by Simon Mawer
‘My dear, it was all over the papers. Even in The Times. It cannot have been easy for you but I understand you performed flawlessly.’
‘I felt an obligation …’
‘I’m sure you did. We all of us have accumulated obligations over the last few years, both personal and professional, haven’t we? But tell me about Hamburg itself. I was there for some time before the war. I loved the city. How did you find it?’
‘Like the surface of the moon.’
He shook his head disconsolately. ‘How terribly sad. One wonders whether Germany will ever get back on its feet again. Or the rest of Europe, come to that.’ The taxi veered round Eros and made its way down Piccadilly. Banal musings became a conversation: what did she think about all the countries of eastern Europe coming under Soviet rule? First Poland and Hungary, and now it looked as though Czechoslovakia was going the same way. Half the continent disappearing behind what they were calling the Iron Curtain.
Marian shrugged. ‘It’s hardly what we fought for, is it? But that’s what imperial powers do.’
‘I suppose it is.’ He moved his lips into a thoughtful pout. ‘Look, I’d like to talk over a few things with you if you’re willing.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, this and that. What happened and what might happen next. What you might do for us. If you’re interested.’
‘Do for you?’
Fawley smiled. ‘Let’s talk about it later, shall we?’
They were in Knightsbridge by now, turning down the Brompton Road. A bus blocked their way. Behind them a car hooted with indignation as they sat there motionless and silent. When finally the traffic moved and the taxi turned into her street it was a great relief. From inside his glass box, the cabbie glanced round. ‘What number, miss?’
‘Just put me down on the next corner.’
The vehicle came to a halt and Fawley opened the door. ‘It’s been so nice talking to you, Marian. Do give me a ring. Any time.’ He pressed a little fold of paper into her hand. ‘There’s my number. And by the way, it’s Mister Fawley these days, rather than Major. Consider me demobbed, although the rank was really no more than a bit of flannel. Oh …’ An afterthought. A silly point about nothing at all: ‘Best not talk about this little encounter, eh? Not to anyone.’ A brief smile, as though smiling itself were a secret. ‘But do give me a ring. Any time.’
Groundbait, was that the word? Thrown on the surface of the water to get the fish to bite. But where was the hook? She attempted to bury the encounter in the morass of her daily life – shopping for the things she and Alan needed, getting to work in the morning, working late into the evening most days and getting back home no earlier than Alan. Feeling better, more confident, the fugue fleeing back into the realms of unimportant memory. Fawley could go hang. But the fact of his appearance was always there, worming its way into her subconscious, setting up memories and fears, and the strange thrill of anticipation; and the little fold of paper with its Victoria number remained in her handbag, anonymous, tantalising, echoing with the faint ring of danger.
Russell
At the Peace Union she had her first triumph. It came about through the lectures programme. Usually the speakers were Mr Roper’s responsibility but this time it was Marian who made the suggestion. Miss Miller was dismissive of the idea – ‘Oh, we’d never get him’ – but Marian felt differently. ‘I think perhaps we might. I’m not promising anything but I think my father may be a help. You see, they were at Cambridge together. And imagine what a thing it would be if we could pull it off.’
A thing indeed, just the kind of thing she needed, to pull herself together, as her father put it. Pulling it off and herself together and through her recent turn and get her back on an even keel. All sorts of metaphors going round and round the family conversations. And her father did indeed pull it off, sending a letter to Trinity College in Cambridge to the great man himself – My dear Bertrand, it began – and receiving a most effusive and enthusiastic reply, so much that Mr Roper was persuaded to overcome his natural parsimony and consent to the hire of a nearby hall to accommodate the talk.
The event was announced in the press as an important initiative from that tireless worker for international peace, but despite Mr Roper’s insistence that she should share in the triumph and take a place up on the stage, Marian hid at the back of the hall like one of the public. ‘I don’t want to be on display,’ she explained to Mr Roper, but the real reason was that she feared the panic that might erupt inside her in the midst of all those people.
Alan had, of course, declined an invitation – ‘To hear one of your socialist friends? You must be joking!’ – but Ned was eager to attend. He had brought someone with him, a young man called Trevor. So the three of them sat together at the back of the hall while Mr Roper stood at the lectern to address the massed ranks of sympathisers and peace lovers. Behind him the guest speaker sat in a straight-backed chair looking for all the world like an ostrich who has determined not to bury its head in the sand.
‘Lord Russell tells me,’ Mr Roper said to the attentive faces, ‘that the only reason why he uses his title is that it gets people to listen to him. But for us, deeds speak louder than titles. So, I’ll present him to you as plain Bertrand Russell because it is through his deeds in the struggle for peace that he has title to our close attention.’
The pun brought polite laughter. Then the audience hushed and the great man rose to speak. It was what he said that was so disturbing. So much so that Marian, sitting right at the back, couldn’t quite believe her ears as his bleating, exact voice drifted out over the audience like a chill breeze. He talked of the bomb, of the American monopoly that would soon be lost as Russia developed her own weapon, of new bombs which would soon be here, bigger and better bombs – by which he intended, with heavy irony, worse bombs. The hydrogen bomb, he explained, in that matter-of-fact manner of the scientist, that would unleash the whole energy of the sun upon the surface of the earth.
The auditorium was as silent as a cemetery, the listeners like so many headstones.
‘Therefore there remains to us,’ Russell asserted in the manner of one speaking incontrovertible truth, ‘a short period during which the world might yet be saved from the indescribable fate of an atomic war which would in all probability exterminate the civilised portion of mankind.’
He thought perhaps that some men and women might survive such a conflict but they would be those fortunate – or perhaps unfortunate – few who may have been engaged in exploring the Antarctic Continent or investigating the theology of Tibetan Lamas. This was intended as a bitter little joke although no one laughed. Such survivors, the man went on, would surely be too few to re-establish civilised communities even should they wish to repeat such a grim experiment. And even if mankind, in the course of a millennium or two, were slowly to climb back to its present intellectual level, it was to be presumed that it would again inflict a similar catastrophe upon itself. To this end the good Lord saw some kind of world government as the only possible solution.
There was a stir of approval at this benevolent idea. After all, that was the title of his talk: World Government and the Road to World Peace. The audience warmed up, expecting further comforting platitudes. ‘However,’ the great man said, ‘the Russians have shown themselves opposed to any such overarching world body unless it is to be run by them. We see at this very moment how they are acting towards the besieged city of Berlin and how they have swallowed up the two countries whose earlier fates were inextricably bound up in the start of the last war.’
Now there was a certain amount of unease among the listeners. Russian motives were not to be impugned so easily. And against this unease, Russell moved on to consider how the West might react to such aggression. There were, he decided, three possible courses of action for the Western world to take, none of which could be described as easy.
The audience waited, hoping for some kind of palliative. The white-haired sage, philosopher a
nd mathematician, observed them with his customary look of innate superiority. Philosopher or mathematician, the calculations were the same: the first course of action was an immediate attack on Russia, which the United States and her allies would surely win quickly and decisively.
There was a collective intake of breath in the crowded hall.
The second course of action was to wait until Russia acquired her own atom bomb, in which case there would almost certainly be a large war between two evenly matched belligerents. This might also end in Western victory but only after frightful carnage, destruction, and suffering.
People in the audience began to mutter among themselves.
The third possible course of action, the speaker decided, was inaction – out of pure fear, to fail to do anything at all. This last possibility would result in the West bowing to Russian domination of the whole of Europe. It would mean the end of European civilisation.
‘I consider,’ Russell said, his fluting voice rising high above the murmurings of the audience, ‘each consequence to be more catastrophic than the one that precedes it.’
There was a gasp of horror as people understood what he had just said. Three possibilities and the least catastrophic was immediate war against the Soviet Union. Journalists scribbled on their pads. Someone called out, ‘Better red than dead!’
Russell observed the people before him with an imperious expression. ‘Was that a question or a statement?’
Marian stood up. People nearby turned to see her. She felt the weight of their regard, and a rising tide of panic. ‘Lord Russell!’ she cried out, and waited while the noise of the audience subsided. ‘I came this evening to hear words of peace. And all I have heard is a call to war. I think what you say is wrong, profoundly wrong, because it fails to address the one factor that I would expect you to consider – the goodwill of the men and women of our former allies, the Soviet Union!’
There was applause, some cries of hear! hear!
‘My dear madam—’ Lord Russell began.
‘I’m not!’
The good Lord looked confused. ‘I’m sorry?’
She felt panic no longer, just a keen and calm sense of outrage. ‘I’m not your dear madam. I’m a woman who took up arms against the Nazis, which is more than you did. And I do not wish to be forced to do the same against the Russians!’
There was tumultuous applause all around her. Up on the stage a hasty exchange took place between Mr Roper and the guest speaker. Marian turned and picked up her coat. ‘Come on,’ she said to Ned, ‘we’re going.’
They shuffled along the line. People around them stood to applaud. Up on the stage Lord Russell was burbling something but she took no notice. As she left the hall with Ned and his friend in her wake, she could only hear the man’s voice calling out in the background. ‘My good lady,’ he was saying. ‘My good lady!’ He sounded like a sheep bleating.
They retreated to a pub just round the corner. She was shaking, a mixture of fright and elation. Ned was laughing. ‘Little sister bearding the great philosopher. The poor man will scurry back to Cambridge with his tail between his legs.’
‘Did I make a fool of myself? But I couldn’t believe some of the things he said, could you? Doesn’t he understand the horrors? I mean …’
What did she mean? Perhaps she meant that anything was better than what she had witnessed during her captivity. But more than that, she had an idea for the future, perhaps an absurd one, but nevertheless a possibility. Maybe the only hope. ‘Like poison gas,’ she suggested to Ned. ‘Think how poison gas was so awful and so indiscriminate that no one used it in the last war. Mightn’t atomic weapons be like that? As long as both sides were equal in some way, neither would employ them because the other would. And any idiot could see that if that were to happen everyone would be destroyed. Russell hadn’t thought of that, had he? The great mathematical philosopher hadn’t thought of that possibility.’
‘Meanwhile,’ Ned said, ‘we’ve got to survive five, maybe ten years while the Russians catch up.’
‘Is that the difference?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s what people say.’
The pub was filling up, men jostling at the bar. Trevor had been dispatched to get drinks. He came back with two pints of bitter and a half of mild for Marian. ‘I thought you did all right,’ he said. ‘Gave Lord Bertrand a real earful.’ He was a rather handsome young man, with a mocking expression. He referred to Ned as ‘Teddy’ and there was something vulgar about his accent. She couldn’t place it precisely. She still wasn’t used to English accents, couldn’t tell Yorkshire from Lancashire, or Birmingham from Liverpool. This, she rather thought, was Liverpool. It suggested lack of education, yet it transpired that he had read Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and admired the man greatly, despite what he’d heard that evening. ‘Trouble is,’ Trevor said, ‘Russell could argue the hind legs off a donkey and donkeys can’t always argue back.’
She laughed. ‘Are you calling me a donkey?’
He seemed a bit put out. ‘That’s not quite what I meant. And you’re certainly not an ass. Not like Teddy here.’
There was more laughter. Ned the donkey. She watched the two of them together, their bantering, the tension between them that seemed at the same time to push them apart and yet draw them together, as though there were a force between them, one of Ned’s mysterious forces of electromagnetism or gravity or something. He had explained to her once how objects cause gravity by distorting space, bending it, giving it curve and flex. Here, in the narrow confines of the pub, space had indeed been distorted, the distance between two men warped by their own presence, their bodies distorting the space separating them so that even when they were apart it seemed that they were together.
Trevor glanced at his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to be going.’ He gave Ned an affectionate punch on the arm. ‘If I don’t get my beauty sleep the sergeant will be cross.’
‘The sergeant?’
‘Trevor’s doing his National Service,’ Ned explained.
The young man stood up and held out his hand to Marian. ‘Nice meeting you, miss. And thanks for the invite. You did marvellous.’ He smiled knowingly and was gone.
Ned picked up his glass of beer and drank. People were pressing round them. She slipped into French so that others wouldn’t understand. ‘How long have you known Trevor, Ned?’
‘Not long. A month or two.’
‘You seem very close.’
‘What’s wrong with that, Squirrel?’
‘He just doesn’t seem your type.’
‘Oh, he’s exactly my type, dear sister. Exactly what I’m looking for.’
She considered him, her brother whom she had worshipped and loved, both at the same time. And she thought of Véronique. ‘Is he …?’ She couldn’t bring herself to utter the word. But he supplied it himself, almost eagerly:
‘Is he what? Queer? Yes, he’s queer, I’m queer. There, I’ve said it. Are you appalled, Squirrel?’ His voice was taunting, like it had been in childhood when she was attempting something that he could do but which was beyond her. She searched around for a reply, some way of expressing her thoughts, and found none.
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘It’s been going on, as you put it, ever since I first thought of people as male and female.’ And then he looked worried, as if he had spoken too much. ‘Squirrel, for God’s sake don’t say anything about this to the parents. You must promise me.’
‘Of course I won’t say anything. But …’
‘But what? There aren’t any buts. They’d never understand.’
She shook her head. ‘But in Geneva, I thought you and Madeleine … You seemed so close.’
‘Madeleine?’ His tone was incredulous.
‘Clément’s sister.’
‘I know perfectly well who Madeleine is. She was a good friend that’s all. She knew everything about me, you see. She knew how I felt and she accepted it.’ He hesitated. ‘She even knew
that I was in love with her brother.’
The bar was crowded now, the noise level rising. She finished the last of her beer and put the glass down, wanting to be out of the place. But his words stopped her. ‘You were in love with Clément?’
‘Does it surprise you?’
‘Of course it does.’ She cast around for something further to say, something that would ground all this in the normal and the quotidian. Her brother queer, the lover of some skinny, common youth. And in love with Clément. She thought of Clément, the smooth, dark shock of his body, his hard flesh where hers was softest and most fragile, the naked shamelessness of it all. ‘Are you still in love with him?’ she asked. ‘Clément, I mean. Are you still in love with Clément?’
There was a bitter taste to his laughter. ‘Always will be, I guess.’
‘And does he know?’
He shrugged. ‘There was an awkward moment in Paris before the war. Too much to drink one evening and a confession that I’d rather not have made. It was all a bit embarrassing. That’s why I left and went to Cambridge.’
She attempted a smile, some semblance of sympathy. ‘Poor Ned. I never realised …’
‘Of course you didn’t. No one realised, except Madeleine. Certainly not the parents, certainly not Clément, until that disastrous evening. And then you told me that you two had slept together. I think I came near to hating you then. That you should have him when I couldn’t.’
She tried to deflect the conversation onto easier ground. ‘What about Trevor? How did you meet?’
He shrugged. ‘We know the places to go.’
‘But it’s dangerous, isn’t it? Illegal.’
‘Of course it is. We have to behave like spies. Signs, passwords, keeping it all secret. But you know all about that, don’t you, Squirrel?’
She smiled with him. Bitter, like the beer. ‘Look, I think I’d better be getting home. I’ll have to get a cab.’ She picked up her coat, looked round for her handbag. ‘Talking of spies, I bumped into Major Fawley the other day. Remember him? Are you still in contact? Do you know what he’s up to?’