‘Do you know,’ she said, when I ordered wine with the meal and filled her cardboard cup, ‘a man’s never tried to get me drunk before.’
‘It’s hard to believe. I often got my wife swined-up when she was tense and couldn’t throw off a bad mood. Just to melt the clouds. She even knew what I was doing and, forgive a bit of crude talk, but the fucks we had afterwards were wonderful. I felt the sky wafting my arse as I went on and on. Then she got on top of me, and the wind tickled her lovely arse. Marvellous what a little loosening up with alcohol can do. I would never try to get a woman so pissed that she couldn’t enjoy sex, though. I’m not a brute.’
‘I know.’
I popped a spoonful of trifle into her mouth. ‘That’s the nicest thing you said to me since we took off.’
She slopped it immediately back, and luckily it went onto her tray. Her gills were the colour of whitewash. ‘Excuse me, but I must go for a pee.’
I pushed the old lady by my side — who had been eavesdropping on our salacious chit-chat — into the gangway. The noise of Agnes’s progress up the plane was painful to hear. Perhaps the experience of meeting me had been too exciting for her. I tripped over the old woman’s reticule, and led my latest loved one to the toilets.
‘It’s bloody disgusting,’ someone called — a podgy bloke wearing a cricket jersey and a porkpie hat.
A stewardess, swinging a bunch of keys and leaning against what looked like a washing machine, poured a miniature bottle of vodka into a mug of cocoa. ‘We get all sorts on planes these days.’
‘It isn’t her fault,’ I snapped. ‘Everybody’ll have it soon. They must have taken bad food on in London.’
My arm around Agnes’s waist went under her plump breast, and I drew it back. Far be it for me to take advantage of a woman in such a state. People were shoving their trays aside, faces bunched up with doubt about the food. Twenty were already queuing at the toilets, but I pushed Agnes in as soon as a startled Indian woman came out, then stood guard, hearing her retch even above the hum of the engines.
I don’t know why, but as I listened to her almost rhythmical unloading, I was fixed with the certain realisation that disaster waited for me in Toronto. My life had been filled with occasions on which my most profound feelings, warning me of the wrath to come, had been ignored. Whether or not it was the closeness of Agnes I don’t know, but this time I decided to acknowledge the feeling that something nasty was being made ready for me, and take steps to avoid it.
I recalled the expression on Moggerhanger’s big-daddy face at the briefing in London. The attaché-case was handed over locked, and when I asked for the key he said I wouldn’t need it because they (whoever they were: I was too lowly in the cogwheels of international skulduggery to be told) had it on the other side. The key had gone over by letter. ‘But what,’ I asked, ‘if the customs officers in Canada want me to open it? I don’t want to end up in the uranium mines.’ I only got a small dose of laughter this time. ‘That’s a risk you’ve got to take,’ he said. ‘It’s a high risk business.’ Like fuck it is — flashed through my mind. ‘Whether you have the key or not, it’ll make no difference if they ask you to open it. Tell ’em you lost it. If they axe it open they’ll just look foolish, because there’s nothing incriminating inside. So no more questions, Michael. Believe me, they won’t stop you. It’s the neatest little job you’ve ever been given to do, and as easy as pie.’
I could only suppose that the payment I had to deliver was in counterfeit notes, that I was the fall guy in a plan of deception that would deceive nobody. Those who were waiting for straightforward recompense, believing in honour among thieves, could not credit the fact that, being an out and out criminal, Moggerhanger wasn’t as perfidious as many inhabitants of Albion had long since been known to be.
Perhaps I was wrong, and my sanity had taken a turn for the worse, but I was determined, after I had delivered my case, to get out of town as soon as — and as secretly as — possible. With Agnes I would be less suspicious than travelling alone, and so I wondered whether my acting scared wasn’t just another plot cooked up by my subconscious to get a woman into bed. I tried not to show my confusion of spirit as I leaned on the bog door, knowing at any rate that I hadn’t fallen so desperately in love that I would risk my own throat when I could get there by infinitely safer methods.
Against a sheet just back from the laundry she would have been invisible on coming out of the lavatory. I licked her wrist, I don’t know why, and she smiled at me with gratitude as we went towards our seats. ‘My husband would have baled out of the plane even without a parachute at this happening,’ she said, ‘but you didn’t abandon me.’
‘Is she all right, duck?’ A wag with a Nottingham accent (you found them everywhere) called that she should have done her business in the sickbags in the pocket of the seat in front, like others were now having to.
‘She’ll spew all over yo’, mate, if y’aren’t careful,’ I replied in an even coarser vein.
He turned to his wife. ‘Bleddy-’ell, a din’t know there wore another Nottingham ragbag on board. Wunders’ll never cease!’
I was laughing as we settled back into our seats. ‘I’m very ashamed, though,’ she said.
‘Don’t make me feel sorry for you. After all, you were only sick.’ I kissed her cold lips, and she held my hands for having been kind to her. I felt as if we’d been married for ten years, such a homely and horny sensation that the peril I would be in once I got to Toronto came palling back over me. My armpits sweated terror. I didn’t think matters through step by step as to how I would avoid the coming trouble, but the picture was played out before me by the time Agnes’s lovely head rested on my shoulder, as we drifted over the woods of Canada. When she woke up I suggested we go to New York, via Niagara Falls, and her look found a special place in my photo-archive. I’d never seen a face with nothing in its expression except an unqualified acceptance of my good nature — though it occurred to me also to hope that if things went wrong in Toronto we wouldn’t end up under the ice together.
As if we had planned it for months, we rattled on about arrangements for getting to the United States. I told her everything, and explained the dangers I would be in, but she laughed as if I’d concocted a story as a writer to take her mind off her recent sickness. To make life safe for us, but especially for her, I would check in at my hotel and deliver what I had brought over for Moggerhanger. I would, as soon as feasible, go out for a walk, and not show my face there again. I braced myself to carry off the meeting with as much nerve as a British con-man can. Agnes would be waiting for me at the Union Station three hours after we had landed — which would be half past four in the afternoon, Toronto time.
Eighteen
Moggerhanger was right. The Canadian customs didn’t open my luggage. I don’t know why I was born with such a suspicious mind. Nevertheless, as soon as I was clear of immigration control I bought a map of the city and planned my campaign. I had only to imagine Bill Straw in my place to see how things should be managed, though why I should regard that bastard with such companionable affection when he had been the one to get me into the mess, I’ll never know. All the same, I would have given anything for a chinwag and booze-up with him, even if he couldn’t stop boasting about how he had nearly wiped out half a battalion of Sherwood Foresters in Normandy before realising they were on his side.