Free Heil Harris! by John Garforth Page A

didn’t seem gothic and the mountains looked serene in the moonlight. The massive silence made Steed feel that perhaps all time was standing still and they, high up in an unreal village in the tirolian alps, were experiencing something that people down there in Europe wouldn’t understand.
    “It must be the brandy,” said Steed, “or perhaps it’s late in the evening. You can’t really be the most exciting girl in the world.”
    She laid her head on his shoulder so that the stray hairs blew in the breeze and tickled his nose. “Maybe you’re the most exciting man.”
    “Ah yes, that must be it.” Her mouth tasted of warm, slightly sweet white wine, almost tasteless, intoxicating, damp and Heidi. He pressed her body against him and felt the way her hips fitted against his thighs. She was the most gloriously romantic animal, he thought incredulously; he’d throw that microphone out of the window as soon as they got back to the hotel.
    “What are you thinking?” she asked softly.
    “I was thinking what a waste it would have been if I’d sent my partner out here instead. There are some things Mrs. Peel just doesn’t appreciate.”
    They walked back slowly along the ancient cobbled streets and Steed told her about the problems of being a literary gentleman, about grammar and human destiny. But, he quoted, “How can I, that girl standing there, My attention fix On Roman or on Russian Or on Spanish politics?” It didn’t sound quite right, but Yeats was supposed to be a lyrical poet. “Tell me about yourself,” he said quickly.
    “Here I am.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    She leaned against him as they walked and her left breast rested against the bottom of his ribs. “I suppose I become involved in all this because of my father. He believed in things like freedom, and he thought he knew what that meant. He was a lawyer, and he objected to National Socialism because it treated the law as an instrument. The Nazis did what they liked with the law.” She smiled. “My father thought the law was an ideal condition that people and the state should aspire to. He was an idealist.”
    “And what are you?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t believe in the law or in National Socialism or any of those things. If I hadn’t taken to you I wouldn’t have bothered to help you very much. I believe in my father, and I believe in you while you’re here with me, and I’ll believe in my husband when I marry and in my children...”
    Steed decided to resign his job and marry instantly. Then he decided to give it some thought. You can’t throw away a whole career just because you’re writing a book about it. He looked at the people hanging around the inn as they went through to the stairs. He would always have the instincts of an under-cover agent.
    “Who were all those people hanging around outside?” asked Steed.
    “Who cares?”
    True. He was feeling rather tragic now as he led Heidi into his room. The transitory nature of beauty, the fleeting glimpses man gets of an ideal. And then you go upstairs, dismantle a microphone and tell the girl you love her.
    “I love you,” he said as they closed the door. Nobody ever takes that one seriously. “And if I burst into tears when — we’ve made love, just take no notice. It’s only because I envy the blond young skiing champion whom you’ll marry next year.”
    “Or the brandy,” she murmured.
    “Yes.”
    She seemed to know what he meant, and she squeezed against him to be reassured. Her passion was partly because she was human and Steed was a man, but she needed him to care. “Tell me what I’m doing here,” she whispered.
    But he decided not to.
    “I suppose we always want everything to last for ever.”
    That stuff about love being a glimpse into eternity.
    “Actually,” she said, “it’s the woman who’s supposed to burst into tears. Will you reassure me then? I’ve always thought how terrible it would be if the man I loved turned over and went to