William Boyd - Restless

He thought for a while and rubbed his chin so she could hear the rasp of his bristles.

'Don't tell me any more,' he said and opened the car door for her.

They drove north, barely saying a word to each other; he smelt of beer and other staleness – old sheets, perhaps, a body not recently washed – but she was not complaining. They stopped to fill up at a gas station in Champlain and he asked her if she was hungry. She said she was and he came back to the car with a packet of fig rolls – Gouverneur Fig Rolls, it said on the wrapping. She ate three, one after the other, as they turned west and headed for a town sign-posted Chateaugay, but just before they reached it he turned on to a gravel road and they began to climb up through pine forests, the road narrowing to a single track, the tips of the pine trees brushing the car as they moved slowly along, a thin metallic whisper in her ears. Hunters' trails, Witoldski explained. She nodded off for a while and dreamt of figs and fig trees in the sun until the lurch as the car came to a halt woke her up.

Dawn was close, there was a tarnished silveriness in the sky above her that made the pines seem blacker still. Witoldski pointed to a junction, lit by his headlights.

'A mile down that road you come to Sainte-Justine.'

They stepped out of the car and Eva felt the cold hit her. She saw Witoldski was looking at her thin city shoes. He went round to the back of the station wagon, opened the tail-gate and came back with a scarf and an old greasy cardigan that she put on under her coat.

'You're in Canada,' he said. 'Quebec. They speak French here. You speak French?'

'Yes.'

'Dumb question.'

'I'd like to give you some money for the gas – and your time,' she said.

'Give it to charity, buy a war bond.'

'If anybody comes,' she said. 'If anybody asks you about me, tell them the truth. There's no need to cover up.'

'I never saw you,' he said. 'Who are you? I been out fishing.'

'Thank you,' Eva said, thinking she should perhaps embrace this man. But he held out his hand and they shook hands briefly.

'Good luck, Miss Dalton,' he said, climbed back in his car, turned it at the junction and drove away, leaving Eva in a darkness so absolute Eva did not trust herself to take even one step. But slowly her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom and she began to make out the jagged tips of the trees against the slowly greying sky and she could see the pale path of the road where it forked. She wrapped Witoldski's scarf tighter around her throat and set off down the track to Sainte-Justine. She was truly flying now, she thought, she had flown to another country and for the first time she began to feel a little safer. It was a Sunday morning, she realised, listening to the noise of her feet crunch on the gravel of the roadway, and the first birds beginning to sing – Sunday, 7 December 1941.

I LOCKED THE KITCHEN door – Ilse and Ludger were out, but somewhere in Oxford, and I didn't want any surprises. It was lunchtime and I had an hour before Hamid arrived. I felt strange pushing open the door to Ludger and Ilse's room – my dining room, I reminded myself – and I reminded myself again that I hadn't set foot in there since Ludger had arrived.

The place looked as if refugees had been holed up there for a month or so. It smelt of old clothes, cigarettes and joss sticks. There were two inflatable mattresses on the floor with unzipped sleeping-bags on them – ancient, khaki, army issue, creased, almost like something once living, a cast-off skin, a decomposing giant limb – that served as beds. There were small stashes of food and drink here and there – tins of tuna and sardines, cans of beer and cider, chocolate bars and biscuits – as if the occupants were expecting to undergo a short siege of some kind. The table and chairs had been pushed against the wall and served as a form of open wardrobe – jeans, shirts, smocks, underwear were hung or laid flat on every edge, chair back or level surface. In another corner I saw the grip that Ludger had arrived with and a bulky rucksack – ex-army – that I supposed was Ilse's.

I very carefully noticed its position against the wall and just before I opened the main flap the thought came to me that she might have placed some snares. 'Snares,' I said out loud, and forced an ironic chuckle: I was spending too much time in my mother's past, I thought to myself – and yet had to admit that here I was indulging in a clandestine search of my lodgers' room. I undid the buckle and rummaged inside – I found a few dogeared paperbacks (in German – two Stefan Zweigs), an Instamatic camera, a tattered teddy-bear mascot with the name 'Uli' stitched on to it, several packs of condoms and something the size of a half-brick wrapped in kitchen foil. I knew what this was and smelt it: dope, marijuana. I unpeeled a corner of the foil and saw a dense dark-chocolate mass. I took a tiny pinch of it between forefinger and thumb and tasted it – I don't know why: was I some kind of drug connoisseur who could identify its provenance? No, not at all, even though I enjoyed a joint from time to time, but it seemed the sort of thing to do when one was secretly investigating other people's belongings. I folded the foil shut again and put everything away. I searched the other pockets of the rucksack and found nothing interesting. I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for: a weapon? A gun? A hand-grenade? I closed the door behind me and went to make myself a sandwich.

When Hamid arrived for his lesson, he handed me an envelope and a flyer. The flyer was to announce a demonstration outside Wadham College to protest at the official visit of the Shah of Iran's sister, Ashraf. In the envelope was a xeroxed invitation to a party in the upstairs room at the Captain Bligh pub on the Cowley Road on Friday night.

'Who's having the party?' I asked.

'I am,' Hamid said. 'To say goodbye. I go to Indonesia the next day.'

That evening when Jochen was in bed and Ludger and Ilse had gone to the pub – they always asked me; I always said no – I rang Detective Constable Frobisher.

'I've had a phone call from this Ilse girl,' I said. 'She must have been given my number by mistake – she was asking for someone I didn't know – some "James". I think it was from London.'

'No, she's now definitely in Oxford, Miss Gilmartin.'

'Oh.' This threw me. 'What's she meant to have done?'

There was a pause. 'I shouldn't really tell you this but she was living in a squat in Tooting Bec. We think she might have been selling drugs but the complaints made about her were to do with aggressive begging. Begging with threats, if you know what I mean.'

'Oh right. So she's not some kind of anarchist terrorist, then.'

'What makes you say that?' There was new interest in his voice.

'No reason. Just all this stuff in the papers, you know.'

'Right, yeah… Well, the Met just want us to pick her up. We don't want her type in Oxford,' he added a bit priggishly and foolishly, I thought: Oxford was full of all sorts of types – as odd and deranged and as unpleasant as they came: one Ilse more or less wouldn't make any difference.

'I'll be sure to call if she makes contact again,' I said, dutifully.

'Much obliged, Miss Gilmartin.'

I hung up and thought of thin, moody, grubby Ilse and wondered how aggressively she could beg. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake calling Frobisher – he was very keen – and what had made me mention terrorism? That was a blunder, really stupid. Here I was thinking I might be inadvertently harbouring the second generation of the Baader-Meinhof gang but had discovered that they were just the usual sad sacks and losers.

The demonstration outside Wadham College was billed for 6.00 p.m., when the Shah's sister was due to arrive for a reception to declare open the new library that the Shah's money had paid for. I picked up Jochen from Grindle's and we caught a bus into town. We had time for a pizza and a coke in the St Michael's street pizzeria before we wandered hand in hand along the Broad towards Wadham.