Сэм Истлэнд - The Elegant Lie

It was a weekday, so the beach was not crowded. A few families had set up towels and umbrellas and were eating sandwiches out of metal-sided coolers. Children played in the lazy surf and on the stone breakwaters. Along the wooden boardwalk, people rode by on bicycles or pushed strollers. Some, too old to walk, were pushed along in wheelchairs, wool blankets covering their legs, vacant looks upon their faces. The smell of lemonade and fried dough stands flooded Carter’s senses.

There was a little coffee shop on the corner of 16th and Ocean Avenue where, for as long as Carter could remember, they had made cider doughnuts and sold them for a nickel a piece. They were still selling them, but the price had gone up to a dime. He bought one anyway and stood there, letting the sugar dissolve on his tongue with each bite, just as he had done when he was a kid.

‘I was surprised to get your call,’ said a voice.

Carter turned.

It was Palladino, his father’s old partner in the police, who had looked after Carter during his time with the Office of Price Administration. Palladino wore a short-brimmed panama hat and an untucked shirt with a Hawaiian print on it, which helped to hide the half-moon of his belly.

‘Thank you for coming,’ said Carter.

‘I heard you’d left the country.’

‘I did,’ replied Carter.

‘Heard you were in some trouble, too.’

‘I was, but I’m setting that straight.’

Palladino nodded. ‘Glad to hear it.’

‘It wasn’t like they said.’

‘I never thought it was.’

‘I have to go back,’ said Carter. ‘I might be gone a while.’

‘And you want me to keep an eye on the old man?’

‘I’d be grateful if you did.’

Palladino smiled. ‘I do that anyway,’ he said. ‘He knows it, too, a fact he’s too proud to admit. We just keep having these coincidental meetings. He never asks me why. You know how it is with your father. As a matter of fact, he’s over there now’◦– Palladino pointed towards the boardwalk◦– ‘keeping an eye out for U-boats. That’s what he always says, even though the war’s been over for years.’

Carter turned and looked.

The old man was sitting on his usual bench, looking out to sea and oblivious to the people passing by. His hands were folded on the top of an Irish blackthorn walking stick and his chin was resting on his hands.

‘You want to say hello?’ asked Palladino.

Carter paused, as if willing his father to turn around. But the old man just kept staring out to sea, his eyes peeled for the German submarines that now lay rusting on the sea floor, the bones of their crews lying in heaps of sticks down in the green-grey silt of the Atlantic. ‘I think I’ll leave him be,’ said Carter.

‘I expect that’s for the best,’ answered Palladino. ‘You go and do the things you have to do. And don’t you worry. I’ll be watching over him.’

There was nothing more to say. Carter shook Palladino’s hand and watched him plod across the road towards the boardwalk, his flat-footed gait like a baby just learning how to walk. Palladino stopped beside the old man and slapped him on the shoulder. Carter’s father turned and jerked his chin in greeting.

The last Carter saw of the two men, they were sitting side by side, both of them looking out to sea as if the U-boats might still be there, after all, like iron sharks prowling the deep.

On his way back to Tate, Carter stopped at his father’s house. The front door was locked but he knew the screen door around back would be open. As he stepped inside, Carter filled his lungs with the familiar smell of his father’s laundry soap and tobacco and the lemony-scented polish he used on the furniture in the dining room where he never sat, since he never had guests and preferred to eat his meals at a small, bare wooden table in the kitchen.

He made his way into the family room.

Nothing had changed. The same overstuffed chairs. The same unread pile of newspapers. The ashtray full of cigarette butts.

Carter stood there for a while, suddenly aware that if he stayed any longer he would never have the strength to leave. He spun on his heel and walked out of the house, closing the screen door carefully behind him. He returned to the car, where Tate sat with the windows rolled down, one arm sticking out of the window and a cigarette pinched between his fingers.

‘You’ve only been gone half an hour!’ said Tate.

‘I did what I came to do,’ replied Carter.

‘That is the damnedest thing,’ said Tate. He sipped at the smoke from his cigarette and exhaled against the inside of the windshield, sending the grey cloud arcing back into his face. Then he flicked the half-smoked stub out of the window.

That single, careless gesture made Carter realise how far he was from the place in which he had just spent the past few years. If Tate had thrown that cigarette into the gutter of a German road, people would have rushed to pick up what he had thrown away. But now it just lay there, smouldering and ignored. This part of the world had always been Carter’s home but, even though he could have found his way blindfolded through these streets, he felt so out of phase with everything around him that he wondered if he could really belong here anymore.

Tate’s voice snapped Carter out of his momentary trance. ‘I guess we had better be going,’ he said.

Before the sun had even set upon that day, Carter found himself in a cargo plane bound for Europe as it climbed steeply over the gunmetal blue sea, and the shoreline of New Jersey faded back into the clouds.

Leaving Teresa to nurse her injured head, Carter made his way down the narrow corridor to the office.

Some attempt had been made to kick the broken glass into the corner and the furniture had been dragged outside, leaving the room half empty.

Dasch was sitting at his desk. His skin looked deathly pale under the glaring bulbs, whose green glass hoods had all been smashed away.

Garlinsky stood in the middle of the room, his back towards Carter and the briefcase on the ground at his side. He turned as Carter stepped into the room. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The American.’ The gabardine wool of his overcoat shimmered softly as he moved, like the wings of an insect in the sun.

Now that Carter could see him up close, Garlinsky did not appear as dangerous as he had seemed before. But he looked very much like the kind of man who worked for people that were.

Slowly, Garlinsky turned away again.

‘You were saying,’ muttered Dasch.

‘The plane overshot the runway,’ explained Garlinsky, ‘and crashed in a thickly wooded area, possibly as far as a kilometre beyond the airstrip. Our contacts were waiting to receive it. The weather conditions were bad. There was rain and there were crosswinds. Your pilots made two aborted attempts to land and then, on the third one, they crashed.’

Slowly, Dasch subsided back into his chair. ‘So my plane has been destroyed,’ he whispered.

‘We assume so,’ said Garlinsky.

Carter walked around until he stood beside Dasch’s desk. ‘Did it burn?’ he asked.

Garlinsky shook his head. ‘It must have been almost out of fuel by the time it crashed. My contacts saw no smoke.’

‘And what about the pilots?’ asked Carter.

‘We assume that they are dead.’

‘Why do you assume?’ demanded Carter. ‘Didn’t anybody check?’

Garlinsky paused before replying. Even in those few seconds, the silence seemed to settle upon them like a layer of dust. ‘The plan,’ he said, ‘was for our contacts to unload that plane in twenty minutes and be gone within thirty. The longer they remained in the area, the greater the likelihood that they might be found by the authorities, and I do not need to tell you what would happen to them if they were arrested. As soon as the plane crashed, they left the area as quickly as they could, and they have not been back.’