Dark Interlude, page 2
She said: “Good.”
O’Mara went on: “But it would seem to me that you have a puncture. If you want the puncture repaired before you go on—and I would advise you to have it repaired—it will take a little time.”
She asked: “How much time?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “A half an hour,” he said.
Tanga looked across the estuary. She looked across to the other side, to the green hill with the tiny church and graveyard on the top.
She said: “There is a villa somewhere in this place called Cote d’Azur. I believe it is not far. I might go there and return in an hour to collect the car. I take it that the puncture would be mended by then?”
O’Mara said: “Definitely.” He was leaning against the bonnet of the Typhoon, looking at Tanga. He looked at her with eyes that were hungry but inoffensive. He looked at her in the way that the old O’Mara could look at a woman and not annoy her—with a peculiar mixture of humility and insolence, admiration and question.
He looked for what seemed to him a long time. He thought: So it’s going to be this one. He realised—as he had never realised before; even before the drink business had become necessary—that she had everything—beauty, intelligence, and that peculiar but supremely necessary nous that was an essential part of the make-up of an artiste in the odd profession to which she belonged; to which he belonged—or did he?
She wore a tunic and skirt of buttercup colour crêpe-de-chine, and her mouth was the colour of raspberries. Her face was beautiful and with an alluring dignity that belonged essentially to her. In her ears she wore small amber flower ear-rings that matched her clothes. Her hair was black, dressed in a page-boy bob for driving; tied with an amber ribbon. Her shoes were of white buckskin, and she wore yellow buckskin driving gauntlets.
O’Mara thought to himself that if you saw this woman once or twice you would forget all about Eulalia. He thought that Eulalia would fade into the remote past. That was how he felt at that moment.
He said: “I think that would be an excellent idea, Madame. I should not have to hurry about repairing the puncture.”
He went to the back of the car. He returned after a minute or two with the jack. He sat down on the ground; pushed the jack under the front axle; began to turn the jack handle. He turned it slowly.
Tanga said: “I am interested in this puncture. Is it a puncture or do you think there is a defective valve on the tyre?”
O’Mara said: “Let us examine this proposition.” Now the wheel was free on the ground. He rolled himself on to his knees, crawled round and sat in front of the wheel. With fingers that were trembling he began to unscrew the valve cover.
He said: “It is very stiff, Madame, or perhaps my fingers are not as good as they used to be.”
She looked over the estuary towards the church. She said softly, in English, with her own peculiar and fascinating accent: “Listen, my delightful, drunken sweet. I think you are wonderful.” Then in a louder tone, in French: “Valves are always stiff if they have not been unscrewed. Besides, it is your nasty fine Breton dust which clogs them.” She said in English under her breath: “I think you are superb. You are so drunk and you are getting fat and paunchy. What has happened to my beautiful O’Mara?”
O’Mara muttered a wicked word. His fingers were still fumbling at the valve.
She went on softly: “A certain Taudrille will telephone at exactly six o’clock. You understand? This is it, my friend. At exactly six o’clock Taudrille will telephone. You understand?”
He nodded. He said: “Yes. Volanon will not be here at six. I shall take the call. Of course he knows the number.”
She said: “Of course, my sweet fool.” She was smiling and still looking over the estuary towards the church. She dropped the words at him. He tried not to look at her.
He asked quietly: “And then?”
She shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly. She said: “Then it is up to you. Things begin to move. Are you good enough, my delightful, my clever, my drunken Shaun?”
He said: “God knows—I don’t. But I have a bottle of coramine. When I take a double dose it pulls me together for quite a bit.”
She smiled. Now her eyes were wandering round the estuary. She seemed vaguely interested in the sunlight playing on the water.
She said: “You will need that, my sweet. You will need something to put a jerk into you, especially”—she laughed very softly—“if Taudrille is not able to arrive exactly on time.”
O’Mara said: “What the hell does that mean?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
O’Mara could hear the plop-plop of Volanon’s rope-soled shoes. Now the valve was off. He said: “Madame, it is not the valve. You have a puncture.” He got up; went to the back of the car; produced tools. He took the hub cap off the wheel; began to unscrew the screws.
Volanon came to the door of the garage. He stood watching O’Mara.
Tanga moved away. She said to Volanon: “I have friends here at a villa called the Cote d’Azur. Is it far? I propose to go and see them; to come back in an hour’s time. By that time this one tells me that the puncture will be mended.”
Volanon said: “Excellent, Madame. In an hour’s time, I have no doubt the no-good Philippe will have done the job. But as I shall not be here when you return perhaps you would like to settle now. Then I will tell you where the Cote d’Azur is. It is not far.”
Out of the corner of his eye O’Mara saw her give some money to Volanon. They spoke for a few moments whilst he told her the way to the Villa. She walked away. Volanon watched her retreating form. He came over; stood above O’Mara.
He said: “There is a woman, mon vieux. It is a long time since I have seen a woman as lovely as that one. Does it not make your mouth water?”
O’Mara said: “It means nothing to me.”
Volanon nodded. “See that you mend her puncture with care,” he said. “Don’t make a mess of that. She may be a good customer.”
He went back into the garage.
O’Mara took the heavy wheel by the spokes; pulled it off. The process pleased him. He was doing something definite. He said to himself: So Taudrille will phone at six o’clock. Now maybe this is all over. Maybe there will be some life again. He trundled the wheel away; leaned it against the low wall. He was surprised to find that he was humming to himself.
It was half-past three in the afternoon.
Mr. Quayle—whose business was nobody’s business—who was just past fifty; inclined to be bald—sat at his desk in his room in the offices of the International Refrigeration Company, in Pall Mall, and considered that life was just as tragically ridiculous as it had been during the war years. If, he thought, the tragedies were not so numerous, the effects were much the same. The effects were possibly more serious because human life in peace-time is held, for some odd and quite unaccountable reason, to be more precious than in time of war.
This foible—for Mr. Quayle considered it to be a foible—was not helpful to him in his rather peculiar business—a business which specialised in the lives of many people and was, therefore, concerned, on occasion, with the sudden departure from this earth of individuals whose raison d’être would seem to have disappeared.
He considered two lists which lay on the desk before him. They were lists of names. A long list and a short one. The long list represented the number of operatives in Mr. Quayle’s rather peculiar organisation who had died or been reported missing in the war years; the shorter list represented those who had merely “disappeared” since.
The desk telephone buzzed. He picked up the receiver. A dulcet voice said: “Mr. Quayle, there are four furniture vans from the Office of Works outside. They seem to have an idea that we’re going to move?”
Quayle said: “They’re perfectly right, Myra. We are going to move. Tell the man in charge that they will begin to clear the Company’s offices at five-thirty. The vans must be loaded by six. They will then go to Golden Square and park on the west side of the square. A foreman from the Office of Works will meet them there with a new driver for each van. He will have his instructions.”
She said: “Very well, Mr. Quayle.”
He asked: “Where is Ernest Guelvada?”
“At home,” she said. “I telephoned him this morning. I told him that I should probably be ringing him again.”
Quayle said: “Tell him to be here at a quarter past four.” He hung up the receiver.
He picked up the long list. Behind the formal typescript he saw the faces represented by the names. There was Eversley—the young man with the fondness for music. Eversley had been unlucky. He hadn’t lasted long. The Nazis had got him in 1944. But he was lucky in a way. He had been shot. And there was Mrs. Gwendoline Ermine—a plump good-figured woman who had spoken German so well, who looked so like a certain type of German woman and who was so pretty and gentle.
Quayle had heard that Mrs. Ermine hadn’t died quite so quickly. They’d been rather unkind to her. And there was the clever French girl, Mavrique. They’d got Mavrique in Paris and put her through it and she’d talked quite a lot—because she had to talk—everyone had a breaking point—and they’d got on to Michaelson and Duborg through her. He’d lost them too. Good types those two.
He produced a cigarette lighter. He burned the long list; watched the grey ashes settle in the glass ash-tray. And that was that. Mr. Quayle sighed. It seemed a great pity to him that all those people—some of them very nice people—should finish like that. He thought that most of them had finished like that. He remembered some of them. . . .
He picked up the short list; regarded it carefully. Then he burned it and put it in the ash-tray with the other ashes. He wasn’t at all pleased about the short list. The long one represented the fortunes of war but the short one was different.
Mr. Quayle thought he was going to do something about that.
He began to arrange a chessboard in his mind. But the pieces were not Kings and Queens and Knights and Castles and Pawns. The pieces were men and women, and you could call them just what you liked. He began to arrange the new set-up for the next “game,” picking his people in his mind; arranging what was to happen as a result of what had happened.
He thought for a long time. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and started many fresh series of thoughts, working away from different theoretic bases; trying out new combinations of ideas but always thinking ahead of the situation which he had already created; which should now be arriving almost at its crucial point. A situation which had already arrived at the point where the not-so-good, the drunken, Philippe Garenne was engaged in finding a puncture in an inner tube at a small and somewhat dilapidated garage on the estuary at Saint-Brieuc.
After a while he turned his mind to the present. He was certain of one thing. There was only one man who could function in the little set piece that Mr. Quayle had in his mind. A man who was clever enough, single-minded enough, to function in a manner that might be considered adequate.
Guelvada . . . that was the man. Ernest Guelvada—otherwise known as Ernie—the man who had been a Free Belgian during the war; who was now an Englishman by virtue of his services. Guelvada, who seemed so happy, and whose heart was filled with an unutterable bitterness against everything Nazi . . . with a bitterness that occasionally overflowed into his guts with results that were sometimes overpowering for the subject of his acerbity.
Guelvada, thought Quayle, had a sufficiency of hatred to make him quite merciless if and when an entire lack of mercy was necessary; enough brains to be opportunist when the situation required a quick change of front; enough virility and manliness to simulate—at least to simulate if not actually to experience—a certain weakness where a woman was concerned—if the woman was attractive enough and if the “weakness” did not interfere—or seemed not to interfere—with the business immediately at hand.
The man, thought Quayle, must be Guelvada.
The subject of Mr. Quayle’s deliberations turned from a sunlit Piccadilly into St. James’s Street. Guelvada was short, very well dressed after the fashion of those good-class tailoring designs which one sees in tailors’ shops but of which nobody—except Mr. Guelvada—ever takes the slightest notice. His face was round. His attitude was one of complacent good humour—an attitude which belied his feelings. Within he was not particularly happy. During the war years he had lived in atmospheres so peculiar, so varied and, even for him, so exciting, that the anti-climax of peace—even if that anti-climax were not quite so decided as a lot of people would wish—was inclined to be boring.
He was half-way down St. James’s Street before he began to think about Mr. Quayle. This, thought Ernest, would be the pay-off.
Everything was over and finished. Ministers, diplomats and “experts” were meeting in all sorts of places to decide the fate of the world. There would be no more shooting in dark corners; no more sombre and slowly flowing rivers carrying on their bosoms a quiescent corpse. No more knives in dark alleyways; no more tense quiet inquisitions where somebody was made to talk because their talking was necessary to the safety of many others. All these things, thought Guelvada, were passing slowly—if they had not already passed.
He did not like that—not at all. It was as if someone was removing a well-loved woman from his arms, and he powerless to stop the process. Guelvada carried his mind back for a few years—to 1940—to the not very pleasant picture which the body of the young woman whom he then adored had presented after the enemy had finished with her. He licked his lips. Since then he had been settling old scores, delighting in the process. Now it seemed that there would be more scores to settle. He considered this to be unfortunate.
He turned into Pall Mall. A little way down the street outside the offices—Quayle’s offices—the International Refrigeration Company—stood two large furniture vans. Guelvada sighed. His guess had been right. This was the pay-off. He turned into the entrance to the offices; went up in the lift to the first floor. He pushed open the door of the main office; walked in. The girl at the switchboard—a demure blonde—said: “Good afternoon . . .?”
Guelvada said in perfect English: “Good afternoon. My name is Ernest Guelvada. To see Mr. Quayle.”
She said: “Will you go straight in, Mr. Guelvada, please.”
Guelvada crossed the office; pushed open the oak door on the far side; closed it behind him. On the other side of the room, behind the large desk set at an angle to the corner, Quayle was sitting, smoking a cigarette. He looked up.
He said: “Hello, Ernie.”
Guelvada said: “Hello—or possibly farewell. Mr. Quayle, I see the furniture vans are outside.”
Quayle said: “You’re disappointed, are you?”
Guelvada shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?” he said. “Now what is there left for me?”
Quayle smiled. His large round face, beneath the almost bald head, was benign. He said: “I shouldn’t worry too much about that if I were you.”
Guelvada said: “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I was only guessing. When I saw the furniture vans outside . . .”
Quayle interrupted: “The deduction doesn’t follow. Anybody can hire furniture vans. Sit down.”
Guelvada sat down. Quayle got up, stubbed out his cigarette; began to walk up and down the office. Guelvada sat quietly. He was wondering.
After a little while Quayle said: “The thing you’ve got to understand, Ernest, is this. The war is officially over. I said officially. Unofficially, all sorts of strange things are happening in a world which is still sitting on a keg of dynamite. The world wants peace badly, but there are quite a lot of people in it who don’t think like that. There are lots of opportunities for them to-day. You understand?”
Guelvada said: “You’re telling me. I understand perfectly.”
“Very well,” said Quayle. “It will be obvious to you that the fact that the war is over must affect the technique of rather peculiar organisations like our own—organisations which were able to function in one way whilst the war was on. Now it’s got to be in another way. We’ve got to be a great deal more careful. That means that operatives will have to take more chances.”
Guelvada said softly: “One has always taken chances.”
“I know,” said Quayle. “But there are chances and chances.” He smiled at Guelvada. “I’d hate to see you hanged,” he said casually.
There was a silence; then Guelvada said: “I get it. Before, one had a chance of a bullet or a knife in the back or something perhaps not so pleasant, but one was never officially hanged. Now there’s even a chance of that.”
Quayle said: “Exactly.”
Guelvada drew a breath of cigarette smoke into his lungs. He said: “A new experience in any event—possibly amusing. I’ve been shot and stabbed before. I have never yet been hanged.”
Quayle sat down behind the desk. He said: “It will be quite obvious to you that there are organisations, similar to the one I control, working for our late enemies. No one has ever put their finger on those organisations. We might have known of their existence; found counter-measures. But when the war was finished they went underground. There are few clues as to what happened to them. One can only see them by the things they do. One set of war criminals has been tried and executed, but the people I’m talking about are probably the best types of our original enemies. They took all the chances we took. Not very nice people possibly, but very brave and now inclined, possibly, to be more desperate than ever.”
Guelvada said: “Of course they’ve got to do something. If they do nothing they haven’t a chance, so they must do something. They don’t care what they do because they feel like rats in a trap.”
Quayle nodded. He said: “There was a man called Rozanski—a rather peculiar type. Rozanski was a junior officer in a crack German Cavalry Regiment at the beginning of the 1914-18 war—a very good officer, I believe. He had an accident—injured his left leg. He wasn’t able to ride any more. Of course he could have transferred to some other branch of the service but he didn’t like the idea. They gave him an alternative. He went into one of the original German Intelligence Services. He had an aptitude for the work. He liked it. Eventually, after the last war, he was transferred to one of the external German Espionage organisations. He did very well with that. When it looked as if the Hitler régime was coming to an end, that Germany was beaten, you know what happened. Most of the internal and external espionage units who weren’t known to anybody—not even to the armed forces, Intelligence Services or even the Gestapo—went underground. There were no records for the Allies to find because there weren’t any records. It wouldn’t matter if our people arrested Rozanski tomorrow. They couldn’t prove anything against him. You understand?”
