by Alan Judd
Without his having done anything in particular, Maurice Lydd’s unpopularity with his fellow students had grown daily. It was visceral. Despite being congenial and capable, with a prompt smile and no record of offences against anyone, and despite the fact that his meanness with money was not actually so much greater than that of many people, he gave an impression of relentless self-seeking. He was either unaware of his effect on people or too thick-skinned to care. When there was nothing going on that might further his interests he was agreeable and undemanding company, yet Charles always came away from conversation with him feeling obscurely compromised. Others felt the same.
Roger emptied his glass and ran his hand up and down his face. ‘Better shave, I guess. Rebecca kept staring at me this morning and I naturally assumed she was overwhelmed by desire until she asked why I was shaving only one side of my face. It’s that poxy little candle in the bathroom. How do you do it?’
‘I hold the candle in one hand and move it across. S’pose we ought to do something about it.’ Neither had yet attempted to get an electrician, partly because it would have meant taking a day or half a day off to let the man in, something that Slack Alice did not see as part of her duties. It now occurred to Charles, however, that, if his case continued, it might be a convenient excuse. ‘I’ll get someone in to fix it,’ he said.
The sitting room in Claire’s flat was small and warm, richly coloured, cluttered with knick-knacks and old black and white or sepia family photos. It wasn’t obvious that they were hers. The cushions were freshly pumped-up. It felt to Charles like being squeezed into a furnished tea-cosy.
She put on a short black coat that looked expensive and impractical. ‘If you agree, Pierre, perhaps we go to the place over the road. They know me there and they will look after us. Très agréable, n’est pas?’
‘D’accord.’
She exaggerated her accent. ‘Only, you know, it is necessary I speak like this all the time because that is how they think I am.’
It was a Greek restaurant, moderately busy. Claire was welcomed effusively and they were shown to a corner table at the back, candle-lit like the one he’d just left in Queensgate. The waiter gave Charles a knowing smile as he unfolded his napkin.
‘They like you here,’ Charles said.
‘I bring them business. Sometimes they bring me some. Also, in my profession, it is useful to have friends nearby.’
Meals with Claire, he was to learn, were never short and always expensive. He had the impression she ate out, or in any quantity, only when there was someone to feed her. She ordered a large kleftiko. Wine, he learned, had to be red, plentiful and look expensive.
The picture she painted of Viktor was fuller but essentially the same: a nice man, charming, considerate, interesting, with no obvious political or intelligence agenda and no sign of security concerns beyond an understandable reluctance to meet in public. That was the case with many of her clients.
‘Yet he’s lying to you about who he is.’
‘If you’re not having me on.’ She had dropped her French accent.
‘And presumably lying to his wife.’
‘Goes without saying.’
‘And he goes on seeing you. Why? Sex?’
‘He loves me.’ A dribble of juice ran from her lip.
‘Has he said so?’
‘All the time. He’s very passionate. Quite a little romantic.’ She dabbed at the juice with her napkin. ‘What you looking at me like that for? You think he must be cross-eyed or something?’
‘Not at all, I was just trying to reconcile –’
‘He’s not the first, you know. He’s not the only one, either.’
‘I’m sure he’s not. Nor the last.’
‘I can pull a man when I want. I don’t have to walk the streets.’
He poured more wine. ‘I was just trying to reconcile his loving you with his lying to you.’
‘Act your age, Pete. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you can’t lie to them, does it? I’d be out of clients if it did.’ She sighed as if it were an old argument between them. ‘And what about you? Aren’t you in love?’
‘No.’
‘Noo.’ She mimicked him, laughing. ‘You’d better watch out, dear.’
The rest of the evening was spent talking about her – her marriage, her divorce, how she had become a ‘masseuse’, her children and their private school, difficulties with clients and the Inland Revenue. There were, Charles learned, grades and strata within her profession as in his; she regarded her own niche as the respectable top level, viewed nightclub hostesses as sad cases and looked with disdain upon the girls in Shepherd Market, while for the street-walkers of other regions she had no words, only contempt. On the way out Charles was winked at by the waiter. He escorted her to her door and waited while she struggled with the keys in her handbag. It took her three or four attempts to get the right one in the lock. He heard her stumble on the stairs.
Although it was past one in the morning, he walked back to the flat to clear his head, then made notes for the write-up he would have to do after his typing lesson the next day. It was nearly three when he retired to his mattress on the floor. They were to have an early start in the offices of Rasen, Falcon & Co. in Lower Marsh, with the morning on HO paperwork procedures and the afternoon on encipherment.
‘You and I are the class dunces,’ said Desmond Kimmeridge. ‘More a surprise to you, perhaps, than to me. Guards officers are supposed to be thick. D’you know the one about the man who wanted a brain transplant? Rejects one from a brain surgeon for a hundred thousand, another from a rocket scientist for half a million. Eventually, he’s offered one for a million. Belonged to a Guards officer. Why’s it so expensive? But, my dear sir, it’s never been used. All right, never mind. Gerry says we’re slower than everyone else and less accurate, despite our messages being shorter. Bottom of the class.’
It was mid-afternoon and Charles’s torpor was deepening. The columns of figures and letters comprising the one-time pad manual encipherment system meant less the longer he looked at them. Theoretically unbreakable, unless either pad fell into enemy hands or was repeated, it was a cipher to be concealed within another, computer-generated cipher, also theoretically unbreakable. The course was divided into pairs to practise encoding and decoding.
‘Was he annoyed by the facetious message?’ asked Charles.
‘French Kisser came out as Trench Litter. Better than French Letter, I s’pose. I fear he’s fundamentally unembarrassable. Doesn’t mind what anyone says about him. He sentenced you and I to another message each of at least twenty groups.’ He bent his head conspiratorially, close enough for Charles to smell his after-shave. It was slightly reviving. ‘Between you and I, I think it’s no bad thing to get a reputation for being bad at these things. You’re less likely to be asked to do them. Same with photography and Edwina. If I were alone on station I’d probably take an axe to Edwina.’
Edwina was an obsolescent cipher machine maintained as a back-up system on many stations. They were all supposed to be able to use it. ‘So long as they don’t suspect it’s deliberate,’ said Charles.
‘Little chance of that with you and I, I fear. Unlike our brace of young classicists. Or Maurice Lydd. He’s doing pages of immaculate stuff. I bet he’s cheating.’
He and Desmond also did badly in clandestine photography at the Castle later that week. Desmond was caught by MOD police while taking supposedly secret photographs of a submarine in Portsmouth dockyard, while Charles’s attempt to develop and print a film using the hand-in-box equipment issued to stations without darkrooms resulted in thirty-six blank exposures. He minded much less about this than about the lack of progress with his case. He thought he had reconciled himself to a long haul but after a week of hearing nothing further from C/Sovbloc or A1 he began to feel unreasonably like a favourite who had been dropped.
The week following was spent wholly in London. A silver-haired lady who lived in Eaton Square and looked
as if she might have been fashioned from finest bone china headed the forgery section. Her voice was soft, polite and persuasive, and she was explaining how she became a forger when Charles was called from the room by Rebecca.
‘Sorry, but someone’s been ringing your official number, your Foreign Office one. A1’s got the message and wants you to go over to HO a.s.a.p. Exciting life you lead.’
‘Not as exciting as it sounds.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that.’
Half an hour later he was again with Hugo in Hookey’s office, with its backdrop of slow trains and its interior of pipe-smoke.
‘They’ve obviously traced you and decided you’re clean,’ said Hugo. ‘That’s good.’
‘All we know,’ said Hookey slowly, ‘is that after delay your call was returned. Koslov’ – Hookey rarely called him Lover Boy – ‘very likely did report meeting you. He’d be foolish not to. And they probably have traced you, in which case they’ve probably assumed – rightly in your case, wrong in others – that because you were in the services you must have joined us, not the Foreign Office. Why they should agree that the cultivation, as they probably and correctly see it, should continue – if that’s what he’s ringing to say – we don’t know.’
When Charles rang back Viktor sounded as if he were reading from a prepared text. ‘Charles, I am very pleased to speak to you. I am sorry that my busy work has prevented me from replying sooner. But now I am free to arrange to meet if you would like.’
Charles imagined him under instruction and speaking before an audience, as he was himself. He felt closer to him, as if they were two victims conspiring together. It was, after all, their relationship that was being traded upon, certainly by one side, probably by both. ‘I should be delighted to meet, Viktor. When would suit you?’
‘At any time for me. Please choose.’
Charles chose an evening, since dinner was likely to be more leisurely than lunch. ‘Where would you like?’
‘Please. It is your city.’
Charles suggested South of the Border, a newly converted warehouse not far from the Young Vic. It was cheerful, not too expensive, with good table separation.
‘Great, we’re in business,’ said Hugo afterwards. ‘Can’t approve of your choice of restaurant, of course. Too close to HO. You should’ve thought of that. Anyway, too late now.’
‘We’re in business but what sort?’ asked Hookey quietly.
‘Only one way to find out. Charles will know on Wednesday.’
‘Perhaps.’ Hookey put down his pipe with a wintry smile. ‘Come and talk about it beforehand.’
‘Yes, do, with me, too,’ said Hugo.
On the day of the dinner Charles took the afternoon off, ostensibly only in order to let in the electrician but also to allow himself to relax and prepare, without the risk of being kept at work because an exercise overran. The electrician took only as long as it took to remove a well-cooked mouse from a junction box. The call-out fee was substantial and the unfamiliar light showed up a lot of dust and dirt.
He booked an early table, as Hookey had said the Russians in London often ate early, and gave himself time to go by cab or tube, hoping that Viktor would drink a lot. He bought an Exchange & Mart to read on the way, since, without disloyalty to his father’s Rover, the feline Mark II Jaguars of the 1960s were again featuring in his automotive daydreams during lectures, where they were joined by a 1950s Bristol 405 sometimes parked in Queensgate. It was not for sale but its swooping curvaceous lines haunted him like the memory of a woman glimpsed. When approaching something that needed thought and energy, he welcomed distraction.
As he was about to leave, the phone rang. He hesitated; he would have left it but feared it might be a cancellation. It was Mary, his sister.
‘May I come round?’ Her voice sounded small, a sign that there was something wrong.
‘No – I mean, yes, later. I’ll come to you. I’ve got to work now.’
‘At home? At this time?’
‘No, I’ve got to go out to meet someone. Someone from work.’
‘So it’s social, you mean.’ Irritation revived her.
Charles tried not to sound the same. ‘No, it’s an official dinner. Diplomatic.’
‘At an embassy?’
‘In a restaurant. What’s the matter, anyway?’
‘Nothing’s the matter.’
‘It sounded as if there was.’
‘No. Anyway, you’re busy. I was just going to say that Peter is going to sell his flat.’
Charles floundered. He was sure Peter wasn’t the fiancé, but he’d been wrong before. He didn’t recall any discussion of flats.
‘If you’re interested,’ she added.
‘Oh yes.’
He struggled on, hoping to pick up clues by her responses. She was referring to a discussion they’d had months ago about a friend of hers who might sell his flat in the fashionable Boltons area between Chelsea and Kensington. It would be at the very limit of what Charles could afford but he had to buy it, she had told him then. It was ridiculous that he threw all his money away on rent when it could go into a mortgage that would get him on the property ladder. Happy in her small house in Battersea, a timely purchase, she pursued opportunities for her brother with a zeal that touched him, but which he never matched. He would get round to it one day, he told himself, and went on thinking about cars.
‘He’s not sure exactly what the price will be but if you’re definitely interested he won’t put it with agents until you’ve seen it, so you’d be able to get it for less because he wouldn’t have to pay the agent’s commission,’ she said.
‘Tell him I am, definitely.’
‘You haven’t seen it yet.’
‘I don’t need to. You have. I trust your judgement. But I must go now.’
‘The other thing is James,’ she said, reverting to her small voice.
She was no longer sure that her engagement was a good idea but was unable, or unwilling, to say precisely why. Charles interrupted to say that he would call round after his dinner. She urged him not to, unless he really wanted. By the time he put the phone down he had ten minutes to get to Waterloo. He ran out of the flat and jumped in the Rover.
He need not have. For half an hour he sat alone at his upstairs corner table, circling cars in Exchange & Mart which he had no intention of buying. Most of the time he watched the door, the stairs and the people at nearby tables, regretting his choice of somewhere inconvenient to the Soviet Embassy and not easy to find. At least there was no one he recognised from the office, though that should not have been a problem since they were not supposed to acknowledge each other in public. It was apparently fairly common for Russians not to turn up for meetings, nor to offer apologies or explanations afterwards unless asked.
Viktor appeared, unobtrusive and smiling, during one of the brief periods when Charles was not looking. ‘I am sorry to be late. I was trying hard to find the restaurant. I was looking in the streets behind the Old Vic but then I remembered you had said the Young Vic. And then I found it. I am sorry.’
His grey suit looked cheap and did not fit well, his silver tie was thin and too tightly knotted and the cuffs of his white shirt slightly frayed. His charm apart, it was hard to see him as a plausible wealthy Finnish businessman. They talked at first of Oxford acquaintances and then of their own lives since, without either probing deeply. Hookey had warned that most communist officials of any nationality would answer one question, and generally a second, but would shy away at three in a row. Viktor asked few questions and so, anxious that the dinner should not appear too much an interview, Charles volunteered whatever of himself he felt might reasonably have been asked. He did, however, establish that Viktor was a member of the Party.
‘We like Party members,’ Hookey had said, with a smile. ‘For one thing, people often can’t get valuable access unless they are. The Party controls everything, including the KGB and the military, although at the higher levels they’re
all interpenetrated. It’s the whole nomenklatura business. For another thing, a good deal of information is distributed internally via the Party cells during their interminable meetings and if you can penetrate one cell you can sometimes discover a lot about what’s going on in the rest of the hive.’
The only subject to which Viktor returned unprompted was Charles’s bachelorhood. ‘You have never met anyone you wanted to marry?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘No one?’
‘There was one girl – well, two, I suppose – I could imagine marrying, but not yet.’
‘My wife has her work to do in the embassy but she misses our child.’
‘And Chantal?’ Charles wanted to ask, but it was too soon. The marriage theme had potential, since Viktor’s interest in Charles’s uxorial state was perhaps a concealed way of talking about his own, but he needed help with the menu. His English was easily good enough but he was reluctant to decide, gratefully following wherever Charles led. The house red, leek and potato soup and steak and chips seemed likely to appeal more to him than the less familiar Spanish or Mexican dishes. Charles kept trying to imagine the diffident, cautiously friendly man across the table as the ardent lover Claire described, the man who dared both to love and deceive her and to deceive his wife and his security authorities. Also, surely, himself, where she was concerned. But the only moment of unease was when Charles asked, with a casualness that sounded unconvincing to his own ears, whether Viktor had had to get permission to meet. He knew the answer but asked in order to see where the subject might lead.
Viktor’s blue-grey eyes were steady but watchful. ‘Of course I asked for permission. It is practice for a diplomat.’
‘Was it difficult?’
‘Should it be difficult? It is normal for officials to meet.’
‘I just wondered whether our knowing each other already made it more or less difficult.’
‘It made no difference, I think.’
The noisy group some tables away became suddenly noisier. Charles remarked on them. Viktor looked across. ‘Two of the men are German.’