"Don't mind the fag, do we, old love? Can't do the brainwork if I haven't got a fag between my fingers. It's not the sucking and puffing that I'm hooked on. It's physically holding the little sod."
His regiment couldn't stomach him, so he did five unlikely years in Army Intelligence, said Burr, which is a misnomer, as we know, but Corky served them proud. The Roper doesn't love him for his looks alone.
"Smoke ourselves, do we, heart? In better times?"
"A bit."
"What times are they, old love?"
"Cooking."
"Can't hear us."
"Cooking. When I'm taking a break from hoteling."
Major Corkoran became all enthusiasm. "I must say, not a word of a lie, bloody good grub you ran us up at Mama's before you saved the side that night. Were those sauced-up mussels all our own work?"
"Yes."
"Finger-lickin' good. How about the carrot cake? We scored a bull's-eye there, I can tell you. Chief's favourite. Flown in, was it?"
"I made it."
"Come again, old boy?"
"I made it."
Corkoran was robbed of words. "You mean you made the carrot cake? Our own tiny hands? Old love. Heart." He drew on his cigarette, beaming admiration at Jonathan through the smoke. "Pinched the recipe from Meister's, no doubt." He shook his head. "Sheer genius." Another enormous draught of cigarette smoke. "And did we pinch anything else at all from Meister's while we were about it, old love?"
Motionless on his down pillow, Jonathan affected to be motionless in his mind as well. Get me Dr. Marti. Get me Burr. Get me out.
"Bit of a dilemma, frankly, you see, heart. I was filling in these forms for us at the hospital. That's my job in this shop. For as long as I've got one. Official form-filler. Us military types, about all we know how to do, isn't it? Well, well, I thought. Ho, ho. This is a bit rum. Is he a Pine or is he a Lamont? He's a hero, well we know that, but you can't put hero when you've got to put a chap's name. So I put Lamont, Thomas Alexander ― I say, old love, I do hope I did right? Born whatnot in Toronto? See page thirty-two for next of kin, except you hadn't got any? Case closed, I thought. Chap wants to call himself Pine when he's a Lamont, or Lamont when he's a Pine, far as I'm concerned, his good right."
He waited for Jonathan to speak. And waited. And drew more cigarette smoke. And still waited, because Corkoran possessed the interrogator's advantage of having all the time in the world to kill.
"But the Chief, you see, heart," he resumed at last, "is hewn of a different tree, as you might say. The Chief, among his many talents, is a stickler for detail. Always has been. Gets on the electric blower to Meister in Zürich. From a call box, actually. Down on Deep Bay. Doesn't always care for an audience. 'How's your nice man Pine these days?' says the Chief. Well, old Meister pops his garters. 'Pine, Pine? Gott in Himmel! That bugger robbed me blind! Sixty-one thousand four hundred and two francs, nineteen centimes and two waistcoat buttons, stolen from my night safe.' Lucky he hadn't heard about the carrot cake, or he'd have done you for industrial espionage as well. You with us in there, old love? Not boring you, am I?"
Wait, Jonathan was telling himself. Eyes closed. Body flat. Your head hurts, you're going to be sick. The rhythmic rocking of Corkoran's chair gained speed, then stopped. Jonathan smelled cigarette smoke very close and saw Corkoran's bulk leaning over him.
"Old love? Are you receiving my signals? I don't think we're quite as poorly as we're making out, to be harsh. The leech says we've made a rather impressive recovery."
"I didn't ask to come here. You're not the Gestapo. I did you a favour. Just get me back to Low's."
"But, darling, you did us an enormous favour! Chief's totally on your side! Me too. We owe you one. Owe you lots. Chief's not a fellow to walk away from a debt. Very hung up on you, the way these men of vision get when they're grateful. Hates owing. Always prefers to be owed. His nature, you see. How great men are. So he needs to pay you off." He ambled down the room, hands in pockets, reasoning the thing out. "But he's also a tinsy bit exercised. In his noddle. Well, you can't blame him, can you?"
"Get out. Leave me alone."
"Seems old Meister pitched him some story to the effect that after busting his safe, you ran away to England and topped a fellow. Codswallop, says the Chief, must be some other Linden; mine's a hero. But then the Chief goes and puts out a few feelers of his own, which is his way. And it turns out old Meister's bang on target." Another life-saving drag of the cigarette while Jonathan played dead. "Chief hasn't told anyone, of course, apart from yours faithfully. Lot of chaps change their names in life, some do it all the time. But topping a chap, well, that's a bit more private. So the Chief keeps it to himself. Doesn't want to nurse a viper, naturally. Family man. On the other hand, there are vipers and vipers, if you follow me. You could be the non-poisonous variety. So he's deputed me to suss you out while he and Jed do whatever they do. Jed's his virtue," he explained, for information. "Nature's child. You've met her. Tall girl. Ethereal." He was shaking Jonathan's shoulder. "Wake up, do you mind, old love? I'm rooting for you. So's the Chief. This isn't England. Men of the world, all that. Come on, Mr. Pine."
His appeal, though roughly made, had fallen on deaf ears. Jonathan had willed himself into the deep, escaper's sleep of the orphanage.
FIFTEEN
Goodhew had told nobody except his wife.
He had nobody else to tell. On the other hand, such a monstrous story required a monstrous audience, and his dear Hester, alas, was by common consent the least monstrous person on earth.
"Now, darling, are you sure you heard right?" she asked him doubtfully. "You know how you are. You hear a lot of things perfectly clearly, but the children do have to interpret the television for you. There must have been an awful lot of traffic on a Friday in the rush hour."
"Hester, he said exactly what I told you he said. He said it clearly, above the noise of the traffic, into my face. I caught every word. I saw his lips move while he spoke."
"You could go to the police, I suppose. If you're sure. Well, of course you are. It's just, I do think you should talk to Dr. Prendergast, even if you don't do anything."
In a rare fit of anger at the companion of his life, Goodhew took a stiff walk up Parliament Hill to clear his head. But it didn't clear it at all. He simply retold himself the story, as he had done a hundred times already:
The Friday had dawned as any other. Goodhew had bicycled to work early because his master liked to put the week to bed before leaving for the country. At nine o'clock, he received a phone call from his master's private secretary, saying the proposed ten o'clock meeting was cancelled because the minister had received a summons to the U.S. Embassy. Goodhew had ceased to be surprised by his exclusion from his master's councils, so he used the morning to catch up on work and lunched on a sandwich at his desk.
At half past three the private secretary called down to ask whether he could step upstairs for a few minutes right away. Goodhew obliged. Spread about his master's office in postprandial ease, amid coffee cups and the aroma of cigars, sat the survivors of a luncheon party to which Goodhew had not been invited.
"Rex. Well done," said his master expansively. "Sit you down. Who don't you know? Nobody. Jolly good."