by John Harris
‘Who’s going to be fighting?’
‘Germany for a start. They’re growing far too big for their boots.’
‘And is that what this office exists for? To work out odds, choose opponents and set the number of rounds?’
Bushy Whiskers frowned at his levity. ‘This office exists for counter-intelligence and combatting the efforts of difficult enemies – at the moment chiefly Irish Fenians and Germans.’
Being Irish himself, Slattery knew about Fenians and he had met a few Germans in the Balkans where they had seemed to have a finger in every pie. They were an arrogant lot on the whole, constantly crowing about Kriegsgefahr, Germany’s strength and her future role in Europe. Generally speaking, he wasn’t over-enamoured of them and he could remember seeing what had seemed to be hordes of them, mostly princes from Middle European states, at the funeral of Edward VII three years before. It had been a dazzling affair of bright uniforms more suited to a wedding than a wake and all somehow in bad taste, the German contingent the most tasteless of the lot. And he was well aware that Europe had been on tenterhooks for years because of the Kaiser’s half-baked impulses. Algeciras. Agadir. The German fleet. The insistence on adjusted frontiers. The demands for colonies. The claims that the Belgian coast ought to be part of Germany. To anybody who read the newspapers, it had become a bit of a bore and somehow the Kaiser always managed to appear rather vulgar.
‘But why Spanish?’ he had asked. ‘Surely the Germans haven’t got their eye on Spain?’
The naval man gestured. ‘They’d like to grab Gibraltar and seal off the Med. We know that. But, no, it isn’t Spain. It’s Mexico.’
‘And you want me to be a spy?’
‘We prefer to call them agents.’
‘What do they do?’
‘Follow each other about and report on each other’s doings.’
‘False whiskers? That sort of thing?’
‘Not quite. But you’d be surprised what we can work out from reports.’
‘Isn’t Mexico where some half-baked revolution’s going on?’
‘More of a civil war really. Mexico’s been waltzing on a volcano for years. And we’re all there – Britain, Germany, the United States – all acting as partners, while the volcano prepares to erupt under us. It started rumbling when Madero appeared. Now it’s really going strong. It’ll be a long time before it stops.’
‘Why are we interested?’
The naval man looked at him as if he weren’t very bright. ‘Because half Germany’s agents seem to be going to Mexico at the moment,’ he said. ‘We feel we ought to send a few too.’
Two
The horizon in the west turned grey beneath the coppery clouds moving up swiftly on a wind that howled out of the desert. Above, the sky looked muddy and the sun was a fading orange ball. In the distance, the mountaintops caught the last of the light, glowing pink as the fiery orb sank.
As they passed the flanks of the umber-coloured hills and rounded a curve, just ahead they saw the town of San Marino de Bravos where the train was to remain overnight. Those passengers who could afford it would be accommodated in the little town’s only hotel.
As the train slowed to a stop the wind increased, lifting out of the west and sweeping ferociously along the valley of the desert to shift the hummocks and the dunes and pile the sand against the stumpy roots of the mesquite.
As the passengers stumbled down the steps from the train, two riders, hunched in their high Mexican saddles, sarapes to their mouths, hats low over eyes, plodded dumbly past with a high-wheeled cart from whose sides they were trying to obtain a little shelter. His voice hoarse with shouting abuse, the driver of the cart stumbled at the heads of the mules to prevent them turning away from the gale which struck at the flanks of the riders and punched at the brims of their hats. Powdery dust layered the clothes of the passengers from the train, parched their throats and filled their eyes with grit. Alongside the track by a hedge of prickly pear was a group of the little wooden crosses the Mexicans placed in the ground to show where someone had died, an indication of some forgotten skirmish between government and revolutionary troops during the past year.
Set well back from the track, the town was a small place of flat-roofed buildings pitted here and there with bullet holes. After two years of revolution, half the towns in Mexico seemed to be marked by bullets and graced with the little roadside symbols of violent death. The shutters of the hotel were closed, the paint seared away by the sun and the everlasting wind that blew across the northern wastes. Opposite, the twin brown towers of the church dominated the place, rising above the sparse trees. The town was still and silent and there was no sign of any of the inhabitants.
The Posada San Gabriel had been made out of an old colonial dwelling, the proprietor’s family living on the ground floor, the residents in rooms opening off a balcony formed by the arches that surrounded the courtyard, where a dusty tree grew among the swathes of sand brought by the wind through the great double door. A boy, bundled to the eyes in a blanket, let the travellers in.
Aloysius Lidgett and the woman, Magdalena Graf, were among those who had decided to spend the night in the hotel. Lidgett seemed to be enjoying himself but the woman’s face was strained, though as she caught Slattery’s gaze on her the blue slanting eyes flashed as if to convince him she wasn’t as tired as she looked.
The dining-room was thick with dust and in the centre of each spotted tablecloth was a glass containing a single wilting flower. The people from the train fell wearily into chairs as bottles of beer were brought by a waitress. She’d just been washing her hair but nobody looked twice at it. Mexican women, Slattery had begun to realise, were always washing the dust from their hair and it was nothing to have a meal served with it hanging wetly down the back. They began discussing General Villa.
‘He was a rustler before he joined Madero,’ Lidgett said. ‘And the people who own cattle support Huerta, so that makes it okay to steal their steers. He sells them across the Rio Grande to raise money for guns.’
The wind died after dark and Slattery went to his room to wash off some of the dust. The air was stifling and as he arranged his belongings he reflected that but for a variety of circumstances he wouldn’t have been there at all. There had been a few debts, but nothing much. A few enemies. A few people who were too friendly. He had been enjoying London after the Balkans and the hospital, and had been content to go on enjoying it; his presence on the wrong side of the Atlantic was really less to do with his broken leg than with women. He was a fugitive from love.
He grinned at his reflection in the spotted mirror. It sounded like the plot of a novelette. Fleeing from the attentions of two women.
Margaret Presteigne would have provided him with a safe family life, fed him well and given him sturdy children, and at the age of sixty he would have been wondering where his years had gone. Amaryllis Eade would have given him moments of wild excitement, riotous laughter and high passion, but he trembled to think what existence with her would have been like.
Margaret Presteigne was the vicar’s daughter, straightforward, honest, boring, and his mother had been set on a match for years. Amaryllis Eade was a different kettle of fish altogether, and was more than willing to dispense with the inconvenience of holy matrimony. She was the author of The British Aristocracy, Princely India and a whole array of books which her relationship to an earl had not only made possible but had also helped to sell. Her brother had been at school with Slattery and he had gone through agonies in his youth when he had considered her the last word in beauty, innocence and sweetness.
That had been some years before, however, and when he had returned to England after a spell in the Middle East he had found she had sprung to fame overnight with her book on the British nobility. With her connections and the aristocracy’s eagerness to read about itself, her book had been an immediate best-seller. She had written it chiefly because she had been bored but, not slow to see the advantages of fame and wealth, had i
mmediately prevailed on her father to send her to stay with the Curzons at the Viceregal Palace in India. The book on the Indian princes had not pleased Curzon but it had sold a lot of copies.
The chances of ever meeting her again had seemed slim and Slattery had actually settled down to the desk job with the two old men in Whitehall when she had turned up again. His work had seemed to consist of writing short propaganda paragraphs for the press, reading newspapers and cutting out any items that mentioned Germany and sticking them on sheets of paper so that the man with the bushy whiskers could punch holes in them and place them in a file.
‘Good training,’ he encouraged. ‘It’ll be more exciting when war breaks out.’
Slattery was already considering giving it up when his cab had locked wheels one day in Piccadilly with another cab and he had suddenly found himself staring through the window into the face of Amaryllis.
‘Paddy Slattery!’
Amaryllis had always been beautiful, with excellent shoulders and a fine bosom, green eyes surrounded by a mist of dark lashes, and a small tigerish nose which she wrinkled when she smiled. With the years, she had gained confidence and poise and she took Slattery’s breath away.
The cab drivers were still cursing each other, to the delight of the newspaper sellers and small boys, and as Amaryllis’ cabbie had tried to force his nag ahead, the wheel of Slattery’s conveyance had been wrenched off. As it had collapsed he had been pitched into the roadway.
Amaryllis’ head had appeared through the window again. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is a very silly situation.’
‘Just what I was thinking,’ Slattery had agreed as he dusted himself off. ‘Let’s leave it and go and have lunch.’
The meal had been exciting. They were old friends meeting for the first time in years and they had discovered to their delight that at the weekend they were both heading for the same country house party in Gloucestershire.
There had been no thought of danger in Slattery’s mind. But while everyone else had been engrossed in croquet, he had made the mistake of disappearing with her to the other side of the estate. They had made no bones about the attraction they still held for each other but Amaryllis had kept her head.
‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Later.’
She appeared at his door that night. ‘Why not?’ she said cheerfully as she climbed into bed beside him. ‘Uncle George and Auntie Mabel did it on the kitchen table. I’m all for this peculiar English practice of Saturday-to-Monday house parties with separate bedrooms for husband and wife. It very much facilitates late-night visiting.’ As she moved closer, she spoke cheerfully. ‘I learned all there is to know about the communion between the sexes before I left school and I decided to become liberated. I’m a bit liberated already, as a matter of fact.’
‘So I’ve noticed.’
‘Love and kisses and a quiver full of children aren’t for me.’
‘Don’t you think you’ll have missed something?’
She gave a beaming smile and clutched Slattery to her. ‘Don’t you believe it, old Fitzpaddy,’ she said. ‘Shall we have another go? It’s better sport than that bloody croquet.’
A week later, dressed to kill, she appeared at his flat in London. Despite the warm day, she was wearing a high-collared gown trimmed with red velvet ribbons.
‘Nice of you to come,’ he said warily.
She unbuttoned her elbow-length gloves and held up her hand for him to kiss. Kissing hands was always an effective curtain-raiser. Her teeth were gleaming white, her hair a dark brown, and there was a certain oriental opulence in her looks that he didn’t remember from when she was younger. Perhaps it was something she had learned in India.
‘The heat’s brutal.’ She fanned herself happily. ‘I shouldn’t have worn this dress. All this bloody whalebone!’ She turned away from him and, dutifully, he began to undo the hooks and eyes down her back. As a youth at hunt balls he had never been granted more than a glimpse of her magnificent bosom. Now, quite casually, she unfastened the ribbon that held the neck of her chemise and allowed it to fall after the dress.
‘I hope you know how to get everything back in again,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘I have a maid waiting in a cab outside,’ she explained. ‘No lady can visit a gentleman without her maid. In Paris it’s quite the thing for afternoon visits.’
She seemed to be surrounded by acres of white cotton. ‘The modern corset can be quite daunting,’ she went on cheerfully. ‘It must be terribly difficult for some women. What can be more humiliating than having to ask your lover to do up your reinforcements afterwards?’
She seemed to know where the bedroom was – he wondered if she’d called earlier when he was out and asked his manservant – and she led him there without blinking. Inside, she shed hairpins until her hair fell like a cascade down her back.
‘Come on, old Paddy,’ she said as she sat on the bed. ‘Make love to me.’
She was confidently dispensing with all the preliminaries. As he took off his jacket, she reached up to unfasten his shirt. She was flushed and eager and didn’t bother to unbutton it, simply wrenching it open to send buttons flying across the room.
As she wriggled out of the remainder of her clothing, flinging the garments aside willy-nilly, she held him at arm’s length as if to allow him to feast his eyes on her.
‘Will I do?’ she asked archly.
It had been a most enjoyable experience but Slattery had a feeling he was being led into a situation that was eminently dangerous.
Unpacking his belongings in the dusty little hotel in San Marina de Bravos, he wondered if she’d been reading Marie Corelli or Elinor Glyn – ‘Would you like to sin, on a tiger skin, with Elinor Glyn?’ She sometimes talked like the heroine of a novel.
It had been a sultry afternoon which had left him exhausted and more than certain that it would be a good idea to avoid her in the future. She had a reputation for getting what she wanted and he wondered if she thought he could provide her with an introduction to the foreign society she liked to write about. Perhaps she was intending to write next about Balkan tribal chiefs and thought his languages would be an asset.
As she dozed he had left her side. She was lying uncovered to the knees, hugging herself as if she were cold, her splendid breasts nestled in her arms as if she were afraid she might lose them. As he had moved to the door, however, she had sighed and moved luxuriously among the welter of pillows and sheets.
‘We really were very naughty, Paddy dear,’ she murmured. She gave a little giggle. ‘Go now,’ she urged, ‘and let my maid know it’s time to come in. You’ll find her sitting on a bench in the vestibule.’
‘I’ll ring the porter and ask him to pass the message.’
The porter would know exactly what to do. In the bachelor apartments where Slattery lived he had seen women sitting in the vestibule before – ladies’ maids waiting to hook up their mistresses and do their hair so that they could safely be let loose on the streets again. Dressing in his study, he wondered what women did when there wasn’t a vestibule or a porter or a handy means of signalling. And how did a woman summon her maid when there wasn’t a telephone? A handkerchief waved from the window? A rocket?
As the maid finally disappeared and he heard the door click, he left the study to find Amaryllis sitting primly on the settee, everything, including her make-up, in place, even the vast hat she had arrived in, an affair as big as a tea-tray and decorated with cherries, flowers and a pheasant’s feather long enough to poke your eye out.
‘You and I,’ she said, beaming at him, ‘were meant for each other.’
Her words had seemed to indicate it was time to seek new pastures. Amaryllis, he decided, could become a drug and he had already grown bored with the one-legged naval officer and the man with the bushy whiskers.
Then he had remembered the interest there had been in the office in Mexico and that a lot of information had passed through his hands concerning a man called Lord Cowdray, an Englishman wh
o owned vast oil wells at Tampico and supplied oil to the Royal Navy. It had set him thinking and, making enquiries, he had learned that the factions in the Mexican struggle had recruiting officers out looking for just such people as himself.
It didn’t take long to find a name because it was there in the files in the office. From then on it was simple because the recruiting officer was looking for men who were no longer bound by patriotic feelings to their own country but knew their job well enough to earn money as mercenaries and could provide the specialist skills the ragged Mexican armies needed to back up the untutored peasant soldiers who had no knowledge of war beyond pulling the trigger of a rifle.
‘You’re going where?’
Amaryllis had stared across the tumbled pillows at him, her eyes wide. She had continued to pursue him ardently for a whole month until he had come to the conclusion that his decision to leave was definitely a good one.
‘Mexico,’ he said.
‘What on earth for?’
‘There’s a war going on and they need skilled soldiers.’
‘But Mexico, for God’s sake!’
‘It’s a damn sight warmer than the Balkans.’
There was a long silence. ‘They have Spanish grandees there, don’t they?’ she said and he knew she was thinking of another book. He took pleasure in disillusioning her.
‘Not any longer,’ he said. ‘I think they shot them all.’
‘Oh!’ She shrugged. ‘When are you leaving?’
‘Week from now. It’s all fixed.’
She smiled. ‘Oh well,’ she said, reaching out for him. ‘We’ve still got plenty of time, haven’t we?’
Three
Since the crossing of the Atlantic in the Cunarder Lusitania was smooth, the weather warm and the moon at its full, he had indulged in a shipboard romance with an American girl in the next cabin called Helen Frankfurter, on her way home to New York after a tour of Europe. She was the daughter of divorced parents and briskly open.
