Alexander Smith - Unbearable Lightness of Scones

“Yes,” said Angus. “But you do need a little time to compose yourself once you’ve rung a bell. That’s all I was saying. Composition time. It’s the same with telephones. If the other person picks up the phone immediately it rings, you get a bit of a shock. You expect a few rings at the other end.”

“That’s true,” agreed James. “It’s a rather abrupt start to a telephone call otherwise.”

They went into the kitchen. Angus sniffed the air, just as Cyril had done: the smell of Domenica’s coffee always seemed so much more delicious than the smell of the coffee he made for himself. Why, he wondered, does somebody not make a perfume, or an aftershave lotion perhaps, that mimicked that smell? Perfumes could be so overwhelming, so cloying by comparison; a person who brought with him or her some wafting reminder of coffee would surely be much appreciated.

The pouring of the coffee was the signal for the topic of conversation to move on. Domenica now related to her guests how Antonia had rung her doorbell – she did not reveal how quickly she answered it – earlier that morning and asked her, again, to take a delivery. “She was as cool as a cucumber,” she said. “Standing there, utterly without scruple. And do you know what she said to me? She said: please be discreet.”

“That clinches it,” said Angus. “This is… what do they call it? The drop?”

James shook his head. “I don’t think so. The drop is a term used purely in espionage. It’s when you drop the papers or the microfilm in a dead tree and somebody comes along and picks them up. Half the secrets of the Cold War were exchanged in that way.”

“How bizarre,” said Domenica. “Men don’t ever really grow up, do they?”

Angus and James were both silent for a while. Then Angus spoke. “Many intelligence people were women, you know. Daphne Park, for example. She worked for MI5, I believe. I had lunch with her down in London once after they put her in the House of Lords. She’s a very remarkable woman.”

“Women make rather good spies because we’re observant,” said Domenica. “But, listen, this is not the point. The point is that at any moment Antonia’s consignment is going to arrive. What are we going to do?”

“We call the police,” said Angus.

Domenica shook her head. “I really don’t think we have time. If I phoned the police now, they would simply send somebody round to check up on my story. And that could frighten the dealers off. They’d see a police car parked outside.”

Angus conceded that this was likely. “So what do we do?” he asked. “Do we simply take delivery?”

“Why don’t we do that?” James said. “Domenica takes delivery, and one of us nips downstairs and takes the number of the person’s car. Then that’s the stage that we call the police. They then come – we tell them the full story…”

“We can’t,” said Angus. “I’m not going to tell them about getting into Antonia’s flat and hiding in the cupboard. That’s probably an offence in itself. I’m not going to tell them that.”

Domenica intervened. “We don’t need to say anything about that. All we need to tell them is that I was asked to take delivery by Antonia. I can then say that my suspicions were aroused – which will be true – and that we investigated the box or packet or whatever it is and discovered that it was full of drugs. Then we hand the whole thing over, and Antonia goes to jail.”

The mention of jail made Angus think again of Antonia’s flat. “If she goes to prison,” he said, “and there can be no doubt that it’s about time that she did, then I wonder what will happen to her flat? It’s very nicely situated. One of the rooms, I’ve always felt, would make a very fine studio. It’s that one with the skylight, which gives a good northern light.”

He watched her for signs of a reaction. If she said, “Well, Angus, why don’t you think of buying it?” it would be a good sign. That would show that she would like him to be her neighbour. And if she would like him to be her neighbour, then perhaps she would like him to be something more than that.

But Domenica said nothing. She let the remark pass, as if nobody had said anything of the remotest interest or consequence.

The hands of the clock moved slowly. Everybody was too nervous now to talk very much and so for a while they sat in silence as they waited for the arrival of Antonia’s supplier. Angus found himself wondering what this person would look like. Lard O’Connor had been such an obvious figure – a gangster of the old school, almost loveable, from a distance, while Antonia’s supplier would come from a totally different end of the criminal spectrum. Such people were callous and psychopathic, indifferent to the chaos and misery their wares caused in the lives of those who consumed them. And yet, here was Antonia, outwardly respectable, quite congenial company – at times, and in her way – implicated in precisely the same trade, even if a lowly link in the chain. But if one passed her in the street it would never occur to one that she was a drug-dealer; one might even see her in Jenners and think nothing of it.

“What was the name of that Italian?” he suddenly asked Domenica.

“Which Italian?”

“The one who said that he could identify criminals by their appearance?”

James provided the answer. “Cesare Lombroso.”

Domenica nodded. She knew all about Lombroso. “You’re thinking of Antonia, I take it,” she said. “You’re reflecting on her lack of a criminal appearance?”

“Well, I was,” admitted Angus. “And you have to admit, she doesn’t exactly look the part of the drug-dealer, does she?”

“Lombroso was interested in the face and the shape of the head,” Domenica said. “If you look at the illustrations in his book, you’ll see that it was all about low foreheads and the eyes being too close together. He had those wonderfully frightening pictures of Murderer – typical Sicilian type and so on.”

“Well, they did rather look the part, didn’t they?”

Domenica laughed. “Have you seen the photographs of Dr. Shipman? The one who bumped off half his patients. Would you have been worried if he came to give you an injection?” She answered her own question. “I doubt it, Angus. There have been plenty of mild-looking murderers.”

Angus looked thoughtful. “Undoubtedly. But at the end of the day, there’s still some connection between the look on a face and what’s going on in the mind. The old saw that the eyes are the window of the soul has some truth in it. Take Richard Nixon. And then compare him with, say, Bill Clinton. What do the faces say to you?”

“Nixon had a…”

“Tricky face?” Angus interjected. “Paranoid? Couldn’t you look at that face and say, ‘That’s a man who has an enemies list’?”

“Whereas William Jefferson Clinton…”

Angus made a gesture to indicate the obvious. “An open, friendly face. Sympathetic. Warm.”

“And in each case what you saw on the outside is what you got on the inside?”

Angus nodded. “Exactly.” He turned to James. “And in portraiture, James, would you not agree that character can shine through the face?”

“Oh yes. Although it might depend on whether there was any flattery going on. Portrait painters are not above flattery, Angus, as I’m sure you are well aware.”

Angus laughed. “I am. That is, I am aware. And I hope that I’m above flattery – most of the time. I suppose there are occasions when I feel that I have to be kind. But being kind to somebody is different, surely, from flattering them.”

They were silent again, each thinking, perhaps, of Antonia and any display in her physiognomy of her secret. Had there been signs that people had missed? Angus remembered seeing the moderately expensive pictures on her wall; for a successful drug-dealer, those would have been easily affordable. Well, that at least answered the question of how she could buy them. It would also explain how she managed to live without working, if one did not count the writing of a novel about the Scottish saints as working, which he did not. And there was a further mystery, the answer to which would soon be revealed: what sort of drugs would she be dealing in? The most likely answer to that, he thought, was cocaine. Antonia would be providing cocaine to the upmarket dinner parties where such things were consumed. She was perfectly placed for that in the New Town, with its elegant flats and wealthy inhabitants. He shook his head, almost wistfully. He had never been invited to one of these fashionable dinner parties, possibly because of Cyril, he thought. Or the clothes he wore. Or even his age.