Anthony Burgess - Tremor of Intent

'Oh, isn't it? You've been concealing things from me, Roper. Going on about bloody martyrdom and red roses when all the time there was something else. What have you been doing with cabinet ministers? I'll find out, never fear. In the meantime, help me to get these trousers down.'

'Disguised as a steward, was he?' said Roper, not helping. 'You just never know, do you? Harmless-looking people waiting and watching, grinning and friendly but always ready to pounce. Ikota ikota,' he hiccuped as Hillier exposed dead Wriste's left flank. 'Ergh.' He screwed up his nose. 'What the hell ikota is all this for?'

'This,' Hillier said, 'is me out of the way. Me done for, finished. The ultimate opting-out.' He took out his pocket-knife and then, digging deep, scored an S on Wriste's unresisting skin. Then he lighted a Handelsgold Brazilian, the first of his posthumous ones, puffing gratefully.

'It's a desecration,' said Roper. 'R. I. Pr He's paid the price.'

'Not quite.' By rapid pumping with his breath, Hillier inflamed the tip of the Brazilian to a red-hot poker-glow. 'This is a very inadequate substitute for the real thing,' he said, applying the first burn to the S-channel. 'But it will serve.' To the smoked-bacon smell of the gun, still lingering, a richer more meaty aroma began to be added.

'What the hell – ikota ikota-'

'Tonight,' said Hillier, 'in the L-shaped cabin we're sharing, you'll see exactly what all this is about.'

'I'm not coming. What the hell have I to come for? Where will you be going to, anyway?'

Hillier looked up and stared for four seconds. 'I just hadn't thought,' he said. 'Of course, we haven't had time to take all this in, have we?' He almost let the cigar go out. 'Good God, no. We're both exiles, aren't we?' He bellowsed the end red again and continued, delicate as a musician, his scoring.

'I'm home,' said Roper. 'This is where I live. The Soviet Union, I mean. I'm not in exile.' He coughed at the smoke and the smell of searing. 'I'm better off than you are.' And Hillier saw himself from the wooden ceiling – in stolen Soviet police-uniform, drawing an S in fire on a corpse with a ruined face, the security-men watching at Southampton, at London Airport, just to be on the safe side, the sawn-off token undelivered. 'Home,' delivered Roper, 'is where you let things gather dust, where things get lost in drawers and the waiter in the corner restaurant knows your name. It's also where the work's waiting.'

'And a woman waiting? Wife or daughter or both?'

'I've got over all that,' said Roper. 'What I mean is, in that old way. There are some very nice girls at the Institut. We have a meal and a drink and a dance. I'm not in need of anything.'

Hillier finished his pokerwork, dusting off bits of charred hair and skin. Then, without help from Roper, he pulled the trousers up and, grunting with effort and distaste, secured them to their braces. 'This raincoat will be useful,' he said.

'Defile the corpse and strip it, eh?' twitched Roper. 'Your work's very dirty work, Hillier. Not like mine.'

'Let's see what-' I'm entitled to this, thought Hillier, drawing out from the dead man's inner pocket a very fat wallet. Sterling, his own dollars, roubles. 'Roubles,' he showed Roper. 'Don't feel too secure when you talk about home. How do you know Wriste wasn't doing a job for Moscow as well as for those bastards I called my friends? A defecting scientist shot when a British ship was in port. You were going on about reading the Douay Version. Perhaps they know you'll be returning to religion one of these days-'

'Never. A load of balderdash.'

'Who can ever tell what he'll do in the future? Even tomorrow? For that matter, look at me tonight, making a good act of contrition.'

'I was ashamed of you,' twitched Roper.

'One of these days you'll be defiling your pure scientific thought with Christian sentimentality. Or getting out of Russia to kiss the Pope's toe, taking your formulae with you.'

'Look,' said Roper bluntly. 'Nobody's ever above suspicion. Do you get that? Those drunks in there are just the same as I am. It's just something you live with, but it's the same everywhere. It's the same in bloody awful England. As for that thing there,' meaning brain-smashed, branded, robbed Wriste, 'he told the truth about that bloke gunning for me in England. That's one thing he told the truth about. That business about me being too old and losing my doctorate was just a lot of nonsense. But he was right about the other thing. What I'm going to do now is get back to my room and have a decent night's kip. I'll take a couple of tablets first, I think. But I'm home, remember that. And I'm all right.'

'You very nearly weren't.'

'Nor were you.' He grinned for the first time that evening. 'Poor old Hillier. You're in a bloody bad way, aren't you? But here's something that might be useful to you. You can get the bastards with this.' And he took from his inner pocket a rather grubby wad of paper scrawled in blue ink. 'This is the chapter I've been working on. I don't think I want to push on with my memoirs now. They served their purpose, clarified things. Here you are, something to read on the voyage to wherever you're going. Where are you going?'

'First stop Istanbul. I'll think things over there. And there's a man I've got to see.' Hillier took the wad. 'You've become a great one for giving me things to read. I had things for you to read – letters. But that was a long time ago. Well, I suppose we'd both better get out of here.'

'It was nice seeing you after all these years. You could, you know,' Roper afterthought, 'stay here if you wanted. I should imagine they'd find you useful.'

'That's all over for me. I'm retiring. I don't think I like contemporary history much.'

'Some aspects of it are very interesting.' He looked at the ceiling. 'Up there, I mean. Men in space. "We'll be making the moon any day now.'

'A barren bloody chunk of green cheese. Well, you're welcome to it.'

The door opened and Alan rushed in, his face green cheese. 'There's a _thing__ out there. Something crawling and moaning. It was trying to follow me.'

It was Roper who picked up the Aiken from the cot. 'Your friend here,' he told Alan, 'is finished with all this sort of thing. Leave it to me.' He strode bravely out in a night that, the baser smells of contemporary history now subsiding, was full of rain-wet flower-scents. Meanwhile Hillier looked down on the boy, that former horrid precocious brat, with compassion and a love referred from that other love. Whether, like a father, to hide the boy's distress in his arms was something he couldn't decide. He said: 'I think I can guess what the crawling thing is. There's nothing to be frightened about. W'ell,' he added, 'I let you in for more than you could have dreamed possible when you left Southampton. Should I say I'm sorry?'

'I can't think, I just can't think.'

Hillier, seeing Theodorescu leering inside him, went hard for an instant. 'And yet,' he said, 'you seduced yourself into becoming a member of the modern world.' He shuddered, watching the lecherous breathing bulk of Theodorescu descend on the thin young body. 'You must have wanted that gun very badly.'

'I didn't know it was yours. I swear. And all I wanted to do really was to frighten her.'

'In that vast dinner-eating crowd?'

'I thought I'd get her alone. What I really mean is I didn't think. I just didn't think.' He began to cry.

Hillier put his arms round the boy's shoulders. 'I'll look after you,' he said. 'You're my responsibility now. Both of you.'

Roper could be heard speaking bad Russian. There was also the noise of skirring feet, as though a man was being half-carried. Hillier went out to help. It was the guard, sorely thumped by Wriste but not killed. A skullcap of dried blood sat on his hair; on his soaked suit a few red rose-petals clung. Roper said, weightily through his panting, 'Vot tarn chelovyek – there's the man.' The guard, open-mouthed, glazed, frowning in rhythm with his pain, saw but did not recognise. The shop-assistant's face looked bewildered, as if he had been unaccountably accused of short-changing. Wriste still had half a face. That half ought, by rights, to go. Perhaps that could be left to Roper. A totally faceless S-man was required. The guard wanted to lie down. 'And now,' said Roper, 'you two ought to get out of here. Leave everything to me now. One in the eye for old Vasnetsov and Vereshchagin in there. Drunk as coots and supposed to be in charge of security. A bit of a shambles all round. One in the eye all right, having to leave everything to an Englishman. We'll show them all yet.'