“What’s the trouble?”
She made no answer, but her hand clung to mine tightly as though human contact now was the one thing she needed desperately.
“Don’t think about Spiegel,” I said.
“It’s not Spiegel....” I heard her force her voice to be normal.
“What then? That’s if you want to talk.”
“I don’t know....”
I felt that I was holding her hand across a great pit of loneliness.
“Sometimes it’s better ... to talk, I mean. Maybe you never have.”
“It was the gun.... The noise, and seeing him there. Everything came back. A long time ago I said I would never let it come back.... But out there, it did....”
“You loved him?”
“Yes.... Oh, God, yes. But it was never any good.... No, no, that’s wrong. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes I could tell myself, fool myself, that it would go on being good. But it never lasted. It’s a most terrible thing to hate and love. Sometimes I didn’t even know what I was feeling. He brought other women into the house, kept them there....”
“You needn’t tell me about that. I read about it.”
“I knew you had. You’ve been nice and kind.... Maybe, it was just that. When people are like that, it brings it back. And then today ... the sudden noise of the gun in my ears....” She moved and her voice was suddenly higher, echoing fiercely in the dark room, “I want to forget.... I don’t want the coldness, the loneliness any longer.... Oh, God, why can’t it be taken from me...?”
Maybe she moved, maybe I moved, maybe the earth just gave a compassionate lurch, but she was cradled in my arms and then holding on to me. I put my lips down and kissed her gently on the brow and then she put up her lips and kissed me, and I knew that it was not me she was kissing, not anyone. Her body, pressed against mine, trembled with an eagerness for warmth and comfort. I held her tightly to me, and talked to her gently, kissed her, and cursed the past, willing it to be exorcized from her, knowing it would be easy to give false comfort, knowing that this was not the moment. That was the way I saw it, and I knew that when the morning came that would be the way she would see it. This was a night for ghosts, a night for shriving.... I held her in my arms and I talked to her and the trembling faded, the fierceness died, and I could feel her tears against my cheek. I went on holding her until she slept.
We made Dubrovnik about half-past seven that morning and took a taxi up over the hill from Gruz and down to the end of the tramlines by the Porto Ploce where were the tourist offices of Atlas. I left Vérité to deal with the question of getting an air booking, and said that I was going into town to have a shave and, maybe, a last taste of oysters before I left. I promised to meet her for coffee in an hour at the Gradska Kafana.
I left her and went into the nearby Excelsior Hotel. On the way back in the boat I’d been thinking about the whip which I’d seen in Madame Vadarci’s room. It meant something to me, something to do with politics. I was curious, too, about Lancing’s reference to the “A. Party pamphlet”. I got through to Wilkins and unloaded my troubles on to her, suggesting that a visit to the publishers of Stigmata might help, and telling her to express anything she found to my Paris hotel.
After that I headed straight for Michael Oglu’s place, hoping that he would have a razor I could borrow and knowing that I would have no time for oysters.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SLIDE OUT FROM UNDER
It was a little house built close up against the city wall on the north side of the town where the ground rises. From the wide windows of Oglu’s studio I could look down across the red tiled roofs and the little vine and creeper bowered balconies to the sea.
The studio was an absolute litter of junk ... paintings, canvases, old frames, a carpenter’s bench with not a clear inch on it, and a long divan on which a cat had scratched the stuffing from the upholstery to make a nest for a litter of kittens which had been born that morning. The range of colouring in the eight small kittens would have given Mendel something to think about.
Oglu fussed around with the cat and kittens while I gave him a quick run down on the events at Melita. He kept nodding and making encouraging noises at the cat to drink milk from a saucer. But the moment I had finished he stood up and said, “Let’s see the stuff.” He put out a hand and swept the top of a small table free of junk.
I put on the table all the stuff I had received from Lancing, except the mounted colour slide. In my report to Oglu I had made no mention of the slide or of Lancing’s comment on it. So far I’d just been beagling along, following a trail made only too obvious. Nobody was trusting me with anything. Now, for the first time, I was in on my own and my pride – or a sound commercial instinct – told me I’d do well to keep a hidden bargaining counter.
Oglu went through it all, his lean Red Indian face suddenly grave and thoughtful. It was a good face and he looked like
