For the Good of the State

except the Arabs and the Jews themselves, that is—and they don’t matter…’ He bit his lip.

‘But you’re a Soviet specialist—aren’t you?’

‘Supposedly… sometimes.’ Audley bridled slightly.

‘Like now?’

Audley chewed at his lip, as though he didn’t like its taste. ‘In so far as it’s any of your business—yes… But nothing contentious…

Interesting, maybe— bloody fascinating, if you like—’ But then he shook his head decisively ‘—only I don’t see how it could be them

—not this time… if ever.’

Tom felt reality slipping again. ‘You’re sacrosanct, are you?’

‘What?’ Audley focused on him as though he hadn’t heard.

‘Where I come from they aren’t above hitting people, David.’

Audley stared at him for a moment. ‘But you aren’t where you come from. And I’m not “people”, Tom.’ Now Audley was focusing exactly on him. ‘No, don’t get me wrong, my lad: no one’s sacrosanct, I agree… But at my level, over here and over there, there are a few unwritten rules, Tom.’

‘What rules?’

‘ What rules?’ The brutal look returned. ‘In theory the rules exist at two levels—at least, according to Jack Butler, who’s a great man for rules—“Rules of Engagement”, as he puts it—okay?’ But then he read Tom’s face. ‘You’re used to terrorists, boy—uncontrolled ones and Soviet-controlled ones— I know! But that’s not what I’m Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State talking about now.’

‘So what are you talking about?’ The fact that Audley knew the score made it more confusing. ‘What two levels?’

‘Okay!’ Audley nodded. ‘There’s the gentlemanly level— which Jack truly understands. Which is like Wellington at Waterloo, when this artillery officer comes up to him, and says he’s got a clear view of Napoleon and his staff, and a battery pointing in that direction, and he’s ready to fire. But the Duke says “No! no! I’ll not allow it. It is not the business of commanders to be firing on each other.” Okay?’

Tom felt he had to argue. ‘But what about us trying to hit Rommel in North Africa—the Keyes commando raid? And the Americans killing Yamamoto with that aerial ambush, after they’d broken the Japanese naval code?’

‘That was different.’ Audley waved a vague hand as he peered out of one of his own windows, across the pacific sheep. ‘That was hot war, not cold war.’

‘Wasn’t Waterloo hot war?’ That had been the second time the man had mentioned the Battle of Waterloo, which fitted neither what Harvey had said about him nor Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society.

The hand waved again. “That wasn’t disgusting twentieth-century war—it was gentlemanly. . .‘Audley gave him a cautious sidelong look ’… at least, it was on Wellington’s side, anyway—if you are about to throw Sous-Officier Cantillon at me, eh? But then Bonaparte was no gentleman— he was just a National Socialist Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State born a century too late—‘ The sidelong look suddenly became sardonic’—although I suppose you, of all people, wouldn’t admit that, eh?‘

Bloody hell! thought Tom: what was ‘ You, of all people’ meant to mean? ‘Who?’ And this wasn’t either the time or the place for such games. ‘Why— who! ’

‘Didn’t Bonaparte pretend to be nice to the Poles? Apart from fathering a child on Marie Walewska?’ Audley circled round him, to take a view of the terrace on his own account. ‘Count Walewski

—Napoleon III’s ambassador in London, to Queen Victoria, wasn’t he?’ He concentrated on the terrace for an instant. ‘All clear this side.’

The conversation was taking an unreal and tangential turn, reminding Tom of his earlier passage of words with the elfin child on the forecourt. But then the wife had warned him that they were like each other; and everything that had happened here had been unreal—even the house itself was unreal, and this sudden unseasonable outburst of sunshine and blue sky, when he’d left grey clouds and rain in the real world.

‘Hadn’t you better keep an eye on the front?’ Audley chided him gently. ‘The police will come up the drive, like Christians. But they’ll be scared, so I wouldn’t wish not to welcome them—you understand?’

Audley was quite matter-of-fact, but somehow that only made it worse, projecting Tom’s memory back out-of- reason into his own childhood, when Mamusia, beautiful and sweet-smelling, had read him to sleep with some silly story about the Elf-King and his Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State daughter, who lived Under the Hill, half in their world, and half in our world, where the flowers were brighter but the dangers were more dangerous… and this was under a hill, or nearly, and there was an equivocal daughter—and an even more equivocal father, who’d known Mamusia herself, too… and where danger was undeniably more dangerous than it ought to be on a quiet afternoon in England!

‘Yes.’ He pretended to scan the empty forecourt again. The trick in Mamusia’s story was to hold on to something from his own world: the boy in the story had held on to his penknife: all he had to feel the shape of in his coat-pocket was the little wallet with his credit-cards in it; but then nothing could be more real world than credit-cards, after all. ‘Who the hell is—or was—“Sous-Officier…

Cantillon”—?’

‘Cantillon?’ Audley seemed to expect him to know who the man was. ‘Why—he was the Napoleonic veteran who tried to assassinate Wellington in Paris in 1814, dear boy.’ He paused interrogatively. ‘And the unspeakable Bonaparte left the fellow 10,000 francs in his will— not the sort of thing a gentleman would do, as I said—did your dear mother never tell you that story, Tom?’

‘My mother?’

Audley gazed at him for a moment, reflectively. ‘No, I can see that she didn’t—perhaps understandably, in the