Tearing the sheet of paper from the block, she tucked it into his handkerchief pocket, then gave him a distracted kiss while Mesterbein looked on with the masked resentment of a lover waiting to claim her for the night. At the porch, he produced a neat Swiss torch. By its light she saw the yellow Hertz sticker on the windscreen of his car. He opened the passenger door for her and said "Please," but she walked straight past it to her Fiat, got in, started the engine, and waited. To drive, she noticed as he went ahead of her, he wore a black beret, the brim quite level like a bathing hat, except that it made his ears stick out.
They drove in slow convoy because of the fog patches. Or perhaps Mesterbein drove that way always, for he had the aggressive poker-back of the habitually cautious driver. They climbed a hill and made north over empty moorland. The fog broke, the telegraph poles stuck up like threaded needles against the night sky. A torn Greek moon peered briefly from the clouds before they dragged it back inside. At a crossroads Mesterbein stopped to consult a map. Finally he indicated left, first with his light, then with a white hand, which he rotated. Yes, Anton, I get the message. She followed him down a hill and through a village; she lowered her window and filled the car with the salt smell of the sea. The rushing air opened her mouth for her in a scream. She followed him under a tattered banner that read "East West Time sharer Chalets Ltd.," then up a narrow new road through dunes towards a ruined tin-mine perched on the skyline, an advertisement for "Come to Cornwall." Left and right of her, clapboard bungalows, unlit. Mesterbein parked, she parked behind him, leaving her car in gear because of the gradient. New groan in the handbrake, she thought; take it back to Eustace. He climbed out; she did the same and locked her car. The wind had dropped; they were on the lee side of the peninsula. Gulls were wheeling low and squalling, as if they had lost something valuable on the ground. Torch in hand, Mesterbein reached for her elbow to guide her forward.
"Leave me alone," she said. He pushed a gate and it creaked. A light went on ahead of them. Short concrete path, blue door called Sea-Wrack. Mesterbein had a key ready. The door opened; he stepped ahead of her and stood back to let her by, an estate agent showing the place to a potential client. There was no porch and somehow no warning. She followed him in, he closed the door behind her, she was in a drawing-room. She smelt damp laundry and saw black fungus spots spattered on the ceiling. A tall blonde woman in a blue corduroy suit was jamming a coin into the electric meter. Seeing them enter, she peered quickly round with a bright smile, then leapt to her feet, punching away a strand of long gold hair as she did so.
"Anton! Oh this is too nice! You have brought me Charlie! Charlie, welcome. And you will be twice welcome if you please show me how to work this impossible machine." Grabbing Charlie's shoulders, she embraced her excitedly on each cheek. "I mean, Charlie, listen, you were completely fantastic tonight in that Shakespeare, yes? Wasn't she, Anton? I mean superb. I am Helga, okay?" Names are a game to me, she meant." Helga. yes? As you are Charlie, I am Helga."
Her eyes were grey and lucid and, like Mesterbein's, dangerously innocent. A militant simplicity gazed out from them upon a complicated world. To be true is to be untamed, thought Charlie, quoting to herself from one of Michel's letters. I feel, therefore I do.
From a corner of the room, Mesterbein offered a belated answer to Helga 's question. He was threading a coat-hanger into his gabardine trench coat. "Oh, she was very impressive, naturally."
Helga 's hands still rested on Charlie's shoulders, her strong thumbs lightly grazing her neck. "Is it difficult to learn so many words, Charlie?" she asked, staring brightly into Charlie's face.
"I don't have that problem," she said, and broke away from her.
"You learn easily then?" Grasping Charlie's hand, she pressed a fifty-pence piece into her palm. "Come. Show me. Show me how to work this fantastic English invention called fire"
Charlie crouched to the meter, turned the lever one way, slipped in the coin, turned it the other, and let the coin fall with a clunk. There was a protesting whine as the fire came on.
"Incredible! Oh, Charlie! But you see that is typical of me. I am completely untechnical," Helga explained immediately, as if this were an important thing about her that a new friend should know. "I am completely anti-possessions, so if I don't own anything, how can I know how to work it? Anton will please translate for me. I believe in Sein, nicht Haben."It was an order, issued by a nursery autocrat. Her English was quite good enough without his help. "You have read Erich Fromm, Charlie?"
"She means being, not possession," said Mesterbein gloomily while he regarded the two women. "It is the essence of Fr?ulein Helga 's moral. She believes in fundamental goodness, also Nature over Science. We both do," he added, as if wishing to interpose himself between them.
"You have read Erich Fromm?" Helga repeated, sweeping back her blonde hair again and already thinking of something quite different. "I am completely in love with him." She crouched before the fire, hands outstretched. "When I admire a philosopher, I love him. That also is typical of me." There was a surface grace to her movements, and a teenager's happiness. She wore flat shoes to help her with her height.
"Where's Michel?" Charlie asked.
"Fr?ulein Helga does not know where Michel is," Mesterbein objected sharply from his corner. "She is not a lawyer, she came only for the journey and for justice. Fr?ulein Helga has no knowledge of Michel's activities or whereabouts. Sit down, please."
Charlie remained standing. But Mesterbein sat himself on a dining-chair and folded his clean white hands on his lap. The trench coat discarded, he displayed a new brown suit. It could have been a birthday present from his mother.
"You said you had news of him," Charlie said. A tremor had entered her voice and her lips felt stiff.
Still crouching, Helga had turned to face her. She had pressed her thumbnail thoughtfully against her strong front teeth.
"When did you see him last, please?" Mesterbein asked.
She no longer knew which of them to look at. "In Salzburg," she said.
"Salzburg, that's not a date, I think," Helga objected from the floor.
"Five weeks ago. Six. Where is he?'
"And you heard from him last when?" said Mesterbein.
"Just tell me where he is! What's happened to him?" She swung back to Helga."Where is he?"
"Nobody came to you?" Mesterbein asked. "No friends of his? Police?"
"Maybe you are not so good at memory as you say, Charlie," Helga suggested.
"Tell us who you have been in touch with, please, Miss Charlie," Mesterbein said. "Immediately. It is most necessary. We are here for urgent matters."
"Actually she could lie easily, such an actress," Helga said, while her wide eyes gazed up at Charlie in a questing, unshadowed stare. "A woman so trained to pretend, how can one believe anything, actually?"
"We must be very careful," Mesterbein agreed, as a private note to himself for the future.
Their double-act had a ring of sadism; they were playing upon a pain she had yet to feel. She stared at Helga,then at Mesterbein. Her words slipped from her. She could no longer keep them in.
"He's dead, isn't he?" she whispered.
Helga seemed not to hear. She was entirely taken up with watching.
"Oh yes, Michel is dead," said Mesterbein glumly. "I'm sorry, naturally. Fr?ulein Helga is also sorry. We are both very sorry. From the letters you wrote to him, we assume you will be sorry also."