by Gareth Rubin
One of the men behind me placed his chips in the black square too. We won. The third time I went for a column of numbers, and in the next moment I had sixty pounds in my grasp. The man and woman at the table had lost all they had.
‘I’ll take that,’ said Jeremy, reaching for my pile of chips.
‘You can have your stake back. The rest is my luck,’ I said, passing him a few tokens.
He grinned and pulled his hands away. ‘Quite right. Come this way, Lorelei, let’s see how your luck holds at vingt-et-un.’ But the table that he took me to was full. He mulled something over for a moment. ‘On second thoughts, let’s go outside,’ he said.
‘And what do we find out there?’ I thought it useful to get the feel of the occasion before I pursued my true task.
‘Oh, just a different crowd.’ We passed out of a side door into the night, and he put his arm around my back to ward off the chill as we trudged towards some sort of low building made of Greek columns. There were lights shining, and, when the breeze blew towards us, I could catch a word or two from low voices. ‘The pavilion,’ Jeremy said.
‘Which is?’
‘A little outdoor home from home. Come and join the real party, Lorelei.’
‘That sounds marvellous.’
‘Oh, it is. They’re Parasites all. Don’t tell NatSec.’ Inside the pavilion, what had once been classical and austere stone architecture had been transformed by satin oriental cushions and velvet drapes to keep out the cold. An old wind-up gramophone was playing jazz.
It’s one for you, it’s one for me;
It’s two for you, yes, two for baby …
A group of people sat on cushions and wicker chairs surrounded by hot braziers. Niches in the walls showed the stumps of recessed busts that had recently been chiselled away. More history turned to dust.
‘Here we are,’ Jeremy said. He stooped at a table to pick up a fruit that I didn’t even recognize – it was like an apple, but with soft flesh like a peach. He bit in and chewed a mouthful before throwing the rest aside; it skidded across the marble flagstones, leaving a trail of seeds and flesh. ‘Grapes?’ he asked, picking up a bunch.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Up to you.’ He dropped them again, and I couldn’t help but think that there was something awful about it all – absurd and impossible, that this could be happening, when outside the walls there were so many parents cutting slices of bread in half to share with their children. The scene was no different to a thousand that had taken place in country houses before the War, but still it struck me as wrong that it should continue to exist in a nation where such disparity was supposed to have been swept away. Privilege would always be with us, I supposed, yet it made my skin prickle that its beneficiaries should be so blasé about it.
‘Jeremy,’ a voice called over. I saw a man in his forties who looked to have been very handsome a few years ago, but those years had taken a toll in hollow cheeks and bags under bloodshot eyes. He was slumped on a wicker chaise-longue.
‘Let’s introduce you,’ Jeremy said, taking me over. The man had his double-breasted jacket open as he leaned back against the armrest. ‘This is Adam.’
Adam gazed at me. ‘I had to beg for the wine,’ he moaned. ‘Shortages, apparently. Russians taking it all. Oh, how Socialist of them. Well, it doesn’t matter now.’ He was slurring his words and sounded utterly wretched.
‘He’s been like this all the time, recently,’ Jeremy muttered. ‘Very boring. You can look after him for a bit.’ He walked away towards a table full of glasses and decanters.
‘I’m Adam Cutter,’ he said, more to himself than to me, holding out his hand.
‘Lorelei Cawson.’ I shook his hand and began to lift off my mask as the others had.
‘Lorelei?’ He seemed to wake from a dream. ‘Oh, Lorelei, I didn’t recognize you.’ My fingers froze on my mask. ‘Why didn’t you reply?’
‘Reply to what?’ Tense, I tried to keep her voice in my mind, the way her vowels rounded and her consonants were like beats on a tight drum. I let the mask slip back into place.
‘To my … note.’ He lifted his head from the armrest, but the effort seemed too much and it fell back. ‘Nick’s heard that you’re selling him out.’
I thought of the handwritten words on the invitation that had been sent to Lorelei. Presumably it referred to the medicines but how?
I sat beside Adam and put my hand on his leg sympathetically. ‘You think I’m doing that?’
‘Of course you are. Of course you are. To your friend up there.’ He pointed towards the house.
So she had been betraying Nick to someone – and that person was here. ‘Where is he?’
‘Oh, where he always is now. The card room, making everyone think he owns the place, not me.’ He closed his eyes and shook his head at the last words, then his eyes flicked open and his head burst up from the armrest. He stayed there searching what he could see of my face before slowly sinking back. I guessed that he was going to pass out any minute.
‘What exactly does Nick know?’
‘Hmmm?’ He seemed to be slipping into unconsciousness.
‘What does he know?’ I repeated it more strongly.
He looked confused. His brow furrowed and his arm lifted up towards me. His fingers closed on my mask and began to pull it; I snatched them away, holding it in place. He sighed and seemed to drift away again. Then, without warning, he sprang at me, ripping away my mask. I grabbed for it, but it was too late. He fell back, agog. ‘Who are you?’ he drawled.
I thought perhaps I could shock him into sobriety. ‘Jane Cawson. Nick’s second wife.’
‘Where’s Lorelei?’ he asked.
‘She died. It was an accident.’
‘Died?’ He reached for a glass full of dark liquid – brandy, I guessed – which he poured into his mouth. ‘My God, I didn’t know.’
‘She drowned in the bath. I’m here in her place,’ I said. ‘You can talk to me just like you talk to her.’ He drained his glass and I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘I need to know how Lorelei was selling Nick out.’
He waved towards the house. ‘Ask him, not me. Card room.’ I shook him again.
‘Adam?’
‘Please leave me.’ He was so drunk that he couldn’t even open his eyes and he folded into himself. A couple sat down on the chaise-longue next to him, laughing between themselves. I thought it best to go.
I walked over to Jeremy, whose mouth was a pit of fruit seeds and mush. ‘Look after Adam,’ I said.
‘Utterly sloshed again? Yes, he does that,’ he replied, lifting a peach from a tray and biting into it. ‘Why don’t you stay here for a while? I’m a little bit bored with the company, to tell you the truth. There’s only so much time you can spend watching idiots lose a month’s salary on the roulette wheel. I just come for the food nowadays.’ I couldn’t help but think how many coupons I would need just for what he had eaten in the last few minutes.
‘Who’s in the card room?’ I asked.
‘The card room? No idea. Take a look. It’s upstairs.’
I put my mask on to walk back. The house was built on a slope that ran down to a dark lake. Beside the water a group of four or five young men had formed a circle around a waitress they had somehow enticed out there, and they were offering her money. She was trying to leave but they wouldn’t let her. One grabbed her and she yelled, shoving her way out of the ring as they burst into laughter, continuing to call to her until she was out of sight. ‘Three quid!’ yelled one. ‘More than it’s worth.’
The card room was at the end of a short oak-panelled corridor on the upper floor. Two plain-clothes men stood in front of it, and, as I approached, one said to me, ‘I’m sorry, this is a private room. Would you please return to the party?’ I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to abandon the course I was on, but there was no way they would let me through. I was about to go back to the stairs when the door opened and a podgy man with thinning brown hair emerged,
his stomach spilling out of his belt. Behind him, I caught a glimpse of a room filled with blue cigar smoke. In its centre was a circular card table with six or seven people around it. The dim overhead light was dropping shadows from their faces on to the green baize, making it hard to see their features. But the dealer, clad in a drab grey suit, was directly opposite me, and, as he lifted his face a little to push the cards to his friends, I recognized him in an instant.
32
The door closed again. I knew it had been him, though. ‘Please let me in,’ I begged one of the guards. The fat man pushed past me. As he did so, his palms seemed to stroke across my waist.
‘It’s guests only,’ one of the guards replied.
I couldn’t think what to do. I turned and walked away. Then I started to hurry to where the podgy man was about to reach the top of the stairs. I stumbled against him.
‘Sorry,’ I giggled.
‘Had a bit too much?’ he said, a wide grin spreading across his face.
‘Yes, a few too many glasses. It’s all so nice, though.’ I sighed and let my head droop on to his shoulder.
‘Well, we could find somewhere for you to lie down.’
‘Could you?’
‘Oh, I’m sure I could. The bedrooms are through here.’ He gently tugged me by the arm towards one of the closed doors.
‘Oh, not yet,’ I yawned. ‘What’s through there?’ I pointed back to the card room.
‘Nothing very interesting. Boring men playing cards.’
I stroked his chest drunkenly. ‘Well, that’s exciting. A real-life card game. Is it poker?’
‘Three-card brag.’ He glanced back at the guards. They were ignoring us. ‘I think you need to lie down. You’ll feel better.’
‘I’ve never seen a real-life poker game. Could you show me?’
‘I think –’
‘After that, I’ll have a lie-down. I’m so tired.’ I yawned.
‘Well –’
‘Please?’ I gazed up at him.
‘All right. Normally I wouldn’t but, well, just this once. I’m Piers, by the way.’
‘I’m Catherine.’
‘Nice to meet you.’ His hand was clammy as it held mine. ‘But when we’re in there, we’ll have to sit in the background. And we must be very quiet.’
‘Like little mice.’
‘Just like little mice.’ Cautiously, he led me back to the card room. The guards opened it without reaction and we were inside. All the players at the table had the silver hammer-and-compass lapel badges worn by those who had been Party members when the Soviets arrived and a few glanced up, but paid us little attention. There were leather chairs at the side occupied by more young women, and Piers led me past them to a studded sofa. As I passed the table, I counted seven players and surreptitiously looked again at the dealer.
In his dull grey suit, vague in that cigar smoke, Comrade Assistant Secretary Ian Fellowman looked like nothing so much as a third-tier Party apparatchik. I hadn’t seen him since the terrible night of the Comintern party at the hotel, when Nick had been so desperate to be introduced to him. The stark sight of him now brought back a sudden feeling of drowning in freezing water and I had to lean on Piers to stop myself from falling. Piers smirked, presuming the drink was doing its part.
Could Fellowman really be the one who had made a deal with Lorelei for contraband medicine? He had come over from the West in ’47, an idealist among idealists. She would probably have known him, though, because of his control of our national broadcasting and her affair with Cairncross. And she had also warned Nick to stay away from him, saying that Fellowman was ‘toxic’ – which could have been her way of keeping Nick in the dark about her arrangement with him.
In the background, a record player was whining out an old speech of Blunt’s. ‘… there is art too in the simple message of the Manifesto. This soaring first line …’
‘I think we’ve heard enough from Anthony for a while,’ Fellowman said, with a wry smile to the others. It was the first time I had heard him speak, and it was almost a surprise to know that he could. His voice was very deep, befitting his size, and he had an upper-class Scottish accent. They all chuckled, and a man I couldn’t see in the darkness at the side of the room lifted the needle from the disc. ‘Dealer has a flush,’ Fellowman said.
Piers put me at the end of the sofa so I couldn’t move away, and sat up against me, with his hand on my knee. We were in semi-darkness, the heavily shaded overhead light not reaching to the edges of the room. I resolved to watch from a distance for now and try to work out what to do. Although I was in the gloom, and Fellowman had seen me for only a few seconds the previous time we had met, I was thankful for my mask.
‘These are some of the most important men in the country,’ the fat man whispered in my ear. ‘Senior Party men. That’s Alan Turner. He’s in charge of the railways now. And Ian Fellowman, he tells us all what to think.’ He guffawed to himself. He believed that I would be impressed by these men. No doubt he was, despite his studied nonchalance around them. In the old days, people would drop the names of the local gentry, and those names would carry weight and inspire awe entirely because of tradition. Now it was commitment to the cause and the sheer power that these men had over the rest of us that impressed: the power to modernize, the power to destroy and rebuild. But the man by my side didn’t know what I knew: the grubby depths to which at least one of them had sunk.
‘Pair of sevens,’ Fellowman said.
Piers returned to his normal voice. ‘But it’s going to be very dull for you, watching these men play cards. Why don’t we find somewhere for you to have a rest? Have you had enough Champagne? I can have someone bring us some.’
‘Do be quiet, Piers,’ Fellowman muttered from the table.
‘Sorry, Ian,’ he replied.
‘And a straight flush, well played.’
But Piers was fidgeting. His hand slid a little up my thigh, and I tried to brush it away without being too obvious about it. ‘I haven’t even seen you, properly,’ he whispered again, his lips almost touching my ear. ‘I think you should take this off.’ He indicated the mask. There were chuckles from the table as someone conceded defeat in the game. ‘Come on, off with it,’ he said, reaching for the ribbons at the back.
‘No, please,’ I said, fending him off.
‘Look – they’ve taken theirs off.’ He pointed to the other girls in the room and reached up again. He disgusted me.
‘I want to keep it on.’
He wasn’t listening, but if I fought him off it would only draw more attention to me, so I let him tease out the ribbons and prise away the mask. ‘There now. You are a lovely one.’
‘Thank you.’ I dipped my head down a little to hide.
‘Another hand?’ asked one of the men at the table.
‘Oh, I feel like mingling for a while,’ Fellowman replied, getting up and lighting a cigar. The game broke up and a few went to a drinks table, while another clutch huddled in a corner, laughing and slapping each other on the back.
I quickly placed the mask back over my face. Piers put his palm back on my thigh.
‘I’m with someone,’ I said.
‘I don’t see anyone here.’ He sounded aggressive.
Then a voice close to us – somehow right beside us, although I hadn’t seen him arrive – spoke. ‘Are you not in the mood?’ The sweating man jerked his head up at Fellowman’s voice.
‘No, not really,’ I replied, tying the ribbons of the mask before lifting my face to him.
‘Well, with fat old Piers here, who can blame you?’ he laughed. ‘Piers, you really must learn when a young lady isn’t interested.’ Piers laughed unnaturally heartily. ‘Come on, why don’t we find better company?’ Fellowman took my wrist and lifted me to my feet. One of the players emerged from a corner and mumbled something in his ear. ‘No. It’s out of the question,’ Fellowman told him. ‘Guy has made up his mind and that’s that. I’m not going to start second-guessing him.’ T
he man ambled away. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked me.
‘Catherine.’
‘Catherine. Are you enjoying the party?’
‘Very much so.’
‘I don’t think we’ve met, have we?’
‘I’m a friend of Adam’s.’
‘Ah, Adam.’ We were beside a balcony. He stopped, thought, and forced the balcony doors apart. One was stiff and groaned as it opened. ‘I need some air,’ he said. Out on the stone platform, he sighed and leaned on the balustrade. I had no idea what he wanted or if he had somehow just taken a shine to me. ‘Did you know Churchill once stayed in this house?’
‘I didn’t, no. That warmonger.’
He waved to someone inside the room. A young man appeared, and I knew in an instant that this was Greg, brother to Pete, who had walked me from the pub to the house. They had the same strong gypsy features, although Greg lacked the physique of a farm labourer. ‘A cigarette,’ Fellowman whispered. The younger man took one from a wooden case, lighted it between his lips and handed it to Fellowman, who placed it in his own mouth before gently touching him on the forearm in acknowledgement. He slipped away again, closing the doors behind him and pulling heavy curtains across them. ‘A warmonger? Oh, I wouldn’t call him that.’
‘No?’
‘It’s empty sabre-rattling. For American consumption. Old Mr Churchill knows we could close the Needle any time we like and he’s in our territory. Besides, our Soviet friends have twice as many warheads as the Americans, and who wants to fight a war that no one wins?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said. My nerves were still taut, but loosening.
He tapped ash down to the ground. Underneath was a pile of what looked like chunks of collapsed masonry covered by a tarpaulin. I was surprised it hadn’t been tidied up and carted away for the party. Even here they had priorities and some things were make-do-and-mend. ‘Comrade Burgess met him in ’38, you know. That imbecile Chamberlain had signed the Munich agreement, and Guy was so furious he went to Churchill’s home in Kent to see him for advice. In fact, Churchill had just received a letter from the Czechoslovakian prime minister begging him to help stop Germany taking over the country. “What can I do? An old man without power, without party?” Churchill said. It turned out that he was more in need of advice than Guy was. Guy told him to go up and down the country making speeches, to force people to listen to the danger. He told old Winston that they would listen to him. They didn’t, though. Guy was wrong about that.’