He sat back and gazed out of the windows. He didn’t expect any comment and I said nothing. Words were tumbling into the man’s mouth from the depths of his being. I didn’t like him. But I felt sorry for him.
‘I last saw her when I was twenty-four,’ he said softly. ‘That was nearly eight years ago. When I was sixteen my father, who kept a little store in the town, sent me to work with the British Aluminium people. But I wanted to be an artist. I spent all my spare time drawing and painting. I saved some money and got myself to Paris, where I learned little about painting and a lot about how to exist on next to nothing. Eventually I got desperate. I am not a very good artist. I know that now. I went back to England and was in and out of the labour exchanges until I joined the Army.’
His voice drifted on, a dull monotone in the heat of the room.
It wasn’t a new story to me. A lot of men had gone the same way in the moral collapse of a world in chaos.
Frustrated, and suffering from an inferiority complex because he had the sense to know his limitations in the only thing he wanted to do, he found himself posted to Ordnance Survey as a draughtsman. This carried him through the first two years of the war. Then he had been fool enough to seduce his officer’s girl friend. Justified or not, he had then developed persecution mania. To get out of the unit he had applied for a commission. After three months at an O.C.T.U. he had been returned to unit. He explained that by saying, ‘Not the right schools, old man.’ But then added, ‘Anyway, gunnery wasn’t my line of country at all.’ Soon after returning to his unit, his officer had had him posted. And to justify the posting he had been given an adverse report.
Within two months he had found himself in an infantry replacement draft bound for Egypt via the Cape. Too late for Alamein, he had gone into Sicily with Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
But though he was realistic enough about his artistic abilities, he had by then developed the artistic temperament to the nth degree. He revolted against the whole life of the infantryman. ‘It wasn’t my sort of job,’ he said. ‘Why, because they wouldn’t give me a commission, should they shove me in the infantry? I just wasn’t cut out for it. The end came at Cassino. Have you ever been scared — so scared that you feel like blowing your brains out rather than face it any longer? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You went to the right schools and they taught you to be more afraid of being scared than of hell itself.
‘Well, I wasn’t made that way. I just cracked up like a lot of other lads. It was in the early spring of ‘44. We were going out on patrol for the third night in succession. We were platoon strength when we went out and half the lads were crying. It’s all so vivid even now. The tears were hot in my eyes and cold on the tip of my chin. I was crying like a child. I just couldn’t go through with it. We were going up to the Hotel des Roses to try and wipe out a spandau position that had been worrying us and I just lay on the hard rubble of a ruined building and let the tears stream down my face. I couldn’t control myself.’
He laughed mirthlessly, drained his glass and refilled it.
‘The officer came over to me,’ he continued. ‘Give him his due, he did his best to get me to go on. And then when he found I wouldn’t, he dug his pistol into my ribs. But I was past caring. “Go on, shoot me, you swine,” I said. But he didn’t. He just sent me back and the next day I was up before the C.O.
‘I was sent to a field punishment camp. I didn’t care after that. I had no pride left. I escaped and made my way to Naples. I had no money, so I joined up with a gang of deserters who were doing all right. We made a living by pinching trucks and running foodstuffs for the Black Market. But it was dangerous work and I soon discovered that there was a good living to be made as a forger. For the first time in my life I found myself making money as an artist. Remember the forged greenies and blackies that were turned out? I did the original designs for one of the gangs in that racket. And then there were passes, certificates, passports, licences. I’ve copied practically every Allied and Italian permit. I’ve built up one of the most prosperous — and incidentally one of the safest — underground jobs in Naples.’
He wiped the sweat off his forehead. He had been talking hard and the liquor was making him a bit dazed. ‘I’ve made money, had all the women I wanted, enjoyed life — and I’ve hated myself doing it. I might have snapped out of it if I hadn’t got tied up with Anna the first few weeks I was in Naples. You wouldn’t think it now but she was a beauty then, luscious like a fully ripe peach. But she was a tart and she had just bought her way out of hospital for fifteen thousand lire. I didn’t know that. I guess I was a fool, but there you are. And now when I’ve got the money I can’t go back to Ballachulish. Not because I’m a deserter — a false name and false papers would be easy. But I’d have to tell her the whole story. And a woman’s got a right to end her days in a fool’s paradise, thinking she’s given birth to a child that’s made a position for itself in a foreign land — instead of to a monstrosity, twisted mentally and physically.’
He laughed loudly and obscenely, and I saw Monique wince. Then he leaned forward and stabbed an uncertain forefinger at me. ‘That’s where you come in,’ he said. ‘The old lady’s suspicious. She thinks that if I’m doing as well as I say in my letters there ought to be no reason why I shouldn’t take a holiday and go and see her. You must go and see her when you get back to England. Tell her you’ve seen me. Tell her anything you like about me — anything, that is, except the truth. And tell her I’m dead. Tell her I was run over — an accident. Tell her you saw it happen and were with me when I died in hospital. I’ll forge all the necessary papers, including a will, and I’ll have a firm of lawyers send her a legacy. Tell her that I spoke of her with my dying breath and that you promised to come and see her. You’re the officer type — she’ll believe it all coming from a bloke like you. She won’t expect an ex-naval officer to be lying, will she? She’ll believe you. That way she’ll never know the truth. She’ll never know how I’ll really die.’ ‘You can’t do this,’ I said. ‘It’s horrible.’ He laughed at that. ‘Horrible! Who are you to judge whether it’s horrible or not. A mother will forgive anything, but not her son mucking around with bad women. You’ll be doing a great kindness. And you’ll do it because you’re in a fix and you’ve made yourself responsible for the girl here.’
I said, ‘I’d do it anyway if I were convinced it were the right thing to do. I don’t need a bribe to do a kindness for some one.’
‘You don’t need a bribe, eh?’ he sneered. ‘Well, you’re bloody getting one, whether you like it or not. I wouldn’t trust any one to do this for me unless I had their conscience in fee. You’ll do it for me because it is a bargain between us — not as a damned kindness. Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t take charity. I’ve fallen low — Goddamned bloody low — but not as low as that.’
He propelled his chair forward until his face was so close to mine that I could smell his liquored breath and sweaty body. ‘Would it interest you to know that I forged papers two days ago for a tank landing craft? It is a strange coincidence that they should come to me, except of course that I’ve got something of a corner in this sort of business around these parts. And would it interest you to know that the original papers were made out in the name of Trevedra?’ I stared at him in amazement. At first I could not believe it. But he had nothing to gain by lying. ‘You mean you forged papers for my own ship?’
He nodded, his lips drawn back in a sneering grin.
‘Who did you forge them for?’
‘I never divulge the names of my clients. That is a cardinal rule in this sort of game. She was purchased by an Italian firm from McCrae for the coastal trade. She is now known by an Italian name. I know what she is now called. And, moreover, I know where she is lying up at the moment.’