by John Lawton
Burne-Jones had sent him here in ’59. The last of a series of visits, which had mostly consisted of waiting, of cooling his heels in any number of the city’s plethora of bars, watching Frank Spoleto get drunk. Waiting for some kind of border incident to manifest itself or utterly fail to manifest itself.
In ’59 Wilderness and Frank had been the reception for a Soviet defector … or was it ’58? No matter. It was … what? Ancient history. He hadn’t seen Frank for at least six months and with any luck he’d never see him again.
He looked at the Finns, silent on park benches, heads tilted to the sun, eyes closed, oblivious to the screeching trams. Doing nothing, saying nothing. Simply happy to be in summer sunshine. Happy as pigs in shit. They did that a lot, he recalled. And in autumn a sea mist could wrap itself around the city, and that too reminded him of London, of the “yellow fog that rubbed its back upon the windowpanes.” Sea mist smelled a lot better and didn’t stick to the back of your throat like chewing gum.
So far, so good.
§22
The chancery was about as unprepossessing as architecture can get. A gigantic, filthy slab of a building, six or seven storeys high, occupying half a block.
He dropped his bags in Burton’s outer office. A girl—that is, a woman in her late forties—was standing behind the desk flicking quickly through papers and muttering to herself.
Wilderness said, “I’m here to see Mr. Burton.”
The secretary looked up, a pale, heart-shaped face, framed by a mop of greying curls.
“Mr. Burton?”
“Yes. You know … the boss?”
A face already grumpy turned sour on him. A look that mixed impatience with disdain.
“And you are …?”
“Young. Michael Young. I’m the new Second Secretary.”
She let the sheaf of papers fall back into the in-tray.
“One moment. I’ll see if Mr. Burton is free.”
As close to “bugger off” as one could get without uttering the actual words. She disappeared into the inner office, closing the door behind her.
Wilderness waited. Several minutes passed.
Then the door opened, and she said, “Mr. Burton will see you now.”
She held the door as Wilderness passed, and, still inside, shut it quietly behind him. The room was empty. Just a big desk with three phones and the usual in- and out-trays and a couple of hard-on-the-arse chairs facing it for visitors. There was no one else there but Wilderness and the secretary.
She looked through Wilderness as if he were invisible, walked straight past him and sat behind the desk.
“Do sit down, Flight Sergeant Holderness. You’re only Michael Young when I’m through with you.”
Burton … Burton … Burton, J. Oh fuck. Jenny Burton from the Bonn Station a couple of years back. The one they called the Brocken Witch.
“I’m surprised we haven’t met before, but Bonn was never your stamping ground, was it?”
Wilderness sat.
“Berlin,” he said simply.
“And your reputation in Berlin precedes you. In fact, I’m amazed the things you got up to in Berlin last year didn’t sink you. But … that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Alec wants you out of the way.”
Wilderness said nothing. If she was going to prattle on about his reputation, he’d neither defend nor agree.
“Let’s get one thing straight from the start, shall we? You won’t be playing Cowboys and Indians on my turf. You won’t be pulling any stunts like the one you staged at Invalidenstraße. You’re a cultural attaché.”
She held up a hand, palm facing him, before he could interrupt.
“Now I know you’ll say that’s only a cover but to be an effective cover it has to be real. Whatever Burne-Jones has set you by way of a mission, you will operate as a cultural attaché. You will do the job. I gather you’ve a brief to look at Lapland. That’s fine. There’s plenty of culture you can spread around in Lapland.”
Wilderness felt his heart sink. The over-seventies nude ballet was rapidly evolving from joke to reality. She made culture sound like a brand of margarine.
“My instructions from London,” she went on, “are that you observe, that you gather information and you report your findings, if any, to London … through me. You are not an agent, you are an observer. There’ll be no shoot-outs. Do you understand me, Holderness?”
“Of course.”
He put on his best fake smile. He doubted Alec had asked for any findings to be routed through her. As Station Head, she’d every right to expect it, but he’d be the one to judge.
“When my secretary, Janis, returns from lunch, she’ll assign you a car and a flat. You’re free to find your own flat if you wish, but you’ll have to pay for it yourself out of your salary. The car will have diplomatic plates. Do not tamper with them, do not remove them … everything you do here is as a diplomat. But don’t let that delude you into thinking you’re immune from tickets for parking or speeding. You’re not. We play by the rules. Any questions? If so … save them till Janis gets back. You can go now.”
An American quasi-obscenity occurred to Wilderness—wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.
§23
The outer office was still empty.
He found a coffee bar two streets away and sat nursing his wounds and counting his blessings.
Wounds = too numerous to mention.
Blessings = zero.
He counted again. Nope … still zero.
§24
He gave it half an hour. Drank a second cup. Hoped that by the time Janis got back the Brocken Witch would have gone out.
She had. Her office door was wide open, and a woman about half the Witch’s age was bashing away at an electric typewriter—one of those newfangled IBM golf balls that tinged technology with magic.
“Hello,” she said, sweeping a lock of thick, black hair out of her eyes. A northern accent, Yorkshire or Derbyshire, a far cry from the arch Roedean or Cheltenham tones of Jenny Burton.
“You must be Mr. Young. Been expecting you. In fact, I was expecting you yesterday. Ne’er mind, you’re here now.”
Mannishly, she stood up, not much shorter than Wilderness himself, a good five feet ten inches of her, and stuck out a hand for him to shake. Just when he thought the whole world was agin him.
“Janis Bell. ’Ave you met the boss? Sorry. Mustn’t call her that. Mrs. Burton. You’ve met Mrs. Burton?”
“Yes. I was called into the headmaster’s study about an hour ago.”
Janis laughed.
“Don’t. You’ll get us both shot. Mrs. B’s a stickler for most things. Starting with respect.”
“Then I won’t tell you what they call her in Bonn.”
“Please don’t. What I don’t know I can’t blab, now, can I?”
She sat down and riffled through the papers on her desk till she came up with a brown envelope identical to the one Alice had given him.
“Flat address and car keys in here. Take a look at the flat and let me know if you can stick it. It’s just up the hill, on the left. A sort of jaundice-yellow building.”
“Stick it?”
“They’re all a bit, y’know, crummy. If I were on a bigger salary, I’d move meself, but … anyway, best not complain, eh, Mr. Young?”
“Actually my real name’s Holderness.”
“I’m expected to observe your cover. You’re either Mr. Young or Michael.”
“Let’s give him a nickname. Call me Joe.”
She tapped her front teeth with the rubber end of her pencil.
“The thing is … the thing about Mrs. Burton is she likes order … everything in its place … a bit like that motto my gran used to have over the cupboard under the stairs … ‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ That hangs over Mrs. Burton’s desk, it’s just that it’s invisible. She’ll expect you to be Michael Young.”
“Pigeonholed?”
“Yep. Loves her taxonomy. I’m
pigeonholed as her ‘Chirpy Yorkshire Terrier.’ Judging by your file you’ll be her ‘Man with the Six-Shooter.’ You don’t have a six-shooter, do you?”
“No,” he lied.
“Cos if you did … and if you got caught with it …”
“I understand.”
“Doesn’t pay to shatter her expectations … you don’t have a gun … and I don’t use words like taxonomy.”
§25
The exterior of the block of flats was promising. Art deco, a yellow he knew must have a specific name, but he could not recall it. Patent-yellow? Or was patent a shade of green?
The interior broke the promise. Crummy was precise. Any hint of Art Deco had vanished long ago in a postwar refit. The official embassy flat was a classic example of the East German style of design and décor. Not designed to make you feel at home, but to make you feel there was no such place as home. Trendy Scandinavia—all that Swedish component shelving and chairs like dog baskets—hadn’t got a look in. Every chair sat you bolt upright as though to slouch were a sin. In contrast, the mattress was soft enough to give you lumbar agony. And every possible surface was finished in a deckled-cream, wipe-down plastic. The dining table looked less likely to be the scene of a convivial meal than an autopsy.
The block of flats bore the inept name of Paradise Apartments—insult added to injury. He’d keep it. What did it matter? He’d be long gone before winter.
All his life he’d resisted sentimentality. He’d had no love for either parent—a drunken mum and a psychopathic dad—and the only reason his dad had got as far as committing suicide was that Wilderness had not got around to killing him. All his affection as a teenager had centred on his maternal grandfather, Abner, and the old man’s mistress, Merle. With them gone there’d been no discernible affection in him until Nell, and with Nell gone—walked out never to return—there’d been none till Judy. But Judy had wooed him. Never one to be passive, Judy had taken all the initiative and unleashed the flattery of a slow seduction on him. She’d taken a couple of years to do this … Wilderness resisting only inwardly, wondering what her father would think … until the day he’d gone round to the house in Holland Park and asked for her hand in marriage.
Now, alone in this sterile outpost of Stalinallee, he found he missed Judy and the girls more than ever before. The switch that so readily changed him from husband and father to field agent didn’t seem to be clicking in. Sitting for a few minutes on the rock-hard couch, looking out across the street, through a dirty, blackened window, at a towering, redbrick, faux-gothic monstrosity—something that had failed the audition to be St. Pancras Station in London and been plonked down here instead—he felt a seeping sentimentality … and what good is a sentimental agent? All the same, he counted his blessings once more and came up with a total of three.
He shook himself. The dog who came in from the rain. Muttered a quick “fukkit” and went in search of his car.
§26
The car was not a car. It was a beast. A Mercedes Benz Unimog 404. He’d driven one during his time in Lebanon. It looked like a cross between a Land Rover and a tank and was about the size of an English dustbin lorry. This one had been set up for Finnish winters—a hard top, and a set of snow chains in a box bolted to the chassis. For some reason there was a metal tube about twelve feet long welded to the roof. The Mog looked great—a child’s toy writ large—but it would not have been his first choice—accelerated like a dopy tortoise, and struggled to reach even sixty miles per hour.
That was probably why they’d chosen it.
§27
In the morning Janis Bell introduced him to more embassy staff. To the cypher clerk, to the other second secretaries, among whom was one Eric Farr: Requisitions and Materiel. Not all second secretaries were spies, except in Soviet embassies.
“Does Farr know who I am?” Wilderness asked as she led him down the corridor.
“Oh yes. Not your real name of course—but he knows why you’re here. He’s used to it. Used to people like you, I mean. He’ll brief you on the culture thing, and he’ll do it with a straight face. Does everything with a straight face. Do try and take him seriously.”
“Why do you say that?”
“In our very brief acquaintance, Mr. Young, I might just have leapt to the conclusion that you don’t take things particularly seriously. Well, things that take place in offices, anyway.”
“Leap away,” Wilderness said.
“We also serve who only type and wait.”
She tapped on the door they had come to and as a voice said “Enter,” she shushed Wilderness with a finger to her lips and whispered, “Now, best po-face!”
A small man, a round, pleasing face, about the same age as Wilderness, running prematurely to fat—well-dressed, a better suit than Wilderness owned, although he would not have been caught dead in a waistcoat, matching or not.
After handshakes, ritual enquiries about life back home—Surrey, Virginia Water and Waterloo station all cropped up in the first few sentences—and platitudes about England, Australia and the ashes, Farr said, “I bet you’re wondering about the Mog?”
“I was rather.”
“It serves its purpose very well.”
“What purpose?”
“British Council Travelling Cinema.”
Wilderness reached for his best po-face.
“Very few small towns in Finland have a cinema, but as long as they have something like a village hall, we can show them an English-language film. We’ve a marvellous selection. I’ve done the run-up as far as Puolanka myself a couple of times. Always a good reception. But the screen is almost twelve feet across, so the Mog is really the only vehicle big enough. Plus, it will get you there in anything short of a blizzard, and I gather from Mrs. Burton that your brief is to get up into Lapland and … er … do whatever it is you chaps do. And if you can do it whilst spreading the gospel of English culture then everyone’s happy. Perfect cover, I’d say. Not that I know anything about … er … whatever it is you chaps do.”
Such innocence. Such a mockery of innocence.
“It’s OK, Mr. Farr. I’ll try not to shoot anyone between reels.”
§28
In the afternoon Wilderness turned out the contents of the Mog. It wasn’t hard to figure out what went where with a 16mm projector and mono sound system, which was just as well since no one was offering to tell him.
But the film library … Farr’s marvellous selection.
Ye gods, he thought, what are they thinking of?
He doubted there was a film less than ten years old. Some of them were twenty years old. He’d seen at least a dozen of them with Eddie when they were training in Cambridge and as many more in the days of courtship before he and Judy married.
The Titfield Thunderbolt—made in 1953. Rustics fight to stop closure of their railway branch line.
The Battle of the River Platte—made in 1956. The Royal Navy blockades Montevideo and the Graf Spee scuttles itself.
Passport to Pimlico—made in 1949. A London borough declares its independence and puts an end to rationing.
Kind Hearts and Coronets—also 1949. Alec Guinness plays umpteen members of an aristocratic family while an utter cad murders his way to a dukedom.
All marvellous … in their way … in their time … but this wasn’t their time … this was 1966. London was swinging. Eddie had assured him it was. Monday was no longer just washing day, chippies open and all. What possible impression of England was the FO trying to convey? Would Finland resist the temptations of communism on an ideological diet of unchanging rural life and wartime British pluck?
He moved to the shorts, the fillers put on between what were commonly known as the big and little pictures, in between the tubs of ice cream (vanilla only) and fruit lollipops—fifty episodes of Look at Life … “The Coffee Bars of Soho” … “Driving a Tube Train” … “A Day in the Life of a London Cabbie” … somewhat more up to date … but a yard and a half wide of the mark. Cultural
cliché if not cultural whitewash … a world in which the British could still point to all “the red bits on the map.”
The Americans and the Russians put men into space—the British looked after their branch lines and looked back nostalgically to the days when they sank Nazi warships. It was all so … resistible.
He mentioned this to Janis Bell over coffee the next morning.
“Draw up a list and give it to Eric. He’ll get you anything you want. I know what you mean. It looks like an outdated vision of England, but the truth is, it isn’t anyone’s vision. It’s a lack of vision. Eric’s realm is paper clips and mimeograph machines. If you ever have need of a ‘Top Secret’ stamp and red ink pad, he probably has a cupboard full. And the last time he went to an English cinema it was probably showing The Titfield soddin’ Thunderbolt. If he’s driven the Mog up north it’s only because there was no one else to do it.”
Wilderness drew up his list:
This Sporting Life
The Entertainer
Live Now, Pay Later
A Hard Day’s Night
Darling
The Ipcress File
A different cinema, a different England. A harder, more cynical England. Self-reflecting, not self-regarding.
He thought about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which had been released just the year before. He and Judy had seen it in Leicester Square. Richard Burton, for once not overacting, for once not seeming too big for the screen he was in—but then he had pause to think … what impression of England did that create?