Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

He sagged past into the smell of frying bacon, and she closed the door. "How d'you like your eggs, Harry?"

"Nothing but tea or juice, thanks." Mrs Caswell had fed them all poached eggs and toast once they had got Blagg bedded down. "D'you mind if I start with the cocktail hour? It rather got lost in the rush. "

Her head went even more on one side. "A whisky breakfast? Don't tell George: he'll be jealous he hadn't thought of it for himself. You know where it all is. "

George was asleep in a big leather chair, making wuffling noises through his open mouth. Carefully not clinking the bottles, Maxim mixed himself a whisky and water, drank it in three gulps, then poured another and began sipping. The lamps were out and the curtains open, letting in an aquarium light that showed up the room for what it really was: a cold, colourless tomb. Maxim shivered and took his drink away to the kitchen.

Agnes was sitting at the table munching bacon and eggs under a bright neon light."'Ello, ahr'Arry. Have you got planning permission to carry that much valuable agricultural land around on your person?" She giggled into her coffee.

Maxim's clothes were still sticky-wet, he was splashed tothe knees with mud, and as for his shoes… With his fair hair, the stubble on his chin showed only as a slight blurring of the normally sharp jawline, but the rest of his face was a bruise of tiredness and strain.

"Don't you taunt the poor man, Agnes," Annette said severely. "Now, would you like to borrow some stuff of George's?"

The idea was briefly attractive, but the difference between George's waistline and his own… "I'll manage, thanks. " He slumped down opposite Agnes, who herself had changed her delicate jacket for one of Annette's cardigans, and kicked off her shoes somewhere.

Annette put down a cup of tea and a glass of orangejuice. "It is lemon and sugar, isn't it? Now you two'll want to talk Top Secrets so I'll go and get dressed. " She bustled tactfully away.

"Went the night well?" Agnes asked.

"Pretty well, if he doesn't get pneumonia, but he's full of antibiotics just as a prophylactic… It was close. Lucky he was young and fit and all. " He took a sip of whisky, thenjuice, then tea.

"He wouldn't have got mixed up in all this if he wasn't young and fit. Is that your normal breakfast?"

"Not exactly. What happened on the home front?"

"You heard it could be murder?-yes, I told you on the phone. Nothing more from that angle except that the police have askedus to check him out, so they're pretty dubious about who he was."

"We know who he was working for, anyway."

"If you mean Six, it really isn't likely," Agnes said. "And I'm not saying that as any friend of theirs."

Unconvinced, Maxim gave a little shrug, then took Blagg's Spanish revolver from his pocket. It was still wet and choked with gritty mud. He emptied out the fired cartridge cases, went across to the sink and washed the gun under the hot tap.

"Where did you take him?" Agnes asked.

"The doc offered one of your safe houses, but I didn't think you'd want to be that much involved. In the end, we went down to a chum in the country. " At first, Mrs Caswell hadn't been all that keen, probably because she didn't want anybodydying on the premises. But Jim, bless him, had taken it with as little fuss as if he'd been asked to feed the cat for a couple of days. "The doc's going again today, and I'll get down this evening."

The door clattered open and George, barely awake, stumbled in. He edged Maxim away from the sink, ran the tap until it was really cold, and mixed a foaming cocktail of Alka-Seltzer and lemon-flavoured Redoxon tablets. Agnes watched, fascinated; George's stomach must be a constant series of coups and counter-coups.

Then he sat down with a cup of coffee. "How's Corporal Blagg?"

Maxim took a handful of kitchen paper and began to dismantle and dry the revolver. "Coming along. It must have been only a 7.65 that got him. It nicked a lung and probably cracked a rib, but it didn't open the abdomen. The doc drained air and blood from hispleuralcavity and…"

"Harry!" George held up a wavering hand. "For God's sake, I didn't ask for allthat. Pleuralcavities. At breakfast. Jesus. " He slopped coffee into his mouth.

"The important thing is, he didn't lose enough blood to need a transfusion, so no hospital."

"Good. I'm sure you'd have related it to me drop by drop. Did you get anything out of him about… about anything?"

"No. He was hardly conscious most of the time, and I didn't want to put any more strain on him. I'll try him this evening. "

George got up and put bits of breakfast onto a plate. "Is that his gun you're field-stripping? – and if so, hadn't it better really be thrown away now? They've already got at least one bullet from Rotherhithe they could match to it. "

Maxim looked at the clutter of parts in front of him and realised how right he'd been in saying soldiers hate to throw away guns, even cheap Spanish ones. "I suppose… but half that stuff about matching bullets to guns is scientific malarkey. Juries only believe it because it always happens in TV cop shows. Anyway, you could scratch up the rifling with a file and steel wool so that it would never give the same markings on a bullet again."

'It's still an unlicensed weapon," George said, sittingdown. "And while you're still working at Number 10, atouch of Caesar's wife might be appropriate."

Agnes gave a snort of laughter. "After all he's been up to? You have to be joking. "

"He could get stopped and searched for some quite other reason. It would still be a scandal even if it was quite a separate scandal."

Maxim had been reassembling the cleaned and dried gun. He stopped and thought for a moment. "Okay. Should I leave it here with you?"

"All right." George nodded amiably. "Nobody'll search this place."

"Get some sewing-machine oil off Annette to -"

"You're _both_ just little boys!" Agnes wailed.

Maxim woke slowly, sweaty and dry-mouthed and with no idea of what day or time it was. Then fragments of memory floated slowly to the surface like debris from a sunken ship, and along with them the aches and twinges of a busy night. By the time he climbed stiffly out of bed he knew it was just past noon and had the events of Rotherhithe roughed out in his mind like a draught report. It had also occurred to him that if he wrote that report it would be the last thing he ever did in the Army.

The day was cooler and still fresh after the night of rain. He cobbled together a brunch of cold remains from the fridge, with lemon tea. Living by himself, he had stopped taking milk: he never got through half a bottle before it went sour, since he drank coffee black and seldom ate cereals. But he'd have to drop the lemon tea lark when he went back to the Battalion; it would be like turning up wearing a frock. Or maybe he'd deliberately keep it on, as the endearing eccentricity of a senior major. But then he knew he wouldn't, because he would be doing it for just that reason even if he really preferred tea with lemon.

Why do I have to think like that? he wondered. I know dozens of officers with their own quirks of taste, dress and behaviour and they're just real people who'd be incomplete without such little fads. Why do I have to conform, to feel real only when I'm being normal? You conforming? he could hear George and Agnes shout in disbelief. But that's not what I mean, he would reply; why can't I just be myself?

But who am I? I used to be Harry Maxim, then I was me and Jenny, and now I just don't know and it'll take more than lemon tea and a pink silk handkerchief in my sleeve and reading Goethe over breakfast to tell me.

George rang. "Get your conscience clean, bright and slightly oiled: it's when-did-you-last-see-your-father time."