The Confidential Agent

  ‘If it seems so to you, I apologise again.’

  ‘Why, I could make you lick my boots . . .’

  ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised.’ Had the man been drinking – or had he perhaps been told by someone to pick a quarrel? D. stood with his back to the washbasin. He felt a little sick with apprehension. He hated personal violence: to kill a man with a bullet, or to be killed, was a mechanical process which conflicted only with the will to live or the fear of pain. But the fist was different: the fist humiliated; to be beaten up put you into an ignoble relationship with the assailant. He hated the idea as he hated the idea of promiscuous intercourse. He couldn’t help it: this made him afraid.

  ‘Saucing me again.’

  ‘I did not intend that.’ His pedantic English seemed to infuriate the other. He said, ‘Talk English or I’ll smash your bloody lip.’

  ‘I am a foreigner.’

  ‘You won’t be much of anything when I’ve finished.’ The man came nearer, his fists hung down ready at his side like lumps of dried meat; he seemed to be beating himself into an irrational rage. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘put up your fists. You aren’t a coward, are you?’

  ‘Why not?’ D. said. ‘I’m not going to fight you. I should be glad if you would allow me. . . . There is a lady waiting for me upstairs.’

  ‘She can have what’s left,’ the man said, ‘when I’ve finished with you. I’m going to show you you can’t go about calling honest men thieves.’ He seemed to be left-handed, for he began to swing his left fist.

  D. flattened himself against the basin. The worst was going to happen now: he was momentarily back in the prison yard as the warder came towards him, swinging a club. If he had had a gun he would have used it; he would have been prepared to answer any charge to escape the physical contact. He shut his eyes and leant back against the mirror: he was defenceless. He didn’t know the first thing about using his fists.

  The manager’s voice said, ‘I say, old chap. Not feeling well?’ D. straightened himself. The chauffeur was hanging back with a look of self-conscious righteousness. D. said gently with his eyes on the man, ‘I get taken sometimes with – what is it you call it? – giddiness?’

  ‘Miss Cullen sent me to find you. Shall I see if there’s a doctor about?’

  ‘No. It’s nothing at all.’

  D. checked the manager outside the lavatory. ‘Do you know that chauffeur?’

  ‘Never seen him before, but one can’t keep a check on the retainers, old man. Why?’

  ‘I thought he went for my pockets.’

  The eye froze behind the monocle. ‘Most improbable, old man. Here, you know, we get – well, I don’t mean to be snobbish, only the best people. Must have been mistaken. Miss Cullen will bear me out.’ He said with false indifference, ‘You an old friend of Miss Cullen’s?’

  ‘No. I would not say that. She was good enough to give me a lift from Dover.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ the manager said icily. He detached himself briskly at the top of the stairs. ‘You’ll find Miss Cullen in the restaurant.’

  He passed in: somebody in a high-necked jumper was playing a piano and a woman was singing, very deep down in the throat and melancholy. He went stiffly by the table where the other sat. ‘What’s up?’ the girl said. ‘I thought you’d walked out on me. You look as if you’d seen a ghost.’

  Where he sat he couldn’t see L. – the name came back to him now. He said softly, ‘I was attacked – that is to say, I was going to be attacked – in the lavatory.’

  ‘Why do you tell stories like that?’ she said. ‘Making yourself out mysterious. I’d rather have the Three Bears.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘I had to make some excuse, hadn’t I?’

  ‘You don’t really believe it, do you?’ she asked anxiously. ‘I mean, you haven’t got shell-shock?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I am just not a good friend to know.’

  ‘If only you wouldn’t be funny. You say these melodramatic things. I’ve told you – I don’t like melodrama.’

  ‘Sometimes it just happens that way. There’s a man sitting facing this way at the first table inside the door. Don’t look yet. I will make a bet with you. He is looking at us. Now.’

  ‘He is, but what of it?’

  ‘He is watching me.’

  ‘There’s another explanation, you know. That he’s just watching me.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘My dear, people often do.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Of course. I can understand that.’ He sat back and watched her: the sullen mouth, transparent skin. He felt an unreasonable dislike for Lord Benditch; if he had been her father he wouldn’t have allowed her to go this way. The woman with the deep voice sang an absurd song about unrequited love:

  ‘It was just a way of talking – I hadn’t learned.

  It was just day-dreaming – but my heart burned.

  You said “I love you” – and I thought you meant it.

  You said “My heart is yours” – but you’d only lent it.’

  People set down their wine and listened as if it were poetry. Even the girl stopped eating for a while. The self-pity of it irritated him; it was a vice nobody in his country on either side the line had an opportunity of indulging.

  ‘I don’t say you lie: it’s just the modern way.

  I don’t intend to die: in the old Victorian way.’

  He supposed it represented the ‘spirit of the age’, whatever that meant; he almost preferred the prison cell, the law of flight, the bombed house, his enemy by the door. He watched the girl moodily; there was a time in his life when he would have tried to write her a poem – it would have been better stuff than this.

  ‘It was just day-dreaming – I begin to discern it:

  It was just a way of talking – and I’ve started to learn it.’

  She said, ‘It’s muck, isn’t it? But it has a sort of appeal.’

  A waiter came over to their table. He said, ‘The gentleman by the door asked me to give you this, sir.’

  ‘For somebody who’s just landed,’ she said, ‘you make friends quickly.’

  He read it. It was short and to the point, although it didn’t specify exactly what was wanted. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I had just been offered two thousand pounds.’

  ‘Why should you tell me if you had?’

  ‘That’s true.’ He called a waiter. ‘Can you tell me if that gentleman has a chauffeur – a big man with something wrong about his eye?’

  ‘I’ll find out, sir.’

  ‘You play it fine,’ she said, ‘fine. The mystery man.’ It occurred to him that she’d been drinking too much again. He said, ‘We’ll never get up to London if you do not go carefully.’

  The waiter came back and said, ‘That’s his chauffeur, sir.’

  ‘A left-handed man?’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ she said, ‘stop it.’

  He said gently, ‘I’m not showing off. This has nothing to do with you. Things are going so fast – I had to be sure.’ He gave the waiter a tip. ‘Give the gentleman back his note.’

  ‘Any reply, sir?’

  ‘No reply.’

  ‘Why not be a gentleman,’ she said, ‘and write “Thank you for the offer”?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to give him a specimen of my handwriting. He might forge it.’

  ‘I give up,’ she said. ‘You win.’

  ‘Better not drink any more.’ The singing woman had shut down – like a wireless set the last sound was a wail and a vibration; a few couples began to dance. He said, ‘We have a long drive in front.’

  ‘What’s the hurry? We can always stay the night here.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You can – but I must get to London somehow.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My employers,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t understand the delay.’ They would have time-tabled his movements, he knew for certain, with exactly this kind of s
ituation in mind – the meeting with L. and the offer of money. No amount of service would ever convince them that he hadn’t got, at some level, a price. After all, he recognised sadly, they had their price: the people had been sold out over and over again by their leaders. But if the only philosophy you had left was a sense of duty, that knowledge didn’t prevent you going on. . . .

  The manager was swinging his monocle at Rose Cullen and inviting her to dance; this, he thought gloomily, was going on all night – he would never get her away. They moved slowly round the room to the sad stiff tune; the manager held her firmly with one large hand splayed out on her spine, the other was thrust, with rather insulting insouciance, it seemed to D., in his pocket. He was talking earnestly, and looking every now and then in D.’s direction. Once they came into earshot and D. caught the word ‘careful’. The girl listened attentively, but her feet were awkward. She must be more drunk than he had imagined.

  D. wondered whether anybody had changed that tyre. If the car was ready, perhaps after this dance he could persuade her. . . . He got up and left the restaurant; L. sat over a piece of veal, he didn’t look up, he was cutting the meat up into tiny pieces – his digestion must be rotten. D. felt less nervous; it was as if the refusal of the money had put him into a stronger position than his opponent. As for the chauffeur, it was unlikely that he’d start anything now.

  The fog was lifting a little; he could see the cars in the courtyard – half a dozen of them – a Daimler, a Mercédès, a couple of Morrises, their old Packard and a little scarlet cad car. The tyre had been fixed.

  He thought, if only we could leave now, at once, while L. is at his dinner, and then heard a voice which could only be L.’s speaking to him in his own language. He was saying, ‘Excuse me. If we could have a few words together . . .’

  D. felt a little envious of him as he stood there in the yard among the cars – he looked established. Five hundred years of inbreeding had produced him, set him against an exact background, made him at home, and at the same time haunted – by the vices of ancestors and the tastes of the past. D. said, ‘I don’t think there’s much to talk about.’ But he recognised the man’s charm: it was like being picked out of a party by a great man to be talked to. ‘I can’t help thinking,’ L. said, ‘that you don’t understand the position.’ He smiled deprecatingly at his own statement, which might sound impertinent after two years of war. ‘I mean – you really belong to us.’

  ‘It didn’t feel like that in prison.’

  The man had an integrity of a kind: he gave an impression of truth. He said, ‘You probably had a horrible time. I have seen some of our prisons. But, you know, they are improving. The beginning of a war is always the worst time. After all, it is no good our talking atrocities to each other. You have seen your own prisons. We are both guilty. And we shall go on being guilty, here and there, I suppose, until one of us has won.’

  ‘That is a very old argument. Unless we surrender we are just prolonging the war. That’s how it goes. It’s not a good argument to use to a man who has lost his wife . . .’

  ‘That was a horrible accident. You probably heard – we shot the commandant. What I want to say’ – he had a long nose like the ones you see in picture galleries in old brown portraits: thin and worn, he ought to have worn a sword as supple as himself – ‘is this. If you win, what sort of a world will it be for people like you? They’ll never trust you – you are a bourgeois – I don’t suppose they even trust you now. And you don’t trust them. Do you think you’ll find among those people – the ones who destroyed the National Museum and Z.’s pictures – anyone interested in your work ?’ He said gently – it was like being recognised by a State academy – ‘I mean the Berne MS.’

  ‘I’m not fighting for myself,’ D. said. It occurred to him that if there had not been a war he might have been friends with this man. The aristocracy did occasionally fling up somebody like this thin tormented creature interested in scholarships or the arts, a patron.

  ‘I didn’t suppose you were,’ he said. ‘You are more of an idealist than I am. My motives, of course, are suspect. My property has been confiscated. I believe⎯⎯’ he gave a kind of painful smile which suggested that he knew he was in sympathetic company – ‘that my pictures have been burnt – and my manuscript collection. I had nothing, of course, which was in your line – but there was an early manuscript of Augustine’s City of God . . .’ It was like being tempted by a devil of admirable character and discrimination. He couldn’t find an answer. L. went on, ‘I’m not really complaining. These horrible things are bound to happen in war – to the things one loves. My collection and your wife.’

  It was amazing that he hadn’t seen his mistake. He waited there for D.’s assent – the long nose and the too sensitive mouth, the tall thin dilettante body. He hadn’t the faintest conception of what it meant to love another human being. His house – which they had burnt – was probably like a museum, old pieces of furniture, cords drawn on either side the picture gallery on days when the public were admitted. He appreciated the Berne MS. very likely, but he had no idea that the Berne MS. meant nothing at all beside the woman one loved. He went fallaciously on, ‘We’ve both suffered.’ It was difficult to remember that he had for a moment sounded like a friend. It was worth killing a civilisation to prevent the government of human beings falling into the hands of – he supposed they were called the civilised. What sort of a world would that be? a world full of preserved objects labelled ‘Not to be touched’: no religious faith, but a lot of Gregorian chants and picturesque ceremonies. Miraculous images which bled or waggled their heads on certain days would be preserved for their quaintness: superstition was interesting. There would be excellent libraries, but no new books. He preferred the distrust, the barbarity, the betrayals . . . even chaos. The Dark Ages, after all, had been his ‘period’.

  He said, ‘It isn’t really any good our talking. We have nothing in common – not even a manuscript.’ Perhaps this was what he had been painfully saved from by death and war. Appreciation and scholarship were dangerous things: they could kill the human heart.

  L. said, ‘I wish you would listen.’

  ‘It would waste our time.’

  L. gave him a smile. ‘I’m so glad,’ he said, ‘at any rate, that you finished your work on the Berne MS. before this – wretched – war.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to me very important.’

  ‘Ah,’ L. said, ‘now that is treachery.’ He smiled – wistfully; it wasn’t that war in his case had killed emotion: it was that he had never possessed more than a thin veneer of it for cultural purposes. His place was among dead things. He said whimsically, ‘I give you up. You won’t blame me, will you?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For what happens now.’ Tall and brittle, courteous and unconvincing, he disengaged himself – like a patron leaving an exhibition of pictures by somebody he has decided is, after all, not quite good enough: a little sad, the waspishness up the sleeve.

  D. waited a moment and then went back into the lounge. Through the double glass doors of the restaurant he could see the narrow shoulders bent again over the veal.

  The girl wasn’t at her table. She’d joined another party: a monocle flashed near her ear: the manager was imparting a confidence. He could hear their laughter – and the harsh childish voice he had heard from the bar in the third class, ‘I want another. I will have another.’ She was set for hours. Her kindness was something which meant nothing at all; she gave you a bun on a cold platform, offered you a lift and then left you abandoned half-way; she had the absurd mind of her class – which would give a pound note to a beggar and forget the misery of anybody out of sight. She belonged really, he thought, with L.’s lot, and he remembered his own, at this moment queuing up for bread or trying to keep warm in unheated rooms.

  He turned abruptly on his heel. It was untrue that war left you no emotions except fear: he could still feel a certain amount of anger and disappointment. He came ba
ck into the yard, opened the door of the car; an attendant came round the bonnet and said, ‘Isn’t the lady . . . ?’

  ‘Miss Cullen’s staying the night,’ D. said. ‘You can tell her I’ll leave the car – to-morrow – at Lord Benditch’s.’ He drove away.

  He drove carefully, not too fast; it would never do to be stopped by the police and arrested for driving without a licence. A finger-post read, ‘London, 45 miles.’ With any luck he would be in well before midnight. He began to wonder what L.’s mission was. The note had given nothing away; it had simply said, ‘Are you willing to accept two thousand pounds?’; on the other hand, the chauffeur had searched his coat. If they were after his credentials they must know what it was he had come to England to get – without those papers he would have no standing at all with the English coal-owners. But there were only five people at home concerned in this affair – and every one of them was a Cabinet Minister. Yes, the people were certainly sold out by their leaders. Was it the old Liberal, he wondered, who had once protested at the executions? or was it the young pushing Minister of the Interior who perhaps saw more scope for himself under a dictatorship? But it might be any of them. There was no trust anywhere. All over the world there were people like himself who didn’t believe in being corrupted – simply because it made life impossible – as when a man or woman cannot tell the truth about anything. It wasn’t so much a question of morality as a question of simply existing.

  A signpost said 40 miles.

  But was L. simply here to stop the purchase – or did the other side need the coal as badly ? They had possession of the mines in the mountains, but suppose the rumour was true that the workmen had refused to go down the pits? He became aware of a headlamp behind him – he put out his hand and waved the car on. It drew level – a Daimler; then he saw the driver. It was the chauffeur who had tried to rob him in the lavatory.

  D. stepped on his accelerator; the other car refused to give way: they raced side by side recklessly through the thin fog. He didn’t know what it was all about: were they trying to kill him? It seemed improbable in England, but for two years now he had been used to the improbable; you couldn’t be buried in a bombed house for fifty-six hours and emerge incredulous of violence.