“I don’t think I’ll do casuals any more,” Miss Dubber said through the open kitchen doorway as she lit the gas. “Sometimes when the doorbell goes I sit here with Toby and I say: ‘You answer it, Toby.’ He doesn’t of course. A tortoiseshell cat can’t answer a door. So we go on sitting here. We sit and we wait and we hear the footsteps go away again.” She cast a sly glance at him. “You don’t think our Mr. Canterbury is smitten, do you, Toby?” she enquired archly of her cat. “We’re very bright this morning. Very shiny. Ten years younger, by the look of our coat, Mr. Canterbury is.” Receiving no helpful response from the cat, she addressed herself to the canary. “Not that he’d ever tell us, would he, Dickie? We’d be the last to know. Tzuktzuk? Tzuktzuk?”
“John and Sylvia Illegible of Wimbledon,” said Pym, still at the visitors’ book.
“John makes computers, Sylvia programs them, and they’re leaving tomorrow,” she told him sulkily. For Miss Dubber hated to admit there was anyone in her world but beloved Mr. Canterbury. “Now what have you done to me this time?” she exclaimed angrily. “I won’t have it. Take it back.”
But Miss Dubber was not angry; she would have it, and Pym would not take it back: a thickly knitted cashmere shawl of white and gold, still in its Harrods box and swathed in its original Harrods tissue paper which she seemed to treasure almost above their contents. For having taken out the shawl she first smoothed the paper and folded it along its creases before replacing it in the box, then put the box on the cupboard shelf where she kept her greatest treasures. Only then did she let him wrap the shawl round her shoulders and hug her in it, while she scolded him for his extravagance.
Pym drank tea with Miss Dubber, Pym appeased her, Pym ate a piece of her shortbread and praised it to the skies although she told him it was burned. Pym promised to mend the sink plug for her and unblock the waste-pipe and take a look at the cistern on the first floor while he was about it. Pym was swift and over-attentive and the brightness she had shrewdly remarked on did not leave him. He lifted Toby on to his lap and stroked him, a thing he had never done before, and which gave Toby no discernible pleasure. He received the latest news of Miss Dubber’s ancient Aunt Al, when normally the mention of Aunt Al was enough to hurry him off to bed. He questioned her, as he always did, about the local goings-on since his last visit, and listened approvingly to the catalogue of Miss Dubber’s complaints. And quite often, as he nodded her through her answers, he either smiled to himself for no clear reason or became drowsy and yawned behind his hand. Till suddenly he put down his teacup and stood up as if he had another train to catch.
“I’ll be staying a decent length of time if it’s all right with you, Miss D. I’ve a bit of heavy writing to do.”
“That’s what you always say. You were going to live here for ever last time. Then it’s up first thing and back to Whitehall without your egg.”
“Maybe as much as two weeks. I’ve taken some leave of absence so that I can work in peace.”
Miss Dubber pretended to be appalled. “But whatever will happen to the country? How shall Toby and I stay safe, with no Mr. Canterbury at the helm to steer us?”
“So what are Miss D’s plans?” he asked winningly, reaching for his briefcase, which by the effort he needed to lift it looked as heavy as a chunk of lead.
“Plans?” Miss Dubber echoed, smiling rather beautifully in her mystification. “I don’t make plans at my age, Mr. Canterbury. I let God make them. He’s better at them than I am, isn’t he, Toby? More reliable.”
“What about that cruise you’re always talking about? It’s time you gave yourself a treat, Miss D.”
“Don’t be daft. That was years ago. I’ve lost the urge.”
“I’ll still pay.”
“I know you will, bless you.”
“I’ll do the phoning if you want. We’ll go to the travel agent together. I looked one out for you as a matter of fact. There’s the Orient Explorer leaves Southampton just a week away. They’ve got a cancellation. I asked.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me, Mr. Canterbury?”
Pym took a moment to laugh. “God and me together couldn’t dislodge you, Miss D,” he said.
From the hall Miss Dubber watched him up the narrow stairs, admiring the youthful springiness of his tread despite the heavy briefcase. He’s going to a high-level conference. A weighty one too. She listened to him step lightly along the corridor to room 8 overlooking the square, which was her longest let ever, in her whole long life. His loss has not affected him, she decided in relief as she heard him unlock the door and close it softly behind him. Just some old colleague from the Ministry, no one close. She wanted nothing to disturb him. He was to remain the same perfect gentleman who had appeared on her doorstep years ago, looking for what he had called a sanctuary without a telephone even though she had a perfectly good one in the kitchen. And had paid her in advance six-monthly ever since, cash-cash, no receipts. And had built the little stone wall beside the garden path for her, all in an afternoon to surprise her on her birthday, bullied the mason and the bricklayer. And had put the slates back on the roof with his own hands after the storm in March. And had sent her flowers and fruit and chocolates and souvenirs from amazing foreign places without properly explaining what he did there. And had helped her with the breakfasts when she had too many casuals, and listened to her about her nephew who had all the schemes for making money that never came to anything : the latest was starting up a bingo hall in Exeter but first he needed the capital for his overdraft. And received no mail or visitors and played no instrument except the wireless in foreign, and never used the telephone except for local tradesmen. And never told her anything about himself except that he lived in London and worked in Whitehall but travelled a lot, and that his name was Canterbury like the city. Children, wives, parents, sweethearts—not a soul on earth had he ever called his own, except his one Miss D.
“He could have a knighthood by now for all we know,” she told Toby aloud as she held the shawl to her nose and inhaled its woolly smell. “He could be Prime Minister and we’d only ever hear it from the television.”
Very faintly Miss Dubber heard above the rattle of the wind the sound of singing. A man’s voice, tuneless but agreeable. First she thought it was “Greensleeves” from the garden, then she thought it was “Jerusalem” from the square, and she was halfway to the window to yell out. Only then did she realise it was Mr. Canterbury from upstairs, and this amazed her so much that when she opened her door to rebuke him, she paused instead to listen. The singing stopped of its own accord. Miss Dubber smiled. Now he’s listening to me, she thought. That’s my Mr. Canterbury all over.
In Vienna three hours earlier, Mary Pym, wife of Magnus, stood at her bedroom window and stared out upon a world which, in contrast to the one elected by her husband, was a marvel of serenity. She had neither closed the curtains nor switched on the light. She was dressed to receive, as her mother would have said, and she had been standing at the window in her blue twin-set for an hour, waiting for the car, waiting for the doorbell, waiting for the soft turn of her husband’s key in the latch. And now in her mind it was an unfair race between Magnus and Jack Brotherhood which of them she would receive first. An early autumn snow still covered the hilltop, a full moon rode above it, filling the room with black and white bars. In elegant villas up and down the avenue, the last camp fires of diplomatic entertainment were going out one by one. Frau Minister Meierhof had been having a Force Reduction Talks dance with a four-piece band. Mary should have been there. The van Leymans had had a buffet dinner for old Prague hands, both sexes welcome and no placement. She should have gone, they both should, and swept up the stragglers for a scotch-and-soda afterwards, vodka for Magnus. And put on the gramophone, and danced till now or later—the swinging diplomatic Pyms, so popular—just the way they had entertained so famously in Washington when Magnus was Deputy Head of Station and everything was absolutely fine. And Mary would have made bacon and eggs while Magnus jok
ed and picked people’s brains and acquired new friends, which he was so tirelessly good at. For this was Vienna’s high season, when people who have clammed up all year talked excitedly of Christmas and the Opera, and tossed out indiscretions like old clothes.
But all that was a thousand years ago. All that was until last Wednesday. The only thing that mattered now was that Magnus should drive up the avenue in the Metro he had left at the airport and beat Jack Brotherhood to the front door.
The telephone was ringing. By the bed. His side. Don’t run, you idiot, you’ll fall. Not too slowly or he’ll ring off. Magnus, darling, oh dear God, let it be you, you’ve had an aberration and you’re better, I’ll never even ask what happened, I’ll never doubt you again. She lifted the receiver and for some reason she couldn’t work out sat in a heap on the duvet, plonk, grabbing the pad and pencil with her spare hand in case of phone numbers to take down, addresses, times, instructions. She didn’t blurt “Magnus?” because that would show she was worried about him. She didn’t say “Hullo” because she couldn’t trust her voice not to sound excited. She said their whole number in German so that Magnus would know it was she, hear that she was normal and all right and not angry with him, and that everything was just fine to come back to. No fuss, no problems, I’m here and waiting for you like always.
“It’s me,” said a man’s voice.
But it wasn’t me. It was Jack Brotherhood.
“No word of that parcel, I suppose?” Brotherhood asked in the rich, confident English of the military classes.
“No word from anyone. Where are you?”
“Be there in about half an hour, less if I can. Wait for me, will you.”
The fire, she thought suddenly. My God, the fire. She hastened downstairs, no longer capable of distinguishing between small and large disasters. She had sent the maid out for the night and forgotten to bank up the drawing-room fire. It was out for sure. But it was not. It was burning merrily, and all that was needed was another log to make the early morning hour less funereal. She put it on, then floated round the room prinking things—the flowers, the ashtrays, Jack’s whisky tray—making everything outside herself perfect because nothing inside herself was perfect in the least. She lit a cigarette and puffed out the uninhaled smoke in angry kisses. Then she poured herself a very large whisky, which was what she had come down for in the first place. After all, if we were still dancing I’d be having several.
Mary’s Englishness, like Pym’s, was unmistakable. She was blonde and strong-jawed and forthright. Her one mannerism, inherited from her mother, was the slightly comic stoop from which she addressed the world, and foreigners in particular. Mary’s life was a record of fine deaths. Her grandfather had died at Passchendaele, her one brother, Sam, more recently in Belfast, and for a month or more it had seemed to Mary that the bomb that had blown Sam’s jeep to pieces had killed her soul too, but it was her father, not Mary, who had died of a broken heart. All of her men had been soldiers. Between them they had left her with a decent inheritance, a fiercely patriotic soul and a small manor house in Dorset. Mary was ambitious as well as intelligent, she could dream and lust and covet. But the rules of her life had been laid down for her before she entered it and had been entrenched with every death since: in Mary’s family the men campaigned while the women lent succour, mourned and carried on. Her worship, her dinner parties, her life with Pym had all been conducted on this same sturdy principle.
Until last July. Until our holiday in Lesbos. Magnus, come home. I’m sorry I raised a stink at the airport when you didn’t show up. I’m sorry I bellowed at the British Airways clerk in what you call my six-acre voice and I’m sorry I waved my diplomatic pass around. And I’m sorry—I’m terribly sorry—I phoned Jack to say where the hell’s my husband? So please—just come home and tell me what to do. Nothing matters. Just be here. Now.
Finding herself standing before the double doors to the dining room, she pushed them open, switched on the chandeliers, and, whisky in hand, surveyed the long empty table glistening like a lake. Mahogany. Eighteenth-century repro. Counsellor’s grade, nobody’s taste. Seats fourteen with comfort, sixteen if you double up on the curved ends. That bloody burn mark, I’ve tried everything. Remember, she told herself. Force your mind back. Get the whole story straight in your stupid little head before Jack Brotherhood rings that doorbell. Step outside yourself and look in. Now. It is a night like this one was, crisp and exciting. It is Wednesday and our night for entertaining. And the moon is like the moon tonight except for a bite out of one side. In the bedroom, that fool Mary Pym who notched up one A-level and never went to university stands with her feet too wide apart putting on her family pearls while brilliant Magnus her husband, a First at Oxford and already in his dinner-jacket, kisses the nape of her neck and does his Balkan gigolo number to try to get her in the party mood. Magnus of course is in whatever mood he needs to be in.
“For God’s sake,” Mary snaps more roughly than she intends. “Stop fooling and fix this bloody clasp for me.”
Sometimes my military family gets the better of my language.
And Magnus obliges. Magnus always obliges. Magnus mends and fixes and carries better than a butler.
And when he has obliged he puts his hands over my breasts and breathes hotly on my bare neck: “Please, my dullink, have we not time for most divine perfect moment? No? Yes?”
But Mary is, as usual, too nervous even to smile and orders him downstairs to make sure Herr Wenzel the hired manservant has fetched the ice from Weber’s fish-shop. And Magnus goes. Magnus always goes. Even when a sharp smack across Mary’s chops would be the wiser course, Magnus goes.
Pausing, Mary lifted her head and listened. A car engine. In this snow they come up on you like bad memories. But, unlike a bad memory, this one passed.
It is dinner; it is the diplomatic happy hour, it is as good as Georgetown in the days when Magnus was still an upwardly mobile Deputy Head of Station with the post of Chief of Service squarely in his sights and everything is mended between Magnus and Mary except for a black cloud that night and day hangs over Mary’s heart, even when she is not thinking of it, and that cloud is called Lesbos, a Greek island in the Aegean wholly surrounded by monstrous memories. Mary Pym, wife to Magnus, Counsellor for Certain Unmentionable Matters at the British Embassy in Vienna and actually the Head of Station here as everyone unmentionable knows, proudly faces her husband across Mary’s silver candelabra while the servants hand round Mary’s venison, jugged according to her mother’s recipe, to twelve unmentionably distinguished members of the local intelligence community.
“Now you also have a daughter,” Mary firmly reminds an Oberregierungsrat Dinkel from the Austrian Ministry of Defence in her well-learned German. “Name Ursula—right? She was studying piano at the Conservatorium when last heard of. Tell me about her.” And to the servant, quietly as she passes: “Frau Wenzel. Mr. Lederer two down has no red sauce. Fix.”
It was a pretty night, Mary had decided as she listened to a recitation of the Oberregierungsrat’s family woes. It was the sort of night she worked for, had worked for all her married life, in Prague and Washington while they were rising and now here where they were marking time. She was happy, she was flying the flag, the black cloud of Lesbos was as good as blown away. Tom was doing well at boarding-school and would soon be home for the Christmas holidays, Magnus had rented a chalet in Lech for skiing, the Lederers had said they would join them. Magnus was so resourceful these days, so attentive to her despite his father’s illness. And before Lech he would take her to Salzburg for Parsifal and, if she pressed him, to the Opera ball because, as they liked to say in Mary’s family, a gal loves a hop. And with luck the Lederers could join them for that too—the children could spend the night together and share a baby-sitter—and somehow with Magnus these days extra people were a comfort. Glimpsing Pym down the candlelight she darted a smile at him just as he slipped away to engage a deaf mute on his left. Sorry about being touchy earlier, she wa
s saying. All forgotten, he was telling her. And when they’ve gone we’ll make love, she was saying, we’ll stay sober and make love and everything will be fine.
Which was when she heard the phone ring. Exactly then. As she was transmitting those loving thoughts to Magnus and having a desperately happy time with them. She heard it ring twice, three times, she started to get cross, then to her relief she heard Herr Wenzel answer it. Herr Pym will return your call later unless it’s urgent, she rehearsed in her mind. Herr Pym should not be disturbed unless it is essential. Herr Pym is far too busy telling a funny story in that perfect German of his which so annoys the Embassy and surprises the Austrians. Herr Pym can also do you an Austrian accent on demand, or funnier still a Swiss one, from his days at school there. Herr Pym can put you a row of bottles in a line, and by pinging them with a table-knife, make them chime like the bells of the old Swiss railway, while he chants the stations between Interlaken and the Jungfraujoch in the tones of a local station-master and his audience collapses in tears of nostalgic mirth.
Mary lifted her gaze to the far end of the empty table. And Magnus—how was he doing at that moment, apart from flirting with Mary?
Going great guns was the answer. On his right sat the dread Frau Oberregierungsrat Dinkel, a woman so plain and rude, even by the standards of official wives, that some of the toughest troopers in the Embassy had been reduced to stunned silence by her. Yet Magnus had drawn her to him like a flower to the sun and she could not get enough of him. Sometimes, watching him perform like this, Mary was moved to involuntary pity by the absoluteness of his dedication. She wished him more ease, if only for a moment. She wanted him to know that he had earned his peace whenever he chose to take it, instead of giving, giving all the time. If he were a real diplomat, he’d be an Ambassador easily, she thought. In Washington, Grant Lederer had privately assured her, Magnus had exerted more influence than either his Station Chief or the perfectly awful Ambassador. Vienna—though of course he was enormously respected here and enormously influential too—was an anticlimax, obviously. Well it was meant to be, but when the dust settled, Magnus would be back on course, and the thing here was to be patient. Mary wished she was not so young for him. Sometimes he tries to live down to me, she thought. On Magnus’s left, similarly mesmerised, sat Frau Oberst Mohr, whose German husband was attached to the Signals Bureau at Wiener Neustadt. But Magnus’s real conquest, as ever, was Grant Lederer III, “he of the little black beard and little black eyes and little black thoughts,” as Magnus called him, who six months ago had taken over the American Embassy’s Legal Department, which meant of course the reverse, for Grant was the Agency’s new man, though he was an old friend from Washington.
A Perfect Spy Page 2