'It was simply awful,' he said. 'What happened after we last met. That bomb on the Madrid killing her husband- then the other where she was staying. I even thought of writing to you. Then I got mixed up with a lot of special duties.'
He had quite changed his tone of voice from the moment before, at the same time assuming an expression reminiscent of Farebrother's 'religious face', the same serious pained contraction of the features. I was determined to endure for as short a time as possible only what was absolutely unavoidable in the exhibition of self-confessed remorse Stevens was obviously proposing to mount for my benefit. He had been, I recalled, unnecessarily public in his carryings-on with Priscilla, had corroded what turned out to be Chips’ last year alive. That might be no very particular business of mine, but I had liked Chips, therefore preferred the circumstances should remain unresurrected. That was the long and the short of it.
‘Don’t let’s talk about it. What’s the good?’
Stevens was not to be silenced so easily.
‘She meant so much to me,’ he said.
‘Who did?’ asked Pamela.
‘Someone who was killed in an air-raid.’
He put considerable emotion into his voice when he said that. Perhaps Priscilla had, indeed, ‘meant a lot’ to him. I did not care. I saw no reason to be dragged in as a kind of prop to his self-esteem, or masochistic pleasure in lacking it. Besides, I wanted to get on to the Szymanski story.
‘You’re always telling me I mean more to you than any other girl has,’ said Pamela. ‘At least you do after a couple of drinks. You’ve the weakest head of any man I’ve ever met.’
She spoke in that low almost inaudible mutter employed by her most of the time. There was certainly a touch of Audrey Maclintick about her, at least enough to explain why Stevens and Mrs Maclintick had got on so comparatively well together that night in the Café Royal. On the other hand, this girl was not only much better looking, but also much tougher even than Mrs Maclintick. Pamela Flitton gave the impression of being thoroughly vicious, using the word not so much in the moral sense, but as one might speak of a horse — more specifically, a mare.
‘I don’t claim the capacity for liquor of some of your Slav friends,’ said Stevens laughing.
He sounded fairly well able to stand up to her. This seemed a suitable moment to change the subject.
‘You were in the news locally not so long ago — where I work, I mean — about one Szymanski.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re with the Poles, Nicholas?’
‘I’d left them by the time you got up to your tricks.’
Pamela showed interest at the name Szymanski.
‘I sent you a message,’ she said. ‘Did you get it?’
When she smiled and spoke directly like that, it was possible to guess at some of her powers should she decide to make a victim of a man.
‘I got it.’
‘Then you were in on the party?’ asked Stevens.
‘I saw some of the repercussions.’
‘God,’ he said. ‘That was a lark.’
‘Not for those engaged in normal liaison duties.’
One’s loyalties vary. At that moment I felt wholly on the side of law and order, if only to get some of my own back for his line of talk about the Lovells.
‘Oh, bugger normal liaison duties. Even you must admit the operation was beautifully executed. Look here …’
He took my arm, and, leaving Pamela sitting sullenly by herself on a bench, walked me away to a deserted corner of the hall. When we reached there, he lowered his voice.
‘I’m due for a job in the near future not entirely unconnected with Szymanski himself.’
‘Housebreaking?’
Stevens yelled with laughter.
‘That’ll be the least of our crimes, I’d imagine,’ he said. ‘That is, the least of his — which might easily not stop at manslaughter, I should guess. Actually, we’re doing quite different jobs, but more or less in the same place.’
‘Presumably it’s a secret where you’re conducting these activities.’
‘My present situation is being on twenty-four call to Cairo. I’ll release something to you, as an old pal, in addition to that. The plot’s not unconnected with one of Pam’s conquests. Rather a grand one.’
‘You remind me of the man who used to introduce his wife as ancienne maîtresse de Lord Byron.’’
‘This is classier than a lord — besides Pam and I aren’t married yet.’
‘You don’t have to spell the name out.’
I was not impressed by Stevens’s regard for ‘security,’ always a risk in the hands of the vain. All the same, not much damage would be done by my knowing that at last some sort of assistance was to be given to the Resistance in Prince Theodoric’s country; and that Stevens and Szymanski were involved. That was certainly interesting.
‘I’ll be playing for the village boys,’ he said. ‘Rather than the team the squire is fielding.’
‘A tricky situation, I should imagine.’
‘You bet.’
‘I saw Sunny Farebrother yesterday, who took the rap in the Szymanski business.’
‘Cunning old bugger. They pushed him off to a training centre for a bit, but I bet he’s back on something good.’
‘He thinks so. Was Szymanski a boy-friend of Pamela’s?’
I thought I had a right to ask that question after the way Stevens had talked. For once he seemed a shade put out.
‘Who can tell?’ he said. ‘Even if there’s still a Szymanski. They may have infiltrated him already and he may have been picked up. I hope not. The great thing is he knows the country like the back of his hand. What are you doing yourself, old boy?’
The change of mood, sudden fear for Szymanski — and by implication for himself — was characteristic. I told him about my job, also explaining how I knew Pamela.
‘Won’t she be cross if we leave her much longer?’
‘She’s cross all the time. Bloody cross. Chronic state, thrives on it. Her chief charm. Makes her wonderful in bed. That is, if you like temper.’
Emphasis expressed as to the high degree of sexual pleasure to be derived from a given person is, for one reason or another, always to be accepted with a certain amount of suspicion, so far as the speaker is concerned, especially if referring to a current situation. Stevens sounded as if he might be bolstering himself up in making the last statement.
‘She’s the hell of a girl,’ he said.
I wondered whether he had run across Pamela with Szymanski in the first instance. In any case, people like that gravitate towards each other at all times, almost more in war than in peace, since war — though perhaps in a more limited sense than might be supposed — offers obvious opportunities for certain sorts of adventure. Stevens, whose self- satisfaction had if anything increased, seemed to have no illusions about Pamela’s temperament. He accepted that she was a woman whose sexual disposition was vested in rage and perversity. In fact, if he were to be believed, those were the very qualities he had set out to find. We returned to where she was sitting.