Passenger to Frankfurt Page 7

Communism, I should think they're considered old-fashioned.

  The Chinese? I think they've lost their way. Too much Chairman

  Mao, perhaps. I don't know who these people are who

  are doing the planning. As I said before, it's why and where

  and when and who.'

  'Very interesting.'

  'It's so frightening, this same idea that always recurs.

  History repeating itself. The young hero, the golden superman

  that all must follow.' She paused, then said, 'Same idea,

  you know. The young Siegfried.'

  57

  ADVICE FROM

  GREAT-AUNT MATILDA

  Great-Aunt Matilda looked at him. She had a very sharp

  and shrewd eye. Stafford Nye had noticed that before. He

  noticed it particularly at this moment.

  ''So you've heard that term before,' she said. 'I see,'

  'What does it mean?'

  'You don't know?' She raised her eyebrows.

  'Cross my heart and wish to die,' said Sir Stafford, in

  nursery language.

  'Yes, we always used to say that, didn't we,' said Lady

  Matilda. 'Do you really mean what you're saying?'

  'I don't know anything about it.'

  'But you'd heard the term before,'

  *Yes. Someone said it to me.'

  'Anyone important?'

  It could be. I suppose it could be. What do you mean

  by "anyone important"?'

  'Well, you've been involved in various Government missions

  lately, haven't you? You've represented this poor, miserable

  country as best you could, which I shouldn't wonder wasn't

  rather better than many others could do, sitting round a table

  and talking. I don't know whether anything's come of all that.'

  'Probably not,' said Stafford Nye. 'After all, one isn't

  optimistic when one goes into these things.'

  'One does one's best,' said Lady Matilda correctively.

  'A very Christian principle. Nowadays if one does one's

  worst one often seems to get on a good deal better. What

  does all this mean. Aunt Matilda?'

  *I don't suppose I know,' said his aunt

  'Well, you very often do know things.'

  'Not exactly. I just pick up things here and there.*

  'Yes?'

  Tve got a few old friends left, you know. Friends who

  are in the know. Of course most of them are either practically

  stone deaf or half blind or a little bit gone in the

  top storey or unable to walk straight. But something still

  functions. Something, shall we say, up here.' She hit the

  top of her neatly arranged white head. 'There's a good

  deal of alarm and despondency about. More than usual That's one of the things I've picked up.'

  58

  'Isn't there always?'

  'Yes, yes, but this is a bit more than that. Active instead

  of passive, as you might say. For a long time, as I have noticed from the outside, and you, no doubt, from the

  inside, we have felt that things are in a mess. A rather bad

  mess. But now we've got to a point where we feel that perhaps

  something might have been done about the mess.. There's

  an element of danger in it. Something is going on--something

  is brewing. Not just in one country. In quite a lot of

  countries. They've recruited a service of their own and

  the danger about that is that it's a service of young people.

  And the kind of people who will go anywhere, do anything,

  unfortunately believe anything, and so long as they are promised

  a certain amount of pulling down, wrecking, throwing

  spanners in the works, then they think the cause must be a

  good one and that the world will be a different place. They're

  not creative, that's the trouble--only destructive. The creative

  young write poems, write books, probably compose music,

  paint pictures just as they always have done. They'll be all

  right--But once people learn to love destruction for its own

  sake, evil leadership gets its chance.'

  'You say "they" or "them". Who do you mean?'

  'Wish I knew,' said Lady Matilda. 'Yes, I wish I knew.

  Very much indeed. If I hear anything useful. 111 tell you. Then you can do something about it.'

  'Unfortunately, I haven't got anyone to tell, I mean to

  pass it on to.'

  'Yes, don't pass it on to - just anyone. You can't trust

  people. Don't pass it on to any one of those idiots in the

  Government, or connected with government or hoping to

  be participating in government after this lot runs out. Politicians

  don't have time to look at the world they're living

  in. They see the country they're living in and they see it as

  one vast electoral platform. That's quite enough to put on

  their plates for the time being. They do things which they

  honestly believe will make things better and then they're

  surprised when they don't make things better because they're

  not the things that people want to have. And one can't

  help coming to the conclusion that politicians have a feeling

  that they have a kind of divine right to tell lies in a good

  cause. It's not really so very long ago since Mr Baldwin

  made his famous remark--"If I had spoken the truth, I should

  have lost the election." Prime Ministers still feel like that Now

  and again we have a great man, thank God. But it's rare.'

  'Well, what do you suggest ought to be done?'

  59

  'Are you asking my advice? Mine? Do you know how

  old I am?'

  'Getting on for ninety,' suggested her nephew.

  'Not quite as old as that,' said Lady Matilda, slightly

  affronted. 'Do I look it, my dear boy?'

  *No, darling. You look a nice, comfortable sixty-six.'

  'That's better,' said Lady Matilda. 'Quite untrue. But

  better. If I get a dp of any kind from one of my dear old

  admirals or an old general or even possibly an air marshal

  --they do hear things, you know--they've got cronies still

  and the old boys get together and talk. And so it gets

  around. There's always been the grapevine and there still

  is a grapevine, no matter how elderly the people are. The

  young Siegfried. We want a clue to just what that means

  --I don't know if he's a person or a password or the name of

  a Club or a new Messiah or a Pop singer. But that term

  covers something. There's the musical motif too. I've rather

  forgotten my Wagnerian days.' Her aged voice croaked

  out a partially recognizable melody. 'Siegfried's horn call,

  isn't that it? Get a recorder, why don't you? Do I mean a

  recorder. I don't mean a record that you put on a gramophone--I

  mean the things that schoolchildren play. They

  have classes for them. Went to a talk the other day. Our

  vicar got it up. Quite interesting. You know, tracing the

  history of the recorder and the kind of recorders there

  were from the Elizabethan age onwards. Some big, some small,

  all different notes and sounds. Very interesting. Interesting

  hearing in two senses. The recorders themselves. Some of

  them give out lovely noises. And the history. Yes. Well, what

  was I saying?'

  'You told me to get one of these instruments, I gather.'

  'Yes. Get a recorder and learn to blow Siegfried's hor
n

  call on that. You're musical, you always were. You can

  manage that, I hope?'

  'Well, it seems a very small part to play in the salvation

  of the world, but I dare say I could manage that.'

  'And have the thing ready. Because, you see--' she tapped

  on the table with her spectacle case--'you might want it to

  impress the wrong people some time. Might come in useful.

  They'd welcome you with open arms and then you might

  learn a bit.'

  'You certainly have ideas,' said Sir Stafford admiringly. 'What else can you have when you're my age?' said his

  great-aunt. 'You can't get about. You can't meddle with

  people much, you can't do any gardening. All you can do is

  60

  sit in your chair and have ideas. Remember that when

  you're forty years older.'

  'One remark you made interested me.'

  'Only one?' said Lady Matilda. That's rather poor measure

  considering how much I've been talking. What was it?'

  'You suggested that I might be capable of impressing the

  wrong people with my recorder--did you mean that?'

  'Well, it's one way, isn't it? The right people don't matter.

  But the wrong people--well, you've got to find out things, haven't you? You've got to permeate things. Rather like a

  death-watch beetle,' she said thoughtfully.

  'So I should make significant noises in the night?'

  'Well, that sort of thing, yes. We had death-watch beetle

  in the east wing here once. Very expensive it was to put it

  right. I dare say it will be just as expensive to put the world

  right.'

  'In fact a good deal more expensive,' said Stafford Nye.

  That won't matter,' said Lady Matilda. 'People never mind

  spending a great deal of money. It impresses them. It's when

  you want to do things economically, they won't play. We're

  the same people, you know. In this country, I mean. We're

  the same people we always were.'

  'What'do you mean by that?'

  'We're capable of doing big things. We were good at running

  an empire. We weren't good at keeping an empire running,

  but then you see we didn't need an empire any more

  And we recognized that. Too difficult to keep up. Robbie

  made me see that,' she added.

  'Robbie?' It was faintly familiar.

  'Robbie Shoreham. Robert Shoreham. He's a very old

  friend of mine. Paralysed down the left side. But he can

  talk still and he's got a moderately good hearing-aid.'

  'Besides being one of the most famous physicists in the

  world,' said Stafford Nye. 'So he's another of your old

  cronies, is he?'

  'Known him since he was a boy,' said Lady Matilda. 'I suppose it surprises you that we should be friends, have a

  lot in common and enjoy talking together?'

  'Well, I shouldn't have thought that--'

  That we had much to talk about? It's true I could never

  do mathematics. Fortunately, when I was a girl one didn't

  even try. Mathematics came easily to Robbie when he was

  about four years old, I believe. They say nowadays that

  that's quite natural. He's got plenty to talk about.^He liked

  me always because I was frivolous and made him laugh.

  61

  And I'm a good listener, too. And really, he says some very

  interesting things sometimes.'

  'So I suppose,' said Stafford Nye drily.

  'Now don't be superior. Moliere married his housemaid,

  didn't lie, and made a great success of it--if it is Moliere I

  mean. ' If a man's frantic with brains he doesn't really want

  a woman who's also frantic with brains to talk to. It would

  be exhausting. He'd much prefer a lovely nitwit who can

  make him laugh. I wasn't bad-looking when I was young,'

  said Lady Matilda complacently.''I know I have no academic

  distinctions. I'm not in the least intellectual. But

  Robert has always said that I've got a great deal of common

  sense, of intelligence,'

  'You're a lovely person,' said Sir Stafford Nye. 'I enjoy coming to see you and I shall go away remembering all

  the things you've said to me. There are a good many more

  things, I expect, that you could tell me but you're obviously

  not going to.'

  'Not until the right moment comes,' said Lady Matilda,

  'but I've got your interests at heart. Let me know what

  you're doing from time to time. You're dining at the American

  Embassy, aren't you, next week?'

  'How did you know that? I've been asked.'

  'And you've accepted, I understand.'

  'Well, it's all in the course of duty.' He looked at her

  curiously. 'How do you manage to be so well informed?'

  Oh, Milly told me.'

  'Milly?'

  'Milly Jean Cortman. The American Ambassador's wife.

  A most attractive creature, you know. Small and rather perfect-looking.'

  'Oh, you mean Mildred Cortman.'

  'She was christened Mildred but she preferred Milly Jean.

  I was talking to her on the telephone about some Charity

  Matinee or other--she's what we used to call a pocket Venus.'

  'A most attractive term to use,' said Stafford Nye.

  Chapter 8

  AN EMBASSY DINNER

  As Mrs Cortman came to meet him with outstretched hand,

  Stafford Nye recalled the term his great-aunt had used. Milly

  Jean Cortman was a woman of between thirty-five and forty.

  She had delicate features, big blue-grey eyes, a very perfectly

  shaped head with bluish-grey hair tinted to a particularly

  attractive shade which fitted her with a perfection of grooming.

  She was very popular in London. Her husband, Sam

  Cortman, was a big, heavy man, slightly ponderous. He was

  very proud of his wife. He himself was one of those slow,

  rather over-emphatic talkers. People found their attention

  occasionally straying when he was elucidating at some length

  a point which hardly needed making.

  'Back from Malaya, aren't you. Sir Stafford? It must

  have been quite interesting to go out there, though it's

  not the time of year I'd have chosen. But I'm sure we're

  all glad to see you back. Let me see now. You know Lady

  Aldborough and Sir John, and Herr von Roken, Frau von

  Roken. Mr and Mrs Staggenham.'

  They were all people known to Stafford Nye in more or

  less degree. There was a Dutchman and his wife whom he

  had not met before, since they had only just taken up their

  appointment. The Staggenhams were the Minister of Social

  Security and his wife. A particularly uninteresting couple,

  he harf always thought.

  'And the Countess Renata Zerkowski. I think she said she'd

  met you before.'

  'It must be about a year ago. When I was last in England,'

  said the Countess.

  And there she was, the passenger from Frankfurt again.

  Self-possessed, at ease, beautifully turned out in faint greyblue

  with a touch of chinchilla. Her hair dressed high (a

  wig?) and a ruby cross of antique design round her neck.

  'Signer Gasparo, Count Reitner, Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot.'

  About twenty-six in all. At dinner Stafford Nye sat between

  the dreary Mrs Staggenham and Signora Gasparo onr />
  the other side of him. Renata Zerkowski sat exactly opposite

  him.

  An Embassy dinner. A dinner such as he so often attended,

  holding much of the same type of guests. Various members

  of the Diplomatic Corps, junior ministers, one or two in63

  dustrialists, a sprinkling of socialites usually included because

  they were good conversationalists, natural, pleasant people

  to meet, though one or two, thought Stafford Nye, one or

  two were maybe different. Even while he was busy sustaining

  his conversation with Signora Gasparo, a charming person

  to talk to, a chatterbox, slightly flirtatious; his mind was

  roving in the same way that his eye also roved, though the

  latter was not very noticeable. As it roved round the dinner

  table, you would not have said that he was summing up

  conclusions in his own mind. He had been asked here. Why?

  For any reason or for no reason in particular. Because his

  name had come up automatically on the list that the secretaries

  produced from time to time with checks against such members

  as were due for their turn. Or as the extra man or the extra

  woman required for the balancing of the table. He had always

  been in request when an extra was needed.

  'Oh yes,' a diplomatic hostess would say, 'Stafford Nye

  will do beautifully. You will put him next to Madame Soand-so,

  or Lady Somebody else.'

  He had been asked perhaps to fill in for no further reason

  than that. And yet, he wondered. He knew by experience that

  there were certain other reasons. And so his eye with its swift

  social amiability, its air of not looking really at anything in

  particular, was busy,

  Amongst these guests there was someone perhaps who

  for some reason mattered, was important. Someone who had

  been asked--not to fill in--on the contrary--someone who

  had had a selection of other guests invited to fit in round

  him--or her. Someone "who mattered. He wondered--he

  wondered which of them it might be.

  Cortman knew, of course. Milly Jean, perhaps. One never

  really knew with wives. Some of them were better diplomats

  than their husbands. Some of them could be relied

  upon merely for their charm, for their adaptability, their

  readiness to please, their lack of curiosity. Some again, he

  thought ruefully to himself, were, as far as their husbands

  were concerned, disasters. Hostesses who, though they may

  have brought prestige or money to a diplomatic marriage,

  were yet capable at any moment of saying or doing the wrong

  thing, and creating an unfortunate situation. If that was to

  be guarded against, it would need one of the guests, or two or

  even three of the guests, to be what one might call professional

  smoothers-over.

  Did this dinner party this evening mean anything but a

  social event? His quick and noticing eye had by now been

  64

  round the dinner table picking out one or two people whom

  so far he had not entirely taken in. An American business

  man. Pleasant, not socially brilliant. A professor from one of

  the universities of the Middle West. A married couple, the

  husband German, the wife predominantly, almost aggressively

  American. A very beautiful woman, too. Sexually, highly

  attractive. Sir Stafford thought. Was one of them important?

  Initials floated through his mind. FBI. CIA. The business man

  perhaps a CIA man, there for a purpose. Things were like

  that nowadays. Not as they used to be. How had the formula

  gone? "Big brother is watching you. Yes, well it went further

  than that now. Transatlantic Cousin is watching you. High

  Finance for Middle Europe is watching you. A diplomatic

  difficulty has been asked here for you to watch him. Oh yes.

  There was often a lot behind things nowadays. But was that

  just another formula, just another fashion? Could it really

  mean more than that, something vital, something real? How

  did one talk of events in Europe nowadays? The Common

  Market. Well, that was fair enough, that dealt with trade,

  with economics, with the inter-relationships of countries.

  That was the stage to set. But behind the stage. Backstage.

  Waiting for the cue. Ready to prompt if prompting

  were needed. What was going on? Going on in the big

  world and behind the big world. He wondered.

  Some things he knew, some things he guessed at, some

  things, he thought to himself, I know nothing about and

  nobody wants me to know anything about them.

  His eyes rested for a moment on his vis-a-vis, her chin

  tilted upward, her mouth just gently curved in a polite

  smile, and their eyes* met. Those eyes told him nothing,

  the smile told him nothing. What was she doing here? She