‘How are you, Hasselbacher?’
‘I said, don’t go in.’
‘I heard you the first time.’
‘They are going to kill you, Mr Wormold.’
‘How do you know that, Hasselbacher?’
‘They are planning to poison you in there.’
Several of the guests stopped and stared and smiled. One of them, an American, said, ‘Is the food that bad?’ and everyone laughed. Wormold said, ‘Don’t stay here, Hasselbacher. You are too conspicuous.’
‘Are you going in?’
‘Of course, I’m one of the speakers.’
‘There’s Milly. Don’t forget her.’
‘Don’t worry about Milly. I’m going to come out on my feet, Hasselbacher. Please go home.’
‘All right, but I had to try,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘I’ll be waiting at the telephone.’
‘I’ll call you when I leave.’
‘Good-bye, Jim.’
‘Good-bye, Doctor.’ The use of his first name took Wormold unawares. It reminded him of what he had always jokingly thought: that Dr Hasselbacher would use the name only at his bedside when he had given up hope. He felt suddenly frightened alone, a long way from home.
‘Wormold,’ a voice said, and turning he saw that it was Carter of Nucleaners, but it was also for Wormold at that moment the English midlands, English snobbery, English vulgarity, all the sense of kinship and security the word England implied to him.
‘Carter!’ he exclaimed, as though Carter were the one man in Havana he wanted most to meet, and at that instant he was.
‘Damned glad to see you,’ Carter said. ‘Don’t know a soul at this lunch.
Not even my -not even Dr Braun.’ His pocket bulged with his pipe and his pouch;
he patted them as though for reassurance, as though he too felt far from home.
‘Carter, this is Dr Hasselbacher, an old friend of mine.’ ‘Good day, Doctor.’ He said to Wormold, ‘I was looking all over the place for you last night. I don’t seem able to find the right spots.’ They moved in together to the private dining-room. It was quite irrational, the confidence he had in a fellow-countryman, but on the side where Carter walked he felt protected.
The dining-room had been decorated with two big flags of the United States in honour of the Consul-General, and little paper flags, as in an airport-restaurant, indicated where each national was to sit. There was a Swiss flag at the head of the table for Dr Braun, the President; there was even the flag of Monaco for the Monegasque Consul who was one of the largest exporters of cigars in Havana. He was to sit on the Consul-General’s right hand in recognition of the Royal alliance. Cocktails were circulating when Wormold and Carter entered, and a waiter at once approached them. Was it Wormold’s imagination or did the waiter shift the tray so that the last remaining daiquiri lay nearest to Wormold’s hand?
‘No. No thank you.’
Carter put out his hand, but the waiter had already moved on towards the service-door.
‘Perhaps you would prefer a dry Martini, sir?’ a voice said. He turned.
It was the headwaiter.
‘No, no, I don’t like them.’
‘A Scotch, sir? A sherry? An Old-Fashioned? Anything you care to order.’ ‘I’m not drinking,’ Wormold said, and the headwaiter abandoned him for another guest. Presumably he was stroke seven; strange if by an ironic coincidence he was also the would-be assassin. Wormold looked around for Carter, but he had moved away in pursuit of his host.
‘You’d do better to drink all you can,’ said a voice with a Scotch accent. ‘My name is Mac Dougall. It seems we’re sitting together.’ ‘I haven’t seen you here before, have I?’
‘I’ve taken over from Mc Intyre. You’d have known Mc Intyre surely?’ ‘Oh yes, yes.’ Dr Braun, who had palmed off the unimportant Carter upon another Swiss who dealt in watches, was now leading the American Consul-General round the room, introducing him to the more exclusive members. The Germans formed a group apart, rather suitably against the west wall; they carried the superiority of the Deutschemark on their features like duelling scars: national honour which had survived Belsen depended now on a rate of exchange. Wormold wondered whether it was one of them who had betrayed the secret of the lunch to Dr Hasselbacher. Betrayed? Not necessarily. Perhaps the doctor had been blackmailed to supply the poison. At any rate he would have chosen, for the sake of old friendship, something painless, if any poison were painless. ‘I was telling you,’ Mr Mac Dougall went energetically on like a Scottish reel, ‘that you would do better to drink now. It’s all you’ll be getting.’
‘There’ll be wine, won’t there?’
‘Look at the table.’ Small individual milk bottles stood by every place. ‘Didn’t you read your invitation? An American blueplate lunch in honour of our great American allies.’
‘Blueplate?’
‘Surely you know what a blueplate is, man? They shove the whole meal at you under your nose, already dished up on your plate -roast turkey, cranberry sauce, sausages and carrots and French fried. I can’t bear French fried, but there’s no pick and choose with a blueplate.’
‘No pick and choose?’
‘You eat what you’re given. That’s democracy, man.’
Dr Braun was summoning them to the table. Wormold had a hope that
fellow-nationals would sit together and that Carter would be on his other side,
but it was a strange Scandinavian who sat on his left scowling at his
milk bottle. Wormold thought, Someone has arranged this well. Nothing is safe,
not even the milk. Already the waiters were bustling round the board with the
Morro crabs. Then he saw with relief that Carter faced him across the table. There was something so secure in his vulgarity. You could appeal to him as you could appeal to an English policeman, because you knew his thoughts. ‘No,’ he said to the waiter, ‘I won’t take crab.’
‘You are wise not to take those things,’ Mr Mac Dougall said. ‘I’m refusing them myself. They don’t go with whisky. Now if you will drink a little of your iced water and hold it under the table, I’ve got a flask in my pocket with enough for the two of us.’
Without thinking, Wormold stretched out his hand to his glass, and then the doubt came. Who was Mac Dougall? He had never seen him before, and he hadn’t heard until now that Mc Intyre had gone away. Wasn’t it possible that the water was poisoned, or even the whisky in the flask?
‘Why did Mc Intyre leave?’ he asked, his hand round the glass. ‘Oh, it was just one of those things,’ Mr Mac Dougall said, ‘you know the way it is. Toss down your water. You don’t want to drown the Scotch. This is the best Highland malt.’
‘It’s too early in the day for me. Thank you all the same.’ ‘If you don’t trust the water, you are right not to,’ Mac Dougall said ambiguously. ‘I’m taking it neat myself. If you don’t mind sharing the cap of the flask…’
‘No, really. I don’t drink at this hour.’
‘It was the English who made hours for drinking, not the Scotch. They’ll be making hours for dying next.’
Carter said across the table, ‘I don’t mind if I do. The name’s Carter,’ and Wormold saw with relief that Mr Mac Dougall was pouring out the whisky; there was one suspicion less, for no one surely would want to poison Carter. All the same, he thought there is something wrong with Mr Mac Dougall’s Scottishness. It smelt of fraud like Ossian.
‘Svenson,’ the gloomy Scandinavian said sharply from behind his little Swedish flag; at least Wormold thought it was Swedish: he could never distinguish with certainty between the Scandinavian colours. ‘Wormold,’ he said.