The Diplomat's Wife

by Ridpath, Michael

  He left me, and ten minutes later returned with some bread, some pâté, some rillettes, some cornichons and another bottle of red wine.

  We ate and we drank and I talked. Dick was kind to me.

  Eventually he and I crossed the street to the small hotel opposite. They had a single room. It was cheap and basic and the bed sagged alarmingly, but it would do. Exhausted, my brain fogged with the wine and the emotions of the day, I bade Dick goodnight and fell almost instantly asleep. But then I woke up, just as the bells of Notre-Dame struck midnight, and I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling until morning came.

  Twenty-Three

  I watched as a thin strip of colour slid beneath the shutters of my room, grey then yellow. A bug scurried across the floor and stopped for a think beside the washstand. It turned out he had friends. I hadn’t noticed them the night before.

  I slipped out of bed, put on some clothes and emerged into the street. Although the Île was bang in the middle of Paris, it felt more like a medieval village than a city centre. A cockerel tucked away in a courtyard somewhere vigorously reminded me it was dawn. A tortoiseshell cat explored the new day. A mongrel, part-poodle part-sheepdog, eyed the cat suspiciously, before raising its leg on a lamppost. The street smelled of early-morning Paris – the stale garlic from the previous night’s cooking lacing the aroma of that morning’s bread seeping out of countless ovens throughout the city.

  None of the cafés was open yet, but the street cleaner was out with his extra-long-handled broom and his buckets, washing the main road that ran along the middle of the island. A horse and milk cart clopped past, the horse leaving a little something extra on the cobbles for the cleaner to work on. I wandered down a narrow alley and leaned on a wall overlooking the river. Shrouds of mist twisted and turned a couple of feet above the water as it flowed urgently by on its long journey to the English Channel.

  Thoughts that had jostled incoherently in my head began to settle. I couldn’t live with Roland a moment longer. Nor could I stay with my mother in Chaddington. I could hole up in a hotel for a few days but eventually I would have to go somewhere. England, probably. To stay with my sister Sarah, probably. I was sure she would have me.

  But that decision brought questions, questions with no good answers.

  And there was the baby. What kind of family was the baby coming into?

  The baby would be all right. One way or the other, I’d make sure of that. I smiled. I could use a tiny ally in this complicated, bewildering world.

  The baby would be all right.

  A few yards down the street the moustachioed proprietor of a café was opening it up, winding down the awning and arranging tables and chairs, all the while favouring a gammy leg – a war wound no doubt. An old woman, her sabots clattering on the cobbles, sauntered by, muttering to herself and ignoring the gruff greeting from the café owner. A boy of about twelve pedalled up with a bicycle cart piled high with the bread I had smelled baking, and made his delivery to the café. I took a table outside, ordered a cup of coffee and some of that fresh bread, and tried to think.

  Should I divorce Roland? Should I make our split public? Should I tell Sarah who the other woman was? Should I tell my father?

  Should I tell Papa?

  He was the person who would be hurt the most if the affair became public. I would cope with the humiliation; it was not as if I had heaps of friends who would gossip about me. I hoped that a scandal might hurt Roland and my mother, but in reality, knowing the circles they moved in, the affair would just add to their illicit glamour.

  Sarah would be upset. She was strong; she would cope in the end.

  But my father? It would destroy my father.

  I loved my father very much, even though we were very different people and barely understood each other. He liked farming – the old way. The old ways were always better. He liked hunting and shooting and drinking late into the night with old friends from Devon, barely speaking. He never read a book. I had the feeling that I had much more in common with his father, my grandfather, the man who had built the library at Chaddington and stocked it so well, the man who had astutely sold a couple of farms on the estate before the war and invested the proceeds in Standard Oil in America, which was where most of the family’s income still came from these days. That investment was something that would never have occurred to Papa.

  My father never understood me, but he always loved me, and loved me for who I was – a queer bookish girl with few friends. Unlike his wife, he loved me no less than his other two children: his brilliant son and his glittering elder daughter.

  A burst of rage burned through the despair and confusion I felt. My mother and my husband had conspired together to ruin my life and quite probably the lives of those others whom I loved. I hated them. I hated them both. It was wrong: wrong, wrong, wrong!

  What would Hugh have done?

  An idea began to form.

  * * *

  I popped into Shakespeare and Company a few minutes after it opened, putting as bright a face on as I could with Sylvia. I spent twenty minutes browsing the shelves looking for something to entertain myself for the day with. I needed something familiar, comforting. I chose A Tale of Two Cities and settled myself in the corner where the woman had been reading the detective novel the day before.

  I had just reached page thirty when Kay showed up, as I knew she would. I could tell she was pleased to see me. We repaired to what was becoming our habitual café around the corner. This time, I eschewed the glass of red wine but stuck to a petit café.

  ‘Well?’ said Kay.

  ‘Tell me what I can do.’

  Twenty-Four

  I met ‘Lothar’ two days later by the Mare de Saint-James, one of the ponds in the Bois de Boulogne. Kay had given me detailed instructions on how to get there, including where to walk, where to hail a taxi, and where to take the Métro. As far as I could tell, I wasn’t followed.

  I thought I had spotted Lothar when an elegant man wearing a straw boater and swinging a cane strolled by, all the time looking at me. For a moment I thought he was about to speak to me, but he seemed to think the better of it, and wandered on. Just another French gentleman staring at a young woman, I realized.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  I turned to see a tall man with thick blond hair brushed back from a broad forehead. He was wearing a light grey summer suit, and a striped tie.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you tell me the way to the Porte Dauphine?’

  ‘Certainly, monsieur,’ I said. ‘It’s that way, past the Royal Pavilion.’ I then pointed in the wrong direction as instructed.

  The man sat next to me and smiled. ‘Good morning, Mrs Meeke. My name is Lothar. Kay has told me all about you.’

  We spoke French, but Lothar spoke it with a German accent – Austrian possibly – rather than Russian. There were plenty of Russian émigrés in Paris at that time, and I was pretty sure he wasn’t one of them. He was friendly, and a very good listener. He examined me with intense eyes of the darkest blue as I spoke. His chin, which jutted outwards, gave his face an aura of quiet strength. He asked me all about myself, about my childhood, my family, and Chaddington. He seemed to know quite a lot about me already – more than Kay could possibly have known or told him.

  We had been talking about Sarah and Hugh, and I felt it was time for me to ask a question. ‘Did you know my brother?’

  Lothar smiled. ‘Yes, I knew your brother. And I am very sorry that he died. He was a good man.’

  ‘Did he work for you?’

  ‘Yes, he did. He had only just begun. The intention was that he would join the Foreign Office and work his way up.’

  ‘Did he give you any secrets?”

  ‘He never got the chance. We knew we would have to wait several years before he could provide anything of use. But Hugh was willing to commit to that. He was prepared to devote his life to the cause. I admired him.’

  ‘Do you think he was killed?’

&
nbsp; ‘Murdered, you mean?’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  Lothar paused, considering his words carefully. ‘We don’t know for sure. But we think so – by the British secret service.’

  Could that really be true? Could Hugh have been killed by his own government?

  ‘Do you have any proof of that?’ I asked.

  ‘No absolute proof; that’s rare in our game. But we have strong indications.’

  ‘What exactly are “strong indications”?’

  Lothar shrugged. He wasn’t telling. I noticed that he was missing the tip of the little finger of his left hand. In those days there were a lot of Britons, Frenchmen and Germans missing bits and pieces of their body, and Lothar seemed to me to be just about old enough to have served in the war. Presumably for the Austrian army, or perhaps the German.

  ‘What exactly do you want me to do for you?’ I asked. ‘And who are you? The Comintern? The Russian secret service?’

  ‘Those are fair questions, and I will answer them in time,’ Lothar said. ‘But first I need to ask you something. Why do you want to work for the cause of international communism?’

  ‘Lots of reasons,’ I said. I had expected the question and had thought through my answers. ‘My brother taught me that the workers are systematically exploited by the capitalist classes throughout the world and I happen to believe that’s both true and deeply wrong. I understand Hugh helped you; perhaps I can too. I have read a lot about communism and socialism and inequality and injustice. I believe in it all, but I am the daughter of a landowner. I don’t work, my father doesn’t work really, we don’t consider ourselves to be particularly rich, but I know we are. I realize I am a hypocrite. Working for international communism would give me a chance finally to do something to help the cause. I am pretty sure that must be why Hugh became a spy.’

  ‘I think you are right,’ said Lothar. ‘Hugh told me he wanted to do something rather than talk about other people doing something. He was very worried about Mussolini and Hitler. I think he liked Russia, but he wasn’t spying for Russia against Britain. He was doing his bit to fight Hitler and Mussolini and stand up for the working class, and he thought working with Russia, rather than for Russia, is the best way to do this. And he’s right. That’s what I’m doing. To answer your earlier question, I work for the Comintern, not the Soviet Union. I’m not Russian.’

  ‘Where are you from?

  ‘Lemberg, as was. It was part of the Austrian Empire; it’s now in Poland and it’s called Lwów.’

  ‘So you speak Polish?’ I suddenly had a strong and rather odd desire to know what language this man spoke.

  He smiled. He understood. ‘There are a lot of languages spoken in Lemberg. From what Hugh told me about you, you would like the city. I speak Polish and German, and a bit of Ruthenian, but we spoke Yiddish at home.’

  ‘Yiddish? Are you Jewish?’ He didn’t look it.

  ‘I’m a citizen of the world,’ he said. ‘As is Kay. As was Hugh. As you are.’

  I didn’t contradict him; I understood what he meant.

  He looked at me closely. ‘Is there anything else? Any other reason you want to work with us?’

  ‘Should there be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lothar. His dark blue eyes were studying me; I had the feeling they would miss nothing.

  I hesitated. ‘There is,’ I admitted, my voice suddenly wobbling. ‘Kay probably told you that my husband has been unfaithful with my mother? Actually, you probably told her.’

  ‘I did know that,’ said Lothar.

  ‘Right. Well, I did have some misgivings about betraying my country. But I have no misgivings at all about betraying Roland. He represents all that I hate about the ruling classes; after all, if you are right, it’s people just like him who murdered my brother. What I’m doing isn’t betrayal – it’s vengeance. It will be my pleasure to give his secrets away to those who can make good use of them to help the workers from Britain or France or even Russia – from wherever.’

  ‘You know this means you will have to go back to your husband?’ Lothar said. ‘You will only be of use to us if you are married to him and living with him.’

  ‘I know. But I am willing to do that. You see . . . if I leave Roland then people will learn everything. There will be a scandal – my sister will find out, as will my father. I don’t want to hurt them. But I also don’t want to be the poor foolish wife who isn’t brave enough to leave. Especially since . . .’

  Lothar waited.

  ‘Especially since I think I am expecting a baby.’

  Lothar smiled. ‘Congratulations,’ he said tentatively.

  ‘Thank you.’ It struck me how absurd it was that the first person I had told was a complete stranger. Except I couldn’t trust anyone closer to me, and for some reason, I did trust him.

  ‘But this way, I stay with Roland, my child has a father and I keep my self-respect because I will know that I am helping you and hurting him. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think I do,’ said Lothar. ‘That’s enough for today. Let’s meet again next week. In the meantime, work out how you can return to live with your husband.’

  ‘That’s going to be difficult.’

  ‘Very difficult. Can you do it?’

  I nodded. ‘I can do it.’

  He made me memorize a complicated procedure for meeting the following week at an address in the Marais, and then we parted.

  It was the first of many meetings between us.

  * * *

  I decided to walk all the way back from the Bois to my hotel on the Île Saint-Louis. Walking helped me think, and I had a lot to think about.

  I liked Lothar. I trusted him. I liked that Hugh had trusted him.

  And I was coming increasingly to believe that the British government had killed Hugh.

  Sometimes, when I have a difficult decision to make, I choose a path and then immediately doubt myself. This was not one of those times. In a situation of extreme murkiness, betrayal and distrust, deciding to work for Lothar and the Comintern felt like simply the right thing to do. It was as if I had fallen into a dark river, with weed tangling my legs, and silt stirred up in the water all around me. I had caught a glimpse of the surface and sunlight and kicked upwards. Soon I would be free of the mud and water, break the surface into fresh air and breathe.

  There would be consequences. I would have to live with Roland. I would have to speak to my mother as if nothing had happened. I would be giving my country’s secrets to a foreign power: despite Lothar’s protestations about working for the Comintern, it was safest to assume that everything I gave him would eventually get to the Soviets. I ran the risk of being caught; I wasn’t sure, but I believed that traitors faced the death penalty in England. Or I might find myself wrapped around a tree on a country road like my brother.

  But it would be a just cause, a cause my brother had believed in, a cause he might even have died for, and I would be proud to follow that cause in his stead. I would be doing it for him and for me, and for all the millions of the poor all over the world, people who were infinitely less fortunate than me, who were being exploited by a capitalist system that was demonstrably broken.

  I would be free.

  Lothar had asked me how I would get back together with Roland. There was no need to rush that. In fact, too immediate a rapprochement would be suspicious, which was fortunate because right then the very idea of him made my skin crawl. I would hole up in the hotel for a few more nights.

  It would be good to see Dick during that time, but I decided not to tell him my decision. In retrospect, I was glad I had rejected the idea of spying for Kay so firmly when Dick had asked me about it.

  In my haste to leave the flat the previous afternoon I had forgotten some things: make-up, another pair of shoes, my address book, writing paper. It was early afternoon, so Roland would either be at the office or – and the thought reignited a flare of rage – in a hotel room with my mother. Either way, it should be safe to s
top by there for a few minutes to pack another, lighter case.

  I climbed the stone stairs to the apartment. When I pulled out my keys I realized that the door was unlocked. I was preoccupied, and I assumed that Roland had simply forgotten to lock up properly when he had gone to work that morning, so I was shocked to see him sitting in his favourite armchair in the sitting room. He looked dreadful – the skin around his eyes, already dark, was now a purplish shade of black, as if some thug had beaten him up.

  He leapt to his feet and took a step towards me.

  ‘Stay away from me!’ I told him in something just short of a shout. ‘Don’t you touch me!’

  Roland backed off, raising his hands. ‘All right. All right.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t you be at the embassy? I only came here now because I thought the flat would be empty.’

  ‘I understand. I told them you were ill and I had to be home to look after you. I hoped you would drop in.’

  ‘Well, that’s jolly big of you.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I’ve behaved abominably towards you.’

  ‘You certainly have.’

  ‘And I don’t expect you to forgive me.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘All that I ask is that you listen to me – hear what I have to say for the next couple of minutes. Then I will let you do whatever you want to do.’

  ‘If you are trying to persuade me to stay, it won’t work.’ As I said this, carried along by my anger, I meant it, but a little voice told me to listen. If I decided to go back to him, I might be able to use whatever he said now as a plausible reason. Though, at that moment, the thought filled me with disgust.

  ‘I saw Lavinia last night,’ he said. Lavinia was my mother.

  ‘I don’t want to know that.’

  ‘I told her you knew about us. She told me that when you and she lunched you had suspected something, but didn’t know it involved her.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘I told her we had to finish it. We had an almighty row.’