‘Hello — Hudson? This is Ingleby.’
‘You still here?’
‘I can’t get out — the airport’s closed.’
‘Oh yeah, I heard.’
‘Can you give me the latest official casualty figures from the Casino de la Plage?’
There was a pause. ‘A.F.P. put over between thirty-eight and forty-five. There’s nothing definite yet. What have you heard?’
Neil hesitated. If he announced that he had been an eyewitness to the disaster, he’d have the whole Press Corps up in his room in five minutes. There was nothing he could tell them except that he was about to sleep with a member of the Secret Army. He told Hudson, ‘The Arab Front put a bomb under the orchestra and blew the whole place up.’
‘That’s what I heard. By the way, are you getting out when the airport’s clear?’
Neil said nothing.
‘I heard another rumour, that’s all,’ said Hudson.
‘What did you hear?’
‘That you’d been meeting up today with some more big noises in the Secret Army.’
‘Hudson, are you jealous?’
‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘Have you got any contacts at all in this place?’
‘Listen, Ingleby, I thought I’d tried to get through your thick damned English skull —’
‘You keep your contacts, Hudson, I’ll keep mine!’ Neil slammed down the receiver. Anne-Marie stirred beside him. He lay back and lit a cigarette, picturing to himself Hudson’s nervous little face bouncing about, scrapping for information, always eager to scare his colleagues. Perhaps it was the cognac and Chablis, but he had decided he would not just tamely obey the windy advice of Messrs. Hudson and St. Leger. He remembered his rendezvous the next morning at ten o’clock at the Cintra Café and wondered what would happen if he didn’t turn up. If he did turn up, of course, he was jumping right into the fire. But the Hine was warm in his belly and the prospect of that café was not as fearful as perhaps it should have been. He still had twelve hours in which to make up his mind.
Anne-Marie stretched out along the bed and laid her hand casually, innocently, between his legs. ‘Get undressed,’ she said.
He put out his cigarette and switched off the bedside lamp. The moon was bright over the balcony. He undressed quickly and lay down beside her, and her mouth crept down his chest, over his stomach, lips fluttering against his raw skin. She said nothing; but with the dexterity of her race, a pairing of competence and delicacy, began caressing him, as he lay back and felt himself harden with her touch, watching the cubes of moonlight on the ceiling.
The telephone rang. It was London via Paris; the Fleet Street operator came on the line. Anne-Marie shifted slowly, like a smooth dark animal, her back curving away along his line of vision as he switched on the light again and settled himself ready to dictate.
Foster, the Foreign Editor, was on the line: ‘Must have been pretty frightful. Reuters say it’s the worst atrocity since the troubles began.’
‘Sounds about right,’ said Neil; ‘There are no definite figures, but I’ve heard there were more than forty dead.’
‘Reuters give forty-seven. We’ll go on that for the moment. What sort of reactions have there been?’
The connection was not good, Neil had to shout into the receiver: ‘Very quiet so far!’
‘Right, bang over everything you’ve got! And I’ve had a hundred pounds sent to the Credit Lyonnais to keep you going. Are you all right otherwise?’
‘I’m all right!’ Neil yelled, and Anne-Marie muttered, ‘Tu cries comme un foul’ — and went back to caressing him beautifully as Foster said, ‘Putting you over to copy!’
The memory of the afternoon became a dull emptiness. Later, with the light out, she murmured, ‘What a funny language English is! All in your nose.’ And as he splayed her arms wide across the sheet he thought guiltily of his second call to London, booked for midnight. He remembered how Caroline mewed in the dark like a kitten, and he tried to shut out her face, not asking Anne-Marie again if she loved him, but going into her savagely till she cried out and whimpered against the pillow, and later lay folded warm and wet against him, the sheet over them and the windows open, listening to the sounds beyond the balcony: the booms and sirens and the soft chatter of gunfire and grasshoppers.
CHAPTER 2
Neil sat with a black coffee and croissant, alone in the café except for the waiter wiping down the zinc bar beside the expresso machine. The time was 10.12. He had left Anne-Marie in the hotel combing out her hair in front of the balcony windows. At exactly nine o’clock her dress had been returned by the Moslem, faultlessly washed and ironed. She had not paid him.
Neil had pressed some money into his hand outside the door, and before leaving had telephoned the Dutch Legation and told them he wanted to attend Van Loon’s funeral. He had arranged to meet Anne-Marie for lunch in Le Berry restaurant at half past one. He had then left the hotel, followed the street round to the Roxy Cinema, and entered the Café Cintra.
He knew, with a sense of perverse pleasure, that in the next few minutes he would reach the point of no return. To have slept with Anne-Marie might be one thing: to deceive her in this ugly game of fratricidal strife was almost certainly fatal.
He sat over his coffee
