by Janice Law
Chapter Fourteen
It took two nights to reach Tangier, with an uncomfortable day laid up in a little cove near the border. As we waited for dark, my smuggler fiddled with the engine, a roaring beast noisy enough, I’d have thought, to wake the entire Zone at any hour. Yours truly lay in the shadows of the rocks desperate to avoid more sunburn. We pushed off when the moon went down, and we reached a little creek east of the port in the misty dawn. I shook hands with my taciturn companion, bid farewell to my gold watch, now on his wrist, and, stiff and footsore, began the trek to the medina.
The sun was up, and I was staggering by the time I reached David’s rented house. I pounded on the door until he threw open an upstairs shutter to let loose a stream of profanity.
“It’s Francis!” I shouted. “I need help.”
The door opened a few seconds later. David stood there in his bathrobe, looking disheveled and hung over. “For Christ sake,” he said when he saw me. “What’s happened? Where the hell have you been?”
I took a step forward and collapsed in his arms. “You won’t believe me,” I said.
And for a while, he didn’t. It was only when I was lying in the bath with my many purple and yellow bruises, raw burns, and peeling flesh on display that he sat down heavily on the toilet seat and said, “Good Lord!”
He brought me brandy and went out for food and was, in every way, very kind. Not perhaps David in his most exciting mode, but a welcome incarnation at the time. He wrapped me up in a sheet and said, “Rest,” and I did. It was not until early evening, up, shaved, clean, bandaged, and dressed in proper clothes that I broached my plans.
“I need you to be very military,” I said.
His expression turned serious. Of course, he was half-drunk; I was sure that he’d been sipping whiskey all day. At the same time, David could function with an amazing level of alcohol. “Right,” he said, perceptibly straightening his back. “Are we facing Messerschmitts or Junkers?”
“Much worse. Top brass.”
“I see.”
I explained what I hoped to do. “You’ll need to be a hero and pull rank.”
David looked skeptical.
“Do you have a better idea? The KGB thinks I’m a spy; the police here are convinced I’m a murderer, and your friend Mrs. Angleford is armed and bent on revenge.”
“It might work,” he allowed. “Two years ago it would certainly have worked. I’d have pulled it off.” His tone was bitter. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
I patted his shoulder but found nothing to say. He was a brave, twisted man, half-ruined by the war and busy completing the destruction. But I could not afford to dwell on that. “Tonight,” I said, “because I must get out of the Zone. The only question is do we meet him early or late?”
Early meant people were sober, and things could be accomplished. Late meant people were drunk and might be amenable. Finally, David, who knew the drinking habits of most of the Zone expats, said, “He always changes for dinner.”
“Always?”
“Without fail. We will catch him at home around ten p.m.”
In the cab up the Mountain, David looked very white and serious. He had unearthed his old RAF uniform, complete with decorations. “A little warm for this climate,” he remarked, “but clothes make the man.”
I found the sight at once impressive and painful, knowing only too well the gap that had opened between the smart, brave pilot he’d been and the wreckage seeking oblivion in Tangier. But Goldfarber was right: survival requires a certain ruthlessness. I found I had plenty, and I hoped that David still had enough.
We left the cab a block before Richard’s house and walked to his walled garden. While I hid in the shadows of an aggressively leafy plant, David rang the bell. The gray, stooped butler, equally renowned for his tact and his memory, appeared. He told David that he was very sorry, but it was too late to see Mr. Richard, who would be going out shortly.
David put on his “voice of command” and said, “Official business. Tell Richard that we must have a quarter of an hour of his time.”
The butler shuffled away. We waited some minutes, so perhaps Richard was indeed dressing for dinner. Then more lights went on, and he appeared at the door, looking spiffy enough for the Court of St. James.
“David!” he said in a tone that reflected both the hour and the uniform. “This is a surprise.”
“And I have another one,” David said, as I emerged from the shadows. “Francis has returned.”
Richard was clearly taken aback, but he automatically attempted finesse. “I hadn’t realized his absence. The busy social season, don’t you know.” He attempted to shut the door, but David already had his foot inside, and I slipped in after him.
“We need to talk,” I said. “We have things to settle.”
For a moment Richard’s face was a study, dismay and anger fighting with his usual bonhomie. Then he led the way to a small study, dark with glossy blue Moorish tiling and equipped with a large desk and some filing cabinets. There were more telephones than even the complex social life of the Zone could possibly require, as well as big topographic maps of Morocco.
“Sit down,” he said. He studied me for a minute. “Of course, your capture by the Soviets was most unfortunate.”
“I was on my way to the Lubyanka,” I said. “That was beyond ‘unfortunate.’”
“Yes, yes. Quite,” Richard said, although his expression, which I’d always thought genial, had subtly morphed into indifferent. “Though everything possible was done. And you gave us quite a lot of trouble. You know that you had only to put yourself into Harry’s care the other night. You’d been assured you were under our protection.”
“Like Samuel Johnson’s patron’s, your help arrived after I had other assistance.”
“We’d be most interested in learning about that,” Richard said with his first show of real interest. “Help from the native community can be invaluable and would go a long way to clearing your copybook.”
David had been sitting looking pale and distant. Now his expression changed. He had been on the aerial front line, while Richard and his ilk plotted in underground bunkers, and I knew that he liked nothing better than to call the brass to account. “Francis has no need to confide anything, and he certainly hasn’t blotted his copybook, as you phrase it.
“Let me put it to you, and I speak now officially. You and your agency have, for your own reasons, one, falsely accused a British subject of murder. Two, involved an untrained and unsuitable civilian in an agency operation. Three, incompetently designed and run said operation, in the process, deceiving a civilian about his situation. The upshot was, four, that you exposed him to manifold dangers, including torture at the hands of KGB operatives. Is that about right so far?”
“Francis was already assisting the police,” Richard began, but David cut him off.
“At your connivance. I don’t know what you threatened him with, although in the last few hours I’ve begun to suspect whatever it was involved me. Which has made me angry and when I am angry, I am reckless. Do remember that, Richard.”
He said nothing.
“Now, here is the situation. Francis has been accused of murder. It must be made clear immediately and publicly, without any hedging or conditions, that he had nothing to do with Angleford’s killing.
“The KGB has been convinced that Francis, under the name Jerome Hume, is a dangerous MI6 agent. The fact that one of their agents was shot during his escape lends credence to that theory. Francis needs his own passport back, and he needs immediate transport to England.”
“After a little debriefing, maybe,” Richard said. “It would be helpful to know what the colonel was after.”
“Finally,” David said, ignoring the interruption, “there is a little matter of two hundred pounds sterling taken by one of your associates to prevent Francis from
leaving the protectorate, a theft that puts paid to any assertion that he acquiesced in this bizarre scheme.”
Richard had gotten very red in the face. I suspected that my entanglement with the KGB meant less than the ungentlemanly accusation of theft. “You realize that I can have you both detained under the Official Secrets Act.”
“No,” David said, “that won’t work. Just try arresting a gifted and popular painter and a hero of the Battle of Britain and see the reaction. My friends in the Forces have been apprised of the situation, and unless you help us tonight in the way I’ve proposed, you will be finished socially in Tangier. And that will end both your cover and your usefulness to the agency.”
Richard attempted indignation. “You would jeopardize your country’s interests over a few pounds and a few bruises?” He began to witter on about the importance of the “Moroccan Mission” and the whole Cold War geopolitical situation, but I spoke up.
“Letters have been written,” I said. The letters, to be sent in case of my death or disappearance, were actually to a variety of my press contacts, but it didn’t hurt Richard to imagine that they were bound for RAF brass and Whitehall chiefs. “And don’t think of getting them; they’re in safe hands.” They were, in fact, deposited with the postal service and winging their way to my dealer in London.
Richard took some time to accept the situation, so long that he’d missed dinner altogether before there was a meeting of the minds. David and I pledged our eternal silence on everything to do with the “operation” in the protectorate, and Richard, though still with very bad grace, ordered his driver to take us all to the consulate. There, a little glue restored my image to my proper passport, and a trip to the safe produced two hundred pounds, somewhat more than Harry had actually lifted, but I considered I’d earned the bonus.
“A flight is next,” David said.
“Surely Francis can take the ferry to Gibraltar.” Richard was as offended as if his butler had demanded the Bentley to run errands in the medina.
“With KGB agents on the lookout? Direct flight to London’s the ticket.”
More discussion, followed by phone calls. Eventually, diplomatic pressure produced a seat on the next direct flight to London.
“I suppose you’ll want a car and driver, too,” Richard said sarcastically.
David nodded. “And fix it with the police commissioner. We don’t want any delays at the airport.”
More phone calls. It was now well after midnight, and various functionaries had to be called from their beds or, more likely, roused from the pleasure palaces of the town. Finally, the arrangements were complete, a remarkable demonstration of bureaucratic wheels in motion. Richard poured us each a brandy and sat studying me with a malevolent expression. “What did the Soviets want?” he asked.
“Oh, this and that. Mostly who my control was.”
“And you said?”
“I gave them you, but they didn’t believe me.”
Richard raised his eyebrows. “A most unfortunate admission in any case.”
“It was under duress. And then I gave them Harry, but they will know all about him now anyway.”
“Yes. He might well have spared the colonel just at that moment. Harry’s usefulness is compromised now.”
“I’d have been compromised if he hadn’t,” I said.
“And just how did you get to the port?”
I shook my head and stood up. Brave men had helped me, and I had no intention of betraying them to Richard, whose only thought would be to turn them to account. “Sorry, I never involve friends and acquaintances,” I said and turned toward the door, staggering on my sore feet. David took my arm.
“Have your driver take us home, Richard,” he said, and he led me confidently to the hall and down the marble steps. In the car, we exchanged satisfied glances, but we remained mute as long as we were in the custody of Richard’s driver.
Back in David’s house, I hugged him, and we both started to laugh. “We must have champagne. We must be drunk and glorious,” I said, although I was sore in every muscle and missing skin all over my pelt.
David endorsed this program. We sat in the kitchen with my last bottle of Chablis—my champagne, unfortunately, was long gone—eating dates and oranges. It was like old times, the good old times, when everything was fun, and David’s demons were resting, and I still felt like a boy. “That was simply marvelous,” I said. “He believed your influence reaches the skies! You were superb.”
“Yes, I was. For the last time, I am sure, but still.” He gave a sad smile. “Remember tonight when you think of me.”
I hated the valedictory sound of that, though tonight was precisely what I would remember, having seen him at his best and glimpsed my own heart’s desire. “Come back with me,” I said impulsively. At that moment, forgetting all past, and even recent, history, I wanted nothing more. “I have enough money for your ticket, for ferry and train if not plane. You can be back in London within days.”
David stood up to take off his blue-gray RAF jacket. He held it in his hands for a moment, with what thoughts and memories I cannot begin to imagine, before folding it so carefully that I sensed that he was putting away a lot more than just a garment. “It didn’t work out before,” he said. “Why do you think it would work now?”
“Even if it doesn’t, come back. It’s not just me; you don’t belong here. You do still have friends in the Forces—that much is true. Go back to what you do well. Go back to your own country, to England.”
“I’m sorry, Francis, but you’re wrong. This is my country now. It has everything I require. Tonight, I returned as far as I can ever go. That was a parting gift for you; look at it that way and forget any other hope.”
We took off at dusk over the green water and flew toward the setting sun for several hours. I had a small bag in the overhead compartment and two of my Owls and an unfinished Pope wrapped up in brown paper in the hold, nothing else. I’d left my Moroccan friend the few blank canvases in my studio. My traveling painting kit was presumably still in the protectorate, but I had art supplies in London, and despite the rigors of the last weeks, I found myself full of ideas. I even believed that I might make the deadline for my next show, if I could just get another advance from my dealer, and in between service from the bar cart—presided over by a very handsome steward—I began composing an appeal to her good graces.
I began with the positives: The Owl series has gone well, and I am returning with several canvases that I am very pleased with. Technically, of course, two is not several, but it is understood in appeals for funds that a certain expansiveness is allowed. I’ve worked hard on the Pope series, too.
That was jolly well correct, although I was thankful that my dealer would never see the pile of slashed and recycled canvases. But once in London, the Pope in the hold would be finished and the series resumed. The Popes were popular sellers, and thanks to the colonel, screaming men had a new and pungent relevance for me. I pondered how to suggest new ideas and inspirations along those lines without giving any specifics.
I was much more eloquent on my other plans. When I got back to my essential Muybridge and the images from The Human Figure in Motion, I would begin some paintings using his photographs of wrestlers. Wonderful, ambiguous images of violence—or sex. That might alarm her just a little, but I trusted her courage, for censorship and threats of prosecution could only boost sales. Oh, yes, I have ideas, I assured her.
Completely true. My affair with David, who was so bad for the actual application of paint on canvas, had proved a wonderful source of inspiration. Yet, as the horizon subtly darkened, I felt not exactly depressed but melancholy. It was over, or as good as over, with David, and having seen him momentarily at his best—brave and smart and generous—that parting was even more painful than I’d expected. He was my great love, at least in the sexual arena. I wondered if a willingness to suffer was the d
efinition of the real thing, or if I was a special case with particular desires. Either way, I doubted that anyone else would conjure the intense emotions that David had.
Then, too, I was aware, in a way I hadn’t been before I arrived in Tangier, of my age, of time creeping up. Maybe it was just the bruises and a blossoming set of aches and pains, maybe it was just the murky vision of the world behind my protective dark glasses, but I was no longer young and full of promise. All my earlier lovers had been older, much older. Now I found myself contemplating the trim buttocks of the steward and realizing that now and forever more, I would be one of the older men. I hoped that I would be rich enough to enjoy that.
I intend to work very hard this next month, I concluded my letter. I am confident that I can make the opening. I wasn’t really, but I did intend to work hard. Tangier was a time of turmoil and trouble, and I suffered a rather nasty auto accident while on a brief trip into the Spanish protectorate. My dear, they had to bring me out on a camel! Even that has proved inspiring, so do send the money to me at my London address.
That seemed a little bald, but there is really no subtle way to ask for cash, and the flight back had rather strained my finances, because Richard had drawn the line at paying for my plane ticket when, as he put it, I had “money in hand.”
I signed, Yours faithfully, Francis, and pushed the call button. I asked the handsome steward if I might have an envelope. He said that he would try to find one, and I slipped him a pound. “Have a drink on me when we land.”
“If you’ll have one with me,” he said.
All right, Francis! Here was a gracious lad, a high-altitude treasure, and my heart rose. If I was very much the worse for wear, I was not quite finished yet.
Chapter Fifteen
I returned to my new studio. It was a drab, modern affair, but after Nan died, there were too many memories in Millais’ wonderful old Victorian rooms. His studio had been grand with a crystal chandelier; this one was low and cluttered, the floor filled up with books and papers and scraps of canvas and photos torn from the newspapers. A mess not to everyone’s taste, but I was reassured by the papers crackling underfoot like leaves. There were ideas down there, ready for the taking.
