The Conduct of Major Maxim

Chapter 23

In the morning, Sims was gone.

Maxim hauled his hangover back from the telephone box by the barracks gate through a barrage of stamping feet and troops answering their names in ringing shouts. There was an atmosphere of rich self-satisfaction around; whatever ACE thought, the regiment was convinced it had done very well on its Agile Blade call-out and was flaunting it noisily. Maxim found himself having Civilian Thoughts as he escaped back into the officer's mess.

There was, he told himself, no point in ringing George at Army dawn – particularly by German time, an hour ahead of Britain. The politest thing he'd get told would be to come home immediately, and however much he wanted to, he had promised Sims that second visit to Dornhausen. He went to ask advice on hiring another car.

Just on eleven, he parked in the shade of Dornhausen's great linden tree and walked back to the little inn. The woman was sitting in there alone, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. She instinctively got up as he went in, recognised him, and smiled perfunctorily.

"Do you want coffee, or beer?"

"Coffee, please."

The floor was still damp from her mop and a cool evaporating smell contrasted with the sudden bitter tang of the coffee she put down in front of him. She wore the same dress as the day before, the same lined, tired expression.

"Did you find out any more about Frau Schickert?"

"I don't think so. Except for this…" He spread the Focus on Germany. "Is that picture still here?"

"That old thing. I haven't seen it in ages."

"It says it used to hang in here…"

"I remember. On the wall, there." She pointed to a faded nude from a tyre calendar, tacked up just to the right of the front door. "But the glass got broken and somebody took it to be repaired and they lost it. "

"Lost it?"

"Yes." She met his look boldly. Too boldly?

"Oh." He sipped the coffee; somewhere outside, a tractor worked in erratic surges of power. "When did that happen?"

"Soon after they printed the picture there. A few people came in to see, becauseofthatarticle. I think one of them took it down, dropped it. "

"Oh," Maxim said again.

She wiped the table, an unnecessary but instinctive movement. "Does it matter where she's buried?"

"Not to me."

"Do you know what happened to the baby, little Manfred?"

He looked up. Little Manfred, the one you gave the bottle to? Oh yes, I heard something about him. He hasn't quite grown up yet – some childish game he played with a chap in his office. Just boyish high spirits.

"No," he said. "I don't know what happened to him." He put too much money on the table. "Thank you for the coffee. "

First he had to ring George, then probably catch the Güter-sloh flight. He paused at the door, taking the last sniff at the country air: the rest would be busy roads, airports, Whitehall. Agnes had been right about needing to get out into the countryside, and it didn't matter much whose country.

Behind him, she asked: "Are you going back to England?"

"Yes."

She paused. "The glass didn't get broken. It was borrowed, somebody wanted to make a copy of it, just like the people from the magazine had done. He didn't give it back. "

"Hecame back. Gu-Rainer Schickert. He came back. "

"Yes." She put the empty cup on the bar. "I was a fool to lend it him, he said it was the only picture of her at that time. He didn't even have one from the wedding. He said he was in shipping, I think, in Hamburg, but I couldn't find him in the directory."

"It was really him?"

"He looked different, but it was him. He knew everything; you can't be wrong about that. It takes only a few words. He came early one morning, before anybody else who might know him – I don't know why. But if you see him, you might mention the picture. He did promise."

"Oh yes, it can be done," Captain Apgood said. "Happens all the time. If you know the right people, or you've got the right money, any East German can get a doctor's chit saying he needs a couple of weeks at some West German spa. It's one of the accepted perks of office, over there. Of course, they want to be sure you'll come back. You've got to own property or leave your wife and family behind. Does your chap fit into that category?"

"I think he would." Nine years back Gustav- soundly remarried, sister's defection forgotten, back in political favour but not yet important enough to make a trip West into an Event – would fit perfectly. And he could be using his SSD connection to tip him off to any mention of wartime Dorn-hausen. Any magazine written for the Allied forces would be on the SSD's reading list.

So Gustavhad come back.

"I can get somebody to check around the hotels in Bad Schwarzendorn," Apgood offered. "They've probably still got their old records. What name would your man be using?"

"I wouldn't know… You wouldn't have any idea when the Gutersloh flight goes?"

"Ah, you've missed that already."

At the start of the holiday season, commercial flights and even train/ferry tickets were difficult to come by, or so Maxim told George on the phone. He would spend another night with the Army and be on the next trooping flight for certain sure, honour bright, cross his heart.

"Stay there a couple of days," George said, surprisingly. "Enjoy yourself. Talk about Pay And Emoluments, discuss SA8o and PJRAD and why the Headmaster always chooses such clunks as defence advisers. As long as that so-and-so Simshas got what he wants, there's no rush. I don't think you've heard about Rotherhithe?" He told about Sims's unit being involved in the shooting, and Maxim saw why he was being offered a short exile in Germany. George feared he might want to have words with Mr Sims. And George, Maxim reflected, could be right.

"How's the Prime Minister?"

"Birds of a feather, mostly carrion coloured, are flocking to his bedside." George sounded suddenly tired. "His chest doesn't appear to be good. I think he'll resign next week and then God help us all. But I don't want him going out in a cloud of cow-shit."

"All right, I promise I'll stay in Germany. "

"Ididn't mean that… I don't think I did, anyway. Just make sure we know where you are. "

"If he goes, will you stay on at Number 10?"

But George had already rung off.

The summer days were too long. While the light lasted she couldn't really feel sleepy, so she sat by the window and watched the slow shadows pooling in the valley. Lights glowed on in other houses down there, but she just waited, soaking in the darkness as if it were drowsiness itself. Soon it would be time for the last of the yellow pills, then the sleeping pills and then perhaps two hours of total oblivion, sleep without pain, before the terrible long process of waking, remembering and hurting all over again.

For the moment, there was the brandy which she was trying to make last until the weekend, and little nibbles of cheese or chocolate and of course the flask of soup. Like most touring musicians she had learned to take a flask of soup to a recital, since wheedling even a plate of sandwiches out of a provincial hotel at ten or eleven at night was a virtuoso performance in itself. Now she clung to the habit as one last reminder of having been Mina Linnarz.

A little crowd of people spilled out of the chapel down the street, swirled gently for a moment in final conversation and then drifted away in twos and threes. It couldn't have been a film show, they would have asked her to that, but they didn'tseem to have them any more. Probably everybody in the village had television by now. Most likely it had just been some committee meeting to organise or object to something. They'd tried to get her involved in that sortofthing, but she was past trying to reform the world. No, she'd never really cared enough; that sortofthingshe always left to Gustav.

But she liked the villagers, with their slow speech and equal slowness to interfere. They were farmers, like her mother's people in the Harzmountains. They knew about frost and hailstorms, and crippled hands too; these things happened. There was no peace, but there at least there was silence, silence that she would never find in a city. She had been a fool to go to London, even to see Leni…

She took the pills with the last of the soup, saving the final half-inch of brandy in her glass for when she was in bed. Now the drowsiness was real, the pain dulled to another brief defeat. This was the best time of the day and she stood up slowly, luxuriating in the silence within her own body. At first, she barely heard the tap on the front door.

Oh dear Lord, not somebody come to say little Rosemary won't be at her piano lesson because… it could wait until tomorrow. What did they think she'd do if little Rosemary simply didn't arrive? Perhaps make the greatest-ever recording of the Romance in FSharp? Or merely dash down and give a sell-out Wigmore Hall recital? Or maybe drink a little more brandy, a little earlier than usual.

When she opened the door she didn't know them, but she knew what they were. For thirty years they had been visiting her in nightmares; at last they had come when she was awake.

"Get Major Maxim back from Osnabrück,"George told the Number10switchboard.