Eric Ambler: Epitaph for a Spy

The small beach was now in complete shadow and a faint breeze off the sea was beginning to stir the tops of the trees; but it was still very warm. I could see the heads of two men and two women over the backs of the deck-chairs in which their owners were sitting; and as I neared the foot of the steps I could hear that they were attempting to carry on a conversation in French.

I walked across the sand, sat a few meters from them on the end of one of the trestles on which the dinghy was being painted, and gazed out across the bay.

From the quick look I had got in as I sat down I knew that in the two chairs nearest me were a young man of about twenty-three and a girl of about twenty. They had been swimming, and it was evidently their brown legs that I had seen from the terrace that morning. I judged from their French that these were the two Americans, Warren and Mary Skelton.

The other two were very different. Both were middle-aged and very fat. I remembered having noticed them before. The man had a beaming moonlike face and a torso that from a distance looked almost spherical. This illusion was due in some measure to the trousers he wore. They were of some dark material and had very short, narrow legs. The tops of them, already very high, were drawn up over his round belly almost to his armpits by very powerful suspenders. He wore a tennis shirt open at the neck and no jacket. He might have walked out of a cartoon in Simplicissimus. His wife, for these were the Swiss, was slightly taller than him and very untidy. She laughed a great deal and even when she was not actually laughing she looked as if she were about to do so. Her husband beamed in concert with her. They both appeared as simple and unselfconscious as a pair of small children.

It seemed that Skelton was trying to explain the American political system to Herr Vogel.

“Il y a,” he was saying laboriously, “deux parties seulement, les Republicaines et les Democrates. Ces sont du droit-tous les deux. Mais les Republicaines sont plus au droit que les Democrates. Ca c’est la difference.”

“Ah oui, je comprend,” said Herr Vogel. He hurriedly translated the sense into German. Frau Vogel grinned broadly.

“One hears,” pursued her husband in his clipped French, “that the gangsters (he pronounced it “garngstairs”) have a decisive influence during the elections. Like a party of the center, perhaps?” He had the air of one putting aside frivolous small talk in favor of graver matters.

The girl giggled helplessly. Her brother drew a deep breath and began to explain with great care, and to Herr Vogel’s evident amazement, that ninety-nine point nine per cent of the people of the United States had never seen a gangster. But his French soon gave out.

“Il y a, sans doute,” he was admitting, “une quantite de… quelque

…” He could get no farther. “Mary,” he said plaintively, “what the hell’s the word for graft?”

At that moment fortune favored me. It may be that teaching becomes a habit, that the impulse to instruct will, like hunger or fear, overcome social inhibitions. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the girl shrug her shoulders helplessly; a fraction of a second later the words were out of my mouth.

“Chantage is the word you want.”

They all looked at me.

“Oh, thanks,” said the girl.

An eager light came into her brother’s eye.

“Do you speak French as well as English?”

“Yes.”

“Then,” he said, tartly, “do you mind telling this moron here on our left that gangster is spelt with a small ‘g’ in America, and they’re not represented in Congress. At least, not openly. You might add, too, while you’re about it, that all our food doesn’t come out of cans, and that we don’t all live in the Empire State Building.”

“Certainly.”

The girl smiled.

“My brother’s not serious.”

“Aren’t I, by heaven! He’s an international menace. Someone ought to tell him.”

The Vogels had been listening to this exchange with bewildered smiles on their faces. I translated, as tactfully as possible, into German. They rocked with laughter. Between paroxysms, Herr Vogel explained that it was impossible not to tease Americans. A party of garngstair! The Empire State Building! There were fresh peals of laughter. The Swiss were evidently not quite so naive as they looked.

“What’s the matter with him now?” demanded Skelton.

I explained. He grinned.

“You wouldn’t think they had any guile in them, would you?” he said, and leaned forward to get a better view of the Vogels. “What are they, Germans?”

“Swiss, I think.”

“Pop,” remarked the girl, “looks exactly like Tenniel’s illustration of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Get those pants!”

The object of these criticisms was regarding us anxiously. He addressed himself to me.

“Die jungen Leute haben unseren kleinen Spass nicht ubel genommen?”

“He says,” I explained to the Skeltons, “that he hopes he hasn’t offended you.”

Young Skelton looked startled.

“Heavens, no. Look-” He turned to the Vogels. “Nous sommes tres amuses. Sie sind sehr liebenswurdig,” he said heartily. Then: “Hell, tell him, will you?”

I did so. There was a great deal of nodding and smiling. Then the Vogels began to talk between themselves.

“How many languages do you speak?” said Skelton.

“Five.”

He laughed disgustedly.

“Then would you explain very carefully,” put in the girl, “just how you learn a foreign language? I don’t want five. But if you could think in terms of ones for a moment, my brother and I would be interested.”

I muttered something about living in countries and cultivating a “language ear,” and asked them if they had been at the Reserve long.

“Oh, we’ve been here a week or so now,” he replied. “Our parents are coming over from home next week on the Conte di Savoia. We’re meeting them at Marseilles. You got here Tuesday, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m glad we can talk to someone in English. Koche is not bad with his English, but he’s got no staying power. We’ve only had that British major and his wife. He’s high-hat and she doesn’t speak at all.”

“Which could be lucky, too,” said his sister.

She was, I was realizing, though far from pretty, extremely attractive. Her mouth was too wide, her nose was not quite symmetrical, and her face was flat, with over-prominent cheekbones. But there was humor and intelligence in the way the lips moved, and the nose and cheekbones were good. The skin of her body was firm and clear and brown, while the thick mass of tawny fair hair crushed forward by the back of the deck-chair gleamed in a most interesting way. She was almost beautiful.

“The trouble with the French,” her brother was saying, “is that they get mad if you can’t speak their language properly. I don’t get mad if a Frenchman can’t speak English.”

“No, but that’s because most ordinary Frenchmen like the sound of their language. They don’t like listening to a bad French accent any more than you like listening to a beginner practicing on a violin.”

“It’s no use appealing to his musical ear,” commented the girl. “He’s tone deaf.” She got up and smoothed out her bathing suit. “Well,” she said, “I guess we’d better be getting some more clothes on.”

Herr Vogel heaved himself out of his chair, consulted an enormous watch, and announced in French that it was seven fifteen. Then he hitched up his suspenders another notch and began to collect his and his wife’s belongings. We all went in procession to the steps. I found myself behind the American.

“By the way, sir,” he said as we started up, “I didn’t catch your name.”