‘Well, why did she want to fleece me?’
‘I don’t see why she shouldn’t have tried to get maintenance of some sort from you. It’s true that her child by Ernie Howe damaged her case. But you walked out on her. She behaved like a normal woman married to a man in your position.’
‘Effie is not a normal woman,’ said Harvey.
‘Oh, if you’re talking in a basic sense, what woman is?’
‘Women who don’t get arrested in Trieste for shoplifting are normal,’ said Harvey. ‘Especially women with her kind of jewellery in the bank. Whose side are you on, anyway, mine or Effie’s?’
‘In a divorce case, that is the usual question that the client puts, sooner or later. It’s inevitable,’ said the lawyer.
‘But this is something different from a divorce case. Don’t you realise what’s happened?’
‘I’m afraid I do,’ said Stewart.
Next day was a Saturday. They sat in Harvey’s cottage, huddling over the stove because the windows had been opened to air the place. There had been a feeling of spring in the early March morning, but this had gone by eleven o’clock; it was now winter again, bleak, with a slanting rain. As Harvey unlocked the door of his little house Stewart said, ‘Lousy soil you’ve got here. Nothing much growing.’
‘I haven’t bothered to cultivate it.’
‘It’s better up at the château.’
‘Oh, yes, it’s had more attention.’
This was Harvey’s first visit to the cottage since the police had pounced. He looked round carefully, opening the windows upstairs and downstairs, while Stewart lit the stove. ‘They haven’t changed the décor,’ Harvey said. ‘But a few bundles of papers are not in the places I left them in. Shifted, a matter of inches—but I know, I know.’
‘Have they taken any of your papers, letters, business documents?’
‘What letters and business papers? You have the letters and the business papers. All I have are my notes, and the manuscript of my little book, so far as it goes — it’s to be a monograph, you know. I don’t know if they’ve subtracted the few files, but they could have photographed them; much good might it do them. Files of notes on the Book of Job. They did take the photograph of Effie; that, they did take. I want it back.’
‘You’re entitled to ask for it,’ said Stewart.
From the window, a grey family Citroën could be seen parked round a bend in the path, out of sight of the road; in it were two men in civilian clothes occupying the front seats. The rain plopped lazily on to the roof of the car and splashed the windscreen. ‘Poor bastards,’ Harvey said. ‘They do it in three— or four-hour shifts.’
‘Well, it’s a protection for you, anyway. From the press if not from the terrorists.’
‘I wish I was without the need for protection, and I wish you were in your office in London.’
‘I don’t go to the office on Saturday,’ Stewart said.
‘What do you do at the week-ends?’
‘Fuck,’ said Stewart.
‘Do you mean, fuck the question or that on Saturdays and Sundays you fuck?’
‘Both.’
‘Don’t you ever go to a concert or a film on Sundays? Never go to Church?’
‘Sometimes I go to a concert. I go away for the week-ends, often. I do the usual things.’
‘Well, you’re wasting your time here,’ Harvey said.
‘No, because first you’re my most valuable client. That’s from a practical point of view. And secondly, I’m interested in your Book of Job; it just beats me how a man of your scope should choose to hide himself away in this hole. And thirdly, of course, I’m a friend; I want to see you out of this mess. I strongly advise you to come back to London here and now. Do you have your passport?’
‘Yes, they gave me back my passport.’
‘Oh, they took it away?’
‘Yes, they took the stuff out of my pockets,’ Harvey said. ‘They gave it all back. I’m not leaving.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, all my books and things are here. I don’t see why I should run away. I intend to go on as usual. Besides, I’m anxious about Effie.’
‘Maybe Effie would move to another field of action if you weren’t in the Vosges,’ said Stewart. ‘You see, I don’t want you to become an unwilling accomplice.’
‘Effie follows the gang,’ said Harvey.
‘Doesn’t she lead it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t even know for certain that she’s in it. It’s all mere allegation on the part of the police.’
Stewart walked about the little room, with his scarf wound round his neck. ‘It’s chilly,’ he said. He was looking at the books. ‘Does Anne-Marie cook for you?’ he said.
‘Yes, indifferently. She’s a police agent by profession.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t mean much,’ said Stewart, ‘when you know that she is.’
‘I used to love mealtimes with Effie,’ said Harvey. ‘I enjoyed the mealtimes more than the meals.’
‘Let’s go out somewhere for lunch,’ said Stewart.
‘We can go in to Nancy. Undoubtedly we’d be followed.’
‘That doesn’t mean much if you know you are being followed,’ said Stewart.
Harvey stood in the middle of the room watching with an irritated air while Stewart fingered his books.
‘There’s nothing of interest,’ said Harvey, ‘unless you’re interested in the subject.’
‘Well, you know I am. I still don’t see why you can’t write your essay elsewhere.’
‘I’ve got used to it here.’
‘Would you like to have Ruth back?’ said Stewart.
‘Not particularly. I would like to have Clara back.’
‘With Effie?’
‘No, Effie isn’t a motherly type.’
‘Ruth is a mother?’
‘She is a born children’s nurse.’
‘But you would like to have Effie back?’ Stewart said, and he made light of this, as of all his questions, by putting them simultaneously with a flicking-through of the pages of Harvey’s books.
‘Yes, I would; in theory,’ said Harvey. ‘That is the New English Bible. The translation is godforsaken.’
‘Then you’d be willing to take Ruth back if she brought Clara. But you’d prefer to have Effie to make love to?’
‘That is the unattainable ideal. The New English Bible’s version of Job makes no distinction between Behemoth and Leviathan. They translate the two as “the crocodile”, which has of course some possibility as a theory, but it simply doesn’t hold in the context.’
‘I thought Behemoth was the hippopotamus,’ said Stewart.
‘Well, that’s the general view, not necessarily correct. However, the author of Job turns God into a poet at that point, proclaiming wonderful hymns to his own creation, the buffalo, the ostrich, the wild ass, the horse, the eagle; then there’s the sparrow-hawk. And God says, Consider this, look at that, reflect on their ways, how they live and survive; I did it all; where were you when I did it? Finally come Behemoth and Leviathan. Well, if you are going to translate both Behemoth and Leviathan as the crocodile, it makes far too long a passage, it gives far more weight to the crocodile as one of God’s marvels than is obviously intended. As for the features of Behemoth, they fit in with the hippopotamus or some large and similar creature equally as well as with the crocodile. Why should God be so proud of his crocodile that he devotes thirty-eight verses to it, and to the horse only seven?’
‘There must be some good arguments in favour of Behemoth and Leviathan both being the crocodile, though,’ Stewart said.
‘Of course there are arguments. The scholars try to rationalise Job by rearranging the verses where there is obviously no sense in them. Sometimes, of course, the textual evidence irresistibly calls for a passage to be moved from the traditional place to another. But moving passages about for no other reason than that they are more logical is no good for the Book of Job. It doesn’t make it come clear. The Book of Job will never come clear. It doesn’t matter; it’s a poem. As for Leviathan and Behemoth, Lévêque who is the best modern scholar on Job distinguishes between the two.’ Harvey was apparently back in his element. He seemed to have forgotten about the police outside his house, and that Effie was a criminal at large.