The Tightrope Men

‘There’s a thing called a telephone,’ she said angrily. ‘Alexander Graham Bell invented it – remember?’

‘I was knocked out by sleeping pills,’ he protested. With a small portion of his mind he noted that this was probably a true statement. ‘Perhaps I overdid it.’

Her expression changed. ‘You do sound a bit glued-up,’ she admitted. ‘Maybe I’ll forgive you.’ There was a faint American undertone to her English. ‘It will cost you a drink, darling.’

‘In the hotel?’ he suggested.

‘It’s too nice a day to be inside. We’ll go into the Studenterlunden.’ She waved her arm past a passing articulated tramcar towards the gay umbrellas in the gardens on the other side of the street.

Denison felt trapped as he escorted her across the street, but he also realized that if he was to learn anything about Meyrick then this was too good a chance to pass up. He had once been accosted in the street by a woman who obviously knew him but he did not have the faintest idea of who she was. There is a point of no return in that type of conversation after which one cannot, in decency, admit ignorance. On that occasion Denison had fumbled it, had suffered half an hour of devious conversation, and they had parted amicably without him finding out who she was. He still did not know. Grimly he thought that it was good practice for today’s exercise.

As they crossed the street she said, ‘I saw Jack Kidder this morning. He was asking about you.’

‘How is he?’

She laughed. ‘Fine, as always. You know Jack.’

‘Of course,’ said Denison deadpan. ‘Good old Jack.’

They went into the outdoor café and found an empty table with difficulty. Under other circumstances Denison would have found it pleasant to have a drink with a pretty woman in surroundings like this, but his mind was beleaguered by his present problems. They sat down and he put his parcel of maps on the table.

One of them slipped out of the packet and his main problem prodded at it with a well-manicured forefinger. ‘What are these?’

‘Maps,’ said Denison succinctly.

‘Maps of where?’

‘Of the city.’

‘Oslo!’ She seemed amused. ‘Why do you want maps of Oslo? Isn’t it your boast that you know Oslo better than London?’

‘They’re for a friend.’

Denison chalked up a mental note. Meyrick knows Oslo well; probably a frequent visitor. Steer clear of local conditions or gossip. Might run into more problems like this.

‘Oh!’ She appeared to lose interest.

Denison realized he was faced with a peculiar difficulty. He did not know this woman’s name and, as people do not commonly refer to themselves by name in conversation, he did not see how he was going to get it, short of somehow prying into her handbag and looking for identification.

‘Give me a cigarette, darling,’ she said.

He patted his pockets and found he had left the cigarette case and lighter in the room. Not being a smoker it had not occurred to him to put them in his pocket along with the rest of Meyrick’s personal gear. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any with me.’

‘My!’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me the great Professor Meyrick has stopped smoking. Now I will believe in cancer.’

Professor!

He used the pretext of illness again. ‘The one I tried this morning tasted like straw. Maybe I will stop smoking.’ He held his hand over the table. ‘Look at those nicotine stains. Imagine what my lungs must be like.’

She shook her head in mock sorrow. ‘It’s like pulling down a national monument. To imagine Harry Meyrick without a cigarette is like trying to imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower.’

A Nordic waitress came to the table; she looked rather like Jeanette MacDonald dressed for an appearance in White Horse Inn. Denison raised his eyebrows at his companion. ‘What will you have?’

‘The usual,’ she said indifferently, delving into her handbag.

He took refuge in a paroxysm of coughing pulling out his handkerchief and only emerging when he heard her giving the order. He waited until the waitress left before putting away the handkerchief. The woman opposite him said, ‘Harry, that’s a really bad cough. I’m not surprised you’re thinking of giving up the cancer sticks. Are you feeling all right, darling? Maybe you’d be better off in bed, after all.’

‘I’m all right,’ he said.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked solicitously.

‘Perfectly sure.’

‘Spoken like the old Professor Meyrick,’ she said mockingly. ‘Always sure of everything.’

‘Don’t call me Professor,’ he said testily. It was a safe enough thing to say regardless of whether Meyrick was really a professor or whether she was pulling his leg in a heavy-handed manner. The British have never been keen on the over-use of professional titles. And it might provoke her into dropping useful information.

All he got was a light and inconsequential, ‘When on the Continent do as the Continentals do.’

He went on the attack. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘You’re so British, Harry.’ He thought he detected a cutting edge to her voice. ‘But then, of course, you would be.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Oh, come off it. There’s nobody more British than an outsider who has bored his way in. Where were you born, Harry? Somewhere in Mittel Europa?’ She suddenly looked a little ashamed. ‘I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. I’m being bitchy, but you’re behaving a bit oddly, too.’

‘The effect of the pills. Barbiturates have never agreed with me. I have a headache.’

She opened her handbag. ‘I have aspirin.’

The waitress, Valkyrie-like, bore down on them. Denison looked at the bottles on the tray, and said, ‘I doubt if aspirin goes with beer.’ That was the last thing he would have thought of as ‘the usual’; she did not look the beery type.

She shrugged and closed the bag with a click. ‘Please yourself.’

The waitress put down two glasses, two bottles of beer and a packet of cigarettes, said something rapid and incomprehensible, and waited expectantly. Denison took out his wallet and selected a 100-kroner note. Surely two beers and a packet of cigarettes could not cost more than a hundred kroner. My God, he did not even know the value of the currency! This was like walking through a minefield blindfolded.

He was relieved when the waitress made no comment but made change from a leather bag concealed under her apron. He laid the money on the table intending to check it surreptitiously. The redhead said, ‘You’ve no need to buy my cigarettes, Harry.’

He smiled at her. ‘Be my guest,’ he said, and stretched out his hand to pour her beer.

‘You’ve given it up yourself but you’re quite prepared to pay for other people’s poison.’ She laughed. ‘Not a very moral attitude.’

‘I’m not a moral philosopher,’ he said, hoping it was true.

‘No, you’re not,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve always wondered where you stood in that general direction. What would you call yourself, Harry? Atheist? Agnostic? Humanist?’

At last he was getting something of the quality of Meyrick. Those were questions but they were leading questions, and he was quite prepared to discuss philosophy with her – a nice safe subject. ‘Not an atheist,’ he said. ‘It’s always seemed to me that to believe in the non-existence of something is somewhat harder than to believe in its existence. I’d put myself down as an agnostic – one of the “don’t know” majority. And that doesn’t conflict with humanism.’