John Lawton - Riptide

As Walter Stilton stepped into the street Sergeant Troy was awoken by a telephone call from his father, a man who would never accept that his son did not ‘do’ mornings unless duty required. As a boy he had known his father to bumble into his bedroom in the pitch-darkness of pre-dawn with some philosophical conundrum on his lips. Today was a day just like those old days. Troy had long since learnt to move from sleep to waking without transition-one second sound asleep the next wide awake and firing on all cylinders.

‘What was it Berdyaev used to say about Russia?’ Alex said without greeting, without so much as a syllable from Troy.

Lately-the last ten years or so-his father had tended to treat Troy as an extension of his memory. A substitute for his own failing powers. He had made Troy read so much as a child-all those prolonged, sickly weeks off school-that his education was warped by the old man-he knew things no one of his generation or education might ordinarily be expected to know. Alex would ask Troy things he could not ask Rod. It depressed Troy to think that his father was still grinding away at his Russian piece. If he hadn’t finished it by now? And what had become of his collaboration with Wells?

‘What exactly about Russia? He banged on about so many things.’

‘It’s in The Soul of Russia-or at least I thought it was. I cannot find it. Books without indexes should be banned.’

‘That’s probably what first narked Hitler.’

Alex ignored this. ‘He was, as you put it, banging on about the Russian Mission.’

‘Oh,’ said Troy, ‘that. The Light from the East. It’s not Berdyaev-well, not just him, it’s most of the old ones. It’s in Dostoevsky. Perhaps even in Tolstoy, and you might recall your dad had more than a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Holy Russian Mission.’

‘Holy?’ said Alex as though the word meant nothing to him, one atheist talking to another.

‘The Great Civilising Mission westward, how Russia as the keeper of the flame of Orthodoxy, the original true faith of Christ, would ultimately be the salvation of the decadent West, by which they meant anything west of Lvov. Of course they were right, in a way.’

‘What way?’ said his dad.

‘There was indeed a Russian mission west-it just wasn’t anything to do with Christ or Orthodoxy or Holy Mother Russia. It was born in 1917 and it died at the end of Frank Jacson’s icepick about nine months ago.’

‘Permanent Revolution,’ said Alex. ‘The earth-shattering theory of the late Comrade Trotsky. How very cynical of you, my boy.’

He rang off. Troy wondered if he’d pushed the old man too far. He was fed up with things Russian, but Trotsky’s murder had run a shudder through the Troy household. If, his mother had protested, the arm of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin reached all the way to Mexico, then who in Europe was safe? Troy’s father had remained unruffled. He was, he pointed out, no threat to Stalin, no renegade Red and, better still, no exiled White. Stalin would not bother with him. Rod had strongly urged him to seek official protection, to talk to Churchill, and the old man had firmly and impolitely refused.

Troy looked at the clock and felt lazy. He could go back to sleep for another hour, perhaps two. He was on the late shift and would not see his bed again before midnight. Besides, Kitty had not been round for a day or two-it would be just like her to turn up tonight; so lie decided to sleep while he could.

Cal passed the morning lying on his bed blowing smoke rings. It was the sum total of what he had learnt in two years at military academy. He rarely smoked, but when he did it was a sign of tension or boredom or both. A letter had come from his father, from New York-what was he doing in New York?-via Zurich. Postmarked April 23 rd. The mail was speeding up. He had read it over breakfast. It filled him with despair.

Plaza Hotel

Grand Army Plaza

New York

Dear Son,

America took a giant step today. The people spoke. Thirty thousand attended the New York America First Rally to hear Lindbergh speak. If FDR ignores this he’s a fool. This is the voice of America. This is the voice of the people.

There were few things he hated more than having his father address him as though he were a voter rather than his own flesh and blood. Then the tone changed-a cloying confidentiality that had him yearning for the old man to get back on the stump.

Of course I stayed off the platform. Let Lindy do the talking-as much as I could. The man is not the brightest bear in the woods, and God knows what he’d’ve said if I hadn’t written most of the speech for him. He was all set to sock it to the Jews. I told him ‘There’s no votes in criticizing Jews, in New York City of all places. Hymietown, for Christ’s sake. As long as we can keep him clear of anti-Semitism he’ll do fine. Just the figurehead we need. Perhaps we can let him rip when we get out West-nobody there gives a damn one way or the other about the Jews.

What we have to get across is the conspiracy-there’s no other word for it-between the British and the White House, between FDR and Winston Churchill to bring America into this war, against the wishes of the people, by any reasonable pretext they can drum up. If That’s what America First has to expose…

Cal stopped reading. Conspiracy? The old man was getting crazy. Poking around under the bed with a shotgun.

He passed the afternoon drifting. Hating Walter for his absence. Drifting. From the leafy squares of Mayfair into the West End. Peering in the gentleman’s outfitters of Jermyn Street-wishing Frank Reininger had given him enough coupons to go in and ask them to measure him for a shirt. Thinking of Reininger he made his way back to the embassy-passed an hour waiting to see if Frank showed up. He didn’t. Berg did, greeted him as though his presence was an affront-‘So you finally decided to show up.’ Cal said ‘Fuck you, Henry,’ and left.

He found his way to a cafe in Brewer Street. It was dismally quiet. Two old men shoving halfpennies up and down a marked board, just as he’d seen men doing that night in the crypt of St Alkmund’s, the radio on merely as a background burble. Then, the volume soared as the proprietor turned it up for the news, and a bloodless BBC voice announced the sinking of the Bismarck. What little chatter there had been stopped. Cal could count the beating seconds by the sound of his own heart. Half a minute passed this way. He was surprised. He’d half expected cheering or someone to get up and sing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. At last one of the old men picked up a halfpenny and said, ‘That’s that, then.’ And the other just said, ‘Yus.’

He ate alone at the Bon Viveur. A table for two-a dinner for one. He figured to time his return to Claridge’s for the end of Kitty’s shift. With any luck they’d meet in the elevator. He’d persuade her to come out. Postpone the inevitability of sex until they’d been out somewhere. A club, a bar, somewhere.

When he collected his key at the front desk the clerk handed him another letter. It looked like Kitty’s writing-that childish, half-formed hand he’d seen on her odd notes to him. The scrawl was hereditary. The letter was from her father.

Been trying to get you on the phone for a couple of hours. Thought you’d be around. Meet me in Coburn Place N1 at 10.30 tonight. It’s an alley between two pubs, the Green Man and the Hand & Racquet. Don’t be late.

Hoping this reaches you, one way or another.

Yrs.

Walter Stilton

PS Wot larx!

The address meant nothing to Cal. He asked at the desk-they silently handed him a street map of London. He found Coburn Place. Only with difficulty. It was tiny-it lurked under the L of ISLINGTON, sprawled across the grid in letters half an inch high. The two pubs weren’t marked on the map, but a music hall close by was-Collins’ Music Hall. He’d look for that.