The Numbered Account (9 page)

‘Oh, emotional Revivalism!' he said, in rather crushing tones. ‘But does that last?—do you know at all?'

And Julia had to confess that she didn't know.

In the evenings she met the family: Gisèle and her husband came to dine one evening, Henriette and hers another; Antoine and his wife on a third occasion—in each case one or two neighbours were asked as well. Both the girls had some of their mother's rather delicate beauty, while Antoine was the spit and image of the Pastor. He worked at a rayon factory not far off; the two sons-in-law were ‘working farmers' (with the accent on working) living on land they owned—what the Scotch used to call ‘bonnet lairds'. But Lucien and Armand, though they might have been forking dung or filling silage-pits since 5 a.m., could talk about Galsworthy or Rilke with the best—could, and insisted on doing so, and on kindred topics. How was Auden regarded as a poet in England? Had the curious preoccupation of the not-so-young intellectuals with the Spanish Civil War died a natural death?

‘Surely,' Armand exploded—he was a blond giant of a man—‘Surely even Spender must realise by now that this all arose from an attempt to create a Communist enclave in the extreme West of Europe, outflanking England and France?' And Julia, once again, had to confess that she had no idea what Spender now realised or didn't realise.

At last the death certificate arrived, direct by air-mail from the Consulate-General in Istanbul; the combination of the Turkish postage-stamp and the Lion-and-Unicorn embossed on the flap of the envelope aroused the highest interest in the village
facteur
who brought the letters, rather to Julia's annoyance; it might, she thought, have been sent more anonymously. The Pastor was already out on his rounds in the parish, and till he returned for the
déjeuner
she had to pacify herself, and help her hostess, by cutting asparagus and also lettuce for the salad—in Fri-bourg they sow lettuces thick and cut them like hay, to save the bother of transplanting; Julia was by now familiar with this curious trick. She was laying the table for luncheon when she heard her host's step in the hall; she hastened out to him.

‘It's come!' she said. ‘So I must be off as soon as possible.'

Jean-Pierre took this announcement, as he took everything, very easily.

‘Quel dommage!
It has been such a happiness to have you with us—Germaine will be lost without her under-gardener! However, after supper we will arrange everything.'

‘Can't I go this afternoon? Colin said it was urgent,' Julia protested.

‘There is no train that will get you to Geneva before the banks close. No—we will deal with it tonight. Now come and eat, and enjoy your lunch.'

They dealt with it that evening in his study. Julia again brought down her papers, together with the copy of the late Mr. Thalassides' death certificate, plastered with English and Turkish official stampings, the Turkish in ugly violet ink. The Pastor once more examined them all,
then pushed them aside, drew forward a sheet of headed paper, and wrote rapidly; folded the sheet and put it in an envelope which he handed to her.

‘This is the authorisation which I, as Aglaia Armitage's guardian, give you to collect the documents; it is incontestable. It gives the account
numéro
. I have told them that the money will not be taken away at this stage; her lawyers or her bankers can do that later—it is their affair. But I have instructed them to show you, if you wish, the certificates which give the extent of her fortune.' He paused, took a card out of his pocket-book, and scribbled on it. ‘Do not show the authorisation I have given you until you are in conversation with one of these two gentlemen,' he said, handing her the card. ‘They are two of the directors of the Banque Républicaine who know me well. If possible speak with Dutour; Chambertin is sometimes
un peu difficile.'

Julia read the card. It said—
‘Je recommande chaleureusement Mademoiselle Julia Probyn, de Londres, qui voudra discuter des affaires bancaires.'
As she put the card away in her bag along with the other papers de Ritter chuckled.

‘They will think you want to open a numbered account,' he said. Then—‘Where do you stay in Geneva?' he asked.

‘I hadn't thought. What's a good hotel?'

‘How are you arranged for currency?' he enquired.

‘Oh, plenty. I get a journalist's allowance—I write for some of the weeklies, when I feel like it.'

‘Then do write about the Canton de Fribourg! Come back to us, and learn more! However, if you are not short of money you had better stay at the Bergues; it is delightful.' He went out into the hall and there and then booked her a room. And the following morning her beautiful hostess once again dragged Julia's luggage down to the station on the hand-cart, and she set out for Geneva and the bank.

Julia, unlike many English people, was always ready to talk in trains. After changing for Geneva at Lausanne she found herself seated opposite a neat little man with a large brief-case, on which he was scribbling notes on
narrow sheets of typed paper that looked like invoices. Julia's appearance of course produced its usual impact; he offered to put out his cheroot if she disliked the smell, enquired whether she wished the window up or down, and promised to show her Mont Blanc when it should come in sight. Soon they were in cheerful conversation—and it proved much more amusing to Julia than most casual conversations in trains. The neat little man presently explained that he held the Swiss agency for an English firm, who made surgical stays in a special air-light elastic weave—‘Corsette-Air' was the trade name—and in Switzerland they had an immense sale; he named a figure for the firm's annual turnover which astonished Julia. She was even more astonished to learn that he had never been to England, and had never met any of the directors of the Yorkshire firm who manufactured ‘Corsette-Air'—all had been arranged by correspondence, through people who vouched for him. More peculiar still, he could not really speak English, but he could read it sufficiently well to understand the letters from Yorkshire.

‘And do you reply in English,' Julia asked, fascinated by this odd set-up.

Ah no, he always replied in German. ‘They send my letters to Birmingham to be translated, and then reply to me in English.'

To Julia it all sounded quite crazy; but if the sums he had named to her were accurate, obviously it worked. And the little man himself was so eager, so energetic and enthusiastic that she could credit his making a go of anything. In his excitement over telling her about his work he quite forgot to show her Mont Blanc at the place whence it is visible—
‘Ah, quel dommage!'
he exclaimed. ‘From Geneva one seldom sees it; in fact you may say never.' Like so many Swiss he was bilingual; he told Julia in French how he wrote to his English employers in German, and how—he glowed with pride as he spoke—‘Sometimes we even touch La Haute Finance; foreign business—not English, I mean; international. We are much used, because we are most discreet.'

‘How thrilling!' Julia said, with her customary easy warmth, which really meant nothing.

‘Is it not? I see that Mademoiselle comprehends. Listen to this—only the other day I, Kaufmann, was called upon to act as intermediary between very important
agences
belonging to two different nations, and pass informations from one to the other!' The little man was quite carried away, between Julia and his own enthusiasms; the girl could not help smiling at his idea of discretion, but merely said, as warmly as before, that this was
formidable
, that he must lead a passionately interesting life—to which he agreed eagerly. Then, as the train began to slow down at the outskirts of Geneva, suddenly he became cautious.

‘This is of course most confidential, what I have told Mademoiselle,' he said rather nervously.

‘But naturally. I am discretion itself!' Julia said soothingly. ‘And I am grateful to you for having made my journey so interesting.' Whereupon the little man insisted on giving her one of his trade cards, and urged her to come and see him if she should be in his neighbourhood. The card depicted on one side a rather fully-formed lady wearing a Corsette-Air, and on the other bore his name and address:

Herr Viktor Kaufmann,

Villa Victoria,

Merligen-am-Thunersee,

B.O.

Julia suppressed a giggle at the letters ‘B.O.'—she already knew that in Switzerland they stand for ‘Berner Oberland'—not their usual English significance; she thanked the little man, put the card in a side pocket of her bag, and promptly forgot all about him.

The Hotel des Bergues at Geneva is indeed a delightful place; the Pastor had been quite right, Julia decided within the first five minutes. It is quiet, unobtrusively high-class, with excellent well-mannered service; it stands
on the embankment beside the huge glass-green Rhône, close to where the river debouches from the lake, and exactly opposite the Île Rousseau, set with Claude-like trees. Upstream, on the lake shore, rises that exotic—and therefore so un-Swiss—fantasy, the only fountain in Europe which springs a clear three hundred feet into the air in a snowy jet which sways like a reed or a poplar in the breeze, glittering most beautifully in the sun against the distant blue shores. In theory the whiteness of the fountain's spray should be a
pendant
to that of the summit of Mont Blanc; in fact that tedious mountain seldom shows itself to Geneva.

She unpacked first, as was her habit, and then tried to telephone to the Banque Républicaine—it was already closed, the porter told her politely. So she went downstairs and strolled across the bridge spanning the Rhône to the Île Rousseau, where she observed with interest the wired enclosure reserved for the black swans, tufted ducks, and other varieties; and laughed at the typically Swiss notice about feeding the sixty-odd ordinary swans who hung expectantly in the strong current below the footbridge leading to the island: ‘Please give your bread to the keeper; he will arrange it suitably to feed the birds'. She walked on to the farther side of the river, and strolled about a little; the whole place enchanted her, a city grey in tone, with an austere elegance combined with a certain simplicity. On returning to the Bergues she found that it had a tea-room close to the front hall; many people were having tea and cakes at small tables on the pavement outside, and Julia did the same, enjoying the warmth, the soft light, the shifting tops of the poplars on the island, the grey profile of the other half of the city beyond the river, and idly amused by the sight of the passers-by on the pavement beside her. One of these, a tall lanky man in a light suit of rather foreign cut suddenly checked, started, and came up to her, raising his hat—she recognised him as a man called Nethersole, whom she had occasionally met in London with her old admirer Geoffrey Consett.

Mr. Nethersole greeted her with the enthusiasm with which men usually greeted Julia, and sat down at her
table. ‘What in the world are you doing here?' he asked.

‘Oh, just sight-seeing. I'd never been to Geneva before. How beautiful it is.'

‘Yes, isn't it? I adore it. But have you seen the oddest sight of all?'

‘No, I've only just arrived. What is the odd sight?'

‘Oh my dear, the Palais des Nations! Well you'd better come and have lunch with me there tomorrow; I work there. Will you? One o'clock, in the restaurant. Oh, what a piece of luck this is!'

Julia accepted this invitation, mentally praising Mr. Nethersole's tact in not asking if she had seen anything of Geoffrey lately. (Anyhow it is always nice to be invited somewhere in a strange place.) Nethersole soon flitted off, and Julia decided to go up to her room and write a full account of La Cure to Mrs. Hathaway before dinner; between helping Germaine and talking with the Pastor, she had only sent her old friend the scrappiest of notes. In the corridor beyond the main hall the lift doors were just closing; the lift-man politely opened them again for her, and she stepped in, saying ‘
Troisième'
. Three other people were already in the lift; one of them was the detective.

This time he grinned very broadly indeed, and murmured, ‘How we do keep on meeting!' Julia put on her haughtiest expression, and made no response; she got out at the third floor, while he was borne upwards. This encounter disturbed her a little; if he really was one of Colin's
mauvais sujets
, it was rather tiresome that he should be staying in the same hotel. And half-way through her letter she went down again to the hall and procured from the concierge a small plan of the city; back in her room she looked out the Avenue de la République. It was only a short distance away, across the bridge by the island. Fine, she would walk there tomorrow, and give no address to a taxi to be overheard by bell-hops, hovering for a tip.

She woke next morning in good spirits; Julia had the priceless gift of sound sleep. Leaning from her window—
she had no idea of her good fortune in being given a front room at the Bergues at twenty-four hours' notice, nor that she owed this entirely to Jean-Pierre—she first looked entranced at the fountain, profiled golden-white in the sunshine against the blue lake. But what was that, looming mistily and incredibly high into the sky?—also golden-white, and immense? It could only be Mont Blanc; it was just where the chambermaid had told her to look for it the evening before. Utterly satisfied, Julia rang for her breakfast, which she ate at her window; then, in high heart, she set out on foot for the bank.

The Avenue de la République is full of banks, all enormous, many of them new. The Banque Républicaine was one of the most grandiose of all; when she stepped onto a door-mat ten feet long, huge bronze and glass doors opened of themselves; within, marble pilasters flanked the doors opening off lobbies—there was no human being in sight. She pushed on through this mausoleum-like splendour into a vast central hall, rising to a height of three or four storeys, and furnished with armchairs and sofas; there was no sign of banking whatever except for a few clerks behind glass walls round the sides. There was, however, a single desk at which sat a pimply youth, curiously inadequate to all this pomp and dignity; to him Julia handed M. de Ritter's card, and asked if she could see M. Dutour or M. Chambertin? The youth glanced at the card and went away, taking it with him—why not telephone, Julia thought, since there were two instruments on the desk. A long pause ensued—long enough to make her, at last, a little nervous. Eventually the youth reappeared accompanied by an older man, who led her to a lift and wafted her up to what he described as the
salle d'attente
.