The London Embassy Read online

  ‘He knew he had to get his act together. He decided to pose as a tourist. He would say that he was just passing through and that, seeing as how this fellow and he had the same unusual name, would he be interested in meeting for a drink? Completely innocent, see? Very casual.

  ‘He phoned the number and got no answer. He kept trying. One day he got a funny noise – not a busy signal, but something that sounded like a bumblebee. He phoned the operator and was told that the line had been disconnected.

  ‘A few weeks went by. He considered writing a letter. Do tourists passing through London write letters to people in London? Baldwick didn’t think so. He stuck to the casual approach. He called again. It rang this time. It was the other Baldwick! The guy had a funny accent – probably upper class, he thought. I mean, upper-class accents are really strange, hardly English at all, German or “mew-mew” or a bad case of adenoids. Half these so-called aristocrats sound like they have sinus trouble.

  ‘Baldwick barely understood his namesake. This pleased him – the guy was genuine! He did his routine. Just passing through. Same name. Wonder if you’d care for a drink? The guy was a little leery – wouldn’t you be? – but it worked. They agreed to meet. Now, here’s the interesting part. Being new to London, Baldwick didn’t know where to meet him. The man didn’t invite him to his house – English people never do until they’ve known you about ten years. So our Baldwick says, “Let’s meet in Piccadilly Circus.”

  ‘Would a New Yorker say, “I’ll meet you in Times Square”? You know he wouldn’t, but Baldwick had every hope of actually finding this guy in Piccadilly Circus in the middle of June. “By the fountain,” he said. “Six o’clock.”

  ‘Naturally, it didn’t work. There were hundreds of people there. Baldwick paced up and down for an hour and then went home. Later, he called the guy. “Why weren’t you there?” he says. The other man swore he had been there, but how could he find him with a thousand people milling around?

  “‘What about a quieter place?” our Baldwick says. “What about a pub?” The other guy says okay and the place they fixed on was the Bunch of Grapes in Knightsbridge. Baldwick said he was staying at a hotel nearby. Actually he had an apartment near there, in Egerton Gardens, but he didn’t want the guy to know.

  ‘The night they agreed to meet, there was something doing here in Hyde Park – one of those free-for-all races. And the Bunch of Grapes, which usually wasn’t very busy, was packed with people. And yet Baldwick had arrived early. He sat by the main door in the saloon bar and watched every person come in. Every single one. He stared at each one, but no one came up to him and said, “Mr Baldwick – my name is Baldwick, too!” He sat there until closing time. He got pretty drunk, because by now he figured the other guy had his number – suspected him of trying to horn in on the family fortune. Here’s this lousy American claiming to be a member of this great English family – castle, swords, paintings, suits of armor, et cetera. Before he left the Grapes he looked into the public bar, stared in each man’s face. No takers. He went home.

  ‘The next day he called the guy again. The guy was furious and so was he. Each accused the other of having let him down; each one said it was a pretty rotten trick, a waste of time, and what did he think he was trying to pull? They argued for a while, and then it came out. Our Baldwick said he had been in the saloon bar, the other guy had spent the whole evening in the public bar. “I always use the public bar,” the guy says.

  ‘Our Baldwick didn’t know the difference. If he had, he might have left it there. He might have hung up and stopped looking for his long-lost relatives. He might have just quietly sized the whole thing up and stopped chasing around for his namesake. I’ll tell you one thing – if he had stopped looking then, he would have died a happy man. Not fulfilled, but happy. Aren’t people better off with an illusion? The truth is pretty awful sometimes, and illusions can make a nice pillow.

  ‘Baldwick told him he had looked into the public bar, but he admitted that by then he had been in a hurry. The other guy started arguing again. Our Baldwick said he had to leave London in a few days and that he would probably never be back. It was now or never. “And I’ve got a little present for you.” He had to say that. Things were getting a little spooky.

  ‘The other Baldwick cheered up. But still he did not offer our man an invitation to drop in for tea. Somehow, this made our man imagine an even greater house, an even grander estate, even shinier armor, and a fat legacy. He says, “Do you know the Albert Memorial?”

  ‘The other guy says, “No.” No!

  ‘Our Baldwick still isn’t suspicious. “It’s near the Albert Hall,” he says. “Across the street.”

  “‘Oh, I went to a boxing match there once,” the guy says. They actually have boxing matches in that beautiful building. It’s a kind of bullring! Incongruous, isn’t it? But listen, here is our man, Baldwick, explaining to the Londoner where the Albert Memorial is, and if that’s not incongruous I don’t know what is.

  “‘I’ll meet you on the top platform of the Albert Memorial at exactly two o’clock tomorrow,” our man says. “We’ll be the only people there. It’s foolproof. And then I can give you the present I mentioned.”

  ‘It was right here,’ Jeeps said.

  We were on the steps of the Albert Memorial – he had walked as he told the story – and now it was just before two o’clock. I wondered whether Jeeps had planned all this – rehearsed the story, dramatized it for my benefit, so that it was the right place and time. We were alone at the monument. The traffic flowed toward Kensington Gore and streamed through the park.

  Jeeps said, ‘Baldwick came from down there,’ and pointed past the Albert Hall. ‘He walked to one of those archways and waited until about one minute to two. At exactly two, he saw a guy running across the road, dodging cars, coming lickety-split. Up the walkway, up all these steps, to here –’

  Jeeps had been walking up the stairs. He stopped; he stood still; he squinted at the path.

  I said, ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Our Baldwick almost cried. He stayed right where he was, over there at the Albert Hall. I mentioned that he was a snob. He was a roaring snob. The kind you want to punch in the face. But now all his dreams about his old family and his name –’

  ‘Was the other guy wearing old clothes?’

  ‘No, he was fairly well dressed – even carried an umbrella.’ Jeeps had an umbrella. He tucked it under his arm and went on squinting. ‘He was completely respectable. So that wasn’t the matter. That wasn’t why our Baldwick turned away and hid behind a pillar and went home to his wife.’

  ‘He went home?’ I said. ‘He didn’t talk to this guy, after all that trouble?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I don’t understand why, Erroll. They could have been related!’

  ‘Look. Stand down there a little, and look.’

  I moved down the stairs and did so.

  ‘What our Baldwick saw, you see now. The other guy was right here, at just this time of day. Get it?’

  ‘His namesake was where you are now,’ I said.

  ‘Right. But that’s all they had in common, that funny name. The rest was what you see. Look! If your name was Jeeps would you think you were related to me?’

  He began laughing very hard in a mocking way, as if jeering at me for not having guessed sooner about Baldwick’s namesake. His laughter was humorless. It was merely a harsh noise, challenging me to look at his black face.

  An English Unofficial Rose

  The fashion in London that year was rags – expensive ones, but rags all the same. Women wore torn blouses and patched jeans, and their shoes were painted to make them looked scuffed and wrongly paired. Their hair was cut in a raggedy way – front hanks of it dyed pink and green and bright orange and blue. They wore plastic badges and safety pins, and they called themselves punks. The idea was for them to seem threadbare. It was a popular look, but it was not easy to achieve. It took imagination, and time, and a great deal
of money for these spoiled wealthy girls to appear down and out.

  But Sophie Graveney wore a smooth blouse of light silk the texture of skin, and a close-fitting skirt slit all the way to her hip, and steeply pitched spike-heeled shoes. The weather was uncertain, but most days were warm enough for a jacket. Sophie’s was bottle-green velvet, with two gold clasps where there might have been buttons. She said she could not bear to be mistaken for someone poor, and was willing to risk being called unfashionable for her rich clothes. Styles change, but beauty is never out of fashion – I told her that. And no one expected this rag business and colored hair to last very long. People stared at Sophie. She was no punk. Horton, my boss at the London Embassy, had called her ‘an English rose.’

  I find it impossible to see a well-dressed woman without thinking that she is calling attention to her charms. Isn’t that lady with the plunging neckline and that coin slot between her squeezed breasts – isn’t she declaring an interest? Certainly that attractive woman in the tight skirt is making a general promise. At the same time, such women are betraying a certain self-love. Narcissism is necessary to that kind of beauty. It is the aspect that maddens lovers, because it is unreachable. Sophie’s self-possession was a kind of inaccessible narcissism. In her beauty there was both effort and ease. Her hair had been softly curled, her eyes and mouth delicately painted, but beneath her make-up and under her lovely clothes was a tall strong girl in the full bloom of thirty, who jogged four miles before breakfast. She was healthy; she was reliable; she dressed as if she was trying to please me. I was flattered, and grateful. So far, I had no friends in London who weren’t connected with the Embassy. I liked the promises of her clothes. I needed someone like Sophie.

  After a month here I had a routine. It was a bachelor’s consolation – my job, my office, my hotel room – and I hated it. It made everything serious and purposeful, and I suppose I began to look like one of those supersolemn diplomats, all shadows and monosyllables, who carry out secret missions against treacherous patriots in the (believe me) laughably false plots of political thrillers. It seemed pointless, this austerity, and I did not believe in my own efficiency. I wanted to break free of it, to prove to myself that my job did not matter that much. I hated the implied timidity, the repetition, the lack of surprise in this routine. In a poor country – a hardship post – I could have justified these dull days by telling myself that I was making a necessary sacrifice. It is some comfort, when one is braving tedium, to know that one is setting a good example. But in London I wanted to live a little. I knew I was missing something.

  No longer: Sophie and I were dining at Le Gavroche, having just seen a spirited Hamlet at the Royal Court. She smiled at me from across the table. There was a flicker of light in her eyes, a willingness to agree, good humor, a scent of jasmine on her shoulders, and a certain pressure of her fingers on my hand that offered hope and a promise of mildly rowdy sex. I was happy.

  She talked the whole time, which was fine with me. By habit and inclination I never discussed my work with anyone outside the Embassy. I listened gladly to everything she said; I was grateful that I did not have to ask my ignorant questions about London. And yet, though she talked mostly about herself, she revealed very little. She told me her plans – she wanted to travel, see Brazil (‘again’) – she had friends in Hong Kong and New York. She was vague about what she was doing at the moment. She seemed surprised and a little annoyed that I should ask.

  “‘What do you do for a living?’” Her accent was the adenoidsand-chewing-gum American drawl that the British put on when they are feeling particularly skittish, which, thank God, is seldom. She went on, ‘It’s not a question people ask in England.’

  ‘It wasn’t my question. I didn’t say, “What do you do for a living?” I said, “What are you doing at the moment?”’

  ‘I know what you meant, and you shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘I wonder why.’

  ‘Because it’s bloody rude, that’s why,’ she said softly, and seemed pleased with herself. ‘Anyway, why should one do anything? I know plenty of people who don’t do anything at all – absolutely nothing.’

  ‘You like that, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I think there’s something really fantastic about pure idleness.’

  “‘Consider the lilies of the field,” et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘Not only that. If a person doesn’t really do anything, you have to take him for what he is rather than what he does. Your asking me what I’m doing is just a cheap way of finding out what sort of person I am. That’s cheating.’

  I said, ‘I don’t see why.’

  She shrugged and said, ‘Daddy didn’t do much, but Daddy was a gentleman. You probably think I’m a frivolous empty-headed girl who sits around the house all day varnishing her nails, waiting for parties to begin.’ She worked her tongue against her teeth and said, ‘Well, I am!’

  ‘It’s been the ruin of many a Foreign Service marriage – I mean, the wife with nothing to do but advance her husband’s career. All that stage-managing, all those tea parties, all that insincerity.’

  ‘I’d love it. I wouldn’t complain. My headmistress used to say “Find a husband who’ll give you a beautiful kitchen, and lovely flowers to pick, and lots of expensive silver to polish.” That sort of thing’s not fashionable now, is it? But I don’t care. I like luxury.’

  And although this was only the second time I had seen her, I began seriously to calculate the chances of my marrying her. She was glamorous and intelligent; she was good company. Men stared at her. She had taste, and she was confident enough in her taste so that she would never be a slave to fashion.

  I was turning these things over in my mind when she said, ‘What do I do? A bit of modeling, a little television, some lunchtime theater. You probably think it’s all a waste of time.’

  ‘You’re an actress,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Sophie said, ‘I just do a little acting. It’s not what you’d call a career. Everyone criticizes me for not being ambitious. Crikey, of course I spend time, but I don’t waste time – are you wasting time if you’re enjoying yourself?’ She did not wait for my reply. She said, ‘I’m enjoying myself right now.’

  ‘Shall we do this again sometime?’

  ‘Again and again,’ she said slowly, in a kind of heated contentment. ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I really would.’

  She reached over and touched my face, brushed the aroma of jasmine on my cheek – it was the most intimate, the most disarming gesture – and said, ‘It’s getting late –’

  I kissed her in the taxi going back to her house. She did not push me away. But after a few minutes she lifted her head.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘This is Prince of Wales Drive,’ she said. ‘Aren’t those mansion blocks fantastic?’ She kissed me again, then she took my arm and said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to live there?’

  They were not my idea of mansions, but I found myself agreeing with her: yes, I said, and looked through the taxi window at the balconies. It was as if we were choosing a location for a love nest. Sophie squeezed my arm and said, ‘That one’s fun.’

  I saw dark windows.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be super to live here?’ she said. And it seemed as if she were speaking for both of us.

  I said, ‘It sure would.’

  ‘Are you looking for a place to rent? Your hotel must be rather cramped.’

  ‘I’m moving the first chance I get. I’m going to buy a place – renting is pointless, and anyway I’ve got two years’ accumulated hardship allowance to spend.’

  She kissed me then, and we were still kissing as the taxi sped on, turned into a side street, and came to rest on Albert Bridge Road in front of a tall terrace of narrow houses. I paid for the taxi, then walked with her to the front gate.

  She said, ‘Your taxi’s driving away.’

  ‘I’ve paid him. I told him to go.’

  ‘That was silly. You�
��ll never get another one around here – and the buses have stopped running.’

  I said, ‘Then I’ll walk,’ and clung to her hand, ‘although I don’t want to.’

  ‘It’s not far to your hotel.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant I’d rather stay here with you.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re sweet.’

  The English are frugal. They can even economize on words. Sophie gave nothing away. She planted a rather perfunctory kiss on my cheek, and when I tried to embrace her she eased out of my grasp and said comically, ‘Do you mind?’ and took out her door key.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I must get some sleep. I have a big day tomorrow – a screening – and I have to be up at the crack of dawn.’ She gave me another brisk kiss and said lightly, ‘Otherwise I’d invite you in.’

  I said, ‘I want to see you again soon.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

  I was half in love with her by then, and in that mood – half-true, half-false – I strolled home whistling, congratulating myself on my good luck. London is kind to lovers – it offers them privacy and quiet nights and spectacles. Albert Bridge was alight. In the daytime it is a classic bridge, but at night all its thousands of yellow light bulbs and its freshly painted curves give it the look of a circus midway suspended in the sky. The lights on its great sweeps are very cheering at midnight over the empty river.

  The next day I wanted to call her, but a long meeting with Scaduto held me up. It was eight o’clock before I left the office. Scaduto furiously preened himself in the elevator mirror as we descended to Grosvenor Square. He said he had called his wife to tell her he’d be late. She had screamed at him.