Manning stared at him.
‘I suppose I do,’ he said. ‘I suppose I do.’
‘I must admit, it wasn’t very satisfactory. It was one of the jobs I wanted you for.’
‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’ cried Raya.
‘You can’t imagine how maddening it is to be left in the dark while this sort of argument flashes about one’s head.’
They looked round. They had both forgotten about her.
‘He’s inviting you to sleep here,’ said Manning briefly.
‘That’s very kind of him,’ she replied. ‘Yes, please.’
‘I wish you’d stop trying to irritate me,’ said Manning. ‘Come on. I’ll see you to a taxi.’
‘She accepted my invitation, didn’t she?’ said Proctor-Gould.
‘Look, don’t be stupid,’ said Manning. ‘Anyway, what about your rule?’
‘What rule?’
‘I thought you had a rule about not getting emotionally involved while you were over here?’
‘Who said anything about getting emotionally involved, Paul?’
‘If spending the night with people isn’t getting emotionally involved with them …’
‘Don’t leap to conclusions, Paul. I shall doss down in the arm-chair. There’s no question of getting involved in any way at all.’
‘What about the danger of blackmail?’
‘Blackmail, Paul?’
‘You were warning me about it, if you remember.’
‘Good heavens Paul! You don’t think Raya’s a police spy, do you?’
‘Well, we don’t know, do we?’
‘I don’t think that’s a very chivalrous attitude, Paul.’
‘Gordon, three days ago it was your attitude!’
‘At that stage I hadn’t met Raya. I was speaking generally. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life, Paul, it’s that success goes to the man who knows when to modify his general principles to meet the situation in hand.’
‘You really have tumbled head over heels, haven’t you, Gordon!’
‘Paul, there’s no question of tumbling head over heels, or any involvement of any sort whatsoever. I’m just offering Raya somewhere to sleep for the night because she’s almost certainly missed her last bus.’
‘Gordon, let’s not delude ourselves. You’re in love with Raya.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Oh, Gordon! You’re making a pass at her! I may say it’s the most preposterous, clumsy, witless pass I’ve ever seen made.’
‘Paul, let me assure you I have no designs upon Raya.’
‘Let me tell you something, Gordon. You’re the archetype of a certain sort of impotence….’
‘Now, Paul, let’s not raise our voices….’
‘You flirt with other men’s women. You get prostitutes in and pay them for drinking Nescafé….’
‘Now, come, come, Paul….’
‘You launch into little adventures where there’s no possibility of failure because there’s no possibility of success….’
There was a sharp rap on the door. They swung round. The old woman from the floor-clerk’s desk was standing on the threshold.
‘Quieter! Quieter!’ she whispered furiously. ‘It’s after midnight – you’ll wake the whole hotel!’
After she had gone Manning and Proctor-Gould stood for a moment looking at each other in silence.
‘Well,’ said Manning, ‘Raya and I are going.’
He looked round to tell her. But she had vanished. She had disappeared from the room without trace.
It was Proctor-Gould who saw her first. She was in bed, with the covers drawn up over her nose, apparently fast asleep. Propped up against the carafe of water on the bedside was one of her playing cards. On it was written in her childish ballpoint hand:
‘A call at 8.0 a.m., please, with cheese, fruit, sour milk, and coffee.’
16
Manning spent a good deal of the night walking up and down his room in Sector B, his fists clenched, unable to believe that he had been treated so badly.
‘I can’t believe it!’ he said to himself aloud over and over again, raising his eyebrows and running his hand through his hair, until the window was grey with dawn, and he was too exhausted to remember what it was that he couldn’t believe. When he woke up two or three hours later he could believe it even less, and when, as he sat haggard and sleepy in the Faculty Library, he received the usual message that Proctor-Gould had phoned and asked him to go over to the hotel, it seemed to him that his impressions of what had taken place the previous evening had simply been mistaken, and that nothing had really changed at all.
But it had. Even as he opened the door of Proctor-Gould’s room he noticed the smell was different. It no longer smelt of loneliness and soiled white shirts – a smell which Manning had always found bleak but curiously English. Instead there was a mixture of warm, cheerful smells – Russian cigarettes, scent, hot cloth. And the appearance of the room had changed. There was a vase of tulips on the chest of drawers, a bowl of birch twigs on the escritoire. The stacks of books had been arranged neatly on shelves, and several large pictures had been pinned to the wall. They were of doll-like figures with red cheeks holding single flowers in their hands, childishly painted in bright poster colours on sheets of dark art paper. The piles of dirty linen and the open suitcases had gone. So had the washing with which the room had on previous occasions been festooned. Instead, Manning noticed, a blanket from the bed had been spread over one of the Imperial occasional tables, leaving the clawed golden feet of the table sticking out ridiculously from underneath, like the boots of a lover hiding behind a curtain in a French farce. On the blanket stood a neat stack of folded pyjamas and shirts, and an up-ended electric iron which clicked as it cooled and contracted.
By comparison with the changed décor, Proctor-Gould and Raya themselves seemed surprisingly familiar. To Manning their ordinariness was depressing; the new status quo was not a matter of impression or interpretation at all, but common, objective fact. Proctor-Gould stood with his back to the radiator, pulling at his ear. Raya lay on top of the bed, propped up on her elbow. It was as if they had always been so, as if a world which contained them in any other way was inconceivable.
‘Welcome to our little nest,’ said Raya, shaking the hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s not much, but it’s home.’
Manning was embarrassed. So evidently was Proctor-Gould, though he seemed highly pleased with himself as well. He kept frowning importantly to hide his pleasure, and pulling harder and harder at his ear.
‘You’ll have it right off if you’re not careful,’ said Manning irritably. Proctor-Gould began to giggle at once, and went on for a long time. Manning noticed that his blazer had been brushed and his trousers were pressed. The pens and pencils had been removed from his breast pocket. He looked almost sleek.
‘Do you like the pictures?’ Proctor-Gould asked at last.
‘Very nice.’
‘Raya painted them herself.’
‘Really?’
‘At least, I think she did. I think that’s what she was saying.’
There was an awkward silence.
‘The point is, Paul,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘we need to get a few things settled as between Raya and myself.’
‘I suppose you do.’
‘I wondered whether you would be kind enough to interpret for us?’
‘What?’
‘I hope you don’t mind?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake …!’
‘What do you mean, Paul?’
‘I mean – well, for God’s sake …!’
Proctor-Gould pulled at his ear again.
‘I see your point, Paul,’ he said. ‘But I can scarcely get one of the Intourist interpreters up, can I? Look, I shan’t ask you to translate anything that might embarrass you. There are just one or two little logistical points we ought to get straight. I’ve been trying to get through to her all day in sign language, but we haven’t made much headway.’