Tremor of Intent (7 page)

‘I know, I know. What do you want me to do about it? I can't see that there's anything I
can
do.' But then – and they should have done this before – my professional ears pricked. ‘Tell me,' I said, ‘do you discuss your work with her at all? Does she know the sort of thing you're doing?'

‘Never.'

‘Does she ever ask?'

He thought for a moment. ‘Only in the most general terms. She doesn't really understand what sort of work a scientist does. She didn't get much schooling, what with the war.'

‘Do you bring papers home?'

‘Well –' I'd made him just a little uneasy. ‘She wouldn't understand them even if she could get at them. I keep them locked up, you see.'

‘Oh, you innocent. Tell me, has she any relatives or friends in East Germany?'

‘None that I know of. Look, if you think she's on the spying game you're greatly mistaken. Whatever's going on is sexual, you take my word for it. Sex.' This damnable. His mouth began to collapse. The whine came gargoyling out. ‘It's not my fault if I get so tired in the evenings.'

‘And on Sunday mornings too?'

‘I don't wake early. She's up hours before I am.' Now the tears were ready to flood, and I was ready to get him out of here before the fierce fat manageress came. I grinned to myself, remembering Father Byrne sermonising in the dormitory. I paid the bill, leaving all the change, and said, as we left, me supporting his left elbow: ‘I
can make a professional job of this, you know. Watching them, I mean. And if you want evidence for a divorce –'

‘I don't want a divorce. I want things to be as they used to be. I love her.'

We walked down Dean Street towards Shaftesbury Avenue. ‘There was a time,' I said, ‘when you were always having a jab at authority. Very independent you were, Renaissance man, knocking at all doors. You seem to need to lean on something now. Somebody, I mean.'

‘We all need to lean. I was very young and inexperienced then.'

‘Why don't you go back into the Church?'

‘Are you mad? One goes forward, not back. The Church is a lot of irrational nonsense. And you're a right sod to talk, aren't you?' The Bradcaster way of speech had burrowed deep into us, despite our Southern background. ‘Been out of the Church yourself since God knows when.'

‘Since taking up this kind of work, to be precise. A question of loyalties. In my dossier my religion is down as C of E. It's safe. It means nothing. It offends nobody. The Department has an annual church parade, believe it or not. When all's said and done, the Pope remains a foreigner.'

‘Beat him up,' said Roper, not meaning the Pope. ‘Teach him a lesson. You've done unarmed combat and judo and so forth. Knock his teeth in, the big blond swine.'

‘In Brigitte's presence? That won't exactly endear you to her, will it? She called me your fiend, remember.'

‘Get him alone, then. Outside at night. Back at wherever he lives.'

‘I don't see how that's going to teach Brigitte a lesson. The true object of the exercise. Good God, this is really the war all over again, isn't it?'

We were approaching Piccadilly Underground. Roper stopped
in the middle of the pavement and began to cry. Some young louts stared at him, but more in commiseration than in the traditional guffawing contempt. The sex-patterns were merging with this new generation. But not for Roper, not for me. Sex was, for us, still damnable. I persuaded him to wipe his eyes and give me his address. Then he tottered off underground to reach it, as though it were somewhere in hell.

I was going to do things my way, not Roper's. At that time my position in the Department, as you remember, sir, was still more or less probationary. It was not yourself but Major Goodridge who gave me permission – treating it rather like an exercise – to spy on Brigitte Roper,
geboren
Weidegrund, and this Wurzel man. I think I was even praised for initiative. Each afternoon after that Soho meeting I waited outside the Roper residence just off Islington High Street. It was a dingy bleak little terraced house, the windows unwashed perhaps because window-cleaners were too proud to call in this district. The dustbins stood, all along that street, like dismal battered front-door sentinels. At one end of the street was a dairy, cloudy milk-bottles stacked outside; at the other was a dirty-magazine shop. As this was a working-class district, it was deserted in the day except for curlered wives in slippers, shopping. Watching was difficult. But I only had to do three days of it. At last the Wurzel man came – muscular, ugly, complacent, dressed in a deplorable blue suit. He knocked, then looked up at the sky, whistling, sure of his welcome. The door was opened, though Brigitte did not show herself. Wurzel went in. I took a walk long enough to smoke a
Handelsgold
Brazilian cigar. Then, spitting out my butt, I too knocked. And again. And again. Bare feet coming downstairs. A voice speaking through the letter-slit, Brigitte, unswitched to English: ‘
Ja? Was ist's?
' I said, in gruff demotic:

‘Registered parcel, missis.' She opened up minimally. Ready for that, I pushed in, feeling the ineffectual counter-push of those large Teutonic breasts (though not seeing, not looking) as she cried after
me marching up the stairs. A shout of bemused and part-fearful enquiry answered her. It was like two people playing at Alps. His sound, as well as a rank cigarette-smell, told me where the bedroom was. Poor Roper. The landing was full of books spilling from shelves. Brigitte was panting up after me. I entered the bedroom, crossing to its furthermost corner before turning to face them both. She, now in, clad only in a gaudy bathrobe, recognised me, the fiend. And now I took in the beast on the bed – gross, stupid, totally – like Noah – uncovered.

There was no spying going on here, that was certain. But could one ever be sure? I said very loudly:

‘Go on, pig. Out. Out before I you into the street all naked kick, swine.'

He saw I was not the husband. He stood up on the bed, seeking balance as on a trampoline, totally and obscenely bare, his little bags swinging. He gorilla-spread his fat arms, grunting at me. He had some idea of leaping at me from the bed-foot, but I was too far away. And then, as in the ring, the bloody fool, he beckoned me in with his fingers. We were to engage to the crowd's roars and boos. I could see at once that he was fit only for rigged bouts, a throw-seller, spectacular enough with the Irish whip and the flying mare, the flying head scissors, the monkey climb, but no good at all in genuine shoot moves. A script-boy.
Cats and big thing after with Tiger Pereira
. ‘Cats' meaning ‘catspaw' meaning ‘draw'. The ‘big thing' an act of anger or marching off in a huff to the crowd's delight. I knew a little about wrestling.

He jumped from the bed. Brigitte's pots and jars shook on their dressing-table. Good God, I now noticed on the wall a group photograph of the Sixth Form at St Augustine's, Roper and I arm-folded side by side, Father Byrne smiling, damnable sex off his mind that day. And now Wurzel advanced, bad teeth snarling, theatrically terrible. We needed more space really. Relying too much on initial intimidation, Wurzel did not expect my sudden
rush with a head-butt to the midriff. His arms were wide open, heaven help him. Surprised, he was taken aback by my rapid hug, from a kneeling position, of his left leg. He was about to chop at my nape, but I was ready for this. I leaned my whole weight and had him on his back, breathless. He was a horrible big soft fleshy feather-bed. I lay on him, his posture Mars Observed. He tried to get up, but I bore down hard. Then I dealt my speciality, a handedge on the larynx,
einmal
,
zweimal
,
dreimal
. By rights Brigitte should have been hammering me with a shoe or something, but I saw her bare feet by the door, quite immobile. ‘
Genug?
' I asked. He gurgled what might have been ‘
Genug
' but I gave him no benefit of the doubt. His thick arms lay quite flaccid, more ornament than use. I bit his left ear very viciously. He tried to howl, but coughs got in the way. I rose from the bed of him in a single nimble push, then he was after me, flailing and coughing, trying to howl expressions with Scheiss in them. On Brigitte's dressing-table was a pair of nail-scissors, so I picked these up and danced round him, lunging and puncturing. ‘
Genug
?' I asked again.

This time he just stood, panting when not coughing, squinting at me warily. ‘I go,' he said. ‘I wish mine gelt.' So she took money, did she? ‘Give it him,' I said. From the pocket of the bathrobe she drew out a few notes. He snatched them, spitting. I found an even better weapon on the dressing-table – a very long nail-file with a dagger-end. ‘One minute to dress,' I said, ‘and then out.' I began to count the seconds. He was pretty quick. He didn't bother to lace his shoes. ‘And if you give the
Herr Doktor
any more trouble –' Brigitte's eyes were on me, not on him, I now had time to notice. She bade him no good-bye as I back-punched him, grumbling, out on to the landing. On the landing he saw Roper's books and, very vindictive, he swept his fist along a top shelf and sent some of them bumping and swishing to the floor. I said: ‘Smutty swine, you. Uncultured shitheap,' and I kicked his arse, a large target. ‘Make a fire, shall we? Burn them all?' He rounded and snarled at me in the
landing-dark, so I thrust him downstairs. Bumping against the stairwell wall he dislodged a little picture that had been unhandily nailed not firmly rawlplugged. It was an old-fashioned woolly monochrome of Siegfried, his gob open for a hero's shout, his hand grasping Nothung. This angered me. Who were they in this house to think that Wagner was theirs? Wagner was mine. I banged Wurzel down the last few steps and then let him find his own way to the front door. Opening it, he turned to execrate a mouthful as elemental and nasty as a bowel movement. I raised my hand at him, and then he slammed out.

All this time I had had my raincoat on. Going back upstairs I took it off, as well as my jacket. Entering the bedroom for a new, but still cognate, purpose, I was already loosening my tie. As I'd expected, Brigitte was lying naked on the bed. In a very few seconds I was with her. It was altogether satisfactory, very gross and thorough. I rode into Germany again, a hell become all flowers and honey for the victor. She didn't want tenderness, victim self-elected, also the mother I and the enemy had been tussling to possess. I re-enacted the victory ride three times. Afterwards (it was now dark) she spoke only German to me, language of darkness. Should she make tea, would I like some schnapps?

‘Did you always take money from him?' I asked. ‘Do you want money from me now?'

‘Not this time. But if you come again.'

We shared a black aromatic
Handelsgold
. ‘You'll have to leave him, you know,' I said. ‘This sort of thing won't do at all. Go back to Germany. They're building fine new
Dirnenwohnheime
there. Düsseldorf. Stuttgart. That's your line. A lot of money to be made. But leave poor Edwin alone.'

‘I too have thought of that. But here in London is better. A little flat, no
Dirnenwohnheim
.' She did a theatrical shudder; I felt it in the dark. In the dark, above the bed, Roper and I looked out at our coming world, arms folded; Father Byrne had smiled through the
act of light, the act of dusk, the act of darkness. Well, I too, were I Brigitte, would much prefer a flat and a poodle in warm sinful London to one of those cold regimented German whorehouses. I said: ‘Have you any money?'

‘I have saved some. But if I am divorced I am deported.'

‘It's up to you. But for God's sake get out of his life. He's got work to do, important work.' Lying here, right hand splayed on her right breast, its nipple rousing itself from flaccidity, I felt both loyal and patriotic. ‘Each of us must do,' I added sententiously, ‘the thing that is given us to do.' My cigar had gone out; there was no point in feeling for the matches to relight it. Roper and British science were to be saved. I felt a gush of generosity. ‘This,' I said, turning to her, ‘can count as another visit.'

Did I do right to tell her to do what, and very soon after, she did? I did not see her again, though, had I had time and inclination to wander Soho or Notting Hill, I might well have spied her, smart with her little dog. I rang up Roper and told him of the discomfiture of Wurzel the West German Devil. He was elated. He thought a marriage could be saved through the elimination of what Brigitte would call the
Hausfreund
. He said nothing to Brigitte nor she to him of Wurzel's being kicked downstairs and out of doors. Let bygones be. Brigitte had been more tolerant, more loving (this seemed to me the best signal of the decision I had articulated for her); again (and this she might have done, had she not been going to leave) she told no lying story to Roper about attempted rape by his best friend or fiend (see: here is his cigar-butt, hurriedly crushed out). But, after a week, Roper came to my flat.

This I had expected. I had waited in every evening, expecting
it, listening to
Die Meistersinger
. When Roper rang, Hans Sachs was opening Act III with his monologue about the whole world being mad: ‘
Wahn
,
wahn
–'

‘I can guess what she's done,' I said. ‘She's gone back on the job. The job she'd already been doing in Germany.'

‘There was no real proof of that,' he snivelled, grasping his whisky-glass as though to crush it. ‘Poor little girl.'

‘Poor little girl?'

‘An orphan of the storm.' Oh my God. ‘A war victim. We did this to her.'

‘Who did? Did what?'

‘Insecurity. Instability. The crash of all that meant anything. Germany, I mean. She doesn't know where she is or what she wants.'

‘Oh, doesn't she? She doesn't want you, that's certain. Nor did she really want that bloody Wurzel. She just wants to do a job she can do.'