Because I’d expected him to go straight home after what he’d told me, and cleave her down the middle, I thought I didn’t know I was living now that the exact opposite seemed to be on the cards. My mistake showed me what a baby I was and how little I knew of the world. All I’d got out of meeting him were the details of a remote railway station I could retire to when I decided to sever connexion with Jack Leningrad Incorporated. I supposed that the Lovers of Putney would be immersed in each other for the next twenty-four hours, so decided to steal a march on him and get to the Fens first thing in the morning to view the place, assuming that since things seemed to be patched up with his wife he would still entertain notions of getting it for himself.
I was looking forward to seeing Smog and Bridgitte, but the flat was empty. A letter on the table said she had taken Smog and gone back to her husband. He had found out where they were and had phoned them, sobbing and weeping and imploring them to come back so that they could live once more as a happy and loving family. Smog didn’t want to go, so Bridgitte had to get him kicking and screaming out of the flat. What he hated most, she wrote, was having to go back to school, and no longer playing this thrilling game of being on the run from his father.
I took a shower so as to have moving water for company, and to swill off the grind of travel. Every journey pulled flesh from me and I didn’t know why, though the physical cost, the fear of getting caught, and the guilt perhaps of doing this work at all, might have added up to an amount I could only just pay, and I was kicking at the limit of my capabilities. I felt as if my blood had been sucked out, but then cheered up, as I lay back and lit a cigar, at the idea of seeing the railway station. I read the timetables, then phoned the agents, Smut and Bunt of Huntingborough.
‘It’s cheap,’ he said, ‘because it’s beyond the commuter belt, but it’s the most beautiful little station you ever saw. Just the place, I would say, for a writer like you.’ The land was flat and waterlogged, grey and green under a vast and heavy sky, metalled by the sun just breaking through. Beautiful. I felt a free man, for the first time since I’d set out from Nottingham on my old jalopy two years ago. I didn’t feel like going back to London, but the trouble was that I’d no idea where to set off for if I didn’t. ‘It’s not easy to get a mortgage for these old stations, though. Don’t know why.’
‘I pay cash.’
He took a humpbacked bridge over a dyke and nearly shot my throat into my brain. ‘That’s all right then,’ he said, envious rather than impressed.
The nearest village was Upper Mayhem, and half a mile on the other side of it we turned into a cul-de-sac, at the end of which was the station, well away from the nearest houses. ‘Any offers yet?’
‘There’ve been one or two, but they’ve fallen through. A chap in London, from Putney, was quite firm on it, but we haven’t heard from him lately. It’s first come, first served. I’ve only got the keys to the back door.’ He opened a wooden gate to get there, and it fell forward off its hinges. He picked it up and set it against the wall. ‘You might find it a bit damp, but you have to expect that in the Fens. Nothing that a few good fires won’t cure.’
It reeked with must as he opened the back door. There were three simple rooms downstairs, with a scullery. ‘Toilet in the garden,’ he said. Upstairs were four more rooms, and half a ton of soot in one of the fireplaces. I didn’t tell him I used to be an estate agent. The plumbing wasn’t up to much, but the ceilings looked all right. I stood at the end of the garden and trained my binoculars on the roof to make sure the slates were in place, and the chimney-stack firm. According to the survey it would need a bit of work done in a few years, but sufficient to the day is the ruination thereof.
‘We’ll go to the actual station,’ he said, which lay across a hundred yards of asphalt, badly holed in places.
‘How much does the land come to?’
‘Two acres. Room to swing a cat, certainly.’
‘Any rabbits around here?’
‘Quite a few.’
I noticed a huge potato field beyond the track, and fruit orchards on the other side of the station. ‘Not an architectural gem,’ I said, ‘though I expect I could make it cosy.’ To the left was the booking office, and all the shelves and ticket compartments were still there, as well as a few cupboards. Across the hall was the waiting-room, with plain seats going around the walls. We strode up and down the platform, passed the ladies and gents lavatories.
‘You say they want twelve hundred for it,’ I said. ‘Is it open to offer, or not?’
‘It’s a firm price. They wouldn’t take less.’
I offered him a cigar. ‘What about a thousand?’ We lit up, and walked back towards the house. ‘You can try,’ he said. ‘Maybe eleven hundred would get it.’
‘I’ll offer eleven then. I’ll need the other hundred to stop it falling down.’
‘It’s pretty firm, the main structure. Are you married?’
‘Divorced,’ I told him. ‘I gave my London house to my wife.’
Back in his office I wrote a cheque for the ten per cent deposit, and gave the name of William’s solicitors as stake holders.
I had a meal at the hotel in Huntingborough, then got the train back to town. When I reached the flat nothing had happened in my absence. I felt let down when I saw no letters or telegrams of alarm waiting for me, so after some beans on toast I phoned Polly, and Moggerhanger himself answered: ‘What do you want?’
‘Can I speak to Polly?’
‘She’s out. Who’s that?’
‘Kenny Dukes,’ I answered, and put the phone down. Then I phoned Bridgitte’s number, and Anderson said: ‘Who’s that?’
‘Mind your own business,’ I said. ‘I’m not one of your weak-headed patients who answers all your questions. Let me speak to Bridgitte.’
‘So it’s you?’ he said, frothing.
‘Yes, it’s me. And if you don’t mind I’d like to talk to Bridgitte.’
‘You mean my wife,’ he said.
‘Bridgitte Appledore,’ I told him, ‘Mrs Anderson if you like.’
‘You damn-well bet I do. You can’t talk to her. And if you see her any more I’ll bloody-well divorce her, and you’ll be paying off court costs for the rest of your life. I’ll spin you around my little finger.’
‘Listen,’ I said, holding the phone a few feet away and shouting into it to trample over his gallop. ‘I’ll see who I like when I like, so get that into your headshrinking head. And if you hit Bridgitte again, or if you kick Smog again, I’ll use your head for a football all over Hampstead Heath.’
I put the phone down, and didn’t feel like using it again any more, having drawn two dud numbers, but thinking I might be third time lucky I contacted Jack Leningrad to say I was back in town, at which they didn’t show much interest, as if they might be glad to see the back of me now that I’d made my expected quota of successful trips. It was my honourable intention to relieve them of all responsibility for my welfare, in any case, but only in my own good time. I was looking to my retreat, not wanting to end up in the next-door cell to William, which wouldn’t be difficult for them to arrange, if they supposed I knew a bit too much. I suspected it was no accident that William had been caught in the Lebanon rather than in England where he would have been brought to court and may have talked too freely.
A few days later, when they loaded me up with gold for Turkey, I looked at each piece in case it was hollow and filled with poppy seed, for if I were searched at that place with such stuff on me it would mean twenty years’ darkness. They noted my suspicions, and didn’t like it, but when I saw them weighing me up I liked it even less. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to fight a war on ten fronts. I was as helpless before the Leningrad outfit as I had been with Moggerhanger’s, and if I lost my nerve it would be through this feeling, not at the brief and occasional ordeal of dodging the customs. Back from Istanbul, I spoke to Stanley, who said there’d be nothing doing for the next three days, after which there could be a bit of a rush.