The Spy Quartet. Len Deighton
Читать онлайн книгу.
24
It was lunchtime. Monique was wearing an ostrich-feather-trimmed négligé when she opened the door. ‘The English have got off the boat,’ she said and giggled. ‘You’d better come in, the old girl will be straining her earholes to hear, if we stand here talking.’ She opened the door and showed me into the cramped room. There was bamboo furniture and tables, a plastic-topped dressing-table with four swivel mirrors and lots of perfume and cosmetic garnishes. The bed was unmade and a candlewick bedspread had been rolled up under the pillows. A copy of Salut les Copains was in sections and arranged around the deep warm indentation. She went across to the windows and pushed the shutters. They opened with a loud clatter. The sunlight streamed into the room and made everything look dusty. On the table there was a piece of pink wrapping paper; she took a hard-boiled egg from it, rapped open the shell and bit into it.
‘I hate summer,’ she said. ‘Pimples and parks and open cars that make your hair tangled and rotten cold food that looks like left-overs. And the sun trying to make you feel guilty about being indoors. I like being indoors. I like being in bed; it’s no sin, is it, being in bed?’
‘Just give me the chance to find out. Where is he?’
‘I hate summer.’
‘So shake hands with Père Noël,’ I offered. ‘Where is he?’
‘I’m taking a shower. You sit down and wait. You are all questions.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Questions.’
‘I don’t know how you think of all these questions. You must be clever.’
‘I am,’ I said.
‘Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to start. The only questions I ever ask are “Are you married?” and “What will you do if I get pregnant?” Even then I never get told the truth.’
‘That’s the trouble with questions. You’d better stick to answers.’
‘Oh, I know all the answers.’
‘Then you must have been asked all the questions.’
‘I have,’ she agreed.
She slipped out of the négligé and stood naked for one millionth of a second before disappearing into the bathroom. The look in her eyes was mocking and not a little cruel.
There was a lot of splashing and ohh-ing from the bathroom until she finally reappeared in a cotton dress and canvas tennis shoes, no stockings.
‘Water was cold,’ she said briefly. She walked right through the room and opened her front door. I watched her lean over the balustrade.
‘The water’s stone cold, you stupid cow,’ she shrieked down the stair-well. From somewhere below the voice of the old harridan said, ‘It’s not supposed to supply ten people for each apartment, you filthy little whore.’
‘I have something men want, not like you, you old hag.’
‘And you give it to them,’ the harridan cackled back. ‘The more the merrier.’
‘Poof!’ shouted Monique, and narrowing her eyes and aiming carefully she spat over the stair-well. The harridan must have anticipated it, for I heard her cackle triumphantly.
Monique returned to me. ‘How am I expected to keep clean when the water is cold? Always cold.’
‘Did Annie complain about the water?’
‘Ceaselessly, but she didn’t have the manner that brings results. I get angry. If she doesn’t give me hot water I shall drive her into her grave, the dried-up old bitch. I’m leaving here anyway,’ she said.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘I’m moving in with my regular. Montmartre. It’s an awful district, but it’s larger than this, and anyway he wants me.’
‘What’s he do for a living?’
‘He does the clubs, he’s – don’t laugh – he’s a conjurer. It’s a clever trick he does: he takes a singing canary in a large cage and makes it disappear. It looks fantastic. Do you know how he does it?’
‘No.’
‘The cage folds up. That’s easy, it’s a trick cage. But the bird gets crushed. Then when he makes it reappear it’s just another canary that looks the same. It’s an easy trick really, it’s just that no one in the audience suspects that he would kill the bird each time in order to do the trick.’
‘But you guessed.’
‘Yes. I guessed the first time I saw it done. He thought I was clever to guess but as I said, “How much does a canary cost? Three francs, four at the very most.” It’s clever though, isn’t it, you’ve got to admit it’s clever.’
‘It’s clever,’ I said, ‘but I like canaries better than I like conjurers.’
‘Silly.’ Monique laughed disbelievingly. ‘“The incredible Count Szell” he calls himself.’
‘So you’ll be a countess?’
‘It’s his stage name, silly.’ She picked up a pot of face cream. ‘I’ll just be another stupid woman who lives with a married man.’
She rubbed cream into her face.
‘Where is he?’ I finally asked. ‘Where’s this fellow that you said was sitting here?’ I was prepared to hear that she’d invented the whole thing.
‘In the café on the corner. He’ll be all right there. He’s reading his American newspapers. He’s all right.’
‘I’ll go and talk to him.’
‘Wait for me.’ She wiped the cream away with a tissue and turned and smiled. ‘Am I all right?’
‘You’re all right,’ I told her.
25
The café was on the Boul. Mich., the very heart of the left bank. Outside in the bright sun sat the students; hirsute and earnest, they have come from Munich and Los Angeles sure that Hemingway and Lautrec are still alive and that some day in some left bank café they will find them. But all they ever find are other young men who look exactly like themselves, and it’s with this sad discovery that they finally return to Bavaria or California and become salesmen or executives. Meanwhile here they sat in the hot seat of culture, where businessmen became poets, poets became alcoholics, alcoholics became philosophers and philosophers realized how much better it was to be businessmen.
Hudson. I’ve got a good memory for faces. I saw Hudson as soon as we turned the corner. He was sitting alone at a café table holding his paper in front of his face while studying the patrons with interest. I called to him.
‘Jack Percival,’ I called. ‘What a great surprise.’
The American hydrogen research man looked surprised, but he played along very well for an amateur. We sat down with him. My back hurt from the rough-house in the discothèque. It took a long time to get served because the rear of the café was full of men with tightly wadded newspapers trying to pick themselves a winner instead of eating. Finally I got the waiter’s attention. ‘Three grands crèmes,’ I said. Hudson said nothing else until the coffees arrived.
‘What about this young lady?’ Hudson asked. He dropped sugar cubes into his coffee as though he was suffering from shock. ‘Can I talk?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘There are no secrets between Monique and me.’ I leaned across to her and lowered my voice. ‘This is very confidential, Monique,’ I said. She nodded and looked pleased. ‘There is a small plastic bead company with its offices in Grenoble. Some of the holders of ordinary shares have sold their holdings out to a company that this gentleman