“That inspector fellow hasn’t been back to trouble you, has he?”
“No, sir.”
“Anyone else been?”
“Not really, sir.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just so odd you coming tonight.”
“Why?”
“It’s maths prep,” said Tom. “It’s my worst thing.”
“I expect you’d like to get back to it then.” He took Pym’s crushed letter from his pocket and handed it across the gap. “Thought you might like this back, too. It’s a fine letter. You should be proud.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Your dad talks there about an Uncle Syd. Who’s that? ‘If you’re ever down on your luck,’ he says, ‘or if you need a warm meal and a laugh or a bed for the night, don’t forget your Uncle Syd.’ Who’s Uncle Syd, when he’s at home?”
“Syd Lemon, sir.”
“Where does he live?”
“Surbiton, sir. By a railway.”
“Old man, is he? Youngish?”
“He looked after Dad when he was small. He was a friend of Granddad’s. He’s got a wife called Meg but she’s dead.”
They both stood up.
“Dad’s still all right, isn’t he, sir?” said Tom.
Brotherhood’s shoulders stiffened. “You’re to go to your mother, d’you hear? Your mother or me. No one else. That’s if things get tough.” He pulled an old leatherbound box from his jacket pocket. “This is for you.”
Tom opened it. A medal lay inside with a piece of ribbon attached to it—crimson with narrow dark blue stripes on either side.
“What did you get it for?” said Tom.
“Sticking out dark nights alone.” A bell was ringing. “Now run along and do your job,” said Brotherhood.
The night was foul. Gusts of rain tore across the windscreen as Brotherhood negotiated the narrow lane. The car was a souped-up Ford from the Firm’s pool and he had only to stroke the accelerator for it to lunge towards the hedge. Magnus Pym, he thought: traitor and Czech spy. If I know, why don’t they? How many times, in how many ways, do they need the proof before they act on it? A pup loomed suddenly out of the rain. He pulled into the forecourt and drank a scotch before going to the phone. Call me on my private line, old boy, Nigel had said expansively.
“The man in the picture is our friend from Corfu. No question about it,” Brotherhood reported.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. The boy’s sure. I’m sure he’s sure. When are you going to give the order to evacuate?”
A muffled crackle while Nigel put his fist over the mouthpiece the other end. But not, presumably, the earpiece.
“I want those Joes out, Nigel. Get them out. Tell Bo to get his head out of the sand and give the order.”
Long silence.
“We’re tuning in at 0500 tomorrow,” said Nigel. “Come back to London and get some sleep.” He rang off.
London was east. Brotherhood headed south, following the signs to Reading. In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.
The letter to Tom was postmarked Reading, he rehearsed. Posted Monday night or first thing Tuesday morning.
He rang me on Monday evening, Kate had said.
He rang me on Monday evening, Belinda had said.
Reading station resembled a low redbrick stable set at one end of a tawdry square. A poster in the concourse gave the times of coaches to and from Heathrow. That’s what you did, he thought. That’s what I’d do. At Heathrow you put up your smokescreen about planes to Scotland, then you hopped a coach to Reading to keep things nice and private. He considered the coach stop, then cast a long slow look around the square until his eye fell at last on the ticket kiosk. He wandered over to it. The clerk wore a small metal wheel in the buttonhole of his jacket. Brotherhood put five pounds in the tray.
“I’d like some change, please, to telephone.”
“Sorry, mate. Can’t do,” the clerk said, and went on with his newspaper.
“You could do it last Monday night though, couldn’t you?” The clerk’s head came up fast.
Brotherhood’s office pass was green with a red diagonal line drawn in transparent ink across his photograph. A notice on the back said that if found it should be returned to the Ministry of Defence. The clerk looked at both sides of it and gave it back.
“I haven’t seen one like that before,” he said.
“Tall fellow,” Brotherhood said. “Carried a black briefcase. Probably wore a black tie as well. Well spoken, nice manner. Had a lot of calls to make. Remember?”
The clerk vanished, to be replaced a minute later by a tubby Indian with exhausted, visionary eyes.
“Were you on duty here Monday evening?” Brotherhood said.
“Sir, I was the man who was on duty on Monday evening,” he replied warily, as if he might not be that man any more.
“A pleasant gentleman in a black tie.”
“I know, I know. My colleague has acquainted me with all the details.”
“How much change did you give him?”
“Good heavens above, what does that matter? If I elect to give a man change, that is my personal preference, a matter for my pocket and my conscience that has nothing to do with anybody.”
“How much change did you give him?”
“Five pounds exactly. Five he wanted, five he got.”
“What in?”
“Fifty p’s exclusively. He wished to make no local calls at all. I questioned him about this and he was entirely consistent in his answers. I mean where is the hardship in this? Where is the sinister element?”
“What did he pay you with?”
“To my recollection, he gave me a ten-pound note. I cannot be completely certain but that is my imperfect recollection: that he gave me a ten-pound note from his wallet, accompanied by the words ‘Here you are.’”
“Did the ten pounds cover his rail ticket too?”
“This was totally unproblematical. The price of a second-class single fare to London is four pounds and thirty pence exactly. I gave him ten fifties and the balance in small change. Now have you further questions? I seriously hope not. Police, police, you know. If it’s one enquiry a day, it’s half a dozen.”
“Is this the man?” said Brotherhood. He was holding a photograph showing Pym and Mary at their wedding.
“But that is you, sir. In the background. I think you are giving the bride away. Are you sure you are engaged in an official enquiry? This is a most irregular photograph.”
“Is this the man?”
“Well I’m not saying it is not, put it that way.”
Pym would take him off perfectly, thought Brotherhood. Pym would catch that accent to a tee. He stood at the barrier studying the timetable of trains leaving Reading station after eleven o’clock on a weekday night. You went anywhere except to London because London is where you bought your ticket to. You had time. Time to make your maudlin telephone calls. Time to write your maudlin letter to Tom. Your plane left Heathrow at eight-forty without you. By eight o’clock latest you had done your turnaround. By eight-fifteen, according to the testimony of the airport travel clerk, you had put up your little smokescreen about planes to Scotland. After that you hightailed it to the Reading-bound coach, pulled down the brim of your hat and said goodbye to the airport as quickly and quietly as you knew how.
Brotherhood walked back to the coach timetable. Time to kill, he repeated to himself. Say you caught the eight-thirty from Heathrow. Between nine- and ten-thirty there were half a dozen trains in both directions out of Reading but you caught none of them. You wrote to Tom instead. Where from? He went back to the square. In the neon-lit pub there. In the fish-and-chip shop. In the all-night café where the tarts sit. Somewhere in this dowdy square you sat down and told Tom what to do when the world ended.
The telephone box stood at the station entrance,
under a bright light that was supposed to deter vandals. Smashed glass and paper cups cluttered the floor. Graffiti and promises of love defaced the awful grey paint. But it was a good telephone, for all that. You could watch the whole square from it while you said your goodbyes. A mail box was let into the wall close by. And that’s where you posted it, saying whatever happens, remember that I love you. After which you went to Wales. Or to Scotland. Or you popped over to Norway to watch the migration of the reindeer. Or you hightailed it to Canada and prepared to eat out of tins. Or you did something that was all these things and none of them, in an upstairs room with a view of the church and the sea.
Reaching his flat in Shepherd Market, Brotherhood was still not quite done. The Firm’s official police contact was a Detective Superintendent Bellows at Scotland Yard. Brotherhood rang his home number.
“What have you got for me on that ennobled gentleman I mentioned to you this morning?” he asked, and to his relief detected no note of reservation in Bellows’s voice as he read him out the details. Brotherhood wrote them down.
“Can you do me another one for tomorrow?”
“It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Lemon, believe it or not. First name Syd or Sydney. Old chap, widowed, lives in Surbiton, close to a railway.”
Reluctantly Brotherhood phoned Head Office and asked for Nigel of Secretariat. Belatedly, and in the teeth of more larcenous instincts, he knew he must conform. Just as he had conformed this afternoon when he poured scorn on the Americans. Just as in the end he had always conformed, not out of slavishness but because he believed in the fight and, despite everything, the team. A lot of atmospherics followed while Nigel was located. They went over to scramble.
“What’s the matter?” said Nigel rudely.
“The book Artelli was talking about. The analogue, he called it.”
“I thought he was perfectly ridiculous. Bo is going to take it to the highest level.”
“Tell them to try Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus. On a hunch. Tell them to be sure to use an early text.”
A long silence. More atmospherics. He’s in the bath, thought Brotherhood. He’s in bed with a woman, or whatever he likes.
“Now how are you spelling that?” said Nigel warily.
10
Once again a willed brightness was overtaking Pym as he listened to the many voices in his mind. To be king, he repeated to himself. To look with favour on this child that was myself. To love his defects and his strivings, and pity his simplicity.
If there was such a thing as a perfect time in Pym’s life, a time when all the versions of himself were appreciated and playing nicely and he would never want for anything again, then surely it was his first few terms at Oxford University whither Rick had dispatched him as a necessary interlude to having him appointed Lord Chief Justice and thus securing him a place among the Highest in the Land. The relationship between the two pals had never been better. Following Axel’s departure, Pym’s final lonely months in Bern had seen a dramatic flowering of their correspondence. With Frau Ollinger barely speaking to him and Herr Ollinger increasingly absorbed in the problems of Ostermundigen, Pym walked the city streets alone, much as he had done at the beginning. But at night, with the wall beside him silent, he penned long and intimate letters of affection to Belinda and his one true anchor, Rick. Stimulated by his attentions, Rick’s letters in reply took on a sudden stylishness and prosperity. The anguished missives from outer England ceased. The stationery thickened, stabilised and acquired illustrious headings. First the Richard T. Pym Endeavour Company wrote to him from Cardiff, advising him that the Clouds of Misfortune which had appeared to Gather had been swept Away one and All by a Providence I can only regard as crackerjack. A month later, the Pym & Partners Property and Finance Enterprise of Cheltenham was advising him that certain Steps were now in Hand for Pym’s future with a view to Insuring that he would never want for Anything again. Most recently a printed card of regal elegance was pleased to announce that following a Merger Agreeable to all Parties, matters relating to the above Companies should henceforth be referred to the Pym & Permanent Mutual Property Trust (Nassau), of Park Lane W.
Jack Brotherhood and Wendy treated him to a farewell fondue on the Firm; Sandy came and Jack gave Pym two bottles of whisky and hoped their paths would cross. Herr Ollinger accompanied him to the railway station and they drank a last coffee. Frau Ollinger stayed home. Elisabeth served them but she was distracted. She had put on bulk around the tummy, though she wore no ring. As the train pulled out of the station, Pym took a look downward at the circus and its elephant house, then a look upward at the university and its green dome and by the time he reached Basel he knew that Bern had sunk with all hands. Axel was illegal. The Swiss informed against him. I was lucky to get out myself. Standing in the corridor somewhere south of Paris he observed tears on his cheeks and vowed not to be a spy again. At Victoria Mr. Cudlove was waiting for him with a new Bentley.
“What do we call you now, sir? Doctor or Professor?”
“Just Magnus will do fine,” said Pym handsomely as they pumped hands. “How’s Ollie?”
The new Reichskanzlei in Park Lane was a monument to prosperous stability. The bust of TP was back in place. Law books, glass doors and a new jockey with the Pym colours winked assurance at him while he waited on leather cushions for a Lovely to admit him to the State Apartments.
“Our Chairman will see you now, Mr. Magnus.”
They bear-hugged, both for a moment too proud to speak. Rick palmed Pym’s back, moulded his cheeks and wiped away his tears. Mr. Muspole, Perce and Syd were summoned by separate buzzers to pay homage to the returning hero. Mr. Muspole produced a sheaf of documents and Rick read the best bits of them aloud. Pym was appointed International Legal Adviser for life and awarded five hundred pounds a year to be reconsidered as appropriate on the strict understanding he worked for no other firm. His law studies at Oxford were thus taken care of; he need never want for anything again. A second Lovely brought bubbly. She seemed to have nothing else to do. Everybody drank the health of the company’s newest employee. “Come on, Titch, let’s have it in the parley-voo!” cried Syd excitedly, and Pym obliged by saying something fatuous in German. Father and son hugged again, Rick wept again and said if only he had had the advantages. The same evening, at a mansion in Amersham called The Furlong, his homecoming was again celebrated by an intimate party of two hundred old friends, few of whom Pym had seen before, including the heads of several world-famous corporations, leading stars of stage and screen and several Great Barristers who one by one took him aside and claimed the credit for obtaining a place for him at Oxford. The party over, Pym lay wakefully in his fourposter listening to the expensive slamming of car doors.
“You did a fine job out there in Switzerland, son,” said Rick from the dark where he had been standing for some while. “You fought a good fight. It’s been noticed. Enjoy your dinner?”
“It was really good.”
“A lot of people said to me, ‘Rickie,’ they said, ‘you’ve got to get that boy back. Those foreigners will make a whore of him.’ You know what I said to them?”
“What did you say to them?”
“I said I had faith in you. Have you got faith in me, son?”
“Masses.”
“What do you think of the house?”
“It’s wonderful,” said Pym.
“It’s yours. It’s in your name. I bought it from the Duke of Devonshire.”
“Thank you very much, anyway.”
“Nobody can ever take it away from you, son. You can be twenty. You can be fifty. Where your old man is, that’s home. Did you talk to Maxie Moore at all?”
“I don’t think I did.”
“The fellow who scored the winning goal for Arsenal against Spurs? Go on. Of course you did. What do you think of Blottsie?”
“Which one was he?”
“G. W. Blott? One of the most famous names in the retail grocery world you’ll ever mee
t. That marvellous dignity. He’ll be a lord one day. So will you. What do you think of Sylvia?”
Pym recalled a bulky, middle-aged woman in blue with an aristocratic smile that could have been the bubbly.
“She’s nice,” he said cautiously.
Rick seized on the word as if he had been hunting for it half his life: “Nice. That’s what she is. She’s a damned nice woman with two first-class husbands to her credit.”
“She’s really attractive, even for my age.”
“Did you get yourself involved out there? There’s nothing can’t be put right in this world by good pals.”
“Just the odd affair. Nothing serious.”
“No woman’s ever going to come between us, son. Once those Oxford girls know who your old man is, they’ll be after you like a pack of wolves. Promise you’ll keep yourself clean.”
“I promise.”
“And learn your law as if your life depended on it? You’re being paid, remember.”
“I promise.”
“Well, then.”
The stealthy weight of Rick’s body landed like a sixteen-stone cat at Pym’s side. He pulled Pym’s head towards his own until their two cheeks were pressed stubble to stubble. His fingers found the fatty parts of Pym’s chest under his pyjama top and kneaded them. He wept. Pym wept too, thinking again of Axel.
The next day Pym moved hastily into his college, claiming a variety of urgent reasons for going up two weeks early. Declining the services of Mr. Cudlove, he travelled by bus and gazed in mounting wonder on flowing hills and mown cornfields glowing in the autumn sunlight. The bus passed through country towns and villages, down lanes of russet beech trees and dancing hedgerows, till slowly the golden stone of Oxford replaced the Buckinghamshire brick, the hills flattened and the city’s spires lifted into the thickening rays of afternoon. He dismounted, thanked the driver, and drifted through the enchanted streets, asking his way at every corner, forgetting, asking again, not caring. Girls in bell skirts skimmed past him on their bicycles. Dons in billowing gowns clutched their mortarboards against the wind; bookshops beckoned to him like houses of delight. He was lugging a suitcase but it weighed no more than a hat. The college porter said staircase five, across the Chapel Quad. He climbed the winding wooden stairs until he saw his name written on an old oak door: M. R. Pym. He pushed the door and saw darkness and another door beyond. He pushed the second door and closed the first. He found the switch and closed the second door on his whole life till now. I am safe inside the city walls. Nobody will find me, nobody will recruit me. He tripped over a case of legal tomes. A vaseful of orchids wished him “Godspeed, son, from your best pal.” A Harrods invoice debited them to the newest Pym consortium.
A Perfect Spy Page 34