Belinda’s mouth tightened angrily but Maggie put a hand on hers.
That’s not fair, Major Sherman.’ And this was Maggie talking. ‘We may make mistakes, but that’s not fair.’ When Maggie talked like that, I listened.
‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m sorry, Belinda. When cowards like me get worried they take it out on people who can’t hit back.’ They both at once gave me that sweetly sympathetic smile that would normally have had me climbing the walls, but which I found curiously affecting at that moment, maybe that brown stain had done something to my nervous system. ‘God only knows I make more mistakes than you do.’ I did, and I was making one of my biggest then: I should have listened more closely to what the girls were saying.
‘And now?’ Maggie asked.
‘Yes, what do we do now?’ Belinda said.
I was clearly forgiven. ‘Circulate around the night-clubs hereabouts. Heaven knows there’s no shortage of them. See if you can recognize anyone there — performer, staff, maybe even a member of the audience — who looks like anyone you saw in the church tonight.’
Belinda stared at me in disbelief. ‘Nuns in a night-club?’
‘Why not? Bishops go to garden parties, don’t they?’
‘It’s not the same thing — ‘
‘Entertainment is entertainment the world over,’ I said pontifically. ‘Especially check for those who are wearing long-sleeved dresses or those fancy elbow-length gloves.’
‘Why those?’ Belinda asked.
‘Use your head. See — if you do find anyone — if you can find out where they live. Be back in your hotel by one o’clock. I’ll see you there.’
‘And what are you going to do?’ Maggie asked.
I looked leisurely around the club. ‘I’ve got a lot of research to do here yet.’
‘I’ll bet you have,’ Belinda said.
Maggie opened her mouth to speak but Belinda was saved the inevitable lecture by the reverential ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and gasps of unstinted admiration, freely given, that suddenly echoed round the club. The audience were almost out of their seats. The distressed artiste had resolved her dreadful dilemma by the simple but ingenious and highly effective expedient of tipping the tin bath over and using it, tortoise-shell fashion, to conceal her maidenly blushes as she covered the negligible distance towards the salvation of the towel. She stood up, swathed in her towel, Venus arising from the depths, and bowed with regal graciousness towards the audience, Madame Melba taking her final farewell of Covent Garden. The ecstatic audience whistled and called for more, none more so than the octogenarians, but in vain: her repertoire exhausted, she shook her head prettily and minced off the stage, trailing clouds of soap-bubbles behind her.
‘Well, I never!’ I said admiringly. ‘I’ll bet neither of you two would have thought of that.’
‘Come, Belinda,’ Maggie said. ‘This is no place for us.’
They rose and left. As Belinda passed she gave a twitch of her eyebrows which looked suspiciously like a wink, smiled sweetly, said, ‘I rather like you like that,’ and left me pondering suspiciously as to the meaning of her remark. I followed their progess to the exit to see if anyone followed them, and followed they were, first of all by a very fat, very heavily built character with enormous jowls and an air of benevolence, but this was hardly of any significance as he was immediately followed by several dozen others. The highlight of the evening was over, great moments like those came but seldom and the summits were to be rarely scaled again — except three times a night, seven nights a week — and they were off to greener pastures where hooch could be purchased at a quarter of the price.
The club was half-empty now, the pall of smoke thinning and the visibility correspondingly improving. I looked around but in this momentary lull in the proceedings saw nothing of interest. Waiters circulated. I ordered a Scotch and was given a drink that rigorous chemical analysis might have found to contain a trace element of whisky. An old man mopped the tiny dance floor with the deliberate and stylized movements of a priest performing sacred rites. The band, mercifully silent, enthusiastically quaffed beer presented them by some tone-deaf customer. And then I saw the person I’d come to see, only it looked as if I wouldn’t be seeing her for very long.
Astrid Lemay was standing in an inner doorway at the back end of a room, pulling a wrap around her shoulders while another girl whispered in her ear; from their tense expressions and hurried movements it appeared to be a message of some urgency. Astrid nodded several times, then almost ran across the tiny dance floor and passed through the front entrance. Somewhat more leisurely, I followed her.
I closed up on her and was only a few feet behind as she turned into the Rembrandtplein. She stopped. I stopped, looked at what she was looking at and listened to what she was listening to.
The barrel-organ was parked in the street outside a roofed-in, overhead-heated but windowless sidewalk cafe. Even at that time of night the cafe was almost full and the suffering customers had about them the look of people about to pay someone large sums of money to move elsewhere. This organ appeared to be a replica of the one outside the Rembrandt, with the same garish colour scheme, multi-coloured canopy and identically dressed puppets dancing at the end of their elasticized strings, although this machine was clearly inferior, mechanically and musically, to the Rembrandt one. This machine, too, was manned by an ancient, but this one sported a foot-long flowing grey beard that had neither been washed nor combed since he’d stopped shaving and who wore a stetson hat and a British Army great-coat which fitted snugly around his ankles. Amidst the clankings, groanings and wheezings emitted by the organ I thought I detected an excerpt from La Boheme, although heaven knew that Puccini never made the dying Mimi suffer the way she would have suffered had she been in the Rembrandtplein that night.
The ancient had a close and apparently attentive audience of one. I recognized him as being one of the group I had seen by the organ outside the Rembrandt. His clothes were threadbare but neatly kept, his lanky black hair tumbled down to his painfully thin shoulders, the blades of which protruded through his jacket like sticks. Even at that distance of about twenty feet I could see that his degree of emaciation was advanced. I could see only part of one side of the face, but that little showed a cadaverously sunken cheek with skin the colour of old parchment.
He was leaning on the end of the barrel-organ, but not from any love of Mimi. He was leaning on the barrel-organ because if he hadn’t leaned on something he would surely have fallen down. He was obviously a very sick young man indeed with total collapse only one unpremeditated move away. Occasionally his whole body was convulsed by uncontrollable spasms of shaking: less frequently he made harsh sobbing or guttural noises in his throat. Clearly the old man in the great-coat did not regard him as being very good for business for he kept hovering around him indecisively, making reproachful clucking noises and ineffectual movements of his arms, very much like a rather demented hen. He also kept glancing over his shoulder and apprehensively round the square as if he were afraid of something or someone.
Astrid walked quickly towards the barrel-organ with myself close behind. She smiled apologetically at the bearded ancient, put her arm around the young man and pulled him away from the organ. Momentarily he tried to straighten up and I could see that he was a pretty tall youngster, at least six inches taller than the girl: his height served only to accentuate his skeleton frame. His eyes were staring and glazed and his face the face of a man dying from starvation, his cheeks so incredibly hollowed that one would have sworn that he could have no teeth. Astrid tried to half lead, half carry him away, but though his emaciation had reached a degree where he could scarcely be any heavier than the girl, if at all, his uncontrollable lurching made her stagger across the pavement.
I approached them without a word, put my arm round him — it was like putting my arm round a skeleton — and took his weight off Astrid. She looked at me and the brown eyes were sick with anxiety and fear. I don’t suppose my sepia complexion gave her much confidence either.
‘Please!’ Her voice was beseeching. ‘Please leave me. I can manage.’
‘You can’t. He’s a very sick boy, Miss Lemay.’
She stared at me. ‘Mr Sherman!’
‘I’m not sure if I like that,’ I said reflectively. ‘An hour or two ago you’d never seen me, never even knew my name. But now that I’ve gone all sun-tanned and attractive — Oops!’