Mitchell kept his eyes on the American, while placing half of the last allusion accurately from his own fledgling experience. That had been when he had met Frances for the first time, and the memory was unfailingly painful.
Frances … oh Frances, Frances …
“Yes?” If Audley had memories, he didn’t show them.
“He told me to make contact with his daughter, Lucy. He said she had all the information I needed. I was just to set up the meeting, but she would handle it from there on—I was to get to hell out of it, on pain of death.” Morris gestured. “Oh, he wrapped it up … And he emphasized that it was entirely private, not professional … And he put a big cherry on the top of the cake, naturally.” The very white teeth showed under the moustache. “He let slip that I was the man he trusted to do the job right, not Schwarz. And that there were some changes already in the pipeline—all quite regardless of this little private matter, of course.” Morris signalled down the bar. “Harry—I thirst.”
Mitchell thrust Frances back into her little English churchyard, and looked at Audley.
“David—”
“Yes.” Audley didn’t look back at him. “It stinks.”
“Like a battlefield on the third day,” agreed Morris.
“So what did you do?” asked Mitchell.
“I did as I was told—inevitably.” Morris reached for his latest pint. “Who was I to question the Senator’s slightest whim?” He tested the new pint, and found it satisfactory.
“So you went to the Oxbridge—?”
“Not directly.” Morris trusted Mitchell now, on the twin grounds that Audley evidently did so and because he had committed himself, and consequently had no choice. “With my responsibility for Cruise Security I just naturally had to check up on the Senator’s schedule for the evening—just in case the ladies of Greenham might have planned to attend his dinner engagement with His Royal Highness … professional etiquette, and all that—” he put his hand to his mouth “—pardon! This beer’s not absolutely right—the Senator is a strong supporter of NATO, after all—” he gave Audley a little nod “—he is actually quite a sound old bastard, present events apart: for a mid-westerner he shows a surprising grasp of geography … meaning, he knows that Europe lies between the Soviet Union and the US of A, more or less, David. Which is more than I can say for some of his colleagues.”
“And?” Audley urged his friend patiently.
“And there was a little private time built into his schedule, before dinner.” Morris nodded. “It seems he was over here a million years ago, as a mere stripling, dropping bombs from a B-17 on to our West German allies. Which accounts for his nodding acquaintance with the geography of the area, I suppose … And while he was taking time off from pulverizing the Third Reich he occasionally came up to the Big Smoke for rest and refreshment, like any red-blooded American boy.” Another smile. “Cementing Anglo-American relationships—you know.”
“He whored around.” Audley, who just dated from those historical times, didn’t smile.
“I thought you were going to say that.” Morris looked pleased. “A very common British misapprehension—‘Over here, over-paid, over-sexed’ … Actually, he was one of the good Christian boys who played the church organ and sang in the choir, and really did cement Anglo-American friendship. And the lady he came back to see—allegedly came back to see—is about a hundred years old, and she really is a lady—and an old dragon, too … Lady Something-Something, of London W1, who drove an ambulance and dispensed tea and buns from a Church of England tea-and-bun wagon in the Blitz over here.” The smile vanished. “At least, that’s the story officially. Unofficially … I rather think he dropped in on Latimer in a private room in the Oxbridge, and talked about the War between the States.”
“You didn’t stay to see?”
Morris winced. “There were some guys I didn’t know turned up, to case the joint. So I decided it might not be too healthy to chance my luck.” He finally settled his eye on Audley. “Besides which … I’d already done the deed, David.”
Audley considered his friend without speaking.
The silence lengthened between them until Mitchell could stand it no longer. “You substituted Latimer … Why?”
The eye switched to Mitchell. “Because he was there, I guess, Dr Mitchell. Like climbing mountains.”
Audley emitted a curious sound. “Or because you didn’t like it?”
“That too.” Morris stared into his beer for a moment, and then looked up. “I guess I didn’t like it—and he was there, and I didn’t want to disappoint the Senator … supposing I was wrong—okay?” The look zeroed in on Audley. “I guess I’m justly served, having you screw me like this.”
“Justly served?” Mitchell frowned.
“I shouldn’t have done it. The Devil tempted me … if it had been David, I’d have told him to see the Senator, and to be nice to him—but to turn the old bastard down flat, whatever he wanted.” Morris shook his head sadly. “But …” He looked at Audley. “But … it being Latimer, I didn’t care so much.”
“You didn’t trust me, did you?” Audley produced his very rare sweet smile—the genuine one. “You thought I wouldn’t take your advice?”
Morris rocked on his bar stool. “Christ, David—you’ve got one helluva bad record for not being able to resist temptation, haven’t you! And this was a bloody-near perfect temptation, too—a nice bit of history somewhere—with a first-class ticket to the States thrown in … I never thought Latimer would bite—I thought he’d run a mile, rather than go into the field, even if it was a private affair …”
“And Senator Cookridge, too!” Audley nodded. “I’d certainly take a risk or two to get in with him—” He switched the nod to Mitchell “—he’s a new man, and I’ve never met him. So he doesn’t owe me anything yet.” The nod came back to Morris. “But I would have cleared it with Jack Butler first. I wouldn’t just have gone swanning off into the wild blue yonder, as Oliver has done.”
Morris grimaced. “Well, that would have been a turn-up for the book. But you can’t expect me to know when leopards change their spots—I thought you’d go … and I thought Latimer wouldn’t go, anyway—”
“But he has gone, Colonel,” Mitchell intervened.
“Okay. So I was wrong.” Morris spread his hands. “So I don’t know what makes Oliver St John Latimer tick—so maybe he’s got an eye for a pretty woman … I don’t know!” He came back to Audley quickly. “And that was the clincher, David—I knew you’d succumb to the fair Lucy’s charms, the moment she lowered her long lashes and showed you her even longer legs. And …” He stopped.
“And?”
“And even more when you knew who she really was.” Morris watched Audley. “Lucy Cookridge—doesn’t she ring a bell?”
“Should she?” Audley plainly disliked being watched so expectantly. “I told you, Howard, Cookridge is a new man so far as I’m concerned.”
“But—Lucy, David—”
“If I don’t know the father, I’m not likely to know the daughter, my dear fellow. I’m not a socializer.” Audley waved a hand at Mitchell. “If she’s got long legs it’s more likely she rings Paul’s chimes of midnight—Paul?”
Mitchell looked at Audley reproachfully. “What?”
“Well, well!” Morris tut-tutted at Audley, ignoring Mitchell altogether. “We haven’t done our homework very well, have we!”
“We haven’t had a great deal of time—the way some of our alleged friends have been up to mischief. And now we are trying to repair the damage.” Audley took refuge in turn in his beer. “So what is so special about the daughter that she should ring our bells?”
Morris smiled. “She’s not really his daughter—that’s what’s special.”
“You said she was.”
The smile became a grin. “A small deliberate mistake, to test you, my dear fellow.” Morris paused deliberately. “This whole situation is becoming over-filled with life’s little ironies. Like …
me saving you from a fate worse than death … and then, as a result, having my Saturday night ashore spoilt by you.”
Audley inclined his head graciously. “And my Saturday night, too. Which amused neither my wife nor my daughter—my real daughter, that is, of course.” He signalled down the bar. “But if you’ll give me another irony, I’ll buy you another drink.”
“Fair enough.” Morris obviously enjoyed playing with Audley when he had an edge. “‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love’.”
“‘Raisin-cake’, actually.” Audley nodded to Harry.
“Raisin-cake?”
“In the Hebrew. The Revised Version has simply ‘raisins’, but there’s a note about the exact Hebrew. The Douai translation is ‘flowers’—‘Fulcite me floribus, stipate me malis; quia amore langueo’—Canticle of Canticles, second chapter, fifth verse. Your ‘flagons’ are only in the Authorised Version. But I wouldn’t quarrel with that here in the Admiral Benbow, not tonight.” Audley waited until Harry had recharged the glasses. “Not in exchange for another irony, anyway.”
“Very good of you.” Morris nursed the glass. “And you wouldn’t be plying me with liquor, would you?”
Audley shook his head. “I’d never ply anyone raised on moonshine whisky. And I’m perfectly well aware that your head is as hard as your black heart.” He raised his glass.
Morris considered Audley affectionately. “You’re a terrible man, David. But that’s why you’re here, of course. Only … you’ve also got the Devil’s own luck, for a damned Anglo-Saxon.”
“Norman, actually. With maybe a touch of Jutish. And I can’t say I feel particularly lucky tonight.”
“Uh-huh.” Morris waved his negative finger. “Being here is lucky for you, I think … but okay—you say you don’t know the daughter because you don’t know the father. But you did know him.”
“I did?”
“Long ago. Back in the old days … pre-Patrick Felton, pre Yuri Strelnikov—mid-Philby … maybe post-Philby too, just about … Long time, David—and that’s a fact, by God!”
Again, Mitchell couldn’t resist looking at Audley. Long time was right! He couldn’t even place … Felton and Strelnikov, so they must be ancient history. And Philby—he was right out of legend, the great survivor of that long stern-chase during the dark years, some of which overlapped Audley’s own early service in their own carefully sealed-off section. In fact … although the departmental records of that time, so far as they concerned Philby, were conspicuous by their absence … David must have been one of the gunners on that stern-chase, too old to be a powder-monkey, but not quite senior enough to have sighted the gun and pulled the lanyard on the uproll—?
“Oh yes?” Looking at Audley was predictably a waste of time, all the same: the man was not about to give away any sort of expression about those days in the public bar of the Admiral Benbow tavern on a Saturday night. “Well, I can’t say I remember any Lucy from those days. But I’m not too good on babies—they all remind me rather of Winston Churchill: not much hair, but they know what they want, and they’re determined to get it—my Cathy, for example … she was exactly like that, you know, Howard—” Having shrugged off Kim Philby, Audley smiled at Howard Morris “—you’d do much better trying to remind me of Lucy’s mother. I’m much more at home with mothers from long ago.”
“Uh-uh.” Morris wasn’t so easily out-faced. “If you haven’t done your homework, you won’t know her either. She was safely shot of him before you knew him.”
Something changed in Audley’s smile. It didn’t weaken, let alone disappear, but it became curiously fixed, as though a garbled message had reached his face, and the muscles didn’t know what to do for the best.
“Macallan.” Howard Morris also observed the change, and he moved quickly to pre-empt Audley himself reaching the name. “She was born Lucy Macallan, David. Remember?”
“Macallan.” Audley repeated the name with such complete lack of emotion that his rage with himself was transparently apparent. “Bill Macallan—William O’Reilly Macallan—of course! He left a family behind somewhere … ‘I am not a Virginian, but an American’—he would have said ‘I am not a father, I am an American’—Bill Macallan—Lord! but—” He frowned at Howard Morris “—but …”
“He’s dead?” Morris goaded him.
“That’s right. Dead to all intents and purposes, anyway. If not actually dead.”
“Actually dead now. Couple of months back.”
“Is that so?” Audley caught Mitchell’s questioning expression. “Don’t look at me—I didn’t do it!” He nodded towards Morris. “Ask him—didn’t he have one of those dreadfully incurable and erratic wasting maladies … nervous or muscular … or both?”
“But who was he?” Mitchell pursued his actual question.
“Macallan?” Audley repeated the name unnecessarily, then nodded again towards the American. “He was one of theirs. And a top man in his day—a proper little Wyatt Earp, by God!” Pause. “But a long way back, way before your time!” Pause. “And he was a long time dying, by golly!” Pause. “But then he was always a fighter, was Bill Macallan.” This time Mitchell received the nod. “He’d have made a good frigate captain in your friend Elizabeth’s old US navy—‘Don’t give up the ship!’ and all that.” He swung back to Morris. “And so he left a daughter—?”
“She nursed him, the last year.”
“But she took Cookridge’s name.”
“Cookridge brought her up. Married the mother—hell, more than twenty years ago, it would be.”
“Indeed?” Audley registered polite interest. “Well, Howard, I grant you a little irony there, and perhaps a little coincidence. But it’s mostly history you have, it would seem, rather than homework.”
“You’re dam’ right. History is just what I have—American history.” Morris frowned at Audley. “And since when were you a goddam’ expert on it? It’s knights-in-armour and feudal system you’re into, not our Civil War—since when were you an expert on that?”
“I’m not.” Audley raised a shoulder. “The last time I opened an American history book seriously was … let me think now … it would have been about the time Neville Chamberlain was flying to Munich to see Herr Hitler, or thereabouts.”
Christ! thought Mitchell, this was history talking about History: Audley had aged so well, and treated everyone so much in the same way, regardless of age and status, that it was hard to think of him as so old—old enough easily to be his own father.
“Yes.” Audley clarified his recollections. “We did ‘Slavery and Secession’ in School Certificate. I have a clear memory of mispronouncing something called ‘the Missouri Compromise’, much to my form master’s amusement—‘Com-promise’, I made it … And there was ‘the Dred Scott Case’, which must have had something to do with the fugitive slave laws—but I can’t for the life of me remember exactly what … But we didn’t actually do the war itself—I remember thinking that that was a rotten shame, because it had all the makings of a most enjoyable blood-letting … the South wrong, but romantic, and the North right, but repulsive—” He stopped suddenly.
“Yes?” Morris pounced on the frown.
“Yes … I was just thinking …” Audley frowned. “About Macallan … Macallan was an expert on the American Civil War, if there ever was one—it was his hobby … In fact, I remember arguing with him about it once.” Audley lifted his chin and looked down on Morris in one of his most characteristically arrogant movements.
“Uh-huh?” Morris recognized the signal too. “He was the expert, and you weren’t—but you argued with him?”
“Mmm … I’ve never thought ignorance should preclude a good argument. In some ways it confers an advantage—and a good argument is a marvellous way of obtaining information. I learnt a lot about Bill Macallan by arguing with him. And that was even more valuable, as it turned out …”
Morris said nothing, but merely waited expectantly for Audley to continue
, and Mitchell followed his example. Although, thought Mitchell, what they were learning now about Audley was what Audley chose to tell them.
“But I did have another advantage, of course …”
He must have taken his School Certificate, which was now the ‘O-level’ exam, very young, decided Mitchell. But, of course, he would have been at some expensive boarding school which aimed its bright pupils at Oxford or Cambridge from the moment of their arrival, all small and pink and hesitant. That—although it was hard to think of Audley as small and pink and hesitant—went without saying. He might have been a born scholar, but he had certainly been very deliberately hammered and beaten into the required shape at great expense.
“Yes.” Audley looked for a moment into the smoke-filled air of the Admiral Benbow public bar, projecting the long-forgotten documentary of the Audley-Macallan Civil War arguments into the haze. “I’d read Gone With the Wind—and he hadn’t—”
“What?” Howard Morris slopped his beer, which he’d been in the act of raising. “Gone—”
“—With the Wind.” Audley completed the title. “A damn good book! If you haven’t read it, Howard, then you ought to have done—and more fool you for not having done so already! If I’d written Gone With the Wind—”
“—You’d cry all the way to the bank!” Morris had his beer under control.
“Too bloody right! Except I wouldn’t be crying.”
“You wouldn’t?” Morris held his beer steadily.
“You better be careful, Colonel.” Mitchell decided to intervene, remembering the contents of one of the rooms in Audley’s rambling farmhouse. “David’s an authority on historical novels, from G. A. Henty to Alfred Duggan and Rosemary Sutcliff. He’s got shelves full of them.”
After all, keeping a good argument going could be very useful!
“Yeah?” Either Morris was playing the same game by design, or so many pints of English beer had made him reckless. “Like Forever Amber, and—and …” He ran out of historical novels too quickly for conviction.
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