William Boyd - Restless

I READ THE LETTER out loud to my mother:

Dear Ms Gilmartin,

Lord Mansfield thanks you for your communication but regrets that, owing to pressure of work, he is unable to comply with your request for an interview.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Orloggi

(Assistant to Lord Mansfield)

'It's on House of Lords notepaper,' I added. My mother crossed the room and took the sheet from me, scrutinising it with unusual concentration, her lips moving as she reread the terse message of refusal. I wasn't sure if she was excited or not. She seemed calm enough.

'Anna Orloggi… I love it,' she said. 'I bet she doesn't exist.' Then she paused. 'Look,' she said. 'There's the telephone number.' She began to pace up and down my sitting-room. She'd come for an appointment with Mr Scott – a crown had loosened – and she had popped up, unannounced, to see me. The letter had arrived that morning.

'Do you want a glass of something?' I asked. 'Squash? Coca-Cola?' It was my lunch break: 'Bérangère had just left and Hamid was due at two. Ludger and Ilse had gone to London to 'see a friend'.

'I'll have a Coke,' she said.

'When did you stop drinking?' I said, going through to the kitchen. 'You certainly drank a lot in the war.'

'I think you know why,' she said drily, following me through. She took the glass from me and had a sip but I could see her mind was working. 'Actually, call that number now,' she said, her face suddenly animated. 'That's the thing: and say you want to talk to him about AAS Ltd, That should work.'

'Are you sure about this?' I asked. 'You could be opening some hideous can of worms.'

'Yes, that's exactly the idea,' she said.

I dialled the London number with some reluctance and then listened to it ring and ring. I was about to hang up when a woman's voice answered.

'Lord Mansfield's office.'

I explained who I was and that I'd just received a letter from Lord Mansfield.

'Ah, yes. I'm very sorry but Lord Mansfield is abroad and in any event does not grant interviews.'

So he doesn't 'grant' interviews, I thought. The woman's voice was clipped and patrician – I wondered if this was Anna Orloggi.

'Would you be so kind as to tell him,' I said, deciding to emphasise the patrician qualities in my own voice, 'that I want to ask him some questions about AAS Ltd.'

'It won't make any difference, I'm afraid.'

'I'm afraid it will if you don't tell him, especially to your continued employment. I know absolutely that he'll want to speak to me. AAS Ltd – it's very important. You have my phone number on my original letter. I'd be most grateful. Thank you so much.'

'I can't promise anything.'

'AAS Ltd. Please be sure to tell him. Thank you. Goodbye.' I hung up.

'Good girl,' my mother said. 'I'd rather hate to have you on the end of a phone.'

We wandered back through to the kitchen. I pointed out my new garden furniture and my mother duly admired it, but she wasn't concentrating.

'I know he'll see you now,' she said, thoughtfully. 'He won't be able to resist.' Then she turned and smiled. 'How was your date?'

I told her about Hamid and his declaration of love.

'How marvellous,' she said. 'Do you like him?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Very much. But I don't love him back.'

'Shame. But is he kind?'

'Yes. But he's a Muslim, Sal, and he's going to work in Indonesia. I can see where this conversation is going. No – he is not going to become Jochen's stepfather.'

She wouldn't stay for lunch but she told me to call her the minute I heard from Romer. Hamid arrived for his lesson and he seemed fine, more composed. We spent our time on a new chapter with the Ambersons – now returned from their unsatisfactory holiday at Corfe Castle only to have Rasputin run away – and explored the mysteries of the present perfect progressive. 'Rasputin has been acting a little strangely lately.' 'The neighbours have been complaining about his barking.' The fear of poisoning entered the cloistered world of Darlington Crescent. As he left Hamid asked me again to have dinner with him at Browns on Friday night but I said instantly that I was busy. He took me at my word: he seemed to have lost the agitation of our previous conversations but I noted the new invitation – it clearly wasn't over yet.

Veronica and I – the single-mother sluts – stood smoking outside Grindle's, waiting for our children.

'How's Sally?' Veronica asked. 'Any better?'

'I think so,' I said. 'But there are still worrying signs. She's bought a shotgun.'

'Christ

'To kill rabbits, she says. And the story about what she did in the war gets ever more… extraordinary.'

'Do you believe her?'

'Yes, I do,' I said bluntly, as if confessing to some crime. I had thought about this matter regularly and repeatedly but the story of Eva Delectorskaya was too textured, detailed and precise to be the product of a mind convulsed with fantastical re-invention, let alone on the verge of senile dementia. I had found the experience of reading the regular supply of pages disturbing because the Eva/Sally figures still refused to converge in my mind. When I read that Eva had slept with Mason Harding so that he could be blackmailed I couldn't connect that historical fact, that act of personal sacrifice, that deliberate surrender of a personal moral code, with the rangy, handsome woman who had been pacing about my sitting-room a few hours ago. What did it take to have sex with a stranger for your country? Maybe it was straightforward – a rational decision. Was it any different from a soldier killing his enemy for his country? Or, more to the point, lying to your closest allies for your country? Perhaps I was too young – perhaps I needed to have been living during World War Two? I had a feeling I'd never truly understand.

Jochen and Avril came bounding out of the school and the four of us wandered back up the Banbury Road.

'We're having a heatwave,' Jochen said.

'A tropical heatwave. That's what it is.'

'Is it like a wave in the sea? A wave of heat washing over us?' he asked, making a swooping wave gesture with his hand.

'Or,' I said, 'is the sun waving at us, making the heat blow down on earth.'

'That's just silly, Mummy,' he said, unamused.

I apologised and we wandered homeward, chatting. Veronica and I made plans to have supper together on Saturday night.

In the flat I was setting about making Jochen his tea when the phone rang.

'Ms Gilmartin?'

'Speaking.'

'This is Anna Orloggi.' It was the same woman – she pronounced her surname without a hint of an Italian accent, as if she were from one of the oldest families in England.

'Yes,' I said, aimlessly. 'Hello.'

'Lord Mansfield will see you in his club on Friday evening at 6.00 p.m. Have you a pen and paper?'

I took down the details: Brydges' was his club – not Brydges Club, just Brydges' – and an address off St James's.

'Six p.m. this Friday,' Anna Orloggi repeated.

'I'll be there.'

I hung up and felt an immediate elation that our ruse had worked and also a disturbing nervousness, knowing that I was finally going to be the one to meet Lucas Romer. Everything had become real, all of a sudden, and I felt the elation give way to a small squirm of nausea and my mouth seemed suddenly dry of all saliva as I thought about this encounter. I knew I was experiencing an emotion that I claimed to be immune to – I was feeling just a little bit frightened.

'Are you all right, Mummy?' Jochen asked.

'Yes. Fine, darling. Twinge of toothache.'

I called my mother to tell her the news.

'It worked,' I reported, 'just like you said.'

'Good,' she said, her voice quite calm. 'I knew it would. I'll tell you exactly what to say and do.'