When he opened his eyes, the Green Line Coach Guide was resting precariously on his lap. He sat up. The Guide fell to the floor, and a small rectangle of paper spilled from it and sailed into the gangway. He leaned over to pick it up and found that it was a newspaper clipping. Still half asleep, he glanced at it and saw that it was in English, the review of some art show or other at one of the London galleries.
That was all right. That was in the character of Kusitch. The ex-dealer was interested in the current exhibitions. He would take advantage of his mission to England to see what was going on. No doubt he had clipped this piece from some weekly journal as a reminder. The Blandish Gallery… twelve new works…
He came fully awake, realising the implication of his find. This clipping had been placed between the pages of the Guide, and, back in the bedroom at the Risler-Moircy, he had failed to discover it. There might be other things concealed in that booklet of Green Line timetables.
He recovered the Guide from the floor and began to go through it page by page. He found nothing until he came to the Guildford-London-Hertford route. Here, a line was drawn in ink under the coach times given for Oxford Circus and a question mark had been placed in the margin against the Turkey Street stopping point. Or possibly it applied to the next point, Waltham Cross. It was difficult to decide. Above the timetable, also in ink, were the letters and figures SS 729. Below, an address was scrawled in pencil. It looked like Walden or Wallen House, Cheriton Shawe, Hertford.
He plodded on to the end of the booklet, eager for further finds, but there was nothing else. He turned back. The Cheriton Shawe address might be a place to stay at, or the residence of someone Kusitch had been instructed to see. The suggestion that Kusitch had planned to use the Green Line bus made the possession of the Guide intelligible enough, but it certainly did nothing to explain why he had taken the trouble to hide so innocent a publication under the carpet. Perhaps the key to everything was in that SS 729, but the cryptogram could not be read merely by looking at it.
Andrew went back to the press clipping. This time he read it attentively, but the second sentence pulled him up, and he stared at the piece of paper as if he could not trust his eyes. He stared at it for quite a time, thinking hard. Then he went back to the beginning and read it right through. The Blandish Gallery, that Delphian temple of the avant garde, is presenting twelve new works which it somewhat recklessly describes as sculptures. We have had, in the past, some acquaintance with Ruth Meriden, but we were not quite prepared for the development displayed in these latest facettes of her art. Abjuring her rigid acceptance of Naum Gabo as the one source of pure light, she is discovering something within herself. We say “something” advisedly. She has not yet cast off the chains of eclecticism, but the discerning must admit that this new empiric phase is interesting, combining as it does the brio of a Brancusi, the mievrerie of a Mestrovic with the cool mathematique of the aforementioned Russian master. Miss Meriden is young. She has still much to learn. But in some of these twelve works she displays an aptitude in the handling of her recessions, and we also find an encouraging restlessness, a reaching down towards a firmer enfoncement. We like most of all the piece defined as Etude Opus 5. There is here a striving towards an existentialist concept that Sartre himself might applaud. The introductory note in the catalogue describes it as Mozartean. We do not concur. The melodic line is more in the tradition of Scarlatti.
Andrew felt confused. He could not at once decide whether the girl with the red hair was a sculptor or a composer, but, when he weighed the evidence, the balance turned against music. Gabo, Brancusi and Mestrovic were ponderable witnesses, or so it seemed, that Ruth Meriden was a sculptor of sorts. Ruth Meriden…
He meditated. It was strange how the girl kept bobbing up. Strange, or not strange…?
He had an idea then that made him jump. Ruth Meriden had joined the Brussels plane at Athens. So had Kusitch. Ruth Meriden had stayed the night in Brussels at the Risler-Moircy. Kusitch had held out till he and Andrew had been given a suite at the same hotel. And now, from the booklet that Kusitch had hidden, came this newspaper clipping about Ruth Meriden. So?
There was no answer.
Andrew opened the Green Line Guide again and gazed at the cryptogram above the London-Bishops Stortford timetable.
SS 729.
When he looked out of the window a few minutes later, the plane was over England.
Five
After the first twenty-four hours London seemed curiously empty. Andrew was still doing the things he had long dreamed of doing; seeing the places that, in Thessaly, had sometimes appeared as remote as Everest or Xanadu. To cross Piccadilly Circus had become an enormous ambition; let him but see Charing Cross Station again and stout Cortez could have the Pacific. But, of course, the reality was less satisfactory. The joys of homecoming were somehow superficial. He felt restless and vaguely uneasy. Never before had he had with quite such intensity the feeling that there was something missing.
If this was to be the mood of the maturer Maclaren, he could regret the loss of the more youthful exuberance that had sent him to his European experiences without a thought for his own interests. Of course, he was alone in the world; but then, he always had been. Now it was like coming back to search among scattered ruins for a lost past and discovering that after all there was nothing to be retrieved.
There had been no relatives on hand to greet him. His mother had died while he was still a student at Edinburgh. His father had accepted an important medical post in the Pacific during the war and had stayed on out there to continue research in tropical diseases. He had some uncles and aunts and innumerable cousins, but, even if he had been interested in them, none was in London.
He had good friends who were delighted to see him again and eager to help him. He had arranged to stay with one of them until he found accommodation, but the expected meeting had been postponed. Roger Lang had rushed off to America, leaving a hurried note and the keys of his flat in Holland Park, but this disappointment had nothing to do with his mood. He had other friends and they welcomed him warmly enough. Some of them frankly envied him; and really he had to admit that he was not out of luck. Home again, a comfortable flat to live in, a month of freedom, and then work that he wanted to do, with the promise of a specialist’s career in the future.
There had been a note awaiting him, asking him to call up Dr. Jeffrey at the Kingsland Road Eye Hospital as soon as he arrived.
The old man said: “Hello, son! Got in a day late, didn’t you? What put this bee in your bonnet about glaucoma?”
“It was thrown at me, sir. Quite a few cases in some parts of Greece.”
“Carotene deficiency. Xerophthalmis breaking out all over the place. They will have their damn silly wars.”
Andrew smiled. “It’s wonderful to think I’ll be working with you, sir.”
“Save that for a few months. Wait till you find out what it’s like to be a registrar at this madhouse.”
“I’m grateful to you for the job.”
“You wouldn’t have got it if I hadn’t thought I could use you. Don’t run away with the notion that you’ve been favoured because of your father. What you wrote about intraocular pressure happened to interest me. Look in on me next week sometime. We’ll discuss procedure. You’ll have every opportunity to work out your ideas. Meanwhile, enjoy your holiday.”
After three days of it the month ahead of him began to look like eternity. He thought of asking old Jeffrey if he couldn’t start work earlier, but he suspected it would be impossible. The hospital had been emphatic about the date of the vacancy. Another man was moving on. Andrew would have to wait till the discarded shoes were ready for him.