by William Boyd
‘No, Ruth, please. I am sincere. I am in love with you.’
‘What’s the point? You’re going to Indonesia in two weeks. We’ll never see each other again. Let’s forget it – we’re friends. We’ll always be friends.’
‘No, I have to be honest with you, Ruth. This is my feeling. This is what I feel in my heart. I know you don’t feel the same for me but I am obliged to tell you what my feelings was.’
‘Were.’
‘Were.’
We sat in silence for a while, Hamid never taking his eyes off me.
‘What’re you going to do?’ I said, finally. ‘Do you want to carry on with the lessons?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Let’s see how we get on, anyway. Do you want a cup of tea? I could murder a cup of tea.’
On uncanny cue, there was a knock on the door.
Ilse pushed it open and said, ‘Sorry, Ruth. Where is tea? I am looking but Ludger is sleeping still.’
We went into the kitchen and I made a pot of tea for Hamid, Ilse, myself and, in due course, a sleepy Ludger.
Bobbie York feigned huge astonishment – hand on forehead, staggering backward a few feet – when I called round to see him, unannounced.
‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he said as he poured me one of his ‘tiny’ whiskies. ‘Twice in one week. I feel I should – I don’t know – dance a jig, run naked through the quad, slaughter a cow, or something.’
‘I need to ask your advice,’ I said, as flatteringly as possible.
‘Where to publish your thesis?’
‘Fraid not. How to arrange a meeting with Lord Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve.’
‘Ah, the plot thickens. Just write a letter and ask for an appointment.’
‘Life doesn’t work like that, Bobbie. There’s got to be a reason. He’s retired, he’s in his seventies, by all accounts something of a recluse. Why would he want to meet me, a complete stranger?’
‘Fair point.’ Bobbie handed me my drink and slowly sat down. ‘How’s that burn of yours, by the way?’
‘Much better, thank you.’
‘Well, why don’t you say you’re writing an essay – about something he was involved in. Publishing, journalism.’
‘Or what he did in the war.’
‘Or what he did in the war – even more intriguing.’ Bobbie was no fool. ‘I suspect that’s where your interest lies. You’re a historian, after all – tell him you’re writing a book and that you want to interview him.’
I thought about this. ‘Or a newspaper article.’
‘Yes – much better. Appeal to his vanity. Say it’s for the Telegraph or The Times. That might flush him out.’
On my way home I stopped at a newsagent and bought copies of all the broadsheets just to refresh my memory. I thought to myself: can one just say one is writing an article for The Times or the Telegraph? Yes, I told myself, it’s not a lie – anyone can write an article for these newspapers but there’s no guarantee they’ll accept it; it would only be a lie if you said you’d been commissioned when you hadn’t. I picked up the Telegraph, thinking this was more likely to appeal to a noble lord, but then bought the others – it had been a long time since I had read my way through a bundle of British newspapers. As I gathered the broadsheets together I saw a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine. On the front page was a picture of the same man who I had seen on television – Baader, the one Ludger claimed to have known in his porno days. The headline was about the trial of the Baader-Meinhof gang in Stammheim. July 4th – the trial was in its 120th day. I added it to my pile. First Ludger staying, now the mysterious Ilse – I felt I needed to reacquaint myself with the world of German urban terrorism. I drove home with my reading matter and that night, after I had put Jochen to bed (Ludger and Ilse had gone out to the pub), I wrote a letter to Lucas Romer, Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve, care of the House of Lords, requesting an interview for an article I was writing for the Daily Telegraph about the British Secret Service in World War Two. I felt strange writing ‘Dear Lord Mansfield’, writing to this man who had been my mother’s lover. I was very brief and to the point – it would be interesting to see what reply he made, if at all.
The Story of Eva Delectorskaya
Washington DC, 1941
EVA DELECTORSKAYA CALLED ROMER in New York.
‘I’ve struck gold,’ she said and hung up.
Arranging an appointment with Mason Harding had been very straightforward. Eva took the train from New York to Washington and booked into the London Hall Apartment Hotel on 11th and M streets. She realised she was subconsciously drawn to hotels that carried some echo of England. Then she thought that if it was becoming a habit then it was one she should change – another Romer rule – but she liked her one-room apartment with its tiny galley kitchen and ice-box and the gleaming clean shower. She reserved it for two weeks and, once she had unpacked, she called the number Romer had given her.
‘Mason Harding.’
She introduced herself, saying that she worked for Transoceanic Press in New York and she would like to request an interview with Mr Hopkins.
‘I’m afraid Mr Hopkins is unwell,’ Harding said, then added, ‘Are you English?’
‘Sort of. Half Russian.’
‘Sounds a dangerous mixture.’
‘Can I call by your office? There may be other stories we can run – Transoceanic has a huge readership in South and Latin America.’
Harding was very amenable – he suggested the end of the afternoon the following day.
Mason Harding was a young man in his early thirties, Eva guessed, whose thick brown hair was cut and severely parted like a schoolboy’s. He was putting on weight and his even, handsome features were softened by a layer of fat on his cheeks and his jaw-bone. He wore a pale fawn seersucker suit and on his desk a sign said ‘Mason Harding III’.
‘So,’ he said, offering her a seat and looking her up and down. ‘Transoceanic Press – can’t say I’ve heard of you.’
She gave him a rough outline of Transoceanic’s reach and readership; he nodded, seemingly taking it in. She said she’d been sent down to Washington to interview key officials in the new administration.
‘Sure. Where are you staying?’
She told him. He asked her a few questions about London, the war and had she been there in the Blitz? Then he looked at his watch.
‘You want to get a drink? I think we close at five or thereabouts, these days.’
They left the Department of Commerce, a vast classical monster of a building – with a facade more like a museum than a department of state – and they walked a few blocks north on 15th Street to a dark bar that Mason – ‘Please call me Mason’ – knew and where, once settled inside, they both ordered Whisky Macs, Mason’s suggestion. It was a chilly day: they could do with some warming up.
Eva asked some dutiful questions about Hopkins and Mason told her a few bland facts, except for the information that Hopkins had had ‘half his stomach removed’ in an operation some years ago for stomach cancer. Mason was careful to mention his department’s and the Roosevelt administration’s admiration of British resolve and pluck.
‘You got to understand, Eve,’ he said, savouring his second Whisky Mac, ‘it’s incredibly hard for Hopkins and FDR to do anything more. If it was up to us we’d be in there beside you, shoulder to shoulder, fighting those damn Nazis. Want another? Waiter! Sir?’ He signalled for another drink. ‘But the vote in Congress has to be won before we go to war. Roosevelt knows he’ll never win it. Not now. Something has to happen to change people’s attitudes. You ever been to an America First rally?’
Eva said she had. She remembered it well: an Irish-American priest hectoring the crowd about British iniquity and duplicity. Eighty per cent of Americans were against entering the war. America had intervened in the last war and had gained nothing except the Depression. The United States was safe from attack – there was no need to help England again. England was broke, fin
ished: don’t waste American money and American lives trying to save her skin. And so on – to massive cheers and applause.
‘Well, you see the problem writ large,’ Mason said, with a resigned apologetic tone, like a doctor diagnosing an incurable illness. ‘I don’t want a Nazi Europe, God no – we’ll be next on the list, for sure. Trouble is hardly anybody else reads it that way.’
They talked on and in the course of their conversation it emerged that Mason was married and had two children – boys: Mason junior and Farley – and that he lived in Alexandria. After his third Whisky Mac he asked her what she was doing, Saturday. She said she had no plans and so he volunteered to show her around the city – he had to come into the office, anyway, to tidy up a few things.
So, on Saturday, Mason picked her up in the morning outside the London Hall Hotel in his smart green sedan and toured her around the city’s key sights. She saw the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol and finally the National Gallery. They lunched at a restaurant called Du Barry on Connecticut Avenue.
‘Look, I mustn’t keep you any longer,’ Eva said as Mason paid the bill. ‘Don’t you have to get to your office?’
‘Oh, heck, it can wait till Monday. Anyway, I want to take you out to Arlington.’
He dropped her back at her hotel before six. He told her to come by the office on Monday afternoon when he would have some news on Hopkins’s state of health and if and when he were likely to be available for interview. They shook hands, Eva thanking him warmly for her ‘great day’, then she went to her hotel room and made the call to Romer.
Mason Harding tried to kiss her on Monday evening. After their meeting – ‘Still no Harry, I’m afraid’ – they had gone back to his bar and he had drunk too much. Coming out, it had been raining and they waited under a shop awning until the brisk shower passed over. As the rain abated, they dashed for his car. She thought it was a little strange that he combed his hair before starting the engine and driving her back to the London Hall. It was while they were making their farewells that he lunged at her and, averting her face just in time, she felt his lips on her cheek, her jaw, her neck.
‘Mason! For God’s sake.’ She pushed him away.
He recoiled and sat glowering, staring at the steering wheel. ‘I’m very attracted to you, Eve,’ he said, in a strangely sulky voice, not looking at her, as if this were all the explanation she required.
‘I’m sure your wife is very attracted to you, also.’
He sighed and his body sagged in mock fatigue as if this was a tired and over-familiar rebuke.
‘We both know what this is about,’ he said, turning finally. ‘Let’s not act like a couple of innocents. You’re a beautiful woman. My personal situation has nothing to do with it.’
‘I’ll call you on Monday,’ Eva said and opened the car door.
He grabbed her hand before she could step out and kissed it. She tugged but he wouldn’t let it go.
‘I’ve got to go out of town tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go to Baltimore for two days. Meet me there – at the Allegany Hotel, 6.00 p.m.’
She said nothing, shook her hand free and slipped out of the car.
‘The Allegany Hotel,’ he repeated. ‘I can get you that Hopkins interview.’
‘The gold is very bright and shiny,’ Eva said. ‘It almost seems to have heat coming off it.’
‘Good,’ Romer said. She could hear through the receiver the sound of people talking around him.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
‘I’m in the office.’
‘They want me to make a sale at the Allegany Hotel, Baltimore, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 6. 00 p.m.’
‘Don’t do or say anything. I’ll come down and see you in the morning.’
Romer was in Washington by ten. She went down to the lobby when the front desk called up to her room to tell her he was there and she felt such a leaping and thudding in her heart as she looked around for him that she paused, surprised at herself, surprised that she was reacting this way.
He was sitting in a corner vestibule but, annoyingly, there was another man with him, whom he introduced simply as Bradley. Bradley was a small slim fellow, dark, with a grin that flickered on and off like a faulty light bulb.
When Romer saw her he stood and came to greet her. They shook hands and he led her over to another part of the lobby. When they sat down she reached surreptitiously for his hand.
‘Lucas, darling – ’
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘Sorry. Who’s Bradley?’
‘Bradley’s a photographer that works for us. Are you ready? I think we should go.’
They caught a train from Union Station. It was a terse almost wordless journey what with Bradley sitting opposite them. Every time Eva looked at him he flashed his short-lived grin at her, like a nervous tic. She preferred to look out of the window at the autumn leaves. She was grateful that the journey was a short one.
At Baltimore Station she told Romer pointedly that she felt like a coffee and a sandwich, so Romer asked Bradley to go ahead to the Allegany and wait for them. Finally, they were alone.
‘What’s happening?’ she said when they sat down in a corner of the station cafeteria, half knowing what the answer would be. There was condensation on the window and with the heel of her hand she wiped a porthole of clarity to see a near-empty street, a few passers-by, a black man selling brilliant posies.
‘We need a photograph of you and Harding entering the hotel and leaving the hotel the next morning.’
‘I see …’ She felt sick, suddenly nauseous, but decided to press on. ‘Why?’
Romer sighed and looked round before taking hold of her hand under the table.
‘People only betray their country for three reasons,’ he said, quietly, seriously, cueing her next question.
‘And what are they?’
‘Money, blackmail and revenge.’
She thought about this, wondering if it were another Romer rule.
‘Money, revenge – and blackmail.’
‘You know what’s going on, Eva. You know what it’ll take to make Mr Harding suddenly become very helpful to us.’
She did, thinking of Mrs Harding with all the money and little Mason jun. and Farley.
‘Did you plan all this?’
‘No.’
She looked at him: liar, her eyes said.
‘It’s part of the job, Eva. You have no idea how this would change everything. We’d have someone in Hopkins’s office, someone close to him.’ He paused. ‘Close to Hopkins means close to Roosevelt.’
She put a cigarette in her mouth – to confuse any passing lip-readers – and said, ‘So I have to sleep with Mason Harding so that SIS can know what Roosevelt and Hopkins are up to.’
‘You don’t have to sleep with him. As long as we have the photographs – that’s all the evidence we require. You can finesse it any way you like.’
She managed a dry little laugh, but it didn’t convince her. ‘ “Finesse” – nice word,’ she said. ‘I know: I could tell him I was having my period.’
He wasn’t amused. ‘You’re being stupid, now. You’re letting yourself down. This actually isn’t about your feelings – this is why you joined us.’ He sat back. ‘But if you want to abort – just tell me.’
She said nothing. She was thinking about what lay ahead of her. She wondered if she were capable of doing what Romer required of her. She wondered also what he was feeling – he seemed so cold and matter-of-fact.
‘How would you feel?’ she asked him. ‘If I did it.’
He said, immediately, flatly: ‘We’ve got a job to do.’
She tried not to show the hurt that was growing in her. There were so many other things you could have said, she thought, that would have made it a little easier.
‘You have to think of it as a job, Eva,’ he continued, in a softer voice, as if he could read her mind. ‘Keep your feelings out of it. You may hav
e even more unpleasant things to do before this war is over.’ He covered his mouth with his hand. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the pressures from London are huge, immense.’ He went on. BSC had one solitary vital task: to persuade America it was in her interest to join the war in Europe. That was all, pure and simple – get America in. He reminded her that it was over three months since the first meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt. ‘We’ve got our wonderful, much-heralded Atlantic Charter,’ he said, ‘and what’s happened? Nothing. You’ve seen the press back at home. “Where are the Yanks?”, “What’s keeping the Yanks?” We have to get closer. We have to get inside the White House. You can help – simple as that.’
‘But how do you feel about it?’ It was the wrong question to ask again, she knew, and she saw his face change, but she wanted to be brutal, wanted him to confront the reality of what she was being asked to do. ‘How do you feel about me and Mason Harding in bed together.’
‘I just want us to win this war,’ he said. ‘My feelings are irrelevant.’
‘All right,’ she said, feeling ashamed and then feeling angry for feeling ashamed. ‘I’ll do what I can.’
She was waiting in the lobby at six when Mason arrived. He kissed her on the cheek and they registered at reception as Mr and Mrs Avery. She could sense his tension as they stood at the front desk – she felt that adultery was not run-of-the-mill in Mason Harding’s life. As he signed the register she looked around; somewhere she knew Bradley was taking pictures; later someone would pay the clerk for a copy of the booking. They went up to their room and, once the bellhop had left, Mason kissed her with more passion, touched her breasts, thanked her, told her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met.
They dined in the hotel restaurant, early, and Mason spent most of the meal quietly but forcefully denigrating his wife and her family and their financial hold over him. This mood of petulance helped her, she found; it was boring, small-minded and selfish and it allowed her to step back from any vision of what was about to ensue. It made her colder. People betray their country for only three reasons, Romer had said. Mason Harding was about to take the first step along that narrow, winding road.