Gabriel's Moon, page 17
Victoria called and invited him to Sunday lunch again. He was about to make up an excuse but then decided not to. He realized he’d be very interested to see how Sefton presented himself, if he made any reference to his trip to Cádiz, now that Gabriel knew of the full extent of his involvement in the Caldwell affair.
The lunch itself passed off agreeably. The fillet of beef was tasty, the pommes dauphinoise demanded second helpings. The boys were intrigued by his idea for the new book and a spontaneous parlour game ensued around which rivers should or should not be included. The Nile and the Amazon were deemed ‘boring’. Gabriel dutifully noted down a couple of the brighter ideas.
After the meal, Gabriel joined Sefton under the pergola where Sefton fuelled, tended and smoked his post-prandial pipe – almost a ritual, Gabriel thought. He carried a full goblet of brandy with him and he smoked his Gitanes. Dutch courage. Cognac courage.
‘How’s the FO taking the Caldwell defection?’ Gabriel asked, as innocently and as idly as he could manage.
‘Well, not our shit hitting the fan, thank God,’ Sefton said. ‘MI6 folk are all hiding under their beds.’
‘I saw him – Caldwell – in Madrid,’ Gabriel said. ‘We spent an evening together. Most amusing man.’
‘That’s it, you see,’ Sefton said. ‘There is always some kind of elaborate facade. That’s their modus operandi.’ He drew deeply on his pipe. ‘He was a queer, you know.’
‘So what?’
‘I think someone must have been blackmailing him.’
‘Right.’
‘Anyway . . .’ Sefton blew out an astonishingly dense cloud of smoke that hung in the air for a few seconds before a breeze dispersed it. ‘He was small fry,’ Sefton went on. ‘No George Blake, no Burgess or Maclean.’
‘Still, it doesn’t look good,’ Gabriel said.
‘Defectors never look good for anyone – for us, the CIA or the KGB,’ Sefton said, complacently. ‘But defectors and double agents will always be with us – like the poor.’ He chuckled at his witticism.
‘Funny he should leave from Cádiz,’ Gabriel said.
‘What’s funny about it?’
‘I was in Cádiz just before he defected – on one of my “jobs”.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘For MI6, for your chum Faith Green.’
‘She’s not my chum, I don’t know her,’ Sefton said, tamping down the tobacco in his pipe with a special little silver tool he had, like a slim penknife.
Lie number one, Gabriel thought.
‘Anyway, I was long gone by then.’
Sefton grunted.
‘It’s a great city, Cádiz. I really like it,’ Gabriel went on, disingenuously. ‘Great atmosphere. These port cities, you know, something different about them. Different feel.’
‘Whither Spain,’ Sefton said, bafflingly.
Gabriel sipped his brandy.
‘Ever been there? Cádiz?’
‘Been to Gibraltar. That’s as close as I’ve got.’
Lie number two, Gabriel noted.
He changed the subject.
When he returned home, Gabriel picked up the Blanco drawing of the preposterous umbrella pine – that he had now placed on the mantel above the gas fire in his sitting room – and stared at it, wondering what was going on. Sefton had lied – convincingly – but maybe that was to be expected. He wasn’t ever going to admit to being part of the Faith Green–Caldwell–Blanco deception, whatever it was. He wondered if there was anything more he should do. His brother was involved, yes; his brother was clearly part of the Secret Intelligence Service, yes; and no doubt his brother had been instrumental in sending him, Gabriel, in the direction of Faith Green, yes. The useful idiot, once again, he thought. And idiots are useful because they can never see the bigger picture.
He crossed the room and sat down at his desk. There were mouse droppings on his typescript. Right, he thought, now it’s full-scale, merciless war.
His trip to Dublin in July, to Chapelizod, was a surprising success. There was nothing about the River Liffey in Chapelizod that was remotely exceptional or picturesque but the location was rich in associations: literary, historical, political. In Chapelizod the Liffey became non-tidal. There was a theory, also, that in the distant, pre-Viking past this was where the first human settlement had been, and where the river was effectively forded. More importantly for Gabriel, Chapelizod was where James Joyce had positioned the Earwicker family living in their pub in Finnegans Wake. In many ways the Liffey was the ideal river for his book: prototypical. It was something of a revelation, he thought. He knew he should explore more, test out more rivers – unknown or insignificant rivers, maybe – before he made his final selection.
In Chapelizod, he stayed in a bed-and-breakfast, not a hotel, run by a widow, a Mrs Doreen Byrne, a woman in her fifties with a strong pale face and thick, unruly, greying hair. She was brusque, dry and knowing, and over the days he stayed there – as he explored Chapelizod and its environs – she came to remind him more and more of Faith Green, as if she were Faith Green’s Irish aunt. They had amicable encounters and brief conversations at the breakfast table or as their paths crossed when he came back from his wanderings around the neighbourhood. The more he stood before Doreen Byrne, chatting – slyly, mockingly fencing with each other – the more Faith Green began to dominate his thoughts as he wandered the city with his guidebooks and camera, almost as if she were haunting him.
He was in a dark pub in central Dublin one day, Donovan’s in Grafton Street – a close-knit, hugger-mugger place with blackened panelling walls and a stained, sagging, creamy ceiling – almost like sitting in a giant pint of Guinness, he thought. He liked Dublin pubs – his fellow drinkers were friendly, curious, eager to converse and, once they learnt why he was in Dublin, immediately full of wildly contradictory advice about the merits and demerits of his explorations of the Liffey at Chapelizod. And when he wasn’t conversing, he was listening to the chat and the banter – almost like a show staged for the visiting foreigner. Was there such a thing as a monosyllabic, taciturn Dubliner? he wondered. It was a good city to be on your own in because you always knew that you needn’t be alone, in an instant, if you didn’t want to be. That particular day, in the pub on Grafton Street, was something of a climacteric, he later realized.
He went to the bar to order another Jameson’s and, as his drink was being prepared, spotted a dusty advertisement for Dubonnet tacked up in a gloomy corner by the till. In a sudden moment – a kind of apt Joycean epiphany – he was transported back to Cádiz, to his last meeting in the hotel bar with Faith Green. That meeting when she had stirred the ice cubes in her Dubonnet and sucked the sticky residue off her finger. He closed his eyes and it was as if he were watching a cinema version of that moment, in all its vividness and close-up proximity. Her pale face, the stirring action, the way her lips folded tightly around her finger, sucking, the little creases in her upper lip, the glimpse of her slick, pink tongue, her slow smile. He felt a shiver across his shoulders, the familiar tension at the nape of his neck. He understood in a Damascene, irrefutable way, that, like it or not, Faith Green had become an inextricable part of his life and, if he was to maintain a normal mental status quo in his daily existence, a calm and level-headed way of living, then he had to achieve some type of significant termination of their relationship.
He took his drink back to his corner seat and, unthinkingly, wrote down her name in capitals in his notebook. FAITH GREEN. Simultaneously, he knew he had to talk to Katerina Haas about this new obsession, this new conviction. Everything that had happened to him since he had spotted her reading his book on the plane from Léopoldville to Brussels – almost two years ago now – was somehow wrapped up in her persona and her relationship with him and his with her. He marvelled rather at its slow build-up – a kind of creeping obsession gathering its emotional heft slowly but steadily, like the progress of a bad head cold or influenza. You notice the signs and symptoms, he thought, and ignore them, assuming you’ll shake the virus off, that your immune system will do its silent duty, but the symptoms persist and grow and become impossible to ignore– the virus infiltrates the bloodstream and soon the fever is established and raging.
He stared at the opposite wall and inhaled. There was a new dimension, he had to admit, about the Dubonnet revelation. Their connection was professional, yes, and it was personal, of course – but it was now also sexual. There was no hiding the reality of his feelings any more. Maybe it had always been sexual, he thought, but he had denied the fact. Why? What was wrong with him? He tried to imagine her naked – and failed. It was very simple, he said to himself. Despite everything she has done, I have to see her again.
6.
Obsession
When he returned to London he immediately tried to book himself in for another meeting with Dr Haas. She was on her summer holiday in Austria, he was told, so he would have to wait until she returned. When might that be? We don’t know, her secretary told him. We’ll inform you, Mr Dax, as soon as she’s back at work.
He telephoned Tyrone, and asked if he would pop by to see him at the flat, when he had a moment. A confidential matter. Money to be earned. Tyrone was prompt.
Gabriel hadn’t seen him for a few months and there was immediately something about Tyrone that was different. Yes, his hair was significantly, liberally blonder. Verging on flaxen Swedish.
‘Are you dyeing your hair?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘Of course you are. You had brown hair the last time I saw you. Now you’re blonde.’
‘I was on holiday in Bournemouth. Two weeks. Boiling hot. Sun, sun, sun. That must be the explanation.’ Tyrone smiled edgily. ‘Anyway, what’s this proposition you got for me?’
Gabriel outlined his plan. He wanted to know where Faith Green lived. He gave Tyrone the address of the Institute of Developmental Studies in Long Acre. Then he told him, in some detail, what Faith looked like and suggested he position himself, covertly, somewhere opposite the Institute’s main entrance at the end of the working day and follow this woman to her home, to the best of his ability. And he had to be careful. She was a professional, in the ‘security’ world – he left it vague – Tyrone had to be discreet and clever. There was £50 in it for him if he came up with the necessary information, £20 down as a sign of his goodwill.
Tyrone accepted the four £5 notes and pointedly counted them twice, as if they were not real, as if he were handling some kind of cash-illusion.
‘Are you sleeping with this woman?’ Tyrone looked at him, suspiciously. ‘I mean, this isn’t some kind of jealous lover thing going on, is it?’
‘I’m working for her. She’s my “boss”, if you like,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m suspicious, that’s all. I need certain information.’
‘Have you and Lorraine split up?’
‘No! No. I’ve been away. In Spain and Ireland. I told her.’
‘Because she’s right moody. Doing me head in.’
‘I’m busy, Tyrone. I’m trying to finish a book. Life is complicated.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Tyrone shook his head vigorously, as if the movement alone could rid him of life’s complications. Then he smiled. ‘OK, I’ll track down this bird for you.’
‘I’m very grateful,’ Gabriel said.
Tyrone seemed suddenly thoughtful; he looked untypically shy and vulnerable.
‘Is my hair that obvious?’
‘I’m afraid it is. But, you know what, Tyrone? It kind of suits you. Good look.’
‘Shit! That’s a fucking mouse!’
Gabriel spent the next few days finishing and polishing his Chapelizod/Liffey chapter, trying not to think about what might be coming up next in his life, concentrating with some success on the here and now. Lorraine telephoned, asking if she might come round for a ‘serious talk’ but he lied and said he was going back to Ireland. He’d call her on his return.
At the beginning of the next week Dr Haas’s secretary telephoned, suggesting a new appointment. Dr Haas had returned from her summer holiday. She had been away for a good while.
EXTRACTS FROM THE TRANSCRIPTION OF SESSION 6
DR HAAS: Have you noticed any improvement in your sleep patterns since our last discussion? I thought we’d made very promising progress.
GABRIEL DAX: I did sleep better for a few days, I admit – but aspects of my life then became very, ah [clears throat, repeatedly, coughs], stressful – and I found I had reverted to the old ‘model’. An hour’s sleep, then dreams of fire and an abrupt wakening. Tossing and turning thereafter.
DR HAAS: What caused this stress?
GABRIEL DAX: I had to travel to Spain, on a kind of assignment. Let’s say things didn’t go according to plan. In fact, it was quite dangerous, I now realize. I wish I’d never agreed to go.
DR HAAS: Goodness! What a life you lead, Mr Dax. Anyway, we don’t need to venture into that story. The thing you must do is to concentrate on your memories of the night of the fire, now you have this new narrative, this new information. If you concentrate, then you can eliminate the false hypotheses you’ve been living with, the false memories. A form of ‘true’ memory will begin to emerge, one that you’ll find convincing. And then you’ll be able to sleep better.
GABRIEL DAX: Right. I see what you’re saying. I understand the logic, anyway. I’ll try. Maybe I need to go back and speak to the loss adjuster again, it now strikes me. Maybe he has more information that he didn’t tell me, or forgot to tell me.
DR HAAS: I think that’s an excellent idea. The more facts you gather, the more your memory becomes – what is the word? – subservient, yes, subservient to them. It’s important to subdue memory, sometimes – even if that seems a paradox.
[PAUSE]
GABRIEL DAX: There’s something else that’s bothering me that I’d like to share with you.
DR HAAS: Unrelated to the fire and your mother’s death?
GABRIEL DAX: Yes, actually. It’s something that I just realized – a few days ago. To do with this assignment, this job in Spain that I was on . . .
DR HAAS: Please, do let me know what you’re feeling. That’s what I’m here for.
GABRIEL DAX: I’ve known this woman, and have been working with her, for nearly two years . . . We have a strange, close, but professional relationship. I am her . . . [Pause] I feel she’s using me, but I can’t fully understand why or see the bigger picture.
DR HAAS: I don’t see where the problem lies.
GABRIEL DAX: It occurred to me – or, rather, I had this revelation – that I’m sexually attracted to her. Powerfully attracted. It shook me, this revelation.
DR HAAS: If you’ve been in contact with her for all this time why has this – this ‘revelation’ – now suddenly arrived?
GABRIEL DAX: I don’t know. I was sitting in a pub in Dublin, researching my new book – and, out of the blue, I knew this was what I felt about her. I wasn’t drunk, or anything. It just came to me that this was how I felt about her, sexually.
DR HAAS: Has she shown any signs that she feels anything like the same for you?
GABRIEL DAX: No, not at all. I told you, it’s an obsession of mine. If anything, she’s rather cold towards me – rather disdainful, sometimes.
DR HAAS: Could this be why you’re attracted to her?
GABRIEL DAX: I’m not a masochist.
DR HAAS: I’m sure you’re not. No, I meant because she’s unattainable. Because it’s something that will never happen, can never happen, your obsession.
GABRIEL DAX: Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that.
Gabriel went to an ironmonger’s on the King’s Road and bought a tin of carpenter’s glue. This had been Tyrone’s advice on how to solve his mouse problem.
‘You see, a London mouse is a clever mouse,’ Tyrone had said, as if speaking to an imbecile. ‘Traps, poison – they make the mouse laugh. Ha ha, I’m not that stupid. No, there’s only one way – glue.’
‘Glue?’
‘Yeah, and not the glue you use to paste pictures in your scrapbook, neither. You need carpenter’s glue. The glue that they use to stick chairs together.’
Tyrone went on to explain the method in some detail and Gabriel took note.
Back at home he cut up a cardboard box into two rectangles, about ten inches by five. Then he opened the tin of glue and spread a layer over the cardboard. The glue was like a thick opaque honey and he could instantly feel its grip as he smoothed it carefully with a butter knife, its potent adhesiveness. He smiled. Clever London mouse or not, the rodent would meet its match in the glue trap, he was suddenly confident. He placed the two smeared rectangles on either side of the cooker, pushed against the skirting. That was the other thing Tyrone had told him – mice hug the wall. He stepped back and looked at his handiwork. The unending war of man versus mouse. This particular battle in the conflict would soon be over, he was sure.
He went back into the sitting room and sat down at his desk where he reread and made some alterations to his chapter on the Liffey. Inigo Marcher, his editor, had asked if he might see the work in progress. He was ‘excited’ by the forthcoming book, predicting great things. Gabriel wondered if now was the time to send off the completed chapters. He was abandoning plans to go to the USA and South America. He should do Europe first, he thought, having spotted, while perusing a map, that there was a town called Krems in Austria on the Danube. Something about the name attracted him – a bit like Chapelizod – he’d never heard of Krems. Perhaps a trip there before the end of the year, then he would send the four chapters in – keep Inigo waiting, keep his excitement up. He replaced the Liffey chapter in the Rivers file and fed a new sheet of paper into his typewriter.
