‘So what are you talking about?’ The fact that Audley knew the score made it more confusing. ‘What two levels?’
‘Okay!’ Audley nodded. ‘There’s the gentlemanly level— which Jack truly understands. Which is like Wellington at Waterloo, when this artillery officer comes up to him, and says he’s got a clear view of Napoleon and his staff, and a battery pointing in that direction, and he’s ready to fire. But the Duke says “No! no! I’ll not allow it. It is not the business of commanders to be firing on each other.” Okay?’
Tom felt he had to argue. ‘But what about us trying to hit Rommel in North Africa—the Keyes commando raid? And the Americans killing Yamamoto with that aerial ambush, after they’d broken the Japanese naval code?’
‘That was different.’ Audley waved a vague hand as he peered out of one of his own windows, across the pacific sheep. ‘That was hot war, not cold war.’
‘Wasn’t Waterloo hot war?’ That had been the second time the man had mentioned the Battle of Waterloo, which fitted neither what Harvey had said about him nor Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society.
The hand waved again. “That wasn’t disgusting twentieth-century war—it was gentlemanly. . .‘Audley gave him a cautious sidelong look ’… at least, it was on Wellington’s side, anyway—if you are about to throw Sous-Officier Cantillon at me, eh? But then Bonaparte was no gentleman— he was just a National Socialist Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State born a century too late—‘ The sidelong look suddenly became sardonic’—although I suppose you, of all people, wouldn’t admit that, eh?‘
Bloody hell! thought Tom: what was ‘ You, of all people’ meant to mean? ‘Who?’ And this wasn’t either the time or the place for such games. ‘Why— who! ’
‘Didn’t Bonaparte pretend to be nice to the Poles? Apart from fathering a child on Marie Walewska?’ Audley circled round him, to take a view of the terrace on his own account. ‘Count Walewski
—Napoleon III’s ambassador in London, to Queen Victoria, wasn’t he?’ He concentrated on the terrace for an instant. ‘All clear this side.’
The conversation was taking an unreal and tangential turn, reminding Tom of his earlier passage of words with the elfin child on the forecourt. But then the wife had warned him that they were like each other; and everything that had happened here had been unreal—even the house itself was unreal, and this sudden unseasonable outburst of sunshine and blue sky, when he’d left grey clouds and rain in the real world.
‘Hadn’t you better keep an eye on the front?’ Audley chided him gently. ‘The police will come up the drive, like Christians. But they’ll be scared, so I wouldn’t wish not to welcome them—you understand?’
Audley was quite matter-of-fact, but somehow that only made it worse, projecting Tom’s memory back out-of-reason into his own childhood, when Mamusia, beautiful and sweet-smelling, had read him to sleep with some silly story about the Elf-King and his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State daughter, who lived Under the Hill, half in their world, and half in our world, where the flowers were brighter but the dangers were more dangerous… and this was under a hill, or nearly, and there was an equivocal daughter—and an even more equivocal father, who’d known Mamusia herself, too… and where danger was undeniably more dangerous than it ought to be on a quiet afternoon in England!
‘Yes.’ He pretended to scan the empty forecourt again. The trick in Mamusia’s story was to hold on to something from his own world: the boy in the story had held on to his penknife: all he had to feel the shape of in his coat-pocket was the little wallet with his credit-cards in it; but then nothing could be more real world than credit-cards, after all. ‘Who the hell is—or was—“Sous-Officier…
Cantillon”—?’
‘Cantillon?’ Audley seemed to expect him to know who the man was. ‘Why—he was the Napoleonic veteran who tried to assassinate Wellington in Paris in 1814, dear boy.’ He paused interrogatively. ‘And the unspeakable Bonaparte left the fellow 10,000 francs in his will— not the sort of thing a gentleman would do, as I said—did your dear mother never tell you that story, Tom?’
‘My mother?’
Audley gazed at him for a moment, reflectively. ‘No, I can see that she didn’t—perhaps understandably, in the circumstances.’
Tom was beginning to feel foolish. ‘What circumstances?’
‘What circumstances?’ Now Audley seemed surprised. ‘My dear boy, your mother— my Danny Dzieliwski— your dear mother was—
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State and presumably still is—quite devoted to Napoleon Bonaparte.
And all things French… quite uncritically, if I may say so. The dreadful Corsican was one of her great heroes—after Marshal Poniatowski, of course. “The epic of Napoleonic Poland” was one of her favourite themes… I won’t say that I learnt all my Polish history from her—rather, I learnt it so that I didn’t have to sit listening to her without being able to argue back, when she swept her generalizations halfway across Europe. In fact…’ Audley raised a large dirty finger ‘—in fact, I became quite an authority on Casimir the Great and Jadwiga of Anjou in my own right, thanks to her. But I never really got beyond the medieval period in any detail, to be honest—modern history is mostly far too complicated for me.’
It was happening again—
‘So don’t get the idea that I’m an expert on Bonaparte—’
‘No—’ It must be stopped, thought Tom desperately.
‘No, indeed! I just happen to be reading this book my wife gave me, about Colquhoun Grant, who was Wellington’s Head of Intelligence in the Peninsula—brilliant field operator, quite brilliant… And I had an ancestor who was killed there, you know—
on my mother’s side—charging with Le Marchant at Salamanca in 1812. So she’s always on the look-out for books on the Peninsular War—Faith is, I mean, not my mother—’
‘ David! ’ Tom finally cracked. ‘For Christ’s sake—I don’t want to know about your mother—or my mother… Or Casimir the Great and Napoleon, for Christ’s sake!’ And what the hell had the child meant by Tripoli? ‘Somebody just took a shot at us, David—
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State remember?’
‘At me, dear boy—not you. How could I forget?’ Audley screwed up his ugly features. ‘I’m only talking because I’m frightened—I told you. It’s a reflex in some people. But at least it’s preferable to other physical reflexes I’ve encountered—’ He stopped suddenly.
‘You don’t think he was shooting at you, do you? But… he would have had to be a very bad shot, surely—?’ He stopped again, and frowned at Tom. ‘But then, he was a very bad shot—wasn’t he!’
Audley had got there at last, however belatedly. ‘Yes.’
‘Yes…’ Audley’s frown deepened. ‘A sitting target—or a standing-still one, anyway… And he would have had plenty of time to sight-up, and make all the necessary allowances, too…’ He stared clear through Tom.