65 Short Stories (106 page)

‘You see, I married a German lady,’ said Caypor gravely.

‘Oh, really?’

‘I don’t think anyone could be more patriotic than I am. I’m English through and through and I don’t mind telling you that in my opinion the British Empire is the greatest instrument for good that the world has ever seen, but having a German wife I naturally see a good deal of the reverse of the medal. You don’t have to tell me that the Germans have faults, but frankly I’m not prepared to admit that they’re devils incarnate. At the beginning of the war my poor wife had a very rough time in England and I for one couldn’t have blamed her if she’d felt rather bitter about it. Everyone thought she was a spy. It’ll make you laugh when you know her. She’s the typical German 
Hausfrau 
who cares for nothing but her house and her husband and our only child Fritzi.’ Caypor fondled his dog and gave a little laugh. ‘Yes, Fritzi, you are our child, aren’t you? Naturally it made my position very awkward. I was connected with some very important papers, and my editors weren’t quite comfortable about it. Well, to cut a long story short I thought the most dignified course was to resign and come to a neutral country till the storm blew over. My wife and I never discuss the war, though I’m bound to tell you that it’s more on my account than hers, she’s much more tolerant than I am and she’s more willing to look upon this terrible business from my point of view than I am from hers.’

‘That is strange,’ said Ashenden. ‘As a rule women are so much more rabid than men.’

‘My wife is a very remarkable person. I should like to introduce you to her. By the way, I don’t know if you know my name. Grantley Caypor.’

‘My name is Somerville,’ said Ashenden.

He told him then of the work he had been doing in the Censorship Department, and he fancied that into Caypor’s eyes came a certain intentness. Presently he told him that he was looking for someone to give him conversation-lessons in German so that he might rub up his rusty knowledge of the language; and as he spoke a notion flashed across his mind; he gave Caypor a look and saw that same notion had come to him. It had occurred to them at the same instant that it would be a very good plan for Ashenden’s teacher to be Mrs Caypor.

‘I asked our landlady if she could find me someone and she said she thought she could. I must ask her again. It ought not be very hard to find a man who is prepared to come and talk German to me for an hour a day.’

‘I wouldn’t take anyone on the landlady’s recommendation,’ said Caypor. ‘After all you want someone with a good North-German accent and she only talks Swiss. I’ll ask my wife if she knows anyone. My wife’s a very highly educated woman and you could trust her recommendation.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

Ashenden observed Grantley Caypor at his ease. He noticed how the small, grey-green eyes, which last night he had not been able to see, contradicted the red good-humoured frankness of the face. They were quick and shifty, but when the mind behind them was seized by an unexpected notion they were suddenly still. It gave one a peculiar feeling of the working of the brain. They were not eyes that inspired confidence; Caypor did that with his jolly, good-natured smile, the openness of his broad, weather-beaten face, his comfortable obesity and the cheeriness of his loud deep voice. He was doing his best now to be agreeable. While Ashenden talked to him, a little shyly still but gaining confidence from that breezy, cordial manner, capable of putting anyone at his i ease, it intrigued him to remember that the man was a common spy. It gave a I tang to his conversation to reflect that he had been ready to sell his country for no more than forty pounds a month. Ashenden had known Gomez, the young Spaniard whom Caypor had betrayed. He was a high-spirited youth, with a love of adventure, and he had undertaken his dangerous mission not for the money he earned by it, but from a passion for romance. It amused him to outwit the clumsy German’ and it appealed to his sense of the absurd to play a part in a shilling shocker. It was not very nice to think of him now six feet underground in a prison yard. He was young and he had a certain grace of gesture. Ashenden wondered whether Caypor had felt a qualm when he delivered him up to destruction.

‘I suppose you know a little German?’ asked Caypor, interested in the stranger.

‘Oh, yes, I was a student in Germany, and I used to talk it fluently, but that is long ago and I have forgotten. I can still read it very comfortably.’

‘Oh, yes, I noticed you were reading a German book last night.’

Fool! It was only a little while since he had told Ashenden that he had not seen him at dinner. He wondered whether Caypor had observed the slip. How difficult it was never to make one! Ashenden must be on his guard; the thing that made him most nervous was the thought that he might not answer readily enough to his assumed name of Somerville. Of course there was always the chance that Caypor had made the slip on purpose to see by Ashenden’s face whether he noticed anything. Caypor got up.

‘There is my wife. We go for a walk up one of the mountains every afternoon. I can tell you some charming walks. The flowers even now are lovely.’

‘I’m afraid I must wait till I’m a bit stronger,’ said Ashenden, with a little sigh. He had naturally a pale face and never looked as robust as he was. Mrs Caypor came downstairs and her husband joined her. They walked down the road, Fritzi bounding round them, and Ashenden saw that Caypor immediately began to speak with volubility. He was evidently telling his wife the results of his interview with Ashenden. Ashenden looked at the sun shining so gaily on the lake; the shadow of a breeze fluttered the green leaves of the trees; everything invited a stroll: he got up, went to his room and throwing himself on his bed had a very pleasant sleep.

He went in to dinner that evening as the Caypors were finishing, for he had wandered melancholy about Lucerne in the hope of finding a cocktail that would enable him to face the potato salad that he foresaw, and on their way out of the dining-room Caypor stopped and asked him if he would drink coffee with them. When Ashenden joined them in the hall Caypor got up and introduced him to his wife. She bowed stiffly and no answering smile came to her face to respond to Ashenden’s civil greeting. It was not hard to see that her attitude was definitely hostile. It put Ashenden at his ease. She was a plainish woman, nearing forty, with a muddy skin and vague features; her drab hair was arranged in a plait round her head like that of Napoleon’s Queen of Prussia; and she was squarely built, plump rather than fat, and solid. But she did not look stupid; she looked on the contrary, a woman of character, and Ashenden, who had lived enough in Germany to recognize the type, was ready to believe that though capable of doing the housework, cooking the dinner, and climbing a mountain, she might be also prodigiously well-informed. She wore a white blouse that showed a sunburned neck, a black skirt and heavy walking boots. Caypor addressing her in English told her in his jovial way, as though she did not know it already, what Ashenden had told him about himself She listened grimly.

‘I think you told me you understood German,’ said Caypor, his big red face wreathed in polite smiles but his little eyes darting about restlessly. ‘Yes, I was for some time a student in Heidelberg.’

‘Really?’ said Mrs Caypor in English, an expression of faint interest for a moment chasing away the sullenness from her face. ‘I know Heidelberg very well. I was at school there for one year.’

Her English was correct, but throaty, and the mouthing emphasis she gave her words was disagreeable. Ashenden was diffuse in praise of the old university town and the beauty of the neighbourhood. She heard him, from the standpoint of her Teutonic superiority, with toleration rather than with enthusiasm.

‘It is well known that the valley of the Neckar is one of the beauty places of the whole world,’ she said.

‘I have not told you, my dear,’ said Caypor then, ‘that Mr Somerville is looking for someone to give him conversation lessons while he is here. I told him that perhaps you could suggest a teacher.’

‘No, I know no one whom I could conscientiously recommend,’ she answered. ‘The Swiss accent is hateful beyond words. It could do Mr Somerville only harm to converse with a Swiss.’

‘If I were in your place, Mr Somerville, I would try and persuade my wife to give you lessons. She is, if I may say so, a very cultivated and highly educated woman.’

‘Ach, Grantley, I have not the time. I have my own work to do.’

Ashenden saw that he was being given his opportunity. The trap was prepared and all he had to do was to fall in. He turned to Mrs Caypor with a manner that he tried to make shy, deprecating and modest.

‘Of course it would be too wonderful if you would give me lessons. I should look upon it as a real privilege. Naturally I wouldn’t want to interfere with your work. I am just here to get well, with nothing in the world to do, and I would suit my time entirely to your convenience.’

He felt a flash of satisfaction pass from one to the other and in Mrs Caypor’s blue eyes he fancied that he saw a dark glow.

‘Of course it would be a purely business arrangement,’ said Caypor. ‘There’s no reason that my good wife shouldn’t earn a little pin-money. Would you think ten francs an hour too much?’

‘No,’ said Ashenden. ‘I should think myself lucky to get a first-rate teacher for that.’

‘What do you say, my dear? Surely you can spare an hour, and you would be doing this gentleman a kindness. He would learn that all Germans are not the devilish fiends that they think them in England.’

On Mrs Caypor’s brow was an uneasy frown and Ashenden could not but think with apprehension of that hour’s conversation a day that he was going to exchange with her. Heaven only knew how he would have to rack his brain for subjects of discourse with that heavy and morose woman. Now she made a visible effort.

‘I shall be very pleased to give Mr Somerville conversation lessons.’

‘I congratulate you, Mr Somerville,’ said Caypor noisily. ‘You’re in for a treat. When will you start, tomorrow at eleven?’

‘That would suit me very well if it suits Mrs Caypor.’

‘Yes, that is as good an hour as another,’ she answered.

Ashenden left them to discuss the happy outcome of their diplomacy. But when, punctually at eleven next morning, he heard a knock at his door (for it had been arranged that Mrs Caypor should give him his lesson in his room) it was not without trepidation that he opened it. It behoved him to be frank, a trifle indiscreet, but obviously wary of a German woman, sufficiently intelligent, and impulsive. Mrs Caypor’s face was dark and sulky. She plainly hated having anything to do with him. But they sat down and she began, somewhat peremptorily, to ask him questions about his knowledge of German literature. She corrected his mistakes with exactness and when he put before her some difficulty in German construction explained it with clearness and precision. It was obvious that though she hated giving him a lesson she meant to give it conscientiously. She seemed to have not only an aptitude for teaching, but a love of it, and as the hour went on she began to speak with greater earnestness. It was already only by an effort that she remembered that he was a brutal Englishman. Ashenden, noticing the unconscious struggle within her, found himself not a little entertained; and it was with truth that, when later in the day Caypor asked him how the lesson had gone, he answered that it was highly satisfactory; Mrs Caypor was an excellent teacher and a most interesting person.

‘I told you so. She’s the most remarkable woman I know’

And Ashenden had a feeling that when in his hearty, laughing way Caypor said this he was for the first time entirely sincere.

In a day or two Ashenden guessed that Mrs Caypor was giving him lessons only in order to enable Caypor to arrive at a closer intimacy with him, for she confined herself strictly to matters of literature, music, and painting; and when Ashenden, by way of experiment, brought the conversation round to the war, she cut him short.

‘I think that is a topic that we had better avoid, Herr Somerville,’ she said. She continued to give her lessons with the greatest thoroughness, and he had his money’s worth, but every day she came with the same sullen face and it was only in the interest of teaching that she lost for a moment her instinctive dislike of him. Ashenden exercised in turn, but in vain, all his wiles. He was ingratiating, ingenuous, humble, grateful, flattering, simple, and timid.

She remained coldly hostile. She was a fanatic. Her patriotism was aggressive, but disinterested, and obsessed with the notion of the superiority of all things German she loathed England with a virulent hatred because in that country she saw the chief obstacle to their diffusion. Her ideal was a German world in which the rest of the nations under a hegemony greater than that of Rome should enjoy the benefits of German science and German art and German culture. There was in the conception a magnificent impudence that appealed to Ashenden’s sense of humour. She was no fool. She had read much, in several languages, and she could talk of the books she had read with good sense. She had a knowledge of modern painting and modern music that not a little impressed Ashenden. It was amusing once to hear her before luncheon play one of those silvery little pieces of Debussy; she played it disdainfully because it was French and so light, but with an angry appreciation of its grace and gaiety. When Ashenden congratulated her she shrugged her shoulders.