“He’s not the ruddy Scarlet Pimpernel, Sergeant.”
Maddox couldn’t play hide-and-seek for ever. Frobisher wondered if he shouldn’t pay Maddox a surprise home visit in Crouch End, catch him red-handed digging his garden or fixing his roof or whatever it was that husbands with time on their hands got up to in Crouch End.
“If he comes in, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“Will do, sir. Tea, sir? A brew?”
Frobisher almost relented, but the acceptance of the tea would seem to indicate a weakness on his part somehow. Shouldn’t they have a woman about the place? An older one, he imagined, plain and tightly wrapped in an apron, pushing a tea trolley. A cockney accent perhaps and a warm, damp aura of reassurance about her person. “No, thank you, Sergeant,” he said eventually, when the sergeant started tapping an impatient tattoo with his pencil on the countertop. He must be careful, Frobisher reminded himself, not to get lost in his own mind.
Simpson’s in the Strand
“May I introduce the beef, sir?” the waiter in Simpson’s asked, raising the dome on the great silver serving trolley with a ponderous flourish, as if diners in the Grand Divan lived all their lives waiting for this revelation. The slab of beef took centre stage, oozing thin, pink juices that puddled around it on the salver. Introductions over, the waiter carved two succulent slices, which he laid delicately on the plate like overlapping leaves before saying, “Horseradish, sir?”
“Yes, please. And the roast potatoes, the creamed leeks, the boiled cabbage, the buttered carrots. And fill the wine glass with a good Bordeaux—Chateau Talbot, 1913?—excellent—and leave the gravy boat on the table, please.” The glass was filled, the claret moving like liquid rubies in the light cast from the huge chandeliers.
God, Azzopardi loved England! He loved the pompous buildings, the scurfy streets. He loved the bitter, bankrupt duke from whom he was renting a house in Eaton Square, and he loved equally the ragamuffin children who followed him in the street, shouting insults about his race. (For some reason, they presumed he was Turkish.) He loved the food in places like this—the bloody beef with its cope of thick yellow fat that he could barely wait to sink his teeth into. And he loved the stodge of a pudding that would follow the joint of beef. Steamed marmalade today, sir. And leave the jug of custard on the table. Please. Thank you.
“The beef for you as well, sir?” the waiter said, turning to Azzopardi’s luncheon companion, his carving knife, like a scimitar, at the ready.
“I’ll have the fish, thank you,” Niven said, to the waiter’s evident displeasure.
Turbot in green sauce was delivered with considerably less pomp than the beef and Niven’s glass was filled with a Vouvray. Azzopardi raised his own glass and caught Niven looking at the scar on the back of his hand.
“Old war wound,” he laughed.
“You weren’t in the war.”
“There’s more than one type of war, Mr. Coker. Anyway, cheers!”
Niven raised his glass in turn. “Cheers.” The heavy crystal chinked.
“To the future,” Azzopardi said.
Niven raised an eyebrow and murmured, “The future,” although he had little faith in it. He was content to go along with Azzopardi’s belief that they were going to take over Nellie’s empire. The Maltese talked of this venture in terms of “reparations,” as if, like Germany, he was smarting under an injustice. If Niven stepped away now he would not be privy to Azzopardi’s intentions. He could save his mother or he could betray her. He liked to think that he was undecided, but in his heart he knew that blood would win. It always did for the Cokers.
Azzopardi drained his glass greedily and signalled to the waiter for more wine. “I think that we are going to be great friends,” he said to Niven.
“Let’s just stick to business partners for the time being,” Niven said.
“Better still,” Azzopardi said.
* * *
—
Niven declined the offer of the steamed marmalade pudding. “You’re quite the monk,” Azzopardi said, already eyeing the cheeseboard. Stilton! A truly magnificent cheese.
“Saving myself,” Niven said.
Niven requested coffee—black—from the waiter. “Nothing else.”
“Not even cream?” Azzopardi asked, looking bereft on the part of the cow. “You are not one of these ‘vegetarians,’ are you?” he asked, stabbing a slice of cheese with his fork. “Divine,” he murmured. For a moment, Niven was reminded of Kitty. The same strange affectations.
“No, I’m not,” Niven said, without elaborating, although he did sometimes harbour doubts about butchery. He had seen too much of it in the war. Better for a man to hunt down a deer with a bow and arrow, he thought, but he was hopelessly trapped by civilization.
“A man needs meat,” Azzopardi said bullishly. “Red meat to make red blood.” He was all performance—an effeminate man pretending he wasn’t. It hardly mattered to Niven. His own brother was in that particular camp and he loved him no less for it. Did he love Ramsay? “Love” seemed an odd word in the context of his family. It was a savage emotion amongst the Cokers. He loved Keeper, of that Niven was sure. If it came to a life-or-death choice between his brother and his dog, which would he choose? The balance of his heart lurched towards the dog.
“My commiserations,” Azzopardi said. “I heard you had a fire in one of your mother’s clubs.”
“A small one,” Niven said.
“She’s growing weaker. Are you ready for a coup d’état? A new regime. Will you join me?” He was a hawk waiting to swoop on his prey, Niven thought. He didn’t seem to understand that Nellie was no one’s prey. “If she doesn’t return to me what is owed to me then I will take her business off her, one way or the other.”
“What is it that she owes you?” Niven puzzled.
“Why don’t you ask her?”
Niven laughed. “It’s against my mother’s religion to give straight answers.” His, too, of course. “I have to go.”
* * *
—
Azzopardi patted the great girth of his belly with satisfaction and called for more port. It was the deprivation of prison that had made him greedy. The betrayal, too, that he had suffered when he realized his fortune had been lost. He had remade it, exporting whisky to Prohibition America from Scotland—Leith to New York, via Montreal, he may as well have had his own shipping line—but that only gave him money, it didn’t give him vengeance.
He didn’t really want Nellie’s clubs, they were simply a forfeit. For what was owed to him, for what she had taken from him. “More port!” he said jovially to the waiter. God, he loved England.
The Audition
Freda had rehearsed and rehearsed for her audition until the City clerk who rented the room beneath them threatened to “drown her like a kitten” if she didn’t stop it. She had a new audition piece—“Tea for Two”—which she sang while executing a snappy tap dance. She had a nice voice, thin and high.