Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Belle D’Or was. Seated in her usual spot at the bar, black flapper dress half open down the back, jade cigarette holder loaded and smoldering, gin cocktail at her fingertips.
Traffic was brisk around her, the usual coming and going of the girls with clients in tow, a couple of sporadically noisy groups drinking and fumbling at each other in the booths.
Belle lifted an imperious hand at him as he came in, didn’t quite snap her fingers, but might as well have.
He mustered some calm. Pushed through the distracted clientele and seated himself on the barstool next to hers.
“You wanted to talk to me?”
She looked narrowly at him a moment. Nodded at the barman, then sideways at Duncan. The barman turned and took down a bottle. The Chivas Regal. He poured a generous measure and set it in front of Duncan on the bar.
“On the house,” said Belle in her smoky voice. “I am very sorry about your girl.”
He raised the glass to her, knocked back the whisky in one chunk. “Appreciate it.”
“However, I’m afraid that—”
“Three days,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Three days and we’re gone. Me, the girl, my other friend, too.
I need tonight, tomorrow night, to organize it, maybe Saturday night as well, if things don’t go as planned.
” Duncan forced himself to stop gabbling, because even to his own ears, it sounded altogether too much like pleading.
He spaced his words. “Sunday evening at worst, we’re out of your hair for good. You have my word.”
The steady, narrow gaze on him again. “You’re not IRA, are you?”
“No.”
“Billy did promise me you weren’t. But I get the impression he’d have no problem lying to protect you. You seem to mean a lot to him. And I know he’s a Catholic himself.”
“So are a lot of people. It’s not a crime, last time I checked.”
Coming back from the Forest at eleven years old, Duncan had missed Christianity as a feature of his upbringing, and the dose he was given at Cadogan’s never really did stick.
Even now, as an adult, he found the rituals and schisms and paraphernalia of the faith weirdly arid and bookish and beside the point.
“Not a crime, no.” Belle sipped at her cigarette holder, blew thin smoke along the bar. “But it is a crime to give comfort to Irish Nationalists, and I don’t want to find out that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“That’s not what you’ve been doing. You have my word.”
“Please understand, I have nothing against the Irish themselves. And I think the reprisals policy over there has been a national disgrace. But it’s awkward enough to keep the Doorbell safely open as it is, without giving the authorities political ammunition into the bargain.”
“You have my word,” Duncan repeated.
There was a slight pause, almost as if she was writing it down. “Well, then,” she said brightly. “Another drink?”
He shook his head. “I was really looking for Arthur.”
“Arthur has gone out. On an errand, he says.” She shrugged. “Well, of course, he wouldn’t have much other reason to go out at this time of night, not with what I allow him on tap here.”
Duncan said nothing. She smiled sourly.
“It’s not an errand for me, I might add, which rather leads me to suspect he’s doing something for you, Mr. Campbell.
And he’s not a man who takes on friendship or obligation lightly.
” Belle smoked meditatively for a moment or two.
She gestured elegantly with the cigarette holder.
“So—Billy Crammond, and now Arthur. You seem to have something of a glamour about you. Something that hard men will follow without question.” She grinned down into her drink.
“Hard women, too, even if I do say so myself.”
Duncan shifted on the barstool. “I think I’d better go and check on Niamh again.”
“Really? From what the girls tell me, my impression was that you’ve checked her pretty thoroughly tonight as it is.”
He got up to go. She put a hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry, that was overly forward of me.
Rude, even. It’s just the snow talking. Stay and have another drink with me, Mr. Campbell.
I don’t bite. Not unless invited to, anyway.
I won’t try to make you do anything you don’t want to.
Arthur will doubtless come back, but in the meantime, a little conversation can’t hurt, can it? ”
He looked into the cocaine-blasted eyes, saw an odd need there that felt too much like a reflection for comfort.
He settled back to the stool, nodded at the barman, and watched the Chivas catch the light as it poured, like a ribbon of water transmuting into molten gold by some alchemy long suppressed and now let loose upon the world once more.
—
Belle D’Or proved surprisingly good company now that she wasn’t trying to nibble various parts of his anatomy.
They talked, increasingly easily, about the state of the world—the war, the peace, the stuttering economy.
The inevitable counting of the dead, the holes in life they had left.
The Forest, and what it might contain, what it might portend.
Duncan stayed quiet about his work as a woodsman.
He trusted this woman to a point, and they’d be gone soon anyway, but Hardy and the police might well come sniffing around in the future, and the less Belle knew about her impromptu guests, the better for all concerned.
They talked, and they drank, and he just about held his thoughts about Niamh at arm’s length, staved off the need to scream that she had given up into the muscles of his upper arm.
What Belle D’Or was staving off, he never discovered.
Sometime after one in the morning, Arthur showed up in a soft cap and coat that had seen more than their fair share of rain. He greeted them both, apologized to Belle for his absence, then gestured Duncan to an empty booth at the end of the room.
“Got news,” he said. “If you don’t mind, Belle?”
“Oh, he’s all yours.” She raised a hand in slightly slurred imperial largesse, waved it at the Chivas bottle on the bar. “Here, Duncan’s been cutting quite a swath in the top-shelf booze. No reason to stop now. Take the bottle with you.”
Arthur nodded his thanks, swiped the bottle and a glass from the barman. Duncan followed him to the booth and slid in. Arthur got straight down to cases.
“Spoke to the Cobbs and Mikey Collier. All good for tomorrow night. You want Collier to swing by and collect you here?”
Duncan thought about Belle’s misgivings for the club, the risk of exposure. “Best not. We should keep this place out of it as much as we can. Look, I’ll give you an address for him to meet me at. Up on Crawgate.”
“Crawgate, eh?”
Even on Arthur’s inexpressive features, the surprise was stamped clear. But he made no further comment, and Duncan made no effort to enlighten him.
“Aye, I’ll need to be over there to collect something anyway. And it’s a lot closer to where we’ll be going.” Abruptly, the whisky and everything else crashed in on him. He felt as weary as he could ever remember. “Look, we can hash out the details tomorrow. Are we going to need money up front?”
“No, I spoke to Billy earlier. He’ll front for you.
It’s not as much as I thought it might be anyway—Collier’s doing it for next to nothing.
” Arthur paused, poured himself a drink, and knocked it back with a grateful shudder.
He was still in his wet coat, had not taken the soaked cap from his head.
Duncan imagined he was not wearing his wig.
“I think our Mikey’s taken a shine to you. ”
You seem to have something of a glamour about you. Belle’s words, floating back through his drink-misted mind. Something that hard men will follow without question.
In his memory, the natter and rattle of the Maxim guns along the German line. Men falling around him like heavy coats flung down, to the ground or to hang folded over the barbed wire, with fatally astonished looks on their young faces.
He drained his glass, shivered a little.
“Billy may not need to front me after all,” he said. “We’ll see tomorrow. Now I’ve got to try and get some sleep.”
Arthur poured himself another generous measure from the Chivas bottle. Touched a finger to his waxy brow in salute.
“Good luck with that,” he said, and drank.