“I did, old boy.”
“Not very clearly.”
“You know what Xan—Xan Fielding—used to do to any new chaps who were chuted in when we were up in the Levka Ore? Send ‘em wham straight out on a Job. No warnings, no sermons. Just—’Watch it.’ Okay?”
I disliked Mitford because he was crass and mean, but even more because he was a caricature, an extension, of certain qualities in myself; he had on his skin, visible, the carcinoma I nursed inside me. I had to suspect, the old paranoia, that he might be another ‘plant’—a test for me, a lesson; but yet there was something so ineffably impervious about the man that I could not believe he was so consummate an actor. I thought of Lily de Seitas; how to her I must seem as Mitford did to myself. A barbarian.
We moved out of the Mandrake onto the pavement.
“I’m off to Greece next month,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Firm’s going to start tours there next summer.”
“Oh God. No.”
“Do the place good. Shake their ideas up.”
I looked down the crowded Soho Street. “I hope Zeus strikes you with lightning the moment you get there.”
He took it as a joke.
“Age of the common man, old boy. Age of the common man.”
He held out his hand. I would have dearly loved to have known how to twist it and send him wham straight over my shoulder. The last I saw of him was of a dark blue back marching towards Shaftesbury Avenue; eternally the victor in a war where the losers win.
Years later I discovered that he had been acting that day, though not in the way that I feared. His name caught my eye in a newspaper. He had been arrested in Torquay on charges of issuing checks under false pretenses. He’d been doing it all over England, using the persona of Captain Alexander Mitford, D.S.O., M.C.
In fact, said prosecuting counsel, although the accused went to Greece in the occupying forces after the German collapse, he played no part whatever in the Resistance. Later there was another bit: Sometime after demobilization Mitford returned to Greece, where he obtained a teaching post by forging false references. He was subsequently dismissed from this post.
Late that afternoon I dialed the Much Hadham number. It rang a long time but then someone answered. I heard Lily de Seitas’s voice. She was out of breath.
“Sorry. I was in the garden. Dinsford House.”
“It’s me. Nicholas Urfe.”
“Oh hello.” She said it with a bright indifference.
“I’d like to see you again.”
There was a small pause. “I have no news.”
“I’d still like to see you.”
I knew she was smiling, in the silence that followed.
She said, “When?”
74
I was out the next morning. When I got back, about two, I found Kemp had slipped a note under my door: A Yank called. Says its urgent. Will come again four. I went down to see her. She was splaying great worms of viridian green with her thumb across murky black and umber explosions of Ripolin. She did not like to be interrupted when she was “making a painting.”
“This man.”
“Said he must see you.”
“What about?”
“Going to Greece.” She stood stockily back, fag in mouth. “Your old job or something.”
“But how did he find where I live?”
“Don’t ask me.”
I stood staring at the note. “What sort of man was he?”
“Christ, can’t you wait a couple of hours?” She turned. “Buzz.”
He came at five to four, a tallish young man with a lean body and the unmistakable cropped head of an American. He wore glasses, was a year or two younger than I; pleasant face, pleasant smile, pleasant everything; as wholesome, and as green, as a lettuce. He thrust out a hand.
“John Briggs.”
“Hello.”
“You’re Nicholas Urfe? Is that how I pronounce it? The lady…”
I made him come in. “Not much of a place, I’m afraid.”
“It’s nice.” He looked around for a better word. “Atmosphere.” We clambered up the stairs.
“I wasn’t expecting an American.”
“No. Well, I guess it’s the Cyprus situation.”
“Ah.”
“I’ve been over here this last year at London University. All along I’ve been trying to figure how I could get myself a year in Greece before I return home. You don’t know how excited I am.” We came to a landing. He saw some of the sewing girls at work through an open door. Two or three of them whistled. He waved to them. “Isn’t that nice? Reminds me of Thomas Hood.”
“Where did you hear about the job?”
“In the Times Educational Supplement.” He gave even the most familiar English institutions an interrogative intonation, as if I might not have heard of them.
We came to my flat. I closed the door.
“I thought the British Council had stopped doing the recruiting.”
“Is that so? I suppose the school committee decided that as Mr. Conchis was over here he might as well do the interviewing.”
He had gone into the sitting room and was looking at the view down grimy old Charlotte Street. “This is charming. You know, I love this city.” I indicated the least greasy of the armchairs.
“And… Mr. Conchis gave you my address?”
“Sure. Was that wrong?”
“No. Not at all.” I sat on the window seat. “Did he tell you anything about me?”
He raised his hand, as if I might need quietening down. “Well yes, he—I do know, I mean… he warned me how dangerous these school intrigues can get. As I understand you had the misfortune…” he gave up. “You still feel sore about it?”
I shrugged. “Greece is Greece.”
“I bet they’re rubbing their hands already at the thought of a real live American.”
“They probably are.” He shook his head, as if the thought that anyone could involve a real live American in a Levantine academic intrigue was almost past belief. I said, “When did you see Mr. Conchis?”
“When he was here three weeks ago. I’d have gotten in contact earlier, but he lost your address. He just sent it to me from Greece. Only this morning.”
I thought quickly. “Only this morning?”
“Yep. A cable.”
“A cable!”
“Surprised me too. I think he’d forgotten about it. You… you know him pretty well?”
“Oh I… met him a few times. I was actually never terribly clear about his position on the school committee.”
“What he told me, no official position. Just helping out. Jesus, his English is marvelous though.”
“Isn’t it?”
We sized each other up. He had a relaxed way about him that seemed inculcated by education, by reading some book on How To Be At Ease With Strangers, rather than by any intuitive gift. Nothing, one felt, had ever gone wrong in his life; but he had a sort of freshness, an enthusiasm, an energy that couldn’t be totally canceled by envy. Let him have his fall; but he made you hope to see him rise again.
I analyzed the situation. The natural coincidence of his appearing and my call to Much Hadham was so improbable that it was almost an argument in favor of his innocence. It might be simply Conchis’s sense of humor at work; to make me doubt unnecessarily; or to make it so obvious I should doubt that I wouldn’t. On the other hand Mrs. de Seitas must have deduced from my telephone call that I was undergoing a change of heart; and this was nicely timed to test my reliability, my preparedness to keep my mouth shut.
Yet telling me about the cable made him sound genuinely innocent; and though I had understood that the “subject” had to be a matter of hazard, perhaps there was some reason, some unknown result of that summer, that had made Conchis decide to choose his next guinea pig. Faced with the guileless, earnest Briggs I felt a little of what Mitford must have felt with me: a malicious amusement, bedeviled in my case by a European delight in seeing brash America being taken for a ride; and beyond that a kinder wish, which I would never have admitted to Conchis or Lily de Seitas, not to spoil his experience.