‘We can’t hold them much longer, Augustus. Something is going to have to be done. They claim they don’t care about us. They say they’re above all this. But they might just give us away.’
But he was not interested. He considered his failed member. The brandy he had drunk had befuddled him and was making him very sleepy. He reckoned he had at least one chance to make it inside Trudy that night and he was going for it. Such determination, such single-mindedness had been the mark of his political success in the days when he was tipped as the next prime minister. Desperately he seized his penis and began rubbing it firmly. It stiffened perceptibly. There was no time to lose. With a grunt he pushed her back on the pillows, thrust his hands under her buttocks and rammed himself home.
‘First thing in the morning,’ he promised. ‘Crack of dawn, I’ll finish them.’
Downstairs in the cellar Kipsel was in a bad way. Trudy’s knots cut so deeply into his wrists that the circulation had gone and try as he might to loosen the cord he only succeeded in cutting more deeply into the flesh and making his wrists bleed. He’d not been able to contain his bladder either and a pool of urine spread beneath the chair.
It was then that Blanchaille had a brainwave.
‘Ronnie,’ he said suddenly, jerking upright in his chair, ‘Jesus what an idiot I am! I’ve been sitting here for days putting up with this crap and all the time I had a way out of here.’
Kipsel licked his lips weakly. ‘Good. Only hurry, Blanchie.’
Sometime later Mevrou Fritz arrived with a pile of ironing. She grimaced at the sight of the urine and wrinkled her nose.
‘Mevrou Fritz,’ said Blanchille, ‘do you get well paid?’
‘Are you joking?’ the concierge demanded. ‘I work for the Department of Works, that’s who this house comes under, through the Embassy in Berne, that’s who I work for. I thought I told you. Do I get well paid? Bus drivers get better paid! Then there’s my accommodation here, for free, so they dock the salary accordingly. Why?’
‘What would you say if we disappeared?’
Her grey eyes stared into his unblinkingly. ‘Hooray. That’s two less to worry about, I’d say. This house isn’t meant for people, you see. Not living people. At the moment I’ve got the attic full of guests, and you men in my cellar.’
‘I think we can help you on both counts,’ said Blanchaille.
A few minutes later they were on their feet and Mevrou Fritz was stroking the necklace threaded with Krugerrands with which Blanchaille had been presented in the Airport Palace Hotel by the beautiful Babybel — a key she had said which he would know how to use when the time came.
Mevrou Fritz took them to the front door but to the old woman’s horror they would not go until they signed the visitors’ book. Trembling she took them to the book and begged them to hurry before the big boss upstairs, as she called him, woke up and shot them all.
Very carefully, Kipsel wrote this message in the book: TO THOSE WHO COME AFTER US — BEWARE! THIS IS NOT THE HOLY PLACE YOU THINK. THIS IS THE HIDE-OUT OF ESCAPED MINISTER GUS KUIKER AND TRUDY YSSEL. THEY ARE LIVING RIGHT ABOVE YOUR HEADS. TELL OUR EMBASSY IN BERNE. YOU WILL BE REWARDED.
Blanchaille wrote simply: WHERE ARE THE KRUGER MILLIONS?
And then to Mevrou Fritz’s intense relief the two fugitives slipped into the night.
CHAPTER 20
Now I saw in my dream how the travellers wandered the lakeside in the manner of those wild tribes who are said once to have populated the shores of Lake Geneva in Neolithic times. They looked, it must be said, no less savage being red-eyed from lack of sleep, tousled, dirty and smelling to high heaven.
It was fine weather all that day with the sky high and blue, full of rapidly scudding thick woollen clouds, and the shining freshness of the prospect increased the feelings of relief and freedom which Blanchaille and Kipsel enjoyed as they made their way along the lakeside towards the town of Montreux. Kipsel wanted to stop at an hotel to wash and eat a meal but Blanchaille allowed only a brief pause by the water’s edge where they splashed themselves, dunked their faces, ran their fingers through their hair and Kipsel at last got rid of the strong ammoniac smell of the dried urine that clung to him. Blanchaille removed his underpants and threw them into the rubbish bin. This was after all Switzerland and the trim sparkle of the countryside insisted on respect. Nothing could persuade Kipsel to do likewise. ‘I simply cannot walk about without underpants, it gives me the oddest, most uncomfortable sensation. Sorry, Blanchie, I know I pong a bit. Where to now?’
‘Up into the mountains, above the town. Remember the readings from Kruger’s book old Lynch gave us so often? Remember the story?’
And Blanchaille quoted exactly as he could remember, the passage from Further Memoirs of a Boer President:
‘Travellers approaching their journey’s end will find themselves as it were between heaven and heaven, one as deep as the other is high. They will think themselves close to Paradise, and they will be as close to it as faithful servants are permitted on this earth, for the country answers to the heavenly ideal in these several instances; to wit, it possesses elevation; it is a republic; it respects and honours the memory of John Calvin; and, not least, honesty prevailing over modesty requires the recognition that it has taken to its bosom this servant of his broken, scattered people, Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger. That it is not the divine country itself but its reflection will be apparent to those who walk in its mountains and still lose their way. But help is at hand for those who seek their true homeland. Scouts will be posted by the camp kommandant as I did always when establishing a concealed laager, or Boer strong-point…’
‘Between heaven and heaven, the book said,’ Blanchaille pointed to the deep blue lake on their right and the bright sky above. ‘I’m sure that’s what he meant.’
‘Scouts will be posted, I remember that.’
‘Well, then, shall we start climbing? They’ll be expecting us.’
‘Bloody well hope so. You could wander in these mountains forever without a guide.’
Blanchaille surveyed the great blue lake, smooth as a dance floor. He saw the flat brown pebbles neatly packed beneath the clear surface, the brown ducks daintily dunking their heads, the roving sea-gulls, the sailing swans. At his feet miniature waves slapped tidily against the rocks. A few palms stood by the lake. Palms in this place! It cheered him faintly. Some sleek crows scavenged an old sweet packet and a sparrow carefully shadowed a gull and ate what it dropped. A duck dived and showed its purplish under-feathers, two swans pecked at each other viciously. The water of the lake began with pebbles and clarity at his feet and turned grey-blue under a gentle rippling surface and then still further out showed itself in pure grey slicks bounded by great shadows, flat and full it stretched into the mist of the further shore line where blue mountains reared; if he half closed his eyes they reminded him eerily of Africa. But this wasn’t Africa: Africa was dead and gone for him. He was here now, and here he must keep his feet firmly planted. At his feet there floated a split cork from a wine bottle, several shredded tissues, a fragment of the Herald Tribune, a Pepsi-Cola can, several orange peels swimming in a bright school, wisps of swansdown, an old pencil, the filters of many cigarettes, and all the few small signs of life washed in by the tiny waves which arrived with gentle decorum. The lakeside was broken up by stone jetties and small coves and he noticed how cunningly the trees and shrubs had been introduced among the rocks: saw the ivy which crawled down to the waterside, the huge willow flanked by palms, those shrubs planted in pots and cunningly blended among the rocks, saw everything was arranged, everything cemented into place. The apparently haphazard grouping of rocks into natural stone piers and causeways was an illusion, he saw that they were actually propped with wooden stakes and iron bars beneath the surface. He could see the steel cables that held these structures in place. Everything was at once so natural and so skilfully arranged. Here was a country which lent itself to such paradoxes. Here, you felt, everything was allowed providing it could be properly arranged. A family, mother, father and two sons in a red paddle boat, with knees going like pistons, floated by. They waved. It was time to be getting on.