‘Vot’s right? You here to invade France?’
‘No, I’d like to buy a suit.’
‘You want suit?’
‘If that’s at all possible,’ Cal said.
‘Gentleman wants suit!’ the first brother all but yelled in the other brother’s ear.
‘A suit you say? He wants suit?’
And then to Cal. ‘You want suit? You got coupons?’
Cal dug around in his pockets and found the clothing coupons Reininger had given him. Mo took them and riffled through them like a cardsharp, a glint of commerce in his eye.
‘Larry, the gentleman got coupons!’
Mo? Larry? Cal was beginning to find something chillingly familiar in this routine. There’d better not be a third brother.
‘Well, young man. You got coupons, the world is your oyster an’ we gottem pearls. Vot kind of suit you was wanting?’
Cal looked at the bewildering mass of rolls. One of the reasons he liked a uniform was that it saved a lot of decisions.
‘Er… what colour’s in this year?’
‘In?’ said Mo. ‘He wants to know vot is in. Khaki is in this year, that’s vot’s in!’
‘Khaki I got,’ said Cal.
Larry fingered the fabric of his battledress.
‘Khaki? I call it sea green mit a dash of chestnut-nice schmutter though. I think you look good in blue.’
‘Blue,’ said Mo, ‘with the double breasteds…’
‘And a nice pinstripe in pale grey,’ added Larry. ‘You look like a million dollars.’
‘Blue and grey?’ Cal queried.
‘Grey and blue,’ they answered, ‘Blue and grey…’ A head shook, another nodded, a hand equivocated in the air to express balance-six of one, half a dozen of the other.
‘OK.’
One tackled his buttons, the other zipped around behind him and they pulled off his battledress and flourished their tape measures.
‘Mit this measure I fitted out Duke Griswald mit his burial outfit in 1888,’ said Mo. Then Larry took up the tale and they alternated line for line in worst vaudeville.
‘Finest suit we ever make.’
‘Then the following year comes the pogrom, so we pack up the shop and come to England.’
‘You know vot-not one single royal customer do we get,’
‘We, who made suits for the Dukes of Transylvania!’
‘The Prince of Wales-votta snappy dresser.’
‘Does he come to us?’
‘Does he bollocks!’
‘So, I measure you mit the same measure I use on royalty!’
Cal tried to feel honoured and failed. 1888 was more than a lifetime away, Transylvania a nation that had ceased, if it ever had existed, to exist.
They both measured him. Two tapes around his chest.
‘Forty,’ said Mo.
‘Thirty-eight,’ said Larry, and each noted down his own figure.
Inside leg.
‘Thirty-six.’
‘Thirty-four.’
Waist.
‘Thirty.’
‘Thirty-two.’
And so it went on. When they’d finished on his sleeves Cal asked the obvious question.
‘Do you guys have a method?’
‘Method, schmethod. Sure we gotta method, we split the difference.’
Cal felt a slight frisson of misgiving. He could walk out of the shop now. He could walk right out and never look back.
‘Could I get some shoes too?’ he asked.
‘Shoes? Next door is shoes. Isaac Horwitz. He sell you nice pair of shoes. You got shoe coupons?’
‘No. Do I need shoe coupons?’
‘These days you need coupon to blow nose or break wind. No coupon, no shoes.’
Cal looked down at his army-issue, brown roundies.
‘Is no problem,’ said the brothers.
‘Nize blue suit.’
‘Nize brown shoes.’
‘Poifect!’
Somehow, Cal could not quite believe them, but it was too late now. Besides, who ever looked at your feet? He slipped his battledress back on.
‘When can I pick it up?’
‘You come by Friday,’ Mo said. ‘We have it all ready for you.’
‘Could you manage it any sooner?’
‘For Uncle Sam and his dozen brave buddies,’ Larry added, ‘we make it Thursday.’
‘Thanks,’ said Cal, glad another English moment had passed, even if this was the Transylvanian version translated loosely from the Yiddish.
Mo scribbled down his address as he dictated it, but in the end Cal could not resist the nagging question.
‘Mo, Larry? Where,’ he asked, ‘is Curly?’
Back home there would have been two possible reactions to this. The good-natured would smile or laugh, the sourpusses would tell you pointedly that this was the hundredth time they’d heard that joke this week, day or hour. The Lippschitz brothers looked at each other, more than slightly baffled, then they looked at him, then they looked at each other and shrugged, then they both yelled ‘Curly!’
And from the back room a gangly, spindly youth of fifteen or so, plastered with acne, beardless but ringletted about the ears, appeared pushing a broom.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t get yer knickers in a twist. Now, wossamatter wiv you two?’
‘Gentleman wants to see you.’
In the mind’s ear Cal heard a wooden mallet bashing against the side of a skull with a hollow report.
‘Thursday it is,’ he said, and ran for it.
§ 16
The front desk at the Savoy handed Reggie half a dozen messages. All the same. ‘Captain Cormack called-please call back.’
Up in his room the telephone was ringing.
‘Reggie-where in hell have you been? I’ve been calling you all day.’
‘Something came up. I’m afraid we may have to delay our little adventure for a while.’
‘What?’
‘Something rather important.’
‘Reggie, what’s up?’
‘I can’t tell you that, really I can’t.’
‘I know. You told me-we’re not allies yet.’
§ 17
Walter Stilton was making his report to Thesiger. Thesiger had come up to town and phoned him in person from his hotel.
‘Our Dutchman’s in digs in Hoxton Lane. He’s signed on at the local Labour Exchange. Gave his trade as printer and got a short lecture about the paper shortage and nobody needing printers any more. He’s registered with the local nick, and he seems to know absolutely nobody in London. He spent yesterday afternoon in a cafe reading the small ads in the local newspaper.’
‘Did you get a copy? Coded messages?’
‘No sir-he was putting rings round items in the sits vac column.’
‘He’ll break cover. Sooner or later.’
‘I’m quite sure he will sir, but in the meantime there is something useful I could be doing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Hess, sir.’
‘My God, word travels fast. Is there anyone in England who doesn’t know?’
‘The Branch, sir-not England. We do get to hear things in the Branch. There’ll be a team of our blokes going up to Scotland to interrogate Hess. I’d like to be one of them, sir.’
Stilton could hear Thesiger sigh. He had known even as he said it that it was an absurd request.
‘If I could do this for you I would. If it were a matter of recommendations, you’d get mine. But I don’t have the authority to assign you to that, really I don’t. I don’t even have the authority to forward your request. All I can say is if they wanted you… well… they’d have sent for you, wouldn’t they?’
§ 18
Reggie called McKendrick from his room. One last try. Would Gordon even talk to him on an unscrambled line?
‘I can’t just dump the fellow, now we’ve got him here.’
‘We don’t need him. Briggs changes everything. This bloke your American knows is a sprat. We’ve got the kingfish now. The PM’s told us to get Briggs to talk.’
‘All the same, we can’t just leave Jerry wandering around London-even if he is on our side.’
‘I rather think you’re going to have to, Reggie.’
McKendrick rang off. It was still only six o’clock. They had an hour before their driver was due. Reggie decided to nip down to the bar, and pass the hour over a drink with Charlie.