Aiding and Abetting (12 page)

“Hildegard!” He was so astonished to see her with her newly fair head of hair that he didn’t know quite what to say. He said, “Will you marry me?”

“What should I do that for?” she said, not knowing, either, exactly what to say.

“Your convalescent widower, Hertz, wants to marry you.”

“I’ll have to consult my assistant, Dominique. She’s been married twice. What brings you here?” “You,” he said.

“Well, we’re going right back. I’m the pursuer now, and I have the address of a couple of people who are on Lucan’s trail in Paris. They’ve seen him, he keeps evading them but they’ve seen him.”

Tall Walker, having obtained a temporary job as a Père Noel in a Paris department store, could count on a modest pay for a few weeks ahead. He rather liked the job and fancied he suited it well. But Walker was weary. The furnished flat comprised two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. Lucky normally occupied the bedroom, while Walker slept on a divan in the sitting room. The place had been decorated by someone with a mania for stripes, pale stripes on the wallpaper, louder ones on the upholstery throughout the apartment. The bathroom tiles formed red stripes punctuated by little bunches of cherries and rosebuds. The towels were striped. The stripes in the sitting room were green and white. The wall-to-wall stuff on the floor, discernible as a yellowish green by origin, was now a matted and stained old brown. A tap in the bathroom dripped incessantly but Walker didn’t feel like approaching the concierge about it; there was the question of the overdue rent which the husband of the concierge ferociously wanted.

Now Walker was idly practicing his part before a mirror above the mantelpiece; it seemed to him that he had been attitudinizing most of his life. He had been the perfect English butler in Mexico, he had been Lucky Lucan for over ten years in Central Africa, and recently in Paris; and now Father Christmas at the Bon Marché. A key in the lock of the front door. Lucky Lucan walked in, not a hair out of place. He held a white carrier bag from which he extracted a bottle of whisky. He put it down on a side table with a thud.

“Where have you been?”

Lucan, on his return from the kitchen with a corkscrew, two glasses, a bowl of ice, said, “Where have I been and what have I done with the money? I might just as well have stayed with my wife.Well, I’ve had a run of bad luck.” “I know we’re absolutely broke.”

“No,” said Lucan, “I’ve just come back from Roget’s junk shop. I didn’t expect him to let me in, but do you know, he did willingly. I had a long talk with him. We’re in business again, we have to go back to Africa.” “Oh, God! Impossible!”

“Can’t be helped. It’s inevitable. It’s a question of one of these tribal chiefs wanting an English tutor for his children. Two English tutors would be even more acceptable. The utmost discretion about us. His nephew is a Dr. Karl Jacobs-here’s his card-lives in Paris. There are three sons. No further questions asked. He wants them to grow up like English lords. That’s where I fit the bill.”

“Do you trust Jacobs?”

“I shouldn’t think so. I haven’t met him. But we’ve nothing much to lose. We’ve no option, in fact.” “And Roget?”

“I don’t trust him. He’s a swine, besides. He makes it a condition that we take this job in Africa. A condition. Otherwise he’ll expose us.”

“But Hildegard . . .”

“He tells me Hildegard is well protected. She has the means to defend herself, we don’t. And that’s maybe the truth. Roget tried to follow me here in a taxi. Some hope! He failed.”

“How much did you get in Scotland?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Haven’t you any other old friends?”

“Plenty. One of them has a daughter who wants to get at me. She wants an interview. Writing a book. She’s going around with an old gambling friend of mine, Joe Murray. Her mother was Maria Twickenham. They even got on the same plane to Paris as I did. It was touch and go. They half recognized me and half didn’t, and then, it was too late, you know how it is.”

“I can get a job as a butler again, anytime, Lucky. You can count me out of Africa.”

“Oh no I can’t. I can make trouble for you and you know it.”

“Not so much as I could make for you.”

“Try it, then.”

It occurred to Walker that much the same conversation had been repeated between them for years; for years on end. He would go to Africa because Lucky Lucan said so.

“I hope,” he said, “that it will be a comfortable job.”

“Very comfortable. Every comfort,” said Lucan.

“What part exactly?”

“It’s a small independent tribal state, north of the Congo, called Kanzia.”

“I’ve heard of it. A small diamond mine, but extra large diamonds,” said Walker.

“That’s it. And some copper. They do well. They import most things, including equipment for their very decent-sized army.”

“Too hot,” said Walker.

“The Chief ’s residence has air conditioning.”

“The Chief?”

“His name’s Kanzia, like the place. He calls himself the Paramount Chief. He has a jacuzzi bath,” Lucan said. “I could swear,” said Lacey, “that I even saw him dressed as Santa Claus in a department store. Something about his shape, and very tall, no kidding.”

This gave rise to another explosion of laughter all round. There were Lacey, Joe, Jean-Pierre, Hildegard, Dominique, Paul and Dick, with the help of Olivia, all dining together in Hildegard’s flat. It was a remarkably happy evening. Lacey, now due home for her children’s holidays, had decided to give up her quest. She was recounting with much merriment the number of occasions in which they had missed Lucan by a hair’s breadth, and the other occasions in which Joe was either too late or completely mistaken.

“We did really see him on the plane. At Longchamp almost surely. But then Joe had a sighting at a lecture at the British Council. Now, if there is one place Lucan would not be, it would be a lecture at the British Council. A lecture on Ford Madox Ford.”

“And then, you say he was Father Christmas . . .” said Hildegard.

“That takes the biscuit,” said Joe.

“Well, we’ve had a good time, Joe and I,” said Lacey. “It’s a pity we never caught up with him after all this effort.”

“He would never have let you interview him.” “You think not? Even for old friends like Joe and my mother?”

“I don’t know,” said Hildegard. They had not been told about Lucan’s double. It would be too much for them to take in with all these breaths of happiness they were experiencing. Even a simple manhunt had been so peripheral to their love affair that they had let him slip time and again, and enjoyed it.

“I daresay he’ll go back to Africa,” said Jean-Pierre.

“That’s where he always feels most secure, I imagine.”

“Oh, surely,” said Hildegard.

“I’m looking forward to getting back to normal, actually,” said Lacey.

“Me, too,” said Hildegard. “I’m opening my office again next week.”

Kanzia was a thickly forested territory of about thirty square kilometers, within which was a clearing on a rocky plateau of about five square kilometers. It was bounded by a wide, reedy swamp in the north, a tributary river in the east, a lake in the south and an enemy in the west. That hostile neighbor kept the considerable armed forces of Kanzia constantly on the alert, and was generally useful when the Chief, old Delihu Kanzia, wanted to pick a fight to divert his people’s cravings for such indigestible ideas as democracy. As the Chief ’s grandson, Karl Jacobs, had told Jean-Pierre, the tiny state was renowned for its having extracted over the years an exceptional number of extra-large diamond lumps, from a mine that as yet showed no signs of petering out.

The Chief was supremely happy when his grandson, Karl, in Paris, sent him word by fax that a couple of English earls had been engaged to tutor his three sons, aged thirteen, fifteen and eighteen. He had other small children, but they could benefit from the prestigious village school of Kanzia in the meantime. For the last lap of their journey Lucky and Walker were borne each on a slung couch attached to four poles. They had left the jeep at the edge of the forest; the rest of the way was a footpath.

“Flies, flies again,” said Lucan. “People who don’t know Africa don’t know how thick with flies the air is everywhere. Nobody writes about the flies. Flies, mosquitoes, flying ants, there’s no end to them.” He flourished a fly swat that one of his bearers had handed to him. They passed a woman with a child on her back, its eyes and mouth black with crawling flies. In Africa there was nothing to be done, ever, about the flies. Lucan’s four men sweated under their burden. They talked loudly all the way, shouting back also to Walker’s bearers.

The Chief was impatient for their arrival. “What are two English earls doing here in these parts? They have committed crimes?” the wily fellow had asked one of his henchmen.

“Well one of them is a nanny basher.”

“What is a nanny?”

“I think it’s some kind of an enemy.”

“Then he’s a brave man, no?”

“These are Christians. They might bring us a holy scripture and a string of beads. Take no notice.” “Oh Christians worship the Lamb, unlike the Hindus who worship the Cow. They wash in the blood of a lamb.”

“I don’t know about that. I should think it was a sticky way to be washed.”

“They say it makes them white, the blood of the lamb.”

“They’re inscrutable, these people, but Karl says they are noblemen.”

Delihu had sent his strongest bearers with their litters and arranged for a long strip of red carpet to be spread down the front steps of his large dwelling.

Hildegard’s business flourished over the following months. She disposed of most of the patients she had left behind when she went to London, for she did not believe in long term therapy. New patients abounded; she seemed to have the healing touch. She now also returned to her domestic life with Jean-Pierre, untroubled and unmarried as always. One day in the cold early spring of the following year, Dominique rang through to Hildegard while she was with a patient; this was an unusual procedure. “Dr. Karl Jacobs is here to see you personally.”

“Good. Tell him to wait.”

When his turn came round she greeted him warmly. “We’re in your debt, Dr. Jacobs. It’s wonderful in Paris these days without the Lucan menace. I hope.”

“I bring you information.”

“About them?”

Karl Jacobs began his story:

“You know, my grandfather believed they were both English earls. No matter, let him believe. The three sons did very well under their tuition. They learned to jump their horses over fences, they learned to cheat at poker and so on, in the best tradition of a gentleman. The only difficulty was between the two lords. Lord Lucan was hearing voices, and Lord Walker was also assailed by unaccountable fears which I can assure you are peculiar to white people in central Africa.

“My grandfather Delihu was convinced Walker was bewitched, which is always possible in that land. Walker complained that the sun went down too quickly and the long starry nights chilled his soul. Lucan wanted to poison Walker; his voices recommended it. But Chief Delihu Kanzia objected. If you poison a man, you see, Dr. Wolf, you can’t eat him. My grandfather thought it over, and was advised by the good people of our medicinal miracles that the boys would benefit by consuming an earl; they would become, in effect, Earl Walkers if they should eat Walker. Which is logical-no?” “Yes,” said Hildegard. “That’s very logical.We become in some measure what we eat, not to mention what we see, hear and smell. The only difficulty is, as you know, Walker is not an earl. Lucan is the earl.”

“No matter,” said Jacobs, “there was a mistake. Two strong men were set to wait for Walker one night when he was returning from his walk to the Palace Paramount where he had a fine apartment for himself-my grandfather was very benevolent towards him. The men clubbed him to death, only it wasn’t Walker, it was Lucan. Such a quantity of blood, my grandfather said . . . The lords were practically identical, except that Lucan was a better teacher. Walker did not have much to teach except fear of the stars.”

“Lucan is dead and buried, then?”

“Lucan is dead, not buried. He was roasted and consumed by all the male children of Delihu. Some of them were rather unwell after the feast, but they are all partly little Lord Lucans now.”

“And Walker?”

“My grandfather discerned that Walker had been spared by unseen spirits of destiny. He has gone to Mexico. My kind grandfather paid his fare. I traveled to Kanzia myself to escort him to an airport. The tribespeople did not care for him at all. They preferred Lucan. But Walker got away. I even helped him to pack his few poor things, and I gave him some of my grandfather’s dollars to help him out.”

“It’s good of you to come and tell me this, Dr. Jacobs.” “Oh, but I like you so much, Dr. Wolf. You’ve given me such courage to work here in Paris. What I especially came for was to bring you a message that Walker gave me with instructions to send it by e-mail to the German and French consuls in Chad.” He handed over to Hildegard a handwritten sheet of blue Basildon Bond writing paper.

On it was written:

Pappenheim Beate, fraudulent stigmatic of Nuremberg, year 1978 forward, is now a successful psychiatrist in Paris under the false name of Dr. Hildegard Wolf. Her sumptuous offices are in the Boulevard St. Germain.

“You promised to send this?” said Hildegard. “Of course. But again, of course, I didn’t. In any case the consuls would have thought it mad.” Hildegard said, “I appreciate your kindness,” but she obviously meant much more.

“Tear it up,” said Karl K. Jacobs.

She did just that. She looked round the office. It looked cleaner than usual.