Choose Somebody Else Page 16

  ‘By disguising myself as Schlecht, I hoped to rescue you and kill that substitute at the same time. But obviously, now, Tibor will have picked me for a fake.’

  ‘The other guy in my photograph of Schlecht,’ I gasp. ‘It was Tibor! I knew he reminded me of someone. But what about the hair, and the beard–—’

  ‘The hair is dyed and the beard’s a fake.’

  Schlecht, who isn’t Schlecht, lets that comment about Irving who isn’t Irving sit for a while.

  ‘Is he SS?’ I ask. Fear makes my gut clench. My ancestors did not do well under those bastards.

  ‘What century are you in, Augusta? White supremacist, more likely.’

  ‘Never mind. Who are you?’ I repeat. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’

  ‘My name is Grant St Clare,’ he says, and I almost swoon at the British beauty of it.

  I half expect the little guy inside the cuckoo clock to restart his gig, but it’s as quiet as a graveyard at midnight. Only the wind makes a slight rustle, weaving itself through Grant’s silk dress shirt.

  Irving, who is not Irving but Tibor, emerges into the crisp night. He gives me a slow wink, the glow from the street lamp illuminating the sweep of his eyelashes. It becomes a toss-up: put a bullet in him, or trust him and let him shoot Grant.

  I’m saved having to make the decision by Grant’s partner. She follows Tibor out and delivers a blow to the side of his head. He goes down like a lush after a hard night’s drinking.

  ‘Thank you, Samantha,’ says Grant.

  She looks at me in a way that says she understands what it is to fall for a guy who’s no good; then she whips off the pale golden wig to reveal ordinary brown curls. She’s generous. That move makes us a little more even in the beauty stakes.

  At my feet the worm moves. I see his hand edge towards his gun. Taking my pistol from my bag I watch as its bullet paints a camellia, scarlet and silver, on his shirt-front. Samantha and Grant pull me into the car. We drive through the night and, before sun-up, reach Geneva. The fountain in the lake still tries to kiss the sky.

  ‘I’d say we have about two hours before the real Schlecht understands our state of play,’ says Grant in the pale pre-dawn. ‘There’s a wine-bar downtown where he’s known as a liberal tipper. We’ll use Augusta as bait. Schlecht knows what she looks like. And he knows that by now she should be breathing water on the Montreux side of Lac Léman. He’ll follow her out. Count on it.’

  Everything goes exactly as planned except that Schlecht ignores completely my entry into Club Cairo and continues talking to his cronies as though I don’t exist.

  ‘Great,’ says Grant when I come out solo.

  At that moment Schlecht appears, typically one step ahead.

  ‘Waiting for me?’ He couldn’t have been more polite except that he’s pointing his gun at Grant. ‘We got Irving and you got Tibor. We could call it quits and all go home.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ says Grant. ‘We want you.’

  Schlecht cocks his gun. ‘And you propose to get me, how?’

  Grant executes a leap that would have done Nijinsky proud. His foot knocks the gun from Schlecht’s hand and I catch it.

  ‘So,’ he sneers, as Grant snaps the cuffs on him in less time than it takes a padre to cross himself. ‘So, you think now I will talk?’

  Nobody replies. We’re too busy stuffing him into the back seat. At headquarters the questioning begins. Schlecht is a tough nut and it will to take more than a tap to crack him.

  The phone rings. Grant nods at me to answer it.

  ‘Josie?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Damnit, Josie, it’s me, Raymond. What are you playing at?’ I feel faint.

  ‘Give the code, please,’ I try to say, but my frontal lobe malfunctions. My larynx has lost touch with my brain. I look around wildly for Grant but he’s nowhere. All I can see are blurred outlines of…of…a Miele dishwasher, a Samsung microwave, a KitchenAid pastel-coloured food processor and Christ!—a kid sitting on fine Italia-Ceramic tiles. He’s building something with Fisher Price blocks.

  ‘Josie Dain,’ comes the voice more insistently now, ‘I’m ringing to check if everything’s ready. Is it all under control?’

  I want to tell him that we were just about to question Schlecht.

  ‘Josie,’ he says in that voice I hate, ‘you told me to ring you half an hour before we leave. Well, it’s half an hour. The boss is starving and we’re picking up his wife on the way. After we’ve had a drink or two, will dinner be ready?’

  ‘Sure, I’ve been cooking all day.’ He doesn’t need to know I’ve doctored five courses from that expensive Lebanese in Toorak Road. Paid for with legal tender from my emergency stash.

  Samantha and Grant have disappeared so completely that they might have been zapped by Captain Kirk’s laser gun, though Kirk will be greatly chagrined when I tell him he’s wiped out the wrong people.

  I push buttons on my state-of the-art Senius oven to keep the serving dishes warm, and at the same time, to catch Scotty on the Bridge. I’ll ask him to beam me up. Then I give myself a shake. Mixing sci-fi and crime? A sure-fire way to a hangover. I walk upstairs.

  Raymond is the sort of guy who makes demands, different demands from Irving and Grant. He likes to show off his house, his antique porcelain collection and me.

  When he comes home at the end of the day he likes to find his woman in the kitchen, standing over bubbling pots which promise fragrant delights. He likes to kiss her cheek and touch his lips to her neck. Resting there, he can breathe in the perfume she sprinkles over herself from that shining black bottle of Joy Parfum by Jean Patou. At $800 per ounce it is the tenth most expensive perfume in the world. Raymond keeps her liberally supplied with it, along with countless other little necessities.

  Adjusting the flow on the shower head to number three, light stream, I smooth Christian Dior Cleansing Milk over my body. And as I watch the bubbles swirl down the drain, the voice in my head makes itself audible yet again.

  ‘You take the goods, you pay the price,’ it says.

  Now I know what it means.

  MOTHS AMOUNG THE WHISPERINGS

  Part I

  Each time I read Gatsby I hope for a different ending.

  JANUARY 1972

  ZÜRICH

  We flew from Australia to Switzerland because my parents had decided that a finishing school would have a pumice-stone effect on my rougher edges. Yet as the months progressed I came to realise that many other reasons were in play.

  On the train to Montreux my father said, ‘Katie, when one person tells you you’re drunk, you can ignore it. When two people tell you, lie down.’

  This was not the first time he had shared that strange little aide memoire with me. Once it had sparkled, I’m sure, but now it was grey with overuse. He offered it up every time he wanted to impress upon me the imperative of making oneself inconspicuous. I always imagined I would need to do this in front of some mythical line of fire. In the callowness of my adolescence, I was convinced he had conjured this line out of a war he had never fought. Besides, he knew it was not in my nature to lie down. I was too entitled; and he held himself responsible for that. Thus, I managed to reach my eighteenth year with barely a glance in that aphorism’s direction.

  Still he repeated it.

  Before arriving at the school in Montreux, my father and I spent several days in Zürich: shopping, visiting art galleries and museums. Philistine that I am, I enjoyed the shopping most of all.

  And Hôtel Eden au Lac was so old and discreet; Zürich so cold. The air hurt my teeth but was as crisp and fine as the best table linen. The streets were tree-lined, their branches heavy with snow. They were the perfect backdrop to the quiet, perfumed fashion houses, particularly those gracing the Bahnhofstrasse. Scarves were piled high, silken and splendid: Christian D
ior, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Gianni Féraud. Bold crocodile bags and belts (Gucci, Vuitton, Chanel) were set against the fragile gowns of Carven and Vionnet. And only Ferragamo or Perugia could have wrought gloves and shoes from that softest Cordovan leather.

  Finally, of course, were the women who came out to serve us, their degree of obsequiousness in direct proportion to the value they assigned to my father’s silver-grey angora coat.

  Old, traditional restaurants: crystal glasses, velvet wine, glistening salmon.

  And at night—gazing at the sky in the northern hemisphere for the first time—I saw the stars, burnished and ablaze, scattered into a new kind of symmetry.

  In a powerful Up-Yours to Hitler, a great number of survivors became rag-trader success stories, some of them millionaires. In that capacity my parents came to love shopping for business and for pleasure. It was no coincidence then that here in Switzerland my father bought me countless outfits, from the very casual to the super chic. We needed an extra valise to accommodate his largesse. As I removed everything from the stores’ carrier bags, I felt like Gatsby tossing garments into the air, all gorgeous fabrics and myriad colours capturing the light.

  But then Zurich’s laughing lights were behind me, her swirling snows, her sophisticated people. I had not yet seen enough to move on so quickly.

  Here, in Montreux, at Institut Lac d’Or, I felt like a stranger. My father was having a last few words with the headmistress before he headed for home.

  ‘Don’t let her smoke,’ he said to Mme Mirielle. ‘I suspect she may have been starting to experiment just before we left.’

  Oh Dad, you don’t know the half of it.

  ‘Monsieur, we believe here that girls who have reached the age of eighteen are entitled to make such decisions for themselves. I am sure Katherine will make the right one.’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said, lowering his voice so I could not overhear his next words.

  ‘Certainly not, Monsieur!’ flashed Madame with heat to match my father’s ice. ‘I trust you understand that that sort of behaviour would be unacceptable, to say nothing of unthinkable, in this school.’

  It didn’t take a genius to surmise what his query had been. If the school were so cavalier about its rules for smoking, might he not conclude it would have equal disdain for restraint regarding sex?

  My father gave one of his enigmatic smiles. ‘Then I am easy,’ he said.

  I bade him farewell and held him hard under her stern gaze. Then I followed her outstretched finger—I noticed its tremor, but it was the last time I would feel any sympathy for her—to my room.

  FEBRUARY 1972

  I have been here a month. So many things are still strange to me, others feel as though I have always known them. The petty sadism of teachers seems to be a global pestilence, but the European version manifests itself as a little more petty, a little more sadistic. Food is good; very continental, a bit too rich. Sometimes I crave the simplicity of a well-grilled lamb chop with a heap of broccoli on the side.

  And the grounds here go on forever, with vast expanses of grass extending timid blades through the snow. There is every kind of tree: silver birch, ash, poplar, pine and spruce, all marked with tags so we can identify them.

  But this winter, this interminable winter—I am not made for it. My blood runs thin, intended for the fierce Australian sun, not the parched vapours of the central heating.

  Gusts of wind would spring up, lathering the waters of Lac Léman. The skies would darken, morning masquerading as twilight. Currents of arctic air coiled themselves through the ancient branches of the pine trees. Snowflakes tumbled. Sometimes hail splintered against the windowpanes, threatening to shatter them.

  This was the Swiss winter I found so hard to tolerate and it was to its insistent clamour that I struggled to wakefulness every day. My circadian rhythms were askew: I was on summer time. I should have been on holidays. At the beach. Surfing.

  To improve matters was the high voice of Mlle Pendite wishing us ‘Bonjour, jeunes dames’, as she flicked on the blinding fluorescent light. I was sure it was the highlight of her day.

  Lac d’Or meant ‘Gold Lake’, because of the colour Lac Léman turned when the sun rose or set over its extremities. In spring and summer, the profusion of windows, crowned by the most intricately composed mosaic ceilings, glowed above the elaborate gardens. One water feature after another plumed skyward and then cascaded in silvery tones towards the lake.

  A multitude of bedrooms and bathrooms for the use of the students—never more than three girls, sometimes only two, to a single en suite—conferred yet another layer of luxury. There was one girl, though, late in returning to school, whose father had demanded she have a bathroom to herself. No one complained. Apparently, no one dared. Her hapless roommate had to share the bathroom of her immediate neighbours, the room occupied by an Egyptian and an Israeli. Clearly Mme Mirielle had her own views on the two-state solution.

  Lac d’Or was a world unto itself, defining its identity proudly and solely by what existed within its ornate gardens and high, wrought-iron borders. We were permitted beyond them only at very specific times. It was easy to see how outsiders might view our situation as enviable, even glamorous. Under our Gothic roof were gathered the finest teachers, able to make use of lavish facilities. Students were offered French, German, Italian, painting, drama, music, riding, swimming, skiing, cuisine, couture and etiquette. There was more; the list stretched without end. But most of the inmates had no illusions about their status. They knew that Lac d’Or was merely a respectable dumping ground for parents too bored, too preoccupied or too divorced to care for their offspring themselves.

  Every morning we would dress in a manner befitting les jeunes dames. My father must have been aware of the protocols when he took me shopping in Zürich. Our makeup was subtle, the hemlines chic, with shoes having just the right amount of heel to complement our height and stance. Nothing was left to chance. Denim and plaid with Adidas or Reeboks were not permitted even on weekends when those of us lucky enough to have family friends or relatives on the outside left the Institut’s confines.

  And so, the bell rang once again, demanding our presence in the dining or classroom. It was a sound I came to dislike intensely, yet I had no choice but to meet it. The problem was that having lived all my life in Australia, I had become too accustomed to freedom. Back home, when school was over for the day, week, month or year, we were generally left to our own devices: cricket in the backyard, swimming in a friend’s or our own pool, going to the beach or just turning up at the park to watch the boys play Aussie Rules. Homework only gained traction after dinner when it was too dark outside to do any more of the above.

  But here in Switzerland, like a proscribed bank account, we were under constant audit.

  I found myself wondering why my parents believed that Lac d’Or was such a good idea. It was evident to me that many other families urgently desired to have as little as possible to do with their offspring and, with clear consciences, dropped them off into the icy embrace of Mme Mirielle. But mine?

  My sister, unrebellious to a fault, had been here two years before me and her tales had made me impatient to go. But she and I were very different creatures and soon the reins began to chafe. Yet as I came to meditate on our parents’ philosophy of sending us away, my sensibility was pricked by a flicker of insight.

  My mother came from a townlet and was in her eleventh year of Gymnasium, a gifted student. Her father, an observant Jew, was also—unusual as this must have been for the times—a liberal-minded man. He had imprinted on his daughter’s consciousness the importance of education. Moreover, he had promised her that he would buy her one of the few places reserved for Jews at the University of Budapest so that she might study the law. Like so many of its sister institutions, Budapest University maintained a strict quota system which effectively limited the number of Jews per
mitted to attend.

  I was never to meet that—or my other—grandfather. This one had his life stolen by men wielding bats only weeks before the Nazi regime decided that gas would be more efficient. But before all that, he had determined that the best method of preparing my mother for Budapest in particular, and for being educated away from home in general, was to send her to the neighbouring town. In the event, she did not attend Budapest University, but the influence of the townlet’s experience would never leave her.

  Within this neighbouring town, strangely enough, existed an avant-garde boarding school for the training of young ladies in their final year of Gymnasium. This cutting-edge academy was open only to Jewish girls, although most non-Jewish girls of the time would have crossed the street rather than be seen within spitting distance of such an institution. Some of them actually did spit, my mother told me, if they inadvertently came too close. For all that, by the time my mother and all her classmates graduated, each one of them would be ready to enter university.

  It is thus plain to see that I was sent to Lac d’Or, l’École Pour Les Jeunes Dames— 14,500 kilometres away from home and on the other side of the planet—because my mother had been sent about 20 kilometres out of her townlet.

  And it came to pass that when there were only four weeks left of the curriculum, the caretaker of my grandparents’ property, was sent to the school to bring my mother home. My never-to-be-met grandmother, my mother’s beloved anya was, according to the caretaker, desperately ill. They had to hurry. My mother did not have time even to farewell her classmates or collect her books. She threw all her clothing into her valise and jumped into the carriage that had been sent for her. She cried all the way home.

  When she arrived, she wanted to go straight to her mother’s bedroom, but the housekeeper led her to the salon generally reserved for formal occasions. My mother looked around her in astonishment. She had been told that her anya had but a few moments of life left to her and was holding her breath until her only daughter returned. But when she saw her mother it became immediately apparent that the family matriarch was not in the least prepared to farewell the world and all its sinners.