Strike Out Where Not Applicable

by Nicolas Freeling

  Sunday afternoon was the only time of the week when he allowed himself to sit back for an hour, but though he was pretending to read Match he was busy thinking about all this. Janine had had a hard time all this year – all these years. And this last six months he had been too busy to pay much heed to her. Well, he would try and make that up to her. He thought this riding business kept her fairly content, but she deserved more.… He hadn’t said anything; he was intending to keep it a surprise. Say to her, casual, in the first week of September, ‘Next week, treasure, we’re going to make a cruise on a liner – go and buy yourself some clothes.’ It was something he’d always wanted.

  The room was a large oblong sitting-room with glass all along one side, looking out to sea. Even at this height, this far back from the beach, the window was constantly obscured by salt, which made the glass smeary and expensive to keep clean, besides corroding the metal window frames. When the wind blew, which it did seven days in ten throughout the year, one could not open these windows without vases of flowers getting knocked over.

  The room had big armchairs and sofas upholstered in black leather, and white polar-bear rugs. The coffee-table was square, very large and massive: black Japanese lacquer with red and gold, covered in glass and the usual patterns of water-lilies and flamingos and spiky curved-roof pavilions. On the walls were several modern paintings, the kind one bought in St Paul de Vence. But most of the long wall, opposite the window, had been excavated into shallow curved alcoves with concealed lighting that could be adjusted with a rheostat. Here on shelves was presentation silver (or pewter, or electroplate) in every conceivable pattern from curliest rococo to bleakest Swedish – but mostly silver, for Rob was the best bicycle champion Holland had had in thirty years, since Long-legged Jan Mossup, or since ever, said some, for he was not only a sprinter.

  He wasn’t so vain as to allow pictures of himself in here, though Jannie (he wasn’t allowed to call her Jannie, but he still thought of her as Jannie) had four silver-mounted cabinet photographs in the guest bedroom. But the café, downstairs, had the walls totally filled with photo-montages of Rob Zwemmer, world champion on the road, in the barred leather headdress of a track racer, in the peaked linen cap of a road runner, bareheaded, his hair swept boyishly back by the speed of his passage …

  No no, he wasn’t vain. He had been cute enough never to make a serious challenge to the French in the long-distance races in stages. Only once had he tried the Tour de France, and he had reached the Pyrenees in a heatwave, and dropped out on the terrible Col du Tourmalet. So had forty others, but his had been the most remarked casualty. It wasn’t a disgrace – the same thing had happened to Louison Bobet, who won three Tours – the same thing happened to Anquetil, who won five …

  Nor could he challenge the emperor of Belgium, Ricky van Looy, who had two world championships, and a record in one-day classics over the wicked cobblestoned Flanders streets that nobody would beat. Nor could he match the fantastic total of winter wins in six-day events, on the covered city tracks, of the other Rik, the wonderful old Van Steenbergen (Rik One and Rik Two they were called, in the bicycle world).

  But he was a complete runner. Who else with his record on indoor tracks (the brass band blaring in the smell of beer, the technique of sleeping in an unsoundproofed cabin while his partner took his stint of round and round, up and down, whizzing to the top of the banked steep track and accelerating down in a wicked diagonal sweep, and as suddenly idling down to cruise tempo, with the Oy-Oy-Oy of the music in the strapped padded ears – the smell was meat and the noise drink; never would he get them out of his grain and fibre), who else with that record had won a Tour of Flanders, a Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a Walen Arrow, and, greatest of all, a Paris-Roubaix in the teeth of them all, thanks to his punch. For he was a good track racer and a good road runner, an excellent sprinter and for a Northerner a remarkable climber, but above all he was a puncher, able to excel himself at a given moment. It was his punch that had won him a Midi Libre over the thirst-dried causses of Languedoc: it was his punch that had won him victory over the terrible Spanish climbers among the saw-edged rocks of the ‘Dauphiné Libéré’. The punch – he could do it once, at most twice, over a week’s racing: his famous ‘coup de reins’. He would have agreed with Van der Valk that power, after you have learned to conquer heat, thirst, pain, fear, springs from the nape of the neck. To be a bicycle racer you have to learn to do a stage of two hundred and forty kilometres at an average over forty to the hour, to climb a col of two thousand five hundred metres through roads with bends of a hundred and eighty degrees, under the merciless sun and the no less merciless rain, to go downhill at a hundred and twenty an hour. If you can do all that you are worth the money you earn.

  He was thin, and looked fragile in his expensive suit – English material, Prince of Wales check, but cut more extravagantly than the clients of the manège would have considered permissible. They would, indeed, have curled the lip and given little deprecating laughs: what else could one expect from a boy who had made huge sums of money just riding a bicycle? No difference between that and a pop singer, that anyone-who-was-someone could see. Making money, to them, was something one did without the eyes of a crowd – the crowd might see how the trick was performed and that would never do.

  Thin, with a narrow head, blond hair cut short, candid blue eyes. Anquetil, not surprisingly, was his great hero; Rob was another one who used his head. Rob had studied the terrible Norman for ten years with extreme care, and profited from something the same temperament. He was Dutch! – not for him the flamboyant fury of a Fausto Coppi, capable of winning on his own half an hour before the next – he had learned how to dose his effort, how to make ‘psychological wins’.

  He was thirty-six, a calm, controlled man, very much in charge of the enterprise to which he had set his hand.

  Every winter he had done two hundred kilometres a day, rough country roads with spare inner tubes slung round the neck, the rain slashing his face, wind in the eye. Six-day events were for money, and also to learn racing in a crowd, to keep balance in the desperate wobble of a sprint, to learn the hard lessons from riders who elbowed you, pinched you against the barrier, held you by the jersey. He wasn’t a salon runner, as the French called it contemptuously. He was hardened. And he had been a lone wolf all his life. He had been sacked by Pellenaers from the Dutch team for disobeying group discipline. All Brabant had pelted him with eggs for that, and a national glory had turned into a national disgrace like so many more. He hadn’t budged, and now he was ‘Our Robbie’, the glory of South Holland. He hated the coldblooded metropolitan west, where there was no sport but football (which Rob thought a show-off game for oafish exhibitionists) and where oafs giggled at his soft, peasant Brabants accent.

  He would have liked to stay in France, where no rider, save perhaps the grave and courteous Raymond Poulidor, was more popular with the French crowd. In France he had been happy. He had learned to stop being uncouth, a tonguetied sweating clod – he remembered so well; Stablinski had beaten him by cunning in the Four Days of Dunkerque, and they had been interviewed together in front of the television. Jean deserved to beat me, he had thought, destroyed with shame and envy, listening to the Frenchman say calmly, ‘You have to exteriorize yourself’ – what on earth did it mean?

  He could talk French now well enough for anybody, a queer mixture, with Northern and Catalan expressions but perfectly understandable. In France a rider was respected and an individual was prized, and he had plenty of money. He would have stayed, but at the last moment he lost courage – for the first time in his life. When it came to buying property he was frightened of the flowery phrases of French bureaucracy, of the chalky old notaries and their exquisite Tourangèle accents, of the odious smooth young men in préfectures, showing all comers that they were Parisian, serving a short apprenticeship in this dusty provincial corner.… When it came to tax and capital, to economic outlay and return, to planning permission and the Préfet’s Decision, h
e turned away instinctively, to his own people, to work his own way stubbornly through paper. And he had liked France …

  Little thanks he had had – Janine had not really forgiven him, even now – but that was neither here nor there.

  There she was, sulking again this morning, sprawling childishly on the big sofa instead of sitting straight. She was graceful and a gawk at the same time … but Robbie found this idea a bit ‘twiddly’, a bit too like a notary embroidering sonorously upon the statute of eighteen eighty-one, as amended by the law of July ninth, nineteen sixty-one, relative to Immeubles.… He did not like twiddly ideas; he liked things simple.

  Janine was thirty-two, four years younger than Rob. They had married when he was twenty-two and she eighteen, and had eaten together the bread of poverty and frustration. She had had three miscarriages, had lost two children prematurely, and now had her tubes tied; the doctor had said that there must not be another time …

  She was a silver blonde, not white, not ash, and certainly not out of any bottle, but a silky silver, cuddly and delicate, and she wore it long, in ringlets that fell in a tumble to her shoulders. In her childhood she had dreamed of the cinema, and it had been Rob who had told her bluntly that she was not the new Bardot, but that he liked her the way she was. He had given her the roses from one of his first amateur wins, a ridiculous thing called the Tour of Overijssel, and she had gone, not long after, to Antwerp for the day and reappeared with a blue rose and the words ‘Rob, I am yours for ever’ tattooed on her right hip. Rob had been profoundly shocked, and had seen to it that there were no further fantasies dating from her Bardot period. She had skin to match her hair, soft and tender with a pale bloom on it, and the French journalists – had they had a memory of a White Lady of some years before? – called her ‘Pêche Blanche’.

  And how she had worked, after they married without a penny, and her father, a skilful collector of unemployment benefit, threw her out in a rage. A stupid bicycle maniac, and from Brabant at that! He had quite believed in the second Bardot, and had indeed counted on being kept in comfort by his grateful daughter, the moment she ‘arrived’.

  She had worked as a chambermaid, as a waitress, her hair pinned up, as a hairdressers’ assistant, as salesgirl in a dress shop, as everything … everything honest, Janine would add, hotly. She wasn’t going to end as any stinking prostitute in the docks, thank you. She would never admit even to herself that she might have done … something – to keep Rob going after his first world championship – he was twenty-fourth, and starting offers were very thin on the ground.

  Her loyalty to him was total – it struck him now that he had forgotten that, lately. He put down his magazine and went to sit on the sofa awkwardly, squashing a corner of Elle, Poor Janine, who so hated her growing-up years that now she would only talk French, only read French – the language of her success. He wanted to show affection for her; awkwardly he started to play with the silky nape of her neck – her power.… She shook her hair irritably but did not stop him. Affection – as it does – turned into desire; he unzipped her frock. Her spine was slightly bony, but that peachlike back, cut horizontally by the black brassiere.… He fumbled a long while with the cunning hook-and-eye system and for a wonder she still did not stop him. In the end, she just had to do it for him …

  Monday morning, and Van der Valk in his cavalry get-up – flannel shirt, with little red lines forming squares, a tie of different shades of green woven into each other. He paraded towards the office, manoeuvring the stick and contemplating horse-chestnut shoes under the twenty-and-a-half centimetre wide trousers. This morning he wore his short overcoat, a nice fawn thing with a furry lining and elaborate pockets that gave him much pleasure: April is a damned cold month in Holland. He had a rich sombre scarf too; midnight-blue silk … bought by Arlette in Paris the first day he walked without crutches.

  In the office he ran through his reports, which included this morning one from the hospital Pathology Department, signed by Doctor Haversma. He brooded some time: life was fairly easy at the moment.… He had three criminal-brigade inspectors, or Adjunct Officers of Police as they are called nowadays, as well as a specialized technical squad. He went round to the Palace of Justice, where he had a tactful wary chat with the Officer, and came back thoughtfully, rubbing his nose. Back in the office he stroked his carefully shaved jaw – he was getting pompous nowadays, and had had a very super German razor from the two boys for Christmas.

  He felt contented with his staff: good boys. That oriental-carpet warehouse that had been broken open last week – they had cleared that up in a clean, decisive manner with no loose fringes left for him to trip over, and he had an agreeable free-handed sensation. He left his duty inspector to hold whatever forts needed holding, went and borrowed Arlette’s deux-chevaux, and drove out towards Lisse.

  The restaurant of the White Horse seemed to be doing business as usual – a girl was laying tables which had been freshly polished that morning, there was a good smell of veal stew with mushrooms, and a slim woman of indeterminate age in an almond-green skirt and jumper was writing out menus behind the bar counter.

  ‘Good morning. A table for lunch? Or was it just coffee?’ briskly.

  ‘Have you such a thing as a glass of cold white wine?’

  ‘Certainly – Rhine, Moselle or Alsace?’ pronouncing it Elzass in the German fashion.

  ‘The dryest, if you please. Is Mevrouw Fischer here this morning?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Have you some business with her?’ dubiously – he did not look like a traveller in ice-cream wafers somehow.

  ‘Van der Valk is my name – I am the district commissaire of police.’

  ‘Has Mr Mije been transferred?’ suspiciously; he smiled.

  ‘No, he’s here and healthy, I’m glad to say. I am his colleague of the criminal brigade.’

  ‘And what does the criminal brigade need of Mevrouw Fischer?’

  It didn’t sound aggressive, nor even vulgar curiosity: it was politely spoken and with assurance, as though it were her business to know. As though she had a right to know, he thought.

  ‘Are you perhaps the manageress?’

  ‘I am, yes – Miss Groenveld, at your service – I am in fact part-owner; Heer Fischer and I were associated many years, so you need not hesitate to tell me your business.’

  ‘No business – a conversation.’

  ‘You can speak in confidence if that is what you wish.’

  ‘I see. Well, there is no need for any stiff formality. You may not know, perhaps, that when anyone dies suddenly in an accident my department is automatically notified. You doubtless do know that in Heer Fischer’s case the local doctor thought fit to ask for a post-mortem, because of his overstrained health.’ She didn’t look as if she was swallowing this – she was watching him narrowly.

  ‘I’ll get your wine myself – the girls are busy.’

  When she came back with it – rather a mean glass, one of those deceptive green German things, but a respectable wine, with condensation forming on the outside – she had thought out her approach.

  ‘We were waiting for word about the funeral. I may tell you that is where Mevrouw Fischer has gone – to arrange for cards to be sent and the cemetery authorities and – uh – so forth.’

  ‘Yes, that is my purpose here. The funeral preparations can go forward whenever you wish – there’s nothing to prevent it.’

  ‘Why should there have been anything to prevent it?’

  ‘A bureaucratic regulation – after a post-mortem the Officer of Justice signs an official release authorizing the funeral.’

  ‘I don’t understand the word authorize – do you come round to tell us that in person?’ Hm, she had detected his little subterfuge.

  ‘Just courtesy. And shall I confess a certain curiosity?’

  ‘Curiosity? – because that fool of a doctor wouldn’t take the simple responsibility of signing a death certificate? I can satisfy your curiosity, Commissaris. He said that
there was nothing wrong with Bernhard’s health, and even encouraged him to go riding that horse. Then when poor Bernhard did have a cardiac failure he couldn’t admit it, because it would have meant admitting that he hadn’t made a right diagnosis – I can tell you that this postmortem shilly-shally won’t do his reputation hereabouts any great good.’

  Now did she genuinely believe that? Surely she must realize that his visit was a result of the post-mortem findings.

  ‘Shilly-shally,’ he repeated as though he liked the phrase. ‘Doctor Maartens’ decision was perfectly proper, and it would be most regrettable if through careless words he were exposed to criticism.’ The snub was sharp enough to sting her.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘His interpretation was confirmed by the post-mortem. The findings have been communicated to me, and Doctor Maartens has no part in the decisions arrived at, which depend, as I have said, upon the Officer of Justice.’

  She was watching him as though he held the last number for her bingo card. Greedily.

  ‘I will ask you to come into another room.’ He had spoken in too low a tone to be overheard but he saw what she meant. He followed her up a flight of stairs into a sitting-room furnished in expensive but tasteless comfort. Limoges enamel and Venetian glass – many expensive semi-antique objects pretty enough in themselves but without coherence.

  ‘Sit down – you do understand that if the restaurant is open it doesn’t mean that we aren’t upset. We didn’t know when we could arrange the funeral, everybody gave different answers, there have been rumours floating about.… We agreed completely that it was sensible to behave as normally as possible.’