‘You’d better say a word to Miss Farrant,’ but Hall twisted away at the sight of her; he couldn’t bear the thought that she was trusted: a skirt. He left it to Krogh to explain: ‘Your brother’s been talking to the Press.’
‘You’ve found it out already,’ Kate said.
‘Hall has.’
‘Ah, our Mr Hall.’
‘It’s got to stop.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Kate said, ‘he’s going back to England tomorrow. I’ve given him the money.’
‘To England? Why to England?’
Hall turned back to them. His hands came a little way out of the pockets in a movement of solicitude which remained unfinished. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Krogh.’ He was like an old nurse whose charge has grown up, who wants to comfort in the old way of the clasped arms and the big breasts but knows her charge has outgrown it. ‘You’ve no cause to worry. I can fix everything.’
‘He’s got a girl there,’ Kate explained, but her anxiety to convince them that it was all right, that there was nothing to fear was too obvious. She said sadly: ‘He’s in love’; her explanations demanded a hearing, they beat like a bird against the blank pane of Hall’s inattention and fell at its base. There was something admirable, pathetic, vicious in his love: he had completely surrendered himself. He was as much Krogh’s as the block of stone in the courtyard, the marked ash-tray, the monogrammed carpet (he said: ‘We can frame him like we framed Andersson’), and Krogh’s for that very reason was his. It was marked with his cheapness, his particular brand of caution, his irresponsible ferocity; it was Hall-marked.
‘No,’ Kate said, ‘you can’t do that.’
‘We’ll frame him,’ Hall repeated.
‘Then don’t blame me,’ Kate said, ‘if he talks. He’s not a fool.’
‘You mean he knows about the sale?’ Hall said. ‘Does the whole office know about the sale?’
He watched her with fierce anger, dislike and suspicion, but he respected her too much to waste any time. They had the same ideas, neither had cared a hang what happened to Andersson; the only difference was that they did not work for the same man. He had no time to think, but there was one line along which his brain easily and rapidly ran. He said: ‘Does he play poker?’
‘Yes,’ Kate said.
‘Does he play it well?’
‘He plays nothing well.’
‘I’ve known a card debt before now,’ Hall said, ‘keep a man off a skirt. You’d better have a game tonight, Mr Krogh. He can’t go back to England.’
‘We’re going out tonight, Tony and I,’ Kate said.
‘It’s that or a frame-up,’ Hall said, ‘he can’t leave Stockholm.’
He was like a little pillar of brown bitter smoke. His malevolence came out of his suède shoe-caps, lay like scurf over his overcoat. ‘I’m not worrying,’ he said, ‘and I’ll see that Mr Krogh doesn’t worry.’
‘So you’ll have dinner with us tonight?’ Kate asked, with irony.
‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘You can bet your boots I’ll be there.’ He stood there brown and bitter, narrow and ferocious, the self-appointed defender of the great glass buildings, the works at Nyköping, the log-mills in the north.
3
Hall got up and shut the windows, pulling down the great double panes to keep out the damp late air. Anthony pushed forward two crowns, Krogh four. Kate said: ‘I’ll put down. I haven’t had a hand tonight.’ Hall came back to the table. Innumerable poker hands had perfected the mechanism of his approach; it was hardly bluff he used; there was no acting in his performance, he merely withdrew his interest from his cards completely. He would bid quickly and then relapse into his patient suspicious silence. ‘I double you,’ and his eyes met Anthony’s across the table with absolute indifference to the other’s hand. He had other things to think about, and when his turn came to discard his cards, he discarded without relation to the cards he held (two tens of spades, a four, and two of diamonds, a six of clubs). ‘One card,’ he said, and threw away the six. He played with a complete disregard of the poker-player’s table of chances, with indifference; he depended recklessly on the weakness of his opponents; he was careless of consequences. If he met a really strong hand he was beaten, but against an average hand or a weak hand he always won. He hardly troubled to look at the card he had taken, a three of hearts.
Gullie said: ‘I’ll have three.’ He became jovial under the influence of cards; he was convinced that he could read anyone’s bluff. ‘The military attaché gets reckless,’ he said, ‘ha, ha,’ and flashed his monocle like a small revolving light from face to face. ‘The military art of camouflage, ha, ha,’ and was momentarily disconcerted by Hall’s lack of response.
‘I’ll double,’ Hall said.
Kate went to the window, passing behind Anthony. She could see his hand, three nines, a knave, a two, a weak strong hand. He played as he believed judiciously, never bluffed to a high figure, but always supported his hand for a little more than it was worth; he was either called at once or laid down his cards before Hall’s high bids. He had only won one hand.
‘Well, well,’ Gullie said, laying an elaborate smokescreen about his intentions, ‘this calls for thought.’
‘Double again,’ Hall said. She watched him from the window; one hand was flat on the table, one hand held his cards in a tight pack on his lap; he was staring at Krogh. Every time a bid was made Gullie looked at his hand.
A steamer went by outside, its lights lying thinly along the surface of the low grey mist; it slid by below the reflections of the card-players, driving into the night past Hall’s face. The lit windows in the workers’ flats lay in tiers, like a liner’s portholes, on the opposite shore.
‘The Minister’s taking a holiday?’ Kate asked.
‘He always goes up to Scotland for the First,’ Gullie said. ‘This is where I drop out. Do you shoot, Farrant?’
‘Oh,’ Anthony said, avoiding Kate’s eye, ‘I hope to have a few days.’
‘Going across?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘You’ll have a rough passage,’ Gullie said. ‘Good sailor?’
‘Not very.’
‘Give a man a horse he can ride,’ Gullie said. ‘I’ve never wanted a boat to sail, ha, ha. Puffin Travers invited me across the other day. He’s taken a moor.’
‘Double again,’ Hall said. He took no notice of the conversation which wavered round him, he smoked cigarette after cigarette with the same concentration he had shown in the lavatory of the airliner, the yellow nicotinous smoke blew through his nostrils.
‘I’ll go down,’ Anthony said.
Krogh said: ‘I’ll call you.’ Hall laid down his cards, the two tens side by side, the rubbish in a pack beside them.
‘I’ve got two queens,’ Krogh said.
‘And yours truly is stung again,’ Anthony said, pushing his money over to Krogh. He lit a cigarette, beaming happily at nothing, or at everything: the thin spray of smoke, the cards Hall gathered from the table for a new deal.
This, Kate thought, is a tune to remember: Tony here, Tony happy, the boat going by outside, the lights turned off one by one over the lake in the workers’ flats. The wind stirred the low mist, drove it up from the water till it stood a man’s height round the lamp-posts; very faintly through the double panes the sound of hooting cars. This tune to remember. Sink it deep.
‘Have the smörgåsbord before we deal again,’ Kate said. She pushed the dumb-waiter over to the table and poured out the glasses of schnapps. They all helped themselves, except Hall, to the thin buttered slices laid with ham, sausage, smoked salmon. Hall lit another cigarette and shuffled the cards. ‘Skål Skål, Skål.’ This tune to remember.
‘That’s a fine wireless set,’ Gullie said.
‘Yes?’ Krogh said. ‘I never play it.’
‘Half-past nine,’ Anthony said. ‘The last news in London.’
Kate turned the pointer. ‘A depression advancing from Iceland,’ a smooth anonymous voice
said and was cut off.
‘Good old London.’
‘There’s Moscow,’ Kate said, swinging the pointer; ‘there’s Hilversùm, Berlin, Paris. . . .’
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir,
Au pays qui te ressemble.
‘The Duke of York, opening the new premises of the Gas Light and Coke. . . .’
The voices went out one by one like candles on a Christmas cake, white, waxen, guttering in the atmospherics over the North Sea, the Baltic, the local storms on the East Prussian plains, rain beating on Tannenberg, autumn lightning over Westminster, a whistle on the ether.
‘You can always tell Paris,’ Anthony said, ‘aimer, aimer, aimer.’
‘Your deal, Mr Farrant,’ Hall said.
‘But it was a good voice,’ Gullie said reverently, ‘a good voice.’
‘I’m out of this,’ Kate said. ‘I’ve lost enough. Do you sing yourself, Captain Gullie?’
‘Among friends, just among friends. I’m trying to get up a little opera company among the English here. Nothing difficult. The Mikado. Merrie England. All good propaganda.’
‘Eena, meena, mina, mo,’ Anthony said, dealing four cards. ‘Stand behind and bring me luck, Kate. Cross your fingers, twiddle your toes, that’s the way the money goes. I’ll join you at the workhouse after this deal.’
Hall staked five crowns.
‘Do you know a soprano, Miss Farrant? I’m held up for a soprano. Mrs Wisecock hasn’t the stage sense.’
‘Thank the Lord,’ Anthony said, ‘I’ve bought my tickets.’
‘Bought your tickets?’ Hall said sharply.
‘Otherwise there’d be no London for yours truly. Do they include food with the fare?’
‘No drinks, my boy,’ Gullie said.
Kate said: ‘You’ve bought the tickets?’ She thought: He’s beaten them after all: only this tune to remember then, because it would never be repeated. Tony happy, the mist rising, the firelight doubled by the panes, the thin hum of the electric power. ‘Give me five’; in his hand a straight flush. ‘I’ll double you.’ He’ll remember this, Kate thought; year after year he’ll talk about tonight, playing poker with Krogh, drawing five cards, drawing a straight flush. The story going round the world, in how many clubs, always unbelieved. ‘Double.’
‘I go down,’ Gullie said.
But already she had begun to plan how they might be together again. She knew she might have prayed; the temptation was there, to fall back on eternity, on other people’s God, the emotional cry in the dumb breast, the nudity of confession: I love him more than anything in the world; no, inexact, go nearer truth: I love no one, nothing but him; therefore give him me, let me keep him; never mind what he wants, save me, the all-important me, from pain: do I call it pain, agony, parting here, parting there, messages on post-cards, the storm, the wires down, no more thought in common. But she wouldn’t pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn’t that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one’s belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn’t loading the dice.
‘Double again.’
‘I’ll put you up five.’
‘I’ll go down,’ Krogh said.
‘Double.’
‘I’ll call you,’ Hall said.
‘Well, you can’t beat a straight flush.’
‘No,’ Hall said, ‘I can’t beat that.’
Anthony said: ‘This’ll take me across. I’ll be able to have a good blind on this.’
Hall began to shuffle the cards again.
‘I’m out,’ Gullie said.
‘We’ve had enough,’ Kate said. ‘It’ll take you all night to win that back, Mr Hall. Let’s have another drink and go to bed.’ Something in the sight of him sitting there, his prominent cuffs, his thin hands clutching the cards, irritated her. She said: ‘Cheer up. You’ll win it back another day. Was he always like this, Erik?’ she asked. ‘Always so serious?’ She explained to Captain Gullie: ‘They were almost boys together.’
‘I’ve seen him in a false nose,’ Krogh said, ‘but I don’t think it altered him.’
‘Were the police after you, Mr Hall?’
Hall said sullenly: ‘It was those festas they have. I believe in doing in Rome as the Romans –’
‘Mr Hall’s getting classical,’ Kate said. His malice across the table, like a small oppressive flame, danced in the corner of the eye. One wanted either to put it out or fan it to something larger.
Hall said: ‘I’m going home. Good night, Miss Farrant.’
‘I’ll walk back with you,’ Anthony said.
‘Stay a bit, Captain Gullie. It’s still quite early. Have another drink. Tell me, tell me,’ Kate said, ‘oh, tell me about tartans, Captain Gullie.’
‘That reminds me,’ Gullie said, dropping his voice, ‘of something that fellow Minty was telling me.’
‘Minty?’ Krogh asked. He rose from the table and joined them. ‘What’s that about Minty?’
Hall stood in the doorway buttoning his coat. It was a little too tight in the waist; it constrained him. He said sharply: ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Krogh.’
‘An odd untrustworthy fellow. Runs the old Harrovian Club here. Don’t know how it got into his hands. The Minister can’t stand him. He was trying to make out you were MacDonalds. Well, of course, I looked it up.’
‘Good old Minty,’ Anthony said. ‘Good-bye, Kate. I’m off early.’
‘Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, Mr Krogh, and thanks for your help. You didn’t really need me here. Good-bye, Gullie. See you in London one of these days, I expect.’
But she had no plan, and she couldn’t let him go. She caught him up by the lift. Hall went down before him and he waited for her.
‘What’s up, old thing?’
Kate said: ‘There are things I want to talk to you about.’ She thought: Every day he’ll forget her, but the idea gave her no comfort. (Every day he’ll forget me.) She said: ‘I haven’t seen much of you. There was a lot I wanted to say to you,’ with desperate sentiment, ‘about the old days.’
‘This time,’ Anthony said, ‘I’ll be a faithful correspondent. Three pages every Sunday.’
His bonhomie infuriated her; it flashed back at her from the long mirror-lined corridor, it grimaced sideways at her from the mirrored stairs, it sparkled from the lift’s chromium doors. She said: ‘That’s the best I get, three weekly pages, when I’ve worked for you for years. Everything I’ve done was to help you, and now because a little bitch –’ she despised her own tears; they were too cheap an appeal; she wouldn’t dry them, wouldn’t call attention to them, just let them drip across her face as if she’d walked through a storm without her hat.
‘But, Kate,’ Anthony said, ‘I’m fond of you.’ He glanced with hurried embarrassment down the lift shaft. ‘Hall’s waiting for me. I must be off.’ He grabbed weakly at her hand. ‘I love you, Kate. Really I do. More than anyone in the world. But Loo. I’m in love with her. I’m crazy about her. You’d like her if you knew her, Kate.’ He became reasonable and sententious. ‘Love and in love, Kate. There’s the difference.’
‘Oh, go to hell,’ Kate said, and ran back up the passage, smearing away her tears with her hand as she ran. She heard him shout: ‘Coming, Hall,’ down the shaft, ring for the lift. She stopped outside the door, cleaned and prepared her face as if she were wiping it free of Anthony.
When she opened the door, Krogh said: ‘Where’s Hall?’ She was surprised by his sharpness and anxiety. She said: ‘He’s gone with Anthony.’
‘It’s stuffy in here,’ Krogh said. ‘Hall smokes such bad cigarettes.’ He threw up the double panes and leant out of the window. ‘I wanted Hall.’
‘Well, I ought to be making tracks,’ Captain Gullie remarked weakly, twisting his empty glass, drooping over the card-table, the ivory chips, the deep ash-tray crammed with damp butts.
‘Don’t go,’ Kate said. ‘Have another drink.’
She poured out three glasses, but Krogh didn’t come. ‘Here’s how,’ she said like an echo of Anthony.
‘Foggy,’ Krogh said.
‘You might have sent them home in the car.’
He said sharply: ‘Hall wanted to walk. He told me he wanted to walk.’ He pulled down the window.
‘A car’s no good in one of these fogs,’ Gullie said. ‘It’s quicker to walk. You might drive over into the lake before you knew where you were.’ He began to deal out some cards. ‘Do you know the Imp of Mischief Patience, Miss Farrant?’
‘I don’t like Patience.’
‘You’ll like this one. You’ve got to cover the knaves first, do you see? They are the Imps, ha, ha.’
‘Whose note-case is that? Is it Anthony’s?’ Kate asked.
‘No,’ Krogh said, ‘that’s Hall’s. I saw it too late.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought Hall was one to leave his money about,’ Gullie said. ‘Did you see how he held his cards, ha, ha. Close-fisted, what?’ The idea tickled him no end; anything tickled Gullie; he enjoyed himself wherever he went with the reckless abandonment of a child; any table could set Gullie in a roar.
‘There’ll be tears before night,’ Kate said.
‘Eh, what’s that?’ Gullie said. He swerved gallantly away from the Imps of Mischief. ‘What’s that, Miss Farrant?’
‘What’s the matter, Erik?’ Kate said. ‘Have a drink. You’re tired.’
‘I’ll buzz off,’ Gullie said. ‘Imp of Mischief, ha, ha.’
‘No, don’t go,’ Krogh said. ‘I don’t want to go to bed yet. It’s early.’
‘There’s the lift.’
‘Hall’s coming back for his money,’ Gullie said. ‘Let’s hide it.’
Kate said with bitter irritation: ‘What a little Imp of Mischief you are.’
But the lift stopped at the floor below.
‘Nearly got it out that time,’ Gullie said, reshuffling the cards. ‘Tried to teach a Frenchman once. Wasn’t a bit of good. He always cheated. Can’t see the fun of playing Patience if you cheat.’
Krogh suddenly slid open the great folding doors, walked through to his study, his bedroom. They could see him, past the collected editions, past the Milles sculpture, taking aspirin. ‘What is it, Erik?’ Kate said.