The Untouchable

by John Banville

  “Well,” I said, “this is nice.”

  Blanche shot me one of her quick, worriedly conspiratorial smiles; Blanche always enjoys it when I am provocative, though she pretends to disapprove. Julian harrumphed, ponderously shrugging, and inserted a finger under the rim of his too-tight shirt collar and gave it a tremendous, eye-popping tug. At an adjoining table an amply fleshed woman in a strapless gown was beginning to recognise me.

  “Saw Mummy today,” Julian said.

  “Oh, yes? And is she well?”

  He glanced at me with a mixture of reproach and distress, and that peculiar beseeching that he directs at me mutely when the subject of his mother comes up. Vivienne resides now in a nursing home in North Oxford, a victim of chronic melancholia. I prefer not to visit her; she finds my presence upsetting.

  “She’s not well, actually,” Julian said. “She has been refusing her meals.”

  “Well, she never was a big eater, you know.”

  “This is different. The doctors are quite worried.”

  “A very stubborn woman, your mother.”

  His jaw was beginning to work.

  “She sent you her love,” Blanche said quickly. (A likely story.) Blanche has an affecting way of making sudden, eager little feints, like a mouse dashing out of its hole to seize on a bit of cheese, and then as quickly drawing back into herself again with a gulp of fright. She works in a school for children with special needs (i.e., mad). She will never marry, now; I can see her at sixty, all brawn and Labradors, doing good works, like poor Hettie, and laughed at behind her back by Julian’s bratty children. My poor girl. Sometimes I am glad that I shall soon be gone. “I told her we were seeing you tonight,” Blanche said. “She said she wished she could be here.”

  I made no comment.

  Soup was a clear, thin, tasteless broth. I pushed the plate away, deciding to wait for my sole. Blanche too was having the fish, but Julian in his manly, masterful way had ordered baron of beef. Really, his resemblance to poor Freddie is remarkable. I asked him how things were in the City and he looked at me warily; he imagines I am waiting in confident anticipation for the inevitable collapse of capitalism. I must be a grave embarrassment to him, among his stockbroking colleagues. I do appreciate his filial loyalty, really I do—no one would have blamed him, least of all myself, if he had broken with me after my public exposure—but I cannot resist teasing him, he is so entertainingly teasable.

  “Your Uncle Nick,” I said, “was at one time an adviser to the Rothenstein family, did you know that? Before the war. It was one of his more bizarre employments. They sent him to Germany to assess the Nazi threat to their holdings. Of course, we were all spies in those days.”

  The word brought a silence down over the table like an awning. Blanche bit her lip, and Julian coughed and frowned and attacked a slice of beef. Heh heh. It is one of the few privileges of old age to be allowed to behave appallingly to one’s children.

  “Didn’t Lord Rothenstein buy that picture, The Death of Cicero, for you?” Julian said.

  “Yes,” I said shortly. “But I paid him back the loan. One would not want to be in debt to a Rothenstein. And it’s Seneca, not Cicero.”

  A frightening thought occurred to me: had the Poussin been a plant, a lure, a way of putting me in their debt? Had they got Wally Cohen to leave it there among the gallery dross, where I would be bound to nose it out? The picture could have been from Rothenstein’s private collection, he would have been well able to spare it. I recalled the peculiar look he and Boy had exchanged on the pavement that summer evening outside Alighieri’s, and Rothenstein laughing his big soft laugh and turning away. I sat aghast, with Julian’s voice buzzing incomprehensibly in my ear, as the thing opened before my appalled imagination like a chrysalis and the whole horrible nasty little plot crawled out. But then, as quickly as it had unfolded, it collapsed again, the wings were furled, the casings fell to dust, and the dust dispersed. Nonsense, nonsense; pure paranoia. I was able to breathe again. I leaned back on my chair and smiled weakly. Julian had asked me a question and was waiting for an answer. “I’m sorry,” I said, “what were you saying…?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  That woman at the table next to us had at last identified me, and was speaking eagerly into the ear of the elderly gent to her left, her bulbous eyes fixed on me excitedly and the tops of her pale plump breasts aquiver. Nice to think one can still cause a flutter. “Funny,” I said, “that Leo was never exposed.”

  Julian stared.

  “You mean he…?”

  “Oh yes, he was one of us. Never very active, more a sort of eminence. Our masters in Moscow were leery of him, him being a Jew and them being—well, Russians; but they valued his connections. And then there was all that money— Blanche, my dear, are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, it’s just a bone… it’s got stuck…”

  Julian had stopped eating, and was sitting with his knife and fork upright in his fists, glowering at his blood-stained plate.

  “Is this true,” he said, “or just one of your jokes?”

  “Would I lie about such a thing?”

  He looked at my smirk and chose not to answer; instead he asked:

  “Uncle Nick—did he know? About Rothenstein, I mean.”

  Blanche, purple-faced, was still coughing and thumping herself in the chest.

  “I never asked him,” I said. “Nick was not terribly observant, you know. Vain people tend not to be. Blanche, do drink some water.”

  Julian bent thoughtfully to his food again, showing me the top of Freddie’s head, the same coarse-textured hair and broad crown. Strange the things the genes choose to replicate.

  “He wasn’t one of you,” he said, “was he—Uncle Nick?”

  The Sancerre Julian had ordered was really quite good, though he knows I do not like Sancerre.

  “Poor Nick,” I said. “All those years and he never noticed a thing. Vanity, you see. Whatever he looked at turned immediately into a mirror. But, ah, such charm!” Julian stopped chewing, keeping his eyes fixed on his plate. I chuckled. “No,” I said, “don’t worry, he was always profoundly, depressingly hetero.”

  Another terrible silence. Had I gone too far? Julian has never reconciled himself to my queerness—well, I would hardly have expected him to: what son would? The thought of even a heterosexual parent’s sexuality is squirm-making enough. And then, he is very loyal to his mother. Blanche is more tolerant of me than Julian is; women don’t really take sex seriously. She is very tender and considerate of my feelings—for I do have feelings, despite appearances to the contrary—but I’m sure she too must think I betrayed her mother. Oh, families!

  “Have you talked to Uncle Nick?” she said now. “I mean, since…?”

  “No, no. Nick and I have not spoken for many years. I was something of a missing rung on the ladder of his success. It was necessary for him to step over me.”

  For some reason Blanche reached out and gave my hand a squeeze, her eyes going shiny; she is such a soft poor thing, much too good-hearted, really, for a daughter of mine. Julian noted the gesture, and frowned. He said:

  “Did he know about… about you?”

  “About me being a spy?” He flinched; I was feeling really quite mischievous by now, thanks to my having drunk most of the bottle of wine. I told myself to go carefully. The lady of the heaving embonpoint was agog. “Oh, no,” I said. “Why would you think that? I’m sure he would have said. He was very straightforward, you know, very bluff and honest, at least in those days—they do say he has been involved in some murky doings on the way to his present position of power and influence. He was always a bit of a Fascist, was old Nick.”

  Julian snickered, surprising me; he has never been noted for his sense of humour.

  “Would that prevent him from working for the Russians?” he said.

  I turned the wineglass in my fingers, admiring the brassy, fiery sunburst burning in its depths.

  “Of course,” I said m
ildly, “you find it hard to distinguish between opposing ideologies. Capital is colour-blind.” Stung, he was about to respond, but instead looked down at his plate again, breathing an angry sigh through his nostrils. Blanche gave me another beseeching, sorrowful look. “Come,” I said, “let me buy you both a drink. Julian: a brandy?” I caught the glance that they exchanged: they had agreed a time limit for the evening. I thought of the flat, with its desk and lamp, of the window holding back the glossy black night. Blanche began to say something but I interrupted her. “And tell me, Julian, how is…?” I always have trouble remembering his wife’s name. “How is Pamela?” I should have asked after the children, too, but I did not wish to have that subject opened up. The thought of grandchildren I find peculiarly dispiriting, and not for the obvious reasons. “She’s thriving, I hope?”

  He nodded grimly and said nothing. He knows what I think of Pamela. She keeps horses. Abruptly, as if the mention of his wife were a signal, he brought the meal to a close, putting down his napkin with grave finality, while Blanche leaned down hurriedly and scrabbled about under her chair for her handbag; he always did bully her. He and I had a brief tussle over the bill; I let him win. In the lobby he helped me on with my overcoat. I felt suddenly old and pettish and wronged. The night was raw. As we walked along the pavement Blanche linked her arm in mine, but I held myself stiffly away from her. Julian’s big black car raced purringly through the darkened streets—Julian becomes uncharacteristically impetuous when he gets behind the wheel. In Portland Place a heap of rags was thrown on the steps leading up to my door; when I stepped out of the car the rags stirred and a terrible, ruined face looked up at me blearily.

  “Look,” I said to Julian, “there’s the result of your capitalism for you!”

  I do not know what came over me, shouting in the street like that. It was not at all like me. Julian had not got out, and sat now staring dourly through the windscreen and tapping out an impatient rhythm with his fingers on the wheel. We said our stiff goodnights. At the corner, though, the car stopped with a squeal and the door was thrust open and Blanche came running back down the middle of the road. Where did she get those big feet from?—not my side, anyway. I already had the key in the lock. She struggled up the steps, panting. “I just wanted to…” she said, “I just wanted…” She stopped, and looked at the ground. Then she gave a great shrug, and a sort of exasperated, lost laugh, and kissed me quickly on the cheek and turned away. At the foot of the steps she paused, and bent over her purse, becoming Vivienne’s mother for a second. A blackened hand reached up from the bundle of rags and she placed a coin in it. She glanced back at me and smiled, bravely, sadly and, I thought, with the hint of an apology—for what, I could not say— and then hurried away towards the waiting car.

  What is it, I ask myself, what is it that everyone knows, that I do not know?

  This morning early, before some busybody should come and move him on, I went down to have a look at that wretch on the steps. He was awake, reclining in his filthy cocoon, his frightful eyes fixed on horrors in the air that only he could see. Indeterminate age, cropped grey hair, scabs all over, mouth blackly agape. I spoke to him but he did not respond; I think he could not hear me. I cast about for something I might do to help him, but soon gave up, in the glum, hopeless way that one does. I was about to turn away when I saw something stir under his chin, inside the collar of his buttoned-up overcoat. It was a little dog, a pup, I think, mangy brown, with big sad eager eyes and a torn ear. It licked its lips at me and squirmed ingratiatingly. Its tongue was shocking in its stark, pink cleanness. A man and his dog. Good God. Everyone must have something to love, some little scrap of life. I went back up the steps, ashamed to have to acknowledge that I felt more sorrow for the dog than I did for the man. What a thing it is, the human heart.

  11

  Miss Vandeleur has I think been listening to wild stories about life at the Poland Street house during the war, for whenever I make mention of the place I seem to detect in her a muffled shudder of disapproval and maidenly pudeur. It is true, there were some memorable debauches there when the Blitz was on, but for goodness’ sake, Miss V., at that time London generally, at least at the level of our class, had the atmosphere of an Italian city state in the days of the Black Death. Although she would never admit it, liberated young woman that she is, what my biographer really reprehends is not the sexual licence of those days, but the nature of the sexuality. Like so many others, she imagines the house was inhabited exclusively by queers. I remind her that our landlord, Leo Rothenstein, was as red-blooded a hetero as his Jewish blood would allow—and there was Nick, after all; need I say more? I admit that when Boy moved in, there were always questionable young men about the place, although occasionally of a morning I would meet some dazed girl stumbling out of his room with her hair in knots and carrying her stockings over her arm.

  Danny Perkins was one of Boy’s discoveries.

  The house was tall and narrow, and seemed to lean a little outwards over the street. Blake must have seen angels prancing in the sunlight flashing down from those high windows. The living accommodation comprised three floors above a doctor’s surgery. The doctor was an elusive figure; Boy insisted that he was an abortionist. Leo, despite his grandee’s manner, had a taste for louche living, and had bought the house as a refuge from the stultifying magnificence of the family mansion in Portman Square. At that time, though, he was rarely in Poland Street, having moved with his new and already pregnant wife to the safety of his place in the country. I had a bedroom on the second floor, across the corridor from the tiny dressing room where Boy lived in awesome squalor. Above us was Nick’s flat. I still had the place in Bayswater, but bombs had fallen near Lancaster Gate and on the west side of Sussex Square, and Vivienne had decamped with the child to her parents’ house in Oxford for the duration. I missed them, in periodic bouts of loneliness and self-pity, but I will not pretend that I was not on the whole content with the arrangement.

  In the mornings I was lecturing on Borromini at the Institute—what a sense of urgency and profound pathos was lent to these occasions by the sound of bombs falling on the city—and in the afternoons I was at my desk in the Department. The crypt-analysts at Bletchley Park had broken the Luftwaffe signal codes and I was able to pass a great deal of valuable information to Oleg on the strength and tactics of the German Air Force. (No, Miss V., however you may urge me, I shall not deign to engage with criticism of my dealings with a country which at the time was supposedly in league with Hitler against us; surely by now it is clear where my loyalties would always lie, whatever worthless treaty this or that vile tyrant might put his name to.) I was, I realised, happy. Amidst the schoolroom smells of the Department—pencil shavings, cheap paper, the mouth-drying reek of ink—or pacing under the great windows of the Institute’s third-floor lecture room, looking down on one of Vanbrugh’s finest courtyards and paying out to an attentive handful of students the measured ribbon of my thoughts on the great themes of seventeeth-century art, I was, yes, happy. As I have already remarked, I did not fear the bombing; I confess I even exulted a little, in secret, at the spectacle of such enormous, ungovernable destruction. Are you shocked? My dear, you cannot imagine the strangeness of those times. No one now speaks about the sense of vast comedy that the Blitz engendered. I don’t mean the flying chamber pots or the severed legs thrown up on to rooftops, all that mere grotesquerie. But sometimes in the running rumble of a stick of bombs detonating along a nearby avenue one seemed to hear a kind of—what shall I call it?—a kind of celestial laughter, as of a delighted child-god looking down on the glory of these things that he had wrought. Oh, sometimes, Miss Vandeleur—Serena—sometimes I think I am no more than a cut-price Caligula, wishing the world had a single throat, so that I might throttle it at one go.

  The summer is ending. So too with my season. At the close of these reddened evenings especially I feel the proximal dark. My tremor, my tumour.

  London in the Blitz. Yes. Everyone
had a story, an incident. The minesweepers on the Thames. The hundreds of barrels of paint in a burning warehouse going up like rockets. The woman with her skirt blown off staggering down Bond Street in her suspenders, her husband skipping along backwards in front of her with his jacket vainly held out to her like a bullfighter’s cape. After a stray bomb fell on the zoo, Nick, returning at dawn from a trip to Oxford, swore he had seen a pair of zebras trotting down the middle of Prince Albert Road; he remarked their fine black manes, their delicate hoofs.

  Und so wetter…

  I was in the kitchen one morning shortly after my return from Ireland when Boy came down to breakfast in his dressing gown, barefoot and hungover. He made fried bread and drank champagne from a tumbler. He reeked of semen and stale garlic.

  “You chose a bloody good time to skulk off,” he said. “The Germans haven’t stopped since you left. Boom boom boom, day and night.”

  “My father died,” I said, “did I mention it?”

  “Pah!—call that an excuse?” He considered me with a merrily spiteful smile; he was half drunk already. “You do look a toothsome old thing in that uniform, you know. Such a waste. I met a chap the other day in the bar at the Reform. Spitfire pilot, hardly more than a schoolboy. He’d been out that morning flying sorties. Got shot down over the Channel, baled out, was picked up by a lifeboat, would you believe, and there he was, three hours later, having a Pimm’s. Scared eyes, big grin, very fetching bandage over one eye. We went to Ma Bailey’s and took a room. Christ, it was like fucking a young horse, all nerves and teeth and flying lather. It was his first time, too—and his last, most likely. This war: it’s an ill wind, I say.” He sat chewing and watched me while I prepared my breakfast. My finicking ways with these things always amused him. “By the by,” he said, “there’s a job going that I think might be right up your street. There are these couriers for so-called friendly governments that travel up to Edinburgh on the night train every week to get their dispatches sent out by the navy. We’ve been told to get a look at their stuff. Frogs and Turks and so on; a tricky lot.” He poured himself another measure of champagne. The foam overflowed and he scooped it up from the greasy table top and sucked it from his fingers. “Nick, of all people, has come up with a plan,” he said. “Very clever, really, I was amazed. He’s got this chap, some sort of bootmaker or master cobbler or whatever, who’ll unpick the stitches of the dispatch bags, leaving the seals in place, you see; you take a look at the documents, committing the juicy bits to your famous photographic memory, then slip them back into the bags, and Nobbs or Dobbs the cobbler will redo the stitching and no one will be the wiser—except us, that is.”