The Great Fire (15 page)

He found a room in Borgo Pinti, in a house where students took lodgings. To conserve money, survived on errands performed for an elderly Englishman, elephantine Mr Crindle, heavy breathing and heavy drinking, veteran of war and wives, who lumbered out each day with the support of Peter Exley and a blackthorn stick, to buy a thing or two and take his coffee in any sun going: who spoke rapid Italian in pure English pronunciation, and had, between wheezes, a fund of anecdotes and an endearing bark of a laugh.

In Cairo, in 1943, Exley had told Leith: 'I learned from Crindle. It was from him that I first heard of tolerance, and where tolerance ends. He was good at sorting things out. I'd grown up in a country where sameness was a central virtue. Crindle made variety legitimate.' He said, 'That spring, in Tuscany, was my first in a deciduous land. The first spring in the world, as far as I was concerned.' Then there were women, who all seemed to have lived before: their graces, innate as dreaming.

Then there was fascism, at Florence in vilest forms. 'Again, it was from Crindle that I learned about that.'

Crindle told him, 'Mussolini is as bad as Hitler, and has taught Hitler a lot. You're just in time, here, for the onset of the Racial Laws.'

'We've had racial laws in Australia for generations.'

Crindle looked astonished; but said, 'By now, nothing surprises me.'

Exley, in the Cairo night, went on: 'In his offhand way, Crindle knew a great deal. One of the British students told me that Crindle was said to be sending information to London. When I spoke to him about this, he laughed.' Archie Crindle, majestically slumped in his wicker chair at the Giubbe Rosse, brownish tweed drawn back from striped shirtfront like the shed skin of an overfed reptile — an effect intensified by the texture of threadbare tweed and by Crindle's heavy eyelids.

Crindle saying, 'Dammed elusive, what?'

'On the face of it, a preposterous choice for a spy. But after his death I thought it might be true. He liked to winkle out hidden things.'

'So he died.'

'Died in the new year of '39, in a spell of bitter cold.' Exley said, 'He left me two thousand pounds.' His unlooked-for sorrow over Crindle's death; and the astounding two thousand. Peter, then studying at the Accademia, was earning little more than his bread by giving English lessons and translating the correspondence of a small importer of jams, teas, and shortbread. The letter from Crindle's solicitors brought his gratitude, and a long reprieve. And quelled his parents, impressing them for the first time with the merits of great art.

'The money was in England. In any case, I knew that I'd have to leave Italy, even if war was delayed. I mean that the game was up, for me as well as for the world. I would never be an art historian. In Australia, I'd had no basis for comparison. When I got to Europe, I wasn't even at the beginning, among those younger than I who'd spent their lives in full awareness. Isolation had made me arrogant, too. I wasn't prepared for the quality of thought in others. Spiritually, the Law had taught me nothing. Most painful of all was to recognise, once in a while, a passion greater than my own. The excuse of war enabled me to withdraw.'

He said, 'I've always given in easily.'

'That's waffle. You'd done a lot.'

'I'd come from the land of the single hope attained. One thing didn't lead to another, but was the sole consummation. People longed for a house and garden, or they pitched it all on a sight of the cliffs of Dover. The women longed to be married, come what might. The evidence achieved, you could die happy. In my childhood there were many such walking about, who had died happy and could leave it at that. And they were the enterprising ones. The effort of my exotic interest, of getting myself abroad and discovering ten thousand paintings, learning a language — all that my fellow students took for granted as preliminary, that was the immense feat on which I'd expended my energies. When the train took me out of Florence that summer, I was escaping under cover of war.' He said, 'All the same, I cried.'

The Hong Kong evening, its air like broth, was charged with Asia's unapologetic smells. Leith walked with Exley to a low-roofed tavern on the docks. Peter had discovered the place on his wanderings: the entry, open to the street, gave on the waterfront. There was the hot, stark electric bulb, supplemented by spirit lamps whose mild reek was agreeable. The plain front room just held the two men, the couple who served them, and the furnishings — quite as if it had been composed around them. They sat at a low square table, on bamboo stools. There was a frequent passage of Chinese patrons into a back room, evidently larger, from which fast emphatic talk was heard, and high laughter, and some heroic clearing of lungs.

Hot wine was brought, and small delicacies. Having touched on their separate afternoons, these two might attempt to touch other experience.

'Aldred. If I can ask, has your divorce gone through?'

'Yes. Contrived after the barbaric laws of my country and yours. The decree was issued some months past. I learnt of it at Chungking. Moira has remarried.'

'Anyone we know?'

Leith shook his head. 'I never saw him. A decent chap, I gather, who handles high-flown insurance, connected with Lloyd's. I can't — God help me, I can't remember his name.' He said, 'I saw Moira before I left: London. We met to sign papers.'

'And how was that?'

'It was quite affecting.' Revelations that need not be shared. 'Quite all right.' Curious, in this place, to think that Peter had memories of Moira. He thought that Peter would soon say, I liked Moira.

Exley said, 'She was a darling.'

A fish — garoupa, as it was called — was brought to them, cooked in a sweet crust. Peter went on, 'I recall her as capable, even efficient, but suddenly funny and lively. Principled. Pretty. I'm saying this badly.'

'No, exactly right.' Moira is now near thirty, and perhaps with child. Charlotte also.

'I have a photograph of your wedding.'

'I too.' Everyone in uniform, the hectic handsome faces, the buxom matron of honour with shining eyes. Gardenias. The commanding officer gave away the bride. Aldred recalled Peter at the wedding, rather drunk. Peter had not been best man. 'Dick Summers was best man.'

'Yes. Who was killed a couple of months later.'

Peter said, 'You too will remarry.' Plucked a bone from his mouth. 'I would like to marry.'

'A good thing that would be, Peter, if I may say. Someone in mind?'

'No one. However, the idea — or ideal, at any rate — attracts me these days. Obviously, in practice, more difficult. But then, so is the single life difficult — drinking, lusting, languishing. Vacancy, loneliness.'

They agreed that the fish was excellent. A young woman came from the back room, in shift: and trousers, smiling. Received compliments, bowed, and withdrew. Down her dark blue spine, the thick, glossy, lacquered pigtail flopped heavily in a life of its own; evoking, in Exley, by vigorous contrast, the inanition of far-off Pattie's pusillanimous plait. Well out of that beige existence, at any rate.

He said, 'Even if there were the choice, one needs the time. In these places, we are always facing some date of departure. And who knows if a desirable woman would want me.'

'I should think it likely, you know.'

They smiled — at the dismantled fish, it could have been, and the discarded chopsticks. People came and went, bringing hot scented napkins, hot scented tea. Peter said, 'Earlier, one was careful not to commit oneself, lose one's head. I'll soon be thirty-six. There seems to have been a penalty on all that caution.'

'The price of vigilance is eternal liberty.' Leith did not consider that he himself had been vigilant with women. In the case of Gigliola, there had been immaturity but no calculation. It was only now that the necessity came home to him that he must weigh his words with a woman — weigh them, as he had done last evening, the envelope balanced on his hand.

Impossibility, which had appeared a safeguard, now seemed illusory.

His scruples. Scruple was a tiny measure, used perhaps by a jeweller or chemist. He had never dealt, in love or otherwise, in such minute quantities.

Along Sir Cecil's Ride, he had dwelt on the letters received, which had given him pleasure so simple and apparently pure that he could not feel some die had been fatefully cast. What struck him, on the contrary, was just the rarity of such charm in his days. The adventure of China, his engrossment in his drafted book, were not in question. But the context of his travels had been, as he had written to Benedict, a sustained farewell. All had occurred in an inward solitude, without intimacy, without the exposures of tenderness.

Following his marriage and its wartime dispersal, women had intersected his life in episodes unexamined, never entirely casual. The commitment to prodigious months of nomadic existence had itself been an engagement for near-celibacy. A need of women, even for their mere congenial presence, was for the most part ironically subdued. War, and peace, had separated him from closest friends, male and female. There had been the maleness, and boredom, of comradeship, the solidarity of combat; the relief — as it sometimes was, despite all the talk — of being free of the provocations and perplexities of women.

There was the word he had summoned for his father's photograph: 'loveless.' His mother's letters were attentively framed to avoid any late offering that her son might find, by now, an infringement. His father had, at most, tinkered with the parental role, taking it up sporadically like a neglected hobby and allowing it to lapse. Meanwhile, the son had cultivated independence — and valued it highly, observing the wrangles of his contemporaries with their parents. Exasperated by unsolicited emotion, as yesterday, when Peter's distress at the airfield had threatened him with undisguised affection.

To live for, there was his new work, and the great works of others. As to more poignant reasons left to him for living, there had been, in Paris, the response of the French officer:
Aucune.

Now Peter was saying, 'And you?' After this wandering, Aldred, are there women in your life?

It was clear that Leith would reply. Nor did the question trouble him. He was silent so long that anyone but Peter Exley might again have spoken.

'A girl has become dear to me. Something unsought, and impossible.'

'Is it the changeling?'

'Of course.' He said, 'Her name is Helen, and she is roughly half my age.'

'The name can't be bettered. And the rest will alter.'

'Over years. So much is wrong. She, from the romance of it, imagines herself in love — or so I believe. I, at this age and stage, have grown serious. She is in these respects ignorant, having been allowed no life of her own. I can't envision myself as — what used to be called — her seducer. Still, I'm not a monk, and we live in proximity.' Bleak words — which were a comfort to utter.

'Has this been said?' Peter meant, Do you make love to her? He feared to be misinterpreted, or intrusive.

'Only in the undeniable silence that can be denied at any cruel future time. My apparent role is avuncular, though she and I, and her brother, know better.'

'And the brother?'

'He, in this, is the uncle to us. The parents, two hurt and irreparable figures who hate too readily, have decided to dislike me. They are much away, but have a deputy, a sad sort of Caliban, who keeps track. Nothing might please these three more than to discover me in some indefensible violation: I should thus, in their view, be brought to my knees.' He said, 'The letters, yesterday, from sister and brother, gave some happiness it would be hard to renounce. Discreet, as were my replies.'

A dish of kumquats had been put on the table, and four small coloured cakes dusted with sugar. Leith said, 'This is very good.' He did not mean the kumquats, though the fruit were luminous in their blue dish. It was the quiet speech, and their shared lives.

When they left, Peter said, 'It's pleasant, having you here. I'll miss this when you go.'

'You might come and see me in Japan. Think about it.'

'I could meet Helen and Ben. Or would they feel that I was sizing them up?'

'They, and I, would be pleased. Things must change for you now, Peter.' Then Leith called to mind Audrey Fellowes — who had an air, herself, of seeking change.

On a morning overcast and gusty, they drove out to the prison at Stanley, where the colonials had been interned by the Japanese. 'Desolate,' Peter remarked, as they crossed the island. 'Looted since then, and abandoned.' There was a plan to construct houses. But no one wanted, as yet, to live with spectral sufferings. 'They were marched out here on Christmas Day, 1941, with what they could carry — men, women, children — and here they stayed, for close on four years. Beatings, starvation, diseases, death: the usual. After Hiroshima, after the surrender, they walked back into town, the survivors. Took up where they'd left off. As you've seen.'

Peter had been taking depositions in the trading houses and banks, and in the colonial administration. Had called on taipans and clerks, and on their wives. Had stood in lofty offices, where looted furniture had yet to be replaced. Strolled on the arcaded upper terrace at Jardine Matheson's to talk with white-clad Number One; ascended in an ancient lift at Gilman's, or Butterfield & Swire, to hear the evidence of Numbers Two and Three. Sat in thin cubicles with juniors of the Green Point Cement Company; or waited in airless outer offices among the Chinese clerks and indispensable Portuguese, listening to the clatter of the abacus and the excruciated cough, the random languages. There was the Englishman appearing in a doorway: 'Well, come in.' The plain office, the pile of tedious, lucrative papers stirred by ceiling fan, the harbour fluted through slatted blinds. Blackwood table, creaking chairs. Unlikely setting in which to make an eventual fortune.

He told Leith, 'Scenes from Conrad. Men from Conrad, passing the port around and relating adventures. Not all were phlegmatic, though most were. Not all were impressive, though some were. No one went to pieces in the narration. Generally indifferent as to the fate of their captors and tormentors, certain of whom were remembered as being far worse than others. Disdainful, however, of compatriots who'd behaved meanly in the camp or — if left at large through some technicality — had collaborated on the outside.