William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

'It won't work otherwise. He'd suspect instantly. He'd know everything within hours. This is the only way we can be truly free. For always.'

'I know, I know. It's just difficult, I -'

'But look at it this way, now I know how he feels about being a father it'll work all the better.' He could see how she wanted to believe him. 'He'll never know. Trust me.'

'What about you?'

'I'll say I'm going to the country to see my mother for a week or so. When they come looking for me it'll be too late.'

She exhaled and slumped, her shoulders rounding, as she rubbed her face with her hands.

'My God,' she said. 'Can you believe it? Just think, Salvador, Vienna. We'll be in Vienna in a matter of weeks.'

'Or Paris, or Moscow, or Rome, or Athens…'

'And nobody will know who we are or where we came from.'

He laughed, the joy suddenly effervescent in him. 'No-body'll have heard of the Philippines.'

She was sober again. 'We're booked for Yokohama on the twenty-fifth.'

'That gives us plenty of time. Axel's waiting, ready. I just have to give him a few days' notice. He made absolutely no fuss about the conditions. A routine job for him, probably, all this clandestine stuff.'

'All right,' she said, making a decision. 'I'll tell him tonight.'

She rose to her feet and gathered up her pencils and sketch pad and looked around the barn. She left the grip with a change of clothes that he had asked her to bring.

'I won't see you here again, I suppose,' she said, a little sadly. 'Or this preposterous flying machine. Poor Pantaleon.'

'Well, it keeps him busy. And it was a good place for us.'

'Yes,' she said emphatically. 'Yes, it was.' Then she kissed him, hard, pushing her tongue into his mouth, feeding on him. They broke apart and looked at each other.

'We'll be free,' he said. 'Don't worry.'

'I love you, Salvador,' she said.

After she had gone he realised that it was the first time he could remember hearing the words from her lips.

Jepson Sieverance sent for Dr Carriscant at 9 the next morning. It was raining hard and as Carriscant dashed from the carriage to the front door he saw that it was Sieverance himself who was holding it open.

'It's the most wonderful news,' Sieverance kept repeating as he strode beside him down the corridor towards the bedroom. 'And I'm sure she's right. Woman has an instinct about these things.'

For some reason Carriscant found his use of the general noun offensive. 'We'll confirm it soon enough,' Carriscant said, managing a thin smile. Delphine was right: the man's preening elation was offensive, rebarbative.

She was in her room, waiting, wearing a plaid robe over her nightgown, sitting in an armchair. She looked calm, he thought, very serene. They greeted each other with their usual cordiality, and then Sieverance obligingly excused himself.

'No Nurse Aslinger?' Carriscant said.

'I was obliged to let her go.'

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead fleetingly. He could hear Sieverance pacing the corridor outside, already a parodical expectant father, he thought. He lowered his voice.

'Everything is organised for the twentieth,' he said. 'Axel is prepared. I'll have everything ready.'

'I know what to do.'

He opened his bag and removed a brown medicine bottle which he gave to her. 'Here. You'll need this to make it convincing.'

'What is it?'

'Blood.' He touched her arm, and her face. She kissed his fingertips as they brushed her mouth.

'You can't bring anything with you, you know. You'll have to tell me what other clothes, powders, rouge, things you need, essentials…

'All right. A complete fresh start,' she said, smiling, 'Good. I like that.'

'I'll make sure they're on the boat.' He paused, the reality of what he was asking her to do sinking in. 'Won't you miss anything?'

'My books, I suppose. I can always buy more books.'

'Axel says he'll get us to Singapore in six or seven days. We can pick up any boat going west to Suez. Then, once we're in the Mediterranean…'

'We can get off anywhere we want.' Her eyes went distant, as if she were focusing again on those magical cities that had been the context for their fantasies of escape. 'What about money?' she said, suddenly practical again.

'I've got plenty. Look, let me take care of the details. You'll have enough to go through.'

'I'll be safe, won't I? I mean, nothing could go wrong, could it?'

'Nothing. And remember we're committing no crime. We're doing nothing wrong.'

'Nothing legally wrong.' She looked solemn, then. 'What about you and your… I never ask you about her. I feel I don't -'

'It's easy for me,' he said, bravely. 'The whole thing's been a sham for years. A big mistake. I don't think there'll be too much surprise on her part.' The words came so easily, he thought. 'I'd better go and tell him the good news.'

Sieverance was waiting in the living room.

'Congratulations,' Carriscant said, feeling oddly formal. 'Your wife is expecting a child. She's almost five months pregnant.'

Sieverance was overcome, but at least he did not weep, Carriscant thought. He managed to leave the house without having to drink the baby's health: THE TOY Nicanor Axel accepted the small jute sack of silver Conant dollars with a look of surprise. Carriscant thought it was the first expression of emotion he had ever seen register on that inscrutably filthy face. The eyes widened and the whites showed unnaturally blanched in their deep swart sockets. 'That's more than generous, Dr Carriscant.'

'Just a down payment. There'll be the same once we make landfall at Singapore. I want you to know how important this is to me and how much I count on your absolute discretion.'

'But of course,' Axel said, scratching energetically at the volute of a nostril. The nail sickle was quite black against the dull nacreous pink of the nail. Indeed the whole nail was outlined in black as if with a pen or an indelible pencil. But somehow his blond hair always looked clean: how did he manage that?

Axel grew aware he was being studied. 'Is there anything wrong?'

'Nothing. And you can guarantee that there will be no other passengers?'

'Completely.'

'And that you will not return to Manila for at least two months after you have deposited… the two passengers at Singapore.'

'Goes without saying.' Axel offered his grubby hand and Carriscant shook it. The palm and fingers were astonishingly calloused, as if carved from pumice. Strangely, Carriscant felt he could trust him.

'May I ask who these two passengers are?' Axel enquired, a little shyly.

'A gentleman and a lady. I think for the moment we should leave it at that.'

Axel nodded hastily. 'Till the twentieth, then,' he said.

Carriscant stowed a suitcase of clothes in the small cabin that had been made available and walked back up top to the reeking deck. Thin ropes of steam rose from one of the forward holds. It was a hot, foetid night and all the moist warmth of Manila seemed to have congregated around this noisome craft. Across the treacly, smeared waters of the Pasig the lights on Fort Santiago burned, a fuzzy areola of moisture haloing the moth-battered bulbs. Carriscant felt the enormity of what he and Delphine were about to do. Then the awful trepidation passed as he stood there, almost magically it seemed, giving way to a strange boyish surge of excitement, a vision of horizons receding, of worlds waiting to be explored.

'Goodbye, Doctor,' Axel said. 'We'll be ready for you.' He corrected himself. 'Your passengers.'

'Not a word to Udo, mind,' Carriscant warned. Axel was no fool. Carriscant said goodbye and cautiously made his way across the sagging planks between the moored cascos to the quayside, the black waters slapping the wooden hulls. He walked up to Escolta and hailed a carromato. Nobody had seen him.