‘Well, when you put it like that – yes. As long as I don’t get shot again.’
Just at that moment some catering staff came in and began to lay the long table for lunch, with much clattering of plates and ringing of silverware.
‘Do you fancy a spot of lunch?’ I asked Munro.
‘I don’t fancy hospital gruel,’ he said. ‘Can we go to a pub?’
We walked through the college and out of the rear entrance on to Walton Street.
‘I’ve never been in this college,’ Munro said. ‘Though I must have walked past it a hundred times.’
‘What college were you in?’ I asked him, not surprised to be not surprised that he’d been an Oxford undergraduate.
‘Magdalen,’ he said. ‘Other side of town.’
‘Then you joined the diplomatic service,’ I said.
‘That’s right, after my spell in the army.’ He glanced at me. ‘What was your college?’
‘I didn’t go to university,’ I said. ‘I started acting straight after my schooldays.’
‘Ah, the University of Life.’
The pub was called The Temeraire and its sign was a lurid misrepresentation of Turner’s masterpiece. It was small and wood-panelled with low tables and three-legged stools and prints of old ships-of-the-line on the walls. Munro fetched two pints and ordered himself a veal-and-ham pie with mashed potatoes and pickled onions. I said I wasn’t hungry.
‘There’s a big attack due,’ Munro said, sprinkling his pie and mash with salt and pepper. ‘In a matter of days, in fact. Supporting a French offensive. In the Loos sector.’
I spread my hands and looked at him with some incredulity. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said. ‘I suggested strongly that we stopped all operations. I urged that we stopped. They’ll be waiting for us – look at the last two Glockner letters. You can pinpoint the area yourself.’
‘If only it were that easy. The French are being very insistent.’ He smiled thinly, unhappily, obviously feeling the same way I was. ‘Let’s hope for the best.’
‘Oh, we can always do that. Costs nothing, hope.’
Munro made a rueful face, said nothing and tackled his pie. I lit a cigarette.
‘There’s one thing our correspondent missed,’ Munro said. ‘Curious. We’re going to use poison gas at Loos – though we refer to it as the “accessory”.’
‘Well, they did it to us at Ypres,’ I said, carefully. ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ I was wondering why he was telling me this. Was it some kind of test?
‘I wonder why he missed it,’ Munro went on. ‘Maybe it’ll help us locate him.’ He took a sip of his beer. ‘Have a week’s leave when you get out of hospital. Then I want you to meet someone in London. We need to plan our course of action.’
‘So I’m still to remain a lieutenant.’
‘Absolutely.’ Then he said, trying to make it sound throwaway. ‘You never told me what the cipher-text was.’
‘I told Massinger and Madame Duchesne.’
‘Oh yes, a German bible. But that obviously wasn’t the truth.’
It’s always dangerous to forget how clever Munro is, I now realize as I write this account up. He seems at times so boringly proper – the career soldier, the career diplomat, a neat and tidy man secure in his status and ever so slightly smug and superior, though he tries not to let it show. But not at all – that’s what he wants you to think. I don’t really know why – maybe because he had tried to test me with news about the ‘accessory’ – but I decided to test him, in turn.
‘I decided not to tell them,’ I said. ‘In fact it was the libretto of an obscure German opera.’
‘Oh yes? Called?’
I watched his face very carefully.
‘Andromeda und Perseus.’
He frowned. ‘Don’t think I know it,’ he said with a vague smile.
‘No reason why you should, I suppose. By Gottfried Toller. Premiered in Dresden in 1912.’
‘Ah, modern. That explains it. I was thinking of Lully’s Persée.’
I felt a chill creep through me and I decided there and then not to trust Munro any more, however much I was naturally inclined to like him. Anyone living in Vienna in 1913 would have known about Toller’s Andromeda. Anyone – certainly someone who was familiar with Lully’s Persée. Why was he lying? Why were we both smilingly lying to each other? We were on the same side.
‘Did Glockner give you his libretto?’
‘Yes. In return for the money.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘I lost it. In all the fuss over the shooting. It was left behind somewhere in the nursing home in Evian, I assume. I haven’t seen it since.’
Munro put down his knife and fork and pushed his plate aside.
‘Shame. Could you lay your hands on another copy – through your contacts in the theatrical world, perhaps?’
‘I could try.’
‘Let’s have another pint, shall we? Celebrate your speedy recovery.’
2. A Turner Two-Seater with a Collapsible Hood
Lysander was discharged from Somerville College a week later and decided to take his leave in Sussex as Hamo’s guest in the cottage at Winchelsea. Hamo had acquired a motor car – a Turner two-seater with a collapsible hood – and together they went for drives over the Downs and into Kent to Dungeness and Bexhill, to Sandgate and Beachy Head and one epic journey to Canterbury where they stayed the night before motoring home. Lysander punctuated the motor tours with walks of increasing length as he began to feel stronger and his injured left leg showed signs of bearing up. The scar on his thigh was still unsightly, buckled and lurid – a lot of muscle had been cut away in search of the evasive coins – and after his walks, steadily progressing through half a mile, a mile, two miles, he felt the leg stiff and sore. Still, it was the best thing for it, he reckoned, as he felt his love of walking renewing and, as soon as his confidence had grown sufficiently, he threw his stick away with relief.
On his final Saturday before his return to London they motored into Rye for lunch and then went for a walk on Camber Sands. They made their way down a path through the barbed wire and the crude anti-invasion defences on to the beach. The tide was out and the huge expanse of sand seemed like the vestige of an ancient, perfect desert washed up here on the south coast of England, unbelievably flat and smooth. A mile away someone was flying a kite but otherwise they had the great beach to themselves. Lysander stopped – he thought he could hear the rumble of distant explosions.
‘That’s not from France, is it?’ he said, knowing the offensive was due any day now.
‘No,’ Hamo said. ‘There’s a range up the coast – training gunners. How’s the leg?’
‘Getting better. No pain, but I’m still aware of it, if you know what I mean.’
They strode on in silence. There was a coolness lurking in the afternoon air.
‘Do you know who I mean by Bonham Johnson?’ Hamo asked.
‘The novelist?’
‘Yes. He lives not far away. Over by Romney. Turns out he’s a great admirer of my African book. He’s asked me to his sixtieth birthday party.’
‘You can drive over.’
‘He wants me to bring a guest. In fact he rather specified you – the actor-nephew – I think he’s seen you on stage. You up for it? Week tomorrow.’
Lysander thought – it was the last thing he wanted to do but he rather felt Hamo’s invitation was more entreating than its casual delivery inferred.
‘Assuming I have weekends off – yes. Might be interesting.’
Hamo was clearly very pleased. ‘Literary types – ghastly. Feel I need moral support.’
‘You’re the one who’s written a book, Hamo.’
‘Ah – but you’re the famous actor. They won’t notice me.’
Lysander went up to London on Sunday evening. The Chandos Place flat was still sublet so he booked himself into a small lodging house in Pimlico – with the grandiose name of The White Palace Hotel – not far from the river. He could walk to Parliament Square in thirty minutes or less. Munro had asked him to meet at a place called Whitehall Court on the Monday morning but had been vague as to who else would be there and what would be discussed.