‘Förlåt mig,’ the young man said. The damp gleam of Anthony’s pumps, the white tie caught his attention. It was as if he were losing a piece of confidence with everything he saw, the flood-lit drive, the kiss in the dark, the blonde against the balustrade, pumps and starched shirt: it was as if he expected something different, had come to the wrong party.
‘Do you speak English?’ He shook his head and began explaining in Swedish what he wanted. It was something reasonable and urgent. ‘Nyköping,’ Anthony heard, and ‘Herr Krogh.’
The pale primrose dress came out of the shadows. ‘What does he want?’ But the young man had stopped.
‘Darling, have you got a car here?’
‘Krogh’s.’
‘Let’s find the car and sit in it awhile.’
The young man saw that they were leaving him and began to talk urgently.
‘What’s it all about?’ Anthony said.
‘He wants to see Herr Krogh. Something about his father. His father has been dismissed. His father knows Herr Krogh. Nothing to do with us.’ Her accents went on and off like an electric road sign: American, English, now charmingly Swedish. ‘He is yust a bore, Anthony darling.’ She was gleamingly international under the floodlights, between the puddles; the minor theatrical companies of every capital had embellished her with innumerable accents, had worn away any trace of a national origin. ‘He says his name is Andersson.’
‘A hard-luck story?’
Andersson at any rate was national in his heaviness, his fairness, his inability to talk another language, and a thin spray of sympathy passed between the two of them, as if they recognized each other’s limitations in a strange world.
‘Might go in and tell him,’ Anthony said.
‘What are you thinking of?’ the blonde said. ‘Herr Krogh wouldn’t see a fellow like that.’
‘He looks all right to me.’
‘Come and have a good time in the car, Anthony darling.’ She had the high-class prostitute’s contempt for working men; she was firmly conservative; she had risen and she wasn’t going to look back.
The young man stood patiently, waiting for their decision.
‘You go and wait for me,’ Anthony said. ‘I’ll just pop in and see Krogh.’
‘All this fuss about that dismal Yonnie.’
‘Been down and out myself,’ Anthony said.
‘He’s not down and out. He says he works for Krogh.’
‘Well,’ Anthony said angrily, ‘it’s just about time he met one of his workmen. The man’s wet through. We can’t leave him out here.’ He flung himself petulantly at the glass door and beckoned to Andersson. The man followed him on tired dragging feet: a pillar of light glowed softly in the centre of the hall; the pale brown walls, the deep square seats, the music from the restaurant, these seemed to take his dust, his weariness, his heavy boots and hang them there like an odd exhibit, a scarecrow fetched in for a sophisticated joke.
‘Now you tell us a story, Herr Krogh,’ the tragic woman was saying. Everyone was eating cheese-biscuits out of a tin, everyone except Kate, who sat watching Krogh with apprehension.
Krogh laughed, smoothed his bald papery head. ‘I – I haven’t any stories.’
‘Oh, but in the life, the romantic life you’ve led –’
‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Hammarsten said.
The tragic woman oscillated wildly between them in the effort to keep them both. ‘Dear Professor, in a moment . . . Your Marina would love it, but first . . .’
Krogh said: ‘There’s a story about the three men who went to a bawdy house in Chicago.’ He said: ‘Wait. I must get it right. So many years . . .’
‘Listen,’ Anthony said, ‘there’s someone wants to see you. A fellow called Andersson, Erik. Says he works for you.’
Krogh said: ‘They’d no business to let the old man in. I won’t be bothered. Send him away.’
‘He’s not an old man. He says you know his father. His father’s been dismissed.’
‘Erik,’ Kate said, ‘was that the man you saw the other day? The man you promised . . .’
‘Get fire and meat for the poor man,’ Hammarsten said fiercely, his glasses falling this time among the cheese-biscuits, ‘’T’has been a turbulent and stormy night.’
‘I put nothing on paper,’ Krogh said.
‘You’ve had him dismissed?’
‘It was the safest thing to do. We put something on him at the works. The union couldn’t object. I couldn’t risk a strike.’
‘A frame-up?’ Anthony said. ‘His son doesn’t realize. He thinks you’ll be of help.’
‘Send him off,’ Krogh said. ‘He has no business here.’
‘I doubt if he’ll go.’
‘Then throw him out,’ Krogh said. ‘I pay you, don’t I? Go and throw him out.’
‘I’m damned if I will,’ Anthony said.
‘For God’s sake,’ Kate said, ‘let’s stop this party. It’s no fun. We’ve finished the brandy. Why in hell’s name did you bring these biscuits, Professor?’
‘An old car,’ the Professor said, ‘I thought we mightn’t get here. The girls couldn’t be allowed to starve.’
‘Let’s go home,’ Kate said. ‘Go and send the man away, Anthony.’
‘I’m damned if I will,’ Anthony repeated.
Kate said, ‘Then I’ll go. You’re crazy, Anthony.’
‘Hall,’ Krogh said suddenly. ‘Hall.’ He was the first to see him: under the chandeliers, down the long lit room the bowlegged walk, the tweed suit, the brown waisted coat with the velvet collar (‘Why,’ he told them, ‘it’s Hall’), narrow stream-lined hat, the lean flat Cockney face.
‘They told me at the office you were here, Mr Krogh.’
‘Everything’s all right, of course?’
Hall took them in, the Professor, the tragic woman, Anthony and Kate, with a deep obvious mistrust: ‘Of course, Mr Krogh.’
‘Sit down and have a glass, Hall. You’ve flown?’
‘I got stuck at Malmö for a couple of hours.’
‘Have a biscuit, Hall?’ Kate said, but he would take nothing from her or anyone. Even the glass the waiter brought him he cleaned surreptitiously under the table with the edge of the cloth. He killed the conversation with his mistrust and his devotion.
‘The sea works high, the wind is loud,’ Hammarsten began to quote, then caught Hall’s eye and cracked a cheese-biscuit instead.
‘Take off your coat, Hall,’ Kate said.
‘I won’t be staying. I just ran down in case there was anything . . .’
Anthony said: ‘We can’t leave the fellow out there all night. He’s dripping wet.’
‘Who’s that?’ Hall said. He wouldn’t even look at them; his shifty dog’s eyes were for Krogh; the eyes not of a sentimental family dog, but of some brown tight-skinned terrier which lounges outside the doors of pubs, trots at a bookie’s heels, a shifty dog which chases cats for bets and goes ratting in old cellars.
‘It’s young Andersson,’ Krogh said. ‘His father was behind the strike they threatened at the works. I talked him round. No written promise – a joke, a cigar. Some trouble about American wages.’
The blonde appeared trailing her primrose dress past the orchestra, innocent pinched painted mouth, imploring eyes, a picked bedraggled flower which had been left out all night upon the tiles. ‘You yust can’t treat me like that, Anthony.’
‘Then I had him sacked. They planted something on him. It was the best way. This boy’s asking for trouble.’
‘Sitting there in the car till I was frozen.’
‘Get him a drink anyway,’ Anthony said.
Kate said, ‘Let’s go home, Erik.’
‘You’ll have to see him then. I brought him inside.’
‘You don’t want to see him, Mr Krogh?’ Hall said. ‘You want him to beat it?’
‘I told you to send him away,’ Krogh said to Anthony.
Hall said nothing. He didn’t even look at Anthony; ther
e was no need to look at anyone to know that they couldn’t be trusted with Mr Krogh. He got up, hands in his overcoat pockets, hat tilted a little forward, walked bowlegged past the orchestra, the silvered palms, through the glass door into the wide waste of the entrance hall, looking neither to right nor left, past the reception counter to the deep rug under the central light, where young Andersson stood and stared about him.
In the restaurant the orchestra began to play again. ‘I’m waiting dear.’
I’m waiting, dear,
Leave off hating, dear,
Let’s talk of mating, dear,
I’m lonely.
‘You young Andersson?’ Hall said. His Swedish consisted mainly of nouns learned from a pocket dictionary.
‘Yes,’ Andersson said, ‘Yes.’ He came eagerly forward to meet Hall. ‘Yes, I’m Andersson.’
‘Home,’ Hall said, ‘Home.’
You can’t ration, dear,
The kind of passion, dear,
Though it’s not the fashion, dear . . .
‘Home,’ Hall said again, ‘home.’
‘I only want to see Mr Krogh,’ Andersson said and smiled tentatively at Hall. Hall struck him on the point of the jaw, stood for a moment above him in case he needed a second blow, then slipped off his knuckle-dusters and said to the reception clerk: ‘Outside.’ He thought bitterly as he retraced his steps: There they all are, the bloody spongers, drinking his wine, not one of them would do a little thing for him when he wanted it.
In the mirror by the restaurant door he watched young Andersson heave himself on to his knees; he knelt with his face down, dripping blood on to the beige rug. Hall felt no anger against him, no sympathy; only a deep unselfish love for Krogh which had no relation to the money he was paid. He remembered the cuff-links; they lay in his pocket beside the knuckle-dusters in a little brown leather case, which was now darkened and marred by blood. Hall sadly, angrily, examined it. He had chosen even the box with care, nothing gaudy, in the best of taste. He strode across the hall and shook it in Andersson’s face. ‘You bastard,’ he said in English, ‘you bloody bastard.’
Young Andersson’s mouth was full of blood; blood was in his eyes, he couldn’t see clearly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said, his breath bubbling on his lips, ‘understand, don’t understand.’
Hall shook the box at him and raised his boot and kicked him in the stomach.
PART VI
1
THERE was half an hour before the train left for Gothenburg. Anthony and Loo walked all the way up the Vasagatan, past the post office, and then down again.
‘We ought to go to the station now,’ Loo said.
‘I’ve bought you these chocolates.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Have you got plenty of cigarettes?’
‘Yes,’ Loo said.
The morning in Gothenburg, breakfast at Drottningholm, one lunch with the family: the scarcity of their meetings fell on the spirit like a famine. The English pleasure-cruiser which had lain opposite the Grand Hotel the night they came to Stockholm had raised its anchor; the chairs had been taken in outside Hasselbacken, Tivoli was closed; the whole world was turning over to winter; everyone was going home.
‘Have you got magazines?’
‘Lots of magazines.’
They turned away from the vibrating noisy square below the station and trod the same street again, up to the post office and back. Anthony waved his hand to Minty who sat in a restaurant opposite the station pouring his coffee into a saucer. There was nothing to say but ‘Sorry you’re going, meet again some day, I had a nice time, thank you, au revoir, auf Wiedersehen, if you are ever in Coventry,’ nothing to do but kiss on the platform and watch the train go out.
‘I’ve had a nice time.’
‘So’ve I.’
‘We ought to go to the station now.’ One step more to the stamp machine, turn on the heel, back down the Vasagatan.
‘I wish I was going too.’
‘I wish you were.’
‘Miss me a bit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Write.’
‘What’s the good?’
‘There’s your father. He’s looking out for you. Wave, and he’ll go away again. He’s carrying Lockhart.’
This is one more coming-to-an-end, to be remembered like the landing and the messages on the walls and the milk which hadn’t been taken in.
‘Why come on to the platform? Ten minutes before the train goes.’ The grey clouds, high and concave, spread thinly against the bright arched sky. ‘It’s going to rain.’
Anthony said, ‘I’ll come a little further.’ It’s not so bad, he thought, this ending as other endings, not so bad as ringing at the empty flat, waiting all the morning on the landing, trying to recognize a writing I’d never seen: ‘No milk today’; ‘Back at 12.30’; ‘Called away. Home tomorrow’; among the stale messages, the errand-boys’ crude drawings of women’s torsos; not so bad this ending, slip away, there’s good old Minty, have a cup of coffee, what next tourist season may bring one doesn’t know, one hopes: ‘I like your hat.’
‘It’s as old as the hills.’
Not so bad this ending because one is getting used to endings: life like Morse, a series of dots and dashes, never forming a paragraph.
‘That must be my train. If you are ever in Coventry –’
‘I might be after all.’
‘Quick. Here’s my card. We’re on the telephone.’
Is it that one gives way too easily to this mood of departure, this hurry along carriages, no time for second thoughts, losing something –
‘Don’t come any further.’
‘I must. There’s your carriage further down.’ Just because a porter shouts and slams a door.
‘Listen, Annette.’
‘Loo to you.’
‘I mean, Loo. Stop here. There are three more minutes. I’ve been thinking. You’re right about my job. I’m going to throw it up. A few days ago at Saltsjöbaden. . . . I’ll be back in England in a week, Loo.’
‘You won’t.’
‘I will.’
‘Oh, it’ll be fun.’
‘A relationship?’
‘I don’t care. Just for once.’
‘A week today in Coventry. Where can we meet?’
At the end of the long train the Davidges waved, but there was no hurry: two minutes to go and the English Minister was going aboard. The stationmaster bowed, the porter ran, Sir Ronald padded on suède shoes to the bookstall: two suitcases, just home for a day or two. ‘A week today.’
‘Listen,’ Loo said, ‘there’s a café in High Street. Moroccan. You can’t miss it. It’s on the same side as Woolworth’s, but nearer the post office. I’ll be there at tea-time a week today. If you can’t come ring up.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Anthony said.
‘In the second room.’
They couldn’t kiss each other: the presence of the anxious Davidges restrained them; they shook hands, and feeling the small bones of her fingers grate in his, Anthony thought: A relationship, this is a relationship. She ran away from him down the train; he felt tired and torn as though she had ripped away her share of his brain – a breakfast, a lunch, a bed in Minty’s flat. Sir Ronald climbed into his first-class compartment and opened The Times, and the carriages gathering speed went by him, a glitter of glass, a flash of electricity, like a regiment of polished preened young soldiers, and like an ageing dug-out left behind he took their salute. Then he went to find Minty. He had to talk to someone.
Minty poured his coffee into the saucer and back into the cup and people went by. Anthony said: ‘I’m throwing up this job. I’m going back to England, to Coventry.’
‘A job’s a job,’ Minty said.
‘Something will turn up.’ But he was not as certain as he had once been; he had never starved, he had never for very long been out of pocket, there were always the vacuum cleaners.
‘You’re lucky then,’ Minty said.
> ‘You’re the lucky one. You’ve got an income,’ but he did not really envy Minty. Sitting there in the café opposite the station, watching the Swedes go by to their work, the small bustle by the station which meant that another train was sliding out for Gothenburg or the farm lands, he saw himself and Minty clearly as one person: the exile from his country and his class, the tramp whose workhouses were Shanghai, Aden, Singapore, the refuse of a changing world. If Minty were to be envied at all, it was that he had chosen his dump and stayed there. They hadn’t the resources to hold their place, but the world had so conditioned them that they hadn’t the vigour to resist. They were not fresh enough, optimistic enough, to believe in peace, co-operation, the dignity of labour, or if they believed in them, they were not young enough to work for them. They were neither one thing nor the other; they were really only happy when they were together: in the clubs in foreign capitals, in pensions, at old boys’ dinners, momentarily convinced by the wine they couldn’t afford that they believed in something: in the old country, in the king, in ‘shoot the bloody Bolsheviks’, in the comradeship of the trenches: ‘My old batman,’ ‘I said, “Don’t I know your face? I believe you were at Ypres in ’15”.’
‘Why are you throwing it up?’ Minty said.
He thought: It’s because I’m not young enough and not old enough: not young enough to believe in a juster world, not old enough for the country, the king, the trenches to mean anything to me at all. He said: ‘There are things I won’t do even for Kate.’
‘If you could stay another month, there’s the Harrow dinner. I got Sir Ronald to consent at last.’
‘I never was at Harrow.’
‘Of course you weren’t.’ Minty blew his coffee. ‘Winter’s here. I always feel it in my stomach where they drained me.’
‘You should wear a cholera belt.’
‘I do.’
‘I had to wear one for years after they took my appendix out.’ Wearily, without relish, they let themselves down into their common stream of interest. ‘I was done at the Westminster.’