before an aircraft r
aid and pointing to the spot in Wolverhampton or Tottenham, London, where Splanemann-Siedlung structures are waiting to be smashed. Their location would be known because of information exchanged at sessions like this one today.’

  ‘Would the Germans have gone in for these blocks themselves if aware they could be destroyed easily by bombs? After all, the location of this block and the type of its construction is well known.’

  ‘That, also, is quite a question,’ Clifford said. ‘I can see it might be thought untactful to raise these matters now. We are guests.’

  They all began to move into the building, led by the guide and the two translators. It was announced that a family on the third floor had kindly agreed to open their apartment, number thirty-four, for examination by the visitors. Luck; Mount felt pleased he had joined the group. Sometimes that enterprise, resolve, audacity recommended in training did work. They would enter the selected apartment in relays. On the way up, the guide spoke of the spaciousness of the landings and gentleness of the stair incline, to suit old people. All the apartments on this floor had dark-blue corridor doors. They were numbered: odds on the front of the building, evens to the rear. Mount thought thirty-seven should be Toulmin’s, but the doors did not show name labels.

  As he entered thirty-four with several of the others, he paused for a moment to let Clifford go ahead and took the chance of a good gaze at the lock, only one. It looked elementary and very susceptible. The door was not solid. He assumed that thirty-seven’s would be the same. He assumed, also, that the layout of thirty-seven would match thirty-four’s: one big bedroom, one smaller, bathroom-lavatory, kitchen, living room, utility room. He’d get the geography into his head as useful if he had to investigate thirty-seven in full or part darkness. The occupants of thirty-four were a young couple with a baby. He worked in a factory and had arranged his shifts so he could be here this morning. They declared their apartment splendid, ideal. Possibly they’d been picked to say so. Perhaps there was an Iron Cross medal for services in praise of plattenbauten.

  When it came to questions, Clifford asked through the translator whether there had ever been evidence that any of the plattenbauten were not lying as snugly together as they should be, allowing moisture to enter the apartment. And perhaps the fault prevented pictures from hanging flush against the wall owing to a bulge, or, similarly, a looking glass, which might consequently give imperfect reflections, as with comically distorting mirrors in a fairground.

  ‘Not at all,’ the couple replied.

  Mount said, also through the translator: ‘A more general point, if I may. Are the apartment blocks neighbourly, or does the construction’s very solidity make residents isolated? Do you know people next door to you and perhaps opposite?’ He thought too much fluency in German from him would not be wise.

  ‘Very neighbourly,’ the man said. ‘The apartment block is compact enough not to become impersonal. We have many friendships.’

  ‘Are apartments occupied exclusively by families, or do some have only one occupant?’ Mount said.

  ‘Mostly families,’ the guide said. ‘That was the main aim of the development.’

  Mount made a note: ‘Mostly families.’

  ‘But not entirely,’ the young mother said. ‘For instance, in thirty-seven there is only one man living alone. Or we think so. We have not seen anyone else go into the apartment, except for a furniture delivery. He is very civil, but never talks very much. We have tried to be sociable with him, but unsuccessfully.’

  ‘Is he away sometimes?’ Mount said. ‘That might explain his behaviour.’

  ‘We know very little of him,’ she replied.

  ‘Good questions of yours, if I may say, Stanley,’ Clifford remarked as they were leaving. ‘Is there a danger these people will become boxed off from one another in their concrete cells? “Very civil, but never talks very much.” Can you think of a better description of urban isolation?’

  ‘Will you be recommending against plattenbauten building for Wolverhampton, Clifford, because of that and the pictures and mirrors?’ Mount replied.

  ‘The whole thing looked so cheap and shoddy. Did you notice the front door?’

  ‘The front door?’

  ‘I always say one can deduce a lot from front doors. Flimsy. Gimcrack. Not much resemblance to wood.’

  ‘No, I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Take it from me, front doors can say so much. I wonder if you’ve ever been to look at number ten Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s residence in London. That is a wonderful front door: solid, regularly painted, I’m sure, domestic, yet also internationally significant.’

  ‘I suppose people could buy themselves a proper wooden one, even if they’re only renting.’

  ‘They could. Of course they could. But that is the point, isn’t it? They live in the kind of context, the Splanemann-Siedlung all-provided context, where people do not bother about the nature of front doors. This is very basic living, with no concern for refinements.’

  ‘Too basic for Wolverhampton?’

  ‘Would they even notice if moisture were getting through imperfect joins in the plattenbauten, caused by movement? Or jutting pictures and mirrors? Such moisture or jutting would not, in itself, be important – only as symptoms of a general instability of structure, which might increase dangers during a bombing raid. But perhaps we’ll meet at the hotel this evening and talk further on these matters, Stanley.’

  ‘I’d enjoy that, Clifford,’ Mount said.

  ‘I feel there is a natural rapport between us, demonstrated in the fact that we both noted as very significant the “locally crafted slabs”.’

  Even if he had known which hotel Clifford was at, Mount thought he’d have to skip this next meeting with him, despite the deep rapport about slabs. The spy business was like that: you met all kinds of fascinating and dull people, and you treated them the same. They were the same: they were equally there to be fooled and possibly milked, and once this necessity passed, they were equally there to be ditched. Instead of rendezvousing with Clifford that evening he would go back to Toulmin’s apartment block. As long as he saw no obvious watchdogs, he’d enter thirty-seven. Earlier, he hadn’t tried to identify possible surveillance. It would have been useless: too many students of plattenbauten, or supposed students of plattenbauten, occupied the stairs and landings, the corridors, and apartment thirty-four.

  Mount still had no pistol, only his bunch of twirls and a narrow-beam torch, intended to provide concentrated, controllable light and limit the spread of give-away glints. He decided he wouldn’t get down on hands and knees to sniff at the bottom of the door for cigarette smoke, or worse. That was potentially farcical and would be hard to explain if someone came into the corridor and stood over him, perhaps sympathetically assuming a fit or heart attack. Non-conclusive, too. The crew waiting might be non-smokers, or had been ordered not to smoke, for fear their prey did the under-door test. Most of these trade tricks were internationally known among secrets people. It might be possible to have a sniff for cigarette odour through the keyhole. Mount believed, anyway, that the couple opposite in thirty-four would have noticed, and mentioned, if strangers had installed themselves at thirty-seven.

  It was just before nine p.m. when he returned, and October-dark. He rambled for a while again in the street, staying close to the apartment block now and observing carefully. He saw nothing to trouble him. There were still folk about, yes, going in and out at the apartment building, but ordinary folk carrying on their ordinary lives, as far as he could judge, not waiting for a visitor to Toulmin. Of course, he couldn’t be sure. They might be folk skilled at looking like ordinary folk carrying on their ordinary lives, but really folk waiting for a visitor to Toulmin, to the traitor Toulmin. If they were on that kind of pounce duty, though, they’d most likely reappear regularly. It didn’t happen while Mount looked, and he looked for half an hour: no encore performances. He’d push on. There was a small entrance foyer to the apartment block. As he stepped towards
it, he saw a man descend from the stairs, obviously on his way to the street. Mount knew he must keep going, not veer off abruptly, scared. It could be a giveaway. He must pretend some of that ordinariness.

  ‘Ah,’ the man said, ‘you are still here?’

  For a moment Mount had not recognized the host from thirty-four. The delay was excusable. He appeared much scruffier now. He wore a grubby navy jacket and black canvas cap, a rough navy jersey, greasy looking dark trousers, and was pulling on an aged, long raincoat before going out into the autumn. He had on heavy black boots. Mount guessed these must be work clothes. He was going to the factory he’d spoken about earlier. He’d arranged his shifts, hadn’t he, so he could be there when they called this morning?

  ‘Our session with you was very helpful, very instructive, but I wanted half an hour to look at the development on my own,’ Mount said.

  ‘Without your English friend who is so concerned about the plattenbauten?’

  ‘It’s a matter of getting the full picture,’ Mount replied.

  ‘You couldn’t do that this morning?’

  ‘Ah, but that was this morning. I’ve seen the building by day, and as a matter of fact done a plan of it, but I wanted also the evening perspective. The occupants’ activities will be different at this time of day.’ A low-powered bulb lit the foyer. Mount pulled the papers out of his pocket again, this time with Baillie’s front-elevation sketch visible. ‘I have to be able to tell my colleagues at home in Britain exactly what I’ve observed here. I, and I alone, represent their interests.’

  The man looked. ‘It’s a good drawing.’

  ‘One aspect only.’

  ‘But correct, I think. Here is the apartment we discussed.’ He put a finger on thirty-seven’s windows.

  ‘Which?’ Mount said.

  ‘Number thirty-seven,’ he said. He moved his finger. ‘Here the bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom.’

  ‘Thirty-seven? Ah, yes, of course, the man you never see.’