The Night Manager

TWENTY-NINE

The Iron Pasha, 1,500 tons, 250 feet long, steel-built by Headship of Holland in 1987 to the specifications of her present owner, interior by Lavinci of Rome, powered by two 2,000-horsepower MWM diesel engines and equipped with Vosper stabilisers, Inmarsat satellite-telecommunications-systems radar, including an anti-collision set and Radar Watch ― not to mention fax, telex, a dozen cases of Dom Perignon and a live holly tree in a tub in anticipation of the Christmas festivities ― sailed out of Nelson's Dockyard, English Harbour, Antigua, the Antilles, on the morning tide, bound for her winter cruise of the Windward and Grenadine islands, and ultimately, by way of the islands of Blanquilla, Orchila and Bonaire, for Curaçao.

A smattering of the better names and faces from Antigua's fashionable St. James's Club had assembled at the dockside to see her off, and there was much sounding of air horns and ships' whistles as the ever-popular international entrepreneur, Mr. Dicky Onslow Roper and his elegantly attired guests stood astern of the departing vessel, waving their farewells to cries of "Godspeed" and "Have a simply marvellous time, Dicky, you've deserved it" from the shore. Mr. Roper's personal pennant, portraying a glittering crystal, fluttered from the mainmast. Society-watchers were gratified to observe such familiar favourites of the jet set as Lord (Sandy to his intimates) Langbourne on the arm of his wife, Caroline, thus discounting rumours of a breakup, and the exquisite Miss Jemima (Jed to her friends) Marshall, Mr. Roper's constant companion since more than a year and renowned hostess of the Roper Xanadu in the Exumas.

The other sixteen guests constituted a carefully selected company of international makers and shakers and included such social heavyweights as Petros (Patty) Kaloumenos, who had recently attempted to purchase the island of Spetsai from the Greek government, Bunny Saltlake, the American soup heiress, Gerry Sandown, the British racing driver, and his French wife, and the American film producer Marcel Heist, whose own yacht, the Marceline, was presently under construction in Bremerhaven. No children were of the company. Guests who had never sailed on the Pasha before were likely to spend their first days swooning over her luxurious appointments: her eight staterooms, all with king-sized beds, hi-fi, telephone, colour television, Redoute prints and historic panelling; her softly lit Edwardian salon in red plush, with antique gaming table and eighteenth-century bronze heads, each in its domed recess of solid walnut; her maple dining room, with sylvan paintings after Watteau; her pool, Jacuzzi and solarium; her Italian afterdeck for informal dining.

Of Mr. Derek Thomas of New Zealand, however, the gossip columnists wrote nothing at all. He featured on no Ironbrand public relations handout. He was not on deck waving to the friends onshore. He was not at dinner, delighting his companions with his sensitive conversation. He was in the Pasha's nearest thing to Herr Meister's fine-wine cellar, chained and gagged and lying in the dark, in a bloody solitude relieved by visits from Major Corkoran and his assistants.

* * *

The combined strength of the Pasha's crew and staff was twenty, including captain, mate, engineer, assistant engineer, a chef for the guests and a chef for the crew, a head stewardess and housekeeper, four deckhands and a ship's purser. The company also included a pilot for the helicopter and another for the seaplane. The security team was augmented by the two German-Argentineans who had flown with Jed and Corkoran from Miami and, like the ship it protected, was lavishly equipped. The tradition of piracy in that region is by no means extinct, and the ship's arsenal was capable of sustaining a prolonged firefight at sea, deterring marauding aircraft or sinking a hostile vessel venturing alongside. It was stored in the forward hold, where the security team also had its quarters, behind a seaproof steel door that in turn was protected by a grille. Was that where Jonathan was being kept? After three days at sea, such was Jed's distraught conviction. But when she asked Roper he seemed not to hear her, and when she asked Corkoran he threw up his chin and made a stern frown.

"Stormy waters, old love," said Corkoran through set lips. "Be seen not heard, my advice. Bed and board and a low profile. Safer for all. Don't quote me."

The transformation she had observed in Corkoran was by now complete. A ratlike intensity had replaced his former sloth. He smiled seldom and issued snappish orders at male members of the crew, whether they were plain or pretty. He had pinned a row of medal ribbons to his mildewed dinner jacket and was given to grandiose soliloquies about world problems whenever Roper was not there to shut him up.

* * *

The day of Jed's arrival in Antigua was the worst in her life. She had had plenty of other worst days till now ― her Catholic guilt had supplied her with a whole bunch. There had been the day the mother superior marched into the dormitory and told her to pack her things, her taxi was waiting at the door. That was the same day her father ordered her to go to her bedroom while he took priestly advice on how to handle a sixteen-year-old virgin whore caught stark naked in the potting shed with a village boy doing his unsuccessful best to deflower her. There had been the day in Hammersmith when two boys she had refused to sleep with had got drunk and decided to make common cause, taking it in turns to hold her down while the other raped her. And there had been the too-wild days in Paris before she stepped over the sleeping bodies, straight into Dicky Roper's arms. But the day she boarded the Pasha in English Harbour, Antigua, had knocked the others off the scoreboard.

On the plane, she had managed to ignore Corkoran's veiled insults by escaping into her magazines. At Antigua airport he had thrust his hand officiously under her arm, and when she tried to shake free he had clutched her in a clawlike grip while two blond boys trod on her heels. In the limousine, Corkoran rode up front and the boys sat too close either side of her. And as she climbed the Pasha's gangway, all three made a phalanx round her, no doubt to demonstrate to Roper ― if he was watching ― that they were obeying orders. Frog-marched to the door of the state apartments, she was obliged to wait while Corkoran knocked.

"Who is it?" Roper demanded from within.

"A Miss Marshall, Chief. Safe and moderately sound."

"Show her in, Corks."

"With luggage, Chief, or was it without?"

"With."

She stepped inside and saw Roper sitting at the desk with his back to her. And he remained there, still with his back to her, while a steward parked her luggage in the bedroom and withdrew. He was reading something, checking it with a pen as he went along. A contract, a whatever. She waited for him to finish, or put it down and turn to her. Even get up. He didn't. He reached the end of the page, scribbled something ― she thought his initials ― then passed the next page and went on reading. It was a thick, typed document, blue, with a red ribbon and a red-ruled margin. There were quite a few pages to go. He's writing his will, she decided. And to my former mistress Jed I leave absolutely sod all....

He was wearing his navy blue tailored silk dressing gown with rolled collar and crimson piping, and usually, when he put it on, it meant either that they were about to make love, or just had. While he read he occasionally shifted the angle of his shoulders inside it, as if he sensed she was admiring them. He had always been proud of his shoulders. She was still standing. She was six feet from him. She was wearing jeans and a knit vest and several gold necklaces. He liked her to wear gold. The carpet was puce and brand-new. Very expensive, very deep. They had chosen it together from samples, in front of the fire at Crystal. Jonathan had lent his advice. This was the first time she had seen it in position.

"Am I disturbing you?" she asked, when he had still not turned his head.

"Hardly at all," he replied, while his head remained bowed over the papers.

She sat on the edge of a chair, clutching her tapestry bag on her lap. There was such over-control in his body, and such harnessed tension in his voice, that she presumed that at any moment he was going to get up and hit her, probably all in one movement: a spring and a sweeping backhand swipe that would knock her into the middle of next week. She'd once had an Italian boy who'd done that to her as a punishment for being witty. The punch had carried her clean across the room. It should have felled her outright, but her riding balance helped her, and as soon as she had grabbed her things from the bedroom, she let the punch carry her out of the house.

"I told them lobster," Roper said, as he again initialled something on the document before him. "Reckoned you were owed one after Corky's little number at Enzo's. Lobster all right for you?"

She didn't answer.

"Chaps tell me you've been having a bit of a tumble with Brother Thomas. Likee? Real name's Pine, by the way. Jonathan to you."

"Where is he?"

"Thought you'd ask that." Turn a page. Raise an arm. Fuss with the half-lens reading glasses. "Been going on long, has it? Quickies in the summerhouse? Knickers off in the woods? Bloody good at it, both of you, I must say. All those staff around. I'm not stupid either. Didn't spot a thing."

"If they're telling you I slept with Jonathan, I didn't."

"Nobody said much about sleep."

"We are not lovers."

She had said the same to the mother superior, she remembered, but it hadn't cut much ice. Roper, paused at his reading, still didn't turn his head.

"So what are you?" he asked. "If not lovers, what?"

We're lovers, she conceded stupidly. It made not one whit of difference whether they were physical lovers or some other. Her love for Jonathan and her betrayal of Roper were accomplished facts. The rest, as in the potting shed, was technical. "Where is he?" she demanded.

Too busy reading. A shift of the shoulders as we amend something with our six-foot-long Mont Blanc.

"Is he on the boat?"

A sculptured stillness now, her father's pensive silence. But father was afraid the world was going to the devil and, by Jove, hadn't the least idea how to stop it. Whereas Roper was helping it on its way.

"Says he did it all by himself," Roper said. "That true? Jed didn't do any of it. Pine's the baddie, Pine did it all. Jed's snow white. Too thick to know what she's about, anyway. End of statement for the press. All his own work."

"What work?"

Roper shoved his pen aside and stood, still contriving not to look at her. He crossed the room to the panelled wall and pressed a button. The electric doors of the drinks cupboard rolled back. He opened the refrigerator, fished out a bottle of the Dom, uncorked it and filled himself a glass. Then, as a kind of compromise between looking at her and not, he spoke to her reflection in the mirrored interior of the cupboard, what he could see of it between a row of wine bottles and the vermouths and Camparis.

"Want some?" he asked, almost tenderly, lifting the bottle of Dom and offering it to her reflection.

"What work? What's he supposed to have done?"

"Won't say. Asked him to, but he won't. What he's done, who for, who with, why, starting when. Who's paying him. Nothing. Could save himself a hell of a lot of aggro if he did. Gallant chap. Good choice you made. Congratulations."

"Why should he have done anything? What are you doing to him? Let him go."

He turned and walked toward her, looking at her directly at last, with his pale, washed eyes, and this time she was certain he would hit her, because his smile was so unnaturally at ease, his manner of such studied unconcern, that there had to be a different version of him inside. He was still wearing his reading glasses, so he had to lower his head to look at her over the top of them. His smile was sporting, and very close to her.

"Simon-pure, is he, your lover boy? Lily-white, is he? Mister Clean? Utter balls, dear. Only reason I took him in was because some hired lout held a pistol at my boy's head. You telling me he wasn't part of the caper? Horseshit, sweetheart, frankly. You find me a saint, I'll pay the candle. Till then, I'll keep my money in my pocket." The chair she had chosen was dangerously low. His knees as he bowed over her were at the level of her jaw. "Been having my thoughts about you, Jeds. Wondering whether you're quite as dumb as I supposed. Whether you and Pine aren't in it together. Who picked who up at the horse sale, eh? Eh?" He was tweaking her ear, making a mischievous joke of it. "Bloody clever chaps, women. Clever, clever chaps. Even when they're pretending they haven't got anything between their ears. Make you think you chose them, fact is they chose you. Are you a plant, Jeds? You don't look a plant. Look a bloody pretty woman. Sandy thinks you're a plant. Wishes he'd had a tumble with you himself. Corks wouldn't be surprised if you were a plant" ― he gave an effeminate simper ― "and your fancy boy ain't saying nuttin'." He was tweaking her ear to the rhythm of each accented word. Not painful tweaks. Playful ones. "Level with us, Jeds, will you, darling? Share the joke. Be a sport. You're a plant, aren't you, sweetheart. A plant with a lovely arse, aren't you?"

He moved his hand to her chin. Taking it between his thumb and forefinger, he raised her head to look at her. She saw the merriment in his eyes that she had so often mistaken for kindness, and she supposed that once again the man she had been loving was somebody she had put together out of the bits of him she wanted to believe in, while she ignored the bits that didn't fit.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "I let you pick me up. I was scared. You were an angel. You never did me wrong. Not till now. And I gave you my best shot. You I did. Where is he?" she said, straight into his eyes.

He released her chin and walked away down the room, swinging his champagne glass wide.

"Good idea, girl," he said approvingly. "Well done. Spring him. Spring your lover boy. Put a file in his French loaf. Shove it through the bars on visiting day. Pity you haven't brought Sarah along with you. Two of you could ride away on her into the sunset." No change of tone. "You don't know a fellow called Burr at all, do you, Jeds, by any chance? First name Leonard? North Country oaf? Smelly armpits? Gospel trained? Come your way at all? Ever have a tumble with him? Probably called himself Smith. Pity. Thought you might have."

"I don't know anyone like that."

"Funny thing. Nor does Pine."

They dressed for dinner, back-to-back, choosing their clothes with care. The formal madness of their days and nights aboard the Pasha had begun.

* * *

The menus. Discussion with the steward and the cooks. Mrs. Sandown is French, and her opinion on everything is therefore regarded by the kitchen as gospel, never mind she eats only salads and swears she knows nothing about food.

Laundry. When guests are not eating they are changing, bathing and copulating, which means that every day they must have clean sheets, towels, clothes and table linen. A yacht sails on its food and its laundry. A whole section of the service deck is got up with banks of washing machines, dryers and steam irons, which two stewardesses tend from dawn till dusk.

Hair. The sea air does terrible things to people's hair. At five every evening the guest deck is humming to the sound of hair dryers, and it is their peculiarity to fail when guests are halfway through their toilet. Therefore at ten to six exactly, Jed may count on the sight of a belligerent, half-dressed lady guest lurking in the gangway with her hair stuck up like a lavatory brush, brandishing a defunct hair dryer and saying, "Jed, darling, could you possibly?" ― because the housekeeper is by now supervising the final touches to the dinner table.

Flowers. Every day, the seaplane visits the nearest island to fetch flowers, fresh fish, seafood, eggs and newspapers, and to post letters. But the flowers are what Roper cares about most, the Pasha is famous for its flowers and the sight of dead flowers, or flowers not adequately arranged, is likely to cause serious tremors below decks.

Recreation. Where shall we put in, swim, snorkel, whom shall we visit, shall we dine out for a change, send the helicopter or the seaplane for the Somebodys, take the Somebody Elses ashore? For the guests on the Pasha are not a static population. They change from island to island according to their negotiated length of stay, bringing new blood, new banalities, a new approach to Christmas: how terribly behind one is with one's preparations, darling, I haven't even thought about my pressies, and isn't it time you and Dicky got married, you look so absolutely yummy together?

And Jed in the madness goes along with this mad routine, waiting for a chink. Roper's references to putting files into bread loaves is not inaccurate. She would fuck all five guards and Langbourne and even Corkoran, if he were so disposed, in order to get alongside Jonathan.

* * *

Meanwhile, as she waits, all the rituals of her strict childhood and convent school ― the rules of grit your teeth and smile ― entwine her in their humiliating embrace. While she obeys them, nothing is real, but also nothing comes adrift. For both these blessings she is grateful, and the possibility of a chink remains. When Caroline Langbourne treats her to a discourse on the pleasures of marriage to Sandy now that the slut of a nanny is safely back in London, Jed smiles dreamily and says, "Oh, Caro, darling, I'm so awfully pleased for you both. And for the children, naturally." When Caroline adds that she probably said some absolutely barmy things about the business deals Dicky and Sandy were getting up to, but she'd talked it all through with Sandy and she really had to admit she'd seen things rather blacker than they were ― and honestly, how can one make one's pennies these days without getting one's fingers the weeniest bit grubby? ― Jed is pleased about that too and assures Caro that she can't remember a thing that Caro said about all that anyway, with Jed and business it's just in one ear and out the other and thank God for it....

And at night she sleeps with Roper, waiting for the chink.

In his bed.

Having dressed and undressed in his presence, worn his jewellery and charmed his guests.

The encounter most often comes at dawn, when her will, like the will of the dying, is at its weakest. He reaches for her, and Jed in some dreadful eagerness at once returns his call, telling herself that in doing so she is drawing the teeth of Jonathan's opressor, taming him, bribing him, making peace with him for Jonathan's salvation. And waiting for the chink.

Because that is what she is trying to buy from Roper all the time, in this mad silence they are sharing, following their first exchange of gunfire: a chance to get past his guard. They can laugh together about something as crucial as a bad olive. Yet, even in their sexual frenzies, they no longer mention the one subject that still joins them: Jonathan.

Is Roper too waiting for something? Waiting herself, Jed believes he is. Why else does Corkoran tap on the stateroom door at all odd hours, poke his head round, shake it and withdraw? In her nightmares, Corkoran doubles as Jonathan's executioner.

* * *

She knows where he is now. Roper hasn't told her, but it has been an amusing game for him, looking on while Jed spots the clues and pieces them together. And now she knows.

First she notices the unnatural grouping at the forward end of the boat, on the lower deck beyond the guest cabins: a clogging of people, an air of accident. It is nothing she can put her finger on, and anyway that section of the boat has always been hazy to her. In the days of her innocence, she heard it referred to as the security area. Another time as the hospital. It is the one part of the boat that belongs to neither guests nor crew. And since Jonathan himself is also neither, Jed sees the hospital as the fitting place to put him. Hovering with intent around the kitchen, Jed observes trays of invalid food, not ordered by herself. They are laden when they go forward. They are empty when they return.

"Is someone ill?" she demands of Frisky, stopping him in his path.

Frisky's manner is no longer deferential, if it ever was. "Why should there be?" he says pertly. The tray aloft. One-handed.

"Then who's eating slops? Yoghurt, chicken broth ― who's that for?"

Frisky affects to notice for the first time what is on his tray. "Oh, that's Tabby, that is, miss." He has never in his life called her "miss" before. "Got a bit of the toothache, Tabby has. Had a wisdom tooth out in Antigua. Lot of bleeding. He's on the painkillers. Yeah."

She has begun to work out who visits him and when. It is an advantage of the rituals that control her that the smallest irregular movement on the ship is her concern; she knows by instinct whether the pretty Filipino stewardess has slept with the captain or the bosun or ― as happened briefly one afternoon while Caroline was sunbathing on the afterdeck ― with Sandy Langbourne. She has observed that it is Roper's three trusties ― Frisky, Tabby and Gus ― who sleep in the cabin above the private stairway to what she now believes is Jonathan's cell. And that the German-Argentineans across the gangway may suspect but do not share the secret. And that Corkoran ― the new, puffed up, officious Corkoran ― makes the journey twice a day at least, setting out with an air of circumstance and returning churlish.

"Corky," she beseeches him, trading on past friendship. "Corks, darling, please ― for God's sake ― how is he? Is he ill? Does he know I'm here?"

But Corkoran's face is shaded by the darkness he has visited. "I warned you, Jed. I gave you every chance," he retorts huffily. "You wouldn't hear me. You were wilful." And goes his way like an offended beadle.

Sandy Langbourne is also an occasional visitor. His chosen hour is after dinner during his evening prowl of the decks in search of more diverting company than his wife.

"You bastard, Sandy," she whispers at him as he saunters past her. "You utter spoilt bloody shit."

Langbourne remains unaffected by this onslaught. He is too beautiful and bored to care.

And she knows that Jonathan's other visitor is Roper, because Roper is unusually pensive when he returns from the forward area. Even if she has not seen him go there, she can tell by his manner when he reappears. Like Langbourne, he favours evenings. First stroll on deck, chat to the skipper or call one of the many stockbrokers, currency dealers and bankers round the globe: how about taking a flier on Deutschies, Bill? Swissies, Jack? the yen, the pound, the escudo, Malaysian rubber, Rus-diamonds, Canadian gold? Then gradually, by these and staging posts, he is drawn as if by magnetic attraction the forward part of the boat. And vanishes. When he reappears, his expression is overcast.

But Jed knows better than to beg or weep or scream or make a scene. If there is one thing that makes Roper dangerous it is a scene. It is the unwarranted invasion of his self-esteem. It is bloody women snivelling at his feet.

And she knows, or thinks she knows, that Jonathan is doing what he tried to do in Ireland. He is killing himself with his own courage.

* * *

It was better than Herr Meister's cellar, but it was also far, far worse. There was no going round and round the black walls. But that was because he was chained to them. He was not neglected; his presence was known to a succession of attentive people. But these same people had stuffed his mouth with chamois leather and taped it with adhesive, and although there was an understanding that they would remove these inconveniences whenever he gave the signal that he wished to talk, they had already demonstrated to him that if he gave the signal frivolously there would be consequences. Since then, he had developed a firm policy not to talk at all, not even a "good morning" or "hullo," because his terror was that ― since he was somebody who tended on occasion to confide, if only in his character as hotelier ― this tendency would become his undoing, and "hullo" would turn into "I sent Rooke the numbers of the containers and the name of the boat," or whatever other stray confession sprang to mind in the agony of the moment.

Yet what confession did they want from him? What more did they need to know that they didn't know already? They knew he was a plant and that most of the stories about him were invention. If they did not know how much he had betrayed, they knew enough to change or abort their plans before it was too late. So why the urgency? Why the frustration? Then gradually, as the sessions grew more ferocious, Jonathan came to recognise that his confession was something they felt that they were owed by right. He was their spy. They had unmasked him. Their pride demanded a contrite statement from the gallows.

But they were reckoning without Sophie. They didn't know about his Secret Sharer. Sophie who had been there ahead of him. And was there now, smiling at him over her coffee, please, Egyptian. Forgiving him. Amusing him: seducing him a little, urging him to live by daylight. When they beat his face ― a prolonged and careful beating, but a devastating one ― he wryly compared faces with her, and for a distraction he told her all about the Irish boy and the Heckler. But nothing maudlin; she was utterly against it; they never went in for self-pity or lost their sense of humour. You killer this woman? she teased him, lifting her plucked dark eyebrows and laughing her mannish laugh. No, he hadn't killered her. They had put that discussion behind them long ago. She had listened to his account of his dealings with Ogilvey, she had heard him out, now smiling, now frowning in distaste. "I think you did your duty, Mr. Pine," she declared when he had finished. "Unfortunately there are many kinds of loyalty, and we cannot serve them all at once. Like my husband, you believed you were a patriot. Next time you will make a better choice. Perhaps we shall make it together." When Tabby and Frisky worked on his body ― mostly by chaining him in attitudes that produced prolonged and excruciating pain ― Sophie reminded him how her body had been broken too: in her case, clubbed until it was destroyed. And when he was deep down and half asleep and wondering how he would make it back to the top of the crevasse, he regaled her with accounts of difficult climbs he had made in the Oberland ― a north face of the Jungfrau that had gone seriously wrong; bivouacking in a hundred-mile-an-hour wind. And Sophie, if she was bored, never showed it. She listened with her great brown eyes steadfastly upon him, loving and encouraging him: I am sure, that you will never again give yourself away so cheaply, Mr. Pine, she had told him. Our good manners can sometimes disguise our courage from us. Have you something to read on the plane back to Cairo? I think I shall read. It will help me to remember that I am myself. And then, to his surprise, he was back in the little flat in Luxor, watching her pack up her overnight bag, one object at a time and very deliberately, as if she were selecting companions for a much longer journey than the trip to Cairo.

And of course it was Sophie who had encouraged him to keep his silence. Had she herself not died without betraying him?

When they had pulled off the adhesive and removed the chamois bung, it was on Sophie's advice that he asked to speak to Roper personally.

"That's the way, then, Tommy," said Tabby, out of breath from his exertions. "You have a natter with the Chief. Then we can all have a nice beer together like the old days."

And Roper in his own good time strolled down to see him, dressed in his cruise gear ― including the white buckskin shoes with crepe soles that Jonathan had noticed in his dressing room at Crystal ― and sat on the chair across the room from him. And it passed through Jonathan's mind that this was now the second time that Roper had seen him with his face in a mess, and that Roper's expression on both occasions had been identical: the same wrinkling of the nose, the same critical assessment of the damage and of Jonathan's chances of survival. He wondered how Roper would have looked at Sophie if he had been around while they were beating her to death.

"All right, Pine?" he asked pleasantly. "No complaints? They looking after you all right?"

"Beds are a bit lumpy."

Roper laughed good-humouredly. "Can't have everything, I suppose. Jed misses you."

"Then send her to me."

"Not her scene, I'm afraid. Convent girl. Likes a sheltered life."

So Jonathan explained to Roper that during his initial conversations with Langbourne, Corkoran and others, the suggestion had repeatedly been aired that Jed was in some way involved in Jonathan's activities. And he wished to say categorically that whatever he had done, he had done it alone, unaided at any point by Jed. And that far too much had been made of a couple of social visits to Woody's House that had taken place when Jed was being bored to death by Caroline Langbourne and Jonathan was lonely. After that, he regretted he could not answer any further questions. Roper, normally so swift to take a point, seemed for a while stuck for words.

"Your people kidnapped my boy," he said at last. "You lied your way into my house, stole my woman. You tried to screw up my deal. Hell do I care whether you talk or not? You're dead."

So it's punishment, not just confession, thought Jonathan, as they bunged up his mouth again. And his sense of kinship with Sophie, if it was possible, grew stronger. I didn't betray Jed, he told her. And I won't, I promise. I shall remain as steadfast as Herr Kaspar with his wig.

Herr Kaspar wore a wig?

But didn't I tell you? Good heavens! Herr Kaspar is a Swiss hero! He gave up twenty thousand tax-free francs a year, just in order to be loyal to himself!

You are right, Mr. Pine, Sophie agreed gravely, when she had listened attentively to everything he had to tell her. You must not betray Jed. You must be strong like Herr Kaspar, and you must not betray yourself either. Now you will put your head on my shoulder, please, the way you do with Jed, and we shall sleep.

* * *

And from then on, as the questions continued without benefit of answer, now singly, now in a hail, Jonathan occasionally saw Roper back in the same chair, though no longer wearing the white buckskin shoes. And always Sophie stood behind him, not in a vengeful way but just to remind Jonathan that they were in the presence of the worst man in the world.

"They'll kill you, Pine," Roper warned, a couple of times. "Corky will go over the top and that'll be that. These queers never know where to draw the line. Quit before it's too late, my advice." After that. Roper would sit back, wearing that look of personal frustration that comes over all of us when we seem unable to help a friend.

Then Corkoran would reappear and, leaning eagerly forward in the same chair, would fire his questions like commands, and count to three while he waited to be obeyed. And on three, Frisky and Tabby went to work again, until Corkoran was tired, or appeased.

"Well, if you'll excuse me, old heart, I'll slip into my sequined sari, pop a ruby in my navel and tuck into a few peacock's tongues," he said as he bowed his way, smirking, to the door. "Sorry you can't be part of the fun. But if you won't sing for your supper, what can one do?"

Nobody, not even Corkoran, stayed long. If a man refuses to speak, and sticks to his resolve, the show acquires a certain sameness. Only Jonathan, roaming his internal world with Sophie, was blessed with any sense of profit. He owned nothing he did not want to own, his life was in order, he was free. He congratulated himself on having discharged his institutional commitments. His father, his mother, his orphanages and singing Aunt Annie, his country, his past and Burr ― all had been paid in full and on the nail. As to his sundry female creditors, they could no longer touch him with their accusations.

And Jed? Well, there was something rather wonderful in paying in advance for sins that he had yet to commit. He had deceived her, of course ― Mama Low's, getting himself smuggled into the castle, offering a faulty version of himself ― but he had a sense that he had also rescued her, which was Sophie's view entirely.

"And you don't think I'm too shallow?" he asked Sophie, in the way young men consult wise women about their loves.

She pretended to be cross with him. "Mr. Pine, I think you are playing a little bit the flirt. You are a lover, not an archaeologist. Your Jed has a nature that has not been touched. She is beautiful, so she is used to being fawned on and adored, and occasionally misused. That is normal."

"I have not misused her," Jonathan replied.

"But you have not fawned on her either. She is not confident of you. She comes to you because she wishes your approval. But you withhold it. Why?"

"But, Madame Sophie, what do you think she does to me?"

"You are joined by a friction that you both resent. That is also normal. It is attraction's dark side. You have both got what you wanted. Now it is time to find out what to do with it."

"I'm just not ready for her. She's banal."

"She is not banal, Mr. Pine. And I am sure you will never be ready for anybody. However, you are in love, and that is that. Now let us get some sleep. You have work to do, and we shall need all the strength we can muster if we are to complete our journey. Was the fizzy-drink treatment as bad as Frisky promised?"

"Worse."

* * *

He nearly died again, and when he woke, Roper was there with his interested smile. But Roper was not a climber and did not understand the fixity of Jonathan's determination: why else do I climb mountains, he explained to Sophie, if not to reach the peak? On the other hand, the hotelier in him had every sympathy for a man who has run away from feeling. Jonathan really wanted to reach out his hand to Roper, and as a gesture of friendship pull him down here into the abyss, just so that the Chief could get an idea of what it was like: you who are so proud of believing in nothing, and me down here with my faith in everything intact.

Then he dozed off for a while, and when he woke, he was in the Lanyon, walking on the cliffs with Jed, not wondering anymore who would be round the corner, waiting for him, but content with himself and with the person at his side.

But he still refused to speak to Roper.

His refusal was becoming more than a vow. It was an asset, a resource.

The very act of withholding was giving him renewal.

Every word he didn't speak, every juddering fist or foot or elbow that rocked him off to sleep, every new and separate pain, went into him like fresh supplies of energy to be hoarded against a future day.

When the pain became unbearable, he had visions of raising himself toward it to receive and store away its life-giving powers.

And it worked. Under the cover of his agony, the close observer in Jonathan assembled his operational intelligence and prepared his plan for the deployment of his secret energy.

Nobody carries a gun, he thought. They are following the law of all good prisons. Warders do not carry guns.