Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

Nothing could be more normal, Sam told himself. Young girl falls for older, successful, married man, then gets thrown over when the affair threatens to go public. Yet nothing could be more abnormal than having Harold and his spooks sniffing around your private parts. ‘But she wasn’t actually working for us, was she? It wasn’t – what do you lot call it? – a honey trap?’

Harold glanced sideways at Sam. He was hoping, oh, surely he was hoping, that he looked like Orson Welles in that scene in The Third Man . Not as he was in the later scenes – not running through the sewers, and certainly not clawing at the grating of the manhole cover. But the one where Harry Lime appears for the first time, standing in the shadows of the doorway. ‘I’d say she was a not-so-innocent bystander caught in the crossfire.’

‘Not so innocent?’

‘Apparently your girl was only fifteen when she started with this fellow. Quite a little titbit.’

Sam felt something snap inside him. Nothing dramatic, just a small palpable rupture. Trust, or something. ‘ Fifteen ?’

‘That’s what it seems. Been with him for three or four years when we caught up with it. There’s a theory going around the files that we were trespassing on another operation. That she was set up by the East Germans. Who knows if that’s true or not?’

‘So she might have been an East German agent? At fifteen ?’

‘Not saying so, old chap. Just a rumour.’

There was a pause while Sam digested this possibility. ‘Sure you won’t come up?’ he asked. ‘A nightcap?’

‘Quite sure, old chap. Must be getting along. Work all hours these days. I do hope I haven’t put the kibosh on the start of a lovely friendship.’

‘Nothing of the kind, Harold. And thank you for the information.’

In his sitting room Sam opened the envelope Harold had given him and tipped the photographic print out along with two strips of negatives. He examined the print. It was the kind of thing you took on holiday – a group of strangers gathered behind half-empty beer glasses, frozen by the flash and backed by shadows. Faces were white and staring, grimacing with laughter. One of the group had put his hand round the back of his neighbour’s head to give him an antenna of two fingers. In the centre was the violinist – Jitka, that was her name – and her husband. On the left of the group was Lenka. The others laughed, she smiled.

What, Sam wondered, was she smiling at?

It’s raining. Scudding clouds like damp rags hung out in the wind. A boy and a girl, laden beneath rucksacks, climbing out of a Land Rover and taking up position on the roadside. The Land Rover drives off in a plume of spray and laughter.

‘Daddy doesn’t believe we’ll get anywhere,’ Eleanor mutters angrily, and it’s only defiance that stops her fulfilling her parent’s belief. Her anorak hood is letting in water around the neck, it’s too damp to roll a ciggie and she’s having second thoughts about this venture.

Lorries, cars, buses, splash past. They seem indifferent, not even inhabited by human beings, just steel boxes of varying size and design and colour careering past as though on a conveyor belt. ‘What do we do now?’ she asks. She feels hopeless and angry, above all angry at James for bringing her here.

‘We walk on a bit.’

‘ Walk on ? I thought the idea was to bum a lift off someone.’

James is wearing a smug expression that says this is what he knows and she doesn’t. He’s the expert here. ‘First rule,’ he says. ‘Only hitch where there’s a place the driver can pull in. No one’s going to stop in the middle of a main road.’

‘What’s the second rule? Give up and take a taxi?’

They shuffle through the drizzle as far as a lay-by. ‘You may as well start,’ he says, plonking his rucksack on the grass verge. ‘Shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll stand back a bit. They’ll stop for a girl.’

‘For a girl ?’

‘Come on, stick your thumb out.’

‘I don’t want that kind of lift.’

‘It won’t be that kind of lift. It’ll be a lift.’

‘It’s like hustling.’

‘It’s only hustling if the customer thinks you’re a tart. But they’ll just assume you’re hitching. Now stick your bloody thumb out.’

She does so, like someone trying in vain to plug a leak. Cars splash by.

‘You want to look the driver in the eye as well. Make it personal. That’s rule number two. You’re a girl, so take advantage of it.’

‘I told you, I don’t want that kind of lift.’

‘Come on, Ellie. All he’ll want is a grope.’

She turns on him, but at the very moment that she’s about to loose a stream of invective, a van slithers to a halt in the lay-by. ‘Hop in,’ the driver yells through the window, and James is opening the door and shoving Ellie and the rucksacks across the seat before she can utter a word. ‘Dover,’ James says across the sodden, furious figure sitting in the middle of the bench seat. The driver, a callow youth with prominent Adam’s apple and rodent teeth, slams the vehicle into gear and accelerates back into the stream of traffic. He’s chewing gum and smoking and scratching his groin, all these things at the same time as driving. It takes concentration, a degree of slick skill. ‘You going abroad then?’

‘France, Germany, Italy. Maybe Greece.’

He grins at them. ‘And you’ve had a row already?’

‘About last night,’ she says. They’ve bought tickets, had something to eat in a greasy-spoon café and then boarded the ferry and waited for it to depart, all without broaching that most delicate of subjects. Now they are on deck looking back over the ship’s wash to where low-lying cloud throws a wartime smokescreen across what might be the white cliffs of Dover fading into the night. The lounge they have abandoned is like a refugee encampment, littered with squalling babies and arguing adults, dominated by a large, loud American extolling the virtues of the latest film to anyone who will listen and many who are trying not to. ‘You’ve gotta see it,’ he is insisting. ‘It’s just ace. This little guy Hoffman. He’s a real star.’

Out on deck it is quiet and cool. The rain has stopped.

‘What about last night?’

He senses rather than sees her indifference. ‘I’m sorry, that’s all. Just… I don’t want to rush into anything.’

‘Bloody Kevin again.’

‘Perhaps.’

There is silence between them but not around them. Around them, beneath them, is the sound of the ship and its way through the water. It pitches and shudders like an old lady confronted with something not altogether pleasant. Deep in its bowels is the rumble of machinery. He wonders what she thinks of him, while she wonders what he thinks of her. Neither offers the other much in the way of clues. Should he take her hand? It seems mad. They’ve kissed a bit, and now he doesn’t know whether to take her hand or not.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Tomorrow morning we’ll be in France—’

‘Belgium, actually. Zeebrugge, remember?’

‘Only because you insisted, because it was cheaper.’

‘My mother brought me up to be careful with money.’ He waits. ‘You were different with your parents, you know that? From what you’re like at Oxford.’

‘Different how?’

He can’t quite say. A hint, a feeling. ‘Obedient,’ he suggests. ‘Wanting to please.’

‘That’s why I try to get away from them. Isn’t it the same with you?’

‘You’ll have to come oop North and find out.’

‘That depends on whether we survive this trip.’