by Ian Mcewan
They were waiting for me – Tapp, Nutting, the greyish, shrunken-looking gentleman from the fifth floor and Max. I had the impression I was walking in on a silence. They were drinking coffee, but no one offered to pour me one as Tapp indicated with an open hand the only unoccupied chair. On a low table before us was a pile of press cuttings. By it was a copy of Tom’s novel. Tapp picked it up, turned a page and read, ‘To Serena’. He tossed the book onto the press cuttings.
‘Well then, Miss Frome. Why are we in all the newspapers?’
‘It didn’t come from me.’
Some soft, incredulous throat-clearing filled a brief pause before Tapp said unemphatically, ‘Really.’ And then, ‘You’re … seeing this man?’
He made the verb sound obscene. I nodded, and when I looked round I met Max’s stare. He was not avoiding me this time and I forced myself to return his look, and only glanced away when Tapp spoke again.
‘Since when?’
‘October.’
‘You see him in London?’
‘Mostly Brighton. At weekends. Look, he doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t suspect me.’
‘Really.’ It was said in the same flat tone.
‘And even if he did, he’d hardly want to tell the press about it.’
They were watching me, waiting for me to say more. I was beginning to feel as stupid as I knew they thought I was.
Tapp said, ‘You realise you’re in serious trouble?’
It was a proper question. I nodded.
‘Tell me why you think you are.’
‘Because you think I can’t keep my mouth shut.’
Tapp said, ‘Shall we say we have reservations about your professionalism.’
Peter Nutting opened a folder on his lap. ‘You wrote a report for Max, recommending we take him on.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were already Haley’s lover when you wrote that.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘But you fancied him.’
‘No. That came later.’
Nutting turned his head to show me his profile while he thought of some other way to make me look self-serving. At last he said, ‘We took this man into Sweet Tooth on your say-so.’
As I remembered it they presented Haley to me and sent me away with a dossier. I said, ‘Before I ever met Haley, Max told me to go down to Brighton to sign him up. I think we were behind schedule.’ I could also have said that it was Tapp and Nutting who caused the delay. Then I added after a pause, ‘But I certainly would have chosen him if it had been left to me.’
Max stirred. ‘It’s true in fact. I thought he was good enough on paper and clearly I was wrong. We needed to get a move on with a novelist. But my impression was she had her sights on him from the start.’
It was annoying, the way he spoke about me in the third person. But I’d just done the same to him.
‘Not so,’ I said. ‘I loved his stories and when I met him they made it easier to like the man.’
Nutting said, ‘It doesn’t sound like there’s much disagreement.’
I tried not to sound like I was pleading. ‘He’s a brilliant writer. I don’t see why we can’t be proud of backing him. Even in public.’
‘Obviously, we’re cutting him loose,’ Tapp said. ‘No choice. The whole list could be in trouble. As for that novel, the Cornish whatever—’
‘Utter drivel,’ Peter Nutting said, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Civilisation brought down by the internal contradictions of capitalism. Bloody marvellous.’
‘I have to say I hated it.’ Max said this with the eagerness of the classroom sneak. ‘I can’t believe it won that prize.’
‘He’s writing another one,’ I said. ‘It sounds very promising.’
‘No thanks,’ Tapp said. ‘He’s out.’
The shrunken fellow stood suddenly and with a sigh of impatience went towards the door. ‘I don’t want to see any more newspaper stories. I’m meeting the editor of the Guardian this evening. You can take care of the rest. And I want to see a report on my desk by lunchtime.’
As soon as he was gone, Nutting said, ‘That means you, Max. Make sure we’re copied in. You’d better get started. Harry, we’ll divide the editors in the usual way.’
‘D notice?’
‘Too late and we’ll look stupid. Now …’
His now meant me, but first we waited for Max to leave the room. He made a point of meeting my eye as he turned right round at the last moment to step backwards through the doorway. In his blank expression I read some sort of victory, but I may have been wrong.
We listened to his footsteps recede along the corridor then Nutting said, ‘The gossip is, and perhaps you can set the record straight, that you were the cause of his engagement falling apart, and that generally, being a nice-looking girl, you may be rather more trouble than you’re worth.’
I could think of nothing to say. Tapp, who had been chain-smoking through the meeting, lit another. He said, ‘We yielded to a lot of pressure and fashionable arguments to bring women on. The results are more or less as we predicted.’
By now I was assuming they intended to sack me and that I had nothing to lose. I said, ‘Why did you take me on?’
‘I keep asking myself that,’ Tapp said pleasantly.
‘Was it because of Tony Canning?’
‘Ah yes. Poor old Tony. We had him in a safe house for a couple of days before he went off to his island. We knew we wouldn’t be seeing him again and we wanted to be sure there were no loose ends. Sad business. There was a heatwave. He spent most of the time having nosebleeds. We decided he was harmless.’
Nutting added, ‘Just for interest, we pressed him on motivation. He gave us a lot of guff about balance of power, but we already knew from our Buenos Aires source. He was blackmailed. 1950, just three months into his first marriage. Moscow Centre put someone irresistible in his path.’
‘He liked them young,’ Tapp said. ‘Speaking of which, he wanted us to give you this.’
He held up an opened envelope. ‘We’d have given it to you months ago but the technical boys in the basement thought there might just be some embedded code.’
I tried to appear impassive as I took the envelope from him and pushed it into my handbag. But I’d seen the handwriting and I was shaking.
Tapp noted this and added, ‘Max tells us that you’ve been worked up about a small piece of paper. That was probably me. I jotted down the name of his island. Tony mentioned that the sea-trout fishing round there is exceptional.’
There was a pause while this irrelevant fact dissipated.
Then Nutting resumed. ‘But you’re right. We took you on just in case we were wrong about him. Kept an eye on you. As it turned out, the danger you posed was of the more banal sort.’
‘So you’re getting rid of me.’
Nutting looked at Tapp, who passed across his cigarette case. When Nutting was smoking he said, ‘No, actually. You’re on probation. If you can keep out of trouble, keep us out of trouble, you might just scrape through. You’re to go down to Brighton tomorrow and tell Haley he’s off the payroll. You’ll keep your Foundation cover, of course. How you do it is your own business. For all we care you can tell him the truth about his atrocious novel. And you’ll also break off relations with him. Again, do it however you like. You’re to disappear into the woodwork as far as he’s concerned. If he comes looking for you, you’re to turn him away firmly. Tell him you’ve found someone else. It’s over. Is that understood?’
They waited. Again, I had that feeling I sometimes used to have when the Bishop called me into his study for a talk about my teenage progress. The feeling of being naughty and small.
I nodded.
‘Let me hear you.’
‘I understand what you want me to do.’
‘Yes. And?’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘Again. Louder.’
‘Yes, I’ll do it.’
Nutting remained seated while Tapp stood and with
a yellowish hand politely indicated the door.
I walked down one flight of stairs and went along the corridor to a landing where there was a view down Curzon Street. I looked over my shoulder before I took the envelope from my bag. The single sheet of paper was grubby from much handling.
September 28th, 1972
My dear girl,
I learned today that you were accepted last week. Congratulations. I’m thrilled for you. The work will give you much fulfilment and pleasure and I know you’ll be good at it.
Nutting has promised to put this note in your hands, but knowing how these things work, I suspect that some time will pass before they do. By then, you will have heard the worst. You’ll know why I had to go, why I had to be alone, and why I had to do everything in my power to push you away. I’ve done nothing so vile in my life as drive off, leaving you in that lay-by. But if I’d told you the truth, I would never have been able to dissuade you from following me to Kumlinge. You’re a spirited girl. You wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. How I would have hated it, you watching me slide down. You would have been sucked into such a pit of sorrow. This illness is relentless. You’re too young for it. I’m not being a noble and selfless martyr. I’m dead certain I can do this better alone.
I’m writing this to you from a house in London where I’ve been staying for a couple of nights seeing some old friends. It’s midnight. Tomorrow I set off. I want to leave you not in sorrow but in gratitude for the joy you brought into my life at a time when I knew there was no way back. It was weak and selfish of me to get involved with you – ruthless even. I hope you’ll forgive me. I like to think you found some happiness too, and perhaps even a career. Good luck in all you do in life. Please preserve a little corner in your memories for those summer weeks, those glorious picnics in the woods, when you delivered such kindness and love to a dying man’s heart.
Thank you, thank you, my darling.
Tony
I stayed in the corridor pretending to look out of the window, and I cried for a little while. Fortunately, no one came by. I washed my face in the ladies’ room, then I went downstairs and tried to lose myself in work. Our part of the Irish section was in a state of muted turmoil. As soon as I came in Chas Mount set me to collating and typing up three overlapping memos he had written that morning. They were to be made into one. The issue was that Helium had gone missing. There was an unconfirmed rumour that he’d been uncovered and shot, but as of late last night we knew this not to be true. A report from one of the officers on the ground in Belfast described Helium coming to an arranged meeting, but staying only for two minutes, long enough to say to his controller that he was getting out, going away, that he was sick of both sides. Before our man could apply pressure or offer enticements, Helium walked out. Chas was certain he knew the reason why. His memos were versions of a strong protest to the fifth floor.
When an undercover agent was considered to be no longer useful, he might find he was brutally abandoned. Instead of looking after him as promised, fitting him out with a fresh identity and a new location for him and his family and giving him money, it sometimes suited the security services to have the man killed by the enemy. Or at least, to make it look like that. Safer, neater, cheaper and, above all, more secure. At least, this was the rumour going about and matters weren’t helped by the case of the undercover man, Kenneth Lennon, who’d made a statement to the National Council for Civil Liberties. He was caught between Special Branch, his employer, and the Provisionals, whom he’d reported back on. He had learned, he said, that Special Branch was finished with him and had tipped off the other side, which was pursuing him in England. If the Provisionals didn’t get him, Special Branch would do the job. He told the NCCL he didn’t have long to live. Two days later he was found dead in a ditch in Surrey, shot three times in the head.
‘It breaks my heart,’ Chas said when I handed him the draft to read. ‘These chaps risk everything, we cut them loose, word gets round. Then we wonder why we can’t sign up anyone else.’
At lunchtime I went out to a phone box on Park Lane and called Tom. I wanted to let him know to expect me the next day. There was no reply, but at the time it didn’t bother me much. We’d arranged to speak in the evening at seven to discuss the press stories. I could tell him then. I didn’t feel like eating and I didn’t want to go back indoors, so I went for a melancholy stroll through Hyde Park. It was March but it still felt wintry, with no sign yet of the daffodils. The bare architecture of the trees looked stark against a white sky. I thought of the times I used to come here with Max and how I’d made him kiss me, right by that tree. Perhaps Nutting was right and I was more trouble than I was worth. I stopped in a doorway, took Tony’s letter out and read it once more, tried to think about it but started to cry again. Then I went back to work.
I spent all afternoon on a further draft of Mount’s memo. He’d decided over lunch to tone down his attack. He must have known the fifth floor would not be pleased by criticism from below and could be vengeful. The new draft contained phrases like ‘from a certain perspective’, and ‘it could be argued that … though granted, the system has served us well’. The final version excluded any reference to Helium – or to any deaths of undercover agents – and simply made the case for treating them well, giving them good aliases when their time was up in order to make it easier to recruit. It wasn’t until almost six that I left, taking the rickety lift down, calling goodnight to the taciturn men on the door, who had finally come round to not scowling at me as I passed by their station.
I needed to get hold of Tom, I needed to read Tony’s letter again. It was impossible to think, I was in such turmoil. I stepped out of Leconfield House and was about to head off towards Green Park Tube when I saw a figure across the street, standing in the doorway of a nightclub, in turned-up coat collar and broad-brimmed hat. I knew exactly who it was. I waited by the kerb to let the traffic pass, then I called across the road, ‘Shirley, are you waiting for me?’
She hurried over. ‘I’ve been here half an hour. What have you been doing in there? No, no, you don’t have to tell me.’
She kissed me on each cheek – her new bohemian style. Her hat was in soft brown felt and her overcoat was tightly belted around her freshly narrowed waist. Her face was long, daintily freckled and fine-boned, with delicate hollows beneath her cheekbones. It was such a transformation. Looking at her now reminded me of my bout of jealousy, and though Tom had persuaded me of his innocence, I couldn’t help being wary.
She took my arm and steered me along the street. ‘At least they’re open now. C’mon. I’ve got so many things to say to you.’
We turned off Curzon Street down an alley where there was a small pub whose intimate interior of velvet and brass she would once have dismissed as ‘poncey’.
When we were installed behind our half pints she said, ‘First thing is an apology. I couldn’t talk to you that time in the Pillars. I had to get out of there. I was no good in groups.’
‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’
I saw the tiniest of ripples in her throat as she held down the emotion released by my sympathy.
‘It’s been terrible for the family. It’s really knocked us back.’
‘What happened?’
‘He stepped out into the road, looked the wrong way for some reason and got hit by a motorbike. Right outside the shop. The only good thing they could tell us was he died straight away, didn’t know a thing about it.’
I commiserated, and she talked for a while of how her mother had become catatonic, of how the close family had nearly broken up over funeral arrangements, of the absence of a will and what should happen to the shop. Her footballer brother wanted to sell the business to a mate of his. But now the shop, run by Shirley, was open again, her mother was out of bed and talking. Shirley went to the bar for another round and when she came back her tone was brisk. That subject was closed.
‘I saw the stuff about Tom Haley. What a fuck-up. I guessed it had somet
hing to do with you.’
I didn’t even nod.
‘I wish I’d been in on that one. I could’ve told them what a bad idea it was.’
I shrugged and drank my beer, vaguely hiding behind the glass, I suppose, until I could think of something to say.
‘It’s all right. I’m not going to probe. I just wanted to say this, put a little idea in your head, and you don’t have to answer me now. You’ll think I’m running ahead of myself, but the way I read that story this morning, you stand a good chance of being kicked out. If I’m wrong, bloody marvellous. And if I’m right, and you’re stuck for something, come and work for me. Or with me. Get to know sunny Ilford. We could have fun. I can pay you more than twice what you’re getting now. Learn all there is to know about beds. These aren’t great times to be in business, but people are always going to need somewhere to kip.’
I put my hand on hers. ‘That’s very kind, Shirley. If I need it, I’ll think about it carefully.’
‘It’s not charity. If you’d learn how the business works, I could spend more time writing. Listen. My novel was in an auction. They paid a bloody fortune. And now someone’s bought the film rights. Julie Christie wants to be in it.’
‘Shirley! Congratulations! What’s it called?’
‘The Ducking Stool.’
Ah yes. A witch, innocent if she drowned, guilty if she survived, then sentenced to death by burning. A metaphor for some young girl’s life. I told her I’d be her ideal reader. We talked about her book, and then her next, an eighteenth-century love affair between an English aristocrat and an actress from the slums who breaks his heart.