Читать книгу The Golden Horns - John Burke - Страница 4

CHAPTER TWO

There were five of them at dinner. Conversation flickered for a few moments and then began to burn steadily. They prodded cosy formalities towards the reassuring flame.

“Such a privilege,” Birgitte was saying, “to have a celebrated music critic at our table.”

Her eyes narrowed in a little grimace that he well remembered. Once it had been an intimate communication between them, a silly twitch of supposed affection. Now he found it distasteful.

It was wrong that she should be capable of turning it on again so readily. The two of them had parted, and would never come together again. She had always talked a great deal about marrying some rich man and apparently she had succeeded.

“After the adventurous life you once led,” said Henning Holtesen, “it must be a great change to write about music. After the excitement—”

“Music is very exciting,” said Martin, “exciting enough for me, anyway.”

He looked across the table at Eiler who smiled heartily back at him.

Martin had never liked or trusted Eiler. Now he seemed larger and more broad across the shoulders than ever. One could see him as the descendant of the old sea raiders, with his massive head and those great hands. The only resemblance between himself and his sister Birgitte was in their hair: but where his was streaked with sandy hue, hers was a rich auburn.

And if it was surprising that Birgitte should be Eiler’s sister, it was even more surprising that the other member of the group should be his daughter.

Inge Nielsen was, oddly, more like Henning Holtesen. She was fair and had severe, well-defined features—the living image of the cold clarity and determination of her Nordic race. She said little. She was quiet and reserved, rather like a grave, attentive child, but with the face and body of a beautiful young woman.

From time to time Martin glanced at her. He could not account for the wry sadness in her eyes. It made him uneasy.

There was something wrong in this house—something wrong with all these people. He was sorry he had come.

Of course, Birgitte was behind the invitation. She must have seen his name in one of the papers where visiting journalists and musicians were mentioned, and suggested to her husband that the invitation should be issued. A typical Dane, Henning Haltesen would set great store by the hospitable formalities of his country, and would readily have fallen in with his wife’s wishes.

It was so like her, thought Martin. He and she had parted, and it had been definitely the end…but now she was curious to see him again.

It was nothing more than curiosity: and he didn’t want it to be. Anyway, they would not be alone together at any time.

That was where he was wrong.

As they were preparing to leave for the Royal Theatre, Eiler began to talk earnestly to Henning Holtesen, and the two of them moved away down a corridor towards the back of the house. Inge had gone upstairs, and Martin found himself with Birgitte.

She said; “Will you do something for me?”

Her voice was hushed and urgent.

Taken by surprise, he turned to her. She was very close. The musky temptation of her perfume drifted about him, and he looked down on the creamy perfection of those shoulders on which his hands had rested so often—so long ago, it seemed.

She laid her hand on his arm as her husband had done when Martin arrived; hut there was vitality in her slim fingers.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“I can’t tell you now. We must have a talk tomorrow. Soon. I want you to take something out of the country for me.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Those days are over. I don’t go in for that sort of thing any more.”

“Not on a large scale, perhaps, but—”

“Not at all,” he said.

“There’s nobody else I can ask.”

The light glowed redly in her hair. Her lithe body was tense. He was aware of every taut, imploring line of it.

“For old times’ sake?” she said. The words sounded queer; their sentimentality, touched by her faint accent, was so inappropriate.

Martin said: “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I don’t want any part in it.”

“It will be worth your while.”

“No.”

“Martin…anything you ask. I made a mistake. I know it now. I should never have married Henning. When this…this job is done, I shall leave him. Would you like me to come to England? Would you, Martin? When you have done this for me, shall I come to you?”

“I’m not going to do it,” said Martin coldly.

“We must talk about it. You’ve got to listen. Martin, you must help me, and then….”

Her voice faltered and died away. She looked past Martin and up the stairs.

Martin turned.

Inge was coming down. She was pale, remote, and exquisite—and still there was that disturbing, haunted look in her ice-blue eyes.

“Are you all ready?” she asked distantly.

She was young and enchanting, but not happy; and she should have been eager, happy and impulsive.

Birgitte had moved away from Martin, her lips set in a petulant line.

Curiosity plucked at his mind. What was it she wanted him to smuggle out of the country for her? She must have other friends, other contacts, who would risk taking small things out on a business or holiday trip. For her to appeal to him with such urgency meant that something big was involved.

But it was better for him not to know.

He did not want to know.

“Shall we go?”

Hollesen had returned. Eiler stood beside him, towering over him. Martin noticed the briefest flicker of a glance exchanged by Eiler and Birgitte. He saw the faint shake of Birgitte’s head.

As they went down to the car Birgitte brushed against him.

“You will see me tomorrow?” she whispered. “We must talk more.”

“No,” said Mark bluntly.

She had no further opportunities for argument.

At the Royal Theatre they separated, Mark going to the Press seat reserved for him. During the interval he looked around, and saw the auburn glow of Birgitte’s head beside the fair purity of Inge’s.

Although he could not see Inge’s expression, he knew what it must be like. Her face haunted him: when the curtain went up again, it came between him and the ballet dancers.

At the end of the performance the party waited for him in the foyer.

Lights sparkled and winked across Kongens Nytorv, and, on the top of the theatre four censers burned brightly up into the night. There was a hubbub of voices—a clash and confusion of languages. Ballet critics gesticulated with long, white hands, and slim, proud women caught the arms of broad-shouldered men and walked across to where candles glowed beneath a restaurant awning.

Henning Holtesen said: “And now you must join us in—”

“Please, no,” said Martin abruptly. “It is most kind of you, but I have promised to meet one or two colleagues to discuss the performance.”

He saw Birgitte moving closer, trying to catch his attention.

“I quite understand,” said Holtesen. He held out his hand.

They shook hands, and Martin said; “Tak for aften.”

“Velbekommen.”

Birgitte’s hand closed tightly on his. Her eyes were aflame with a light as angry as the smoky flames above the theatre.

Then Eiler, with his mouth set hard. And Inge….

He looked into the depths of those incredible blue eves, and, for a moment thought he detected the trace of a wondering smile there. Then it was gone.

He walked away without looking back, and did not speak to Birgitte again. Once, a week later, they nodded to one another at a reception, which Martin was attending, but that was all.

She had, he noticed, fastened her claws on another man—a young impressionable Englishman.

Mark knew the youngster slightly.

He was Sean Clifford, a member of the Cockaigne Ensemble, a group of London musicians who were giving n series of recitals here during the Festival.

They were specialists in old, unfamiliar music, which they played on the original instruments. Sometimes, the results were interesting; sometimes the noise was indescribable. But there was a rage for this sort of archaic reconstruction, and the ensemble was flourishing.

It seemed unlikely that Birgitte was interested in the eccentric works of minor composers whose names had been almost forgotten. But young Clifford, with his shy, brown eyes and his boyishly greedy mouth, presumably had an appeal of his own to her.

Martin was not sure whether to be glad or sorry for the young man. He knew the passion of which Birgitte was capable, and the exultation she could arouse in a man’s heart.

But he knew also what her contempt and bitterness could be like.

He hoped Sean Clifford would come out of it alive!

At any rate, it was a relief. Whatever plans Birgitte might have had regarding himself, she had abandoned them now. Her time was occupied with this new, presentable young man.

Martin did not imagine she would try to enlist Clifford’s aid, in any smuggling venture: he was the wrong kind for that sort of thing. He was merely the plaything for an idle hour.

Just as I used to be, he thought grimly: just as I would have been again if she’d had her way.

The days passed swiftly.

His world was filled with music. He listened to music, talked about music, and wrote about music—wrote articles, sent cables, and made notes for future use.

There were receptions, meetings, cocktail parties, late suppers that went on for hours until there were the intimations of dawn beyond the copper spires of the city….

And then, at last, the Festival was ended and he was on his way home.

* * * *

The Cockaigne Ensemble was on the boat with Martin. Sean Clifford nodded to him as they cast off, and in the bar during the course of the evening he edged over and spoke.

“Wonderful place, Copenhagen.” His face was strangely restless—almost apprehensive, thought Martin doubtfully.

“Wonderful,” he dutifully agreed.

“I’m surprised your editor didn’t send you by air. You rich critics….”

Clifford was brashly aggressive. He seemed as though he could not stop talking.

Or as though he wanted to appear at his ease, and had to stick close to someone—not one of his fellow musicians, but someone who would calm him down somehow.

Martin said: “I don’t like travelling by air.”

“I’m all in favour of it myself,” Clifford chattered on. “Bobbing up and down on the sea for hours, after that long train journey—and then another train journey at the other end... Liverpool Street of all depressing places…instead of taking a couple of hours for the whole trip.”

Martin remembered the plane sinking lower over Jutland. He felt the rush of wind, the drop into silence, and the tug of the parachute opening. Danish soil rushed up to meet him…

He said: “I like to forget about aeroplanes. I had enough of them during the war.”

“For myself,”—there was no stopping Clifford—“I’d have been on the plane this morning if it weren’t for all the luggage we have to carry. All our instruments, you know.” He laughed unsteadily. “Lot of old scrap-iron.”

“Well,” Martin shrugged, “if you will play such eccentric old things, you’ve only yourselves to blame.”

He was glad to get away from young Clifford—glad when they reached Liverpool Street the following day, and glad as the taxi whirled him away from the station.

He let himself into his flat and pushed his two heavy cases into a corner of the small entrance hall. First things first: a drink and a cigarette, and a sprawl in his favourite chair.

He was just lowering himself gratefully into its cushioned depths when the doorbell buzzed softly.

Martin sighed. For a moment he considered ignoring it; but a doorbell, like a telephone bell, was a challenge he could never brush aside. He went to the door and opened it.

There was nobody there. Ahead of him was the stairwell, to his right the lift doors.

He emerged from the flat to glance along towards the lifts...and was slashed savagely across the back of the head by something hard—something that drove a surge of pain into his head, exploded a blaze of light before his eyes, and then thrust him down into a reeling, tumultuous darkness.