‘Tracy gone!’ There was, in the Major’s voice, a terrible note of doom, as though the meaning had also gone out of his life. ‘But you look so exactly like Tracy.’
‘I don’t know, do I?’ The girl was pouring gin from an upturned bottle on the wall. ‘I don’t know what the girl might have looked like. Now. Do I have to open a bottle of white?’
‘No,’ I reassured her, ‘I’ll have a gin and tonic as well.’ I didn’t want to add to her problems.
When the drinks were poured things began to look up for my host. A big-breasted and motherly person carrying two huge menus in scarlet covers with gold tassels came up smiling and said, ‘As soon as you’re ready, Major dear. I’ve kept a nice table for you and chef’s put on the caneton à l’orange. Your favourite.’
‘There you are, you see.’ Jaunty shot me a look of triumph from over the top of the menu. ‘They know me here. You know how to look after me, don’t you, Marion?’
‘Marcia.’ She smiled tolerantly and looked, I thought, like the nicest kind of hospital matron. ‘And will it be your usual, Major? It’s the Barolo, isn’t it?’
‘The Barolo Italiano.’ Jaunty was now almost cheerful. ‘And another couple of generous gins, old girl. Prawn cocktail to kick off, Progmire? We’re here to enjoy ourselves!’
‘Thank you, young man.’ Marcia smiled at my host, took our menus and left us, a kind, top-heavy woman walking unsteadily on shiny high heels who had managed to remember Jaunty.
Later I was looking round at the Dandini club where we were almost the only diners. Three brawny men in suits who looked like plain-clothes police officers were having dinner with an elderly man similarly dressed. They were listening to his stories, laughing at his jokes, and I thought he might have been a retired superintendent and that it was some private reunion of a few privileged members of the Vice Squad. The duck à l’orange had not been hatched out long enough in the microwave and the Black Forest gâteau lingered cloyingly on the palate.
Jaunty said, ‘They know me here, of course. Know me well. I’ve only got to breathe the word and they’ll make you a member. No other reference needed!’
‘I don’t really think so.’ Why did I feel, obscurely, that I didn’t want to disappoint Jaunty? ‘It’s a bit off my beaten track. I mean, it’s rather a long way from Muswell Hill.’
‘It’s a bloody long way from Exmoor but I’ve been a regular for years. I come here on leave, you might say, when things get a bit rough on the front line.’ I wasn’t sure what he meant by the front line, but I thought it must be the altogether peaceful presence of Mike. And then Jaunty gave me another of his unnerving grins. ‘I should think you might find a place like this pretty useful, living the sort of life you do now.’
‘What do you mean exactly?’
‘A geezer on his own. Unmarried. I don’t need to spell it out, do I, Progmire?’
‘Is that why you asked me here?’ I felt a wave of depression. Was that the way ahead? Tina with a cold or Marcia leading me gently and tactfully into the geriatric ward?
‘Well, no Not exactly.’
‘Why, then?’ Tina had taken a tray of drinks over to the Vice Squad. As she set down their glasses, she bent her knees in a curious bobbing motion and smiled at their greeting.
‘It’s about my blessed son-in-law. The new one, that is. He shouldn’t be doing that job.’
‘Which job is that?’
‘The one he’s got on for your people. I tried to tell Bethany. It’s a war he knows absolutely nothing about. Too young for it. Most people are. Only just a few of us left. Only a very few of us understand what it was like exactly.’ He looked at me in a way he never had before, as though he was asking me to feel sorry for him He filled my glass. ‘Barolo.’ He rolled the word round his mouth with a sort of relish. ‘Reminds me of Italy. Not that we got it there in those days. Horse’s pee mixed with red ink and paint-stripper. That’s what the peasants gave us if we were very lucky. That was our tipple in those far-off days.’
‘Which far-off days were those?’ I asked the question reluctantly, feeling that each word was a step further into a plot that no longer concerned me. But it apparently concerned Beth and so I asked the question.
‘Winter of 1944. In the High Apennines. Bloody bleak and bloody dangerous. The King of Italy had surrendered, but Mussolini was still kicking about in the north. Allied armies fighting their way all up the peninsula, which was a complete waste of effort, quite honestly. Germans fallen back on Florence, and in the hills ... Well, all sorts of odds and sods.’
‘Partisans, mainly communists,’ I told him. ‘Italian fascists and some British SAS sections, dropped by parachute. Oh, and the Germans of course.’
He looked at me suspiciously, as though I was trying to trap him. ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’
‘I know something.’
‘Not how we felt, though, do you? None of you peace babies know that. Look, I wasn’t much older than you both were when you put on that show at Oxford. What was it?’
‘Hamlet.’
‘Not much older than that when I was an army veteran. We’d fought across North Africa. We hadn’t been home for – Oh, it seemed as long as anyone could remember. We were shagged out, tired of each other, tired of sleeping in our clothes. Most of all we were tired of being scared to death every waking hour from what I remember.’ His hand was unsteady as he raised his brandy glass. For some reason, in the tacky surroundings of the Dandini club, wartime terror had returned to him. This was an entirely different Jaunty from the old man who had told me the army taught him everything he knew, and that war was the finest university. ‘Italy was the end, as far as I was concerned. The end of the bloody line.
‘To be absolutely honest with you, Progmire. I never understood what we were meant to be doing there. They dropped us in between the communists, who were busy getting ready to take over after the war, and the worst of the fascists, who were a gang of murderers on the way out. And then there was the German Army. Bloody good fighting-machine, you’ve got to hand it to them. What were we meant to do with six men and a boy? Frighten them out of their wits? Cut off their retreat? Best we could do was to keep our heads down, hide in some cave or in the pigsty of a peasant who’d betray you for the price of a bottle of grappa.’
So this was the setting of one of Dunster’s scripts: the High Apennines, which Peregrine Gryce had said would make a ‘fun location’. This was the drama to be created by actors and extras and cameramen, which Jaunty Blair had acted out for real a lifetime ago. He took a gulp of brandy, coughed as it hit his chest and growled on. ‘Do you think everyone fought that scrap entirely according to the Queensberry Rules? Or the Geneva Convention, come to that? Do you? Do you think if they’d’ve bagged a group of Musso’s cutthroats, they’d’ve built a nice comfortable prison for them and arranged for Red Cross parcels to be sent in? Do you honestly think they did that?’
By ‘they’ did he mean ‘we’? I felt I was going to get some sort of confession and had no idea what I should do with it. I looked down and saw Jaunty’s gnarled hand on my arm. He was looking at me beseechingly and I was reminded of all the animals he had hunted.
“An old geezer has nothing to do with what he was as a youngster. Progmire. We all change completely. We haven’t got the same bloody fingernails. Our hair falls out. Our teeth aren’t ours any more. You can’t hold an old man responsible. Not for what happened when he was a different mind in a different body and scared shitless. Do you catch my drift, Progmire? Do you see what I mean, old son?’
‘I’m not sure I do.’ What struck me most about this speech was that he had called me son, as though Beth and I were still together. But then he brought me back to reality.
‘Your friend Dunster,’ he said, ‘can charm the birds out of the trees.’
‘He’s not my friend exactly.’
‘No. No, of course not. Not under the circumstances." Jaunty seemed cheered up for a moment, and then his gloom returned
‘He got me talking one night, over a jar at Blair Cottage. Got me talking about the old days.’
‘When you were someone else?’
‘When we all were. Perhaps I had a jar too much. I don’t know. We got out some old maps and started talking about that time in the mountains. He seemed so bloody interested. Led me on, I suppose Not that I told him anything, not anything sensational, believe me. But perhaps I set him off, inventing. And I want to tell you this, Progmire. He’s got nothing to go on. No evidence at all, you understand? No use him poking about and trying to find a story.’
‘Is that what he’s doing?’
‘Something he can sell for your geezers to put on the box. That’s what he’s after. You’ve got to tell your lot. There’s nothing in it. No truth at all.’
‘I’m an accountant. Not the programme controller.’
‘I know but you have the ear of the bloody management. And you can tell Jaunty was gripping my arm now. I could feel the surprising strength of his old fingers. ‘You can tell my present son-in-law, tell your successor...’
‘I haven’t got his ear. I haven’t got any part of him.’
‘He’ll listen to you. No bloody good my talking to him. Tell him he’s just asking for it, that’s all.’
‘Asking for what?’
‘Disaster. For himself. For the whole family. You’ll put a stop to it, won’t you?’
‘I can’t promise anything.’
‘You’ll do it, won’t you? You’ll do it for Beth?’ He leant back in his chair then, less rattled, sure of his ground. ‘After all, you owe me something.’
‘Do I?’
‘Have you forgotten? Who found you your job? All those years ago. I had this connection at Megapolis.’
‘Yes, of course. So you did. I was very grateful.’
The Major finished his brandy and his eyes seemed to film over, as though he’d lost interest in the entire subject. The ex-superintendent, or whoever he might have been, had left his table and was at the bar chatting to Tina. He had an impressive head, like the damaged bust of a Roman emperor, with a nose that had been broken at some time in his career and iron-grey hair as a fringe to his naked scalp. He looked in our direction, as though curious about what we were doing together. A few other couples had arrived and music for dancing came unsteadily out of a speaker in a corner of the room, like warm water dripping from a rusty tap.
‘Look here,’ the Major said. ‘If you’ve got something else on, I really don’t want to keep you.’
‘I must get back.’ I wanted to go to sleep and try, for a night at least, to forget everything he had told me.
‘Sure you don’t want to stay? That young Tracy behind the bar looks as though she might be friendly.’
‘No, really. Got to work tomorrow.’
As I left the Dandini club, a middle-aged couple, looking at each other hungrily, were bopping to a crackling tape playing, in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight.’ I saw the Major get up and leave our table, and I thought he was about to join the man who had been eyeing us from the bar.
Chapter Fourteen
After this meal certain conclusions were. I’m sure you would agree, obvious. Jaunty, in his cups, had hinted at some discreditable incident in the Apennines. Dunster had received this information eagerly, researched it further, touched it up a little and was about to produce a story in which Beth’s father – a man who, for reasons best known to herself, she loved – was to be accused of a war crime, heaven knew how serious, during the Italian campaign in 1944. Cris wanted me to join that sartorial enthusiast Peregrine Gryce in an effort to control Dunster, an activity which required the hopeless optimism of King Canute giving orders to the tide.
I had woken early and lay waiting for the grey start of the day. Then I decided to drive to work before the traffic, but at half past six the container lorries were already rattling down to the Angel and queuing where the road was up. From the car radio I learnt that the oil wells were flaming in Kuwait and that half-starved Iraqi conscripts were surrendering. Soon the war would be over and quite soon forgotten. Nothing would be left but the choking clouds, the burnt-out and twisted buildings – and the uncomfortable revelation that those we fought for hadn’t been much better than the enemy. When Natasha was my age it would be a part of history, the names of generals and places and participants buried, as were the details of the Italian campaign, in a few books which not many people read. There would be other fears, different sufferings, to fill the Today programme. As I was driving, I was thinking about Beth, wondering whether she knew about Dunster’s script and if there were any way of preventing the Jaunty story being beamed into ten million homes.
I got to Megapolis far too early and had breakfast in the canteen among the security men and a few people who’d come in for the early chat show. And then I waited for Cris to come in and tell me, I hoped, exactly what I ought to do.
‘Jaunty Blair!’
I was sitting in the conversational part of Cris’s office and he was standing looking out over the river, showing me his back in its white shirt and crossed braces.
‘As a matter of fact he used to be my father-in-law.’
‘I know,’ was what I thought Cris said, and I was puzzled because I’d never told him. And then he turned slowly with the sun behind him making a silvery halo on his head, his face in shadow. ‘He told me when you and Beth got married.’
‘How long have you known him?’
‘Since 1942. He arrived in Egypt with the yeomanry. One of the new boys. I was sent back from my regiment to give them some basic training in tank warfare. That’s when I first met young Second Lieutenant Jonathan, usually known as Jaunty, Blair.’
‘Young?’
‘Four years younger than me.’ It was hard to believe. Cris was straight-backed, hardly lined. Jaunty’s face was etched like a map of Spaghetti Junction, his hands peppered with those brown marks which are said to be signs of approaching death.
‘Of course, I didn’t really get to know him then. I was a desert rat who went over to the Special Air Service regiment. Jaunty had the best of the war in Egypt. We were actually winning in his time there. But he got trapped in a burning tank. Lucky to get out alive. After that he said he had a sort of horror of closed spaces. So he was keen to get into the SAS. Fresh mountain air, that’s what he said he was after. No more being cooked in a tin oven in the desert.’
‘You were up there, in the Apennines together?’
‘Some of the time. Only some of the time. The situation was pretty fluid, if you understand me. But, yes. I suppose that’s where we got to know each other a little better.’
I had got up early and the sofa was too comfortable. My eyelids were heavy during his account of an ancient campaign, but now I was awake to a situation that seemed inexplicable.
‘You met Beth. Often. We came to stay with you. When we were together.’
‘Which is why I understand, I think, exactly what you felt about her.’ His smile was gentle, as always. He moved then, to sit near me.
‘She never said you knew her father.’
‘Perhaps’ – Cris carefully straightened the trade magazines and the heavy marble ashtray on the glass-topped table between us – ‘her father never told her about me.’
‘And you never told her you knew Jaunty.’
Cris was still smiling, which encouraged me in my unusual role as a cross-examiner.
‘No point in opening up old wounds. The truth of the matter is, Jaunty and I never got on particularly well together.’
‘I can understand that.’
‘We parted on pretty bad terms, as it happens. Let’s say we didn’t see eye to eye on the way wars should be fought. That is, if you have to fight them. Then he wrote to me. Out of the blue. It was rather a pleasant letter. He said we’d been through some hard times together and had our differences in the past. Well. That was putting it mildly. But his daughter was marrying a young economist, a man with a terrific
head for figures who’d played the part of Hamlet at Oxford.’
‘Jaunty wrote to you! I mean, I know he wrote to someone at Megapolis. I imagined it was someone in accounts. But when I asked Gary Penrose about it he was a bit vague. Said whoever it was must have left.’
‘I suppose it was such a curious idea.’ Cris looked up at me again. ‘The Hamlet of the balance sheets! I found it irresistible. Or did I admire Jaunty’s cheek, asking me for a favour? I told Gary to get you in for an interview.’
So I had been Cris’s choice from the start, because of what I’d done before he met me. I said, ‘There’s something I should have told you, long ago. I suppose it’s just that, well, since Beth and I broke up I don’t like talking about him.’
‘Just as I don’t like discussing Major Jaunty Blair.’ He gave the military rank a mocking emphasis.
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘something like that."
Cris lay back in his chair, his legs crossed, his hands clasped across his stomach. ‘You’re talking about Dunster, of course.’
‘You know?’
‘Naturally. When he was doing this job. I made a few inquiries.’
I suppose I should have expected Cris to know everything. ‘I really can’t explain why I didn’t tell you that Beth left me for Dunster. I should’ve told you as soon as you said he’d written the scripts.’
‘Don’t worry. I can understand exactly why you didn’t.’
‘And now,’ I said, ‘Dunster’s found out what Jaunty got up to in the war.’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘That’s what I know.’
‘Tell me.’
Cris moved again and sat in a more official position behind his desk and I gave him a condensed account of dinner with my ex-father-in-law at Dandini’s. This was followed by a silence. Then he asked me, ‘Do you think Jaunty’s frightened of being exposed?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I suppose it’s likely.’
‘And you must know what it’s all about.’
‘I’ve got an idea or two. I’m not sure until I know what Dunster’s written.’
Dunster Page 12
