spectacle.”
“That’s great. We’ll have a lot to talk about.”
“Yes, I’m sure. And if we haven’t we’ll order up a bottle of gin. I suppose they do have gin in Austria?”
“They do, Mother. Or they did. I might have drunk it all earlier on.”
“Oh, Mickey. And all that wine with dinner. Your father will have to carry you home.”
“Well if you two are going to get bombed on gin, it won’t matter much, will it?” said Mickey. “They don’t call it Mothers’ Ruin for nothing.”
Frances laughed.
“Ah, Mothers’ Ruin, the memsahib’s friend. Elspeth, I shall tell you all about India. You’ll be fascinated.”
“And that’s an order,” said Mickey. “Right. Shall we go?”
Herbert slowly rose, and pulled back his wife’s chair, while the children sauntered, conferring happily enough, towards the door. Frances looked up, and gave him a gentle smile.
“Do you think you can help?” she said.
“Perhaps, if I can get him to talk, if I can just listen. I’m not very good company this evening, not for you. You don’t mind being left, with Elspeth?” She squeezed his arm.
“You do what you can. I’ll be perfectly all right. Don’t drink too much.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
8
Herbert set a brisk pace out of the hotel, and across the forecourt to the street.
“I think I remember seeing a café over there, on the right-hand side. Yes, there it is. Shall we try it?”
Mickey shrugged and nodded. Anywhere that sold alcohol was fine with him.
The place was unappealing on the outside and unwelcoming within. One customer sat reading a newspaper at the far end of a line of tables, another two leaned on the bar by the door, in gentle conversation with what looked like a team of husband and wife behind it. Apart from these five, and now the two Englishmen, it was empty.
“Nice and quiet,” said Herbert. “Well, it’s early yet.”
They made their way at random to a table half way along the wall, followed at a respectful distance by the female half of the partnership, who contrived to reach them just as they sat down. Herbert ordered two large beers, and smiled at her as she went away. Then he said;
“Funny place.”
“Why?”
“Oh . . . Lack of atmosphere. It really shouldn’t be empty at this time of day. I think it must have opened recently. Look, everything’s new. No wear on the furniture, no stains on the carpet, or the tables. Let me see . . . Prints of old Vienna, piped music. The furniture’s not exactly plush, though, is it? I’d say they’re trying to catch the locals and the tourists, and they’ve fallen in between. It doesn’t feel very Viennese, somehow. It feels sort of uneasy. Ah, here comes the beer. I think we’ll pay as we go, English style. We’re not staying.”
“You’ve been away a long time, you know. Things might have changed.”
Herbert counted half a dozen coins onto the small tin tray, and waved away the change. Then he said;
“Oh, indeed. I did look in on a couple of places this afternoon, though. The café Eiles on the Ring, and the café Mozart, not the famous one, another one just along the street here. That was very much the old style. No. I’ll ask the girl when she comes back. Bet you the next round the place has been open less than a month.”
“I was rather under the impression that this was your treat.”
“Really? Extraordinary notion.”
They laughed together, and Mickey looked past his father, distracted by a flicker in the mirrored wall at the back. Another single customer had come in, and now hesitated by the bar before sitting down, uneasily, near the door.
“You might not be such a great detective,” said Mickey. “Looks like the place is filling up.”
Without moving his head, Herbert glanced over his son’s shoulder, towards the bar.
“Him? He was in the dining room at the hotel. He must have followed us. No don’t look round. You’ll embarrass him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“But why?”
“Don’t look so alarmed, dear boy. He’s not a deadly enemy out of my shady past. Too young, for one thing. He’s probably on his own, decided to tag along. I expect he’ll work up the courage to introduce himself when he’s had a couple.”
Mickey smiled, and relaxed.
“Your shady past, of course. I should have known better than to take that bet. I keep forgetting you were a spy.”
“Only in the war, with the resistance groups. That’s not what people mean by spying these days. Perhaps one does have a heightened sense. I don’t know.”
“Not a lot seems to get past you, anyway.”
“That may be true. Well then . . . do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“What do you mean?”
“Of course, you might not want to talk, but I thought perhaps you just didn’t want to talk, you know, over dinner. Was it something to do with the exhibition?”
Mickey hesitated, torn between gratitude and anger. Should he own up? This could be his chance to fill in the missing piece, and it might not come again, yet he had deliberately avoided it for his father’s sake. Part of him said that if the old man wanted to rob his son of the grown-up dignity conferred by compassion, then he could take what was coming to him; but it was no better to surrender than to be beaten. He looked for guidance into his father’s face, and found only the fear of rejection.
“All right, Dad, you win. Yes, I did find the exhibition upsetting, and I thought you would as well, so I decided not to tell you about it. How did you work it out?”
“It was pretty obvious, I’m afraid. What really gave you away was . . . Forgive me, this is going to sound rather unkind. While Elspeth was talking about what a waste of effort it had been, it occurred to me that it was the first time I had ever heard her voice a criticism. I take it there was a difference of opinion.”
Mickey looked down again. The partial truth on which he had compromised, which he had hoped would satisfy, had proved inadequate. Now he must add disloyalty to the lie. He said;
“She didn’t seem to be as sensitive to it as she might have been.” Alas, this was also part of the truth.
“Well, don’t be too hard on her, Mickey. She’s a super
