Strange Music (28 page)

‘Because he hasn't gone!' she shouted, not at Willard but at one of the open windows. ‘His body may have gone but he lives on in every line of that
fucking
will! It's his revenge for my rebellion.' Her voice broke.

There was a silence between them after that.

Willard broke it first: ‘You're right, honey.' He sighed. ‘As always. In fact, you're more than simply right – you're
absolutely
right.'

She smiled at him and, reaching out, gave his arm a grateful squeeze – even though, in her heart of hearts, she knew this was just the
other
Willard speaking; he was his own good cop, bad cop.

‘But,' he said brightly, ‘may we now take it – now that the war is over and the Nazis are either hanged or shot or rehabilitated or hiding out somewhere – may we now take it that von Ritter steel is clean?'

‘No! Certainly not! The entire business was built up with the same blood money!'

‘So what are we . . . what are you going to do with it?'

‘Take legal advice. Make it a cooperative? Make it a charity, like Carlsberg? Turn it into a public company to go on making profits—'

‘Now you're talkin' turkey!'

‘. . . but keep a controlling share and turn those profits over to some good cause? Helping the victims of Naziism? I don't know. I'll have to take legal advice. Come on! Breakfast's waiting, and we have quite a day ahead.'

She kept the Big Possibility in reserve.

Breakfast, served out on the terrace overlooking the lake, was of moist, thin slices of ham, a very mild, soft cheese, rounds of bread that looked artificial, with all the aerated bubbles evenly sized and equally spaced – though it tasted good. There was also a bowl of a thready kind of yoghurt, called ‘long milk,' into which they broke chips of a hard, flat, unleavened bread, served in rounds the size of a twelve-inch record.

‘Do they ever do French toast here?' Willard asked.

She laughed. ‘We have a much more romantic name for it –
fattiga riddare
. . . poverty-stricken knights – that's knights with a ‘k.' Don't ask me why!'

‘Jesus!
Arme Ritter!
I'd forgotten that – when I wanted french toast in Germany . . .
Arme Ritter!
It means the same.'

She thought he was about to connect the name with her own and make some comment about money and poverty, but he gazed far out across the little lake and said, with a sigh: ‘It's all so . . . faded and far away.'

‘The view?'

‘No. The war. The way of life we led back then.'

‘Do you ever hanker after them – those days?'

He was genuinely shocked. ‘Hell, no! All the things we're doing now . . . our careers . . . our work . . . our friends – that's what we were fighting to attain. Surely you don't miss
anything
about the war years? Do you?'

She wondered if it was time to come clean at last about her links with the communist resistance in Berlin . . . the excitement . . . the danger . . . the feeling of doing something useful on behalf of . . . well, the whole of Europe . . . the future . . . now – the ‘things' he was talking about.

He respected her hesitation and regretted putting the question to her so bluntly. ‘Anyway,' he said, ‘we can't come to Sweden without calling on Sven Markelius. I'd like to see his plans for this new garden-city outside Stockholm . . .'

‘Vällingby.'

‘That's the one. Also to see if he's likely to be Sweden's nominee on the committee to design the new UN headquarters in Manhattan. He'd have quite a lot of sway there.'

‘I certainly won't have time for that,' she said.

‘I understand.' He cultivated a brief silence. ‘On the other hand . . . I'm not going to be much practical use to you here . . .'

Marianne laughed. ‘Clicketty-click, honey!'

‘Clicketty-click,' he agreed.

Monday, 17 September 1951

When Faith told Alex that, in a few weeks' time, she was going to Tehran to discuss a possible book to mark the 450th anniversary of the foundation of modern Iran under Shah Ismail in 1509, he said, ‘But that's eight years from now.'

‘The inspiration for the book is theirs, not ours,' she replied. ‘They want to commission it from us. And believe me, what with the lavish sort of book they're planning, in a dozen different language editions, to say nothing of the multiple international exhibitions of Persian art and crafts to coincide with its launch, it could easily take us every minute between now and then to put it all together. Besides, it's all got to be very hush-hush for a few years – so “not a word to Bessie about this,” eh!'

He laughed. ‘When you say it's
their
idea . . .?'

‘Yes. That's typical of Fogel – the unplanned way it came about. The Iranian embassy held a party last year to launch a new edition of one of their ancient poets, Ferdowsi, who'd been translated into English – published by Blond but with a hefty subsidy from the Shah. Bound in silk . . . cased in leather . . . hand-laid paper from Barcham and Green . . . no expense spared.'

Alex laughed. ‘I'll bet old Fogel's eyes gleamed at the mere sight of it!'

‘More than that. He immediately started asking the ambassador about the history of Persia . . . and about three seconds after the man said the country was united inside its modern boundaries in fifteen oh-nine, Fogel said, “But that means the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary is only nine years away!” which it was, then . . . and the rest is history – Persian history! So now we've got a
disgracefully
huge budget to produce what will probably be the most lavish book of . . . well, certainly since the war. We're already talking about seven-colour gravure, including gold . . . it'll outshine anything from Lund-Humphries.'

‘And all to the greater glory of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, no doubt!'

‘Ve are all prostitoots now.' She gave an expansive, Fogel-type shrug and added, casually, ‘He's asked me – Fogel, that is – to come back from Persia with a detour via Tel Aviv.'

‘Oh?'

Faith would have sworn that his ears physically twitched. ‘Yes. The Persian book has woken him to the fact that nation states have even more loose cash than do American publishers. I bet I'll be off to Ghana before long. He's well in with Nkrumah. Took him to a picnic at Whipsnade last Sunday. Gave him a birthday present of an air gun.' She chuckled.

‘What's funny about that?'

‘Oh . . . years ago, Fogel asked him what he'd like for his birthday and Nkrumah said, “An air gun – and when you can give it to me legally, you'll know that Ghana is at last free from imperialism!”'

‘About Israel?' Alex prompted.

‘That's very current. Our previous overtures toward the Zionists were a little premature. But now Fogel thinks that – what with the criticism Israel's having to endure at the
UN
these days – Ben Gurion might see the wisdom of doing a book on the Zionist claim to the Holy Land. The
Promised
Land, after all.'

‘And, to be sure, Ben Gurion will be even more inclined to see the wisdom of commissioning such a book once he claps eyes on the dummy pages you'll be taking to His Supreme Majesty in Tehran?'

She smiled archly and said, ‘That might just have formed part of Fogel's thinking.'

‘After
you
had planted the seed of it in his mind, no doubt?' he asked with pantomime casualness.

‘Me?' Her mouth was an O of surprise. ‘Moi? Perish the thought! I'm just the company messenger.'

‘It's beginning to look as if bg has worked out a deal to end the stalemate.'

‘That's the other thing – he'll be too busy to start nit-picking over every small detail in the text. If we say “so-and-so was armed,” they'd want it corrected to “so-and-so was
furnished with
arms
.” Stuff like that is an editor's nightmare.'

A few weeks later and some ten days before she was due to leave for Tehran, Alex rang her from the
BBC
to suggest they should stay up in town for dinner at the Lansdowne. ‘I've spoken to Delfine,' he added. ‘She'll bath the brats and put them to bed. I said we'd be back before midnight. Oh, and I've asked a friend to join us.'

‘Do I know him?'

‘Philip Anderson. He and I occasionally lunch at the Lansdowne. You may have met him there.'

Her heart sank. ‘Oh, yes.' She had met him once before, lunching with Alex at the carvery bar in the Lansdowne. He had clearly been annoyed with her for turning up unannounced and she guessed he had some business with Alex that could not be talked of in front of her. In fact, Alex – instead of walking back with her as far as Broadcasting House – had gone off with him at the end of their lunch. Out of curiosity she had followed, and was just in time to see them disappear into that huge, ugly, concrete Ministry of Education building just round the corner from the Lansdowne, in Curzon Street. But when she had gone to the main desk there, the receptionist denied that two people had just entered the building and that anyone named Philip Anderson worked there or had
ever
worked there. Tony and Adam later told her what ‘everyone in London knows' – that the ‘Ministry of Education' in Curzon Street was actually the
HQ
of
MI
6 and people who worked there liked to meet at the carvery in the Lansdowne because it overlooked the swimming pool, where the splashing and the echoes rendered it almost impossible to make clandestine recordings of conversations there.

‘You don't sound too enthusiastic,' Alex said. ‘Shall I put him off?'

‘No! I only met him the once but I got the impression he wasn't too happy to see me.'

‘Ah, well, believe me – he'll be more than happy to see you tonight!' Alex promised.

The Lansdowne dining room had been très chic back in the thirties – all peach-pink lighting and warm-tinted mirrors and a deep pile carpet that a regiment could have marched over in utter silence; unobtrusive screens of frosted glass in art-deco patterns baffled conversations between each table and its neighbour so that only people up from the shires, accustomed to conversing over hunting horns, shotguns, and howling draughts, ever spoke loud enough to be overheard. Now, in the austerity fifties, it seemed almost sinful to be sitting there, basking in glories that only last year seemed gone forever.

But Philip Anderson was, indeed, pleased to see her; he sprang to his feet and clapped and dry-soaped his hands and helped her into her seat with a beaming smile. ‘I've been
so
looking forward to meeting you again,' he said. ‘Alex has been telling me what a globetrotter you are. I long to hear all about it.'

‘I've ordered you a dry Martini,' Alex said.

And a moment later it was there.

‘Oh! This menu has improved out of all recognition since they abolished the four-shilling limit on meals,' she said.

‘And it can only get better now we've kicked out the socialists,' Anderson said.

She raised an eyebrow at Alex. ‘You agree?'

He shook his head. ‘I wish it were so, but . . . no.'

Anderson looked at him in surprise. ‘Really?'

‘Really. Churchill's not actually in charge, these days. The first thing they moved back into Downing Street was his bed from Hyde Park Gate – symbolic, what? We ought to order, chaps.'

They decided on a selection of hors d'oeuvres from the trolley, followed by Dover sole for Faith, devilled kidneys and bacon for Anderson, and beef carved from the joint for Alex – and agreed, once again, that the abolition of the old cash limit was an utter boon. To wash it down they chose the house white and the house red. ‘So abstemious!' Anderson remarked.

Conversation over the hors d'oeuvres was light enough, mainly about the gossip then circulating around town. Anderson had seen Tallulah Bankhead arriving at the Ritz – her first return to London since before the war; the newspapers said she was afraid all her old friends would be in wheelchairs or on crutches. Faith's mother had been at a house party where Lady Diana Cooper was one of the guests; everyone had been dying to hear about that fabulous party Charles de Beistegui had held in Venice at the Palazzo Labia, which the Aga Khan said was the best party he'd been to since the days of Queen Victoria. Nobody mentioned the incident in which someone threw a glass of water over Lady Diana, and she hadn't spoken of it herself.

‘I wonder – did she mention Johnny Russell?' Anderson asked with a grin.

‘Of the embassy in Rome?' Alex said. ‘First secretary, isn't he?'

‘The same.'

‘Oh, yes!' The penny dropped with Faith. ‘He was the one whose feathered headdress caught fire. Yes, she told them about that.'

‘I've got one for you, Findlater,' Anderson said. ‘Remember an old Gaiety Girl called Rosie Boote? Married the Marquis of Headfort.'

‘Vaguely, but nothing to do with me. We've never met.'

‘Wait till I tell you! She lives in St John's Wood and sends out invitations to what she calls “TeeVee dinners.” The guests all sit around with dinner trays on their laps and watch television! Sign of the times eh, what? What?'

‘Well! Funny you should say that. I wish I'd heard of it yesterday. We had a meeting this morning and it would have gone down well. We were talking about the division of resources between radio and television and up until now I've had the feeling that people considered—'

‘People?' Faith asked.

‘“The men upstairs,” as Arthur Askey calls us. The feeling among us has been that television was at the undignified end of broadcasting, while radio was the plum, with the Third Programme at the summit.'

‘Radio certainly has all the plummy voices,' Faith commented. ‘Sorry. D'you two realize, these olives are stuffed with real anchovies? It used to be sardines. Another sign of the times.'