BLANCHE [putting ring on]: Look, it still fits. Good omen.
ME: You won’t mind being Mrs Lysander Rief? No more Miss Blanche Blondel?
BLANCHE: It’s better than my real name. I was born [Yorkshire accent] Agnes Bleathby.
ME [Yorkshire accent]: Thee learn summat new every day, Agnes, flower. Happen.
BLANCHE: We’re all acting, aren’t we? Almost all the time – each and every one of us.
ME: But not now. I’m not.
BLANCHE: Me neither. [Kissing renewed fiancé] Still, it’s just as well that some of us can make a living from it. Come here, you.
I’ve drafted out a telegram – I’ll call in at a telegraph office on the way to the Annexe. Everything’s changed now.
DEAR VANORA SAD NEWS STOP YOUR AUNT INDISPOSED SUGGEST POSTPONE LONDON TRIP STOP ANDROMEDA.
At a halfpenny a word that’s probably the wisest seven pennies I’ve ever spent.
15. A Dozen Oysters and a Pint of Hock
Lysander timed his walk to the Annexe from Trevelyan House and discovered that, at a brisk pace, it took him slightly more than five minutes. He felt briefly pleased at the economies of time and money such proximity to his place of work would supply, but then abruptly reminded himself that his days in the Annexe must, surely, be nearly over. Matters were coming to a head, and fast – still, he had one more trick left to play.
As he sauntered up the Embankment, past Cleopatra’s Needle, about to cross the roadway to the Annexe, he saw Munro coming towards him. Too many impromptu meetings, he thought – first Fyfe-Miller, now Munro. Anxiety must be building in Whitehall Court.
‘Well, what a coincidence.’
‘Cynicism doesn’t suit your open, friendly nature, Rief. Shall we have a coffee before your daily grind begins?’
There was a coffee stall under Charing Cross Railway Bridge. Munro ordered two mugs and Lysander lit a cigarette.
‘Quite a raid last night,’ Munro said.
‘Why can’t we shoot down something that big? That’s what I don’t understand. It’s vast. Sitting up there in the sky, lit up.’
‘There’s only one anti-aircraft gun in London with a range of ten thousand feet. And it’s French.’
‘Couldn’t we borrow a few more from them? The Zeppelins will be back, don’t you think?’
‘Let others worry about that, Rief. We’ve got enough on our plate. Actually, I will try one of your “gaspers”, thank you.’
Lysander gave him one and he lit it, then spent a minute picking shreds of tobacco off his tongue. He wasn’t really a practised smoker, Munro, it was more of an affectation than a pleasure.
‘How are you getting on?’ he asked eventually.
‘Slow but steady –’
‘– Wins the race, eh? Don’t go too slow. Any suspects?’
‘A few. Better not single anyone out, just yet – in case I’m wrong.’
He saw Munro’s jaw muscles tighten.
‘Don’t expect us to tolerate your due caution for ever, Lysander. You’re there to do a job, not sit on your arse sharpening pencils. So do it.’
He was suddenly very angry for some reason, Lysander saw, noting the patronizing use of his Christian name.
‘I’m not asking for your tolerance,’ he said, trying to seem calm. ‘I’ve got to make this enquiry look as boring and routine as possible. You wouldn’t thank me if I scared someone off or presented you with the wrong person all for the sake of gaining a day or two.’
Munro seemed visibly to regain his usual mood of thinly disguised condescension as he thought about this.
‘Yes . . . Well . . . I understand you sent for Osborne-Way’s claims from the War Office.’
‘Yes, I did.’ Lysander concealed his surprise. How did Munro know this? An answer came to him at once – Tremlett, of course. Munro’s eyes and ears in the Directorate of Movements. Eye and ears, rather. He would keep Tremlett’s divided loyalties very much in mind from now on. ‘Osborne-Way potentially knows everything that was in the Glockner letters, he’s –’
‘You had no right.’
‘I had every right.’
‘Andromeda’s not Osborne-Way.’
‘We can’t be complacent; we can’t risk easy assumptions.’
He could see Munro’s anger returning – why was he so on edge and quick-tempered? He decided to change the subject.
‘I saw Florence Duchesne the other day.’
‘I know.’
‘Is she still in London?’
‘She’s left I’m afraid.’
‘Oh. Right. I was rather hoping to see her again.’ Lysander felt a brief but acute sadness at this news – maybe something had been lost there. For some reason he thought of her as his only true ally – they seemed to understand each other; they were both functionaries following orders from a source neither of them knew or could identify. Their strings were being pulled – that’s what linked them . . . He looked at Munro, puffing at his cigarette like a girl. He decided that attack was the best means of defence, now.
‘Are you telling me everything, Munro? Sometimes I find myself wondering – what’s really going on here?’
‘Just find Andromeda – and fast.’ He threw some coins on the counter, gave him a hard smile and walked away.
Lysander went back to the Annexe with a plan forming in his head, slowly taking shape. If Munro wanted action, then he would give him action.
Tremlett was waiting for him outside Room 205 and seemed unusually chirpy – ‘Nice cuppa tea, sir? Warm the old cockles?’ – but Lysander looked at him suspiciously now, wondering what Tremlett might have gleaned from their trip to the south-coast hotels. On reflection it seemed unlikely that he’d make the connection with Vandenbrook; Lysander had never told him what he was doing, making Tremlett wait outside each time. But he was no fool. Would he have passed on the details of their journey to Munro, in any event? Probably – even if he couldn’t explain it. Was that what was making Munro and Fyfe-Miller so jumpy? Did they have a sense that he was ahead of them, was unearthing facts that they had no inkling of? . . . The unanswered questions piled up and yet again Lysander felt himself sinking in a quagmire of uncertainties. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a booklet of pre-paid telegraph forms. He’d give them something that would make them think again.
He picked up the telephone and dialled Tremlett’s extension.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is Captain Vandenbrook back from Folkestone?’
‘I believe so, sir.’
‘Would you ask him to step into my office.’
Lysander treated himself to a lunch at Max’s oyster bar in Dean Street in Soho. He ordered a dozen oysters and a pint of hock and allowed his thoughts to return pleasingly to Blanche and the night they had spent together. She was tall, almost ungainly under the sheets – sheets that they had spread and tucked in themselves in a kind of frenzy, snatching them from his trunks, delivered by porter that morning – she was all knees and elbows, lean and bony. Her flat wide breasts with tawny nipples. It was obvious she’d had many lovers before him. That way she held his head, his hair gathered in her fists holding him still . . . Where or from whom did that trick come? He had no regrets about spontaneously asking her to take back his ring – though he wondered now, as he emptied oysters down his throat, if he had been too precipitate, over-happy, over-relieved that his old ‘problem’ hadn’t recurred with her. No – it had been as good as with Hettie. Hettie, so different. There was no sense of danger with Blanche, however, it was more a kind of rigour. Refreshing, no-nonsense Agnes Bleathby. It was the end of Hettie, of course. But that was only right as Hettie had let him down shockingly, had betrayed him instantly and without a qualm to save herself despite the fact that she was the mother of their son. Lothar meant little or nothing to Hettie Bull, he realized. Furthermore, he – Lothar’s natural father – clearly played no part in her life unless he could be useful to her in some selfish way – the marriage to Jago Lasry was t
he perfect example. No, Blanche had always been the girl for him. She had asked him back to her mews house in Knightsbridge for supper – her show was cancelled until the damage to the theatre was repaired. He smiled at the idea of Blanche cooking supper for him on his return from the office – a little forerunner of their domestic bliss? For the first time in many months he felt the warmth of security wash through him. Contentment – how rare that feeling was and it was only right that it should be cherished. He ordered another round of oysters and another pint of hock.
He returned to the Annexe in good spirits. He had a course of action to follow and Munro would have his answer soon, however unwelcome it might be. Vandenbrook was poised and ready. Yet again Tremlett was waiting by his door, agitated this time.
‘Ah, there you are, sir. I was beginning to think you’d gone for the day.’
‘No, Tremlett. What is it?’
‘There’s a man downstairs insisting on seeing you. Claims to be your uncle, sir – a Major Rief.’
‘That’s because he is my uncle. Send him up at once. And bring us a pot of coffee.’
Lysander sat down with a thump, realizing his head was a little blurry from all the hock, but pleased at the prospect of seeing Hamo. He didn’t come up to town often – ‘London terrifies me,’ he always said – so this was an unfamiliar treat.
Tremlett showed Hamo in and Lysander knew at once something was very wrong.
‘What is it, Hamo? Nothing to do with Femi, is it?’ The fighting in West Africa was over, as far as he knew – everything had moved to the East.
Hamo’s face was set.
‘Prepare yourself for the worst possible news, my boy . . .’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Your mother is dead.’
16. Autobiographical Investigations
There is this myth that death by drowning is the best of all deaths amongst the dozens or hundreds available to us human beings – that with drowning your end arrives simultaneously with a moment of pure exhilaration. I will hold on to that idea but the rational side of my brain asks who provided this testimonial? Where’s the evidence?
When I saw my mother’s body in the undertaker’s at Eastbourne she did, however, look serene and untroubled. Paler than usual, a slight bluish tinge to her lips, her eyes closed as if she were dozing. I kissed her cold forehead and felt a pain in my gut as I remembered the last time I’d made that gesture, holding her warm in my arms. ‘I won’t let you be dragged down by this.’
Hamo tells me there is an unopened letter at Claverleigh waiting for me but I don’t need to read it to know that it will be her confession. Hamo, in his kindness, bless him, ventured the theory that it might have been some awful accident – a slip, a fall, unconsciousness. But I told him I was convinced it was suicide and the letter would merely confirm that. Her body had been found at dawn on the shingly beach at Eastbourne, left by the retreating tide – the proverbial man out walking his dog at first light – she was fully clothed, all her jewellery removed and one shoe missing.
I find myself, all of a sudden, remembering something Wolfram Rozman said to me – it seems eons ago, back in that impossible, unimaginable world before the war began, before everybody’s lives changed for ever – when, having been asked what he would have done if the tribunal had found against him, Wolfram had said – blithely, inconsequentially – that he would have taken his own life, of course. I can bring him into my mind’s eye effortlessly – Wolfram standing there in his caramel suit, swaying slightly, tipsy from the celebratory champagne, saying in all seriousness, ‘In this ramshackle empire of ours suicide is a perfectly reasonable course of action.’ Wolfram – was it just bravado, the swagger of a born hussar? No, I recall, it was said smilingly but with absolute rigid logic: once you understand that – you will understand us. It lies very deep in our being. ‘Selbstmord’ – death of the self: it’s an honourable farewell to this world. My mother had made her honourable farewell. Enough.
Hugh and the Faulkner family are deeply shocked. I feel my grief burn in me alongside a colder, calmer anger. My mother is as much an innocent victim of this whole Andromeda affair as are those two men I killed in a sap one June night in no man’s land in northern France. The causal chain reached out to claim them just as it did Anna Faulkner.
My darling Lysander,
I will not allow myself, or my stupidity, to harm you or endanger you in any way. You should understand that what I am about to do seems an entirely reasonable course of action to me. I have a few regrets at leaving this world but they are wholly outweighed by the benefits my imminent non-being will achieve. Think of it that way, my dear – I am no longer here, that’s all. This fact, this state, was going to arrive one day therefore it has always seemed to me that any day is as good as the next. I already feel a sense of relief at having taken the decision. You are now free to move forward with full strength and confidence and with no concerns about your foolish mother. I cannot tell you how upset I was after our last conversation, how you were intent on imperilling yourself, on taking a course of action that was plainly wrong, only to spare me. You were prepared to sacrifice yourself for me and I could not allow that, could not live with that responsibility. What I am about to do is no sacrifice – you must understand that for someone like me it is the most normal of acts in a sane and rational world.
Goodbye, my darling. Keep me alive in your thoughts every day.
Your loving mother.
Images. My mother. My father. How she wept at his funeral, the endless tears. The grim flat in Paddington. Claverleigh. Her beauty. Her singing – her rich mellow voice. That terrible sunlit afternoon in Claverleigh Wood. At meals when she talked the way she would unconsciously tap the tines of her fork on her plate to emphasize the point she was making. That night I saw my father kissing her in the drawing room when they thought I was asleep. The way they laughed when I walked in, outraged. The cameo she wore with the letter ‘H’ carved in the black onyx. How she smoked a cigarette, showing her pale neck as she lifted her chin to blow the smoke away. The confidence with which she walked into a room as if she were going on stage. What else could I have been with those two as my parents? How can I best avenge her?
Dr Bensimon saw me two hours ago. I telephoned him as soon as I had returned from Eastbourne.
‘I wish I could say it was an effort fitting you in at such short notice,’ he said. ‘But you’re my only patient today.’
I lay on the couch and told him bluntly and with no preamble that my mother had killed herself.
‘My god. I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said. Then, after a pause, ‘What do you feel? Do you feel any guilt?’
‘No,’ I said immediately. ‘Somehow I want to feel guilt but I respect her too much for that. Does that make any sense? It was something she thought about and decided to do. In cold logic. And I suppose she had every right.’
‘It’s very Viennese,’ Bensimon said, then apologized. ‘I don’t mean to be flippant. Choosing that option, I mean. You’ve no idea how many of my patients did the same – not spontaneously – but after a great deal of thought. Calm, rational thought. Have you any idea what made her do it?’
‘Yes. I think so. It’s connected with what I’m doing myself . . .’ I thought again. ‘It’s to do with this war and the work I’m doing. She was actually trying to protect me, believe it or not.’
‘Do you want to talk about her?’
‘No, actually, I want to ask you about something – about someone else. Do you remember that first day we met, in Vienna, at your consulting rooms?’
‘The day Miss Bull was so insistent. Yes – not easily forgotten.’
‘There was another Englishman present, from the Embassy – a military attaché – Alwyn Munro.’
‘Yes, Munro. I knew him quite well. We were at university together.’
‘Really? Did he ever ask you anything about me?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ he said, apologetically. ‘Very sorry.?
??
I turned my head and looked at Bensimon who was sitting behind his desk, his fingers steepled in front of his face.
‘Because you can’t remember?’
‘No. Because he was my patient.’
‘Patient?’ I was astonished at this news. I sat up and swivelled myself around. ‘What was wrong with him?’
‘Obviously I can’t answer that, either. Let’s just say that Captain Munro had serious problems of a personal nature. I can’t go any further than that.’
I sit in 3/12 Trevelyan House with a bottle of whisky and a cheese-and-pickle sandwich I bought from the pub on the corner of Surrey Street. I telephoned Blanche and told her what had happened and she was all sympathy and warm concern, inviting me to come round and stay with her. I said that day would come soon enough but I had to be on my own at the moment. There will be an inquest, of course – so we must wait before we can bury her – my mother, Annaliese. I want tears to flow but all I feel is this heaviness inside me – a leaden weight of resentment, this grinding level of anger that she should have felt she had no more choice than to do what she did. To take her jewels off and walk into the sea until the waters closed over her.
17. A Cup of Tea and a Medicinal Brandy
The next day passed slowly, very slowly, Lysander felt, as if time were responding to his own desultory moods. He kept to himself as much as possible, staying in Room 205 with the door closed and locked. At midday he sent Tremlett out to buy him some pastries from a luncheon-room in the Strand. He ran through the plans he had made for the evening again and again. He was trying to convince himself that this exercise would be significant, possibly revelatory. At the very least he would be wiser – one step closer, perhaps.
In the middle of the afternoon, Tremlett called him on the telephone.