The predicament, p.10
The Predicament, page 10
‘Well, leave me to stew in my paranoia. Thanks for coming by, Faith. I appreciate it.’
He turned away, his chest tight, but seeing things clearly through his anger – he felt unhappy, that old bitterness – as he walked away back to the hospital and his room.
‘Gabriel!’ she shouted after him. ‘Don’t be stupid! Nothing is what it seems!’
Part Three
* * *
EAST SUSSEX LONDON THE COTSWOLDS
April 1963
1.
Home Sweet Home
Gabriel unlocked the front door of Rose Cottage and felt his sphincter loosen momentarily with the sudden, intense relief he was experiencing at being back. Home. He shivered, lugging in his suitcase, grip and typewriter and setting them down before closing the door behind him. The Cat stalked out of the living room into the hall, looked briefly at him, and headed down the corridor to the kitchen. Food – now – was the clear message. How had the Cat known when he was returning? Gabriel wondered, following it to the kitchen where he emptied a tin of catfood into a saucer and left the beast to its lunch.
He unpacked and had a bath, contemplating, as he dried himself off, the row of neat black stitches – fifteen in all – that were knitting together the two sides of his wound. It seemed to have properly healed though it was still a gleaming pink stripe. The hospital had advised him to have the stitches removed as soon as possible on his return to Britain. He would ask his doctor, Muir Kinross, to do the deed. Another trip to London beckoned.
As he shaved, he began to think that, in fact, he needed to rent a pied-à-terre in London. He was spending too much on bed-and-breakfasts and hotels, however modest. He had enough money – thanks to the Russian subventions – and it would make life easier for him. Faith would approve, also: another more ostentatious use of the Russian windfall. Somewhere in Chelsea, he thought, his old stamping ground. The idea cheered him up and made him forget his recent trauma – and the perplexing mysteries of his Guatemala trip. Think positively, he told himself. He could have been stabbed to death – and he had managed to find two new rivers for his book. Not everything was going against him.
His phone rang. It was Ishbel Dunbar.
‘Welcome home,’ she said. ‘Would it be possible for you to drop by the Institute the next time you’re in London?’
‘Yes, of course. I have to come up to see my doctor.’
‘I heard about the incident,’ she said. ‘Glad you’re fit and well.’
‘I’ll let you know,’ he said. ‘Sometime later this week.’
They exchanged banalities and he hung up. Yes, he thought, he definitely needed his own place in London. The city seemed to be claiming him again.
Muir Kinross was wearing an emerald-green silk tie that offset his white shirt and charcoal-grey pinstriped suit to perfection. Gabriel was concentrating on the tie’s shimmering iridescence as Muir snipped away at the sutures and then pulled the threads out with a small pincer, each tug causing a mini-spasm of pain.
‘Going to make a very nice scar,’ he said. ‘Obviously an ideally sharp knife. Like a wire through cheese, as they say.’
‘We must count our blessings, I suppose,’ Gabriel said.
‘Was it a robbery?’
‘Or a madman. Maybe a disappointed reader.’ Gabriel tried not to think back. ‘I smashed his nose in – some compensation. Then he ran off. Nobody was arrested.’
Muir wiped some disinfectant over the now stitch-free wound.
‘Are you still going to that psychoanalyst?’ Muir asked. Katerina Haas had been his suggestion.
‘I’m heading there now,’ Gabriel said. ‘You’ll have noticed I’m not asking for more supplies of sleeping pills.’ Gabriel thought for a moment. ‘It was an excellent idea of yours, Muir, I must say. I find her very …’ He paused. ‘Still very helpful – even though the initial cause seems to have been resolved. The insomnia is minor, intermittent, tolerable.’
‘Well, whatever gets you through the night, as they say.’
‘She was psychoanalysed by Freud, you know,’ Gabriel said, adjusting his trousers and tightening his belt.
‘That old fraud. Is that a recommendation?’
‘She claims to be a follower of Adler, now.’
Muir’s thin smile was eloquent.
‘I like her,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m at ease with her. I tell her everything.’
‘Well, if it works, it works,’ he said. ‘Very good to see you again, Gabriel. Looking forward to the new book.’
EXTRACTS FROM THE TRANSCRIPTION OF SESSION 13
DR HAAS: But this attack, this stabbing, hasn’t – what can I say? – hasn’t destabilized you?
GABRIEL DAX: Well, it has. But not in a consequential way. I relive the moment – but I can banish it. It doesn’t stop me sleeping at night, that’s the main thing.
DR HAAS: What was the cause, the provocation?
GABRIEL DAX: I can only think this person was trying to kill me.
DR HAAS: My God. Why?
GABRIEL DAX: Because of what happened in Guatemala. But I can’t analyse it further. It’s connected to Guatemala but I’m not sure who had the motive. It could be one of several people. [Pause] But I do feel safer now I’m back in England. For some reason.
DR HAAS: And you said that when you were in hospital in America you were visited by this woman, Faith Green.
GABRIEL DAX: Yes, I was very touched, actually. I think it was a sign of some concern. Very unusual for her.
DR HAAS: Do you think she felt some responsibility for the injury?
GABRIEL DAX: I don’t know. She sent me to Guatemala, so maybe she did feel a bit responsible.
DR HAAS: How are your feelings for this woman, now?
GABRIEL DAX: Exactly the same. I can’t really get her out of my mind. But, also, I just can’t figure her out. We have been lovers, as you’re aware. And she knows what I feel about her – but I’ve no concrete idea what she feels about me. It’s not normal, our relationship – such as it is.
DR HAAS: Are you familiar with the concepts of the ‘true self’ and the ‘false self’?
GABRIEL DAX: No. I mean, of course, I understand the division, the opposition, but not in a clinical sense.
DR HAAS: Some people call it a division between the ‘original self’ and a ‘pseudo self’. A person exhibiting a ‘false self’ occurs when other people’s expectations override the spontaneous expression of the ‘true self’. The ‘false self’ is a kind of masquerade – a self that is presented to the world. A ‘social self’. Not the true, private self, inside.
GABRIEL DAX: I don’t see what this has to do with me and Faith Green.
DR HAAS: I’ve never met this woman but, from what you say, I believe that maybe the root of the problem is that you are showing your true self to her – and she is responding with her false self. In a case like that there can be no – what’s the word? – Vereinigung … [Pause]. Yes, fusion. Is that a good English word?
GABRIEL DAX: It makes a kind of sense. But, if that’s indeed the case, what am I meant to do about it?
DR HAAS: Well, first of all I think you have to try to make this Faith Green show you her true self. Then fusion has a chance of taking place.
GABRIEL DAX: I think that might be quite difficult.
DR HAAS: But worth the effort, no? And until that happens I suggest that you try to have an ordinary sexual life. You’re a young man, attractive, clever, successful. You should be in the full flush of your sexual being. Not obsessing about this woman with her false self.
GABRIEL DAX: Easier said than done. But I promise I’ll give it some thought.
2.
The Studio
The estate agent handed Gabriel the keys, wished him a happy tenancy of Studio 3 and left him to contemplate his new London home.
Ruskin Studios was a late nineteenth-century development of purpose-built studio apartments constructed around a courtyard that was accessed through an archway from Flood Street. It was a red-brick building with a conspicuous decorative frieze high up on the outer wall. There was a caretaker’s cottage next to the main door which gave on to a wide, tiled corridor lined by the various-sized studios on offer – some single units like Gabriel’s; others grander duplexes with two bedrooms as well as the sizeable workspace. The studios were about two hundred yards away from his old flat in Redburn Street and their very proximity to his former existence seemed serendipitously apt. He had his country life in Claverleigh and now here was a new toehold in his former Chelsea world. Trips to London were to be welcomed. He could spend a night or two in town and enjoy the city. Thank you, KGB, for your largesse, thank you, Varvara Suvorina.
The studio was unfurnished. Wooden-floored, white-walled, it consisted of a substantial, high-ceilinged room (previously occupied by a photographer, he had been told) with a very large multi-paned window giving maximum luminosity. A gas fire provided heat. There was a small, open kitchenette with a stove, a fridge and a sink and – through a door – a lavatory. Sleeping quarters were in a mezzanine overlooking the main studio space, reached by a narrow twisting stair. £10 a week. No bathroom or shower but he could easily wash and shave at the kitchen sink – very nineteenth century, he thought – and, anyway, his stays would be short: a night, two nights at the most. All he needed was a bed for the mezzanine sleeping area, a desk, a chair, a rug, a couple of table lamps, sheets, blankets, some pots and pans, dishes and glasses, essential cutlery and it was ready for occupancy. One trip to Peter Jones at Sloane Square would see the place furnished. He felt his mood surge – a fizz of elation – things were looking up. The key objective, he realized, was to keep it a secret. This was his safe house, his bolthole, should his life ever become precarious or threatened in some way. The courtyard entrance and the communal corridor made it especially discreet. Nobody need know who was occupying number 3 Ruskin Studios. Certainly not Faith Green.
He locked the door of the studio behind him and set off towards Sloane Square and the department store that would answer his every domestic need. His buoyant mood sustained him: the Motagua river chapter was finished and he was near the end of his Hudson river chapter. Once that was done his book was effectively completed. Time to hand it in to Inigo. Maybe his old life would return, wholesale … But then he remembered he had an appointment at the Institute. What did they want him for, now?
It was strange being in the Institute with no Faith Green present. Ishbel Dunbar had greeted him at the door and had invited him into her office, a small, cramped space, just fitting her desk and two chairs and a bookshelf full of Spanish and South American books – dictionaries, almanacs, manuals and histories, as far as he could tell. A window looked on to a yard with bins and several parked bicycles.
Ishbel’s hair was back up in its sensible bun and her checked-saffron tweed jacket had a large thistle-shaped amber-and-silver brooch on the lapel. She offered him a glass of sherry that he gladly accepted, experiencing a sudden sensation of being back at university having a tutorial with a don, one of the few memories that remained of his truncated sojourn as an undergraduate at Cambridge – that feeling of being slightly tense, conscious of not being fully prepared. How would things have been different, he momentarily wondered, if he had stayed on at Cambridge and become the doctor he had so fervently wished to be? He wouldn’t be sitting in the Institute of Developmental Studies drinking sherry with Ishbel Dunbar, that was for sure.
‘Are you all right, Gabriel?’ Ishbel asked. ‘Thought I’d lost you there.’
‘Some distant memory triggered, that’s all. Apologies. Is Faith joining us?’
‘She’s away – in Italy, I believe.’
‘Holiday?’
‘No. I’m pretty sure not.’
‘Right.’
So – no Faith, Gabriel thought, sensing something unorthodox approaching.
‘How are you?’ Ishbel asked. ‘I mean, after the attack in New York. Shocking.’
‘I’m very lucky,’ Gabriel said. ‘The wound’s well healed. My doctor thinks it’ll make rather a fetching scar.’
‘Doctors,’ Ishbel said, rolling her eyes.
‘I still have no real idea of a motive. Something to do with Guatemala, that’s for sure. But what? Who? Why?’
‘Mistaken identity?’
‘The man used my name. He wanted to check it was me.’
Ishbel frowned and fiddled with her brooch, thinking.
‘Faith came to see you at the hospital – in New York.’
‘Yes. Very good of her.’
‘Did she tell you what she was doing in America?’
‘She said she had to go to a big meeting at Langley. CIA, MI6, brainstorming sort of thing.’
‘There was no such meeting scheduled.’
Gabriel said nothing for a moment, aware that this discussion had a subtext he couldn’t discern. Some internal issue in the Institute, no doubt – little power shifts under way, Ishbel taking advantage of Faith’s absence. He didn’t want to know.
‘Perhaps I got it wrong,’ he said. ‘I was pretty woozy most of the time. Pumped full of painkillers.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe it was a personal matter. Maybe she was visiting friends.’
‘Yes, probably something like that,’ Ishbel said. ‘Did she mention any names?’
‘Not that I recall,’ Gabriel said, sipping at his sherry. Sherry from Jerez, he thought, remembering his brief visit there.
‘Ever been to Jerez?’ he said, keen to change the subject.
‘Yes, I have, actually, several times,’ Ishbel said. ‘Frank Sartorius was your CIA contact in Guatemala City.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you come across a CIA agent called Austin Belhaven?’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Faith didn’t mention his name?’
‘No.’
‘Hmmm …’ Ishbel murmured to herself and fiddled with her brooch again. Annoying habit, Gabriel thought.
‘Might I smoke a cigarette?’ he asked, the sherry stimulating his need for nicotine.
‘I’d prefer if you didn’t,’ she said. ‘Apologies. I don’t smoke in the office.’
‘Right. Of course.’
She stood up, seeming slightly irritated, Gabriel thought; as if she hadn’t received any of the answers she was expecting, clearly signalling that the meeting was now over.
‘Very good to see you looking so well, Gabriel, after your ordeal. Thank you for everything.’
She saw him to the door and out into the street.
‘Off back to Sussex?’
‘Going to see a lawyer,’ he said. ‘Bit of legal trouble in my other life.’
‘Oh, yes. You told me about it.’ She smiled. ‘My offer still stands, if you want to take it up. The way of least resistance.’
‘Thanks, but I think we’ll scare him off. He’s just an old fool trying to extort money.’
‘How is Aldous?’ John Saxonbridge asked.
‘Very well,’ Gabriel said. ‘Struggling to cope with being a retired art dealer but making a go of it.’
‘Send him my best. Tell him I’ll invite him to lunch at the Garrick. He always liked that.’
John Saxonbridge was the rapacious lawyer Aldous had recommended. He was immensely tall – six foot six – with a skewed broken nose. His suit and his shirt were clearly bespoke, his tie was discreetly banded with a little undiscernible motif on it. He had a deep, plummy voice and pronounced the word ‘off’ as ‘awf’. What had Aldous said? ‘He’ll jump down your throat and eat your liver.’ He didn’t look or sound like that kind of person to Gabriel but maybe, he reflected, it was a very clever disguise. The patrician smiler with the sharp, concealed, deadly knife.
They were sitting in his dark, dusty office on Chancery Lane. Dying spider plants lined the windowsill. On the walls were framed portrait photographs of the Queen, Winston Churchill and a much-decorated senior officer – a colonel or a general – whom Gabriel didn’t recognize. Aldous had said John Saxonbridge had had a ‘good war’, whatever that meant.
A butler figure in a morning suit brought tea and biscuits on a silver tray. Once the tea was served, Gabriel told Saxonbridge all about the Applegate plagiarism claim.
‘Applegate? I know that name,’ Saxonbridge said. ‘I think I’ve even read some of his books. I thought he was dead.’
‘Very much alive, alas.’
‘Have you read any of his books?’
‘Yes. All of them. I’m a huge admirer – he was a massive influence on me.’ Gabriel shrugged. ‘I’ve even written articles about him – but I didn’t steal from his book.’
‘Yes,’ Saxonbridge said, pulling strongly at his nose as if he was trying to force it back into its original shape. ‘Interesting. I think the first step is a truly ferocious “Cease and Desist” letter. If that doesn’t work we can counter-sue, for ridiculous damages. Have you a compliant doctor who could testify to the mental wear and tear this absurd and harmful claim is having on you?’
‘Yes, and I’ve a psychoanalyst, as well.’
‘Even better.’ He paused. ‘Do we know where Applegate is living?’
‘I can find out,’ Gabriel said. He’d ask Inigo.
‘I’ll have the letter served by a bailiff – that adds to the general terrifying heft of our response.’
Saxonbridge made some notes and they chatted about Aldous and the old friendship between the men. After precisely an hour Saxonbridge ended the meeting and showed him out.
‘Very glad to be of help, Gabriel, but did Aldous happen to tell you I’m extremely expensive?’
‘Yes. “Eye-watering” was his assessment. But don’t worry – I’m in funds. Just delivering my new book.’ They shook hands.
‘We’ll well and truly fuck up Applegate for you, don’t worry.’
Gabriel felt reassured by the casual expletive. Saxonbridge was going to dine on Applegate’s liver. Serve him right.
