Chapter Nine
Boris was still there. not even enough tact to take himself off, Colin thought, unreasonably disregarding the fact that Boris’s only lines of retreat lay by the back stairs from the hall or else through the french windows of the drawing-room. Neither route would altogether have avoided the risk of meeting Scziliekowicz in the street. All the same it was galling to see him standing there chatting with Margaret as if nothing had happened.
“I shall be obliged,’’ said Colin, in what Margaret considered his most insufferable F.O. voice, “if you would let me know another time before you barge into our home.’’
“Colin!’’ Margaret said, fiercely, “you forget that I invited Boris to call any time he likes.’’
“It is unfortunate,’’ said Boris, quite obviously unrepentant. “I apologize, Colin. I am on my way to a place I have not found on my map of London. It is very hot. I find myself in Church Street and I think Margaret will tell me how to reach my assignment while I rest for five minutes in your charming garden. The good Ogden—’’
“I cannot understand why your English becomes so elementary when you are speaking to me,’’ Colin interrupted in rapid Polish. “On most occasions, when there are other people present, it is very nearly perfect. What’s the point of that particular form of clowning?’’
“Perhaps,’’ Boris answered gently, “it is because you always succeed in making me feel a stranger in your presence.’’
“Stop!’’ Margaret cried at them. “Stop talking in a language I don’t understand. Or have you explained to him what a fuss he’s making about nothing?’’ she asked Boris.
“I have explained a little,’’ Boris answered, “but I think Colin does not believe me.’’
“Of course he believes you. What’s this place you’re going to? The name of the man you have to see?’’
She walked firmly across the room to the telephone and began to flip over the pages of the directory. Colin protested, Boris watched. Margaret ignored them both. She found the number and dialled.
“I’m speaking for Mr. Sudenic,’’ she said, when she got through. “You are expecting him, I believe. Yes, from the Baltic Trading Company. Mr. Sørensen.’’ She gave a triumphant nod in Colin’s direction. “He has been unfortunately delayed. He will be with you in about ten minutes time. Thank you.’’
“There!’’ she said, putting back the receiver. “Off you go, Boris. I said ten minutes. You’ll have to get a taxi. You’ll find one easily enough in Notting Hill Gate; probably pick one up on the way there.’’
“Thank you,’’ said Boris, quietly. His eyes were shining with amusement and relief and an unaffected admiration. He turned to Colin. “I apologize again,’’ he said. “I did not imagine Scziliekowicz would have such a guilty conscience.’’
This remark so astounded Colin that Boris was out of the room before he could move and had closed the front door behind him by the time Colin reached the hall. He went back into the drawing-room. Margaret was sitting down now, looking rather pale. But she had not lost her former impetus. She went at once into attack.
“What on earth possessed you to behave like that to Boris?’’ she demanded. “He might be your worst enemy.’’
This was a mistake.
“Perhaps he is,’’ Colin answered immediately.
“What d’you mean?’’
“Need I explain?’’
“Are you making a vulgar, utterly imbecile suggestion?’’
They glared at each other, both of them too deeply hurt to see the essentially misguided nature of their quarrel. Before either could invent a really unforgivable thrust, however, Louise put her head into the room. In spite of the heat she looked cool, her make-up was perfect, her full-skirted, gaily patterned dress was both fresh and pretty.
“Excuse,’’ she said, at once noticing the signs of strain though there had been no sound of raised voices outside the room. “I bring tea.’’
Leaving the door open, she went out for a moment, to reappear pushing the trolley which was set out with several cups and saucers on the top and plates of sandwiches and small iced cakes of Mrs. Ogden’s baking on the shelf below.
“Thank you, Louise,’’ said Margaret, bleakly.
The girl hesitated, looking round the room.
“Mr. Ogden say there are two guests,’’ she began. “They go?’’
“They had to go,’’ said Colin.
“Sit down, Louise,’’ Margaret said. “When did you get back?’’
She was wondering if the girl had met Boris in the road or if she had reached the house before he left it. Surely she would have said if she had seen him. Anyway she would not have expected to find him in the drawing-room.
“Five minutes, perhaps,’’ Louise told her. “It was too hot at the Institute. Everybody was exhausted.’’
“You look far from exhausted,’’ Colin said, smiling at her. He was thankful the quarrel had been interrupted, if only for the time being. It had been brewing too long and he knew its violence was not yet expended. In the meantime he hoped to recover his temper so that he might withstand Margaret’s inevitably renewed onslaught in a stony silence. This always defeated her.
Louise smiled back at him. The poor Colin, she was thinking. So jealous and with so little cause.
“Then Martha is in, too, is she?’’ Margaret went on.
“Mrs. Ogden?’’
“Yes. To get the tea ready if you have only been in the house five minutes.’’
“Oh, I see. No, it was Mr. Ogden who prepared the tea. He was going to bring it, but I said it was for me to receive for the trolley.’’
Margaret knew she ought to correct this very imperfect sentence but she could not be bothered. Louise was a good-natured girl, she knew Ogden found it tiring to go up and down the kitchen stairs. It was thoughtful of Louise to stand at the service lift in the dining-room to load the trolley. Though of course she would be having tea with them.
“What about pouring out?’’ said Colin, with false jocularity.
“Sorry,’’ Margaret answered, with equally false submission.
Louise did not linger over the meal, which she always considered superfluous. Nor had the Brentwoods much appetite. Before she wheeled out the trolley again Louise said, “I forget to ask, Mrs. Brentwood. I will be late tonight. It is a party with my friend, Lotte.’’
“Did you forget to tell me?’’ Margaret asked, a little put out because she had counted upon having the girl there to act as a buffer between herself and Colin for the evening. “Or has it only just blown up?’’
“That,’’ said Louise, laughing. “This afternoon it blow up.’’
“Blew up.’’
“Blew? Yes. Blow. Has blown. Blew.’’
“Never mind. You’ll be out to dinner, then?’’
“Please.’’
“I’ll give you a key,’’ Margaret said, getting up.
“I can let her in,’’ Colin suggested. “I’ve some work to do that’ll keep me up, I expect. How late will you be?’’ he asked Louise.
She shrugged, looking hopefully at Margaret.
“You shall have a key,’’ the latter assured her.
When Louise had gone an uncomfortable silence filled the room, broken only when Margaret said she must bring her writing things in from the garden.
“I’ll come with you,’’ Colin said.
“Why?’’
“Why not?’’
The fight was on again, all the more bitter for the short armistice over tea, all the more savage that each knew Boris was only a catalyst, not a prime cause, in their fundamental difference.
Having put her papers together, Margaret would have gone straight back to the house, but Colin stopped her with a heavy hand on her arm.
“You’ve got to tell me,’’ he said. “I can’t stand much more of this. It’s bad enough having to watch him for—’’
He broke off, but too late.
“So you
spy on him, do you?’’ she burst out. “As if he hadn’t enough to contend with you’ve poisoned the minds of the people who can help him or send him back to his death?’’
“Nonsense. Hysterical nonsense. Much more likely he’s trying to use me.’’ Caution, once breached, collapsed as the flood poured from him. “I suspected at the start he came here as a spy. He was planted by the Russians. They often do it. So do we, for that matter. Every country does. It’s standard practice. It isn’t that I mind, so much. It’s using you to worm his way in. You were ready for it from the start, weren’t you? The long-lost lover. There’s nothing in it for you, my girl. So don’t think there is.’’
“Let me go!’’ Margaret panted. She struck at his hand on her arm, striking, tearing, until he dropped his hand, not noticing where her nails had started a thin red trickle from his wrist.
“You seem to want me to hate you!’’ she cried. “Or can’t you even see me, the real me, behind the poor misused self you look at all the time? I think you’re mad. There’s nothing between Boris and me but an old friendship, not very well renewed. He’s changed a lot – as I’ve changed.’’
But only just – only beginning – she cried to herself, weeping inwardly for her dying love, her dead girlhood.
Colin looked at her with dull eyes, hearing only the false note as she ended.
“You haven’t changed,’’ he said. “God knows I’ve waited and hoped. But you haven’t changed. You never will.’’
“You accuse him of attempting to use you,’’ she swept on. “How? He practically never sees you. What can he get from you? You never bring anything home that matters. You aren’t allowed to.’’
“He knows too much. He knew Scziliekowicz would be here today. He came into the house exactly when he meant to. He’s ruined our relations with that particular society. They’ll never trust us again. I shall be on the mat for it. It was a serious interview.’’
“I don’t believe you.’’
“You can believe what you like. It was Sudenic’s doing.’’
“Now,’’ she said, beside herself with rage, grief and a new gnawing anxiety grown from his words, “now listen to me. Boris told me today about his wife and children, how he loved them. The woman betrayed him and he knows he will never see any of them again.’’
“You believed this story?’’
“Oh, you’re impossible!’’ she threw at him. “It’s useless to tell you anything.’’
She left him under the trees, walking quickly to the house. Mrs. Ogden, back at last, saw her from the kitchen window.
“She looks fair upset,’’ she said. “What’s been going on ’ere this afternoon?’’
“Happen it’s thunder we’ve got coming.’’ Ogden answered, supported by a distant growl almost as he finished speaking.
Colin, sitting hunched up on the day-bed, heard the thunder, too, considering it fully appropriate to his mood and circumstances. He stayed, brooding miserably, until he noticed the thin line of dried blood on the back of his hand. At any rate, he thought, I did no violence to her. Morally, he felt one up on her for that and drew a faint comfort from the thought. When a brief spatter of heavy drops struck the leaves above him he got up, folded the day-bed, put it away with the deck-chairs and went back into the house.
The storm that was circling in a kind of moody, undecided menace over London that evening caused many people to dive into doorways for shelter when those first heavy drops fell. Among them was Louise, who turned to put over her mass of bright curls one of those unbecoming, strictly functional pieces of plastic material that are so much less cumbersome to take about than an umbrella. Her summer coat, which was showerproof and which she carried over her arm, she now pulled on. Her shoes, black for the evening with high stiletto heels would just have to suffer. She watched the large drops spread on the pavement and dry quickly. Before five minutes had passed she was on her way again.
Boris, too, lifted his head to inspect the sky when the first drops struck his nose. But he continued on his way. Thunderstorms, he decided, like so much else in England, seemed incapable of making up their minds. This attitude was confirmed by his recent business interview. He was late, but he was kept waiting all the same. If he had been punctual, he learned from the secretary, he would have waited longer. The delay was not at all a deliberate punishment for his own ineptitude.
However, the affair had gone well. Sørensen would be satisfied. He knew that the managing director suspected his double role and resented the fact that he himself was not admitted into his government’s confidence. Though this was in no way Boris’s fault it did not help Sørensen to regard him with any favour. But this afternoon’s transaction, though of a minor nature, ought to persuade him that his curious translator and odd-job man was, at least in part, genuinely concerned to promote the business, whatever else he did.
Since he had less distance to travel and had not stopped on the way, Boris arrived first at the rendezvous. This was an insignificant restaurant in an area near Queen’s Road. The whole district was a mixture of large old Victorian houses, for the most part run down, side by side with smaller slum property, in process of demolition, with new development springing up in patches, all height and glass and concrete. The demolition followed roughly those parts that had been bombed during the war and had thereafter been shut up behind hoardings. But some of it, bordering on the network of railway tracks finding their way to Paddington station, consisted of small, close-packed, old-fashioned railway workers’ cottages, in terrace formation for the most part, with here and there a group of little shops, a pub, even a small enclosed square or cul-de-sac at the end of a narrow alleyway.
The restaurant where Boris found a table and sat down to wait was in the middle of one of these groups of shops and had been a general grocer’s itself until it failed in competition with the local supermarkets. Then a Pole, who had been in the British army in the war, managed to scrape together enough money to buy the place, put in a new front at street level, though not above and opened it with the help of an Italian cook. Boris discovered it when he explored the neighbourhood of his most recent dwelling.
Louise was nearly ten minutes late.
“But you gave me very little time,’’ she protested, when he told her of this. They spoke in French as they usually did in public places. “If I had not come back early today you would not have seen me here at all. I didn’t know I should find you just leaving the house.’’
“No. I didn’t know, either. You can stay?’’
“I told Mrs. Brentwood I was asked to a party of Swiss friends. A sudden invitation. That was true, at any rate. Made at my class today, I told her.’’
“That was a lie.’’
“Would you prefer me to tell Mrs. Brentwood I am having an affair with you?’’
“Hush.’’
“They are all English here, aren’t they? Except the proprietor and his cook?’’
“They were,’’ answered Boris, shortly.
One of the two very sleazy waitresses came to their table with a couple of covered dishes.
“I ordered while I was waiting for you,’’ Boris said, smiling. “After all, there are only two dishes on the menu worth eating and we had the other one last time.’’
Louise laughed, then leaned forward.
“Why did you say – that – before the food arrived?’’
“Because there are four men who are sitting now in the window alcove at the right side of the door, who are speaking Polish and who came in about three minutes after you did.’’
She did not look round; Boris had trained her sufficiently for that. Besides, she was not really interested in the more puzzling side of his life. She was in love with him and that was enough.
But she noticed the thoughtful look on his face as he told her about his compatriots and felt a slight anxiety as she listened.
“They won’t want to talk to you, will they? They must not spoil our evening together. I couldn’t
bear that. Such a wonderful surprise to be destroyed for no reason—’’
“There would be a reason,’’ said Boris, gently. “I think I know who they are.’’
“Then we can just greet them as we go out. Must there be more?’’
“I must not appear to avoid them,’’ said Boris, smiling a little. “But I will tell you what to do. We shall certainly not miss our evening together, my darling.’’
“Tell me, then.’’ His voice, caressing her, commanded her full submission.
“When I hung up your coat for you just now I put in the pocket, the right-hand pocket, a key of my new flat and a paper telling you the address and how to get there.’’
“Have you moved again?’’ She was disagreeably startled.
“Need that upset you? Or even surprise? When we finish our coffee you will take your coat to the ladies’ room here and put the key in a safe place. Then you will learn what the paper says and put that down the drain. You understand?’’
It was the first time he had asked her to take part in the game he played with so much care, ease and familiarity. She giggled.
“It’s like a film,’’ she said, longing to turn round and stare at the four strange figures near the door. Did they carry knives – or revolvers? Did they wear hats pulled down over their faces?
“A film by Alfred Hitchcock,’’ she said, still laughing softly.
“It is essentially rather boring,’’ Boris told her. “But unfortunately necessary.’’
His tone was grave and his bearing remote. She understood, as she had always suspected, that there were tracts in his life, factual and spiritual, where she would never enter, never be allowed to trespass. Perhaps, she told herself, with true Swiss sturdy common sense, she would not enjoy those aspects of him at all. As a lover he was wonderful. Wasn’t that enough? More than she had ever hoped for during her stay in this curious, easy-going, indifferent country? Particularly in the circle in which the Brentwoods moved; so polite, so cold, so basically uninterested in her and her needs. But outside it, too. Everywhere. Foreigners were creatures apart, like animals, to be treated kindly, even indulgently, if they behaved well. But if they appeared to be harmful or vicious, on grounds perhaps solely of prejudice, then they must be removed or destroyed as pests were destroyed, without further question, without mercy, with complete self-justification.
The Alien Page 9
