by William Boyd
≡ Philby, the KGB spy, was an iconic figure to the radical left in the sixties and seventies: the ultimate insider—the ultimate betrayer.
I said, no—and then John Vivian himself appeared, looking grumpy. Guess what, John? Anna said, Logan was a spy in the war. Vivian looked at me keenly and without warmth: well, well, well, he said, who’s a dark horse, then?
My newspaper-selling technique is thoroughly tried and tested now. I wear a suit and tie and, unlike my fellow vendors, I never frequent the working-class pubs where they make their modest sales. I go to London University colleges, art schools and polytechnics. Gower Street, around University College and its student union, is my best patch. I try to prowl the cafeterias and refectories at lunchtime. ‘This is the only newspaper in the country that will tell you the whole truth,’ is my sales pitch. And in actual fact The Situation is not a bad newspaper, of its type. Tina Brownwell writes about 90 per cent of it; John Vivian chooses the headlines and sets the tone of the editorials. The most amusing and interesting section is Tina’s analysis of other newspapers’ reporting, pointing out the pro-Zionist bias or the crypto-American line as she finds them. There is a long editorial, usually, heavy on political theory (which I find unreadable), with strident headlines of the ‘Capitalism Must Finance its Own Overthrow’ or ‘Criminal Action is Political Action’ variety.
My fiver a week has become something of a welfare lifeline to me and I probably don’t need to rely on my dog-food stews for sustenance any more—though I must say I’ve developed a real taste for Bowser’s rabbit chunklets with—a new refinement—a pinch of curry powder judiciously stirred in.
Tuesday, 31 May
I’ve just had lunch with Gail. We ate in the restaurant of her hotel off Oxford Street; her husband did not join us. She had written to me and said she was coming to London and could we meet, giving me her dates and urging me to telephone: ‘Please, Logan, please.’ So I did, and went to meet little Gail, whom I loved so, and found that she has turned into a brisk, unsmiling woman with dyed blonde hair and a bad smoking habit. I would say that she was not happy in her marriage—but what do I know, the marriage-expert? Just occasionally the old Gail would flash from her—a rare smile, and once when she pointed her fork at me and said, ‘You know, Mom was such an asshole.’ I said I was fine, no really, life was OK, I was coping, writing a new novel, no, fine, fine, really fine. When we parted she held on to me tight and said, ‘I love you, Logan. Don’t let’s lose touch.’ I couldn’t stop the tears and neither could she, so she lit a cigarette and I said it looked like rain wasn’t far off, and somehow we managed to part.
§
As I write this I feel that draining, hollowing helplessness that genuine love for another person produces in you. It’s at these moments that we know we are going to die. Only with Freya, Stella and Gail. Only three. Better than none.
Saturday, 4 June
I was sitting in the Park Cafe today having a cup of tea and a Penguin biscuit, reading someone’s discarded Guardian, when I came across the news of Peter Scabius’s knighthood for ‘services to literature’. To be candid, I felt a pang of envy before indifference and reality closed in again. It was not so much envy, in fact (I’ve never envied Peter’s success—he’s too much of a fraud and an egomaniac to provoke real envy), it was more an impromptu insight into my condition vis-a-vis his. I suddenly saw myself—in this threadbare shiny suit, with my unironed nylon shirt and greasy tie, with my thinning grey hair needing a wash—as a truly pathetic figure. Here I was, well into my seventies, sitting in this undistinguished, overlit caff, sipping my tea and dunking my Penguin biscuit, wondering if I can afford a pint at the Cornwallis this evening. This was not the image of my elderly self that I had conceived when I was younger; this was not the kind of old age I had imagined I would be living. But then I never saw myself as a Peter Scabius-type either: Sir Logan Mountstuart talked to us today from his lovely home in the Cayman Islands…That was never for me, never. What was for you, then, Mountstuart? What fond vision of the future warmed your soul?
I haven’t worked on Octet for months. I’ve been distracted by the SPK and my paper round. But, in the end, the work—the oeuvre—is everything: that’s my reply. The books are there in the copyright libraries, if nowhere else. I must press on with Octet, I now see—surprise them all.
Monday, 6 June
When I went to pick up my hundred Situations today John Vivian asked me to come upstairs—wanted a little chat. Tina was there and Ian Halliday too. We sat in a room with two television sets; the mood was solemn but not unfriendly. ‘We want to thank you for your work, Mountstuart,’ Vivian said. ‘You’ve been most useful.’ Then all three of them stepped forward and shook my hand. Not for the first time I wondered where all the cash I made for them went. Anyway, Vivian said that, because of my staunch efforts, he thought the time had come to inaugurate me into ‘Working Circle—Direct Action’ and was I prepared to accept the extra duties (I’d still be flogging newspapers). He explained that in ‘Working Circle—Direct Action’ I would be going on demonstrations, joining picket lines and attending all forms of protest. I would carry an SPK placard mounted on a pole and would hand out SPK flysheets, try to recruit members and sell subscriptions for The Situation. There was a bus drivers’ strike in Oldham currently going on, Vivian said, and there was a demonstration planned for next week outside the town hall. Was I ready to go? I can’t afford to travel to Oldham, I said. ‘We’ll pay for you to be there,’ Vivian said with a tolerant smile, ‘all reasonable expenses provided. And if there’s a press photographer in sight make sure you get that SPK sign in the frame.’
§
[NOTE IN RETROSPECT. Thus it was that in the summer of 1977 I travelled surprisingly widely (by bus) throughout the British Isles in my capacity as member of the SPK’s Working Circle—Direct Action. After Oldham I went to Clydeside, after Clydeside I was on the pavement opposite Downing Street for five days. Striking dye-stampers in Swansea, fishermen in Stonehaven, sweatshops in Brick Lane—I was there. You may even have seen glimpses of me on the television news or in the background of newspaper photographs: the tall elderly man in the dark suit and tie, wielding the SPK placard, being jostled by policemen, shouting abuse at Margaret Thatcher, jeering at scabs in buses. In between times I sold The Situation and lived my simple but now committed life, shuttling between Turpentine Lane, the public library, the Cornwallis and the Park Cafe. I no longer complained about my lot—I felt I was doing something at last.]
Thursday, 8 September
I’m in the Cornwallis this evening enjoying a half pint of Extra Strength lager and a small schooner of Bristol Cream sherry (for any impoverished, committed boozer this combination will work wonders, I guarantee—you don’t want to drink another drop of alcohol and you sleep like a baby) when, to my genuine astonishment, John Vivian comes in.
He sits down opposite me, looking dark-eyed and agitated. I have to say the mood of the Napier Street Mob has changed these last few weeks. Ian Halliday has gone away, Tina hardly speaks and Anna seems close to tears all the time. I think Vivian may have started an affair with Anna—anyway, I believe ‘strung out’ is the correct term to describe their demeanour. The last issue of The Situation had shrunk to four pages—more of a pamphlet than a newspaper—and half of it was an incoherent editorial by Vivian about ‘Isolation Torture in West Germany’. Most of the rest was a badly translated article written by Ulrike Meinhof in 1969. I made the point that this issue was going to be almost impossible to sell on the streets of London and Tina Brownwell screamed at me, calling me a fifth-columnist and a scab. Luckily for everyone some German industrialist was kidnapped on Monday↓ and the event managed to raise enough interest for me to sell over a hundred copies.
≡ Dr Hanns-Martin Schleyer, President of the West German Federation of Industries—kidnapped by the Red Army Faction.
Now Vivian leans towards me and offers me a cigarette (no thanks) and another drink (no thanks) and asks m
e if he can have my newspaper money now. It’s back at my flat, I say. I was going to bring it along tomorrow as usual. I need it now, he says.
So Vivian comes back to Turpentine Lane with me but won’t follow me inside. I fetch the money and hand it over, asking for a receipt. ‘Still that shopkeeper mentality, eh, Mountstuart?’ he says, with a thin smile. But he signs my docket all the same and strides off into the night. It must be drugs: I think they use the newspaper money to buy drugs.
Monday, 12 September
Maybe I’m wrong. Vivian was his usual cool sardonic self when I picked up the new issue today (which was still on the thin side, still largely devoted to the doings of the radical left in West Germany). There was no sign of Anna or Tina. Unusually, Vivian offered me a drink, a whisky, which I decided to accept this time. We had a peculiar conversation.
§
ME: So—what was your college at Cambridge?
VIVIAN: Gonville and Caius. Why?
ME: I was at Oxford. Jesus College.
VIVIAN: Look at us, Mountstuart, the flower of the nation. You were reading English, no doubt.
ME: History, actually.
VIVIAN: What do you think about what’s going on in Germany?
ME: I think it’s complete madness. Delusion. Violence isn’t going to change a thing.
VIVIAN: Wrong. Anyway, it’s not violence. It’s counter-violence. Big difference.
ME: If you say so.
VIVIAN: You ever been in prison, Mountstuart?
ME: Yes.
VIVIAN: So have I. I spent thirty-six hours locked up in a cell in Cambridge police station. That’s violence for you. I was making a legal protest against fascist generals in Greece and the state took my freedom away from me.
ME: I spent two years in solitary confinement in Switzerland, 1944-5. I was fighting for my country.
VIVIAN: Two years? Christ…
§
That shut him up for a while. He topped up our drinks.
VIVIAN: Do you like travelling?
ME: Don’t mind a spot of travelling.
VIVIAN: Well, do you fancy a little trip abroad?
§
Vivian was very circumspect as he outlined the itinerary. Everything would be paid for by the SPK, all I had to do was to take the ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland and go to a town near Hamburg, called Waldbach. There I was to book into a small hotel called the Gasthaus Kesselring, where I would be contacted by someone. Then new instructions would be given to me. Every evening I was to call Napier Street at 6 o’clock and report in, but I was to speak only to Vivian himself. Our password would be ‘Mogadishu’. I was to say nothing unless the person to whom I said the word ‘Mogadishu’ repeated it. Only you and I know this password, Vivian said, that way our conversations will be secure.
‘Mogadishu in Somalia?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Has a nice ring to it.’ .
‘So we could say I’m on Operation Mogadishu, then?’
‘If it makes you happy to think of it that way, Mountstuart, then indeed you are.’
We sat and drank some more. I asked Vivian what this was all about. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, Mountstuart, he said. We were both becoming a little pissed as we neared the bottom of the bottle. What do you believe in, John? I asked him. I believe in fighting fascism in all its forms, he said. That’s an evasion, a catch-all, I said, and fundamentally meaningless. Then I told him about Faustino Angel Peredes—my friend the Spanish Anarchist who had died in Barcelona in 1937—and the credo we had evolved between us on the Aragon front that year. I let all these names and dates drop with full self-consciousness, wanting him to weigh up the implicit experience, the lived-life therein. Our credo of two hates and three loves: hatred of injustice, hatred of privilege, love of life, love of humanity, love of beauty. Vivian looked at me, sadly, and poured out the last of the whisky for himself, and said: ‘You really are an old unreconstructed tosser, aren’t you?’
Thursday, 6 October
I came home this evening to find two envelopes had been pushed through my letter box. The first one contained £100, cash, a train ticket from Waterloo to Waldbach and confirmation that a room had been booked for me at the Gasthaus Kesselring from Saturday onward. The other envelope contained $2,000 in $50 bills and a note to say that my contact in Waldbach would tell me whom to give it to. I am to leave early on Saturday morning—it seems Operation Mogadishu is underway. It may appear strange to make this observation, especially at my age, but I find myself tense with excitement and almost schoolboy anticipation. I could be back at Abbey about to go on a night exercise.
§
MEMORANDUM ON ‘OPERATION MOGADISHU’
Waldbach is a small town set on two sides of a slow meandering river (I forget its name). On the southern side of the town is a semi-ruined castle and a few steep-roofed timbered houses clustered around it. North of the river is the new town (largely post-war dominated by the functional buildings of a large teacher-training college). This was where the Gasthaus Kesselring was situated. I had a room at the rear with a view of a garage and a cinema. I arrived after midnight on Saturday and went straight to bed.
On Sunday I explored the castle and lunched in the small square at its foot. I dined in the Gasthaus restaurant and read my book in the residents’ lounge (a biography of John O’Hara—very underrated writer). On Monday, I repeated the process, but instead of reading my book went to the cinema to see a badly dubbed film called Three Days of the Condor↓—which seemed to be excellent, as far as I could understand what was going on.
≡ Starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. Directed by Sydney Pollack.
I made sure to call Napier Street at 6.00 (there had been no reply the previous night).
‘Hello?’ a man’s voice said.
‘Mogadishu.’
‘Hello?’
‘Mogadishu.’
Someone else picked up. ‘Is that you, Logan?’
It was Anna. ‘Yes. Could I speak to John, please?’
‘Where are you? Are you all right?’
‘Absolutely fine.’
Vivian came to the phone.
‘Mogadishu.’
‘Hi, Mountstuart. Everything fine?’
I hung up, then rang back two minutes later.
‘What the fuck are you playing at, Mountstuart?’
‘Mogadishu.’
‘All right. Mogadishu, Mogadishu, Mogadishu.’
‘There’s no point in establishing a security procedure if you ignore it.’
‘Anna was standing beside me. I couldn’t start spouting ‘Mogadishu’ all over the place.’
‘Shall we change the password?’
‘No, no, no. Any news?’
‘No sign of the contact.’
That’s odd. Well, hang on in there.’
On Tuesday I trudged across the bridge that led to the castle, but I couldn’t stand another tour, and instead settled myself at the café with my book and ordered a beer and sandwich. It was a chilly day so I sat inside—the place was more or less empty.
Then two girls came in and sat down. I sensed they were staring at me and having some sort of whispered discussion. Both of them had badly dyed hair—one blonde, one carroty red. Eventually I looked over and smiled—it seemed to make their minds up and they took seats at my table.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ the blonde one whispered harshly at me.
‘We’ve been sitting in that fucking railway station for two days,’ said Carrot-top.
I explained that my instructions said nothing about meeting anyone at the railway station. I apologized and suggested buying them a drink as a peace offering and they had a couple of beers. They both spoke good English and smoked constantly.
‘I’m Mountstuart,’ I said.
‘Why are you so old?’ Blonde said. ‘Can’t they find any young people in England?’
‘No, no,’ Carrot said. ‘It’s very clever. Fucking clever, if you thi
nk about it. An old guy like him in his suit and overcoat. No one would think anything.’
‘Yeah…’ Blonde said. ‘I’m, ah, Ingeborg.’
‘And I’m Birgit—no, Petra,’ the redhead corrected herself guilelessly. They both tried not to laugh.
‘I believe you have instructions for me,’ I said.
‘No,’ Petra said. ‘I think you have something for us.’
‘I’d better make a telephone call.’
I went to the telephone-cabin and somehow managed to make a reverse-charge call to Napier Street.
‘Will you accept a reverse-charge call from a Mr Logan Mountstuart?’
‘Certainly not,’ Tina Brownwell said and hung up.
I told Petra and Ingeborg they would have to meet me later that evening after I had made my 6 o’clock call to London and we arranged to rendezvous at a cafe-bar opposite the station.
I called Vivian at the appointed hour.
‘Mogadishu.’
‘Cut all that crap, Mountstuart, this isn’t the Boy Scouts.’
‘It was your idea.’
‘Yeah, yeah. What’s happening?’
‘They’ve made contact, but they’ve no instructions.’
‘Fucking Jesus Christ!’ Vivian railed on for a while. ‘Where is he? Can you put him on?’
‘Who?’
‘The contact.’
‘It’s a couple of girls, actually. I’m meeting them later.’
He said he would make some calls and try to sort matters out. I wandered up to the station and found Petra and Ingeborg sitting in the window of a blazingly bright cafeteria. We ordered some roast chicken and chips and drank beer. The girls smoked. Petra, I suspected from her colouring, was a blonde who had gone redhead. She had blue eyes and a sulky, pouting face sprinkled with many small moles. Ingeborg was a dark-haired girl who had turned peroxide blonde—thin-lipped, with restless brown eyes and a cleft in her chin.