The dew was rising out of the field and rolling on to the carriageway like steam. The roads glistened under the wet grey clouds, the wheels of the traffic crackled in the heavy damp. Back to the grey, he thought wearily. No more hunt today. No little angel to submit to this old hairless ape. No absolutes yet at the end of the trail; nothing to make a defector of me.
The night porter at the Adler looked at him kindly. ‘You were entertained?’ he asked, handing him the key.
‘Not much.’
‘One should go to Cologne. It is like Paris.’
De Lisle’s dinner jacket was draped carefully over his armchair with an envelope pinned to the sleeve. A bottle of Naafi whisky stood on the table. ‘If you want to take a look at that property,’ Turner read, ‘I’ll collect you on Wednesday morning at five.’ A postscript wished him a pleasant evening at the Bradfields, and requested him in a facetious aside not to pour tomato soup down the lapels as de Lisle did not wish to have his politics misread; particularly, he added, since Herr Ludwig Siebkron of the Federal Ministry of the Interior was expected to be of the company.
Turner ran a bath, took the tumbler from the basin and half filled it with whisky. Why had de Lisle relented? Out of compassion for a lost soul? Save us. And since this was the end to a night of silly questions, why was he being invited to meet Siebkron? He went to bed and half slept until afternoon, dreaming of Bournemouth and the spiky, unclimbable conifers that ran along the bare cliffs at Branksome; and he heard his wife say, as she packed the children’s clothes into the suitcase, ‘I’ll find my road, you find yours, and let’s see who gets to Heaven first.’ And he heard Jenny Pargiter’s crying again, on and on, a call for pity in an empty world. Don’t worry, Arthur, he thought, I wouldn’t go near Myra to save my life.
CHAPTER TEN
Kultur at the Bradfields
‘You should forbid them more, Siebkron,’ Herr Saab declared recklessly, his voice thick with burgundy. ‘They are crazy damn fools, Siebkron. Turks.’ Saab had out-talked and out-drunk them all, forcing them into embarrassed silence. Only his wife, a little blonde doll of unknown origin and a sweet, revealed bosom, continued to vouchsafe him admiring glances. Invalids, incapable of retaliation, the remaining guests sat dying under the sheer tedium of Herr Saab’s diatribe. Behind them, two Hungarian servants moved like nurses along the beds, and they had been told – there was no doubt in Turner’s mind – that Herr Ludwig Siebkron merited more attention than all the other patients put together. And needed it. His pale, magnified eyes were already drained of all but the last drops of life; his white hands were folded like napkins beside his plate, and his entire listless manner was that of a person waiting to be moved.
Four silver candlesticks, 1729, by Paul de Lamerie, octagonal based and, in the words of Bradfield’s father, quite decently marked, joined Hazel Bradfield to her husband like a line of diamonds down the long table. Turner sat at the centre, midway between the second and third, held rigid by the iron bands of de Lisle’s dinner jacket. Even the shirt was too small for him. The head porter had obtained it for him in Bad Godesberg for more money than he had ever paid for a shirt in his life, and now it was choking him and the points of the half-starched collar were stabbing the flesh of his neck.
‘Already they are coming in from the villages. Twelve thousand people they will have in that damn Market Place. You know what they are building? They are building a Schaffott.’ His English had once more defeated him. ‘What the hell is Schaffott?’ he demanded of the company at large.
Siebkron stirred as if he had been offered water. ‘Scaffold,’ he murmured, and the dying eyes, lifting in Turner’s direction, flickered and went out.
‘Siebkron’s English is fantastic!’ Saab cried happily. ‘Siebkron dreams of Palmerston in the daytime and Bismarck in the dark. Now is evening, you see: he is in the middle!’ Siebkron heard the diagnosis and it gave him no comfort at all. ‘A scaffold. I hope they maybe hang the damn fellow on it. Siebkron, you are too kind to him.’ He lifted his glass to Bradfield and proposed a long toast pregnant with unwelcome compliments.