by Len Deighton
I put down my pen and sipped the coffee. I sniffed it. Perhaps it was acorns. Behind the soy sauce was propped a pamphlet advertising ‘Six lectures in modern Marxism’. I turned it over; on the back someone had pencilled, ‘Don’t complain about the coffee, you might be old and weak yourself some day.’
Suppose that the two gate men had not been so far wrong. Suppose that I had been in the Evaluation Block once already that morning. Ridiculous, but I pursued the notion. Suppose I had been drugged or hypnotized. I decided to discount both those possibilities for the time being. Suppose my exact double had been there. I rejected that idea too because the men on the door would have remembered: or would they? The card. Those gate men seldom bothered to look at faces. They checked the card numbers against the rack and against the time-book. It wasn’t my Doppelgänger that had been through the gate: it was my security card.
Before I got to the door another thought occurred to me. I sat down at the table and took out my wallet. I removed the security card from its plastic cover and looked at it closely. It was exactly the right shape, size and springiness for sliding up the door catch of my locker. I’d used it to force the lock dozens of times. But this card had never been used for that purpose. Its edges were sharp, white and pristine. This wasn’t the security card I’d been given, someone else had that. I was using the forgery!
That disturbing conclusion got me nowhere. It just made me lonely. My world wasn’t peopled by charming wise and influential elders, as Ferdy’s world was. My friends all had real worries: like who can you get to service a new Mercedes properly, should the au pair have colour TV, and is Greece warmer than Yugoslavia in July. Yeah, well maybe it was.
I looked at my watch. This was Thursday and I’d promised to take Marjorie to lunch and be lectured about my responsibilities.
I got to my feet and went to the counter. ‘Ten pence,’ she said.
I paid.
‘I said you’d eat the nut cutlet,’ she said. She pushed her spectacles up on her forehead to see the cash register better. Damn, I’d eaten the wretched thing without even tasting it.
‘You didn’t like the coffee?’ she asked.
‘Is this anarchist’s coffee?’ I asked the girl.
‘Grounds enough for arrest,’ she said. I suppose someone had said the same thing before. Or maybe they thought of the joke and then built the coffee shop around it.
She passed me the change. Alongside the cash register there were half a dozen collection boxes. Oxfam, World-Wildlife and Shelter. One of the tins had a hand-written label with a Polaroid photo fixed alongside it. ‘Kidney Machine Fund. Give generously for Hampstead Sick and Elderly.’ I picked up the tin and looked closely at the photo of a kidney machine.
‘That’s my pet charity,’ said the girl. ‘Our target is four machines by Christmas. Going all the way to the hospital every week or so is too much for some of the old ones. They can have those machines in their own home.’
‘Yes, I know.’ I put my change into the tin.
The girl smiled. ‘People with kidney trouble would do almost anything for one of those machines,’ she said.
‘I’m beginning to believe you’re right,’ I said.
14
Attacker. For the purposes of the assessment the ‘phasing’ player, who brings his unit into range, is called the attacker. The player against whom the unit is brought is called the defender.
GLOSSARY. ‘NOTES FOR WARGAMERS’. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
The loneliest place in the world is the entrance hall of a big hospital. The huge and elaborate Victorian palace in which Marjorie worked was a maze of cast-iron staircases, stone arches and decorated paving. From these pitiless materials, whispers echoed back like the endless thrash of a furious sea. The staff were inured to it. They clattered past in white coats, smelling of ether and hauling trolleys which I did not dare examine. By the time Marjorie arrived I needed medical reassurance.
‘Then you should wait outside in the car.’
‘I haven’t brought the car.’
‘In my car.’ She was wearing a pink jersey shirt-dress instead of one of the dark suits she usually wore when on duty. She tied a black silk scarf and put on her belted raincoat.
I said, ‘I haven’t got the key of your car.’
‘Wait near my car.’
‘You didn’t bring it today, remember?’
‘The real answer,’ said Marjorie, ‘is that you like the frisson of hypochondria.’ We stepped through the portal. The sun was high in a clear blue sky. It was hard to believe it was almost Christmas.
She was always like this when she was on duty: trimmer, younger, more independent. More like a doctor, in fact. It was difficult to escape the thought that the scatterbrained little girl that she became when with me was not the person she wanted to be. And yet we were happy together, and just waiting for her I rediscovered all the excitements and anxieties of adolescent love. We took one of the taxi cabs from the hospital cab rank. I gave him the address of The Terrine du Chef.
‘I bought you a present.’
‘Oh, Pat. You remembered.’
She unwrapped it hastily. It was a wristwatch. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’
‘They’ll exchange it for a desk barometer.’
She held the watch tight, and put her closed fist inside her other hand, and pressed it to her heart, as though frightened that I might take it from her. ‘You said repapering the sitting-room would be for my birthday.’
‘We’ll probably be able to afford that as well,’ I said. ‘And I thought … well, if you do go to Los Angeles, you wouldn’t be able to take the wallpaper.’
‘And it’s got a sweep second-hand.’ Tears welled up in her eyes.
‘It’s only steel,’ I said. ‘Gold isn’t so waterproof or dustproof … but if you want gold …’
There was a lot of the little girl in her. And there was no denying that that was what attracted me. I leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose.
‘Los Angeles …’ she said. She sniffed, and smiled. ‘It would mean working in a research lab … like a factory, almost … I like being part of a hospital … it’s what makes it worthwhile.’
The cab swerved and threw her gently into my arms. ‘I do love you, Patrick,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to cry,’ I told her. Her hair came unclipped and fell across her face as I tried to kiss her again.
‘We just don’t get on together,’ she said. She held me tight enough to disprove it.
She drew back from me and looked at my face as if seeing it for the first time. She put out a hand and touched my cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘Before we try again, let’s find somewhere else to live.’ She put her hand lightly across my lips. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your flat, but it is your flat, Patrick. I feel I’m only a lodger there, it makes me insecure.’
‘I have another trip scheduled. While I’m away, you could speak with one of the less crooked house-agents.’
‘Please! Do let us look. I don’t mean in the suburbs or anything. I won’t look at anything farther out than Highgate.’
‘It’s a deal.’
‘And I’ll try for a position in whatever hospital is local.’
‘Good,’ I said. As long as she worked in the same hospital as her husband there would always be this distance between us, even if – as she insisted – it was solely of my creation. I’d seen her with her husband. It was bloody disconcerting when they got on to the topic of medicine: it was as if they had their own culture, and their own language in which to discuss its finer nuances.
For a few minutes neither of us spoke. As we passed Lords Cricket Ground I saw a newspaper seller with a placard: RUSSIAN MYSTERY WOMAN CHAIRS GERMAN UNITY TALKS. That’s the way it is with newspapers. The car strike had already become ANGRY CAR PICKETS: VIOLENCE FLARES after some name-calling outside the factory that morning.
‘Have you got a game in progress?’ It was Marjorie’s attempt to account for my moodin
ess.
‘I left just as Ferdy was deciding whether to atomize a sub outside Murmansk and risk contaminating the shipping and ship yards in the fjord. Or whether to wait until its multiple clusters leave him without nukes for retaliation – or with the random target selection of the surviving silos.’
‘And you ask me how I can work in the Pathology Lab.’
‘It’s comparable in a way … disease and war. Perhaps it’s better to pick them to the bone and see what they are made of than to sit around and wait for the worst to happen.’
The cab stopped outside The Terrine. ‘I must be back by two thirty at the latest.’
‘We don’t have to eat here,’ I said. ‘We can have a beer and a sandwich and get you back ten minutes early.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘It was a lovely idea.’
I paid the taxi off. Marjorie said, ‘How did you find this little place – it’s sweet.’
I was cupping my hands and peering close to the window. There were no lights on and no customers, just the neatly arranged place settings, polished glasses and starched napkins. I tried the door and rang the bell. Marjorie tried the door too. She laughed. ‘That’s typical of you, darling,’ she said.
‘Just cool it for a minute,’ I told her. I went down the narrow alley at the side of the restaurant. It gave access to back entrances of houses above The Terrine. There was a wooden gate in the wall. I put my arm over the top of it, and by balancing a toe on a ledge in the wall I reached far enough to release the catch. Marjorie followed me through the gate. There was a tiny cobbled yard, with an outside toilet and a drain blocked with potato peelings.
‘You shouldn’t.’
‘I said cool it.’ There seemed to be no one looking down from the windows, or from the iron balcony crammed with potted plants, now skeletal and bare in the wintry sun. I tried the back door. The net curtains were drawn. I went to the window but its lacy-edged yellow blind was down, and I couldn’t see in. Marjorie said, ‘Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.’
I tried to lever the spring bolt open with the edge of my security card but it must have been one of those double turn movements with a dead-bolt. ‘That’s women,’ I said. ‘Give them presents and they complain they’re not getting enough kindness.’ I gave her another tiny kiss on the nose.
The lock wouldn’t give. I leaned my back against the glass panel in the door to deaden the sound, then I pressed against it until I heard the glass snap.
‘Have you gone mad?’ said Marjorie.
I put a finger in the crack and widened it enough to pull a large piece of broken glass away from the putty. ‘OK, Ophelia,’ I said. ‘You’re the only one I love; stop complaining.’
I put my hand through the broken glass panel and found the key, still in the old-fashioned mortice lock. It turned with a screech of its rusty tumblers. Glancing round to be sure there was no one coming down the alley, I opened the door and went in.
‘This is burglary,’ said Marjorie, but she followed me.
‘House-breaking, you mean. Burglary only at night, remember what I told you for that crossword?’
The sun came through the holland blind; thick yellow light, viscous, almost, like a roomful of pale treacle. I released the blind and it sprang up with a deafening clatter. If no one heard that, I thought, the place is empty.
‘But you could go to prison,’ said Marjorie.
‘We’d be together,’ I said, ‘and that’s what matters.’ I leaned forward to kiss her but she pushed me away. We were in the pantry. Lined up along the servery there were wooden bowls, each with a limp piece of lettuce and a segment of pale-pink tomato. There were desserts, too: platoons of caramels and battalions of babas, deployed under muslin and awaiting the word to attack.
I helped myself from a tray of sausages. They were still warm. ‘Have a sausage, Marjorie.’ She shook her head. I bit into one. ‘Entirely bread,’ I said. ‘Be all right toasted, with butter and marmalade.’ I walked into the next room; Marjorie followed.
‘A really long lease is what we should go for,’ said Marjorie. ‘And with both of us working …’
The sewing machine was still there but the uniform had gone and so had the dossier of measurements and photos. I went down the worn stone steps to the room into which the refrigeration chamber had been built. It switched itself on and made us both jump. ‘Especially with me being a doctor,’ said Marjorie. ‘The bank manager told me that.’
There was a tall cupboard built into one wall. Its door was fastened with a massive padlock. A hairpin had no effect on it.
I opened the kitchen drawers, one by one, until I found the sharpening steel. I put that through the padlock and put my weight behind it, but, as always, it was the hasp that gave way: its screws slid out of the dead woodwork and fell on the floor.
‘It’s against the law,’ said Marjorie. ‘I don’t care what you say.’
‘A shop, or a restaurant? Implied right of access – a tricky point of law. It’s probably not even trespass.’ I opened the cupboard.
‘It’s better than paying rent,’ said Marjorie. ‘You’ve paid for your old place three times over, I’ve always said that.’
‘I know you have, Marjorie.’ There was nothing inside the cupboard except dead flies and a packet of account-overdue stickers.
‘We might get it all from the bank – not even have to go to a building society,’ said Marjorie.
The door of the cold room had two large swing clips holding it. Outside, on the wall, there were light switches and a fuse box marked ‘Danger’. I put the light switch on and a small red neon indicator came alight. I put my weight upon the swing clips and without effort opened up the giant door.
‘That would be wonderful,’ I said.
‘You’re not listening,’ said Marjorie.
‘Building society,’ I said. ‘Wonderful idea.’
‘Not have to go to one,’ said Marjorie.
‘Well, there you are,’ I said, ‘you’ve answered your own question.’
Score nothing for guessing that this was an ordinary room disguised as a cold chamber. The frozen air came out to meet me. I stepped inside. It was a normal refrigerated room, about eight feet square, with slatted shelving from floor to ceiling on all sides, except for the part of the rear wall that was occupied by the refrigeration machinery. The displacement of the air tripped the thermostat. The motor clicked on and built up the revolutions until it was wobbling gently on the sprung mounts. It was cold and I buttoned my jacket and turned up the collar. Marjorie came inside. ‘Like the mortuary,’ she pronounced. Her voice echoed in the tiny space. I did my monster walk towards her, my hands raised like claws.
‘Stop it,’ she said. She shivered.
Five sides of mutton were lined up along one side. Frozen fillets – fifty according to the label on the box – had been piled up on the top shelf, and crammed alongside them were three large bags of ready peeled frozen sauté potatoes and three cardboard boxes of mixed vegetables.
‘One gross individual portions: Coq au vin, suprêmes de volaille, suprêmes de chasseur. Mixed.’ A large tin of ‘Curry anything’ and a shelf crammed with frozen lamb chops. Just inside the door there were three bottles of champagne being cooled the hard way. No hollow walls, no secret com-partments, no trapdoors.
We came out of the refrigerated room and I closed the door again. I went back into the kitchen and sniffed at the saucepans in the bain marie. They were all empty. I cut a slice of bread. ‘Bread?’
She shook her head. ‘Where could they all be?’ said Marjorie. ‘It’s not early closing.’
‘There you’ve got me,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ll look down in the wine cellar. They could just be hiding.’
‘It’s nearly half past.’
‘You’d better have a sausage. By the time we’ve finished this burglary, there won’t be time for lunch.’ I took another one myself and squashed it between a folded slice of bread.
She g
rabbed my arm. ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’ she asked.
‘Not with a partner. Sausage sandwich?’
I thought she was going to cry again. ‘Oh, Patrick!’ She didn’t stamp her foot exactly, but she would have done in her other shoes.
‘I was only joking,’ I said. ‘You didn’t think I was serious?’
‘I don’t even think you are serious about the house,’ she said.
There was no one in the cellar. No one in the toilet. No one in the store room upstairs.
An hour or so ago this had been a flourishing restaurant, now it was not just deserted: it was abandoned.
There was something in the atmosphere, perhaps the sound that our voices and footsteps made with all the windows and doors closed, or perhaps there really is something that happens to houses that are forsaken.
It had been hastily done and yet it was systematic and disciplined. No attempt had been made to save the valuables. There was an expensive Sony cassette player, a cellar full of wine and spirits, and two or three boxes of cigars and cigarettes in a cupboard over the serving hatch. And yet not one scrap of paper remained: no bills, receipts or invoices, not even a menu. Even the grocery order that I’d seen wedged down behind the knife rack had been carefully retrieved and taken away.
‘There’s sliced ham: you like that.’
‘Do stop it,’ she said.
I walked into the restaurant. The light came through the net curtains and reflected upon the marble table-tops and the bentwood chairs arranged around them. It was all as shadowy and still as a Victorian photograph. Antique mirrors, gold-lettered with advertisements for cigarettes and apéritifs, were fixed to every wall. Mirrored there were seemingly endless other dining-rooms, where red-eyed pretty girls stretched ringless hands towards tall shabby furtive men.
