The first Lovely, if reluctantly, suspends her researches. The second does likewise. Suddenly they are decent London women, with kindly faces and puffed, overworked bodies.
“It was over for him, dearie,” she says, pushing away a hank of hair with her chubby wrist.
“What was?”
“He said if he couldn’t have that phone no more, he’d have to go. He said that phone was his lifeline and if he couldn’t have it, it was a judgment on him, how would he do his business without a blower and a clean shirt?”
Mistaking Pym’s silence for rebuke, her companion flares at him. “Don’t look at us like that, darling. He’d had all we’ve got long ago. We done the gas, we done the electric, we cooked his dinners, didn’t we, Vi?”
“We done all we could,” says Vi. “And given him the comfort, too.”
“We pulled tricks for him more than was natural, didn’t we, Vi? Three a day for him, sometimes.”
“More,” says Vi.
“He was very lucky to have you,” says Pym sincerely. “Thank you very much for looking after him.”
This pleases them, and they smile shyly.
“You haven’t got a nice bottle in that big black briefcase of yours, I suppose, dearie?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Vi goes to the bedroom. Through the open doorway Pym sees the great imperial bed from Chester Street, its upholstery ripped and stained with use. Rick’s silk pyjamas lie sprawled across the coverlet. He smells Rick’s body lotion and Rick’s hair oil. Vi returns with a bottle of Drambuie.
“Did he talk about me at all, in the last days?” says Pym while they drink.
“He was proud of you, dear,” says Vi’s friend. “Very proud.” But she seems dissatisfied with her reply. “He was going to catch you up, mind. That was nearly his last words, wasn’t it, Vi?”
“We was holding him,” says Vi, with a sniff. “You could see he was going from the breathing. ‘Tell them I forgive them at the telephone exchange,’ he says. ‘And tell my boy Magnus we’ll both be ambassadors soon.’”
“And after that?” says Pym.
“‘ Give us another touch of the Napoleon, Vi,’” says Vi’s friend, now weeping also. “It wasn’t Napoleon though, it was the Drambuie. Then he says: ‘There’s enough in those files, girls, to see you right till you join me.’”
“He just nodded off really,” says Vi, into her handkerchief. “He mightn’t have been dead at all, if it hadn’t been for his heart.”
There is a rustle at the door. Three knocks. Vi opens it an inch, then all the way, then stands back disapprovingly to admit Ollie and Mr. Cudlove, armed with buckets of ice. The years have not been kind to Ollie’s nerves, and the tears at the corners of his eyes are stained with mascara. But Mr. Cudlove is unchanged, down to his chauffeur’s black tie. Transferring the bucket to his left side, Mr. Cudlove seizes Pym’s right hand in a manly grip. Pym follows them down a narrow corridor lined with photographs of neverwozzers. Rick is lying in the bath with a towel round his middle, his marbled feet crossed over each other as if in accordance with some Oriental ritual. His hands are curled and cupped in readiness to harangue his Maker.
“It’s just that there wasn’t the funds, sir,” Mr. Cudlove murmurs while Ollie pours in the ice. “Not a penny piece anywhere, to be frank, sir. I think those ladies may have taken a liberty.”
“Why didn’t you close his eyes?” says Pym.
“We did, sir, to be frank, but they would open again, and it didn’t seem respectful.”
On one knee before his father, Pym writes out a cheque for two hundred pounds, and nearly makes it dollars by mistake.
Pym drives to Chester Street. The house has been in other hands for years but tonight it stands in darkness, as if once more waiting for the Distraining Bailiffs. Pym approaches gingerly. On the doorstep, a nightlight burns despite the rain. Beside it like a dead animal lies an old boa in the mauve of half mourning, similar to the one belonging to Aunt Nell that he had used to block the lavatory at The Glades so long ago. Is it Dorothy’s? Or Peggy Wentworth’s? Is it some child’s game? Is it put there by Lippsie’s ghost? No card attaches to its dew-soaked feathers. No sequestrator has pinned his claim to it. The only clue is the one word “Yes,” scrawled in trembling chalklines on the door, like a safety signal in a target town.
* * *
Turning his back on the deserted square Pym strode angrily to the bathroom and opened the skylight that years ago he had daubed with green paint for Miss Dubber’s greater decency. Through a gun slit, he examined the gardens at the side of the house and concluded that they too were unnaturally empty. No Stanley, the Alsatian, tethered to the rain tub of number 8. No Mrs. Aitken, the butcher’s wife, who spends every waking hour at her roses. Closing the skylight with a bang, he stooped over the basin and sluiced water in his face, then glowered at his reflection till it gave him a false and brilliant smile. Rick’s smile, put on to taunt him, the one that is too happy even to blink. The one that cuddles up against you and presses into you like a thrilled child. The one Pym hated most.
“Fireworks, old son,” said Pym, mimicking Rick’s cadences at their holy worst. “Remember how you loved a firework? Remember dear old Guy Fawkes night, and the great setpiece there, with your old man’s initials on it, RTP, going up in lights all over Ascot? Well then.”
Well then, Pym echoed in his soul.
* * *
Pym is writing again. Joyously. No pen can take the strain of this. Reckless free letters are careering over the paper. Lightpaths, rocket tails, stars and stripes are zipping above his head. The music of a thousand transistor radios plays around him; the bright faces of strangers laugh into his own, and he is laughing back at them. It is July 4th. It is Washington’s night of nights. The diplomatic Pyms have arrived a week ago to take up his appointment as Deputy Head of Station. The island of Berlin is sunk at last. They have a spell in Prague behind them, Stockholm, London. The path to America was never easy, but Pym has gone the distance, Pym has made it, he is assumed and almost risen into the reddened dark that is repeatedly blasted into whiteness by the floodlights, fireworks and searchlights. The crowd is bobbing round him and he is part of it, the free people of the earth have taken him among them. He is one with all these grown-up happy children celebrating their independence of things that never held them. The Marine Band, the Breckenridge Boys Choir and the Metropolitan Area Symposium Choral Group have wooed and won him unopposed. At party after party Magnus and Mary have been celebrated by half the intelligence aristos of Georgetown, have eaten swordfish by candlelight in red-brick yards, chatted under lights strung in overhanging branches, have embraced and been embraced, shaken hands and filled their heads with names and gossip and champagne. Heard a lot about you, Magnus — Magnus, welcome aboard! Jesus, is that your wife? That’s criminal! Till Mary, worried about Tom — the fireworks have overexcited him — is determined to go home and Bee Lederer has gone with her.
“I’ll join you soon, darling,” Pym murmurs as she leaves. “Must pop in on the Wexlers or they’ll think I’m cutting them.”
Where am I? In the Mall? On the Hill? Pym has no idea. The bare arms and thighs and unhampered breasts of young American womanhood are brushing contentedly against him. Friendly hands make space for him to pass; laughter, pot-smoke, din pack the scalding night. “What’s your name, man?” “You British? Here, let’s shake your hand — take a swig of this.” Pym adds a mouthful of bourbon to the impressive mixture he has already taken in. He is climbing a slope, whether of grass or tarmac he cannot determine. The White House glistens below him. Before it, erect and floodlit, the white needle of the Washington Monument cuts its light-path to the unreachable stars. Jefferson and Lincoln, each in his eternal patch of Rome, lie to either side of him. Pym loves them both. All the patriarchs and founding fathers of America are mine. He crests the slope. A black man offers him popcorn. It is salt and hot like his own sweat. Further up the valley, the harmless battles of other firework shows boom and splash into the sky. The crowd is denser up here but still they smile at him and part for him while they ooh and aah at the fireworks, call friendship to each other, break into patriotic song. A pretty girl is teasing him. “Hey, man, why won’t you dance?” “Well, thank you, I will with pleasure but just let me take off my coat,” Pym replies. His answer is too woody, she has found another partner. He is shouting. At first he does not hear himself but as he enters a quieter place his own voice bursts on him with startling distinctness. “Poppy! Poppy! Where are you?” Helpfully, the good people round him take up the cry. “Hurry on over, Poppy, your boyfriend’s here!” “Come on, Poppy, you bad bitch, where you bin?” Behind and above him the rockets become a ceaseless fountain against the swirling crimson clouds. Before him a gold umbrella opens, embracing the whole white mountain and lighting the emptying street. Instructions are ringing remotely in Pym’s head. He is reading the numbers of the streets and doorways. He finds the door and with a final surge of joy feels the familiar bony hand close round his wrist and the familiar voice admonishing him.