Tremor of Intent

  I gasped. She’s agreed to it? He said: I’m afraid it’s all got to be done rather quickly. There’s a boat leaving Tilbury tomorrow morning at eleven. Eleven? (looking for confirmation to the Slav man. The man nodded.) The Petrov-Vodkin, carrying cargo to Rostock. Some men from Warnemünde will pick you up at the Warnow Hotel. Everything’s going to be all right, believe me. A new lease of life. Your career’s done for here, you must realise that. What’s that in Shakespeare about the man almost damned in a fair wife? Never mind. You’ll like your new ambience – hard work and hard drinking, so I understand. Any questions?

  I’m not going, I said. He said: That’s not a question. As for the disposal of your goods and chattels (you have a house, I believe), that can be done by remote control. The Curtain may be Iron, but it has letter-boxes cut in it. From now on our friend here will be looking after you. Give him your house-key and he’ll arrange for bags to be packed. You’ll sleep here tonight.

  I said: And you call yourself a Minister of the Crown. I knew England was corrupt, but I never dreamed—And then: Will she be coming here too? Will we be going together? He said: You’ll meet at the Warnow Hotel. You don’t believe me? You think this is all a trick? Well, here’s something for you. He took from his top pocket, from behind a handkerchief arranged in seven points, an envelope. He gave it to me. I recognised the handwriting of the note within. I was a fool. We will make a new beginning. Cornpit-Ferrers said: No forgery. The genuine article. She has been a fool too. In fact, we’ve all been fools. Live and learn. But you’ve been the biggest fool of the lot. Of the lot. Of the.1 I said: This is going to be bloody merry England’s last betrayal of a Roper. Oh yes. What you did in 1558 you’re doing again now. Faith then, still faith. England’s damned herself. Warmongering cynical bloody England. His light went out at 15.58. Continental time.2 Up all your pipes. Martyr’s blood runs through them. He said: No regrets, then. Good. He put on a bowler hat and picked up an umbrella. He was wearing a grey raglan overcoat. He was Trumper-shaved-and-barbered. Eucris. Eucharist.3 He had a hard handsome look that would soon go soft. I said: On your own head be it. In my head I carry things England thought valuable. Good, he said again. International share-out, eh? Plans across the sea. I said: Traitor. He said: To whom or to what? Then: I must be going now. I’m giving lunch to a couple of rather important constituents. He did a sort of mock-salute against his bowler-brim, then ordered arms with his umbrella, lip-farting a bugle-call, grinned goodbye at the Slav man, left. I spat in his wake. The Slav man reproved me for that in thick English. His house, he said. Rented by him, anyway.

  The story can end here. Except that, at the Warnow Hotel in Rostock, there was no Brigitte waiting for me. I was not surprised. In a way I was pleased. My sense of betrayal was absolute. I fetched the barnaby out of the cheese-slice, fallowed the whereupon with ingrown versicles, then cranked with endless hornblows of white, gamboge, wortdrew, hammon and prayrichard the most marvellous and unseen-as-yet fallupons that old Motion ever hatched in all his greenock nights.1 The men from Warnemiinde were very jolly and plied me with gallons of the stuff. I think we sang songs. We hardhit bedfriends in twiceknit garnishes. Oh, the2 welter of all that moon-talk, such as it was, whistles and all.3 Whenever an empty trestlestack is given4 more than half of its prerequisite of mutton fibres, you may expectorate high as a HOUSE FULL placard. Implacable.5

  8

  ‘What do we do now?’ repeated Hillier, awake again but dog-tired. He stood up, letting the manuscript fall in loose sheets to the floor. She sought his chest, bare under the dressing-gown, and, arms about him, wept and wept. ‘My poor darling,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘But we knew this was going to happen. You have me to look after you now.’ The figure of Cornpit-Ferrers danced through his brain, waving its rolled umbrella, another of the bloody neutrals. That was where evil lay: in the neutrals. Clara wept, her face still hidden; he could feel tears rilling down the sternum. She drew in breath for a sob and coughed on an inhaled chest hair. His arms held her tight. He stroked, soothing. But the body of a woman was the body of a woman, even when she was a girl, even when she was a daughter. ‘Come,’ he said gently. ‘You’ll feel better soon.’ And he led her over to the narrow bunk. She sat there, wiping her eyes with her knuckles, and he sat beside her, still trying to soothe. She said, her voice denasalised by tears: ‘She walked right in. To my cabin and. Shook me. It was as if she was. Glad.’

  ‘She’s one of the neutrals,’ said Hillier. ‘And now you’ll be rid of her.’ He kissed her forehead.

  ‘And then. When she’d told me. She went. Back to bed.’

  ‘There there there there.’ But, of course, what was there to do except go back to bed? And tomorrow she would have a blinding headache and expect pity, the widow. Had she already equipped herself with smart black? There would be men all too ready to give comfort. Hillier saw them knocking gently at her cabin door; they wore bowler hats and carried umbrellas. He saw himself, tomorrow, making all arrangements. I insist on a rebate, he would tell the purser. And, for that matter, it wasn’t Mr Innes’s fault that he didn’t embark at Yarylyuk. I’ll bet he didn’t nudge out other possible bookings. I want a sizeable chunk of money back. A question of a coffin. Thrown in free, one of the ship’s amenities?

  ‘There’ll be a lot to do tomorrow,’ said Hillier. ‘She’ll see out the cruise, all the way back to Southampton. A distraught and desirable widow. Leave everything to me. As for now, we both need rest.’

  She was tired with the whole evening; it had been a very tiring evening for the three of them: no wonder Alan couldn’t wake up. When he woke he would have a memory of a dream of killing a man, then he would hear of the death of his father. It was no way to start a sunny cruising morning. But there was still this merciful night, a whole black sea of it. ‘Come,’ said Hillier, and he raised her gently from the bunk so that he could draw down the coverlet and blanket and top sheet. Dead-beat, she nodded, sniffing. Hillier helped her off with her silk dragon-patterned dressing-gown; the nightdress underneath was black, bare-armed and shoulder-strapped, opaque but maddening. This was no time for being maddened, though; this was his daughter. She flopped into the bunk, her hair everywhere. Hillier brought his chair closer, sat, and held her hand. Soon the hand tried to drop from his, finger by finger. She slept quite soundly, the power of the sedative Hillier had given her earlier re-asserting itself blessedly. Totally without desire, he stripped himself naked and eased himself into the bunk beside her. Her body, unconsciously accommodating, rolled itself to the bulkhead. He lay with his back to her, almost on a knifeedge of bed space.

  A ghost of sobbing possessed her sleep. He could not lie so, averted. He turned to hold her, and his hands strove to avoid those areas of her body where she would cease to be a daughter. Again that sleeping body helped, turning to face him, the head at length cradled in his oxter, tiny gales of her breathing heating his bare chest. It was possible then to sleep, but he slept lightly, awakening to a rougher sea than any they had known yet, outside the half-open light. Sleepless, a man was parading the deck, coughing over a two-in-the-morning cigarette. Wriste looked in, switched on the bunkside lamp, and, dangling from a bloodless socket an eye on a rubbery stalk, said: ‘I admire you, sir, I do really. What time your early-morning death, sir?’ Hillier shook him out, along with the lamp, but Cornpit-Ferrers, much diminished in size, jumped on to the other bunk and, gripping his lapels in elder-statesman style, addressed the House: ‘My right honourable friend has spoken eloquently of duty to the country as a whole, but duty as seen by a government consists primarily not in governing so much as in existing (Hear hear), and this applies not merely collectively but (man thrown out of Strangers’ Gallery for crying: Adulterer!) componentially. Divided we stand even though united we may fall.’ Hillier found himself in the House of Commons, waiting to meet his own member to protest about being awarded death instead of a bonus. On the floor he disentangled Virtue Prevails and Love and Fidelity to Our Country and Faithful out of the
florid Byzantine cryptograms. Then the letters all snaked up again and the meanings were lost. Instead of his member there came along his chief and colleagues – RF, VT, JBW, LJ. Hue and cry. Guns going off while the Speaker toddled in, preceded by his mace-bearer, followed by his doddering chaplain. ‘I appeal,’ called Hillier, ‘in the name of the Mother of Parliaments.’ A policeman with the portcullis symbol on his flat cap said: ‘Court of Appeal’s not here, mate.’ Hillier was told to take it like a man, not to interrupt the grave processes of legislation, question-time just coming up. Foreign tourists disobeying orders, snapped with their cameras the leaping and twisting body of Hillier as bullet after bullet got home.

  He awoke to find Clara comforting him. ‘A nightmare,’ she said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with her bare hand, which she then rubbed dry against the over-sheet. The sea was quiet again; it was grey very early morning.

  His member; what had that been about his member? Her hands were smoothing his body, girl’s curiosity as well as motherly tenderness in them. His body’s dream-leaping must have shaken her awake. As one hand went down he arrested it, thinking: Never would I have thought possible, never could I have ever possibly conceived that I would now resist what of all things. But her hand, that had turned the pages of so many cold sex-books, was interested. What she touched was warm, smooth, a bauble rather than a rocketing monster. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that. But there are other things.’ This was no time, this was no girl, for the big sweating engine of phallic sex. And so, very gently, he showed her. He gave without taking. He imagined shocked faces on the ceiling whispering: ‘Necrophily’, but he rubbed them out with his own acts of tenderness. To ease her in gently to that world of release and elation which lay all before her, all too easily spoilt for ever by the boor, cynic, self-seeker, was surely a valid part of the office of almost-father he had assumed. This was an act of love.

  But had she already perhaps half-corrupted herself with curiosity? It was more avidity for knowledge than acceptance of pleasure that, after the first epiphany, led her to ask for more things, her greed squeaking faintly like the pencil of an inventory-taker. And what is this, that? How is the other thing done? She wanted to turn atlas names into the photographable stuff of foreign travel. Hillier bade her sleep again, they must be up early, there were many things to be seen to before their disembarkation at Istanbul. He fed her one pleasure that brought her to the sword-point of a cry that might wake the whole corridor, and after that she slept, her firm young body mottled with heat-rash and her hair all dark strings. Hillier wearily looked at his watch: 6.20. At seven she wakened him roughly and demanded what he had been loath to give her. He still demurred but soon, the morning advancing and his own lust angry at its bits and snaffles, he led her to the phallic experience. It was then that she ceased to be Clara. His head was too clear now, tenderness bundled out like a passenger who had not paid his fare, and he was able to say to himself: There are no virgins any more; ponies and gym-mistresses are the distracted deflowerers, jolly liquidators of a once high and solemn ritual spiced with pain. Tea-trays began to rattle in the corridor. He muffled the shriek of her climax with a hand over her mouth and then took his own, humbler, orgasm outside her. At once he was able to plunge into the prose-world of the morning – to lock the door against a tea-bringing steward, light a cigar, tell her to cover herself and, when the corridor was clear, seek her own cabin. Love. How about love?

  She said: ‘Do you think my breasts are too small?’

  ‘No no no, perfect.’

  She put on her nightdress and then her dressing-gown with a child’s glow of smugness. She said: ‘Do you have to smoke those horrible things first thing in the morning?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do. An old habit.’

  ‘An old habit.’ She nodded. ‘Old. It’s a pity one has to wait till one’s old to really know anything. You know a lot.’

  ‘What any mature man knows.’

  ‘They’ll be jealous at school when I tell them.’ She lay on the bunk again, very wide awake, her hands behind her head.

  ‘Oh, no,’ murmured Hillier.

  ‘It’s all talk with them. And of course what they get out of books. I can hardly wait.’

  Hillier was hurt. Early though it was, he gave himself a large Old Mortality and tepid water; the name on the bottle glared at him like his own reflection. She looked indulgently: this was a bad habit, but it didn’t smell like a cigar. ‘Which,’ he asked, ‘will you tell them first – that you’ve lost a father or gained a lover?’

  Her face screwed up at once. ‘That was a filthy and cruel thing to say.’ It was too.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I know a lot but I’ve forgotten much more. I’d forgotten the coldness of youth till you reminded me of it. It needs to be matched with the coldness of the village initiator. There used to be such men, you know – safe experienced men who showed young girls what it was all about. No love in it, of course. I suppose now you think me a fool for having talked about love.’

  She sniffed back the renewed tears of bereavement. ‘I shall remember it. It’s one of the things I shan’t tell the other girls.’

  ‘Oh yes you will.’ His mouth tasted sour. He would have liked to be lying in that bed alone, watching the tea brought in. ‘It doesn’t matter really. I’d forgotten you were a schoolgirl. I’ve never even asked your age.’

  ‘Sixteen.’ She smirked very faintly then looked sad again.

  ‘Not so young. I once had an Italian girl of eleven. I was once offered a Tamil girl of nine.’

  ‘You’re pretty horrid really, aren’t you?’ But she gave him a full gaze of neutral appraisal. Initiator: he could see the word being marshalled into position behind her eyes. And on this cruise there was a man who was really what you might call an initiator. A what? Tell us more.

  ‘I don’t know what I am,’ said Hillier. ‘I failed to be a corpse. I dreamed of a regeneration. Perhaps one can’t have that without dying first. It was foolish of me to think I could be both a father and a husband. And yet in what capacity do I dread your being thrown to the wolves?’

  ‘I can look after myself. We can both look after ourselves.’

  There was a knock at the door. ‘Tea at last,’ Hillier said. ‘You’d better get off that bunk. You’d better look as though you just came in to tell me your sad news.’ She got up and went demurely to a chair. Sad news; that was what the Old Mortality tasted like. Have another nip of Sad News. Hillier unlocked and opened up. It was not the strange steward, Wriste’s replacement. It was Alan. In his dressing-gown, hair sleek, Black Russian in holder, he looked rested and mature.

  ‘Did she spend the night here?’ he asked. Hillier made a mouth and shrugged; no point in denying it. The brother had done murder; the sister had been initiated. ‘Well,’ said Alan, ‘you’ve certainly shown both of us how the other half lives.’ He tasted, like Sad News, the ineptness of that last word. ‘She came,’ he said. ‘She woke me up to tell me. It seemed rather small stuff really. I hope that doesn’t sound callous.’

  Very ill at ease, Hillier said: ‘He reached Byzantium first.’ He could then have bitten out his tongue. Alan looked at him gravely, saying: ‘You’re what I’d call a romantic. Poetry and games and visions.’ To Clara he said: ‘She’s behaving as I knew she would. Terribly ill after telling everybody the news. Blinding headache. Prostrate with grief. She said it was up to the Captain to see to everything. Get him off the ship. Bundle him out of sight. It upsets the passengers, having a dead body on board. They paid for a good time and by God they’re going to have it.’

  ‘You must leave everything to me,’ said Hillier. ‘You’ll want to travel back with him. You can fly BEA from Istanbul. I’ll sort it all out for you, the least I can do. I’ll get dressed now and go and see the purser. I ought to radio your solicitors, his I mean. They can meet you at London Airport.’

  ‘I know what has to be done,’ said Alan. ‘You’re too much of a romantic to be any good at real things. I notice you
don’t say anything about flying to London with us. That’s because you daren’t, isn’t it? Some of your pals will be waiting for you, other romantic games-players in raincoats with guns in their pockets. You talked about looking after us, but you daren’t even set foot in England.’

  ‘Things to do in Istanbul,’ mumbled Hillier. ‘One thing, anyway. Very important. Then I was going to suggest that you both meet me in Dublin. At the Dolphin Hotel, Essex Street. Then we could decide about the future.’

  ‘Our future,’ said Alan, ‘will be decided by Chancery. Wards in Chancery, Clara and Alan Walters. A stepmother has no legal obligation. I suppose you’ll start talking about yourself having a moral obligation. And all that means is our skulking in Ireland with you. Neutral territory. Opting out of history – that was your expression. That means the IRA and gun-men and blowing up post-offices. No, thank you. Back to school for us. We want to learn slowly.’

  Hillier looked guiltily and bitterly at the two children. ‘You didn’t always think like that,’ he said. ‘Sex-books and dinner-jackets and ear-rings and cognac after dinner. You talk about me playing games –’

  ‘We,’ said Alan with something like sweetness, ‘are only children. It was up to you to recognise that. Games are all right for children.’ Then his larynx throbbed with anger like an adult’s. ‘Look where your bloody games have landed us.’

  ‘You’re not being fair –’

  ‘Bloody neutrals. That bitch with the grief-stricken headache and filthy Theodorescu and grinning Wriste and you. But I suppose you feel very self-righteous and very badly done to.’

  ‘There are no real martyrs,’ said Hillier carefully. ‘One should always read the small print on the contract.’