The Other Side of Silence

She shrugged. “A last throw of the dice from Britain and France to prove that these old colonial powers still matter? After all, it’s them who administer the canal. Of course. Why not?” She smiled. “But you didn’t come up here to talk international politics, did you?”

“We can if you like. Just as long as I don’t have to vote for anyone. That never changed anything. Even in the good old days.”

“How old?”

“Very old. Old enough to be good. Before the Nazis, anyway. Speaking of the very old, I spent the evening with Somerset Maugham. At the Villa Mauresque.”

“How is he?”

“Getting strangely older by the minute, if that were humanly possible.”

“Makes two of us.”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“You’d be surprised. The longer I stay parted from that fifty-thousand-dollar publishing advance, the older I feel.”

In the car, I’d resolved to tell her everything; if I was going to risk my neck for the Englishman there had to be something in it for me, and that something had started to look like it might just be Anne French.

“Then it’s good that I’m here. I’ve got some news that should make you and your publisher very happy. I’ve persuaded Somerset Maugham to meet with you.”

This was making more of my effort on her behalf than was perhaps warranted, of course, but it sounded like the sort of thing she probably wanted to hear, which, for obvious reasons, was the kind of thing I was keen to tell her.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Really? That’s fantastic.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Frankly, I think he is a kind of vampire.”

“All authors are a bit like that.”

“I wouldn’t know. But I feel like I lost a lot of blood up there tonight. I feel drained.”

“Then you’d better come in the house and let me mix you a transfusion.”

“I think I’ve had enough to drink already.”

“Something else then. Coffee, perhaps.”

“Are you sure? It is late. Maybe I should go.”

“Look, Walter, I’ve never been one for knowing what I should and shouldn’t do. I always wanted to be good but now I realize I should have been a little less specific. Especially now you’re here. Now I think I just want to be wanted.” She shrugged off the nightdress like an extra skin and stood there naked in the moonlight. “You do want me, don’t you, Walter?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go in before I change my mind, or I get bitten by something while I’m standing here naked. A mosquito, perhaps.”

“Not if I get there first.”

SEVENTEEN

The subject of the tape was printed on the box, which now lay on the refectory table beside the tape machine. “Interview with Guy Burgess, May 28th, 1951, SS Pamyati Kirova.” I carefully threaded the leader onto the Grundig, lit my fifth cigarette of the day, poured some coffee from the brightly polished silver pot that Ernest the butler had brought for me, and, under the eye of a tomato-colored nude by Renoir, sat down to await Maugham’s delayed arrival in the elegant drawing room. On the lawns the garden sprinklers were already spinning around like dervishes and the chauffeur had washed the car again. The nude was a bit too pink and chubby for my taste; she only lacked a lollipop and a Teddy bear to be wholly unsuitable. I was tired but in an almost pleasant way, suffering a little with the equivalent of a hangover from an excess of sex, if such a thing is possible for a man living alone. My balls felt like they’d spent the night on a beer-hall billiard table. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again as Robin Maugham came into the room and sat down heavily, more like an old housewife after a day trailing around the shops instead of a man wearing a blazer who had only just finished breakfast. He smelled strongly of cloying cologne and false courtesy. I sensed that he had started to dislike me almost as much as I disliked his cologne.

“My uncle is going to be another five or ten minutes. He had an uncomfortable night. The heat, you know.”

“I had a bit of a rough night myself.”

“Well, I always say, there’s nothing quite like a bit of rough.” Robin smiled at his own little joke. “Anyway, he’s just getting dressed.”

I nodded. “Fine.”

“You know, every time I open a door in this house these days it seems you’re there, Walter. Why is that?”

“Does that make you nervous?”

“No. It makes me wonder, that’s all. I mean, what’s in it for you, that kind of thing. What do you want from this house, Walter?”

“You asked me to come here. To play bridge. Remember?”

“No, what I mean is, why are you helping my uncle now?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“Oh, come on, Walter. I’m not a fucking idiot. Everyone wants something from the old boy. What’s your angle?”

“Would it make you feel a little more comfortable if you thought there was money in it for me?”

“Yes, I suppose it would. I mean, it’s like Dr. Johnson says about being a writer: No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Well, surely the same is doubly true for a man who used to be a private detective like you.”

“Who told you that?”

“What?”

“That I used to be a private detective?”

“I suppose my uncle must have mentioned it.”