The Confidential Agent

  He got up and washed the blood from his mouth; the two teeth he had lost were at the back. It was lucky, he thought grimly, for life seemed determined to make him look less and less like his passport photograph. He was not so bruised and cut as he had expected. He went downstairs. In the hall there was a smell of fish from the dining-room, and the little servant ran blindly into him, carrying two boiled eggs. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Some instinct made him stop her. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Else.’

  ‘Listen, Else. I have locked the door of my room. I want you to see that nobody goes in while I am away.’

  ‘Oh, nobody would.’

  He put his hand gently on her arm. ‘Somebody might. You keep the key, Else. I trust you.’

  ‘I’ll see to it. I won’t let anybody,’ she swore softly while the eggs rolled on the plate.

  The Entrenationo Language Centre was on the third floor of a building on the south side of Oxford Street: over a bead shop, an insurance company, and the offices of a magazine called Mental Health. An old lift jerked him up: he was uncertain of what he would find at the top. He pushed open a door marked ‘Inquiries’ and found a large draughty room with several arm-chairs, two filing cabinets, and a counter at which a middle-aged woman sat knitting. He said, ‘My name is D. I have come for a specimen lesson.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she said and smiled at him brightly. She had a wizened idealist’s face and ragged hair and she wore a blue woollen jumper with scarlet bobbles. She said, ‘I hope you will soon be quite an old friend,’ and rang a bell. What a country, he thought with reluctant and ironic admiration. She said, ‘Dr Bellows always likes to have a word with new clients.’ Was it Dr Bellows, he wondered, whom he had to see ? A little door opened behind the counter into a private office. ‘Would you just step through?’ the woman said, lifting the counter.

  No, he couldn’t believe that it was Dr Bellows. Dr Bellows stood in the little tiny room, all leather and walnut stain and the smell of dry ink, and held out both hands. He had smooth white hair and a look of timid hope. He said something which sounded like ‘Me tray joyass’. His gestures and his voice were more grandiloquent than his face, which seemed to shrink from innumerable rebuffs. He said, ‘The first words of the Entrenationo Language must always be ones of welcome.’

  ‘That is good of you,’ D. said. Dr Bellows closed the door. He said, ‘I have arranged that your lesson – I hope I shall be able to say “lessons” – will be given by a compatriot. That is always, if possible, our system. It induces sympathy and breaks the new world order slowly. You will find Mr K. is quite an able teacher.’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But first,’ Dr Bellows said, ‘I always like to explain just a little of our ideals.’ He still held D. by the hand, and he led him gently on towards a leather chair. He said, ‘I always hope that a new client has been brought here by love.’

  ‘Love?’

  ‘Love of all the world. A desire to be able to exchange – ideas – with – everybody. All this hate,’ Dr Bellows said, ‘these wars we read about in the newspapers, they are all due to misunderstanding. If we all spoke the same language . . .’ He suddenly gave a little wretched sigh which wasn’t histrionic. He said, ‘It has always been my dream to help.’ The rash unfortunate man had tried to bring his dream to life, and he knew that it wasn’t good – the little leather chairs and the draughty waiting-room and the woman in a jumper knitting. He had dreamt of universal peace, and he had two floors on the south side of Oxford Street. There was something of a saint about him, but saints are successful.

  D. said, ‘I think it is a very noble work.’

  ‘I want everyone who comes here to realise that this isn’t just a – commercial – relationship. I want you all to feel my fellow-workers.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I know we haven’t got very far yet . . . But we have done better than you may think. We have had Italians, Germans, a Siamese, one of your own countrymen – as well as English people. But of course it is the English who support us best. Alas, I cannot say the same of France.’

  ‘It is a question of time,’ D. said. He felt sorry for the old man.

  ‘I have been at it now for thirty years. Of course the War was our great blow.’ He suddenly sat firmly up and said, ‘But the response this month has been admirable. We have given five sample lessons. You are the sixth. I mustn’t keep you any longer away from Mr K.’ A clock struck nine in the waiting-room. ‘La hora sonas,’ Dr Bellows said with a frightened smile and held out his hand. ‘That is – the clock sounds.’ He held D.’s hand again in his, as if he were aware of more sympathy than he was accustomed to. ‘I like to welcome an intelligent man . . . it is possible to do so much good.’ He said, ‘May I hope to have another interesting talk with you?’

  ‘Yes. I am sure of it.’

  Dr Bellows clung to him a little longer in the doorway. ‘I ought perhaps to have warned you. We teach by the direct method. We trust – to your honour – not to speak anything but Entrenationo.’ He shut himself back in his little room. The woman in the jumper said, ‘Such an interesting man, don’t you think, Dr Bellows?’

  ‘He has great hopes.’

  ‘One must – don’t you think?’ She came out from behind the counter and led him back to the lift. ‘The tuition rooms are on the fourth floor. Just press the button. Mr K. will be waiting.’ He rattled upwards. He wondered what Mr K. would look like – surely he wouldn’t fit in here if he belonged to the ravaged world he had himself emerged from.

  But he did fit in – with the building if not with the idealism. A little shabby and ink-stained, he was any underpaid language master in a commercial school. He wore steel spectacles and economised on razor blades. He opened the lift door and said, ‘Bona matina.’

  ‘Bona matina,’ D. said, and Mr K. led the way down a pitchpine passage walnut-stained: one big room the size of the waiting-room below had been divided into four. He couldn’t help wondering whether he was not wasting his time – somebody might have made a mistake – but then, who could have got his name and address? Or had L. arranged this to get him out of the hotel while he had his room searched? But that, too, was impossible. L. had no means of knowing his address before he had the pocket-book.

  Mr K. ushered him into a tiny cubicle warmed by a tepid radiator. Double windows shut out the air and the noise of the traffic far below in Oxford Street. On one wall was hung a simple child-like picture on rollers – a family sat eating in front of what looked like a Swiss chalet. The father had a gun, and one lady an umbrella; there were mountains, a forest, a waterfall; the table was crammed with an odd mixture of food – apples, an uncooked cabbage, a chicken, pears, oranges and raw potatoes, a joint of meat. A child played with a hoop, and a baby sat up in a pram drinking out of a bottle. On the other wall was a clockface with movable hands. Mr K. said, ‘Tablo’ and rapped on the table. He sat down with emphasis on one of the two chairs, and said, ‘Essehgo.’ D. followed suit. Mr K. said, ‘El timo es . . .’ he pointed at the clock, ‘neuvo.’ He began to take a lot of little boxes out of his pocket. He said, ‘Attentio.’

  D. said, ‘I’m sorry. There must be some mistake . . .’

  Mr K. piled the little boxes one on top of the other, counting as he did so, ‘Una, Da, Trea, Kwara, Vif.’ He added in a low voice, ‘We are forbidden by the rules to talk anything but Entrenationo. I am fined one shilling if I am caught. So please speak low except in Entrenationo.’

  ‘Somebody arranged a lesson for me . . .’

  ‘That is quite right. I have had instructions.’ He said, ‘Que son la?’ pointing at the boxes and replied to his own question, ‘La son castes.’ He lowered his voice again and said, ‘What were you doing last night?’

  ‘Of course I want to see your authority.’

  Mr K. took a card from his pocket and laid it in front of D. He said, ‘Your boat was only two hours late and yet you were not in London last night.’

&n
bsp; ‘First I missed my train – delay at the passport control – then a woman offered me a lift: the tyre burst, and I was delayed at a roadhouse. L. was there.’

  ‘Did he speak to you?’

  ‘He sent me a note offering me two thousand pounds.’

  An odd expression came into the little man’s eyes – it was like envy or hunger. He said, ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing, of course.’

  Mr K. took off the old steel-rimmed spectacles and wiped the lenses. He said, ‘Was the girl connected with L?’

  ‘I think it’s unlikely.’

  ‘What else happened?’ He said suddenly, pointing at the picture, ‘La es un famil. Un famil gentilbono.’ The door opened and Dr Bellows looked in. ‘Excellente, excellente,’ he said, smiling gently and closed the door again. Mr K. said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘I took her car. She was drunk and wouldn’t go on. The manager of the roadhouse – a Captain Currie – followed me in his car. I was beaten up by L.’s chauffeur. I forgot to tell you he tried to rob me in the lavatory – the chauffeur, I mean. They searched my coat, but of course found nothing. I had to walk. It was a long time before I got a lift.’

  ‘Is Captain Currie . . . ?’

  ‘Oh no. Just a fool, I think.’

  ‘It’s an extraordinary story.’

  D. allowed himself to smile. ‘It seemed quite natural at the time. If you disbelieve me – there’s my face. Yesterday I was not quite so battered.’

  The little man said, ‘To offer so much money . . . Did he say what – exactly – for?’

  ‘No.’ It suddenly occurred to D. that the man didn’t know what he had come to London to do – it would be just like the people at home to send him on a confidential mission and set other people whom they didn’t trust with a knowledge of his object to watch him. Distrust in civil war went to fantastic lengths: it made wild complications; who could wonder if it sometimes broke down more seriously than trust? It needs a strong man to bear distrust: weak men live up to the character they are allotted. It seemed to D. that Mr K. was a weak man. He said, ‘Do they pay you much here?’

  ‘Two shillings an hour.’

  ‘It isn’t much.’

  Mr K. said, ‘Luckily I do not have to live on it.’ But from his suit, his tired evasive eyes, it wasn’t probable that he had much more to live on from another source. Looking down at his fingers – the nails bitten close to the quick – he said, ‘I hope you have everything arranged?’ One nail didn’t meet with his approval; he began to bite it down to match the rest.

  ‘Yes. Everything.’

  ‘Everyone you want is in town?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was fishing, of course, for information, but his attempts were pathetically inefficient. They were probably right not to trust Mr K. on the salary they paid him.

  ‘I have to send in a report,’ Mr K. said. ‘I will say you have arrived safely, that your delay seems to have been accounted for . . .’ It was ignominious to have your movements checked up by a man of Mr K.’s calibre. ‘When will you be through ?’

  ‘A few days at most.’

  ‘I understand that you should be leaving London at latest on Monday night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If anything delays you, you must let me know. If nothing does, you must leave not later than the eleven-thirty train.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘Well,’ Mr K. said wearily, ‘you can’t leave this place before ten o’clock. We had better go on with the lesson.’ He stood up beside the wall-picture, a little weedy and undernourished figure – what had made them choose him? Did he conceal somewhere under his disguise a living passion for his party? He said, ‘Un famil tray gentilbono,’ and pointing to the joint, ‘Vici el carnor.’ Time went slowly by. Once D. thought he heard Dr Bellows pass down the passage on rubber-soled shoes. There wasn’t much trust even in the centre of internationalism.

  In the waiting-room he fixed another appointment for Monday and paid for a course of lessons. The elderly lady said, ‘I expect you found it a teeny bit hard?’

  ‘Oh, I feel I made progress,’ D. said.

  ‘I am so glad. For advanced students, you know, Dr Bellows runs little soirées. Most interesting. On Saturday evenings at eight. They give you an opportunity to meet people of all countries – Spanish, German, Siamese – and exchange ideas. Dr Bellows doesn’t charge – you only have to pay for coffee and cake.’

  ‘I feel sure it is very good cake,’ D. said, bowing courteously.

  He went out into Oxford Street: there was no hurry now: nothing to be done until he saw Lord Benditch. He walked, enjoying the sense of unreality – the shop windows full of goods, no ruined houses anywhere, women going into Buzzard’s for coffee. It was like one of his own dreams of peace. He stopped in front of a bookshop and stared in – people had time to read books – new books. There was one called A Lady in Waiting at the Court of King Edward, with a photograph on the paper jacket of a stout woman in white silk with ostrich feathers. It was incredible. And there was Safari Days, with a man in a sun helmet standing on a dead lioness. What a country, he thought again with affection. He went on. He couldn’t help noticing how well clothed everybody was. A pale winter sun shone, and the scarlet buses stood motionless all down Oxford Street: there was a traffic block. What a mark, he thought, for enemy planes. It was always about this time that they came over. But the sky was empty – or nearly empty. One winking glittering little plane turned and dived on the pale clear sky, drawing in little puffy clouds, a slogan: ‘Keep Warm with Ovo.’ He reached Bloomsbury – it occurred to him that he had spent a very quiet morning. It was almost as if his infection had met a match in this peaceful and preoccupied city. The great leafless square was empty, except for two Indians comparing lecture notes under the advertisements for Russian baths. He entered his hotel.

  A woman whom he supposed was the manageress was in the hall – a dark bulky woman with spots round her mouth. She gave him an acute commercial look and called, ‘Else! Else! Where are you, Else?’ harshly.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I will find her on my way up.’

  ‘The key ought to be here on its hook,’ the woman said.

  ‘Never mind.’

  Else was sweeping the passage outside the room. She said, ‘Nobody’s been in.’

  ‘Thank you. You are a good watcher.’

  But as soon as he was inside he knew that she hadn’t told the truth. He had placed his wallet in an exact geometrical relationship to other points in the room, so that he could be sure. . . . It had been moved. Perhaps Else had been dusting. He zipped the wallet open – it contained no papers of importance, but their order had been altered. He called ‘Else!’ gently. Watching her come in, small and bony with that expression of fidelity she wore awkwardly like her apron, he wondered whether there was anybody in the world who couldn’t be bribed. Perhaps he could be bribed himself – with what? He said, ‘Somebody was in here.’

  ‘Only me and—’

  ‘And who?’

  ‘The manageress, sir. I didn’t think you’d mind her.’ He felt a surprising relief at finding that, after all, there was a chance of discovering honesty somewhere. He said, ‘Of course you couldn’t keep her out, could you?’

  ‘I did my best. She said as I didn’t want her to see the untidiness. I said you’d told me – no one. She said, “Give me that key.” I said, “Mr D. put this in my hands and said I wasn’t to let anybody in.” Then she snatched it. I didn’t mean her to come in. But afterwards I thought, well, no harm’s done. I didn’t see how you’d ever know.’ She said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t ought to ’ave let her in.’ She had been crying.

  ‘Was she angry with you?’ he asked gently.

  ‘She’s given me the sack.’ She went on hurriedly, ‘It don’t matter. It’s slavery here – but you pick up things. There’s ways of earning more – I’m not going to be a servant all my life.’

  He thought: the infection?
??s still on me after all. I come into this place, breaking up God knows what lives. He said, ‘I’ll speak to the manageress.’

  ‘Oh, I won’t stay – not after this. She’ – the confession came out like a crime – ‘slapped my face.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Her innocence and her worldly knowledge filled him with horror. ‘Oh, there’s a girl who used to come here. She’s got a flat of her own now. She always said as how I could go to her – to be her maid. I wouldn’t have anything to do with the men, of course. Only open the door.’

  He exclaimed, ‘No. No.’ It was as if he had been given a glimpse of the guilt which clings to all of us without our knowing it. None of us knows how much innocence we have betrayed. He would be responsible. . . . He said, ‘Wait till I’ve talked to the manageress.’

  She said with a flash of bitterness, ‘It’s not very different what I do here, is it?’ She went on, ‘It wouldn’t be like being a servant at all. Me and Clara would go to cinemas every afternoon. She wants company, she says. She’s got a Pekinese, that’s all. You can’t count men.’

  ‘Wait a little. I’m sure I can help you – somehow.’ He had no idea, unless perhaps Benditch’s daughter . . . but that was unlikely after the episode of the car.

  ‘Oh, I won’t be leaving for a week.’ She was preposterously young to have such complete theoretical knowledge of vice. She said, ‘Clara’s got a telephone which fits into a doll. All dressed up as a Spanish dancer. And she always gives her maid the chocolates, Clara says.’

  ‘Clara,’ he said, ‘can afford to wait.’ He seemed to be getting a very complete picture of that young woman; she probably had a kind heart, but so, he believed, had Benditch’s daughter. She had given him a bun on a platform: it had seemed at the time a rather striking gesture of heedless generosity.

  A voice outside said, ‘What are you doing here, Else?’ It was the manageress.

  ‘I called her in,’ D. said, ‘to ask who had been in here.’

  He hadn’t yet had time to absorb the information the child had given him – was the manageress another of his, as it were, collaborators, like K., anxious to see that he followed the narrow and virtuous path, or had she been bribed by L.? Why, in that case, should he have been sent to this hotel by the people at home? His room had been booked; everything had been arranged for him, so that they should never lose contact. But that, of course, might all have been arranged by whoever it was gave information to L. – if anybody had. There was no end to the circles in this hell.