Philip Kerr - The Other Side of Silence

You could say I was feeling a bit sorry for myself and perhaps I was also a little drunk because instead of driving straight home I somehow found myself ignoring the lobster pot where I lived and heading out of town and up the hill toward Anne French’s villa. I told myself that if you spend enough time around homosexuals, you begin to feel the need to redress the balance with the company of a congenial woman. It’s not much of an excuse for what I was doing but I couldn’t think of a better one.

I stopped in front of the gate posts, lit a cigarette, and stared along the drive at the house. The lights in her bedroom were on and for a moment I just sat there, imagining Anne in bed and wondering if I was about to make a stupid mistake and spoil everything between us. What would a woman like her want with a man who owned as pitifully little as I? Apart from bridge lessons.

I almost turned around and drove away. Instead I drove slowly up the drive and stopped the engine. Discretion might be the better part of valor, but it has no business between men and women on a warm summer’s night on the French Riviera. I hoped I wouldn’t offend her, but being drunk I was willing to take that risk. So I opened the car door, stepped out, and cocked an ear. Coming from the guesthouse was the sound of a large radio and someone trying vainly to tune it to a more reliable frequency. A few moments later the radio was turned off, the door opened, and Anne came outside wearing just a short, almost see-through cotton nightdress. It was a very warm evening. The cicadas showed their appreciation of her cleavage and shapely legs with an extra loud click of their abdomens. I certainly felt like giving my own abdomen a bit of action, too.

“Oh, I’m glad it’s you,” she said. “I thought it might be the gardener.”

“At this time of night?”

“Lately he’s been giving me a funny look.”

“Maybe you should let him water the flower beds.”

“I don’t think that’s what he has in mind.”

“The heat we’ve been having? He’s in the wrong job.”

“Did you come here to mow my lawn, or just to talk?”

“Talk, I guess.”

“So, what’s your story?”

“I’m all out of stories tonight. Fact is, Anne, I’m feeling just a bit sad.”

“And you thought I might cheer you up, is that it?”

“Something like that. I know it’s a bit late.”

“Too late for bridge, I’d have thought.”

“I’m sorry, but I just wanted to see you.”

“Don’t apologize. Actually, I’m glad you’re here. I was feeling a little sad myself.” She paused. “I was listening to the BBC World Service news on the shortwave. And now that I have I wish I hadn’t. Apparently the Egyptians have nationalized the Suez Canal and closed it to all Israeli shipping.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, for one thing, it means the price of oil is going to go up. But I think it also means there’s going to be a war.”

“When we haven’t finished paying for the last one? I doubt that.”

She shrugged. “A last throw of the dice from Britain and France to prove that these old colonial powers still matter? After all, it’s them who administer the canal. Of course. Why not?” She smiled. “But you didn’t come up here to talk international politics, did you?”

“We can if you like. Just as long as I don’t have to vote for anyone. That never changed anything. Even in the good old days.”

“How old?”

“Very old. Old enough to be good. Before the Nazis, anyway. Speaking of the very old, I spent the evening with Somerset Maugham. At the Villa Mauresque.”

“How is he?”

“Getting strangely older by the minute, if that were humanly possible.”

“Makes two of us.”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“You’d be surprised. The longer I stay parted from that fifty-thousand-dollar publishing advance, the older I feel.”

In the car, I’d resolved to tell her everything; if I was going to risk my neck for the Englishman there had to be something in it for me, and that something had started to look like it might just be Anne French.

“Then it’s good that I’m here. I’ve got some news that should make you and your publisher very happy. I’ve persuaded Somerset Maugham to meet with you.”

This was making more of my effort on her behalf than was perhaps warranted, of course, but it sounded like the sort of thing she probably wanted to hear, which, for obvious reasons, was the kind of thing I was keen to tell her.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Really? That’s fantastic.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Frankly, I think he is a kind of vampire.”

“All authors are a bit like that.”

“I wouldn’t know. But I feel like I lost a lot of blood up there tonight. I feel drained.”

“Then you’d better come in the house and let me mix you a transfusion.”

“I think I’ve had enough to drink already.”

“Something else then. Coffee, perhaps.”

“Are you sure? It is late. Maybe I should go.”

“Look, Walter, I’ve never been one for knowing what I should and shouldn’t do. I always wanted to be good but now I realize I should have been a little less specific. Especially now you’re here. Now I think I just want to be wanted.” She shrugged off the nightdress like an extra skin and stood there naked in the moonlight. “You do want me, don’t you, Walter?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go in before I change my mind, or I get bitten by something while I’m standing here naked. A mosquito, perhaps.”

“Not if I get there first.”

The subject of the tape was printed on the box, which now lay on the refectory table beside the tape machine. “Interview with Guy Burgess, May 28th, 1951, SS Pamyati Kirova .” I carefully threaded the leader onto the Grundig, lit my fifth cigarette of the day, poured some coffee from the brightly polished silver pot that Ernest the butler had brought for me, and, under the eye of a tomato-colored nude by Renoir, sat down to await Maugham’s delayed arrival in the elegant drawing room. On the lawns the garden sprinklers were already spinning around like dervishes and the chauffeur had washed the car again. The nude was a bit too pink and chubby for my taste; she only lacked a lollipop and a Teddy bear to be wholly unsuitable. I was tired but in an almost pleasant way, suffering a little with the equivalent of a hangover from an excess of sex, if such a thing is possible for a man living alone. My balls felt like they’d spent the night on a beer-hall billiard table. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again as Robin Maugham came into the room and sat down heavily, more like an old housewife after a day trailing around the shops instead of a man wearing a blazer who had only just finished breakfast. He smelled strongly of cloying cologne and false courtesy. I sensed that he had started to dislike me almost as much as I disliked his cologne.

“My uncle is going to be another five or ten minutes. He had an uncomfortable night. The heat, you know.”

“I had a bit of a rough night myself.”

“Well, I always say, there’s nothing quite like a bit of rough.” Robin smiled at his own little joke. “Anyway, he’s just getting dressed.”

I nodded. “Fine.”

“You know, every time I open a door in this house these days it seems you’re there, Walter. Why is that?”

“Does that make you nervous?”

“No. It makes me wonder, that’s all. I mean, what’s in it for you, that kind of thing. What do you want from this house, Walter?”

“You asked me to come here. To play bridge. Remember?”

“No, what I mean is, why are you helping my uncle now?”