by Len Deighton
11
The Science Museum was quiet that morning. It was Saturday. The giggling, chewing, chatting, scuffling battalions of school children who are shepherded through it by glazy-eyed teachers on weekdays do not choose to visit such institutions in their own time. Especially when there’s a football match on TV.
I was with the children and Gloria. It had become a regular Saturday routine: a visit to one of the South Kensington museums followed by lunch at Mario’s restaurant in Brompton Road. Then she came back home with me and stayed until Sunday night, or sometimes Monday morning.
The aviation gallery on the top floor of the Science Museum was empty. We stood on the overhead walkway that provided a chance to be up among the old planes suspended from the roof. The children had run ahead to stare at the Spitfire, leaving me and Gloria with the dusty old Vickers Vimy that made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. We hadn’t been talking about work, but I suddenly said, ‘Do you know the sort of chits they fill out when someone has to go across to the Cabinet Office and ask questions? Pale green chits with lines and a little box for a rubber stamp. You know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She leaned over the balcony of the walkway trying to see where the children were.
‘Have you ever dealt with anyone in the Cabinet Office? Do you know anyone over there?’
‘From time to time I have to deal with some of them,’ she said. She still was giving the conversation only perfunctory attention. She had picked up the phone handpiece to get a recorded account of the exhibit and I had to wait until she had finished. Then she offered the phone to me but I shook my head.
‘It’s going to rain,’ she said. ‘I should have brought an umbrella.’ She had just come from the hairdresser’s and rain is the hairdresser’s friend. I looked out through the big windows. You could see across the rooftops of West London from here. The clouds were dark grey so that inside the hall it was gloomy. The huge planes were casting dark shadows on the exhibits below us.
When she’d put the earpiece down I said, ‘Do you know anyone in the Cabinet Office? Do you know anyone I could talk to without official permission?’
‘You want to go over there and make enquiries?’ she said. She was alert now and turned to watch my face. ‘I suppose so, if that’s what you want.’ She smiled.
It was her immediate cheerful complaisance that made me feel guilty. ‘No, forget it,’ I said. I heard the children clattering down the stairs at the far end and watched them emerge from under the walkway. Billy made straight for the aero engines. He’d always liked the engines, even when he was small.
‘Of course I’ll do it,’ Gloria put her arms through mine and hugged me. ‘Look at me, darling. I’ll do it for you. It’s the easiest thing in the world.’
‘No. It’s a stupid idea,’ I said, turning away from her. ‘If they insist upon having the chit, it could end up with you getting fired.’ The Cabinet Office was for us the most sensitive of government departments. We were controlled from the Cabinet Office. When the D-G was put upon the carpet – as he was now and again – it was the carpet of the Cabinet Office that he was put on.
‘Why not go through ordinary channels?’ she said. She touched her pale blonde hair. The sky had grown even darker and it was beginning to rain; the raindrops could be heard beating against the glass panels of the roof.
‘Shall we just forget it?’
‘No need to get angry. I said I’d do it. But tell me why.’
‘This isn’t the time or the place…and in any case I don’t want to discuss it. Forget it.’
She hugged my arm. ‘Tell me why, Bernard. You’d want to know why if it was you arranging it for someone else, wouldn’t you?’
It was reasonable. But it was damned difficult to explain it all to her without sounding like a lunatic. ‘There’s a technical input of material that opens the possibility of another KGB penetration of the Department.’
She gave a little laugh. It was a lovely laugh. Her laugh was always enough to make me fall in love with her all over again, even when it contained so much derision. ‘How very departmental. I’ve never heard you using all that jargon. You sound like Mr Cruyer. Is that a very pompous way of saying that the woman you went off to see in Berlin said we have a mole in the office?’
‘Yes, it’s a pompous way of saying that.’
‘And you believe her, Bernard? A mole? Who do you think it might be?’
‘I don’t believe her, but it should be followed up.’
‘So why not tell Mr Cruyer…My God, you don’t think it’s Dicky Cruyer, do you?’
I played it down, of course. ‘The woman is not a very high-ranking source. She’s just a low-grade radio operator. It’s a matter of code words and radio procedures. Even if she’s told us the whole truth, there could easily be some other explanation.’
Gloria was still looking at me and waiting for an answer. ‘No, it’s not Dicky,’ I said. ‘But it’s no good talking to him about it. Dicky doesn’t want to get involved. I’ve mentioned it to him, but he doesn’t want to know.’
Of course, she couldn’t resist the temptation to play spies. Who can resist it? I can’t. ‘What if his indifference is simply a cover?’ she said, like a child guessing the answer to a riddle.
‘No. He’s too busy with his clubs and his expense-account lunches and his girlfriends to have time for his work, let alone being a double.’
‘But what if…?’
‘Look, sweetheart. How many times have you taken a pile of work in to Dicky and had him tell you to bring it straight across to me, without even going through it to see what was there?’
‘I see what you mean,’ she said.
‘Don’t sound so disappointed,’ I said. ‘No, it’s not Dicky. The chances are, it’s not anyone.’
‘But if there was someone, that someone would be in the German Section?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
‘So it’s Bret.’ She was quick.
‘It’s probably not anyone.’
‘But it’s Bret you’re concerned about. Your request to go over to the Cabinet Office and ask questions would have to go through Bret. It’s him you want to avoid, isn’t it?’
‘For the time being, yes.’
‘But that’s absurd, darling. Bret is…well, he’s…’
‘He’s so honourable. I know. That’s what everyone says. I’m getting sick of hearing about how honourable he is.’
‘Do you have anything else that points to Bret?’
‘Some silly little things. A man in Berlin reckons that when Bret went there many years ago, he dismantled the networks we were running to the Russian Zone.’
‘And did he do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
She hugged me and rested her head against my cheek. ‘Don’t be stupid, darling,’ she whispered. ‘I know you too well. You must have double-checked that one in the archives. How could you resist it. And you were in there only yesterday.’
‘The official explanation is that Bret was expediting the denazification programme in line with top-level Anglo-American agreements of that time.’
‘And do you believe that’s what Bret was doing?’
‘Bret was sent to Berlin to do a job. I can’t find any evidence that he did anything wrong.’
‘But he has lots of little bits of mud sticking to him?’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘And now there’s something else,’ she said. ‘A bigger piece of mud?’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘Because so far there’s nothing that would account for you wanting to talk to the Cabinet Office staff.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Something else has come up. I’ve got hold of one of our secret documents…It’s suggested that it’s come from Moscow.’
‘And you’ve got it?’
‘A photocopy,’ I said.
‘And you haven’t told anyone at the office? That’s awfully dangerous, Bernard. Even I
know that you can go to prison for that.’
‘Who should I tell?’
‘And it points at Bret?’
‘Even if there was a leak, it’s not necessarily one of the staff. We lose papers by theft and accident. Material goes astray and winds up on the other side.’
‘If you did find something against Bret, it wouldn’t be difficult to convince Morgan…he’d use any little thing to roast Bret. He hates him, you know. They had an argument the other day. Do you know about it?’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Morgan is determined to bring Bret Rensselaer down.’
‘Well, I don’t want to help Morgan do that. But I have to follow this line to wherever it leads. I don’t like Cabinet memos being sent to newspapers and I don’t like them going directly to Moscow either.’
‘What do you want to find out?’
‘I want to talk to someone who knows how the Cabinet Office works. Someone who knows how their paperwork circulates.’
‘I know a woman in the chief whip’s office. She’s nice and she knows everyone. There’ll be no problem. She could tell you all that. That would be easier than the Cabinet Office.’
‘Look at Billy explaining about the engine to Sally. He looks like an old man, doesn’t he?’
‘Of course he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘How sweet the children are together.’
‘We mustn’t be late at Mario’s; they get crowded at lunchtime on Saturday.’
‘Relax. Mario won’t turn you away,’ she said. ‘But take it easy on that pappardelle you keep eating. You’re getting plump, darling.’
It was only a matter of time. The urge to reform the male is something no woman can resist. I said, ‘Pappardelle con lepre – they only have it in winter. And they run out of it if you’re late.’
‘Did I say plump?’ she said. ‘I meant big. Have two lots, Bernard. I like my men colossal.’
I aimed a playful blow at her, but she was ready for it and jumped aside.
It was still raining when we came out of the Science Museum. There are never any taxicabs available in Exhibition Road at midday on Saturday, they are all working the West End or the airport or taking a day off. Mario’s is not very far, but we were all rather wet by the time we arrived.
Mario was there, of course; laughing, shouting and doing a lot of those things I don’t like the school kids doing when they’re in the museums. We always went to Mario’s to eat; that’s not quite true, of course – not always but often. There were lots of reasons. I’d known Mario for ages – everyone in London knew him – but his new restaurant had only just opened by the time Fiona defected. I’d never been there with her; it had no unhappy memories for me. And I liked Mario. And I couldn’t help remembering the time that little Billy had vomited all over his lovely tiled floor and Mario had laughed and made no fuss about it. They don’t make people like Mario any more, or if they do, they’re not running restaurants.
The children ordered spaghetti carbonara followed by chicken. It was their regular favourite. Gloria thought I was a bad influence on their eating habits but, as I always pointed out to her, they never demanded salad when I had salad.
When I ordered the pappardelle it was Gloria who said, ‘Give him a big portion; he hasn’t eaten for a couple of days.’
Mario’s face was inscrutable, but I said, ‘Mario knows that’s not true. I had lunch here yesterday with Dicky Cruyer.’
‘You swine,’ said Gloria. ‘You told me you were going to diet.’
‘I had to come,’ I said. ‘It was work. And Dicky was paying.’
Billy went off to the toilet. Mario had imported the urinals at tremendous expense from Mexico, and Billy liked to check them out whenever he visited the place.
Sally went with Mario to choose an avocado for Gloria. Sally considered herself a connoisseur of avocados. It was while we were on our own that Gloria said, ‘Is Dicky Cruyer having an affair with your sister-in-law?’
‘Not as far as I know,’ I said truthfully, although not totally truthfully since George had told me she might be. ‘Why?’
‘I saw them in a Soho restaurant that night when my father took me to dinner to quiz me about why I wasn’t sleeping at home at weekends.’
‘It couldn’t have been Tessa,’ I said. ‘She won’t eat anywhere except at the Savoy.’
‘Don’t be flippant,’ she said. She grinned and tried to slap my hand, but I pulled it away so that she made the cutlery jingle. ‘Answer me. Am I right?’
‘What did your father say that evening? You never told me about it.’
‘Why don’t you just answer my question?’ she said.
‘Why don’t you answer my question?’ I replied.
She sighed. ‘I should never have fallen in love with a spy.’
‘Ex-spy,’ I said. ‘I’ve given up spying a long time ago.’
‘You never do anything else,’ she said. It was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke.
We had to go out to dinner – to George and Tessa Kosinski’s – that evening. But you can’t go out to dinner after rain has reduced your hair to rat-tails. It was a special event, their housewarming, and we’d promised to go; but Gloria wailed that she couldn’t. That was the predicament that faced us that Saturday afternoon. Had my wife, Fiona, ever been so childish and petulant, I would have dismissed such protests angrily, or at least with bad-tempered sarcasm. But Gloria was little more than a child, and I found the manner in which she treated such minor incidents as crises both silly and funny. How wonderful to be so young, and so unaware of the terror that the real world holds, that disarrayed hair can bring tears. How gratifying when one quick phone call and the price of a repair job at a crimping salon in Sloane Street can bring such a gasp of joy.
And if you’d told me that my reactions were the sign of a fundamental flaw in our relationship, if you’d told me that these aspects of my love affair with her were only what could be expected when a man of forty falls in love with a woman young enough to be his daughter, I’d have agreed with you. I worried about it constantly and yet I always ended up asking myself whether such elements of paternalism weren’t to be found everywhere. Maybe not in every happy marriage, but certainly in every blissful affair.
I was still careful, not to say wary, about the places I took her to and the people we mixed with. Not that I had an infinity of choices. A man without a wife discovers all kinds of things about his friends. When my wife first left me I’d expected that all my friends and acquaintances would be inviting me out – I’d heard so many wives complaining about how difficult it was to find that ‘extra man’ for dinner. But it doesn’t work like that; at least, it didn’t for me. A man separated from his lawful wife becomes a leper overnight. People – that is to say one’s married friends – act as if a broken marriage is some kind of disease that might prove contagious. They avoid you, the party invitations dry up, the phone doesn’t ring, and when you finally do get an invitation, you’re likely to find yourself entertained alone on an evening when their attractive teenage daughters are not in the house.
The Kosinski’s housewarming party was amusing enough. I suspected that this was a result of practice, for it was rumoured that George and Tessa were staging a series of such gatherings and representing each as the one and only. But the evening was none the worse for that. The guests, like the food, were decorative and very rich. The cooking was elaborate and the wines were old and rare. Tessa was amusing and George was friendly in a way that suggested that he liked to see me with Gloria; perhaps seeing us together removed any last feelings he had about me coveting his wife.
George’s Mayfair flat was a glittering display of tasteful extravagance. The old Victorian dining table that had once belonged to George’s poor immigrant parents was the only modest item of furniture to be seen. And yet this long table, so necessary for a big family and now fully extended, provided George with a chance to play host to sixteen guests with enough room at each place setting for three large polished wine glasse
s, lots of solid-silver knives and forks, and a big damask napkin. The other guests were a glamorous mixture that emphasized the different worlds in which George and Tessa moved: a bald stockbroker who, sniffing the claret admiringly, dropped his monocle into it; a heavily lacquered TV actress who would eat only vegetables; a Japanese car designer who drank nothing but brandy; a grey-haired woman who looked like a granny, ate everything, and drank everything and turned out to be a particularly fearless rally driver; a Horse Guards subaltern with shrill young deb; and two girls who owned a cooking school and had sent a prize student to cook for Tessa that evening.
None of the women – not even the gorgeous Tessa, flaunting a new green-silk dress that was all pleats and fringe – could compare with mine. Gloria’s hair was perfect, and she wore a choker of pearls and a very low-cut white dress that was tight-fitting enough to do justice to her wonderful figure. I watched her all the evening as she effortlessly charmed everyone, and I knew beyond a doubt that I was seriously in love with her. Like all such London dinner parties it ended rather early and we were home and undressing for bed before midnight. We didn’t read.
It was dark. I looked at the radio clock and saw that it was three-twenty in the morning as I became fully awake. I’d been sleeping badly for some time. I had a recurring dream in which I was swept away in the filthy swirl of some wide tropical river – I could see the palm trees along the distant banks – and as I drowned I choked on the oily scum. And as I choked I woke up.
‘Are you all right?’ said Gloria sleepily.
‘I’m all right.’
‘I heard you coughing. You always cough when you wake up in the night like this.’ She switched on the light.
‘It’s a dream I have sometimes.’
‘Since that boy Mackenzie was killed.’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘No maybe about it,’ she said. ‘You told me that yourself.’