“So you should be,” Vanderdecker said, “it’s very embarrassing. You’ve no idea how conspicuous it makes me feel. Do please try and keep a hold of yourself.” He folded the policy up and put it away again, along with the birth certificate and the receipt for his electric razor.
“Are you from the insurance company?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jane said. “It’s a bank now, of course, as well as an insurance company. And I’m not actually with them; I’m an accountant.”
“So you said.”
“So I did.” Jane wiped the tears from her eyes with a corner of her handkerchief.
“Do you know,” Vanderdecker said, “you remind me of someone.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.” Vanderdecker looked faintly embarrassed, as if he didn’t want to say what he was saying. “Someone I used to know, years back. In fact,” he mumbled, “that was her address on the piece of paper you saw just now. She must have been dead for three hundred years now.”
“Go on,” Jane said.
“Greta,” said the Flying Dutchman, “from Schiedam. There’s nothing to tell, actually. We met at a dance and just seemed to hit it off. I told her a joke, I remember—actually, it wasn’t a joke as such, just something that had happened to me that she thought was funny—and she laughed so much she spilt wine all down my trouser leg. Anyway, it turned out that she was leaving for Bruges the next day, and it was the last day of my shore leave. She gave me her address. I wrote to her, seven years later, and seven years after that I picked up her reply from the poste restante in Nijmegen. Apparently she’d met this man, and perhaps he wasn’t the most wonderfully exciting human being there had ever been but by all accounts he was going to be very big in worsteds one day, and of course she would always think of me as a very dear friend. Undoubtedly for the best,” he went on, “things being as they are. Still.”
“And I remind you of her?” Jane asked.
“Only because you laugh so damned much,” replied Vanderdecker austerely.
“I see,” Jane replied. “Can I get you another drink?”
Vanderdecker swirled the white specks round in the bottom of his glass. “Yes,” he said. “Only this time I’ll try the mild.”
“Is that good?”
“No,” he said.
Shortly afterwards, Jane came back with the drinks. “If it’s nasty,” she said, “why do you drink it?”
“Because it’s there,” Vanderdecker replied. “What’s so special about my life policy, then? Do try not to laugh when you tell me.”
Jane took a deep breath. She was, she realised, gambling with the financial stability of the entire free world. On the other hand, it didn’t seem like that, and the strange man had turned out not to be all that strange after all. “Before I tell you,” she said, “do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Be my guest,” Vanderdecker replied.
“Mr Vanderdecker,” she asked, “what exactly do you want out of life?”
Vanderdecker smiled; that is, there was an initial movement at the corners of his mouth that developed into a ripple just under his nose and ended up with a full display of straight, white teeth. “What a peculiar question!” he said.
“Yes,” Jane admitted, “and as a rule I’m not into this soul-searching stuff. But you see, it is quite important.”
Vanderdecker was surprised. “Is it?”
“Yes, actually,” Jane said, “it is.”
“Well then,” Vanderdecker said, composing himself and looking grave, “The way I see it is this. After all this time, and bearing in mind the things I’ve told you about, I would have thought it was more a question of what the hell it is life wants out of me. Blood?”
“I see,” Jane said. If she’d had a notebook, she would probably have written it down. “So you’ve never had any urge to rule the world, or anything like that?”
“What, me?” Vanderdecker said. “No, I can’t say I have. It would be nice to change some things naturally.”
Jane leaned forward and looked serious. “Such as?”
Vanderdecker considered. “I don’t know,” he said, “now you come to mention it. I can’t actually think of anything that even remotely matters. You get such a wonderful sense of perspective at my age.”
“You look about thirty-three.”
“Thirty-five,” Vanderdecker replied. “And you flatter me. Aren’t we getting a bit sidetracked, or is this all relevant?”
“It’s sort of relevant,” Jane said. “So you would say that you’re a relatively balanced, well-adjusted person?”
“Perhaps,” said the Flying Dutchman. “When you consider that I’ve lived for over four hundred and fifty years, and seven-eighths of those years have been mind-numbingly boring, I think I’ve coped reasonably well. What do you think?”
“I think,” said Jane with conviction, “that I’d have gone stark staring mad in the early fifteen-sixties.”
