St. Urbain's Horseman (22 page)

Bodies were gnawed by rats, as were unconscious women. The women were plagued by lice.

“Then Mengele came. He was the first one to rid the entire women's camp of lice. He simply had an entire block gassed. Then he disinfected the block.”

Mengele's pitch, his most cherished place, was on the ramp with the Canada detail. The Canada men unloaded prison transports and collected the baggage of new arrivals. Watches, pocketbooks, blankets, jars of jam, sausages, bread, coats. These valuables were lugged to storehouses with the collective name Canada, so called because of the country's reputation as a land of immense riches.

“Mengele cannot have been there all the time.”

“In my opinion, always. Night and day.”

S
URFACING FROM A DREAM OF THE HORSEMAN, ONLY A
week after Ingrid had formally filed charges against him and Harry, he thought – no fear, Jake – soon Ormsby-Fletcher will arrive. Ormsby-Fletcher, his consolation. To remark on the weather and clap his bowler down on the monk's bench in the outer hall. Then the two of them would retire to the study to mull over the day's defeats and plan tomorrow's campaign.

Ormsby-Fletcher.

When it became obvious, even to Jake, that there would be no stopping Ingrid's complaint and that the case would actually go to court, his first embarrassed thought was he did not want a Jewish lawyer, no twisting, eloquent point scorer who would outwit judge and prosecutor, eat witnesses, alienate the jury, shine so foxily in court in fact as to ultimately lose him the case. No. Say what you like about the
goyim
, they had their uses. For his defense Jake required an upright plodding
WASP;
and, in his mind's eye, swishing cognac around in his glass night after night, Jake methodically fabricated his identi-kit champion. He would be unaggressively handsome, after the fashion of the British upper classes, that is to say, somewhat wanting, like an underdeveloped photograph. Without salt. He would commute, Jake imagined, from a detached in an unspoiled village in Surrey (nr. Guildford, 40 min. Waterloo), where on weekends he
tended to the rose bushes and fought off encroaching crabgrass with his toothy wife. (If it isn't too much to hope for, Jake thought, fighting down the tears, we'll swap cuttings, my
goy
and I.)
England worries him
. Raised on the King James version, lemon squash,
Tom Brown's Schooldays
, hamsters from Harrod's pet shop, Daddy's Ceylon tea shares, Kaffirs, debentures, chocolate digestives, and duty, he would find today's swingers perplexing. He would approve of the court's decision on
Lady Chatterley's Lover
, but would argue – Jake hoped – that issuing the novel in paperback, thereby making it available to untutored minds, was going too far, rather, like
MBE'S
for the Beatles. He would have been to a good but minor public school, doing his national service with a decent regiment, going on from there to Pembroke, Cambridge (his father's college) before being articled to a solicitor. He would not have crammed at university because his nagging parents had never had the chance
oy
and were doing without
oy oy:
he would have muddled through to a degree. He was a Tory, but no Blimp. While he felt, for instance, that black Africans were not quite ready for self-government, he could jolly well understand their point of view. His wife – “The vicar's daughter,” Jake decided aloud – ordered a joint (tenderized) for Sunday and cleverly made do (color supplement shepherd's pie, not
-too
-hot curry) until Tuesday. Waste not, want not. Instead of dinner on Wednesday they got by with high tea, cucumber and fishpaste sandwiches, bread and jam, while he helped his son with his Latin prep and she read
Mary Poppins
aloud to their little girl. Mnnn … I know, Jake added, clapping his hands, there is no central heating because they both agreed it was unhealthy. When she was having her menstrual period he was not so boorishly selfish as to hint at alternative forms of gratification: instead he came home bearing boxes of chocolates.

My
goy
's wife, Jake thought, once the most feared left-winger on the Girton hockey field, twice mentioned in Jennifer's Diary, drives him to his commuters' train each morning, both of them fastened
into their seat belts, and – Jake added – if he makes a telephone call from my house he will offer me four pence. If she has stunning breasts she would keep them decently bound and cashmered: similarly, if her bottom was ravishingly round it would be squared into a tweed skirt.

We'll chat about politics, Jake thought, my
goy
and I, agreeing that while Harold Wilson was too clever by half and George Brown wasn't the sort of chap you'd send to see the Queen, they were, after all, entitled to their innings. Jake's solicitor would no more fiddle the tax inspector than cheat his mother at bezique; and what about the
Times
crossword? Yes, yes, of course he does it. Faithfully.

Perfect!

But where oh where, Jake wondered, consumed with ardor for his image, will I find such a limp prick? And then he remembered Ormsby-Fletcher. Stiff-collared, cherub-mouthed Ormsby-Fletcher, whom he had met at one of Luke's parties, finding him as abandoned as an empty beer bottle in a corner of the living room. “I daresay,” Ormsby-Fletcher said, “I'm the only one here not connected with the arts. I'm Adele's cousin, you see.”

So Jake located Ormsby-Fletcher and phoned him at his office. “Mr. Ormsby-Fletcher,” he said, “I'm afraid you won't remember me. This is Jacob Hersh –”

“Indeed I do.”

“I'm in trouble.”

“I'm afraid I don't handle divorces myself, but I'd be glad to refer –”

“What about, um, criminal law?”

“I see,” Ormsby-Fletcher said, faltering, retreating, already contriving excuses, Jake thought.

“Couldn't we meet,” Jake cut in. “Informally, if you like.”

They met at a pub, Jake arriving first, showily carrying a
Times
and
Punch
. “I fancy a long drink myself,” Jake said, already tight. “What about you?” A gin, he said; and then Jake suffered chit-chat and fortified himself with uncounted doubles before he risked saying, “This
is probably not your cup of tea, Mr. Ormsby-Fletcher. I shouldn't have troubled you. You see, it's a sex charge.”

The blood went from Ormsby-Fletcher's strawberry-colored cheeks and he drew his long legs in from under the table tight as he could to his chair.

“Hold on. I'm not queer. It's –”

“Perhaps if you began at the beginning.”

Brilliant. So Jake started to talk, circling close to repellent details, backpedaling furiously, hemming, hawing, hinting obliquely, retreating from the excruciating moment he would have to get down to concrete details, the crux, which would oblige him, just for openers, to use words such as penis and penetration … or, Jake wondered, hesitating again, was he expected to lapse into a gruffer idiom, something more forthrightly colonial? And then Ormsby-Fletcher, permanently endearing himself to Jake, volunteered, “I see. So then he led her into your room and, on her own initiative, she took hold of your roger …”

My roger of course. “Yes,” Jake said, igniting with drunken delight, “then the bitch took my roger in her hand …”

“But if that's the case, Mr. Hersh –”

Jake clapped his hand on Ormsby-Fletcher's shoulder and locked him in a manful heartfelt look. “Jake,” he said.

“Edward,” Ormsby-Fletcher responded without hesitation.

Unburdening himself now, Jake released the sewer gates. Careful not to incriminate Harry, he told all. Well, almost.

“I see.”

“Well, Edward?”

“Can't promise anything, you understand, but I'll see what I can do.”

“That's good enough for me,” Jake said, compromising him, he hoped.

“I suggest you come to our offices first thing tomorrow morning,” Ormsby-Fletcher said, and he called for a round-for-the-road.

“Sorry. No more for me,” Jake said, immensely pleased with himself. “I'm driving, you see.”

It was, as it turned out, the first of a seemingly endless run of conferences at offices, with ruinously expensive barristers, and at Jake's house.

Jake, doting on Ormsby-Fletcher, came to anticipate his needs. Five sugars and milk heated hot enough to make a fatty skin for his coffee. Brandy, yes, but not an ostentatiously sloshed three fingersful into a snifter: rather, a splash, British style, sufficient to dampen the bottom of the glass. Ormsby-Fletcher liked to relax with a cigar and natter about this island now. “I daresay, to your way of looking, we
are
hopelessly inefficient …”

“But living here,” Jake protested, looking deep, “is so much more civilized than it is in America. After all, man doesn't live by timemotion studies alone, does he?”

Encouraged, Ormsby-Fletcher asked, “Is it really true that corporations interview and grade executives' wives?”

“It's ghastly. Diabolical,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I simply wouldn't know where to begin …”

Ormsby-Fletcher enjoyed sucking Smarties as he pondered his brief. Hooked on glitter, he liked to think Jake was on intimate terms with the stars, and Jake, lying outrageously, cribbing gossip from
Variety
, more than obliged. “Bloody Marlon,” Jake began one evening, unaware that Nancy had just entered the room, “has done it again. He –”

“Marlon who?” Nancy asked.

“The baby's crying.”

Suddenly Ormsby-Fletcher said, “If it doesn't sound too dreary, I wonder, well, Pamela thought if you had nothing better on, perhaps you'd both drive out to our place for dinner on Saturday night?”

“Why, that would be absolutely super,” Jake said.

But he wakened ill-tempered, dubious, and he phoned Ormsby-Fletcher at his office. “Edward, about Saturday night –”

“You needn't explain. Something's come up.”

“No. Not at all. It's, well – your wife – Pamela – does she know what I'm charged with?” Would I disgust her, he wanted to say.

“You mustn't even think like that, Jake. We'll expect you at eight.”

Wednesday morning a postcard came, written in the most ornate hand and signed Pamela Ormsby-Fletcher. Were there any foods that didn't agree with either of them? Now there's breeding for you, Jake thought, and he wrote back to say all foods agreed with them. The next morning Ormsby-Fletcher phoned. “It's just, ah, well, are there any dietary laws …?” No, no, Jake said. Not to worry. But swinging out onto the Kingston by-pass on Saturday night, Nancy in the car beside him, he began to worry more than a little himself. “Let's not have that smart-assed argument about pantos and homosexuality tonight, the principal boy being a girl …”

The Ormsby-Fletchers' cottage, overlooking the common in an unspoiled village in Surrey, exceeded Jake's fondest fantasies. It was Georgian, with magnificent windows and climbing red roses. Pulling into the driveway Jake braked immediately behind a black Humber with the license plate
EOF 1
, grateful that Nancy hadn't noticed the plate, because he did not want to admit to her that Edward's father, who had bought the original, had been called Ernest, and that Edward was so called because no other anything-
OF 1
plate was available.

“Hullo, hullo,” Ormsby-Fletcher said, and he led them through the house into the garden.

Floribunda roses. Immense pink hydrangeas. Luscious dahlias … Pamela, a streaky blonde and very nice to look at, wore a Mary Quant sheath cut high above the knees and white crocheted stockings. There was another guest, a plump rumpled sybarite called Desmond – something in the City he was – waiting on the terrace, where drinks were served with cheese sticks and potato crisps. Suddenly a pale stammering boy called Edward was thrusting a book and pen at Jake. “What?” Jake asked, startled.

“It's the guest book,” Nancy said. “You sign your name and birth date.”

The
au pair
girl fetched Ormsby-Fletcher's other son, an unpleasant three-year-old called Eliot, to be kissed good night. This done, Pamela began to chat about the theater: she was mad keen.

“But how do actors do it,” Desmond asked Jake, “going on night after night, doing the same bloody thing …?”

“They're children, inspired children,” Jake said triumphantly.

Pamela jumped up. “Would anybody like to wash their hands?” she asked.

“What?”

Nancy kicked Jake in the ankle.

“Oh, yes. Sure.”

Pamela led Nancy to the downstairs toilet and Jake was directed upstairs. Passing Eliot's bedroom, he discovered the boy squatting on his potty, whining. The
au pair
girl was with him. “Anything wrong?” Jake asked.

The
au pair
girl looked up, alarmed. Obviously, she had seen Jake's picture in the newspapers. She knew the story. “He won't go to sleep without his golliwog,” she said, “but he won't tell me where he put it.”

Jake locked himself in the bathroom and immediately reached into his jacket pocket for the salami on rye Nancy had thoughtfully prepared for him. Munching his sandwich, he opened the medicine cabinet, but it yielded no secrets. Next he tried the laundry hamper. Shirts, socks, then at last, Pamela's smalls. Intricately laced black panties, no more than a peekaboo web. A spidery black bra, almost all filigree. You naughty thing, he thought.

Dinner commenced with hard-boiled eggs, sliced in half. Paprika had been sprinkled over the eggs and then they had been heated under the grill to suck out whatever moisture they still retained. Pamela flitted from place to place, proffering damp, curling white bread toast to go with the eggs. Jake washed down his egg with a glass
of warm, sickeningly sweet, white Yugoslav wine, watching gloomily as Pamela brought in three platters. One contained a gluey substance in which toenail-size chunks of meat and walnuts and bloated onions floated; the next, a heap of dry lukewarm potatoes; and the third, frozen peas, the color running. Pamela doled out the meat with two ice cream scoops of potatoes and an enormous spoonful of peas and then passed around the toast again.