Anselm studied the Prior’s contracted features, the squared shoulders, the rolled up sleeves.
‘Just how much do you know?’ he asked, quietly knowing the Prior wouldn’t answer, seeing him once more at his friend’s side, long ago, listening intently to mumbled confidences.
‘Enough to be sure that John needs a helping hand. As, in fact, do I.’
He nodded towards a pile of mature, dry wood stacked high against one wall. It reached the split central beams which ran to the other side of the shed where they met another pile of timber — the green stuff, fresh cut and still heavy with sap. Anselm gingerly pulled free a log and stood it upright on the block, mindful that this partnership between the old and new almost certainly held up the roof. Large flakes of snow drifted through the open door. There was a faint, freezing breeze.
‘It was immense,’ said Anselm, standing back, hands in his habit pockets.
‘What was?’ To aim, the Prior tapped the centre of the log three times with the blade of the axe.
‘His deception. Look at his public life, his entire social existence. He wrote a dissertation applauding political values he doesn’t hold, ideas that he doesn’t accept. He teaches them now He basks in the reflected glory of every thinker whose mind he managed to pick. He’s held in awe in the senior common room because he tramped over the intellectual killing fields and came back with his mind intact.’
The Prior brought the axe down and the wood huffed and gave way.
I defended your reputation in the High Court, thought Anselm, looking at the two halves. Did you think me a fool? I stood by you and fought your corner, despite the destruction of a journal, the reluctance of a witness and a total absence of coherent instructions.
‘I’m sorry, I think you’re wrong,’ Anselm said, dragging aside the split wood and pulling free another log. He held it between his arms, leaning back against the pile, challenging the Prior’s belief in John’s willingness to be exposed; his need to be helped along the way ‘He didn’t want to be found by his friend. He hoped I’d go to Warsaw and find nothing. And, in fact, there was nothing to be found; the file was empty. I could easily have given up and come back empty-handed. And he’d have been reassured that there was nothing over there waiting to blow up in his face. That’s what he really wanted to know Remember, Róża had told him about the files. She’d said it was only a matter of time before the informer was flushed out by some lawyer or journalist interested in the Shoemaker. He needed to know what was inside the Polana file to see if he was safe.’
The Prior was listening but he didn’t reply Gilbertines were like that. He had nothing else to say so he said nothing. Anyway he was keen to get on, nodding strained gratitude when Anselm finally placed the wood on the block.
‘And I wasn’t the only one he used,’ murmured Anselm. ‘There were others.’
The Prior tapped the log three times.
That reluctant witness: John had urged her to come to London. Why? Because he loved her? Or because he knew that sooner or later the press might look a little closer at the circumstances of his expulsion from Warsaw; that he might be accused; that he might have need of a respectable dissident to preserve his standing. She refused when he tried to use her. And the day he was vindicated, she walked out of his life.
The axe fell and the wood splintered.
‘He gave me hints for years,’ continued Anselm. Without his former caution he yanked out the next victim for the block. ‘He smoked Russian cigarettes. He wore East German trainers.’
The Prior humphed and the log cracked and fell, divided.
‘Worst of all, he played games with Róża.’ Anselm was talking to the pile of dry wood. He spent a long time choosing the next branch. He paused while pulling it free. ‘She was begging him to make a confession, to come on side, and help her bring Brack to court. To vindicate himself by himself. What did he do? He called up the naive lawyer who’d done the magic last time around. Someone with his head in the clouds. Someone who wouldn’t know the meaning of a Zeha trainer if it vanished up his backside. I just don’t understand. I can’t—’
‘Here.’
‘What?’
‘Take this.’
Anselm seemed to wake. The Prior was holding out the axe. His round glasses, repaired at both ends with a paperclip, caught the wintry afternoon light. Snow was creeping timidly into the shed. The Prior’s breath fogged in the cold air.
‘Let the head do all the work.’
‘Wot?’
‘You do nothing. Just guide the weight of the axe and let it fall.’ Anselm wasn’t entirely grateful for the technical advice. He considered himself something of a woodsman.
‘We all want to understand,’ said the Prior, impatiently drying his brow with a clean, white handkerchief ‘But sometimes we can’t, and when that happens we just have to get on with our life.’ He paused, folding up the cloth neatly ‘There are other, special situations when it’s not our job to understand. When our task is a kind of obedience to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Róża came to John. John came to you. No one demands that you understand anything. For the moment, you simply have to put one foot in front of the other. You have to do as you were asked. It’s their job to understand and explain. Now, speaking of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, do some work. It solves all manner of problems.’
Anselm capitulated, though not in deference to that last, doubtful maxim. He’d simply worn himself out thinking. Jaw thrust forward, he squared up to the wood and began to swing the axe, thinking of Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie — something far from the unpleasantness of the grown up world. Suddenly he slowed and stopped.
‘What happens now?’ he asked. ‘What do I do?’
‘I’ve just told you.’
‘Sorry I must have missed that one.
‘Let the head do the work. Just guide the weight and let it fall.’
‘Forgive me. South of Hadrian’s Wall we stick to the matter in hand, it’s why we won at Culloden—’
‘John needs to explain how he came to be CONRAD,’ groaned the Prior, ‘and Róża needs to explain why CONRAD is so important.’
‘And I do nothing?’
‘Bring them together, Anselm,’ rasped the Prior. ‘Bring them far away from all that is secure and familiar. Bring them here. And build them a fire.’
Anselm planned two phone calls but ended up making three. Sitting in the calefactory he started with John. After a few pleasantries, he told him the full cost of his trip to Warsaw — leaving out hefty disbursements paid by the IPN.
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘It’s to be expected, I suppose. Can’t say I’d carried out the full calculation.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Calculations, John.’ Anselm felt himself slipping away drawing back behind his words, into the gloom of his mind. From far inside, he said, ‘I was going to explain about champagne and oysters, and a room in another hotel that I didn’t use, but let’s put first things first. I think you need to explain to Róża everything that happened to CONRAD … you know, Klara’s boy.’
There was a long blistering pause on the line.
‘John?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘I’m sorry to mention her name. I know, now, something of her life. I’ve learned a little of what she did. I’ve an idea of how that might have affected you.’
In the corridor outside, Father Jerome hollered after Brother Benedict. It sounded like the opening shots of an argument about the work rota. Intellect and feeling were about to lose their footing.
‘And that was in a file?’ asked John, coldly his voice far off as if he’d turned from the mouthpiece.
‘No. There is no file on Klara. It’s been destroyed. In a way that’s also true of the Polana file. Nothing between the covers points unequivocally to you, the Dentist made sure of that.’ Anselm waited, listening hard. He raised a hand to the air, reaching out. ‘John, I�
�m not saying you betrayed Róża. You’ve nothing to fear from me, or anyone else. In the world of ducking and diving, you’re safe. You’re home and dry. This is what I have to say: the huge issue here is not your relationship with Otto Brack and how to keep it secret. It’s Otto Brack’s with Róża Mojeska and how to make it public. The big question is not whether you’ll ride out your days without being named, it’s whether Róża will end hers with the justice she’s been denied. She’s put the power to decide in your hands. You can choose yes, or no. She came to see you, John, not to accuse you, but because she feared that you were going to be exposed anyway sooner or later. But she was wrong. The file is empty. All she has left is your willingness to speak for yourself … because she won’t name you. I don’t know why’
‘Me neither.’
Anselm only just caught the reply because John seemed further off.
‘Come to Larkwood. It’s a good place to get things off your chest. Róża already knows what you’re hiding. She just wants you to tell her yourself. It’s what friends do.’
The scorching silence was back. Outside, snowflakes fell like shreds of wet paper. They were banking high on the window sills. Anselm pressed the phone hard against his ear, trying to catch some indication of John’s presence. It came hard and suddenly the words squeezed through the tiny holes of the mouthpiece.
‘Fine. I’ll explain. You might as well call Celina. She’ll need to listen, too. You’ll get her number from the BBC. There’s no point in me calling. She wouldn’t pick up the phone.’
Then he was gone. No goodbye. Just a light click.
Anselm’s heart was beating erratically It thumped hard against his chest. The open blisters on his hands began to burn from the sweat. On a kind of élan of misery, he rang the BBC and two extensions later he spoke to Celina Hetman who was about to do a live broadcast for the World Service. He’d pushed, saying it was personal and urgent and that he was a monk — that last being a key to many a closed door. The conversation was brief because the engineer was raising his voice. The light had gone green. Maybe that’s why she caved in.
Then, drained of emotion, he rang Sebastian to suggest that he might like to catch a flight and give Róża Mojeska a pleasant surprise. The end was near. Praise came down the line, but Anselm just held the receiver away from his ear. He felt desperately sad. The cost of his trip to Warsaw had been immense.
‘I don’t know how Róża will react,’ he said, cutting short the tribute, ‘but afterwards you’ll be free to prosecute Otto Brack.’
Chapter Forty-One
The Old Mill had stood by the Lark for four hundred years. The original grinding mechanism, fragile and jammed, remained visible in the large room where Anselm had made the fire. The floor was flagged and uneven, worn down by the feet of peasant farmers who’d brought their threshed wheat to be ground into flour. In the centre stood a waxed round table, brought in by Anselm as a learned allusion to the groundbreaking Round Table talks of 1989 between Solidarity, the Communists and the Church; the negotiations that had launched a new order in social relations. There were four mock Chippendale chairs — a nod towards English fair play — occupied by the delegates invited by Anselm. A standing crowd of Suffolk ghosts seemed to watch expectantly cloth caps in hand.
‘This isn’t going to be easy’ said John, nudging his dark glasses. ‘I don’t want to make a speech. I can’t see you … it would help if you’d ask questions, reply anything, only don’t leave me floating in the darkness.’
Róża had come by train with Sebastian who was now in the guesthouse eating his nails. She sat upright, her back away from the chair. A face of shadows, thought Anselm. Shadows that were deep with the movements of dusk. She wore a silver brooch clipped to her white blouse. Her eyes seemed to speak a forgiving but frightened tenderness.
‘Why don’t you start with Klara?’ suggested Anselm, his voice dry and spare. ‘The road to this table begins with her, doesn’t it?’
Beside Róża sat Celina Hetman. She’d been held up by the snow drifts. Anselm had thought she might not come after all. He’d remembered a vibrant intellect and a kitsch, plastic belt. They’d only met two or three times. He’d once tried to imagine her in the Royal Courts of Justice speaking on John’s behalf, the judge intrigued, if not distracted, by the decorated headband. He needn’t have worried. She’d fled from John’s life. When the car had finally pulled up at Larkwood, Anselm hadn’t recognised her. On the understanding that the outlandish don’t always wear that well, he’d expected a middle-aged multicoloured prune but he’d met a timeless woman whose refinement made him stammer. She was dressed in black — cashmere wools and matt leather shoes — in contrast to the coral pink of her lips. On her little finger was a large ring: a daisy; a spot of yellow enamel with long white petals. Her hair was jet black and very short, like a distressed belle’s in a Chaplin film: boyish curls by the ears and incredibly feminine. Skilled with her courtesy, she’d been delighted to meet Róża and pleased to see John once more, but Anselm — a man familiar with troubled voices — sensed anxiety and old wounds. She looked at John as he ran a finger behind his roll neck collar, but then Róża suddenly spoke, a voice soft and musical, small and knowing: ‘Perhaps you should start with Otto Brack.’
The call came after John had been in Warsaw a couple of months. He said, ‘Call me the Dentist.’ He said he needed help. He said he wanted out. That’s how it all began: with a plea for help. He urged John to trust him, to understand how dangerous it was for him to speak to a British journalist. He didn’t trust his own organisation and he didn’t trust any in the West: ‘I need to find someone outside the system. Do you understand?’
Anselm shifted in his seat: this wasn’t the kind of call he’d expected Brack to make. Why would he want out? The point — Anselm had imagined — was to get John in.
‘The Dentist wanted me to vouch for him with a government minister, whom he’d later name, right over the head of MI6,’ John’s hand, flat on the table made a polishing motion. ‘He was flattering me; building up my self-importance. I was easy meat.’
John had two questions — and he asked them with all the aplomb of an experienced handler: first, what did the Dentist have to offer?
Second, why come to John? Warsaw was packed with foreign journalists.
‘He said he’d bring the entire SB battle order. He had lists of informers within Solidarity and the Church. Copies of correspondence between Moscow and Warsaw He knew the colour of Brezhnev’s underpants … you name it, the Dentist had pulled it from some top drawer marked “Secret”, and it was mine to hand over. Part of the dowry that would secure my place in the annals of Cold War history — unread by all, save the major players on either side of the Wall.’
Anselm was cut loose. A dowry? How could a mock defection by Brack lead to John betraying Róża? Once more — and this time with complete finality — Anselm abandoned a convincing interpretation of the evidence. John might have been CONRAD but CONRAD was no willing spy … and Róża’s eyes were resting upon him; she hadn’t strayed once; she held on to his voice as if it were a handle. I’ve got everything wrong, except for this meeting; and even now, I don’t know why it’s right.
‘He was typical of many people I knew back then,’ said John —he’d become swift and fluid; his memory set in motion by the relief of letting go — ‘he was convinced that but for martial law the Russians would have invaded. They’d marched into Budapest in fifty-six, Prague in sixty-eight and Kabul in eighty. He thought they still might come to Warsaw, which was why he wanted out now, and fast.’
‘But why you?’ Celina’s tone was frail, like tearing paper. ‘Why did he pick you?’
Anselm involuntarily abridged Bogart’s gin-joint line — of all the food queues in Warsaw, why did you have to walk into mine? And he understood that she grieved, even now, at ever having met him.
‘Because I was a stranger,’ replied John, hearing — Anselm was sure — the same tone of regret. ‘Because he
’d done some research. He knew a great deal about my family Far more than me; he’d guessed why I’d come to Warsaw.’
He knew John was the son of a diplomat; the son of a woman who’d committed suicide; the son of a tragedy He’d read his mother’s file. He’d calculated that John’s embarrassment went deep into his identity; that he carried a kind of transferred guilt.
‘Suicide?’ repeated Celina, softly.
The subject was too large for the moment — like Anselm with Irina on the unswerving ardour of monks — but Celina was simply reaching out to him from a new understanding. She knew there was more to be said … that might once have been said, if things had been simpler between them.
‘Yes,’ replied John. ‘I’ve come to see it very differently over the years. Once it was a betrayal. Now? I think she wanted to eternalise her regret. To say sorry for ever — to me, to my father. Brack smelled that, too.’
He’d been deeply sympathetic. The pressures of the time had been awful (Brack said) — ‘I was there, I know what it was like; I felt the heat’ — with friend pitted against friend to demonstrate their innocence. He’d only raised the matter because he felt that John, of all people, would understand why the Dentist wanted out; that John, of all people, might want to rectify the past — by helping him; by purging the mistake of his mother.
‘He didn’t use those words, but that’s what he meant.’ John’s hand had stopped moving. ‘And that was the trick. Within minutes of listening to him, the table had slowly turned. He was offering to help me. And you might find this difficult to believe, but I was grateful. Really grateful. Without the assistance of an insider, I’d never know what my mother had actually done. I thought a great chance had come my way.
The Dentist asked John to think about it because there were dangers on both sides. A week later the phone rang again. To prove his bona fides, he offered John copies of telegrams sent to the KGB dealing with Solidarity’s— ‘I didn’t want them. I told him I was prepared to take the risk.’ But the Dentist said that’s not how things worked. That trust was a kind of deal, a bargain, an exchange of services. And, if he was to help the Dentist, there were rules.
The Day of the Lie Page 26