Old Flames (Frederick Troy 2)

by Lawton, John

  Onions thought about this for a moment or two, as though puzzled.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s not funny.’

  §5

  There was scarcely enough of the evening left to do anything but go home, pack and go to bed. It was a short walk from Scotland Yard to his town house in Goodwin’s Court. Over the years Troy had worked out and walked every possible route home. Along the Embankment, under Hungerford Bridge, up Villiers Street, across the Strand and in the back way via Chandos Place and Bedfordbury—which was rivery and, on the whole, quiet. Or straight along Whitehall, across Trafalgar Square, miss Nelson, pass St Martin-in-the-Fields, up St Martin’s Lane and in the front way—which was far from quiet and for when he was in the mood to play the tourist. Or, as tonight, in mood perverse, over Whitehall, down Downing Street, where the lights still burned in the Prime Minister’s offices—last-minute alterations to the agenda allowing Mr K to visit a pickle-bottling factory in Middlesbrough or morris dancing in Middle Wallop?—where the duty copper gave him an unexpected salute, out into Horse Guards’ Parade, up the steps at Carlton House, up the Haymarket, and left into Orange Street—there to pause, to gaze quickly up at the top floor of an old, narrow house, and walk on, out into Charing Cross Road, through Cecil Court and in the front way.

  When he got in the telephone was ringing.

  ‘Freddie? Come out and have a jar.’

  Why Charlie? Why now?

  ‘Bad timing, Charlie, I’m off somewhere at first light. I have to pack.’

  ‘I’m only in the Salisbury. I saw you pass by. Come on. Just half an hour.’

  ‘Charlie, it’s half past—’

  ‘Since when did we give a toss about the time?’

  The Salisbury stood on the far side of St Martin’s Lane, opposite the entrance to Goodwin’s Court. In the heart of the West End, all but sandwiched between theatres, it was a popular watering hole of actors. And, of a kind, Charlie was an actor.

  Troy found him in the tap room, swirling a brandy and soda, a thousand trivial questions on his lips, his glistening, tangled web stretched out for Troy to settle into. Troy had known Charlie for thirty years. He was a matter of days older than Troy. They had started at school the same day, in the same dormitory, and had lived side by side for nearly eight years through the vicissitudes of an education that Troy had hated. Charlie had more tolerance of it, more understanding, Troy had assumed, of what it all meant. He had steered Troy through the course of it, around social and formal obstacles that left Troy baffled and wondering vaguely if the English were not a race of lunatics. All the same, each summer Troy asked his father if he could leave now, and each summer the elder Troy replied that he would never come to terms with the new country any other way and so must stay. ‘Do you want,’ he said, ‘to be an Englishman or not? I recommend it wholeheartedly. They can be so unforgiving to wogs of any kind. If the club has opened its doors, I suggest you join. You don’t have to believe. That is, after all, un-English. Remember Conrad—Under Western Eyes. They made their compromise with history long ago, and so believe nothing. And you don’t have to like them either.’

  Charlie led. Whatever the situation, Charlie led and Troy was an NCO. The benefits to Troy were great. At first he had wondered why Charlie had picked him, since more often than not he needed protecting from the perils of a closed society that he scarcely understood. And the price to Charlie had been great. He had stood up to bullies, with whom he personally had had no quarrel but for whom Troy, foreign in his looks and short in stature, was a natural target. And on more than one occasion had taken a beating meant for Troy.

  ‘I don’t feel it as you would,’ he had said when Troy asked why he had owned up to whatever it was Troy had done. Troy did not for a moment believe this, and said as much. Charlie replied, ‘Well, let’s put it another way. They hit me a damn sight less hard than they would have hit you. They know you’re not one of them; they think I probably am. But they’re wrong. Contra mundum, Fred. You and me against the world.’

  Troy had not understood this. All the same, Charlie had gone on saying it.

  In its way their education had shaped each of them into what they were now. Each found a home outside the norms of English high society. Charlie had gone up to Cambridge in 1933, from there straight into the Guards, in which he spent the war. In theory at least he was still in the Guards, but this was all part of the colossal bluff that Troy thought went back to the war and perhaps to before the war. Guards meant spook, reserve meant active spook, attachment to our embassy in Helsinki meant important spook, attachment to our embassy in Moscow meant very important spook. All this went without saying. Charlie and Troy did not discuss it, had never discussed it. There was little need. Few men alive had Charlie’s gift for small talk.

  ‘How are the girls?’ he asked, beaming his faultless smile at Troy.

  ‘Not bad at all. They’re forty-five now, and when I can struggle free of them long enough to be faintly objective, I’ll admit they’re good-looking women.’

  ‘And Sasha? How’s Sasha? I always had a soft spot for her.’

  This was a lie. Passable enough, plausible enough if uttered to anyone else, but to Troy it smacked of Charming Charlie. At school some wag whose facility with words was as good as his perception had dubbed him Princess Channing. It reflected Charlie’s good manners, his good nature, his sexual proclivities, his ready flattery and the inevitable result—Charlie usually got his own way. Six feet tall in his stockinged feet, a mop of unruly blond hair that seemed to roll down his brow just short of the cuteness of curls, a pleasing heart-shaped face, pale blue eyes and good, un-English teeth set in a wide mouth, Charlie’s looks had made him a social success from an early age. Troy had seen him grow from a pederast’s delight to the perfect ladies’ man. In many ways he and Troy were opposites but, as the years had proved, enduring friends. Charlie lived recklessly, was always broke, and seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis untouched by the clammy hand of chaos. Troy had a vivid memory of the last time he had lent him money three or four years ago, if only because it was the last time and because, for the first time, Charlie had paid him back. Three hundred quid in used flyers, and a crystalline lie about having backed the winner in the Grand National. Prior to that, Troy had paid off bad debts, settled tailor’s bills and seen off menacing bookmakers with a disheartening regularity and, the charm working like magic, no real resentment that he could remember. Time was, Troy thought, Charlie could talk his way in or out of anything.

  ‘No you didn’t,’ said Troy. ‘Nobody could. I can tell them apart physically. I always could. But I defy anyone to drive so much as a playing card between their characters. They’re both the same, and they’re both as bloody minded as they come. The idea that you could have a preference for one over the other isn’t on, and the idea that any man could seriously have a soft spot for either one of them is preposterous. Even their wretched husbands can’t aspire to that.’

  Charlie grinned. ‘How is dear Hugh?’

  Sasha had married the Hon. Hugh Darbishire in 1933. He was an English uppercrust bore, far from brainless but safely, absolutely contained by the mores and interests of his class. Troy’s father had remarked on the announcement of their engagement that no one should ever doubt what to buy Hugh as a present—shirts for him to stuff. ‘Wretched’, Troy knew, was scarcely fair. Hugh was probably as happy as one of Troy’s pigs, for much the same reasons. He was blind to his wife’s eccentricities and took immense pride in telling people what a marvellous wife and mother she was. On a good day, Troy thought, Sasha could just about remember her children’s names. Last year Hugh’s father had died and Hugh had gone to the Lords as the Viscount Darbishire. He had broken with his family’s Liberal tradition and sat for the Conservatives. Hugh and Troy’s elder brother Rod had not spoken since the day he called the family together to announce this. Rod had called him a ‘chinless wonder’, to which Hugh had weakly protested with an ‘I say’, which Rod had capped wit
h, ‘And you’re a fucking idiot, too.’

  ‘Charlie, you didn’t get me here to chew the fat about Hugh.’

  Charlie beckoned the barman and ordered another brandy and soda.

  ‘No,’ he smiled. ‘Of course I didn’t. I just wanted to say that you don’t have to do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You don’t have to go to Portsmouth.’

  Troy was perplexed.

  ‘I don’t?’

  Charlie shook his head vigorously, then swept an over-long lock of blond hair from his face.

  ‘It’s my shout. The whole damn shebang is down to me. I only found out the Branch had roped you in about quarter of an hour ago. Honestly, you don’t have to do it. It wasn’t on for those buggers to go twisting your arm like that. If they didn’t nurse the illusion of their independence so jealously and had asked me first, I’d have told them not to bother.’

  It was the first admission Charlie had ever made to being a member of the Secret Service. But Troy had already made up his mind. Of course the Branch were a pain in the arse. He hated Special Branch even more than he hated spooks, but nothing on earth would now dissuade him from the prospect of spending a week in the company of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s OK. Honestly. I’ve told Wintrincham I’ll do it and I will.’

  ‘We don’t need you. Really we don’t.’

  ‘I rather think you do. Where else are you going to find a Russian speaker as good as me? Outside your own ranks, that is. And of course you’ve been told to stay out of it, haven’t you?’

  ‘Do you really think Khrushchev is going to be indiscreet in front of a British bobby?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. But you must think it’s worth the chance or you wouldn’t have surrounded him with paid ears, would you? Where will you be?’

  ‘Out of it. I’ll be in London. And if Cobb doesn’t keep me posted I’ll have his bollocks for conkers. If any of the Comrade First Secretary’s men spotted me there would be a bit of a rumpus. How did you know we’d been warned off, by the way?’

  ‘It’s buzzing around the Commons. My brother remarked on it only a couple of days ago. Said the word had come from the top.’

  ‘He’s right. I got the works. Meeting with the PM himself. Five and Six to go nowhere near the old boy, or else.’

  Yet more admissions, thought Troy. Charlie would hardly be summoned to meet Eden if he himself were not somewhere near the top of the spook’s greasy pole.

  The barman appeared over Charlie’s left shoulder. Placed a brandy and soda in front of him, but spoke directly to Troy.

  ‘’Scuse me, Mr Troy. Friend o’ yours in the back room. Askin’ for you.’

  ‘Johnny?’ Troy asked.

  ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘Arseholed, Mr Troy. If you wouldn’t mind. He is askin’.’

  Troy got up. Charlie followed. The back room at the Salisbury was beautiful; a plush red box, a sumptuous crimson hole, a velvet glove in which to drink and dream. The man called Johnny was face down on the table, moaning softly.

  ‘How did he know I was here?’ Troy said.

  ‘If you ask me, it’s second sight. Like how does he always know who’s just been to the bank, and how does he know which night the guvnor’ll be round askin’ to clear ’is slate.’

  The man pushed himself slowly upright, his hands against the edge of the table. His black cashmere coat and his matching red scarf—the nearest thing to a toff’s mufti—were spattered with vomit. He reeked of whisky. Wafts of it floated across at them as he burbled.

  ‘Freddie, Freddie me old cocksparrer. Pissed again, eh?’

  Troy put a hand under his arm and jerked him to his feet. Charlie took the other arm, and the barman grabbed a brown trilby off the hatstand and rammed it down on Johnny’s head.

  ‘Home, Johnny,’ Troy said simply, and the two of them lugged him through the front bar to the street door.

  ‘Can’t,’ he was burbling. ‘Just can’t, can’t seem to get over it. D’y’knowwhatahmean?’

  Charlie looked questioningly at Troy, but Troy had no time for the unspoken question.

  ‘Flag a cab,’ he told him.

  ‘Freddie, me old mate,’ Johnny went on, ‘there are times when all you want . . .’ He paused to belch loudly. ‘When all you want is just to be, just to be . . . dammit just to be able to talk to her. You know, you must know. For Christ’s sake you’re the only one who does.’

  Charlie had bagged a cab. The driver pulled over to the kerb, looking doubtfully at the way the drunken lord sprawled across Troy.

  Troy tipped Johnny into the back seat, prised his hands away and got the door shut on him.

  The cabbie was leaning out of his window, neck craning backwards, eyes full of suspicion.

  ‘Where to, guv?’ he asked.

  ‘Lowndes Square,’ said Troy.

  Then the back window came down and Johnny’s head lolled out.

  ‘Soon, old chap, soon, whaddya say?’

  Charlie pointed south towards Trafalgar Square with his thumb. A long wail of Troy’s name trailed after the cab as it shot away down St Martin’s Lane.

  Troy and Charlie stood facing each other on the pavement, neither making a move to go back inside.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘Johnny, thirteenth Lord Enniskerry, tenth Viscount Lissadell, ninth Marquess of Fermanagh, and well-known piss artist,’ Troy recited.

  Charlie looked at his shoes, then back at Troy.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Diana Brack’s brother.’

  He paused. Glanced back down the street after the cab.

  ‘I wouldn’t have said he’d make a natural friend.’

  ‘Killing his sister isn’t part of the equation. If the truth be known, I’d say Johnny was devoted to Diana. But in killing her I destroyed his father. And if there really is something the ninth Marquess and I have in common, it’s a hatred of the eighth Marquess. I’m sorry, Charlie, but this puts a damper on the evening. If you’ll forgive me I’m just going to stagger home to bed. I have to be up with the birds anyway.’

  ‘You’ll be OK?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve put Johnny to bed pissed out of his brain dozens of times. I’ve listened to his drivel about his sister and his father more times than I could ever count. Always leaves its mark, but nothing I can’t handle.’

  Charlie hugged Troy. A quick embrace, with enough backslap to pass for rugged and manly. It was the sort of thing Troy hated, but it was Charlie through and through and he had long since learnt not to flinch from Charlie’s promiscuous, public emotions. Troy had, he rarely thought, loved only four people in his life: his father, long dead; Diana Brack, also long dead, shot by Troy himself in the last year of the war; one Larissa Tosca, long since vanished; and Charles Leigh-Hunt. It would be foolish in the extreme to lose what little he had left.

  He crossed St Martin’s Lane, cursed Johnny Fermanagh for his lack of timing, and went home. Within ten minutes he knew that Johnny had ruined a good night’s sleep and with it the prospect of an early night. Troy would not sleep. Sleep brought only the prospect of the same repetitive nightmare; the same which played itself out in his head a thousand times, in a thousand variations, but with only one ending.

  He had been recently in Portsmouth—three days spent on a murder investigation in February. A pimp strung up from a lamppost by his tie, and the killer had hung onto his feet till the poor sod had strangled. Troy had stayed at a pleasant enough hotel only walking distance from the naval dockyard—the King Henry, run by a retired dockyard policeman. It was only a quarter to ten. If he threw a few things into an overnight bag and got a cab to Waterloo, he could be there by midnight or perhaps twelve-thirty at the outside. It would distract him from the headful of nonsense that Johnny Fermanagh had given him, and with any luck he might be ready for sleep when he arrived. Better still, he’d be able to lie in till seven or thereabouts. He called ahead.
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br />   ‘You’re in luck, Mr Troy,’ said ex-Sergeant Quigley. ‘We got just the one room left. I’ll be up till one meself. Always stock the bar before I goes to bed. Just bang good and hard on the door.’

  Out in the street Troy flagged a cab. As he sat back in the seat, and the cabbie waited a moment for traffic to pass, the door of the Salisbury swung open and Charlie came out. He yawned, stretched, buttoned his coat, swung his scarf around his neck and disappeared down Cecil Court. Troy watched him go, wondering at the distance that time had placed between them, wondering how well you could know any man whose entire life was bound up with lies, and thinking that Charlie knew Troy, now, infinitely better than Troy knew him or could know him. It pained him. As boys they had had no secrets, even to the details of Charlie’s vigorous queer love life; as young men they had had few secrets, even to the details of Charlie’s gargantuan consumption of women. Now he told Troy little. And for once it dawned on him how little he had ever told Charlie of his affair with Diana Brack. But then, he had never told anyone. Far easier was it to own up to killing than to loving. Young Fermanagh had rubbed this home in one drunken fit by quoting Oscar Wilde’s piece of appalling doggerel on the subject: ‘We each one kill the thing we love.’ It was quite possibly the only piece of verse Johnny knew by heart, and he had failed utterly to work out whether it was the brave man who had the sword or the other chap, and undoubtedly well-meant; but right now Troy could do without such platitude. He closed his eyes and asked the driver to tell him when they reached Waterloo.

  §6

  Quigley had a perverse flair for melodrama. His rambling, twisted, late-Tudor dockside inn had seen countless additions and changes, amongst which was electricity in the bedrooms. Not, however, in the corridors and landings, along which Quigley led Troy by the sweeping, sputtering glare of a kerosene lamp, arm held high, shadows leaping from wall to wall, less like a retired copper and more like a ham auditioning for the part of Long John Silver.