sure,’ I said. ‘Or else I would have got you with only twenty-five pence on the clock.’ How could I have been so stupid. On that phone if you dialled TIM you’d hear the tick of the Chief Commissioner’s watch.
‘We’d better get you home,’ said the cop. ‘And thank you, Mr Mason.’
Mason let the driver open the door of the Executive for him as if to the manner born. That little bastard would wind up running the Centre, that much was clear.
They took me all the way home. ‘Next time,’ said the cop, ‘get car-pool transport. You’re entitled to it after a trip, you know that.’
‘You couldn’t get one of your people to collect my Mini Clubman – between games of bridge, I mean.’
‘I’ll report it stolen. The local bobbies will pick it up.’
‘I bet sometimes you wish you weren’t so honest,’ I said.
‘Goodnight, sir.’ It was still pouring with rain. I got out of the cab. They’d left me on the wrong side of the street. U-turns were forbidden.
3
All time is game time …
RULES. ALL GAMES. STUDIES CENTRE. LONDON
I let myself into the flat as quietly as possible. Marjorie turned up the heating whenever I was away, and now the stale air, heavy with fresh paint and unseasoned timber smells, hit me like a secondhand hangover. It would be a long time before I’d get used to living here.
‘Is that you, darling?’
‘Yes, love.’ I prodded at the pile of mail, pushing the unsealed buff envelopes aside until there remained only a postcard from a ski resort, Cross and Cockade magazine and a secondhand book about the Battle of Moscow. On the silver-plated toast rack – a place kept for urgent messages – there was a torn piece of hospital notepaper with ‘Please go to Colonel Schlegel’s home on Sunday. He’ll meet the ten o’clock train’ written on it in Marjorie’s neat handwriting. I’d have gone Monday except that Sunday was underlined three times, in the red pencil she used for diagrams.
‘Darling!’
‘I’m coming.’ I went into the sitting-room. When I was away she seldom went in there: a quick bout with the frying pan and a briefcase full of post-graduate medical studies on the bedside table was her routine. But now she’d got it all tidied and ready for my return: matches near the ashtray and slippers by the fireplace. There was even a big bunch of mixed flowers, arranged with fern and placed in a jug amid her copies of House and Garden on the side table.
‘I missed you, Marj.’
‘Hello, sailor.’
We embraced. The lingering smell of bacon I’d encountered in the hall was now a taste on her lips. She ran a hand through my hair to ruffle it. ‘It won’t come loose,’ I said. ‘They knit them into the scalp.’
‘Silly.’
‘Sorry I’m late.’
She turned her head and smiled shyly. She was like a little girl: her large green eyes and small white face, lost somewhere under that dishevelled black hair.
‘I made a stew but it’s a bit dried up.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You haven’t noticed the flowers.’
‘Are you working in the mortuary again?’
‘Bastard,’ she said, but she kissed me softly.
In the corner, the box was keeping up its bombardment of superficial hysteria: British Equity outwits fat German extras shouting Schweinhund.
‘The flowers were from my mother. To wish me many happy returns.’
‘You’re not rerunning that twenty-ninth birthday again this year?’
She hit me in the ribs with the side of the hand and knew enough anatomy to make it hurt.
‘Take it easy,’ I gasped. ‘I’m only joking.’
‘Well, you save your lousy jokes for the boys on the submarine.’
But she put her arms round me and grabbed me tight. And she kissed me and stroked my face, trying to read her fortune in my eyes.
I kissed her again. It was more like the real thing this time.
‘I was beginning to wonder,’ she said, but the words were lost in my mouth.
There was a pot of coffee clipped into an electric contraption that kept it warm for hours. I poured some into Marjorie’s cup and sipped it. It tasted like iron filings with a dash of quinine. I pulled a face.
‘I’ll make more.’
‘No.’ I grabbed her arm. She made me neurotic with all this tender loving care. ‘Sit down, for God’s sake sit down.’ I reached over and took a piece of the chocolate bar she’d been eating. ‘I don’t want anything to eat or drink.’
The heroes on the box got the keys to a secret new aeroplane from this piggy-eyed Gestapo man, and this fat short-sighted sentry kept stamping and giving the Heil Hitler salute. The two English cats Heil Hitlered back, but they exchanged knowing smiles as they got in the plane.
‘I don’t know why I’m watching it,’ said Marjorie.
‘Seeing these films makes you wonder why we took six years to win that damned war,’ I said.
‘Take off your overcoat.’
‘I’m OK.’
‘Have you been drinking, darling?’ She smiled. She’d never seen me drunk but she was always suspecting I might be.
‘No.’
‘You’re shivering.’
I wanted to tell her about the flat and the photographs of the man who wasn’t me, but I knew she’d be sceptical. She was a doctor: they’re all like that. ‘Did the car give you trouble?’ she asked finally. She wanted only to be quite certain I wasn’t going to confess to another woman.
‘The plugs. Same as last time.’
‘Perhaps you should get the new one now, instead of waiting.’
‘Sure. And a sixty-foot ocean racer. Did you see Jack while I was away?’
‘He took me to lunch.’
‘Good old Jack.’
‘At the Savoy Grill.’
I nodded. Her estranged husband was a fashionable young paediatrician. The Savoy Grill was his works canteen. ‘Did you talk about the divorce?’
‘I
