‘What was he doing with the Russians?’ Turner asked after a pause. ‘What work was it?’
‘Quadripartite, bi-partite… one of them. Berlin’s on its own, see. Different world, specially in those days. Island. Different sort of island.’ He shook his head. ‘Not like him,’ he added. ‘All that Communist kick. Not his book at all. Too bloody hard-nosed for all that balls.’
‘And this Aickman?’
‘Miss Brandt, Miss Etling and Miss Aickman.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Three dollies. In Berlin. Came out with them from England. Pretty as pictures, Leo said. Never seen girls like it. Never seen girls at all if you ask me. Emigré types going back to Germany. Join the Occupation. Same as Leo. Croydon airport, sitting on a crate, waiting for the plane, and these three dollies come along in uniform, waggling their tails. Miss Aickman, Miss Brandt and Miss Etling. Posted to the same unit. From then on he never looked back. Him and Praschko and another fellow. All went out together from England in forty-five. With these dollies. They made up a song about it: Miss Aickman, Miss Etling and Miss Brandt… drinking song, saucy rhymes. They sang it that night as a matter of fact. Going along in the car, happy as sandboys. Jesus.’
He’d have sung it himself for two pins.
‘Leo’s girl was Aickman. His first girl. He’d always go back to her, that’s what he said. “There’ll never be another like the first one,” that’s what he said. “All the rest are imitations.” His very words. You know the way Huns talk. Introspective beggars.’
‘What became of her?’
‘Dunno, old boy. Fizzled away. What they all do, isn’t it? Grow old. Shrivel up. Whoopsadaisy.’ A piece of kidney fell from his fork and the gravy splashed on his tie.
‘Why didn’t he marry her?’
‘She took the other road, old boy.’
‘Which other road?’
‘She didn’t like him being English, he said. Wanted him to be a Hun again and face facts. Big on metaphysics.’
‘Perhaps he’s gone to find her.’
‘He always said he would one day. “I’ve drunk at a good few pools, Mickie,” he said. “But there’ll never be another girl like Aickman.” Still, that’s what we all say, isn’t it?’ He dived into the Moselle as if it were a refuge.
‘Is it?’
‘You married, old boy, by the by? Keep away from it.’ He shook his head. ‘It would be all right if I could manage the bedroom. But I can’t. It’s like a bloody grease-pot for me. I can’t make it.’ He sniggered. ‘Marry at fifty-five, my advice. Little sixteen-year-old dolly. Then they don’t know what they’re missing.’
‘Praschko was up there, was he? In Berlin? With the Russians and Aickman?’
‘Stable companions.’
‘What else did he tell you about Praschko?’
‘He was a Bolshie in those days. Nothing else.’
‘Was Aickman?’
‘Could be, old boy. Never said; didn’t interest him that much.’
‘Was Harting?’
‘Not Leo, old boy. Didn’t know his arse from his elbow where politics are concerned. Restful that was. Trout,’ he whispered. ‘I’d like trout next. Kidneys are just in between. If it’s on the secret vote, I mean.’
The joke entertained him off and on for the remainder of the meal. Only once would he be drawn on the subject of Leo, and that was when Turner asked him whether he had had much to do with him in recent months.
‘Not bloody likely,’ Crabbe whispered.
‘Why not?’
‘He was getting broody, old boy. I could tell. Sizing up for another crack at someone. Pugnacious little beast,’ he said, baring his teeth in a sudden grimace of alcoholic cramp. ‘He’d started leaving those buttons about.’
He got back to the Adler at four; he was fairly drunk. The lift was occupied so he used the stairs. That’s it, he thought. That is the sweet end. He would go on drinking through the afternoon and he would drink on the plane and with any luck by the time he saw Lumley he would be speechless. The Crabbe answer: snails, kidneys, trout and Scotch and keep your head down while the big wheels roll over. As he reached his own floor he noticed vaguely that the lift had been wedged with a suitcase and he supposed the porter was collecting more luggage from someone’s bedroom. We’re the only lucky people in the place, he thought. We’re leaving. He tried to open the door to his room but the lock was jammed; he wrestled with the key but it wouldn’t give. He stepped back quite quickly when he heard the footsteps, but he didn’t really have much chance. The door was pulled open from inside. He had a glimpse of a pale round face and fair hair carefully combed back, a bland brow furrowed with anxiety; he saw the stitching of the leather as it moved down on him in slow motion and he wondered whether the stitches cut the scalp the way they cut the face. He felt the nausea strike him and his stomach fold, and the wooden club buffet at the back of his knees; he heard the soft surgeon’s voice calling from the darkness as the warm grass of the Yorkshire Dales prickled against his child’s face. He heard the taunting voice of Tony Willoughby, soft as velvet, clinging like a lover, saw his pianist’s hands drift over her white hips, and heard Leo’s music whining to God in every red-timber tabernacle of his own childhood. He smelt the smoke of the Dutch cigars, and there was Willoughby’s voice again offering him a hair-dryer: I’m only a temporary, Alan old boy, but there’s ten per cent off for friends of the family. He felt the pain again, the thudding as they began slapping him and he saw the wet black granite of the orphanage in Bournemouth and the telescope on Constitution Hill. ‘If there’s one thing I really hate,’ Lumley observed, ‘it’s a cynic in search of God.’ He had a moment’s total agony as they hit him in the groin, and as it slowly subsided he saw the girl who had left him drifting in the black streets of his own defiant solitude. He heard the screaming of Myra Meadowes as he broke her down, lie for lie, the scream as they took her from her Polish lover, and the scream as she parted from her baby; and he thought he might be crying out himself until he recognised the towel they had shoved into his mouth. He felt something cold and iron hard hit the back of his head and stay there like a lump of ice, he heard the door slam and knew he was alone; he saw the whole damned trail of the deceived and the uncaring; heard the fool voice of an English Bishop praising God and war; and fell asleep. He was in a coffin, a smooth cold coffin. On a marble slab with polished tiles and the glint of chrome at the far end of a tunnel. He heard de Lisle muttering to him in kindly moderation and Jenny Pargiter’s sobbing like the moan of every woman he had left; he heard the fatherly tones of Meadowes exhorting him to charity and the cheerful whistling of unencumbered people. Then Meadowes and Pargiter slipped away, lost to other funerals, and only de Lisle remained, and only de Lisle’s voice offered any comfort.