I and My True Love (33 page)

So he began to tell her of his first meeting with the Army, while he watched with some amusement the way she held a cushion over her lap, with pretended carelessness, to try and camouflage her figure.

“Was it really as comic as that,” she wanted to know, “or have you forgotten the grim bits?”

“Some things stay grim.” But why pick at a wound until it starts bleeding again? “It’s strange, though, what you can laugh at. Afterwards.”

“Distance lends enchantment to the view?”

“Not exactly.” There were some views he could do without. “It lends a touch of comedy, perhaps.”

“I wonder if, in a week or two, I’ll laugh at the way I move around now? I take about half an hour to climb our stairs. And yesterday, I went down to the drugstore at the corner. Three people, including an elderly gentleman, passed me on the street just at our front door. By the time I had got to the drugstore, they were half-way down Connecticut Avenue.” She looked at him severely. “That isn’t funny,” she told him. “Not one bit.”

The telephone rang.

“Probably Martin,” she said quickly. “Give me a hand, will you, Bob? And this isn’t funny either, at the moment. Later, do you suppose I’ll talk gaily about the time when I needed a bulldozer to haul me out of a chair?”

“I’ll answer the ’phone,” Bob said as he helped her carefully to her feet. “I’ll tell him you’re coming.”

“I don’t walk as slowly as all that,” she said a little sharply. “And Martin will wait for me,” she added with a smile as she left the room. She was right, for the telephone kept on ringing until she reached it.

Bob Turner paced around the small room. No mention of Sylvia, he thought. Heartless? No, not Amy. She had probably done what she could, and now she was instinctively concentrating on what was to be the future. She needed all her courage for that. “Later,” she had said, and he remembered the way she had glanced round the room. “In a week or two,” she had said, and again she had looked round. As if to reassure herself that she would be coming back here. Or did she feel a doubt when she said the word “later,” and then force the growing fear away from her with a joke? Amy would make a good soldier, he thought.

The telephone call was subdued and brief. But Amy didn’t come back into the living-room. She had gone into the bedroom. Then he heard Kate’s footsteps at the door. He opened it, even as she was ringing the bell.

She stood quite still for a moment, her eyes widening with surprise. The frown on her brow cleared away, the slight sad droop of her lips vanished. He took her hand and drew her into the apartment.

“Well, did you have any luck?” he asked.

“Yes.” She didn’t sound too excited about it. “I found a room. It will do meanwhile. At least, it’s my own.”

“Brave new world.”

She smiled then. “Oh, Bob, it’s good to see you.” They stood looking at each other. He let go her hand as Amy returned.

“I found a room, Amy,” Kate said quickly. “It’s furnished. Partly, at least. I’ve taken it for a month. That will give me time to look around for something that’s better value. What you want and what you get don’t always match, do they?”

“Here’s a chair,” Bob suggested, noticing Amy’s white face.

“I gave Martin’s name as a reference, was that all right?”

Amy nodded. She was scarcely listening. She hadn’t even seen the chair Bob had offered. “I’ve just had a ’phone call,” she said. “From Jan Brovic.”

Kate looked at her, and then at Bob.

Amy said, “Kate, he wants you to meet him.” She held out a slip of paper. “Here’s the address I noted down.”

Bob Turner, his face set, his mouth tight, said, “Don’t go, Kate.”

Kate studied the slip of paper. “What did he say, Amy?”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“A message for Sylvia?”

“I don’t know.”

Bob said, “How do we know it was Brovic who telephoned? How do we know even that?”

“It was Jan’s voice.”

“Are you sure?”

Amy looked at him with a little smile curving her lips. “Yes,” she said very quietly.

“But how did he know Kate was here?” Bob persisted.

“He ’phoned Joppa Lane and Walter gave him our number.”

“Then it’s urgent.” Kate looked at the scribbled instructions again.
15 Fargo. Ring bell for Carson.
“I’ll go,” she said.

“He said you were to be careful,” Amy told her.

Bob said, “I’ll make sure of that.”

“No, you can’t possibly come with me, Bob. You’re in uniform,” Kate said, “and if—”

“I’m coming with you. Are you ready?”

Kate looked at Amy.

“Yes,” Amy said, “go at once. He said—he said his time was short.” She picked up a ball of pale blue wool and hunted for her knitting needles. Then she settled herself in the chair by the radio.

As they left her, her head was bent over her work. The radio was playing a Beethoven quartet. The little room, green-lit with the last rays of the afternoon sun, was warm-shadowed, comforting.

“The C sharp minor,” Bob said, listening to the music fading as they went downstairs. “Where’s that coming from, I wonder—the Mellon Gallery?” And I wish I were there with Kate sitting beside me: that would be a reasonable way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Then after that, we’d have dinner some place, sit and talk—this being Washington with its own laws about Sunday entertainment—talk quietly about ourselves, build up our own world. He glanced at Kate, troubled and unhappy. “When I was a kid,” he said, “I didn’t know much about music. I liked it, but I couldn’t understand the jargon. The G minor quartet. The F major. I used to go about wondering what was so minor about the G, and what made people think that the F was a major work.”

That had little effect.

“Look, Kate, do we really have to go to see Brovic?”

“Yes.”

“By cab or on our own two feet?”

“It isn’t far. We could walk.”

“Fine. Let me take charge of this.” He slipped the piece of paper out of her hand, glanced at it, stuck it into his pocket. “What’s been happening, anyway?” he asked, keeping his voice unconcerned. A gossip column is a gossip column, he thought. Certainly it didn’t amount to all the worry he saw in Kate’s face. “What about telling me some of it? I’m just the guy who’s on the outside looking in. The glass isn’t too good, or there’s too much steam in the room, or the window needs cleaning, or something. Anyway, I can’t see much. Do you want me to see?”

She looked up at him then. “Yes,” she said. She gave an odd little smile, but he liked it. It was one she didn’t give many people, he hoped.

“Yesterday morning,” she began...

24

Jan Brovic left the telephone booth. He could still hear Amy Clark’s quiet voice: “Is there anything we could do? Jan—is there anything?” But none of my friends can do anything, he thought. The kindness in her voice, the willingness to trust, had moved him. He had thought he was far beyond such emotion, but now it attacked him as he walked slowly through the drugstore. He forced his attention on the things around him, the pyramids of nylon hairbrushes, scissors, bath tablets, witch hazel, face powder and nail polish, separating the serious counter—with its chemist prescriptions and packaged medicines—from the counter fronted by a dozen leather and chromium stools. He was in control of his emotions again, as practical as his surroundings. He was observant, cold, suspicious.

There were only four customers at the soda counter—two high school boys, a small girl, a middle-aged woman—all safe enough. Its two clerks were arguing mildly, wiping the chromium taps and the black slab counter as they talked. Across the store, the pharmacist was measuring a prescription. Near the entrance, the blonde girl who sold cigarettes and candy and magazines was preoccupied with her fingernails.

He paused at the display of magazines and papers, he hesitated at the racks of comics and coloured postcards. Then he could postpone his exit no longer. Already, the blonde clerk had looked up to study a prospective customer. He walked into the street, his head bent forward, his chin tucked down, his eyes avoiding contact with the passers-by. And suddenly, as he stopped to light a cigarette and glance around him quickly, he became impatient of all precautions: he lifted his head and faced the pedestrians frankly; instead of walking round four blocks to complete a detour, he stepped off the sidewalk to cross the avenue directly.

Here, on lower Connecticut, the expensive little shops filled with antiques and smart dresses had given way to a mixture of contrasts—large hotels, sandwich shops, bars closed for Sunday, small buildings that still lapped over from the turn of the century and waited to be pulled down for more hotels, more sandwich shops, more bars. The sidewalks had their usual collection of strollers, incurious, aimless. All safe enough, he decided as if to reassure himself that his impatience hadn’t been ill advised. For a moment, he loitered with the groups of walkers. Then quickly, he turned the corner to enter a short street, dingy and dull, quiet on Sundays. Here were the service entrances to the hotels, three night clubs with clever-cute names, a garage with its quota of used cars for sale, and—opposite the garage—two old brick houses separated by a gap which had become a parking lot.

It was here, in the first of the two houses, that he had rented a room under the name of Carson almost four weeks ago. He had taken it with the idea that it would be a useful hiding place for the first few days, once he made his break for freedom. Then, the trees that were spaced along the grey sidewalks were black and lifeless. In his optimism, he had looked at them and smiled, thinking that before they were in leaf he would have escaped. The green buds were a symbol.

He had watched the trees—for as he walked about Washington with Czernik or Vlatov, or sometimes even seemingly alone, he would take this street as a short cut between Connecticut and Seventeenth as many people did. He had walked past the house, not even glancing at it, but thinking of the room upstairs that was his, waiting for him when he was a free man. Now, the green buds had opened, the first bronze-coloured leaves were uncurling. The symbol was meaningless.

Four steps led up to the veranda, its ironwork inspired by New Orleans, that stretched along the first floor of the house. The doorway, like the veranda, needed a coat of paint, but it was clean. The letter boxes carried six names.
Carson
looked as real as any of the others, printed or scrawled on the small pieces of paper or cardboard that fitted into the name-slots.
Carson, 3rd floor,
in his own disguised handwriting.

The front door had been left unlocked. He shook his head over this evidence of trust or of carelessness. He made sure that the door was tightly closed, firmly held, before he climbed the staircase.

It was a room on the top floor, at the front of the house. “With possibilities,” the renting agent had said. With possibilities. The phrase had amused him then.

He looked round the bleak room, barely furnished, that had seemed miraculous four weeks ago. He walked over to the window and carefully—so that he would not be seen from the garage opposite—he opened it wide. The fresh evening air blew freely in, driving out the stale warmth of a room too long closed.

He threw his hat on the narrow bed which stood disguised as a couch against a yellowed wall. He sat down in the armchair, facing the open window, watching the fading light, waiting.

* * *

“So that’s the picture,” Bob Turner said, grim-faced, as they walked down Connecticut Avenue.

“That’s all I know,” Kate said. “Just bits and pieces.” That is all any of us ever knows, she thought, just the bits and pieces that we have found out for ourselves.

“It’s more than enough.” He was angry now. “How did they draw you into this?”

“How do we get tied up with anything?”

He looked at his uniform. “Sure,” he said, “sure.”

She suddenly stopped and touched his arm. “Here’s Fargo Street. What do we do?”

“Let Brovic weep on our shoulders and tell us how sorry he is,” he said bitterly.

She shook her head slowly.

He calmed down. “We’ll walk along this side of the street. The apartment must be in one of those ruptured buildings, unless he’s rented a garret over one of the night clubs. That would be dramatic enough for Brovic.”

“You don’t like him?”

“Why should I?”

“Then why do you bother to come?”

“Not for Brovic’s sweet smile.”

For Sylvia’s sake? She looked at him.

He said, almost roughly, “You’re here. So I’m here.” He caught her arm and held it. “Fifteen,” he said, reading the number on the first house they came to. “Careful, now,” he added with a hint of amusement for Brovic’s dramatics, as they climbed four steps and crossed a narrow balcony which stretched along the first floor of the house.

“What shall I tell him?” Kate asked unhappily.

“Wait and see how he plays it. Feel your way along.” And then his mood altered. Behind them, down at the foot of the steps, a man had paused to light a cigarette. Bob’s eyes searched for the name of
Carson
on the mail box in the doorway. It was there all right, sharing the third floor with
W. Hirschfeld.
But Bob didn’t ring the bell. His hand tightened warningly on Kate’s arm, as the stranger behind them mounted the steps slowly.

“Hirschfeld, Hirschfeld...” Bob said, “where the hell is Hirschfeld? Didn’t he learn to write at school?”

The man was still having trouble with his cigarette. He halted on the narrow balcony. Now, he had further trouble with his lighter.

“There it is!” Kate said. “The difficulty isn’t with Bill’s writing, but with your eyes, darling.”

“Is it?” Bob’s smile widened. “They’re a bit slow sometimes, I agree.” He looked round at the man who had come up behind him. “Sorry,” he said quickly, stepping aside from the door. “We’re in your way.”

“After you,” the man said. He drew back politely.

Bob turned to the row of names, blocking any view of them with his body. He placed his thumb over the Hirschfeld bell, but his third finger pressed down on Carson’s. “Perhaps Bill has gone to Maryland, this week-end,” he said.