‘You’ve got to hand it to him,’ nodded the winger. ‘Unless, of course, he’s just showing off.’
‘All passengers’ wishes must, providing they seem reasonable, be acceded to without question,’ said Wriste primly. ‘What can I get for you, sir?’
‘Crustaceans, if you know what those are. No garnishings, but don’t forget the red pepper. A painfully cold bottle of Sekt.’
‘Right, sir. And the number of the cabin you have in mind, if you don’t know it already, is fifty-eight. Gor-blimey,’ said Wriste old-fashionedly, ‘how the poor live.’
5
It was not possible to proceed to that cabin with any degree of furtiveness, even though the hour was very late and the corridorlights had been dimmed. The snores along the corridor were so loud that Hillier found it hard to believe them genuine; soon doors might fly open and outrage be registered from under curlers and out of mouths with their dentures removed. As an earnest of this, Wriste suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor to say ‘Good luck, sir’ as though Hillier were going in to bat. And Master Walters, in endragoned Chinese brocade dressing-gown, was pacing like a prospective father, puffing a Black Russian in a Dunhill holder. Hillier, remembering that ‘father’ was a relevant word here, asked kindly if there was any news.
‘News?’ The face, for all the precocity, was very young and blubbered. ‘What news would there be? As a man sows so shall he reap. Arteriosclerosis. He knew he was bringing it on.’ There seemed to be a flavour of Miss Devi’s callous philosophy in all this.
‘One can’t always be blamed for the state of one’s arteries,’ said Hillier. ‘Some people are just lucky.’
‘If he dies,’ said Alan, ‘what’s going to happen to Clara and me?’
‘Clara?’
‘My sister. That other bitch can take care of herself, which is just what she’s doing. My father wouldn’t listen to reason. I told him not to re-marry. We were doing very nicely on our own, the three of us. And everything will go to her, everything. She hates us, I know she does. What will happen to us then?’
Snores answered. ‘Modern medical science,’ said Hillier lamely. ‘It’s amazing what they can do nowadays. He’ll be right as rain in a day or two, you’ll see.’
‘What do you know about it?’ said Alan. ‘What do you know about anything? Spying up and down the corridor, as I can see, spy as you are. If he dies I’ll get her. Or you can get her, being a spy. I’ll pay you to get her.’
‘This is a lot of nonsense,’ said Hillier loudly. A voice from a cabin went shhhhhh. As he’d thought, there were people awake. ‘We’ll talk about this in the morning. But in the morning everything will be all right. The sun will shine – it will all be a bad dream, soon forgotten. Now get to bed.’
Alan looked at Hillier, who was naked under a bathrobe. ‘That’s two baths in half a day,’ he said. Thank God, the boy still had some innocence in him. ‘At least you’re a very clean spy.’
‘Look,’ said Hillier, ‘let’s get this absolutely clear. I’m not a spy. Have you got that? There are spies, and I’ve actually met one or two. But I’m not one of them. If you could spot me as a spy, I can’t very well be a spy, can I? The whole point of being a spy is that you don’t seem to be one. Have you got that now?’
‘I bet you’ve got a gun.’
‘I bet you’ve got one too. You seem to have everything else.’
The boy shook his head. ‘Too young for a licence,’ he said. ‘That’s my trouble – too young for everything. Too young to contest a will, for instance.’
‘Too young to be up at this hour. Get to bed. Take a couple of sleeping-tablets. I bet you’ve got those too.’
“You don’t seem,’ said Alan, ‘to be too bad of a bloke, really. Have you got children?’
‘None. Nor a wife.’
‘A lone wolf,’ said Alan. ‘The cat that walks alone. I only wish you’d be straight with me. I’d like to strip the disguise off and find out what you really are.’
Miss Devi again. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Hillier. ‘Everything will seem different tomorrow. Which is your cabin?’
‘That one there. Come in and have a nightcap.’
‘Many thanks,’ said Hillier. ‘But I have some rather urgent business to attend to.’ He writhed as with bowel pain.
‘That’s all the eating,’ said Alan. ‘I saw that and I heard about the rest of it. Don’t trust that man,’ he whispered. ‘He’s a foreigner. He can’t kid me with his posh accent.’ And then, in an officer-tone: ‘All right. Off you go.’ And he returned to his cabin. Wriste had also gone. Hillier padded to Cabin No .58. As he had expected, the door was not locked. He knocked and at once entered. Again as he had expected, Miss Devi said: ‘You’re late.’
‘Delayed,’ gulped Hillier. Miss Devi was lying on her bunk, naked except for her silver nose-ring. ‘Unavoidably.’ She had loosened her hair and her body was framed in it as far as the knees. Her body was superb, brown as though cooked, with the faintest shimmer of a glaze upon it; the jet-black bush answered the magnificent hair like a cheeky parody; the breasts, though full, did not loll but sat firmly as though moulded out of some celestial rubber; the nipples had already started upright. She reached out her arms, golden swords, towards him. He kicked off his slippers and let his bathrobe fall to the floor. ‘The light,’ he gasped. ‘I must put out the –’
‘Leave it on. I want to see.’
Hillier engaged. ‘Araikkul va,’ she whispered. Tamil? A southern woman then, Dravidian not Aryan. She had been trained out of some manual, but it was not that coarse Kama Sutra. Was it the rare book called Pokam, whose title Hillier had always remembered for its facetious English connotation? What now began was agonisingly exquisite, something he had forgotten existed. She gently inflamed him with the mayil or peacock embrace, moved on to the matakatham, the poththi, the putanai. Hillier started to pass out of time, nodding to himself as he saw himself begin to take flight. Goodbye, Hillier. A voice beyond, striking like light, humorously catechised him, and he knew all the answers. Holy Cross Day? The festival of the exaltation of the Cross, September 14th. The year of the publication of Hypatia? 1853. The Mulready Envelope, The Morall Philosophie of Doni, the Kennington Oval laid out in 1845, The White Doe of Rylstone, Markheim, Thrawn Janet, Wade’s magic boat called Wingelock, Pontius Pilate’s porter was named Cartaphilus the wandering Jew. When did Queen Elizabeth come to the throne? November, 1558. Something there tried to tug him back, some purpose on earth, connected with now, his job, but he was drawn on and on, beyond, to the very source of the voice. He saw the lips moving, opening as to devour him. The first is the fifth and the fifth is the eighth, he was told by a niggling earth-voice, but he shouted it down. He let himself be lipped in by the chewing mouth, then was masticated strongly till he was resolved into a juice, willing this, wanting it. Mani, mani was the word, he remembered. The mani was tipped, gallons of it, into a vessel that throbbed as if it were organic and alive, and then the vessel was sealed with hot wax. He received his instructions in the name of man, addressed as Johnrobert-jameswilliam (the brothers Maryburgh playing a fife over Pompeii, Spalato, Kenwood, Osterley) Bedebellblair: Cast forth doughtily! So to cast forth in that one narrow sweet cave would be to wreck all the ships of the world – Alabama, Ark, Beagle, Bellerophon, Bounty, Cutty Sark, Dreadnought, Endeavour, Erebus, Fram, Golden Hind, Great Eastern, Great Harry, Marie Celeste, Mayflower, Revenge, Skidbladnir, Victory. But it was the one way to refertilise all the earth, for the cave opened into myriad channels below ground, mapped before him like the tree of man in an Anatomy. The gallons of mani had swollen to a scalding ocean on which navies cheered, their masts cracking. The eighty-foot tower that crowed from his loins glowed whitehot and then disintegrated into a million flying bricks. He pumped the massive burden out. Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel and Jerahmeel cried with sevenfold main voice, a common chord that was yet seven distinct and different notes. But, miracle, at once, from unknown reservoirs, t
he vessel began to fill again.
‘Madu, madu!’ she seemed to call. It was then now to be the gross way of the south. She bloated herself by magic to massive earth-mother, the breasts ever growing too big for his grasp, so that his fingers must grow and he grow new fingers. The nipples were rivets boring through the middle metacarpal bones. His soreness was first cooled then anointed by the heat of a beneficent hell that (Dante was right) found its location at earth’s centre. He was caught in a cleft between great hills. He worked slowly, then faster, then let the cries of birds possess his ears – gannet, cormorant, bittern, ibis, spoonbill, flamingo, curassow, quail, rail, coot, trumpeter, bustard, plover, avocet, oystercatcher, curlew, oriole, crossbill, finch, shrike, godwit, wheatear, bluethroat. The cries condensed to a great roar of blood. The cabin soared, its ceiling blew off in the stratosphere and released them both. He clung, riding her, fearful of being dislodged, then, as the honeyed cantilena broke and flowed, he was ready to sink with her, she deflating herself to what she had been, her blown river of hair settling after the storm and flood.
But even now it was not all over. The last fit was in full awareness of time and place, the mole on the left shoulder noted, the close weave of the skin, the sweat that gummed body to body. The aim was to slice off the externals of the jaghana of each, so that viscera engaged, coiling and knotting into one complex of snakes. Here nature must allow of total penetration, both bodies lingam and yoni. ‘Now pain,’ she said. Her talons attacked his back; it was as if she were nailing him to herself. When she perceived his sinking, she broke away – viscera of each retreating and coiling in again, each polished belly slamming to, a door with secret hinges. She gave his neck and chest the sounding touch, so that the hairs stood erect, passed, on to the half-moon on the buttocks, then the tiger’s claw, the peacock’s foot, the hare’s jump, the blue lotus-leaf. She was essaying the man’s part, and now she took it wholly, but not before Hillier had nearly swooned with the delectable agony of a piercing in his perineum so intense that it was as if he were to be spitted. She was on him then, and though he entered her it seemed she was entering him. He seemed raised from the surface of the bed by his tweaked and moulded nipples. He in his turn dug deep with plucking fingers into the fires that raged in the interlunar cavern, and soon what must be the ultimate accession gathered to its head. With athletic swiftness he turned her to the primal position and then, whinnying like a whole herd of wild horses, shivering as if transformed to protoplasm save for that plunging sword, he released lava like a mountain in a single thrust of destruction, so that she screamed like a burning city. Hillier lay on her still, sucked dry by vampires, moaning. The galaxies wheeled, history shrieked then settled, familiar sensations crept back into the body, common hungers began to bite. He fell from her dripping as from a sea-bathe and, as also from that, tasting salt. He sought his bathrobe, but she grabbed it first, covering herself with it. She smiled – not kindly but with malice, so that he frowned in puzzlement – and then she called: ‘Come in!’
And so he entered, still in evening clothes, huge, bald, smiling. Mr Theodorescu. ‘Ah, yes,’ he organ-stopped. ‘Accept only this brand. The genuine article.’ The S burned on wet nakedness; it was too late now to attempt to hide it. ‘Mr Hillier,’ beamed Theodorescu. ‘I thought it must be Mr Hillier. Now I definitely know.’
6
‘Yes,’ said Theodorescu, ‘now I definitely know.’ He was carrying, Hillier now noticed, the kind of stick known as a Penang lawyer. ‘You, of course, Miss Devi, have known a little longer. That branded S tells all. Soskice’s work, a cruel operator. The face of Hillier still unknown, but that signature snaking all over Europe, revealed only to the debagger – and your enemies, Mr Hillier, do not go in for debagging, not having been educated in British public schools – to them, I say, or to a lady with the manifold talents of Miss Devi here.’
‘I was a bloody fool,’ said Hillier. ‘There’s no point in my denying my identity. Look, I feel as though I’m having a medical. Can I put something on?’
‘I think not,’ said Theodorescu. Miss Devi still had Hillier’s robe about her; she was also sitting on her bunk, so that Hillier could not tug a sheet or blanket off. Hillier sat down on the cabin’s solitary chair, set under the porthole. To his left was a dressing-table. In those drawers would be garments. Even now, the prospect of wearing one of Miss Devi’s saris or wisp of her underwear met a physical response he had to hide with both hands. Again, in one of those drawers might be a gun. He risked putting out a hand to a drawer-handle, tugged, but the drawer was locked. ‘It is better, Mr Hillier, that you sit there in puris naturalibus, delightful coy phrase. Let us see you as you are. Dear dear dear, how scarred your body has been in war’s or love’s lists. But I would like to see the face. Pads of wax in the cheeks, I should imagine; the mouth-corner drawn down in a sneer – by simple stitching? Is that moustache real? Why do your eyes glitter so? Never mind, never mind. The time for talk is short. Let us talk then.’
‘First,’ said naked Hillier, ‘tell me who you are.’
‘I operate under my own name,’ said Theodorescu, leaning against the wardrobe. ‘I am utterly neutral, in the pay of no power, major or minor. I collect information and sell it to the highest – or shall I say higher? – bidder. I see only two men, usually in Lausanne. They bid according to the funds their respective organisations render available. It is a tolerably profitable trade, relatively harmless. Occasionally I make a direct sale, no auctioning. Well, now. Would you, Miss Devi, be good enough to dress? We will both look the other way, being gentlemen. And then I’d be glad if you’d proceed at once to the radio-room. You know what message to send.’
‘What is all this?’ asked Hillier. ‘Something about me?’ Miss Devi rose from her bed, bundling up sheets and blankets as she did so. These she threw, a billow of white and brown, on to the space between Theodorescu and the cabin-door, so that Hillier could not get at them. Theodorescu then stepped gracefully aside, that she might take garments from the wardrobe. She chose black slacks and a white jumper. Hillier, naked, no gentleman, watched. She drew on the slacks without removing the bathrobe. Then she removed and threw it among the sheets and blankets, making Hillier gulp with the nostalgia of shared passion. She pulled the sweater on. Her hair, still flowing, was trapped in it. She released it with a long electric crackle. Hillier gulped and gulped. Theodorescu had kept his eyes averted, looking through the porthole at the deep Adriatic night. Miss Devi smiled at nothing, thrust her feet into sandals, then silently left. Theodorescu came to sit heavily upon the bunk. He said: ‘You will have guessed what the message is. You are, if my informants in Trieste have not lied, now on your final assignment. I do not know what the assignment is, nor do I much care. The fact is that you will not be landing in Yarylyuk. Miss Devi is informing the authorities – in a suitably cryptic form they will know how to interpret – that you are on your way. They will be awaiting you on the quayside. I am not doing this for money, Mr Hillier, for, of course, you will not be landing. There will be men waiting for Mr Jagger or whatever new persona you might consider assuming, and they will find nobody answering your description. They may, of course, find it necessary to strip one or two of the male passengers, looking for a telltale S. Those who are stripped – and they will not be many, most of our compagnons de voyage being old and fat – those who are will not object: it will be a story about adventures in a brutal police-state to retail over brandy and cigars back home. You would, if you were to stay on board instead of landing, also be in some slight danger. For these dear people are efficient at winkling out their quarry, as you well know. Visitors are allowed aboard, in the interests of the promotion of international friendship. This port of call is the sweet-sour sauce of the whole meaty trip. A British meal, British whisky, a few little purchases in the ship’s gift-shop – these are encouragements to keep the Black Sea open to British cruises. There will be people wandering the ship looking for you, Mr Hillier. There may even be police-warrants
, trumped-up charges. The Captain will not want too much trouble.’
‘You do talk a lot,’ said Hillier.
‘Do I? Do I?’ Theodorescu seemed pleased. ‘Well, I’d better come to the point or points, had I not? Tomorrow a helicopter will be picking up Miss Devi and myself. We shall be sailing quite near the island of Zakynthos. You are cordially invited to come with us, Mr Hillier.’
‘Where to?’
‘Oh, I have no one headquarters. We could spend a pleasant enough time, the three of us, in my little villa near Amalias.’
‘And then, of course, I would be sold.’
‘Sold? Sold? Could I not sell you now if I wished? No, Mr Hillier, I trade only in information. You must be a repository of a great deal of that. We could take our time over it. And then you could go, free as the air, well-rewarded. What do you say?’
‘No.’
Theodorescu sighed. ‘I expected that. Well, well. The delights that Miss Devi is qualified to purvey are, as you already know, very considerable. Or rather you do not yet know. You’ve had time to touch only their fringes. Women I do not much care for myself – I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys – but Miss Devi – this I have been assured of by some whose judgement I respect on other matters of a hedonistic kind – Miss Devi is altogether exceptional. Think, Mr Hillier. You’re retiring from the hazardous work of espionage. What have you to look forward to? A tiny pension, no golden handshake –’