The Retreat

by Anne Morgellyn

  ‘The US model of government works. That means small government. People are at liberty to do well in America. Take immigration. The USA was built by immigrants.’

  ‘My Irish ancestors were longshoremen in Baltimore and New York,’ she said. ‘When they first arrived, from Europe, they were pelted by a crowd of protesters on the wharf and told to go back to Ireland to eat rotten potatoes.’

  ‘That was generations ago. First generation. Third and fourth generation are probably lawyers and doctors now.’

  ‘Construction business, dentistry, and police work. I’ve got a niece at Smith. She wants to be a senator. I admit that they’ve all done well for themselves over there. They work hard. There are no barriers to bettering themselves. We’re fettered in the UK by an establishment entrenched in archaic traditions and attitudes. The right school. Oxbridge. Who you know.’

  ‘There’s an establishment over the pond, too. But, you’re right. We don’t have an archaic system that prevents social movement. We fought The War of Independence. Americans are fascinated by your Royal Family, but they wouldn’t want it in the USA. Clinton and Obama were raised in lone parent households, not castles or palaces. I was raised on a farmstead, went to the local school, got the school bus. Got in to Harvard.’

  ‘Anyone can become president. That’s commendable. I love that can-do attitude. But there’s still a widening divide between rich and poor, and no safety net for those you call losers. ‘

  ‘Bartender! Let’s not talk about socioeconomics. We were talking about the administration of Europe. The thing is that, in the US we all go to school and sing the Star Spangled Banner when the flag is raised in the morning, placing our right hands on our hearts. We all celebrate Thanksgiving. It makes no difference if your family came over on The Mayflower or from Italy, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, India, Japan, China. Anywhere. We’re all Americans. In Europe that kind of unity is just an ideal. There is no common thing that unites those little states, some of them no bigger than a ranch in Texas or Wyoming, as European. They think of themselves as separate entities — German, French, British, Italian, Bulgarian. It’s not a melting pot of liberated individuals, driven by ideals of freedom and democracy. They don’t want a common purpose. That’s why they didn’t emigrate to the New World. They just stayed at home, watching the pie get smaller.’

  ‘Bush talked about making the pie higher, but I think he meant corporations and banks, not the little guy.’

  ‘Whatever. Jean Monnet was wrong when he thought he could create a European state united under one flag. Take the language barrier. There is no common language like there is in the US. Everything comes through interpreters. How can you hold a council like that? This thing called The EU is a menace to free trade and corporate business.’

  ‘Is that what you’re gathering intelligence on — the EU?’

  ‘Yeah, and the possibility of it imploding. We don’t want a Third World War or a Caliphate.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Partners then?’

  She raised her glass, downed the remains of the water, and said she’d see him in the morning.

  9

  Three luxury coaches were sent to collect the delegates the following morning. The seats filled up quickly on the first two. Mackie found a seat on the third, which was half empty and looked out of the window. Where had all these people come from? The couple in front of her were American. The rest all seemed to be talking Dutch or German. There was a British security man outside the château entrance and another in the hall, where Jacqueline was seated at a table covered by a white cloth. Mackie joined the queue to register and was given a programme, an album, a badge, and a list of attenders She was complimenting Jacqueline on setting all this up so quickly. but was nudged forward by an impatient man behind her. She glared at him but he was over six feet tall and didn’t acknowledge her. The security guard, who looked about fifteen, checked her badge and waved her through to the library where the old furniture had been replaced by twenty rows of gilt edged chairs with red plush seats. Mackie counted them all as she made her way to the back. She sat at the end of the row so she could make a quick getaway. Many of the delegates knew one another and were reaching over chairs and bodies to shake hands and return greetings. She spotted Schmidt seated in the front row, and in the third row Sofka’s unmistakable purple highlights. She was having an animated conversation with Huygens.

  At nine forty five, Jem came in to welcome them all. He was dressed in a blue linen jacket over a cambric shirt with the top button undone. He was standing on a podium, but she still couldn’t see all of him. He explained about the arrangements for breaks and lunch. An American voice spoke up to ask about the location of the rest rooms. Someone tittered. Jem was nonplussed. Sofka took control and stood to face the audience. She spotted Mackie at the back and turned away.

  The first speaker, a middle aged man with a strong German accent, gave an illustrated talk about the history of the magic lantern. Mackie could only see the top quarter of the screen. From what little she heard and saw of it, it was an account of the early itinerant lanternists who travelled the countryside with their small candlelit lamps to show pictures of supernatural beings – goblins and ghouls and so forth. A mysterious manifestation in a superstitious world. A couple of centuries later, Samuel Pepys recorded a visit from a Mr Reeves who came to see him, bringing a lantern and projecting images on a wall — very pretty. There was a lot of applause at the end of the talk, and Mackie wondered if she could creep forward. She didn’t mind standing. She just wanted to see the screen. Next, however, came a talk by a British man about the scientific development of illuminants. He would probably have worn an anorak if the temperature hadn’t been so high in the crowded library.

  By the time it came to the description of the process of creating limelight, she was completely alienated. The only thing she understood was that the process was complicated and dangerous The lanternist had to create a gas that went down another jet and projected an image far brighter and clearer than had been seen before. It was impossible to see the effect of this because she couldn’t see the illustrations. Exasperated because she felt she was missing out, she turned to the album she’d been given. There was a transcript of this talk in there, and one of Huygens’s paper about the phantasmagoria. Bedtime reading, she thought, and focused her attention on the audience. They looked wealthy, or at least very comfortable. It was easy to distinguish the New World contingent from the mass of earnest Germans and Dutch. She looked at the list of attenders to see if she recognised any from Babel. She didn’t. She’d have to check it thoroughly against the Babel list.

  By eleven fifteen, she was gasping for a coffee, a beverage she rarely drank, but felt that it would pep her up today. She found Huygens, and related this information to him, adding that the only coffee she bought was Douwe Egberts. She didn’t tell him that it was the instant variety. She then listened to a tedious patter about coffee—drinking in the Netherlands. He had protested about Starbucks gaining hold in the city. When Jem came up to tell him he was looking forward to the performance on Saturday night, she made her escape. An American couple were admiring one of the portraits on the staircase. She asked who was the subject of the painting, and they looked at her as though she had crawled out of the bog.

  ‘Surely you know who that is, honey?’ The woman smelled of cigarette smoke. ‘That’s Ralph Waldo Emerson.’

  ‘He’s a poet, isn’t he?’ Mackie hazarded.

  ‘A poet and a philosopher. One of the greatest. We must get this, Bradley. The Peabodies will be bidding for it. We’ll have to go high.’

  ‘I am not going to let it go to those damn Peabodies.’

  Mackie made her escape and took refuge in Sofka’s studio. Herbert was in the craft room anterior to it, colouring a picture.

  ‘Have you come to snoop on me now?’ he asked, without looking up at her. ‘Well have a gander at this.’ He held the picture up– a phoenix with red eyes, rising from th
e ashes. ‘This will be the logo for our new venture. Sofka’s got it covered. Roman had it coming to him, and so’s his brother.’

  She decided to miss the afternoon talks. After lunch, when she managed a few words with Schmidt, she walked into Pont du Calvaire. There were a few visitors wandering around, consulting their guidebooks. She remembered that there was a campsite at the end of the road where Les Oiseaux lived. The crèperie would be doing

  a roaring trade. She felt no more curiosity about Duroc’s investigation. If he’d arrested L’Oiseau and allowed some mitigation in the case of Marie-No, then all to the good. But she had no sympathy for any of those people. The material fact remained that the conference centre was razed to the ground and Roman and Lucie were burnt to death. Whoever did or didn’t do it couldn’t change that fact. Rudyard had told her not to investigate the fire but to concentrate instead on the Servants of Light and Jem Roman and any more links to Babel.

  She took the bus to the resort and walked down the seafront to the hotel. There were plenty of people on the beach, and she could hear British voices among the French. Why didn’t they go to Cornwall? What was this never ending attraction for Abroad?

  The hotel was deserted. Most of the guests would be at the Convention. She went up to her room and called room service for a pot of English tea. This arrived with a flourish and starched white napery but turned out to be a jug of hot water and a cup and saucer with a Liptons’ tea bag on it. Another saucer held three slices of lemon and a pair of silver tongs.

  The Babel list was on her phone. She compared it with the Servants of Light. There were a couple of Germans and four Dutch with the same surnames as those on the Convention list, but the initials were different. If Babel had engineered the burning of the conference centre and now had nothing more to do with affairs at the château, then why send anyone to the last conference? What was Sofka talking to Huygens about and what, if anything, had that to do with Herbert’s last volley of bile? It would be easy to turn her back on it all and rest on her laurels. Other intelligence officers would be acting on the intelligence she had passed on to Rudyard now. She realised that this work she she’d been doing was not as straightforward as solving a crime and bringing a criminal to justice. This was an international arena in which the rules of play were fixed from country to country – she’d seen that in France. The internet was a global network with no fixed laws at all, save prohibitions against paedophile and other disgusting content. Such as beheadings and stoneings. Those villains just got away with it, and if the law eventually caught up with them, it took years of wrangling across borders to bring them to justice. She’d had to learn to live with this because, on this stage, there was no such thing as closure.

  10

  There was a seating plan in the lobby. The few other guests at the hotel who were not attending the Convention and the gala dinner, looked on wistfully. Mackie was placed at Jem’s table on the opposite side of the circle. Their other table mates were Mr and Mrs Richard Peabody, the British man, who had talked about limelight and had changed into a hand-knitted pullover with a robin on it for evening, and an elderly Dutch couple who were dressed for a cocktail party, the woman wearing diamonds in her ears and on her wrists and a triple string of pearls around her neck. Mackie wore the simple black dress which she’d bought years ago in a sale at Marks & Spencer. Jem had changed into a black jacket and a white silk shirt, undone at the top. She saw Roman unbuttoning his shirt in the bedroom at the conference centre. Forcing herself to concentrate upon the diners, she spotted Huygens on the other side of the room. Sofka was at his table, along with the arrogant German whom Mackie had encountered at registration that morning. Was he the mysterious financier? The delicious food was effortlessly served by waiting staff who glided across the parquet, without slipping. Wine waiters popped up out of nowhere to refill glasses. Mackie had never attended a freebie as grand as this. At police do’s, the food was indifferent, the waiters harassed, and the talk from male officers smutty. They looked at Mackie and the clutch of other female officers there with a hostility that increased with every pint they downed.

  At the end of the meal, she remained seated with Jem while the lantern theatre were setting up and the delegates fetched their own coffee from the buffet. She told him she had decided to fly home on Sunday afternoon, after the auction. She planned to get the airport coach with the other delegates.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure. I’ve got quite a bit of clearing up to do.’

  ‘I’m sorry not to stay and help.’

  ‘Not at all, you’ve done more than enough.’ He smiled. ‘You have exceeded your brief — I believe that’s the term. Are you comfortable at the hotel?’

  ‘Very. Thank you so much for inviting me.’

  Mrs Peabody came back with her coffee, and told Jem she’d be bidding for the Emerson portrait at the auction in London. Could they possibly buy it privately? Jem said it wasn’t available for sale yet but noted their interest. He turned to the Brit with the robin on his breast, and they became engaged in a serious discussion about the demerits of the oxy—acetylene jet. The talk then turned to optics — angles of projection for triple lanterns.

  The room went dark suddenly, and there was a loud scream.

  Everyone at the table gasped, except Jem and Mr Peabody, who chuckled. A skeleton rose up in the air and faded away. Then a ghost, then a monster-faced entity that came nearer and nearer to the tables. A woman screamed again. The Dutch matron was clutching her pearl necklace. More phantoms appeared, then the lights went up.

  The next two subjects were humourous. The slides were highly coloured. The light projecting the images dazzled Mackie after the muted colours of the spook show. This must be one of the biggest projectors. The faces of the people at the table nearest to the screen were shading their eyes. They were in the limelight. The slides were put in. First came a sequence about two warring neighbours, one a cellist and one a painter. The cellist put his bow through the wall and the painter retaliated by destroying his neighbour’s instrument. The second was about two ducks harassing a frog, which got its revenge, tucked up behind a tree stump, when a fat farmer approached the birds with a carving knife. The lights went down and up again with a story about the evils of drink. A hapless Victorian gent squandered his money on booze and left his family destitute. Mackie marvelled at the speed with which the lanternists changed the slides. It was like an early film. The audience was invited to come up and sign the pledge by an actor wearing a Salvation Army bonnet. None of them did.

  The highlight of the show was The Rat Catcher. The audience seemed primed for this. It became an interactive performance.

  Loud snores pervaded the room as the sleeper gaped and a rat climbed up onto the bed and jumped into his mouth. There were shouts of encore. The sequence was run again three times. ‘Who needs the cinema?’ Schmidt called. Mackie was sorry when the performance came to an end. She took a flyer. The lantern company were coming over from Rotterdam to perform in London, Oxford, and Dublin. The London venue was the Camden Roundhouse. She wondered if Jem would be there.

  ‘Have we converted you?’ he asked her. ‘You were enraptured.’

  ‘I was.’

  He asked everyone to rise and toast his brother, Peter, who had wanted to come to the Convention and was there in spirit.

  The auction in the morning was fast and furious. The auctioneer and his assistant, who had both been at the dinner, knew how to sell. Sixteen lanterns were sold, including Jem’s Criterion, which fetched five thousand dollars from Schmidt. She was irritated that the bids were made in US currency when the majority of attenders came from the euro zone. The slides were popular. She raised her hand for Puss in Boots, but was soon outbid.

  The last objects to come up were posters adverting lantern shows, engravings of journeymen lanternists from the sixteen century, and a miscellany of gas jets, slide cassettes, and lenses. She heard Bradley telling the Peabodies that he wanted to buy the portrait of Emerson for Dartmouth
College, his alma mater. A contingent from the school would be coming over for the auction in London. The Peabodies weren’t intimidated.

  ‘You cleaned up, I think,’ she told Jem.

  ‘There’s the auctioneer’s fees and percentage to pay, but, yes,we all did pretty well. I bought more stock. Accessories are always in demand at the shop. I got a nice child’s lantern, too, which I’ll display in the window. And here’s a souvenir for you.’ He gave her a hand-coloured slide of Cinderella and her sisters. One of them looked like Sofka, who wasn’t there today.

  ‘Thank you so much. I couldn’t afford the ones in the auction,’

  ‘Thank you for finding Jacqueline. I couldn’t have managed without her. And Byrne, the undertaker. He told me he had a TV studio in his yard.’

  ‘Yes, he does a television show about funerals.’

  ‘And sends human remains into space in rockets.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t think my brother would have liked that, even though his head was in the stars a lot of the time.’

  ‘You miss him.’

  ‘Yes. And I’ll go on missing him. But we lost touch for a long time, so I’m used to his not being around.’

  She knew this separation was different. It was forever.

  ‘Sofka and co. are sure to want their pound of flesh,’ she said.

  ‘You know they’re thinking of setting up a school for the arts here?’

  He sighed: ‘I’m letting my lawyers deal with it. They’ll come out here, if necessary. One of the partners speaks fluent French. And there’s Jacqueline.’

  ‘I’d watch your back.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fight.’

  ‘I was referring to the funders group. Babel. Watch out for men tattooed with red and black flashes. They’re at large. The police are supposed to be rounding them up, but there’s tension in London about a violent outbreak.’

  ‘And you think I’m at risk because of Peter’s association with them?’