‘Connoisseur.’
‘French! ‘ Saab was outraged. ‘The English have no word for Kenner? They use a French word? Bradfield! Telegram! Tonight! Sofort an Ihre Majestät! Personal recommendation top secret to the damn Queen. All Connoisseurs are forbidden. Only Kenner permitted! You are married, Mister Turner?’
Bradfield, having sat himself in Hazel’s chair, now passed the port to his left. The coaster was a double one, joined elaborately with silver cords.
‘No,’ said Turner, and it was a word thrown down hard for anyone to pick up who wanted it. Saab, however, heard no music but his own.
‘Crazy! The English should breed! Many babies. Make a culture. England, Germany and Scandinavia! To hell with the French, to hell with the Americans, to hell with the Africans. Klein-Europa, do you understand me, Turner?’ He held up his clenched fist, stiff from the elbow. ‘Tough and good. What can speak and think. I am not so damn crazy. Kultur. You know what that means, Kultur?’ He drank. ‘Fantastic!’ he cried. ‘The best ever! Number one.’ He held up his glass to the candle. ‘The best damn port I ever had. You can see the blood in the heart. Bradfield, what is it? A Cockburn for sure, but he always contradicts me.’
Bradfield hesitated, caught in a genuine dilemma. His eye turned first to Saab’s glass, then to the decanters, then to his glass again.
‘I’m delighted you enjoyed it, Karl-Heinz,’ he said. ‘I rather think, as a matter of fact, that what you are drinking is Madeira.’
Vandelung, from the french windows, began laughing. It was a cracked, vengeful laugh and it went on for a long time, while his whole body shook to the tune of it, rising and falling with the bellows of his old lungs.
‘Well now, Saab,’ he said at last, walking slowly back to the table, ‘maybe you will bring a little of your culture to the Netherlands as well.’
He began laughing again like a schoolboy, holding his knobbly hand to his mouth in order to conceal the gaps, and Turner was sorry for Saab just then, and did not care for Vandelung at all.
Siebkron had taken no port.
‘You went to Brussels today. I hope very much that you had a successful journey, Bradfield? I hear there are renewed difficulties. I am sorry. My colleagues tell me New Zealand presents a serious problem.’
‘Sheep!’ Saab cried. ‘Who will eat the sheep? The English have made a damn farm out there and now no one won’t eat the sheep.’
Bradfield’s voice was all the more deliberate. ‘No new problem has been raised at Brussels. The questions of New Zealand and the Agricultural Fund have both been on the table for years. They present no problems that cannot be ironed out between friends.’
‘Between good friends. Let us hope you are right. Let us hope the friendship is good enough and the difficulties small enough. Let us hope so.’ Siebkron’s gaze was on Turner again. ‘So Harting is gone,’ he remarked, laying his hands flatly together in prayer. ‘Such a loss to our community. Particularly for the Church.’ And looking directly at Turner he added: ‘My colleagues tell me you know Mr Sam Allerton, the distinguished British journalist. You spoke with him today, I believe.’
Vandelung had given himself a glass of Madeira and was sampling it ostentatiously. Saab, sullen and dark faced, stared from one of them to the other, comprehending little.
‘Ludwig, what an extraordinary idea. What do you mean, “Harting is gone”? He’s on leave. I cannot imagine how all these silly rumours have got about. Poor fellow, his only crime was not to tell the Chaplain.’ Bradfield’s laughter was wholly artificial, but it was an act of courage in itself. ‘Compassionate leave. It is not like you, Ludwig, to get your information wrong.’
‘You see, Mr Turner, I have great difficulties here. For my sins, I am responsible for civil order during the demonstrations. Responsible to my Minister, you understand; and only in a modest capacity. But responsible all the same.’
His modesty was saintly. Put a ruff on him and a surplice and he could sing in Harting’s choir any time. ‘We are expecting a little demonstration on Friday. I am afraid that among certain minority groups the English are at present not very popular. You will appreciate that I don’t want anybody to get hurt; anybody at all. Naturally therefore I like to know where everybody is. So that I can protect them. But poor Mister Bradfield is often so overworked he does not tell me.’ He broke off and glanced once at Bradfield, and then no more. ‘Now I am not blaming Bradfield that he does not tell me. Why should he?’ The white hands parted in concession. ‘There are many little things and there are even one or two big things which Bradfield does not tell me. Why should he? That would not be consistent with his vocation as a diplomat. I am correct, Mister Turner?’