Tremor of Intent (24 page)

‘You very nearly weren't.'

‘Nor were you.' He grinned for the first time that evening. ‘Poor old Hillier. You're in a bloody bad way, aren't you? But here's something that might be useful to you. You can get the bastards with this.' And he took from his inner pocket a rather grubby wad of paper scrawled in blue ink. ‘This is the chapter I've been working on. I don't think I want to push on with my memoirs now. They served their purpose, clarified things. Here you are, something to read on the voyage to wherever you're going. Where
are
you going?'

‘First stop Istanbul. I'll think things over there. And there's a man I've got to see.' Hillier took the wad. ‘You've become a great one for giving me things to read. I had things for you to read – letters. But that was a long time ago. Well, I suppose we'd both better get out of here.'

‘It was nice seeing you after all these years. You could, you know,' Roper afterthought, ‘stay here if you wanted. I should imagine they'd find you useful.'

‘That's all over for me. I'm retiring. I don't think I like contemporary history much.'

‘Some aspects of it are very interesting.' He looked at the ceiling. ‘Up there, I mean. Men in space. “We'll be making the moon any day now.'

‘A barren bloody chunk of green cheese. Well, you're welcome to it.'

The door opened and Alan rushed in, his face green cheese. ‘There's a
thing
out there. Something crawling and moaning. It was trying to follow me.'

It was Roper who picked up the Aiken from the cot. ‘Your friend here,' he told Alan, ‘is finished with all this sort of thing. Leave it to me.' He strode bravely out in a night that, the baser smells of contemporary history now subsiding, was full of rain-wet flower-scents. Meanwhile Hillier looked down on the boy, that former horrid precocious brat, with compassion and a love referred from that other love. Whether, like a father, to hide the boy's distress in his arms was something he couldn't decide. He said:

‘I think I can guess what the crawling thing is. There's nothing to be frightened about. Well,' he added, ‘I let you in for more than you could have dreamed possible when you left Southampton. Should I say I'm sorry?'

‘I can't think, I just can't think.'

Hillier, seeing Theodorescu leering inside him, went hard for an instant. ‘And yet,' he said, ‘you seduced yourself into becoming a member of the modern world.' He shuddered, watching the lecherous breathing bulk of Theodorescu descend on the thin young body. ‘You must have wanted that gun very badly.'

‘I didn't know it was yours. I swear. And all I wanted to do really was to frighten her.'

‘In that vast dinner-eating crowd?'

‘I thought I'd get her alone. What I really mean is I didn't think. I just didn't think.' He began to cry.

Hillier put his arms round the boy's shoulders. ‘I'll look after you,' he said. ‘You're my responsibility now. Both of you.'

Roper could be heard speaking bad Russian. There was also the noise of skirring feet, as though a man was being half-carried. Hillier went out to help. It was the guard, sorely thumped by Wriste but not killed. A skullcap of dried blood sat on his hair; on his soaked suit a few red rose-petals clung. Roper said, weightily through his panting, ‘
Vot tarn chelovyek
– there's the man.' The guard, open-mouthed, glazed, frowning in rhythm with his pain, saw but did not recognise. The shop-assistant's face looked bewildered, as if he had been unaccountably accused of short-changing. Wriste still had half a face. That half ought, by rights, to go. Perhaps that could be left to Roper. A totally faceless S-man was required. The guard wanted to lie down. ‘And now,' said Roper, ‘you two ought to get out of here. Leave everything to me now. One in the eye for old Vasnetsov and Vereshchagin in there. Drunk as coots and supposed to be in charge of security. A bit of a shambles all round. One in the eye all right, having to leave everything to an Englishman. We'll show them all yet.'

‘See what I mean?' said Hillier. ‘The old Adam coming out.'

‘None of us is perfect. There's a bloke on this conference who says that the Ukrainians could knock spots off the Muscovites. The thing to do is to get on with the job.'

‘I borrowed this jacket,' said Alan, taking it off, ‘from a man asleep in the vestibule. Will you give it back to him?'

Roper took out a mess of old envelopes from the inner pocket. He snorted. ‘This belongs to Vrubel. I'm going to have some fun here, I can see that. I don't care much for Vrubel.'

‘We'll have to get a tram,' said Hillier. His tunic seemed crammed with passports and money. ‘When we've gone, would you mind completing the image –' He made a
coup de grâce
pantomime. Roper seemed to understand. ‘With his,' he added. ‘I'll have my own back.'

Roper surrendered the Aiken with a smirk of regret. ‘Nice little job. I assumed you wouldn't be needing it any more.'

‘It's unwise to assume anything. You should know that, being a
scientist. I fancy I have just one final job to do. On my own account.'

‘Well, it's been nice seeing you,' said Roper, as though Hillier had just dropped in from next door to enjoy an evening of referred crapula, fear, threats and assassination. To Alan he said: ‘You've been a good boy,' as though he'd sat in the corner with cake and lemonade, causing no trouble. Then he twitched a cheery goodbye.

Going down the winding path to the coast-road, Hillier and Alan heard a very dull thud from the massage-hut. The S-man was now fully there. Alan shivered. Hillier tried to laugh, saying: ‘Imagine you're in a novel by Conrad. You know the sort of thing: “By Jove, I thought, what an admirable adventure this is, and here am I, a young man in the thick of it.”'

‘Yes,' said Alan. ‘A very young man. But ageing quite satisfactorily.'

Hillier saw trolley-sparks and heard, over the sea's swish and shingle-shuffle, the familiar rattle. ‘By Jove,' he said, not in Conrad now but in Bradcaster after an evening at the cinema with Roper, running for the last tram, ‘we'll have to –' They arrived breathless at the stop just as it began to rattle off. Hillier groaned under his breathlessness as he saw who was sitting opposite.

‘So it's you,' nodded the man. ‘And if you think it's a bit suspicious me going off early like this, well then, you can go on thinking. I didn't feel well. You shouldn't have done what you did, threatening me like that. And I see that all you've managed to pull in is that kid there. Easy, isn't it, taking kids to the police-station and getting them to talk.'

‘What does he say about me?' asked Alan fearfully.

‘All right,' said Hillier and, to the man, ‘
Zamolchi!
'

‘That's all you can say, isn't it? But you won't say
zamolchi
to that kid there. Oh, no, you'll get him to talk. Well, he won't say anything about me because he doesn't know me and I don't know him. It's the higher-ups you ought to be going for, the head waiter and the
Direktor
and all that lot. All right, I've said my say.' And he took out his old copy of
Sport
and intently examined a photograph of a women's athletic team. But when the tram arrived on the boulevard with the mulberries and Hillier and Alan started to get off, he called: ‘
Samozvanyets!
'

‘What does that mean?' asked Alan.

‘That's what
you
called me that evening in the bar. When you recognised that I knew nothing about typewriters. I think,' said Hillier, ‘I'd better turn myself into a sort of neutral.'

‘Don't say that.'

‘Cap off and raincoat on. This is where my imposture starts to end.'

A boy and a bareheaded man in a white raincoat and riding-boots walked quickly down the rain-wet road that led to the dock-gates. Suddenly the quiet that should have cooed with sailors and their pick-ups erupted into mature festal cries and the roar and spit of an old motor. Its exhaust pluming, a crammed grey bus was going their way, though somewhat faster. ‘It's our crowd,' said Alan, wincing on the ‘our'. ‘They've had their gutsing dinner.
She'll
be there, bitch.'

‘In that case,' said Hillier, ‘we'll have to run again. She mustn't get on board before we do.'

‘Why?'

‘There will be a time,' puffed running Hillier. ‘Be patient.'

The well-dined passengers were already leaving the bus by the time Alan and Hillier reached the gates. ‘Too many figs,' said somebody. ‘I warned her.' A woman, not Mrs Walters, was being helped off, green. There was a powerful tang of raw spirits being laughed around.

‘There she is,' said Alan. ‘Last off, with that blond beast.' They pushed into the heart of the passport-waving queue, Hillier still panting. Soon there would be no more of that, slyness and nimbleness and hatchets; he foresaw mild autumn sun, a garden chair, misty
air flawed by the smoke of mild tobacco. He felt for a passport and found several. He was inclined to shuffle them and deal at random – bearded Innes; dead Wriste;
samozvanyets
Jagger; true, shining, opting-out Hillier: take one, any.

‘By God,' said a man to Hillier, ‘you've been attacking the flesh-pots and no error.' He punched Hillier lightly in the peaked cap that was hidden under the belted raincoat. ‘Nice pair of boots you've got there, old man,' said somebody else. ‘Where did you pick those up? Look, Alice, there's a lovely bit of Russian leather.' People, including the guard at the gate, began to peer at Hillier's legs: a space was hollowed out round him, the better to peer. ‘I don't feel at all the thing,' said the green woman. Hillier shoved in, showing a picture of himself. The gate-guard compared truth and image sourly, the speed of his comparison forming a slowish nod, then grunted Hillier through. He and Alan quickly inserted themselves into a complex of belching men but found their shipward progress too slow. They sped to the view of the ship, lighted, immaculate, safe, England. But England wasn't safe any more. At the foot of the gangway well-fleshed men and women, panting under a load of Black Sea provender safely stowed, were starting to labour up. Up there he saw no Clara smiling in greeting and relief. The rail was lined with jocular wavers, but Hillier remained careful, thrusting his nose, as into a blown Dorothy Perkins, into a fat back and keeping it there. ‘Have a good time, sir?' asked a voice at the top of the gangway. It was Wriste's winger-pal. ‘Ta once again for the Guinness,' he added. Hillier said to Alan: ‘See you in Clara's cabin,' and then rushed towards the nearest companionway, seeking A-Deck. The ship hummed with emptiness, but it would soon fill with drink-seekers, thirsty for something dryer, colder, less fierily crude than what Yarylyuk could afford. He dashed down corridors of aseptic perfume and discreet light, at last finding his own. Here was Mrs Walters's cabin.

Inside, the bedclothes hardly rucked, snored a calm sleeper: S. R.
Polotski, aged 39, born Kerch, married, the dirty swine. Hillier rapidly took off Wriste's raincoat, emptied the tunic of all that he owned or had acquired, then stripped to his shirt and pants. He neatly laid S. R. Polotski's uniform on the bedside chair and placed his boots at the foot of the bunk. Then, raincoat on again, the pockets stuffed, he went to his own cabin. He opened the door cautiously: there was no smell as of harmful visitors, only the ghost of Clara's too-adult perfume lingered. He poured himself the last of the Old Mortality and drank it neat. He regretted the end of that useful, though money-loving, shipboard Wriste, then he shuddered to think how easy it was to regard a human being as a mere function. Was that what was meant by being neutral – a machine rather than a puppet-stage for the enactment of the big fight against good, or against evil? He put on a lightweight suit, knotting the tie with care. He was going to see Clara. His heart thumped, but no longer with fear.

But it was with fear that he listened outside her door, his hand on the knob. Those rhythmical screams, inhuman but like the noises made by some human engine – the screaming machine that welcomes holiday gigglers to the sixpenny Chamber of Horrors. He went in. On the bunk lay Alan prone, screaming. Clara was sitting on the bunk with him, her hair disarrayed in distress, going ‘Hush now, hush dear, everything will be all right.' Seeing Hillier with hard hardly-focused eyes, she said: ‘You've done this to us. I hate you.' And she got up and made for Hillier with her tiny claws, scarlet-painted beyond her years as in a school parody of flesh-tearing. Hillier could have wept out the whole horror of life in a single concentrated spasm. But he grabbed her hands and said: ‘We all have to be baptised. Both your baptisms have been heroic'

From the corridor came louder screams than any of which Alan was capable. Full rich womanly outrage called. Alan was shocked into silence, listening, tear-streaked and open-mouthed. They listened all three. Poor S. R. Polotski, the dirty swine. Soon there were
harsh male voices under the screams, two of them sounding marine and official.

‘Unheroic,' said Clara as they heard protesting Russian somehow being kicked off. Her hands relaxed.

‘Shall we,' said Hillier, ‘have a large cold supper in my cabin? I'll ring for – Stupid of me,' he added.

‘But that's the best way to look at him, I suppose,' said Alan. ‘Just somebody nobody can ring for any more.'

The trouble with Lucy was she wanted to be in charge. She wanted to be a wife, but I already had one of those, wherever she was, and I didn't want another. It was all right Lucy coming to the house and giving it a bit of a tidy-up and insisting on getting laundry together and cooking the odd meal. That was all right, although the meals were always finicking what she called exotic dishes, vine-leaves wrapped round things and lasagne and whatnot. It was better to have these working parties in the house (though what did I really want with a house now?) so that she could be sort of swallowed up among the others while we got on with this pamphlet about science in society. Some nights when we'd finished work and I tried to sneak off on my own saying I'd got to see somebody, she used to ask who
I was going to see, and then I couldn't think who I was going to see, not knowing many people in London now except those we both worked with. All I wanted was a quiet sandwich in a pub and then perhaps to go to the cinema, all on my own. But sometimes I had to take work home and then she said she'd cook something for me, so as not to waste my time doing it myself, and she'd be quite content to sit quiet, so she said, with a book. I saw that if I didn't watch out we'd be on to sex, and that was something I didn't particularly want, not with Lucy anyway.