Red Anger

by Geoffrey Household

  The public passed quickly through the house on the way to more spectacular exhibits. Only a father with two young children loitered by the cages, appearing fascinated by mink and sable. I ruled him out at once, expecting some heavily-built, round-headed Slav in a suit too tight for him. It was not until I heard him speaking Russian to his sons that I realised this slim, distinguished, dark-haired father was my man.

  I murmured ‘Ionel Petrescu’ as the family passed me, and he responded with a splendid act in excellent English as if I were an old friend whom he had inexcusably failed to recognise. He even introduced me to his children.

  We strolled outside where with complete naturalness he sent his boys off to queue for elephant and camel rides while we sat down on a bench in the main avenue and watched them. I stuck carefully to my thick English accent until he switched the language to Russian and remarked politely that I spoke it well for a Romanian.

  ‘Now, what was it you wished to tell me, Mr. Petrescu?’

  ‘Only this—that the KGB is following me about and that there’s no reason for it.’

  ‘The KGB? There is no such thing in England.’

  ‘Well, whatever they call themselves.’

  ‘I think you are mistaken. From our files we know you are a Romanian who wished to desert your country and for reasons of your own—to get a pension of some sort?—invented this story of escape from a fishing fleet. I presume the British know it too, and only pretended to accept your story since all defections to the West are valuable propaganda. We have no interest in you whatever.’

  ‘Then why did your agent Marghiloman persuade me to take that letter down to Mrs. Hilliard?’

  ‘Who is Mrs. Hilliard?’

  ‘The aunt of Alwyn Rory.’

  The name of Rory made him sit up at once. He asked me to describe Marghiloman, which I did. I then gave him the whole story so far as it concerned myself—how Marghiloman had tried to detain me on my return from Molesworthy and had me followed at Swindon, and how I had returned to Mrs. Hilliard as my one friend in a foreign country to ask what I ought to do. I said that I did not wish to spend my whole life in hiding and that I had decided to put my head into the wolf’s den and see if it really wanted to eat me.

  He heard me out in silence and asked if Ionel Petrescu was my true name. I pulled out the documents which the police had given me and showed them in the hope of impressing him though they proved nothing. I was very conscious of Adrian Gurney’s passport in another pocket, separated from him only by a bit of cloth.

  ‘You have no reason to be afraid, Ionel Petrescu,’ he said. ‘If a man is fool enough to leave his country and there is nothing else against him, we don’t let him waste our time. Few of them are any better off. You yourself don’t look very prosperous.’

  ‘I could be if your people would leave me alone.’

  ‘Would you object to being questioned by someone who knows more of the background than I do?’

  ‘Not at all. I’d be glad. But where?’

  ‘Oh, not in the Lubianka prison! You are too nervous, Petrescu. Wherever you like.’

  ‘I don’t want to get into trouble with the British.’

  ‘Privacy? I’ll guarantee that. Can you row a boat?’

  ‘As a trawlerman I ought to be able to.’

  That made him laugh. I have never associated laughter with the KGB. I think this chap must have been an assistant Naval Attaché. He said that I should take a boat on the river at Richmond Bridge and row upstream until someone hailed me from the left bank. I was then to take him on board and cross to the other bank. I should wear something bright yellow—scarf or shirt—so that I could be recognised.

  ‘Recognised?’

  ‘My dear Ionel Petrescu, you are consumed by a sense of self-importance. I doubt if any of our people in London could recognise you.’

  I found this hard to believe and assumed that it was one of those attempts at lying even when it wasn’t possible, of which Alwyn had spoken. However, there was no doubt that if I wanted to be left alone once and for all I had better go boating and see what I picked up. My contact told me to start from Richmond Bridge at eleven the next morning. If it was raining and thus an unlikely time for anyone to be enjoying the river I should come the following day.

  It turned out to be warm, blue river and green banks full of activity for a weekday. So, with a yellow scarf round my neck, I started off up the stately Richmond reach between the meadows and the leafy towpath. I had never rowed, and anyone who watched the skiff rolling and splashing would have known at once that I was no fisherman. Just short of Eel Pie Island a woman gave me a comradely wave from the towpath. I had noticed the gay summer frock while still some distance away and thought how pleasant it would be to have such a companion sitting on the stern cushion. But no luck with beautiful spies! Her face was round and competent—she might have been a District Nurse on her day off—and the rest of her rather indefinite. When she came aboard I crossed to the other bank as instructed, and appreciated how simple and sensible the move was. If anyone was interested in her movements he would have to go round by one of the distant bridges before he could catch up with us.

  She told me to pull in under cover of Eel Pie Island and to take the stern seat while she rested on the sculls. Finding that my English was barely comprehensible, she started to speak Russian and asked me how I had really left Romania. I refused to tell her on the grounds that I did not wish innocent persons to get into trouble, but otherwise gave her a coherent story which would be hard to check. I said that I had tried to make a living in Paris, had been suspected by French police of embezzlement—details founded on Caulby here—and paid a seaman to smuggle me into England. A few days after I had landed, sleeping rough and not knowing in the least what to do, I heard of the trawler fleet and put on my act of having swum ashore from it in the hope of regularising my position and getting some sort of charitable hand-out. The facts of what happened when I was found were convincing, for I related them exactly as they were.

  ‘Typically Romanian!’ she said rudely. ‘And the immigration officers believed you?’

  ‘I don’t know whether they did at first, but afterwards, yes.’

  And I continued with the story of my quiet life, translations and all, up to the meeting with Marghiloman.

  * The Miss X of the Prologue. Her name at this time meant nothing to me. A.G.

  She questioned me at length about him and then turned to Eudora, asking if she believed her nephew was in Moscow. No doubt about that, I said.

  ‘Did she ever say why he should have escaped to Russia, if he did?’

  ‘No. She assumed you had arranged it.’

  ‘Did she tell you on what evidence the British Tribunal decided that he must be guilty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She believed him innocent?’

  ‘She would have liked to, but how could she after he had defected?’

  ‘Mr. Petrescu, you are clearly on quite intimate terms with her. Can you find out what was the evidence against Rory?’

  I knew very well what the damning evidence was: the bank accounts. But if I said so it would be plain that I had heard it directly from Alwyn or that Alwyn had been able to tell his aunt. Very deep waters, and all the deeper because there was no clue to what she wanted. It might be that the KGB did not know what the effect of their fake bribe had been or that they wondered how far Rachel’s cover as a harmless intellectual was blown.

  ‘Mrs. Hilliard must know or suspect what it was. You will ask her.’

  ‘I do not want to be involved.’

  ‘It could mean a useful sum of money for you if you found out the truth.’

  ‘Not me! I’m not clever enough.’

  ‘You are quite as intelligent as most agents, Mr. Petrescu. Have you family in Romania?’

  ‘Find out!’

  ‘We shall, whether your name is Petrescu or not.’

  She gave two hearty pulls on the sculls which would have taken us out in
to the middle of the Volga, let alone the Thames.

  ‘There are two of my companions idling suspiciously at Richmond Bridge, and I am sure that they have been followed by British security police. If you do not agree to do what you are told I shall row you back and both of them will receive us cordially at the landing stage. Instead of dreaming that you are under surveillance by us, you will be suspect to the British from then on.’

  I told her that I would jump overboard and that she could go to hell and pay the hire of the boat as well.

  ‘If you do, it will be in full view of all the people on both banks. However you explain your extraordinary action, the police will be interested and you will be exposed.’

  ‘I shall not be. Escape from the KGB!’

  ‘What were you doing with them in the first place? Difficult to explain, Mr. Petrescu, especially if we pass the word to the police that you are a criminal and a fraud and that they should find out how you really entered England.’

  It was in my mind to tell her straight out that I was not Petrescu but Adrian Gurney, British subject. It may be that I should have done so; but it must be remembered that I was muddled by these persistent questions which made no sense. I also foresaw that if MI5 were to learn that Adrian Gurney—that impostor whom they had allowed to stew in his own juice—was suspiciously involved in the affair of Alwyn Rory, their interrogators would be much too good for me.

  So could I risk going down to Molesworthy as an agent of the KGB? It was tempting, and one could almost say it was a patriotic duty. If I could find Alwyn, I could let him know that the Russians were willing to pay to find out what the damning evidence against him was, so that either they didn’t frame him or didn’t know that it had worked.

  ‘Suppose I agree and disappear?’

  ‘You could try, Petrescu, but eventually we should catch up with you. Didn’t you want to be free of all surveillance? Refuse to work for us and you will never feel secure. Agree, and I promise you will be left alone. You have only to report to me that you cannot get the information we need and to tell me what you did get. But if you can find out what the evidence was which broke Alwyn Rory and if your report is confirmed—shall we say five hundred pounds?’

  I pretended to be surprised and delighted. She then said that I should always keep an eye open for any stranger who wanted to talk to me. He would introduce himself by: Good morning, I mean, good afternoon or Good afternoon, I mean good evening or whatever was appropriate to the time of day. I was to reply: It’s all this summer time. Most ingenious! It was a typically eccentric English reply which would not attract the attention of any third party—or, if it did, the attention would be laughing and sympathetic.

  I dropped her off on the towpath, paddling around for an hour before returning to Richmond Bridge. Now that I had the KGB off my back I was ready to visit Molesworthy without any precautions. But there remained the enigmatic Marghiloman. Father at the zoo had obviously never heard of him. However, that meant nothing; a diplomat might well be unfamiliar with the dirtier activities of his staff. My boat-woman had neither admitted that he was working for the Russians, nor said that he was not. On the whole I was inclined to think that he was an agent of MI5 after all, or perhaps an over-zealous private eye. There were probably such chaps gathering information in hope of profit like freelance journalists.

  Puzzling over Marghiloman it suddenly occurred to me that I myself was now a double agent—for Alwyn and the KGB. The realisation startled me. One doesn’t easily recognise oneself under a formal label of that sort. When I considered that in the matter of Mornix’s escape from Whatcombe Street I was also doing a job for MI5—though quite without their knowledge—I could call myself a triple agent, which must be a rarity. I found that comic, while well aware that the joke was in the same class of sick humour as coffins and feet set in concrete.

  So the triple agent was professionally cautious and left Greenwich on foot, which experience showed to be far the best way of avoiding persons who might wish to trace his movements. No ticket collectors. No bus conductors. No police checks on motor vehicles. I was now splendidly fit after so much open air and exercise, all the yellow of my complexion having turned to a weather-beaten, rural tan. I reached Basingstoke in two days which was good going. A train to Exeter and two more days’ walking landed me in the morning on the slope of the knoll above Cleder’s Priory.

  I had lost all sense of urgency, that artificial urgency of London where women chattered their way from one shop window to another and men hurried to earn a living by selling unnecessary objects or to spend money on acquiring them. Febrile activity is not so apparent in Eastern Europe. One would have more sympathy for communism if only its chief ambition was not to catch up in the race after futility.

  Below me, deep Devon spread over combes and hillocks without a human being in sight unless one counted two splashes of colour on the seats of distant tractors. Yet every acre of the scene—woodland, pasture, corn ready for harvest—was the result of unremitting work, unremitting love. Urgency? There was never anything else in the life of the land, but no sign of it and certainly no pretence of it.

  In the valley behind me I caught a glimpse of Eudora, John Penpole and the pack returning from exercising the hounds. I had never seen her on a horse before. That straight pillar of devotion and integrity was a formidable sight when mounted on a dapple grey which must have been all of seventeen hands. In a narrow lane they came on Tessa, whose lower half at once vanished in the flood of adoring hounds. I had no idea that she had left London. She had evidently made up the quarrel with Eudora, for I could just hear the ring of their voices and it was happy.

  Eudora and John rode on with the pack, intending to skirt the high ground and return to the kennels by way of Molesworthy. Tessa climbed directly up the path through the bracken. She looked in her natural environment, exposing my dream of romantically rescuing her from London as the nonsense it was. I don’t know why the fact that she was walking alone and using her eyes should have revealed to me another Tessa. If she had been riding I might have felt that she was merely forcing herself into some resentful pleasure; but as it was I could understand why her Tommy Bostock had accepted me so easily when I claimed to be a friend of hers from Devon. He had been aware of this other Tessa, as I was not.

  At the top of the ridge her eyes were following a pair of sailing buzzards and she did not see me until I said good morning.

  ‘You turn up like a bad penny, Adrian,’ she said.

  ‘I see you’ve been talking to Eudora. About time for both of you!’

  ‘Yes. She couldn’t understand what you were doing with Alwyn.’

  ‘And what have you told her?’

  ‘Everything.’

  After talking to Tommy Bostock, Eudora had driven straight to London and sailed like a battleship into Rachel’s flat, guns hooded and the pennants of England, Old and New, streaming behind. She and Tessa had fallen into each other’s arms and at once returned to Molesworthy. Thereafter there was little point in either keeping secrets from the other when Alwyn had trusted Tessa to groom me for the Whatcombe Street caper.

  ‘What about Rachel?’

  She did not answer, but asked me if I had seen Alwyn recently.

  ‘Over a week ago. He is still in England.’

  ‘Are they on his trail? Is he in danger?’

  ‘He doesn’t think so.’

  ‘Adrian, tell me if I’ve done the right thing! Look at this!’

  She pulled out an envelope from her shirt pocket and handed it to me; it contained two sheets of paper—one, she said, in Rachel’s writing, the other in Alwyn’s, both unsigned.

  Alwyn’s to Rachel read:

  ‘We are both in danger. Can I talk to you? T knows where I am. She was there on her tenth birthday.’

  Rachel’s note to Tessa was:

  ‘Greatly surprised to get this. I thought he was away.’

  Alwyn must have dropped his message at Rachel’s flat before leaving London,
for he would not have trusted post or telephone. It was cleverly worded—merely a warning that the investigation of both was far from over and without any hint of innocence or guilt.

  ‘How did you get it?’ I asked.

  ‘It was given to Amy Penpole by a young man she didn’t know.’

  Tessa said that she had not yet consulted Eudora whose prejudice against Rachel was too strong.

  ‘She would not have let me answer. She would have said it was a trap.’

  ‘So it is. But for Rachel.’

  I had always been apprehensive of what the effect on Tessa might be when she learned the truth about her patronising friend, and hoped that it would be someone else who had to disillusion her. Now I had to do it myself, and just at the morning when I felt that her confidence was growing.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I found out at Whatcombe Street that Rachel helped Mornix to escape. It could not have been done without her.’

  ‘Did Alwyn believe it when you told him?’

  ‘He did. It fitted.’

  She was silent too long, and I said inanely that it must be a shock.

  ‘Yes. But once one knows it, no. It’s always been in the back of my mind, Adrian. It wasn’t that I couldn’t believe it. It’s that I wouldn’t.’

  She saw how uneasy I was at her silence and put her hand over mine.

  ‘I was trying to remember what I could have given away. Nothing, I think. I have never even hinted that he wasn’t in Moscow. And of course she must have known all along. But I’m glad you never told me who Ionel Petrescu was.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter any more. Nobody is looking for him.’

  ‘And nobody is looking for Adrian Gurney either?’

  ‘Adrian Gurney is in suspended animation. I am just Willie, and I have news for Alwyn which he ought to know. Where is he and what did you do?’

  She had acted as soon as she received the message and telephoned Rachel to meet her at the village of Frogmore. Then she had guided her as far as the entrance to a track which led up to the patch of neglected woodland where Alwyn was.