Sweet Poison

by David Roberts

  ‘Divorce, you mean?’

  ‘Dirty word, isn’t it? But maybe better than living with me.’

  ‘I say, old chap,’ said Edward uncomfortably, ‘brace up. If there is going to be a smash then maybe it won’t be as bad as you think. Have you had a chat with Lord Weaver? He might do something for you though he’s got his own troubles. You’ve heard about his stepdaughter?’

  ‘Hermione? Yes, poor girl. God, is no one happy on this earth! Anyway, Corinth, since you are being good enough to let me wallow in self-pity, I may as well tell you there is something else, even worse.’

  ‘What, for goodness sake?’

  ‘I’ve been such a bloody fool and now it’s all going to come out. Your friend Weaver’s got hold of it for one.’

  ‘Got hold of what?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t really tell you. You know that blighter Friedberg who was at dinner with us when Craig was killed or killed himself, whichever it was?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I had fallen into a stupid trap he set me. I was in Germany about a year ago and I met Friedberg. He was very friendly – I can see why now. The long and short of it was I agreed to keep him informed about events in England – you know, not secret stuff or anything – in return for a . . . for a consideration. Anyway, I got drawn in. He pressed me; said if I didn’t deliver better stuff he would tell the world I was a spy or something. I was frightened and tried to do what he asked, but – oh God, why am I telling you all this!’ Larmore put his head in his hands. ‘But it wasn’t enough and Friedberg said he would expect something good when we met at Mersham or . . . or something nasty. Anyway, I had got something to give him – something I ought not to give him – but before I could betray my country the General died and Friedberg scurried off. Now I’m waiting for something awful to happen.’

  Edward took a deep breath. ‘Golly, you are in the wars, old man,’ he said inadequately and contemplated putting an arm round his shoulders but decided against. ‘Still,’ Edward said, ‘look at the bright side: you didn’t do anything unforgivable.’

  ‘No, but I have done enough for it to look pretty bad in one of Weaver’s rags. I’ll have to resign my seat, of course, but that’s all right. I couldn’t have hung on to it anyway with my debts.’

  ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ said Edward as the two sweating youths came off the court. ‘Don’t give way yet. Let me think. I know, let’s both go and see Weaver. He’s not a bad man and he knows what it is for things to go wrong with a fellow. He might be able to keep the hounds at bay. Anyway, it’s worth a try.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Larmore, taking his head out of his towel.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Edward firmly, ‘but before that, let’s forget everything and bash a ball about – work up a sweat. What do you say, Larmore?’

  Larmore stared at Edward. ‘You know, Corinth, I never much liked you: stuck-up prig, I used to think – more money than sense – but I was wrong. You’re all right. Yes, let’s play squash and damn all the rest of it!’

  Verity had been rather put out by Edward’s behaviour the previous evening. She liked him and, considering he was a useless scion of the decadent aristocracy, he seemed to share to a remarkable degree her own values and her reluctance to let sleeping dogs lie. It was all the more annoying that he should let her down, and himself for that matter, by fawning over an American girl with not a brain in her head. Furthermore, they had made no progress in discovering how General Craig had come to die, except that she was now convinced that he had been murdered. All the ‘respectable’ figures around the Duke of Mersham’s table, not excluding the Duke himself it had to be said, had some reason to dislike or fear the old man. Verity abhorred everything the dead man had stood for but her natural instinct was to see justice done – a point of view her friend David Griffiths-Jones would have regarded as dangerous self-indulgence in bourgeois morality.

  She regarded herself as a committed Communist – committed to bringing down the capitalist system and stringing up people like Lord Edward Corinth from lamp-posts – and she made no attempt to square her convictions with her personal regard for Edward as a man – at least, when he was not irritating her. She had been at first amused and then concerned to see the animosity between David and Edward. In an English way, their dislike of each other had been subsumed in good manners but she had been aware of how thin that carapace was. She could not admit it even to herself, but beyond their political differences she had sensed a ‘locking of horns’ over her which might have given pleasure to a less sensible girl.

  She felt guilty in David’s presence. His implied criticism of her for consorting with the class enemy she felt to have some justification. There was also the knowledge that David regarded her obsession with General Craig’s death to be irrelevant in the fight to which she should be devoting all her energies. The only aspect of her investigation of which he seemed to approve was her interest in the German, Helmut von Friedberg. He had more or less directed her to do a Mata Hari on him and insinuate herself into his affections. She disliked the idea of prostituting herself – that was an exaggeration of course – but as a fundamentally honest person, pretending to like someone she loathed was not easy. She guessed that David would think her reservations on this score to be ‘bourgeois’ and she had to confess that, however hard she tried to throw off the conventions of her class and upbringing, she was irredeemably bourgeois. There was something hard, almost sinister beneath David’s wholesome good looks and frank behaviour which she found both frightening and yet attractive. He was dangerous – not for anything he had done but because of what he might do. He was dangerous not like a half-tamed animal but like a sword. It is hard, cold and without feeling but it will not cut if you do not embrace it.

  Gritting her teeth, she telephoned the German embassy and asked to speak to Baron von Friedberg. She hoped he would not be there or, if he were, he would not wish to speak to her. Maybe he would not even remember who she was. But no, he was there and he would be delighted to speak to her.

  ‘Miss Browne,’ he said in his almost perfect English, ‘how happy I am that you have telephoned me. It was my desire that you should show me your London. Here at the embassy I attend official receptions, dinners, and talk to politicians – so boring and I never meet any real English people.’ He went on in the same vein for several minutes, claiming to be despondent that his busy schedule prevented him from playing the tourist but in fact taking pleasure in making Verity aware of how important he was.

  ‘Yes,’ said Verity, ‘I knew how busy you must be but since you had been so kind as to –’

  ‘Of course, but I am desolated. I have to return to Berlin tomorrow and I do not know when I shall be back. Mein Führer,’ he said importantly, and Verity could imagine him standing to attention and clicking his heels together, ‘mein Führer requires that I make my report to him personally. I fly first to Berlin and then to Berchtesgaden, but tonight – there is a reception here at the embassy and after that there will be a small dinner-party, just a few friends. I would be honoured if you would join us.’

  Verity said she would be delighted. There was some relief to her in the idea that there would be other people present. She admitted to herself that she had not liked the idea of fending off Friedberg at some intimate dinner for two. There were limits to what she would do for the Party. She wondered if he knew she was a Communist and did not care or whether he was ignorant of her political allegiances. She suddenly felt rather scared and reached out a hand to dial Edward’s number but then thought better of it. She was still annoyed with him and she would enjoy proving to him that she was capable of putting her head in the lion’s mouth and getting away unscathed.

  She spent the afternoon in pleasurable self-indulgence which, since she was acting upon a direction from the Party, was not self-indulgence at all. If she were going to vamp she would go the whole hog. She began by having a long luxurious bath, washed her hair and considered make-up. Usually she scorned to use
any and with the God-given clear skin of youth and large expressive eyes which she could if she wished employ to devastating effect, she normally saw no need for ‘powder and paste’ as she put it. Tonight was different, however. She opened her wardrobe. Her father was too busy to offer much in the way of moral support but he made up for it in part by giving her a more than generous allowance. This was a secret, of course, except that everyone suspected it. As a member of the Party she could never admit to existing on her father’s handouts even though it was his money which made it possible for her to devote so much unpaid time to Party affairs. It was also a comfort to Verity to know that the money came not from some capitalist exploiter of the proletariat but a man famous for being a defender of the poor and the outcast.

  Because he was such a good lawyer his services were also in demand by the rich and famous. An ascetic himself, except in his love of beautiful motor cars and his ancient and noble house near Reading, he spent his money on his daughter and on supporting the Daily Worker. Since his wife had died – of tuberculosis when Verity was nine – he had given up entertaining except where it was necessary for business, seldom ate in restaurants or went to the theatre, but spent long hours at his desk in his chambers in the Temple. He was universally respected by his fellow lawyers though he had no intimate friends among them. He had refused to be made a King’s Counsel in case that compromised his freedom to act for political outsiders such as Gus Ramsbotham, the union leader and CP member who had been accused of inciting illegal strikes in the coal industry. It was a lonely life in many ways because no one else in his profession seemed to share his political views or would at least admit to it in public, and he deliberately held himself apart from his fellow lawyers for this reason. Among the younger members of the Bar he had fervent admirers and they might be seen at his coat-tails as he strode through the law courts on his way to do battle with the many-headed Hydra, capitalism. Verity was proud of him, loved him, but there was something lacking – he was too bound up with his crusade to spare a shoulder for his daughter to cry on. He was proud of her – her intelligence, her love of life – and above all they shared a devotion to the idea of justice even in a world which increasingly denied it. Had Verity been a man she would, no doubt, have followed her father into the law but for a woman this was impossible and, curiously, it never occurred to either father or daughter that this was unjust. It had been a disappointment to him – never declared of course – that he had no sons, just this one daughter. He wanted her to succeed as a journalist if this could be done without betraying her principles. Verity’s father was not a Party member. Had he been, it was certain that he would have been prevented from practising at the Bar but in many respects he was more extreme in his views than his pragmatic daughter. Verity gave him hope that the world could change for the better, but as the political situation in Europe grew more desperate month by month he could see that even if a small light of freedom still burned in England it must soon be extinguished.

  At Verity’s last birthday – her twentieth – her father had given her a sum of money – a huge sum it seemed to Verity – to spend on clothes. He had an idea that girls ought to have fun and look pretty even if the world was coming to an end or perhaps because of it. It occurred to him that if Verity had had a mother instead of two faded elderly aunts to bring her up, she would have enjoyed treats and delights he could not begin to imagine. It was unthinkable of course that a daughter of his should ‘come out’ and be presented at Court. The whole ‘debutante’ cattle market filled him with horror. Along with public schools – he had been at Winchester – ‘the season’ symbolized the class distinctions which he abhorred. But that did not mean Verity was not to go to parties and enjoy herself. ‘Buy a dress, my dear, something to make an old man’s eyes sparkle.’

  ‘Oh Father, you are not an old man,’ she had said. ‘You are a gladiator. I was in court, remember, when you were defending that poor woman who had killed her husband – a man who had brutalized her and done terrible things to their children. You were amazing. I was bursting with pride, in fact I almost exploded.’

  ‘A gladiator, eh, darling?’ he said, pulling her on to his knee. ‘An accurate comparison perhaps – “we who are about to die salute you”, the future.’

  It was this dress – her father’s gift – Verity now took reverentially out of the wardrobe where it had hung undisturbed for almost a year. It was a Schiaparelli, not one of Elsa’s ‘shocking pink’ creations but a deceptively simple white gown which to be effective needed to be worn by a girl of flawless complexion and raven black hair. On many girls it would have looked absurd but on Verity it was a powerful statement of her strong personality which could dispense with showiness. Her normal self-confidence ebbed away as she prepared herself for what might prove a difficult evening. She looked despairingly at her small collection of jewellery, finally deciding to wear a pearl choker which had belonged to her mother. She wondered if her father would have approved of her using this dress and her mother’s choker to seduce a Nazi. She decided he would certainly not approve and she was not sure she did but orders were orders. What she needed was a friend to bolster her confidence and tell her she looked stunning, but since leaving school she had never had any close girl friends. She had friends in the Party, of course, and she still saw one or two of the girls who had been at boarding school with her but she had never shared a flat with any of them and built a friendship on the shared intimacies which come from living with someone. Her world, the world in which she wanted to be successful, was a man’s world and she had deliberately distanced herself from contemporaries who were already preparing to subjugate themselves to a man, bear his children, bask in his successes and tolerate his arrogance, infidelity and contempt. It was one of the things which had particularly attracted her to the Communist Party: the emphasis on equality between the sexes and shared responsibility even if, in practice, the women were always left doing the washing-up while the men talked, smoked, conspired and occasionally fought. And now she was going to have dinner with a Nazi, dressed as though she was expecting to dance with the Prince of Wales, in a Schiaparelli dress, a mink stole she had never had occasion to wear before tonight draped over her naked shoulders.

  It was a source of embarrassment to Verity that her flat was in Hans Crescent, only a comrade’s stone’s throw from Harrods and Harvey Nichols, temples of bourgeois life, rather than in the Old Kent Road or Deptford High Street. However, it was certainly convenient for the German embassy in Carlton House Terrace. She got a taxi easily – so easily in fact, she had to ask the driver to circle Trafalgar Square a couple of times so that she wasn’t embarrassingly early. When she did at last enter the portico of the German embassy, the fount of all evil as far as she and her political friends were concerned, her heart was beating fast and she was aware of a film of moisture on her upper lip which, as she was wearing white evening gloves, she was unable to wipe away without doing more harm than good.

  The first thing which struck her was the effort which had been put into making visitors to the embassy aware they were entering another country. Two massive swastikas embraced an oversized portrait of the Fü hrer, the work of a painter so in awe of his subject as to have reduced what talent he might have had to slavish sycophancy. But once past this reminder of what modern Germany was all about, Verity was surprised by how normal everything seemed. She observed two men in uniform, military attachés on their way out to some function, but the rest of those she saw going about their business were dressed in suits and wore sober ties and were indistinguishable from their counterparts in other embassies or in Whitehall. It was almost a disappointment to Verity. If you enter the devil’s domain you want to be impressed – even a little frightened – but if the enemy proves to be no different in outward appearance to yourself and your friends it is subtly disturbing.

  A lackey showed her into a large drawing-room noisy with people having a good time. Von Friedberg saw her immediately and, muttering some words of apol
ogy to the couple he had been talking to, he strode across the room, bowed, almost clicked his heels together, and kissed her hand. When he raised his eyes to her face they were brilliant with sexual hunger and, much as it might embarrass her, there was something exciting about recognizing – how could she not? – the man’s undisguised admiration. The conversation all around them hushed and many eyes were turned to see who had made so dramatic an entrance. Von Friedberg introduced her to the Ambassador, a meek, worn-down-looking man, and then to other officials. There were many more men than women and what women there were had the look of seasoned cosmopolitans. Their faces were heavily made-up and their dresses, from Paris fashion houses, managed to look like suits of armour. Verity seemed to be by far the youngest present and she was soon surrounded by a crowd of young men of various nationalities, all speaking very good English. It so happened that Verity had spent three months at a workers’ summer camp near Munich where the German Communist Party sent its young to relax and imbibe the spirit of the movement and meet representatives of the Party in other countries. With the help of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with her she learnt to speak fluent if not accentless German, but she had decided before she set out for the embassy to pretend to have no German in the hope she might pick up information when her hosts talked among themselves. If she was to be a spy there was no point in not thinking like one.

  Gradually, the room emptied until at about nine thirty only those were left who had been invited to Friedberg’s dinner-party – it was clearly his party not the Ambassador’s. She had almost to pinch herself to remember that the men she had been talking to as normally and pleasantly as if she had been with like-minded friends in Bayswater or Islington were, some of them at least, representatives of a regime which was imprisoning political opponents – people with political convictions similar to her own – and making life for Jews and other declared enemies of the Nazi Party almost impossible.