12
I knew a man once did a girl in
Any man might do a girl in
Any man has to, needs to, wants to
Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.
T. S. ELIOT, Sweeney Agonistes
Peter and I went back a long way—to my first months in England. With my girlfriend of the time, I had rented a cottage in the Suffolk village of East Bergholt. Twice a week, I took the train to London and did the rounds of publishers, hoping one would commission the book I wanted to write about movie stuntmen.
Progress was slow, but, in time, one editor, though not enthusiastic himself, thought it might interest a colleague.
“Peter’s our militaria man,” he said. “I’ll take you along.”
Militaria? I couldn’t see the connection, but I let myself be led to a tiny cluttered office at the end of a long corridor.
“John, meet Peter van Diemen.”
Peter hadn’t changed much since that first meeting. The face had been less masklike and the twitch of the lips more benign. But my first impressions were sidetracked by the state of his office. Even for a publisher, it was chaotic. Manuscripts and long sheets of galley proofs competed for space with books into which torn scraps of paper had been sandwiched to mark a place.
Framed photographs covered the walls. Most showed men in uniform, behind whom, in the middle distance, something smoked: a wrecked aircraft, a tank, a town. A common weary slouch conveyed wordlessly that they’d survived an ordeal. They eyed me warily, as if across a ravine that, however narrow, could never be traversed. It was the same look as on the faces of those young soldiers in the photographs displayed at the embassy. This is how fighting men always regard those who have not shared their experience. Though sometimes contemptuous, the look could also be kindly. Be sorry you weren’t here, it seemed to say, but be grateful too.
Peter and I felt an instant rapport. For the rest of that first afternoon, we talked—or, rather, he talked and I listened. Too young for World War II and too old for Vietnam, he’d satisfied his taste for battlefield glory by becoming the most meticulous of military historians. A worldwide network of contacts gave him access to intelligence at the highest level. He could discourse on Erwin Rommel’s admiration for von Clausewitz or the folly of Jeb Stuart at Gettysburg, then switch in a moment to an insider’s view of the role of mercenaries in such African pestholes as Angola. Whatever the subject, however, his dryly ironic tone made war appear both the noblest of callings and the most futile.
As the light faded, he unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a gun. With a lurch of the heart, I recognized that most glamorously menacing of automatic pistols, the Luger P08.
He checked the magazine and worked the action to satisfy himself it was unloaded, then held it out, butt first.
I took it in awe. I’d never before handled that chic, efficient implement of death.
“It’s heavier than I expected,” I said, weighing it.
“Good tools often are.”
Reluctant to hand it back, I curled my hand around the butt. For the first time, the hunger it aroused in collectors became understandable to me.
The Luger P08 pistol
Before I left, and almost as an afterthought, he agreed to publish my book. Maybe, he said, readers who liked stories about men being blown up would enjoy hearing about the men who blew them up, if only for the movies. But we both recognized that the reluctance with which I’d relinquished the Luger had tipped the scales. On some fundamental level, it revealed we were two of a kind.
When I returned a few weeks later to sign the contracts, however, Peter wasn’t there.
“As it turns out, I’ll be handling your book,” said the editor who’d introduced us. “Just initial the bottom of each page.”
“What about Mr. van Diemen?”
“Peter isn’t . . . um . . . well, he won’t be around for a while.”
“Is he ill?”
“Not exactly . . .”
Over a plowman’s lunch at the pub, the story emerged.
Peter lived with a particularly ill-tempered companion: wife or mistress, nobody knew exactly. But she often turned up at the office for visits that ended with embarrassingly loud arguments. The managing editor called Peter into his office for A Quiet Word, and the scenes ceased. The reason emerged a few weeks after Peter and I first met. Golfers on a remote suburban course found a corpse. Dissected, polyethylene-wrapped, and buried in a dense patch of rough, it might have remained undiscovered had inquisitive foxes not dug it up. Reassembled, the pieces were identified as Peter’s lady friend.
Owning up without embarrassment to the police, Peter described her death as an accident: a wild punch at the culmination of yet another row. Since nobody had a good word to say about the victim, a sympathetic jury gave him the benefit of the doubt and five years for manslaughter. He served three.
He wrote me a courteous note when the stuntman book was published, and after his release, we shared a lunch. How, I asked, was life outside prison?
“A bit lonely. I miss having a girlfriend, but I’m out of touch. It’s difficult, finding women.”
They had trouble finding your last one, I thought, but, diplomatic for once, said nothing.