She said, ‘Of course, as that telegram was mutilated, you don’t even know about the radio-operator.’
‘I don’t.’
‘He’s at the Inglaterra too. Airsick. We have to find room for him as well.’
‘If he’s airsick perhaps..
‘You can make him assistant accountant. He’s been trained for that.’
‘But I don’t need one. I haven’t even got a chief accountant.’ ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get things straight in the morning. That’s what I’m here for.’
‘There’s something about you,’ Wormold said, ‘that reminds me of my daughter. Do you say novenas?’
‘What are they?’
‘You don’t know? Thank God for that.’
The man in the dinner jacket was finishing his song.
‘I say that winter’s May And I’ve no axe to grind.’
The lights changed from blue to rose and the dancers went back to perch among the palm trees. The dice rattled at the crap-tables, and Milly and Dr Hasselbacher made their way happily towards the dance-floor. It was as though her birthday had been constructed again out of its broken pieces.
Chapter 2
Next morning Wormold was up early. He had a slight hangover from the champagne, and the unreality of the Tropicana night extended into the office-day. Beatrice had told him he was doing well she was the mouthpiece of Hawthorne and ‘those people’. He had a sense of disappointment at the thought that she like Hawthorne belonged to the notional world of his agents. His agents. He sat down before his card-index. He had to make his cards look as plausible as possible before she came. Some of the agents seemed to him now to verge on the improbable. Professor Sanchez and Engineer Cifuentes were deeply committed, he couldn’t get rid of them; they had drawn nearly two hundred pesos in expenses. Lopez was a fixture too. The drunken pilot of the Cubana air line had received a handsome bonus of five hundred pesos for the story of the construction in the mountains, but perhaps he could be jettisoned as insecure.
There was the Chief Engineer of the Juan Belmonte whom he had seen drinking in
Cienfuegos he seemed a character probable enough and he was only drawing
seventy-five pesos a month. But there were other characters whom he feared might not bear close inspection: Rodriguez, for example, described on his card as a nightclub king, and Teresa, a dancer at the Shanghai Theatre whom he had listed as the mistress simultaneously of the Minister of Defence and the Director of Posts and Telegraphs (it was not surprising that London had found no trace of either Rodriguez or Teresa). He was ready to jettison Rodriguez, for anyone who came to know Havana well would certainly question his existence sooner or later. But he could not bear to relinquish Teresa. She was his only woman spy, his Mata Han. It was unlikely that his new secretary would visit the Shanghai, where three pornographic films were shown nightly between nude dances. Milly sat down beside him. ‘What are all these cards?’ she asked.
‘Customers.’
‘Who was that girl last night?’
‘She’s going to be my secretary.’
‘How grand you are getting.’
‘Do you like her?’
‘I don’t know. You didn’t give me a chance to talk to her. You were too busy dancing and spooning.’
‘I wasn’t spooning.’
‘Does she want to marry you?’
‘Good heavens, no.’
‘Do you want to marry her?’
‘Milly, do be sensible. I only met her last night.’
‘Marie, a French girl at the convent, says that all true love is a coup de foudre.’
‘Is that the kind of thing you talk about at the convent?’ ‘Naturally. It’s the future, isn’t it? We haven’t got a past to talk about, though Sister Agnes has.’
‘Who is Sister Agnes?’
‘I’ve told you about her. She’s the sad and lovely one. Marie says she had an unhappy coup de foudre when she was young.’ ‘Did she tell Marie that?’
‘No, of course not. But Marie knows. She’s had two unhappy coups de foudre herself. They came quite suddenly, out of a clear sky.’ ‘I’m old enough to be safe.’
‘Oh no. There was an old man he was nearly fifty who had a coup de foudre for Marie’s mother. He was married, like you.’
‘Well, my secretary’s married too, so that should be all right.’
‘Is she really married or a lovely widow?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t asked her. Do you think she’s lovely?’
‘Rather lovely. In a way.’
Lopez called up the stairs, ‘There is a lady here. She says you expect her.’
‘Tell her to come up.’
‘I’m going to stay,’ Milly warned him.
‘Beatrice, this is Milly.’
Her eyes, he noticed, were the same colour as the night before and so was her hair; it had not after all been the effect of the champagne and the palm-trees. He thought, She looks real.
‘Good morning. I hope you had a good night,’ Milly said in the voice of the duenna.
‘I had terrible dreams.’ She looked at Wormold and the card-index and Milly. She said, ‘I enjoyed last night.’
‘You were wonderful with the soda-water siphon,’ Milly said generously, ‘Miss..
‘Mrs Severn. But please call me Beatrice.’
‘Oh, are you married?’ Milly asked with phoney curiosity.
‘I was married.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Not that I know of. He sort of faded away.’
‘Oh.’
‘It does happen with his type.’
‘What was his type?’
‘Milly, it’s time you were off. You’ve no business asking Mrs Severn Beatrice..
‘At my age,’ Milly said, ‘one has to learn from other people’s experiences.’
‘You are quite right. I suppose you’d call his type intellectual and
sensitive. I thought he was very beautiful; he had a face like a young fledgling
looking out of a nest in one of those nature films and fluff-like feathers round
his Adam’s apple, a rather large Adam’s apple. The trouble was when he got to forty he still looked like a fledgling. Girls loved him. He used to go to UNESCO conferences in Venice and Vienna and places like that. Have you a safe, Mr Wormold?’
‘No.’
‘What happened?’ Milly asked.
‘Oh, I got to see through him. I mean literally, not in a nasty way. He was very thin and concave and he got sort of transparent. When I looked at him I could see all the delegates sitting there between his ribs and the chief speaker rising and saying, “Freedom is of importance to creative writers.” It was very uncanny at breakfast.’
‘And don’t you know if he’s alive?’
‘He was alive last year, because I saw in the papers that he read a paper on “The Intellectual and the Hydrogen Bomb” at Taorrnina. You ought to have a safe, Mr Wormold.’
‘Why?’
‘You can’t leave things just lying about. Besides, it’s expected of an old-fashioned merchant-king like you.’
‘Who called me an old-fashioned merchant king?’
‘It’s the impression they have in London. I’ll go out and find you a safe right away.’
‘I’ll be off,’ Milly said. ‘You’ll be sensible, won’t you, Father? You know what I mean.’
It proved to be an exhausting day. First Beatrice went out and procured a large combination-safe, which required a lorry and six men to transport it. They broke the banisters and a picture while getting it up the stairs. A crowd collected outside, including several truants from the school next door, two beautiful Negresses and a policeman. When Wormold complained that the affair was making him conspicuous, Beatrice reported that the way to become really conspicuous was to try to escape notice.
‘For example, that siphon,’ she said. ‘Everybody will remember me as the woman who siphoned the policeman. Nobody will ask questions any more about who I am. They have the answer.’
While they were still struggling with the safe a taxi drove up and a young man got out and unloaded the largest suitcase Wormold had ever seen. ‘This is Rudy,’ Beatrice said.