Horse Under Water (16 page)

Jean met me at Paddington. She was still driving Dawlish’s old Riley.

‘What is it you do to Dawlish, that he lends his pride and joy?’

‘You have a disgusting mind.’ She gave me a girlish smile.

‘No kidding, how do you get him to trust you with it? He sends the doorman out to watch me when I park near it – let alone trust me inside when the wheels are moving.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said Jean. ‘I
compliment
him about it. It’s something you’ve never heard about, but among civilized people compliments are all the rage. Try, some day.’

‘My compliments tend to oversteer,’ I told her, ‘and I end up in a ditch backwards.’

‘You should try a touch of brake before changing direction.’

‘You win,’ I said. She always wins.

The Admiralty is next door to the Whitehall Theatre, where they get paid for farce. The policeman spotted Dawlish’s motor and let us pull across Whitehall into the courtyard among the official cars, their smooth black contours heavy with wax and crowded with reflection. Under the porch hung an old lantern, and brasswork was burnished to an illegible sheen. Inside the entrance a vast grate of incandescent coals flickered electric light through its artful plastic embers. A doorman in a braided frock-coat directed me past a life-size Nelson in a red niche who stared down with two blind eyes of stone.

The cinema projector and screen had been set up in one of the upstairs rooms. One of our own people from Charlotte Street was threading it up and opening and closing little boxes of blinding light. There were three senior officers there when we arrived, and we all shook hands after a sailor on the door was persuaded to allow us in.

The first minutes were hilarious. There was this boy Victor from the Swiss section, dressed up in long shorts with the elastic of his underpants grappling with his belly. But the serious stuff was well done. An old black Ford threaded its way over the uneven Portuguese cobblestones, stopped, and an old gentleman climbed out. The tall thin figure walked up a flight of steps and disappeared into the black maw of a church portal.

Another shot, same man, medium close-up moving across camera. He turned towards the camera. The gold spectacles glinted in the sun.
Our photographer had probably complained that he was blocking the view, for da Cunha walked a little more quickly out of the frame. There were fifteen minutes of film of da Cunha. He was the same imperious gaunt figure that had given me a brown-paper parcel on a night that seemed so long ago. Without warning the screen flashed white and the film spool sang a note of release.

The three naval men got to their feet, but Jean asked them to stay a moment longer to see something else. A still picture flashed on the screen. It was an old creased snapshot. A group of army and naval officers were sitting, arms folded and heads erect. Jean said, ‘This photograph was taken at Portsmouth in 1938. Commander Andrews sorted it out for us.’ I nodded to Commander Andrews across the darkened room. Jean went on, ‘Commander Andrews is third from the left, front row. At the end of the front row there is a German naval officer – Lieutenant Knobel.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

The operator changed the slide. It was a part of the same picture enlarged, a big close-up of the young German sailor’s face. The projector-operator went to the screen with an ink marker. He drew spectacles on Lieutenant Knobel. The picture was very light in tone and now he drew in a new hairline on the plastic screen. He drew a darkened eye-socket.

‘O.K.,’ I said. It was da Cunha as a young man.

BRITISH NAVAL OFFICER FACES GRAVE CHARGES

BEARING ARMS AGAINST COMRADES

SIX CHARGES OF TREACHERY

The 1945 press cuttings that Jean had photostated for me lay on the dusty table in the Admiralty Library. The dates on the cuttings helped me to locate the file I wanted to see. It had a grey cover with a reference number. The pages were fastened together with three star-shaped clips and numbered to prevent loss of one of them.
^*

Out of the medical envelope slid cards, flimsies and reports. Here it was, the clincher:

This was Fernie Tomas. Jean’s search of the Spanish Civil War files at the Home Office had found a name curiously like Fernie Tomas – Bernie Thomas: otherwise Bernard Thomas Peterson.

So Fernie was an expert frogman, a renegade R.N. officer. I remembered the two-stroke cycle that gave Giorgio a ride in the night, the capsizing of the boat ‘by a frogman’ and Giorgio’s voice as he told me that the stars were going out. And da Cunha had been a German naval officer; they made quite a pair.

My hands were black with dust. I borrowed the soap from the bent tin and used the small stiff towel that was kept for visitors to the Admiralty Library.

‘Don’t forget your pass,’ someone called, ‘you’ll never get out of the building without it.’

To wake up in the sun in Albufeira is to be reborn. I lay in the no-man’s-land of half-asleep and hugged the crater of bedclothes, afraid to advance into the gunfire of wide-awake. The sound of the town dripped into my consciousness; the tinkle and clink of bell-laden bridles; the hoof taps, and the rumble of tall wheels over the cobblestones; the high note as trucks came up the hill in bottom gear; the crackle of water dropping from overflow pipes on to the beach below, and the squawk of cats exchanging blows and fur. I lit a Gauloise and eased my toes into the daylight beyond the blankets. From the beach came the rhythmic chanting of men heaving at the sardine net, and from the seagulls hoarse cries as they slid down the onshore wind to pounce upon discarded slivers of fish.

I stepped on to the balcony. The stone floor was hot underfoot, and on the grey wooden chairs sat Buddha-like cats squinting into the sunlight.
Charly was fixing coffee and toast in the kitchen, holding the front of her silk housecoat closed. I am pleased to tell you that a lot of the coffee-making was a two-handed job. She stood against the light of the window and I began to realize for the first time what every male in the region had known since she arrived; she was five feet ten inches tall and every inch was soft and delicious.

The deaths of Joe and Giorgio had curtailed the diving operation. Each day Singleton went out to the sunken submarine and continued the search, but I had long since concluded that what I was looking for was on dry land.

After lunch Singleton said that he must drive to Lisbon to recharge the air bottles. How long could he stay there, he said. I looked at Charly and she looked at me. ‘Have two or three days there,’ I said. Singleton was pleased.

I walked along the beach trying to arrange the facts I had access to. As I look back on it I had enough information then to tell me what I wanted to know. But at that time I didn’t know
what
I wanted to know. I was just letting my sense of direction guide me through the maze of motives.

It was clear to me that Smith was connected with this town in some way or other, legal or illegal. Fernie was a frogman and Giorgio had been killed under water. The canister from the U-boat had contained heroin and someone had emptied it recently (or how had the ballpoint writing got
inside?). Smith had sent £7,100-worth of equipment to K (Kondit begins with a K, but so does the real name of da Cunha – Knobel).

Did Smith have a say in Giorgio’s death or in Joe’s? Did da Cunha want Smith to have the sovereign die when he gave it to me, and why had he invented a mythical dead sailor and manufactured a grave?

I met Charly in the main square.

The scrawny old houses stared red-eyed into the sunset. Two or three cafés – houses with a public front room – opened their doors, pale-green colourwashed walls were punctuated with calendar art, and crippled chairs leaned against the walls for support. In the evening the young bloods came to operate the juke box. A small man in a suede jacket poured thimble-size drinks from large unlabelled medicine bottles under the counter. Behind him green bottles of ‘Gas-soda’ and ‘Fru-soda’ grew old and dusty.

It grew darker and juke-box music scalded the soft night air. Between the strident rock vocals came the occasional
fado.
Brazilian jungle melodies, transposed for Lisbon slums, they sounded curiously right in a Moorish land. I sipped brandy and chewed the dried-cuttlefish appetizers – rubbery and strong-tasting.

‘Medronho,’ said the man behind the counter, pointing to my glass. It is made from the medronho berry from the mountains. ‘Good?’ he asked with his sole word of English.

‘Medonho,’ I said, and he laughed. I had made a Portuguese joke; ‘medonho’ means ‘frightful’. Above the noise Charly was saying, ‘You speak Portuguese?’

‘A little,’ I said.

‘You cunning old bastard,’ said Charly in her clear Girton voice, ‘you understood every word I’ve said for weeks.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I only have a smattering.’ But she wasn’t to be placated.

We went to the Jul-Bar for dinner. The place was full of men doing Toto-Bola football pools and the seventeen-inch TV was cutting us in on the secrets of Tide and Alka-Seltzer. Our table was set with a tablecloth and cutlery and a flask of wine. The meal was simple and the drink relaxing, and by 11 p.m. I wanted to go to bed, but Charly suggested a swim.

The water was cool and moonlight trickled across it like cream spilt on a black velvet dress. The night and the water reminded me of the night Giorgio died. Charly’s blonde hair shone in the light and her body was phosphorescent in the clear black water. She swam near to me and pretended to have cramp. I grabbed her as I was intended to do. Her skin was warm and her mouth was salty and the clear white brandy had done things to my better judgement.

What a short journey it is to any bedroom. How difficult to remove a wet swimsuit. She was a considerate and inventive lover, and afterwards we talked with the soft, kind truth that only new lovers have.

Her voice was low and close; she had discarded the banter with her clothes.

‘Women always want love affairs to go on for ever and ever,’ Charly said. ‘Why aren’t we clever enough just to enjoy it on a day-to-day basis?’

‘Love is just a state of mind,’ I said, using Dawlish’s slogan and grinning to myself in the darkness.

There was a note of alarm in Charly’s voice. ‘It
has
to be more than that,’ she said.

I held the cigarette against her lips. ‘A mortal’s attempt to define infinity,’ I said.

She inhaled and the red glow lit her face for an instant. She said, ‘Sometimes two people see each other just for an instant, perhaps from a moving train and there’s a rapport. It’s not sex, it’s not love, it’s a sort of magical fourth dimension of living. You never saw him before, you’ll never see him again; you don’t even intend to try because it doesn’t matter. Everything that is wise, I mean, that is good, that is understanding and profound, in the two of you becomes real at that instant.’

‘My old man gave me two pieces of advice,’ I said, ‘don’t ride a hard-mouthed horse or go to bed with a woman who keeps a diary. You are beginning to make noises like a diary-keeper. It’s time I faded.’ But I made no move.

‘There’s one thing I’d like to know,’ said Charly.

The church clock clanked one o’clock and there was a sudden scurry of cats across the balcony.

‘Why are you really so interested in this submarine?’ Charly asked. I suppose I must have snapped awake, for she added, ‘Don’t tell me if it’s a big man’s secret and I’m not allowed to know.’

I didn’t answer.

‘What is it that you are trying to find out here? Why do you stay here after two men have died? You know as well as I do that there is nothing in the submarine. Who is it that you are so interested in? I would like to think it’s me, but I know it isn’t.’

‘You sound like you have a theory,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think you are investigating yourself,’ she said.

She waited for a comment, but I made none. ‘Are you?’ she said.

I said, ‘There’s a law held inviolate by the people among whom I work:
truth varies in inverse proportion to the influence of the person concerned.
I’m going to break that law.’

‘Must you do it alone?’ Charly said.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘everyone
is
alone, born alone, live alone, get sick alone, die alone, everything alone. Making love is a way for people to pretend they aren’t alone. But they are. And everyone in this business is even more so, alone and aching with a lot of untellable truths in his brain-box. You’re groping in the dark through the Hampton Court maze with a hundred people shouting different directions at you. So you grope on; striking matches, grabbing handfuls of privet and occasionally getting mud on your knees. You
are
alone and so am I. Just
try getting used to it or you’ll wind up telling people that your husband doesn’t understand you.’

‘I’m still single,’ Charly said. ‘I’ll make a lot of men miserable on the day I get married.’

‘No kidding,’ I said. ‘How many men are you going to marry?’ She gave me a spiteful punch in the ribs and tried to make me jealous by talking about H.K.

‘Harry has a canning factory,’ Charly said; she lit two cigarettes and passed me one. ‘He’s very proud of it. Practically built it with his bare hands, according to him.’ I grunted. We smoked cigarettes and outside the sea that had caused it all kicked the shore in delinquent spite.

‘What does H.K. can at this canning factory?’ I asked.

‘Tuna in the season, sardines, pilchards. Anything that’s a good buy. All the canning factories mix their products. Harry does pickled things too, I think.’

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Charly, ‘as we drove past his laboratory tonight the smell of vinegar was as strong as anything. It almost choked me.’

There is a tremendous amount of acetic acid to get rid of … Boardable … erection of chemical works …

I thought about it all for a minute. Then I said, ‘Get dressed, Charly; let’s take a look at H.K.’s laboratory right now.’ She wasn’t keen to go but we went.