‘There won’t be enough.’
‘We can stretch it to four,’ Esther called. There was no privacy in this house at all.
‘I’ll bring something,’ Monty said. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’
He arrived breathless and carrying a brown paper bag from which he emptied Cheddar cheese, oranges and a portion of butter. He sat down with us in Esther’s kitchen to eat Esther’s stew. Whatever he wanted to say to me could clearly wait until he had eaten.
‘We all here have something in common,’ Manny said. ‘You know what?’ We shook our heads. ‘Cambridge,’ he laughed. ‘That’s what.’
‘Their son is at John’s,’ I explained to Monty. ‘Reading Russian.’
Manny shook his head. ‘I learn Russian from my father and now our Joe he learn it from professors at Cambridge. Life is strange, no?’
‘Only you didn’t learn it,’ Esther said. ‘That’s why your father always disappointed in you.’
‘I never learn because my father no good teacher. Not like Danny’s father. That’s why our Joe go to Cambridge. Cambrige is the best, no?’ He laughed again.
‘Tell us what it was like when you boys were there,’ Esther said. ‘I like to hear these stories.’
I had had this conversation with her many times before. Cambridge was a mythical city in her imagination. She had never been there and would probably never go.’
‘No, that not a place for people like us,’ she had said to me once. ‘Joe don’t want us around. We not good enough for him now. He got his own life there. We leave him be.’
Joe was the joy of their lives, the boy who broke the mould, who had left them to live in another world of which they could only dream. The fact that Monty and I had been brought up there meant we were part of her myth too. Cambridge was where people like us came from. I tried to dissuade her from thinking like this but it didn’t work.
‘We grew up together,’ Monty said. ‘We’ve known each other for more than twenty years. His father’s a professor and mine’s a shopkeeper.’
‘Like me,’ Manny grinned. ‘I own a shop.’
‘Like you, yes.’
‘My boy, maybe he end up professor like your dad.’ Manny thought that was a huge joke and laughed loudly. ‘He don’t go to Cambridge to come back here and mend shoes like his dad.’
‘Now you work in London, always together,’ Esther said. ‘Very nice.’
‘What you do for a living, Monty?’ Manny asked. He could never keep his curiosity down for long. Esther was making noises in the background but he took no notice.
‘Me? I keep an eye on the Russians here, make sure they behave, don’t break the rules, don’t steal our secrets, that sort of thing.’ I had never known him to be so open.
‘A policeman without the clothes,’ Manny said. ‘What do you call that in English?’
‘Manny,’ Esther said disapprovingly.
‘You chasing dirty Russian spies around the country, eh? That makes me sleep good at nights. We don’t want no Soviet bastards here. Where do you go, then? I bet you go to Cambridge. That’s where all these professors are, like Danny’s dad, all these men who make these bombs. I bet you go there to make sure they safe, yes? No bloody Reds under their beds, eh?’
When supper was over Esther pushed us upstairs out of her way. She always insisted on doing the dishes by herself while Manny read the paper and listened to the news on the wireless.
‘Have you seen your father recently?’ Monty asked, helping himself to my whisky. I recognized the tone of voice. This was Monty the interrogator, Monty the spycatcher, the Monty who only got in touch when he needed something. The man who had cornered me when he came to Berlin was on duty again tonight.
‘No. Why?’
‘He’s gone to Helsinki to speak at a scientific conference.’
I didn’t find that hard to explain, I said. My father spent much of his life speaking at conferences.
‘While he’s there he’s expected to meet a Russian scientist called Ruth Marchenko.’ No explanation of how he knew.
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ I said. ‘He knows Marchenko.’
‘What do you know about her?’ he asked.
‘They met years ago, long before the war. Marchenko works in the same field of nuclear physics as my father. If she’s going to be at this conference too, I’d be surprised if they didn’t bump into each other.’
‘There’s nothing casual about this. We understand she asked for the meeting.’
‘Maybe she saw his name on the list of delegates before he saw hers, and she wants to see him again.’
‘Your father submitted his name to the conference organizers at the very last minute. His name isn’t on any published list. We think he did that deliberately.’
‘How on earth do you know Marchenko wants to meet him?’
‘You know I’m not going to tell you that.’ The atmosphere between us was suddenly strained. ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ he said.
‘Why should I be?’
‘British nuclear scientist meets Russian nuclear scientist. That doesn’t strike you as odd?’
‘If he’s going to a conference and there are Russians there, I am sure he will meet them.’
‘It’s unlikely there’s an innocent explanation for this meeting. The Soviets don’t work like that. We’re worried for your father’s safety.’
‘Helsinki’s neutral territory, unlike Moscow. They can’t touch him there.’
‘Don’t be naive, Danny. The Soviets can do what they like in Finland. They could kidnap your father, blackmail him, murder him, if they so chose.’
‘If you’re so worried for his safety, get your people to look after him while he’s there. Isn’t that what you’re paid to do? So we can sleep safe in our beds at night?’
The irony was wasted on him. I should have remembered, it’s something he’s never reacted to.
‘I thought you might like to do that.’
‘Do what?’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Go to Helsinki?’
‘It’s lovely at this time of year and you’ve got reasons for wanting to be there, haven’t you?’
How he knew about Tanya was beyond me. There must have been a follow-up to my visit I knew nothing about, or I’d been watched closely while I was there.
‘That’s got nothing to do with your outfit,’ I said furiously.
‘Your father’s in deep trouble, Danny. I can’t say any more than that. I’m trying to help him. I’m asking you to go there and stop him meeting Marchenko. What else you get up to while you’re there is entirely your business. I don’t want to know about it.’
‘If you want to stop him, do it yourself, Monty. I’m not your mercenary.’
‘We’ve done all we can. Your father won’t listen to us.’
Outside the light had vanished. The evening had become unnaturally dark, a blanket of blue-black cloud having descended, crushing the heat in. It was very close. Occasionally there was a light rumble of thunder in the background. We were in for a storm.
‘It’s too hot to argue and this is too serious to fight about,’ Monty said. ‘We may not be able to prevent your father going to Helsinki, but the meeting with Marchenko mustn’t happen. It’s too risky. We think he might listen to you.’
‘When did he ever do that?’
‘Tell him we think the Russians want him.’
‘What for?’
‘What he knows, presumably.’
‘You don’t mean they’re going to kidnap him, do you?’ The whole idea was preposterous.
‘Listen to me, damn it! We know he’s a target of the Soviet intelligence services. In some way they’re out to disable him. I’m begging you, Danny. He’s in great danger and he’s completely unaware of it. You have to bring him out of there before it’s too late.’
*
The account of the fire in Watson-Jones’s house in South Street was short and to the point. It had been discovered at two in th
e morning, the fire brigade had rescued Watson-Jones and his wife Meredith by ladder from their top-floor bedroom. Neither had been injured. There was extensive damage to the ground floor, with a number of family possessions feared destroyed. What had caused the fire remained a mystery.
I was out of the country when it happened and didn’t learn about it until long afterwards.
*
I arrived in Helsinki on a beautiful midsummer morning. What surprised me was not the blueness of the sky nor the calmness of the sea but the soft wind, full of warmth, that blew lightly off the water as we approached the harbour. The city I remembered as cold and in darkness was now warm, light. It was an extraordinary transformation.
I walked up the street from the harbour, carrying my jacket, my few belongings in my army haversack. I saw fair-haired, fair-skinned women in summer dresses; I saw tall men with deep-set eyes, some wearing student caps, their arms around the girls, sitting in the cafés and drinking in the bars. The world had come out into the streets, and I sensed a frantic energy, a dedication to absorbing the light which for these people lasted so short a time.
It was not far to Tanya’s flat. As I walked up Mannerheimintie, the sunlight and the warmth got to work on me, banishing the doubts that had gathered as I’d watched the islands slip past on my passage up the Baltic. Would she be there? Would she want me? Had she really said she would wait for me? It was too warm a day for disappointment. I climbed the steps and rang her bell. For a moment or two I thought there was no one in. Then I heard someone moving and the door opened and there she was, standing in front of me.
‘Danny! Danny!’
She threw her arms around my neck. I had to drop my haversack to prevent myself falling. She kissed me again and again as she dragged me into the apartment. She was wearing a blue dress without sleeves. Her hair was longer than I remembered, her skin darker. But the curves of her body were the same, her eyes just as blue. My memory had not deceived me.
‘I cannot believe it. I cannot believe you are here.’
She put her arm through mine and made me sit on the sofa.
‘I want to hear everything you have done since I saw you last. Everything.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘Everything.’ She kissed me again, and it was some time before I could speak.
‘Did you think I’d come back?’ I asked. I wanted to know how sure of me she was.
‘I am two people, Danny,’ she said. ‘For the dreamer in me we have never been apart. But the doctor knows what it is like to be alone. In this country, the winters are very long. You can become very pessimistic in the dark.’
‘It’s light, the sun is shining and I’m here,’ I said.
‘This is the best day of my life,’ she answered, putting her arms around me again. ‘The best. The very best.’
She captured my heart then, in a way she had not done before. What enchanted me was her happiness, her delight in my presence, and I loved her for it because it was something that I alone could give her. On her face I saw the smile that I knew was on my own face, in her arms I felt the excitement in her body that I knew was in my own. I saw in her whole being the reflection of what I had always wanted, and for the first time I believed that it was possible my life could change. It was like the discovery of something you have always known existed but which until now has remained concealed. The moment of discovery is unimaginable. That morning was unimaginable, even though I had dreamed it a thousand times.
She lay against me as we looked out of the window at the blue sky.
‘I will not ask why you have come here or how long you can stay, and for now I do not want to know. It is enough that you came back. For these few days you are mine. I have a boat. Tomorrow we will go to our summer house. This is our secret time and no one will know where we are. We will escape from the world together.’
If you want to escape, there can be no better place than the Finnish lakes, vast expanses of inland waterways peopled with islands, minute havens covered with trees, some uninhabited, some with wooden summer houses set back from narrow beaches. We saw other boats and occasionally other people, but during that time our lives were entirely our own.
Tanya’s house itself was built on the banks of a reedy inlet where we moored the boat and was surrounded by birch trees. We carried up the boxes of provisions, unlocked the door and went in. The air inside was dry and warm. We opened the shutters and the windows. Dust particles rose in the shafts of sunlight that poured in. Everything I touched was warm: the cupboards, doors, and, when I took off my shoes, the floors. The wooden building creaked as we moved around, as if it was slowly waking up to our presence.
‘When I was younger and I heard these noises,’ Tanya said, ‘I used to imagine the house was talking to me.’ The floor creaked again and she laughed. ‘Like an old man stretching after a bad night.’
I stood in the doorway and looked out across the water, clear and still. There was a slight breeze and the branches of the birch trees dipped and brushed their leaves against the side of the house. But I could hear no other sound. We were truly alone. The world was very far away and quite forgotten.
Tanya put her arms around me. ‘I used to dream of being here with you,’ she said. ‘Then I would wake up and fight the dream, in case you never came back. Now, I won’t ever have to dream again.’
We spent the morning cleaning the house, scrubbing the floor, wiping the dust of months off the surfaces of everything and washing the windows. When we had finished, Tanya said: ‘Time to swim.’
She took off her clothes and ran naked into the water. She swam out to the boat, climbed on board and lay down in the sun.
It never really gets dark at night at that time of year. The light changes at the end of the day, it loses its brightness and the sky becomes a matt blue tinged with yellow. It seems to close in then, in some mysterious way appearing to bring horizons closer, marking each detail, each change of contour coming into sharper relief as the shadows grow. But there is no moment of darkness, no time when the shadows disappear altogether.
We sat on the veranda, watching the light move on the water. We saw wispy plumes of smoke rising from one or two of our neighbouring islands, and we knew that others, like us, were eating outside.
‘We used to spend our summers here when we were children,’ Tanya said. ‘Whole summers, swimming, sailing – can you imagine that? Then the war came and all that ended.’
‘Everything was still here, untouched, after the war?’
‘Oh yes.’ There was no surprise in her voice. ‘Nothing had changed. There was more dust, of course, but it was still our house. It had waited patiently for us.’
I wondered whom she had come back with and felt an icy shaft of anxiety. I tried to tell myself that her life before I met her was no concern of mine, but the idea persisted of someone else sitting where I was now, looking out over the same view, with Tanya next to him.
‘What was it like, coming back after all that time?’
‘Very sad. In the last summer before the war my father had been here with us. Now it was just my brother and myself.’ Relief flooded through me. ‘Though he has never liked it here.’ Doubt again. Perhaps she had not come back with Mika.
‘Why not?’
‘Mika is restless. He cannot keep still. Here there is nothing to do. He prefers to sail.’
‘He left you alone here, did he, sailed off once you’d opened up?’
There was silence between us. A bird rose up from a tree, flapping its wings lazily as it flew off over the lake.
‘I wasn’t here alone, Danny.’ The words I had dreaded. I heard her changing her position in her chair. I felt her hand reach for mine.
‘You cannot claim the past,’ she said. ‘Not the years before I knew you. If I could, I would wish them away. But they are there, a part of me as much as yours are a part of you. I am not sorry for those years. They taught me to know myself and to know what I want. Then I found you. That i
s all that matters.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh,’ she said in mock irritation, ‘the English sorry again. Are there two of you, Danny, one who says I love you and one who says I’m sorry?’
She laughed at my bewilderment.
‘You can ask me what you wish,’ she said. ‘You can know about me what you want to know. I will always tell you the truth. But why? Why hurt yourself with memories you cannot change? Why look backwards? The past is gone. It is forgotten. Its only value is, it led me here, to you.’
‘I know.’
‘Then leave it, Danny. Let it go. Let it all swim away into the night.’
For a time I managed to do what she said. I forgot everything and lived in an eternal present with her. We sailed and swam and made love, we talked about each other, what we believed in, what we wanted for our lives. It was a time of discovery for both of us. We never talked about the future and we never mentioned the past. But the world cannot be jettisoned for long. Unknown to us, it had slipped its moorings in the night and every day was drifting slowly but irrevocably towards us.
PART FOUR
1
DANNY
‘Professor Stevens? Good morning. Lander. From our embassy here. Welcome to this northern land.’
The voice on the telephone was conspiratorial, as if the relief of discovering our shared nationality in this distant outpost was a comforting secret. We were English, and that set us incontrovertibly apart from the locals. It made us superior, too, but it would be tactless to play on that in front of the poor old Finn.
‘We were wondering if you might be free for a drink tonight.’
Monty’s instructions had been far from explicit, though he had been clear in his view of the British embassy. ‘Avoid them at all costs. Useless lot. We don’t want them involved.’
‘Very informal,’ Lander was saying. ‘Just a few Brits and one or two distinguished locals. H. E. would be so pleased. No need to dress.’
‘H. E.?’
‘His Excellency. The ambassador.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said.
Making Enemies Page 34