It was as I came out of the gents that I saw Stanhope. He was sitting across the public bar in what, even at twenty feet I could smell was a cloud of pure hashish smoke. With a deft use of his claw, he was reading the English edition of the Völkischer Beobachter. In honour of the coming Sad Anniversary, this had a huge picture of Hitler on the front and back pages. Whatever he was reading on the inside pages, his huge body was shaking with laughter.
What was he doing here? I thought I’d seen the last of him when I breezed through passport control at Croydon. A continental flight was in, and the alien entry queue was fifty yards long. He’d absolutely insisted I shouldn’t wait for him. And his final lecture had been forbidding and interminable—all about the new Russian calendar, with its ten months called variations on the name Stalin, and about the placing of its fifteen days of Socialist Rest. No one could have blamed me for taking my chance and bolting. I’d already given instructions for delivery of my boxes. So it had been straight onto the tram just before it pulled out. Now, here sat Stanhope—for all the world as if he’d come up on the following tram.
I might have wondered how he’d got so fast through alien entry. I could have marvelled how, of all the establishments in London, he too had chosen this one. What really mattered, though, was that he didn’t appear to have seen me. Nor would he see me. Voyage friendships are seldom worth prolonging. This was no exception. I dropped a sixpence into the China Mission collection box and dodged into the street.
Now it had stopped raining, I could see that London was reassuringly unchanged. It was the same noisy bustle on the streets, the same shiny cars of the higher classes trying to push their way through the swarms of smaller vehicles, the same smell of electricity from all but the grandest traffic. I thought of stopping a taxi. But I wanted the normality of London. Here, there’d be no machine gunning of pedestrians from unmarked black vans, no terror bombs in the restaurants, no endless stops and searches by men in and out of uniform—no swooping by those wicked black helicopters. It would surely come on to rain again in the next quarter hour. But I’d walk to the Richardson offices. Besides, where even English beer is concerned, two quarts still make half a gallon. I’d need a clear head for this meeting.
I was half way up Charing Cross Road when it did begin to rain. This time, it fell in sheets that overwhelmed the pavement heating. The danger now wasn’t so much stumbling into the road as being soaked by water thrown up by the trolley busses and other large traffic. Having no umbrella, I dodged into the main entrance of Foyles. I stood there, fumbling with a packet of fifty and looking in at the display of new books. My own first Churchill volume was now over a year old, and had been promoted to the general chaos of the shelves. There might be a few copies on the second floor, or they might be in the basement—always hard to say, of course, with Foyles where anything might be shelved from one day to the next. I scratched a wet fingernail over wet cellophane until I could make a breach in the seal. I gave an annoyed grunt as I pushed the packet open. While I was away, the larger packs of Capstan Super Strength had gone filter tipped. I broke off the cork tip and flicked it onto the pavement. I was trying to get my lighter going in the gusty, rain-soaked wind, when someone who’d taken shelter beside me reached forward with his own gas lighter. I lit my cigarette on its intense blue flame and nodded my thanks.
“Iss it true, my friend, zat ze Archpishop of Canterbury is not a priest?” he asked with slow deliberation in a very thick German accent. He waved at the central book on the display. It was the defence of the Thirty Nine Articles that had come out to such acclaim just before I left England. I watched as the stream of smoke I let out was dispersed in the wind and gathered my thoughts.
“It was a controversial appointment,” I replied in German. “But C.S. Lewis was, of course, ordained before the position was formally offered. And I don’t think anyone can doubt that he has been a success by any reasonable measure. It isn’t every day that a Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and a dozen other Romish priests are converted in the course of a public debate.” I’d lost him there, and I didn’t feel inclined to explain myself. The man smiled and went back to looking at the display. About my own age, he was dressed in English clothes. If he hadn’t opened his mouth, I’d not have guessed he was a foreigner. I could have kept the conversation alive by asking how long he’d been in England. But that isn’t something you ask of Germans. It was still raining, but the sky was beginning to lighten. I took another draw on my cigarette and got ready for a complex sentence all about the weather.
“You have just returned from Germany?” he asked with a downward look at the one suitcase I’d brought with me from Croydon.
“Sadly not,” I replied. “I’ve been in America. I’m having my main luggage delivered to where I live.” It sounds a redundant amplification. But you weren’t there to see how the man looked at me and at my luggage and back again.
“It iss as it should be,” he said, back now back in his slow and hesitant English. “But you should come to Germany soon. Dresden is an extremely beautiful city in ze spring—ja, ze most extremely beautiful city!”
I had no doubt it was. But it had now left off raining. I stamped my cigarette out and made my parting excuses. Normally, I’d have made some effort at politeness—you can strike up some interesting friendships in this way. On the other hand, conversations, in English or German, about the whereabouts of my luggage or the joys of yet another chocolate box German city were not on my agenda for that afternoon.
CHAPTER FOUR
“So, our good Dr Markham is back from the wars!” Gwen snapped. She looked up from her typing and took off her spectacles. “Back, and still in one piece, I see,” she added with a look of bitter contempt. I tried for an easy smile, but found myself wilting in the blast from that chilly stare. “Since you’re back this early, I suppose you’ve been wasting money on one of those nasty little aeroplanes.” She ripped the sheet from her typewriter and muttered an obscenity as she reached for her bottle of correcting fluid. “Well, the Boss is out to lunch,” she said without looking back up. “I don’t expect him back this afternoon. I suggest you call in tomorrow. I’ll see then if there’s an appointment free.” She stabbed viciously at the sheet, sending a splash of whiteness over bad text and good text alike.
“Oh, dearest Anthony!” I heard a voice behind me. “Oh, dearest, dearest Anthony! We really weren’t expecting you until tomorrow at the earliest—tomorrow, or perhaps even Wednesday.” It was Vicky. Poured into a dress that couldn’t have left much change out of fifty guineas, she stood in the doorway. Holding it out carefully to avoid getting dust on that shimmering green silk, she carried a stack of marked up typescript.