The Captain and the Enemy

  I carried the letter and the cheque with me when I went to meet the Devil at the rendezvous which he had proposed at the Reform Club. I noticed how much my father had aged in the years that had passed since he intruded on the three of us accompanied by my unbearable aunt.

  He greeted me at the bar with a reproach, ‘Why didn’t you tell me Liza was in hospital?’ I answered back with equal harshness, ‘I didn’t think you would be interested. How did you know?’

  ‘That aunt of yours – she always knew everything. Perhaps one of the tenants told her. I suppose you don’t give the Devil credit for any human feeling.’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘Oh, forget it. Have a drink. I suppose you do drink. After all you are my son.’

  I was unused to anything but beer which was all that I could afford, but my mind switched suddenly back to the Captain on our first day together, and I said, ‘A gin and tonic.’

  ‘A large vodka for me,’ my father told the barman and he added over his shoulder, ‘When you are my age you will learn not to dilute good alcohol with fizz.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to learn how to drink.’

  ‘What exactly did you come for? Money?’

  ‘No, I’m managing. Just about managing.’

  ‘And our friend – you know the one I mean – what does he call himself now? Is he very upset about Liza?’

  ‘He’s calling himself Carver at the moment, and he doesn’t yet know about Liza. He’s away somewhere in Panama.’

  ‘Panama? So this time he’s really put himself out of reach. What’s he done to make him go that far?’

  ‘He seems to be doing pretty well. I have a letter here which arrived with a cheque after Liza went to hospital. He wants her to join him – and me to come later.’

  I gave the Devil the envelope.

  My father said, ‘These little countries always have such pretty stamps. It’s about all they’ve got to sell.’ He added, ‘There’s no postmark. Someone brought it by hand.’

  He led the way to a sofa where he sat and read the letter. He asked, ‘Have you telegraphed Carver Apt 361?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve been wondering what to do with the cheque if Liza dies. Should I tear it up?’

  ‘One should never tear up money,’ my father said. ‘Money is always good. Money has no morality. Better not telegraph him about Liza. He might stop the cheque.’ He seemed to me more interested in the cheque, which he examined closely, than the letter. He went on thinking aloud, ‘Made out to Bearer? One doesn’t see that often these days. Why doesn’t he put her name? Perhaps he thought the tax people would be after her. Or just for the sake of secrecy. He loved secrets.’

  It was as if he felt pleasure from the feel of the cheque. ‘Bank of London and Montreal. Address in Panama. I hope for your sake the London branch will accept it from you.’

  ‘He meant it for Liza, not me.’

  ‘He owed me fifty pounds. If you cashed the cheque, you could pay me back. Only fifty out of fifteen hundred.’ The idea obviously amused him.

  ‘It would be swindling him, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘And how do you think he came by the money. Earned it? I doubt if the Captain (that’s the permanent name you both call him, isn’t it?) I doubt if he ever earned any money honestly in his life. Come, let’s have some lunch and consider very carefully this interesting moral point.’

  For the second time I found myself beginning a meal with smoked salmon. The taste of it brought the Captain sympathetically close.

  My father was silent (perhaps he was brooding on the question of morality), so in order to make conversation I inquired after my aunt’s health.

  ‘Could hardly be worse,’ my father said. In the respectable surroundings of the Reform Club I thought it would only be good manners to lie. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘In fact,’ my father went on with relish, ‘she died the day before yesterday. Just after she telephoned me about Liza being in hospital. She was a bitch to the last. She left you nothing – nor me either. Everything went to a home for stray dogs.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected anything from her. After all …’

  ‘She was a good deal worse than her sister – I mean your mother, and that’s saying a lot. You owe it to me she didn’t put the police on your track all those years ago – only a private detective. I said I would fight any case she brought. I had the legal custody. So all she could do was try to prove with her detective that Liza wasn’t capable. Luckily for you she failed at that.’

  ‘And you lost me at chess – or was it backgammon? A fine father you were.’

  ‘I knew you weren’t happy with your aunt. And money was quite a problem for me then. I had been paying all the school fees, and there were other reasons. Liza is a good girl and she had wanted so much to have a child. Not me. One was more than enough. The doctor cost a lot and he did his job badly. As for the Captain – he’s not such a bad fellow in his way. A bit of a liar, of course, and a bit of a cheat. You can’t trust him where money’s concerned, but who the hell can you trust when it comes to money? I was doing my best for both of you, leaving you with Liza, and you can’t say it’s worked out badly, not if the cheque’s cashable. You’ll be getting more from him than you were ever likely to get from me if you keep the cards close to your chest.’

  ‘Were they all lies he told us?’

  ‘I don’t know which ones he told you. He always had a rather large repertoire.’

  ‘How he escaped the Germans …’

  ‘Well I suppose he must have escaped from them if he was ever a prisoner and I think he probably was.’

  ‘He uses strange words. Usually when I look them up they don’t make any sense.’

  ‘He told me once that the only book he had to read in prison was half an English dictionary. The other half had been used as a bum wiper. Well, with a “goluptious” he seems to have read as far as the Gs.’

  ‘Yes. And there are some Fs. Once he used a word I can’t remember which means “rope-walker”.’

  ‘Any Hs?’

  ‘I think there was one H.’

  ‘I expect his half of the dictionary didn’t get as far as J.’

  ‘How did he escape?’

  I hoped at least to hear again that story of the Pyrenees.

  ‘He never went into details. Details are dangerous when you are lying. But I think he was pretty quick on his feet. You might say that’s how we became acquainted.’

  The waiter came to take our plates and for a while the menu absorbed him. He said, ‘The cold roast beef is always good if you like it red as I do. And we can trust the house wine.’ If money had once been a problem, it was a problem which he seemed to have solved satisfactorily.

  ‘How was it you met?’ I asked. It was the Captain who interested me – not my father.

  ‘It was after your mother died. I can’t pretend I missed her – we hadn’t got on well for years. In fact not since your birth, which, if you forgive my saying so, was at the time a psychological mistake, as well as a bit of carelessness on my part. Well, after that, you might say that I looked around and began living with Liza though I wouldn’t call it living, but sort of making the time pass. She was a nice girl, she knew it wasn’t for keeps, and the surgeon was really to blame – though of course your aunt blamed me for what happened, and Liza was badly upset. I hadn’t realized that she wanted the damned child so much – until she lost it.’

  ‘I asked you about the Captain not Liza.’

  ‘So you did. So you did. What does he call himself now?’

  ‘You saw in the letter. Carver.’

  ‘We’d better stick to the Captain. It’s easier to remember. You want to know how I met him. I’m getting things a bit out of order. That’s what lunch does to one. You’ll find it when you get to my age. The mind wanders, and that’s what happened to me over the chess game we played after a good dinner. Why did he say it was backgammon? Sometimes I think he lies just for the sake of lying. Or perhaps
he wants to keep everything hidden.’

  ‘Hidden from what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t necessarily mean the police. Perhaps from himself. What were we saying?’

  ‘You were going to tell me how you first met him.’

  ‘Oh yes, as a matter of fact it was between Leicester Square and Covent Garden on the Underground. You might say a quite suitable place – the Underground. It was late, nearly midnight, and few people were around – in fact only myself waiting to get out, a man reading a newspaper and a boy – really a boy – he couldn’t have been more than sixteen – who came up to me and said, “Your money or your life.” (I suppose he’d heard that on television or in some child’s mag.) I laughed and turned my back and there was a tinkle on the ground and a knife was lying there and a voice said, “Be off, you little bugger”, and that, you see, was the Captain. Quick on his feet as I told you. He said to me, “The young ones are the dangerous ones. They don’t think twice.” Of course I thanked him and next day we met for a drink near the scene of action at the Salisbury in St Martin’s Lane and there he said that he was coming up north to take on a job not far from me, so of course I invited him to spend a night. In fact he spent nearly a week with me then and he didn’t seem in any hurry to take the job – if there was one. So that was how he met Liza. She was four months’ gone and I never knew he was getting all that interested in her. She didn’t exactly look her best. Well, you know how the story went.’

  ‘I know very little.’

  ‘She went off with him after the abortion. She must have written to him as soon as she got on her feet again. I must say it was a bit of a relief to me, for she wasn’t fit for much when she came out of hospital.’

  ‘You were lovers. It must have been a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call us lovers – bedfellows. You ought to leave a word like lovers to the gossip columns. She had cheated me, trying to have a child. Perhaps she had marriage in mind, but I wanted none of that nonsense. I told her I’d treat her to an abortion, but I wouldn’t pay for a child. One child was quite enough – you. That abortion of Liza’s cost me a lot in those days when it wasn’t strictly legal, and it was no fault of mine when things went wrong and she knew she could never have another. I suppose she felt a bit desperate and remembered the Captain. He had been very convincingly kind. He can be pretty convincing, especially when he’s lying.’

  ‘Weren’t you jealous?’

  ‘Jealous of poor Liza. Not on your life. Let me see that letter again.’

  He read the letter more carefully than he had the first time. ‘What the hell does he mean about the mules? He’s not the type to take up farming.’

  ‘I think … Of course I’m not sure … when I was a child he used to tell me about Drake – seizing the mule trains carrying gold across Panama.’

  ‘Panama … gold trains … you don’t really think …?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose there are any gold trains now. It’s just the way of saying … well …’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘I think he thinks …’ It seemed to me that one ‘think’ almost immediately gave birth to another ‘think’. ‘Thinks’ were breeding like rabbits – or that other word ‘wonder’.

  My father asked, ‘And what is it you think?’

  ‘I think he believes that he’s about to make a lot of money.’

  ‘I doubt if the Captain will ever do that. But to return to the cheque …’

  ‘You think’ (think again) ‘that I should cash it? If she dies.’

  ‘I wouldn’t wait till then. You can look after the money better than poor Liza. But be careful. He’s the sort of man who might prove dangerous. I don’t know why I say that. A sort of instinct. And the way he handled that boy in the Underground. Underground. He’s an Underground type himself.’

  ‘All the same …’

  ‘You’ve lived with the Captain long enough. Would he hesitate to cash a good cheque which might be stopped if there was any delay?’ I pondered the point and thought the Devil had reason on his side.

  As I left the club I asked him, ‘Will you be visiting Liza?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it would do me no good and it certainly wouldn’t do her any.’

  (3)

  I cashed the cheque after some trouble (I think they must have telephoned Panama and seven hours’ difference in time can’t have helped). I had a certain sense of guilt but one which was small enough to fade quickly after I paid my father his fifty pounds. I even treated myself on the strength of my new wealth to smoked salmon and a dry Bordeaux at a Soho restaurant which I couldn’t normally have afforded, but all the same I found that I didn’t enjoy my solitary meal as much as I had hoped. It was not because of the money; I believe it was the realization that I hadn’t even yet written to the Captain to tell him that Liza was ill, probably dying.

  Soon after this little celebration of mine another letter arrived marked Express. It was delivered just as I was sitting down to my breakfast of toast and tea, and I neither ate nor drank until I had read it twice over.

  ‘My dearest Liza, perhaps after all you shouldn’t come out here yet. There are difficulties – troubles – and I don’t want you to feel any sort of unease. I hope that you’ve cashed the cheque that I sent because I can’t send any more to you for the moment because of these difficulties. I’ll be writing to you again as soon as I can and it won’t be very long, I swear. Tell Jim not to worry either. The mules are on the way all right, but there are a few pot-holes on the route. Unexpected and sometimes deep pot-holes. I wish to God this wasn’t such a business kind of letter, when all I want to write is how much I miss you. I miss you every hour of the day. But, Liza, it won’t be long now, I’m sure it won’t be long. Your Captain.’ And then there was the inevitable postscript: ‘Before you go to bed give me a thought.’ He had written first, ‘when you go to bed’ and then changed ‘when’ into ‘before’ for some mysterious reason unless perhaps he was avoiding a sexual connotation. ‘Together we were not often unhappy, were we?’ It was a very modest claim, I thought, for a lover to make. If indeed he was a lover. This wasn’t the sort of language that I associated with love. Perhaps they were the easy lies of a man bent on keeping a woman quiet and at a distance.

  A comparison came to my mind and I took out from a file on my desk the rough draft of a letter which I had written a year ago. I always made a rough draft of a love letter, and this one was addressed to a girl I thought I loved at the time called Clara: I wondered – wondered again – whether the Captain had the habit too of making rough drafts and perhaps had sent the wrong version, for his letter read very much like a first effort which was not intended to be seen. There was after all nothing wrong about making a rough draft. When I wrote an article I made rough drafts. In both cases – a love letter or an article – I worked hard to produce the maximum effect on the reader. Even a poet, I told myself, made rough drafts and no critic condemned him for insincerity. A poet would often keep his rough drafts and sometimes they were published after his death. Judging from his final version, if this were a final version, the Captain’s rough drafts, I thought, would be very rough indeed and unlikely to find a publisher.

  I read my own letter with a certain nostalgia. It began ‘Whenever I get into bed’ (I was surprised how close that phrase was to what the Captain had written) ‘I put my hand out and try to imagine that I am touching you where it pleases you most …’

  Well, I thought, my letter certainly wasn’t poetry – it was meant, however crude the expression, to excite myself and Clara too. In my own way I had written as sincerely as the Captain, perhaps even more sincerely. I had left nothing out for the sake of good taste. I had written to please the two of us, and to hell with good taste.

  But why, I asked myself, do I feel so angry with the Captain? And I realized that what I felt now was a sense of shame when I compared the two letters. Was it because I no longer wanted to put my hand out to touch Clara when I went to bed and I no longer
troubled even to write to her. I had left her – or rather we had left each other – a few weeks after I wrote that letter. In my experience love was like an attack of flu and one recovered as quickly. Each love affair was like a vaccine. It helped you to get through the next attack more easily.

  I read the Captain’s letter a third time. ‘I miss you every hour of the day.’ That sentence at least could not possibly be true, but why did the Captain persist in penning such sentimental lies when there was no benefit to be gained from them since he was far away in Panama and she was stuck in her Camden Town basement? For how many years had he been writing just such deceptive letters while I had only written my exaggerations for a matter of months. Who was the greater liar? Surely it was the Captain, who had been imprisoning Liza with his lies and robbing her of liberty as the price of her loyalty?

  My irritation against the Captain remained, until I began to ask myself, is it only my envy speaking, the envy of someone who has never felt real love for anyone?