The Diplomat's Wife

by Ridpath, Michael

  It was true. That was what Hugh believed.

  ‘So that’s why he applied for the Foreign Office?’ I asked. ‘To be able to spy for the Comintern?’

  ‘Sure. And to get in he had to demonstrate that his communism was no more than a student phase. He had to deny it.’

  ‘I just wish he had told me what he was really up to.’

  ‘He wanted to. He used to speak about you plenty. He said you talked more sense than most of the socialists he knew at Cambridge. But they wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘“They”? Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. The people from the Comintern he was speaking to, I guess.’

  Kay was watching me closely under her thick black eyebrows.

  ‘What about you?’ I said. ‘“They” let him speak to you?’

  ‘That’s true,’ she admitted.

  ‘Why? Are you one of “them”?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Kay. ‘But I did put Hugh in touch with them.’

  ‘You did.’

  Kay nodded.

  Who was this woman? ‘How long have you been a communist? I didn’t know there are communists in America.’

  Kay smiled. ‘Oh, there are. Plenty. There are communists all over the world. That’s why we need the Comintern to bring us all together. You, me, Hugh, Freddie, Rosa Luxemburg, Maurice Thorez here in France and, yes, Comrade Stalin.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ve been a communist all my life. As has my father. My grandfather emigrated to America from Lithuania in the 1880s. The entire family ended up working in factories in Chicago. I went out to work at the age of twelve.’

  ‘But you escaped?’

  ‘I sure did. My father was self-taught and he taught me.’ She smiled. ‘A bit like Hugh teaching you. I got myself involved in labour organizations and I ended up in Europe.’

  ‘Is Kay your real name?’

  ‘It is at the moment.’

  I had more questions. ‘So how did Hugh die? Do you believe it was an accident? Was Freddie right? Did the British secret service kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kay, for the first time looking troubled herself. ‘They may have done. It was very convenient for them, after all. And you said yourself you didn’t think Hugh’s death was an accident.’ She took a deep breath. ‘If they did kill him, I cannot forgive them.’

  I was reminded that this woman loved my brother too.

  ‘Nor can I,’ I said.

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  Kay spoke. ‘You know I said I put Hugh in touch with people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I could do that for you. You could continue Hugh’s work.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! Anyway, what possible use would I be?’

  ‘Your husband is doing real well in the diplomatic service. He will go far. I’m sure he trusts you.’

  ‘You want me to betray his trust?’ The words were out of my mouth before the irony hit me.

  Kay shrugged.

  ‘And betray my country?’

  ‘These are the people who killed your brother.’

  ‘So you say. You don’t know that.’

  ‘I believe it’s likely.’

  Was it? I didn’t know. I remembered Dick’s assertion that that wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in England, and I wanted to believe him, not Kay.

  But . . .

  ‘Anyway,’ Kay went on. ‘You wouldn’t be betraying your country. Not really. You would be helping the world’s workers. The poor. The people whose lives are being destroyed by the capitalist system every single day. British people, your countrymen. And you would be stopping the Fascists, the Fascists who hate Jews like me and who are just as keen to suppress the working classes but will use even worse methods than the capitalists.’

  I didn’t say anything. I was listening.

  ‘Hugh did it. I’m just suggesting you should too.’

  I took a gulp of my wine and shook my head. ‘No. I won’t be a traitor. I know you mean well – I know Hugh meant well.’ I leaned back in my chair. ‘It’s rather a lot to take in. Especially with everything else that’s going on.’

  Kay watched me carefully.

  ‘You mean your husband?’ she said.

  ‘My husband?’ Something close to panic rose in my chest. ‘What about my husband?’

  ‘You spoke about betrayal?’

  ‘You know? How do you know?’

  Kay shrugged. ‘I know. I just wasn’t sure you did. But it makes me wonder.’

  ‘Wonder what?’

  ‘Wonder why you would shy away from betraying your husband? After what he did to you, what he’s still doing to you.’

  I swallowed.

  ‘And who he’s doing it with.’

  I leapt on that. ‘Who with? Do you know who he has been seeing? Is it the Comtesse de Villegly?’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  I shook my head. It clearly wasn’t the comtesse. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted Kay to tell me.

  But then I knew who it was. Who would be worse than Sophie de Villegly? It was all suddenly so clear.

  ‘My mother.’ I said the words quietly.

  * * *

  ‘It’s my mother.’

  Kay nodded.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Kay nodded again.

  It all fitted. Everything fitted. Once you accepted the premise that in the real world anyone could be unfaithful to anyone, then Roland could be unfaithful to me, and Mama could be unfaithful to Papa. Of course there was their age difference, but my mother was unquestionably still a beautiful woman, and Roland liked beautiful women.

  My mind raced. My mother had been visiting Paris much more frequently since Roland had been posted here. She was in Paris the day that Dick saw Roland with another woman. Dick had said that that woman had had dark hair, but he must have been lying to protect me. I recalled that when he had first mentioned he had seen my husband in the restaurant he had been about to tell me whom Roland was with when I cut him off. If it had been a woman Dick hadn’t known, rather than simply his mother-in-law, Dick would have been more suspicious, and wouldn’t have told me about it so blithely.

  How long had it been going on? It must have been soon after we were married. Or perhaps before? Since Roland had come to stay with us in Devon the weekend Hugh had died?

  Then a darker thought occurred to me. Was the whole thing camouflage? Had their affair already been going on when my mother invited Roland down to Devon? Which meant his wooing of me was just an elaborate cover; by getting Roland respectably married off to me, they were enabling the two of them to see each other whenever they wanted.

  I knew the way my mother thought. She would love that. It would be a means of controlling him, and asserting her total superiority over her useless bluestocking daughter. Me.

  I pulled some francs out of my purse and put them on the table.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kay. I have to go.’

  Twenty-One

  June 1979, Paris

  * * *

  ‘But, Grams, that’s terrible!’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘I can’t believe he did that to you. And with your mother! Yuk! I’m glad I never met her. Or at least I don’t remember meeting her.’

  ‘You didn’t. She died when you were two.’

  ‘No wonder no one talks about her. Does Mum know all this?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t. We didn’t talk about it in the family. My generation are experts at sweeping things under the carpet. I’m sure she realizes something went badly wrong, but she doesn’t know what. That’s probably why she never told you much about our history. You might understand now why I brought you along instead of her.’

  Phil did some quick sums in his head. ‘She was the one you were pregnant with?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘Do you want me to keep it from her?’

  ‘When I’m alive, yes. When I’m gone, it’s entirely up to you. I didn’t want my story to die with
me, which is why you are here.’

  She pulled some francs out of her purse for the bill. ‘Let’s go.’

  They left the Café de Flore and walked along the busy Boulevard Saint-Germain. Phil was still trying to get to grips with what he had heard.

  ‘But I liked Grandpa.’

  ‘I know you did, darling.’

  ‘I can’t believe he did that to you. What happened?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  Phil was tempted to insist Emma fast forward to the end of her story, but he knew his grandmother wanted to tell it in her own way, at her own pace. He felt privileged that she trusted him to hear it.

  There had been no mention of Lothar yet, the Russian spy whom Swann had mentioned. Nor of any mole.

  And there was that revolver in her suitcase. Somehow that was related.

  They left the boulevard and walked down increasingly chic streets of yellow stone buildings bearing intricate wrought-iron balconies. Boutiques sold fabric, women’s dresses, antique furniture, art, old books and exuberant flower arrangements. This was the Paris of wealth, sophistication and style. Midday was approaching, the streets were hot and, here, mostly empty. Every now and then they passed a woman in sunglasses, a silk scarf around her neck, browsing the shops, her subtle scent following them along the pavement for a few yards.

  They turned into a street lined with high walls and imposing buildings, many given over to government business.

  ‘This is the Rue de Grenelle,’ said Emma. She stopped outside a wall above which, set back from the road, stood what looked like a mansion. A complicated multicoloured flag hung from a pole pointing out towards the street, the insignia of an oil-rich Middle Eastern nation. ‘This was the Comtesse de Villegly’s house,’ she said. ‘Seems it’s an embassy now.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Phil. ‘Very grand.’ It was hard to imagine real people living there. But then the Comtesse de Villegly didn’t sound like a real person, or not like any person Phil knew.

  They walked down towards the river, past an abandoned railway station and then on to the buildings of the National Assembly, guarded by policemen with sunglasses and machine guns, who seemed to be staring at them. Creepy. And not at all like the lone bobby in front of 10 Downing Street.

  They turned up a narrow street, the Rue de Bourgogne. This was less swish than the others, the buildings and the shops were less grand: a butcher, a greengrocer, a tabac, a hairdresser.

  They stopped outside a thick wooden door. ‘This was our building,’ Emma said, looking up at some large windows protected by blue shutters, closed at that moment to keep out the sun. ‘We lived on the first floor.’

  ‘Looks nice.’

  ‘It was.’

  Phil took a couple of steps back, to let Emma remember.

  After a minute or so, she turned to him. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Let’s go to the Voltigeur. It’s just down the road. I used to drop in there for a cup of coffee sometimes.’

  The Voltigeur hadn’t changed much, according to Emma – a simple cramped café on a corner – although the leather-jacketed guy playing the pinball machine was definitely a 1970s addition. They ordered croque-monsieurs, which Phil was becoming partial to, with a beer for Phil and a glass of Evian for Emma.

  ‘What did you do about Roland?’ Phil asked.

  ‘It was an agonizing decision,’ Emma said. ‘And even now, I’m not sure I did the right thing.’

  Twenty-Two

  May 1936, Paris

  * * *

  I blundered down the street towards the river, and took the steps to the bank. I found a spot free of fishermen, sank down to the ground and sobbed.

  I don’t know who passed me, who saw me, and what they thought. I didn’t care.

  Eventually, the sobbing dried up. I looked up at the back end of Notre-Dame cathedral. A tug chugged past, dragging a long barge behind it, a young boy watching me curiously from on top of a pile of what looked like coffins secured to its deck. Dozens of coffins – new, not used, presumably.

  I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard what I had just heard. I couldn’t follow my mother’s advice, however worldly-wise. I had to deal with this my own way.

  Directly.

  I climbed the steps up to street level and hailed a taxi. It dropped me off outside the Hôtel de Charost. I nodded to the porter and made my way to the Chancery building.

  I strode past Muriel, Roland’s secretary, and into his office. He was on the telephone. He saw my face and hung up.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ His smile was innocent, concerned.

  ‘I know who your mistress is,’ I said.

  His eyebrows rose. ‘What mistress?’

  ‘My mother. Your lover.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You’re . . .’ I searched for the word I wanted and couldn’t find it, so I settled on a poor substitute. ‘You’re fornicating with my mother. Your mother-in-law. It’s disgusting. You disgust me.’

  Roland pulled himself to his feet, his face full of concern. For a second I doubted myself, but only for a second.

  ‘I think you must have got the wrong end of the stick, my darling. Why do you think your mother is my mistress? That’s absurd.’

  ‘Because you were seen with her when you were supposed to be in Le Havre talking to some shipping tycoon.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Roland smiled reassuringly. ‘I can explain that. Let me tell you what happened.’

  ‘No, Roland. I don’t want to hear your lies about what happened. I don’t want to speak to you ever again. When you get home this evening, I won’t be there. Goodbye.’

  With that I turned on my heel and left his office. I passed a preoccupied-looking Cyril on the stairs on my way out to the courtyard, but I ignored his half-hearted greeting.

  * * *

  I made my way to Dick’s flat an hour before we were supposed to meet at the cinema, lugging my suitcase. I had his address: it turned out he lived at the top of an ancient, unsteady building squeezed into the middle of the Île Saint-Louis. An ancient, unsteady concierge let me in, and pointed up to some stone steps. I climbed them and rapped on a door under the eaves.

  ‘Emma?’ he said as he opened it. ‘I thought we were meeting at the cinema?’

  Then he saw my suitcase, and his expression changed from surprise to concern. ‘Come in.’

  His flat was really nothing more than a room with a bed, a washstand, two armchairs, a gas heater and a hob. And a desk bearing a typewriter with a view over the rooftops to the river and the buildings of the Left Bank beyond. It reeked of pipe tobacco.

  It was the classic Parisian artist’s garret; evidence of Dick’s writings lay all over the desk.

  ‘Sit down, Emma,’ he said. ‘I take it you’ve found out?’

  I sat down. ‘It was my mother,’ I said. ‘Roland was seeing my mother.’ I looked up at him, almost in supplication, praying that he would inform me I was wrong.

  But he didn’t. I could tell immediately from the expression in his eyes, a mixture of kindness and pain. ‘Yes. I saw him with your mother.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I was going to. In fact, I almost said “I saw your husband and your mother today,” but you interrupted me. Then when you said that you thought Roland was in Le Havre, I shut up. It became clear that you thought he had been seeing a woman, a mistress, and I suddenly realized that he had, and that that mistress was your mother.’

  ‘So why hide that from me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I thought admitting he was seeing another woman was bad enough.’

  I was determined not to cry again in front of Dick.

  ‘Look, Emma, I can tell you are having a rotten day. Let me give you a glass of wine.’

  I nodded. Dick opened a bottle of simple rough red, and poured us both a glass. He sat down opposite me. ‘How did you find out?’

&
nbsp; I looked at those kindly eyes. Hugh’s friend. I wanted him to be my friend too. I badly needed a friend.

  And so I told him. About meeting Kay at Shakespeare and Company. About how she had claimed that Hugh was a spy for the Russians, or at least the Comintern, and then how Kay had told me not only that Roland was betraying me, but that he was doing it with my own mother.

  ‘Do you believe her?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘As she was telling me, it all slotted into place. In fact, I even suspect that this was their plan right from the beginning. To invite Roland down to Devon to meet me and marry me. I suspect my mother arranged the whole thing.’

  ‘But that’s grotesque!’ exclaimed Dick.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘And what about that bit about your brother being a spy?’

  ‘I think that’s true too. Don’t you?’

  Dick blew out through his cheeks. ‘I’m not so sure: I don’t think Hugh would do that. Unlike Freddie, I always thought Hugh loved his country. Why did Kay tell you all this?’

  ‘She wants me to be a spy for the Comintern too. Like Hugh.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Are you going to tell the authorities about her? Someone at the embassy? The French police?’

  ‘No. I’m not going to do that either. But I did go and see Roland to say I knew about him and Mama.’

  ‘Was that wise?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think I had any choice.’

  ‘Did he deny it?’

  ‘He acted confused. He was convincing. Roland is always convincing.’

  ‘You don’t believe him?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Look,’ said Dick. ‘We can’t go to the flick now. There’s a traiteur just around the corner. I’ll be back in a moment with some food for supper. Stay here.’