Yesterday's Spy

Chapter 23

There was a bright moon, but cloud was building up with every sign that the promised storms would arrive by morning. I kept up a good speed on the dry moonlit roads. I took my own route into Nice rather than follow the obvious one. I crossed the River Var high up, leaving behind the chic region where wealthy psychiatrists throw poolside parties for pop-groups.

East of the Var is another landscape. Routiers and quarrymen work extra time to buy a few hundred breeze blocks for raw little villas, that squat upon steep hillsides and at the weekends excrete small cars. In record time we were at St Pancrace. I raced through the empty streets of the northern suburbs and along the Boulevard de Cessole to the station. From there it was only two minutes to the Rue de la Buffa where Pina Baroni lived.

I found a parking place near the Anglican church. It was still only about one A.M., but as the sound of the Fiat’s motor faded there was not a sound or a movement in any direction.

Pina lived on the fourth floor of a new apartment block, at the fashionable end of the Rue de la Buffa. Across the street was Pina’s boutique. Its neighbours included two foreign banks, a poodle-clipper and the sort of athletic club that turns out to be a sun-lamp salon for fat executives.

In the moonlight the white marble entrance was as bright as day. The foyer was all tinted mirror, concealed lighting and locked glass doors, with a light behind the intercom and a thief-proof welcome-mat. ‘It’s Charlie,’ I said. The door opened with a loud click, and a sign lighted to tell me to push the door closed behind me.

Pina was dressed as if ready to go out. ‘Charlie —’ she began, but I shook my head, and at the sight of Billy she bent down to him. ‘Darling Billy,’ she said, and embraced him tightly enough to squeeze the breath from his body.

‘Aunty Nini,’ he said dutifully, and stared at her thoughtfully.

‘He got his feet wet,’ I told her. ‘He went down to talk to the fishes in his pyjamas.’

‘We’ll give you a hot bath, Billy.’

‘These are clean pyjamas and underclothes and things,’ I said. I indicated the bag I’d brought.

‘Your Uncle Charlie thinks of everything,’ said Pina.

‘But always a bit too late,’ I said.

As if anxious to avoid talking to me, Pina took Billy into the bathroom. I heard the water running, and Pina came out and fussed about with clean sheets and pillowcases for the spare bed.

‘I want you to take him to England, Pina. Take him back to Caty.’

Pina looked at me without answering. ‘Hot milk or cocoa?’ she called loudly. ‘Which would you like, Billy?’

‘Cocoa, please, Aunty Nini.’

‘I can’t,’ said Pina.

‘It’s all over, Pina,’ I said. ‘Even now I can’t guarantee to keep you out of it.’

She pushed past me and went into the tiny kitchen. She poured milk into a saucepan, mixed cocoa into a jug and added sugar. She gave it all her attention. When she spoke it was without looking up. ‘You know about the others?’

‘Serge Frankel masterminding the whole thing, with you and old Ercole’s grandson doing the commando stuff? Eventually I guessed.’

‘Is Champion dead?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They took him away when the big trucks came. Where are they going, Pina?’

She bit her lip and then shook her head. ‘It’s a mess, Charlie.’ The milk boiled and she poured it into the cups. She pushed one cup towards me and took another one to Billy.

I sank down into an armchair and resisted a great desire to go to sleep myself. I heard the water running, and the voices of Pina and the child. I looked round the room. Amongst the colour TV, indoor plants and the sort of steel-and-leather furniture that looks like office equipment, there were one or two items still remaining from the farmhouse where she’d lived with her parents during the war. There was a sword that some long-dead Baroni had carried in the Battle of Solferino, at a time when Nice and Savoy were speaking Italian. Alongside it hung a faded watercolour of a house near Turin, and a photo of Pina’s parents on their wedding day. In the glass-fronted cabinet a place of honour had been found for a Staffordshire teapot with a broken spout. In the old days that had been the hiding place for the radio crystals.

‘He’s asleep,’ she said. She looked at me as if still not believing I was real.

‘I’m glad you kept the teapot, Pina.’

‘I’ve come close to throwing it over the balcony,’ she said tonelessly. She went over to the cabinet and looked at it. Then she picked up the photo of her late husband and sons and put it down again.

‘I should have come here and talked to you,’ I said. ‘Every day I planned to, but each time I put it off. I don’t know why.’ But really I did know why: it was because I knew such a conversation would probably end with Pina going into custody.

‘A husband and two fine boys,’ she snapped her fingers. ‘Gone like that!’ She pouted her lips. ‘And what of the kid who threw the bomb. Someone said he was no more than fifteen years old. Where is he now, living there, in Algiers, with a wife and two kids?’

‘Don’t torture yourself, Pina.’

She took Billy’s coat and mine from a chair, and with the curious automatic movements that motherhood bestows she straightened them, buttoned them and hung them in a closet. Then she busied herself arranging the cups and saucers and the small plates and silver forks. I said nothing. When she had finally arranged the last coffee spoon, she looked up and smiled ruefully. ‘The war,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel so old, Charlie.’

‘Is that why?’ I said.

‘Is that why what?’

‘Is that why you tried to kill Champion today, and damned near killed me and the kid as well?’

‘We didn’t even know Billy was in France.’

‘So it was Champion’s fault,’ I said bitterly.

‘Did you recognize me?’ she asked.

‘Billy did.’

‘We came back,’ she said. ‘You were on your feet, and Billy was all right. So we didn’t stop.’

‘You and old Ercole’s grandson,’ I said. ‘Bonnie and Clyde, eh?’

‘Don’t be bloody stupid, Charlie.’

‘What, then?’

‘Someone’s got to stop Champion, Charlie.’

‘But why you? And why Ercole’s grandson?’ But I didn’t have to ask. I’d heard Ercole’s stories about the war and the glorious part he’d played in the liberation of France. Who could miss the citation, and the photographs, so beautifully framed and well displayed near the lights ostensibly directed at the Renoir reproduction?

I put more sugar into the cocoa.

‘I said you’d guess,’ said Pina. ‘He sounded you out about the football match, to make sure you wouldn’t be in the car at the time. But I said you’d guess.’

‘It will be a fifteen-year stretch,’ I said. ‘The driver’s dead, do you know that?’

‘We talked about it,’ said Pina. She took her coffee and drank some. ‘But finally we decided that we’d go ahead, even with you in the car, we’d go ahead.’

‘So I noticed,’ I said. I drank some cocoa and then I sniffed at it.

‘It’s only cocoa, Charlie,’ she said.

I drank it. ‘And did you decide to go ahead even if Billy was in the car?’

‘Oh, my God, Charlie. What have we come to?’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Will you forgive me, Charlie? We didn’t see Billy. You must believe me. You must!’

‘I believe you, Pina.’

She reached out and clung tightly to me, but there was no passion, just that terrible wail of despair with which survivors lament being left alone.

‘Take Billy to his mother, Pina.’

She nodded, but her face was contorted with grief and she soon began to cry again. I put my arms round her, and tried to steady her as the sobs racked her frail body. I felt the hot tears on my cheek and I caressed her back as a mother might calm a fractious child.

‘I’ll phone my people right now. I might be able to arrange a plane immediately. In any case, you mustn’t stay here.’

She stopped crying, and looked at me. ‘Serge Frankel said you were an important man.’

‘Go to Caty, in Wales. Stay, until I tell you it’s safe to return.’

She gripped my arm to tell me that she understood. I pulled myself away from her and stood up. She huddled in the corner of the sofa and sobbed into her hands. I remembered the tomboy who had never shed a tear, not even when the Germans took her mother away. Pina had a lot of crying to catch up with. Or perhaps she was crying for all of us.