A Kind of Grief (48 page)

“A mile or so on, we reached a biggish loch and a smallish baronial castle with long lawns going down to the water's edge. It looked rather grand until we went closer. Then you could see how badly maintained it was. There were dogs running around. Not nice family dogs, big Alsatian guard dogs. The man who called them away was in uniform. I don't know which branch of the army . . .” Joanne's speech was fading, but he knew she needed to finish, else she would not sleep properly.

“Then you met Alice?”

“Sorry.” A roll of the shoulders, a sip of wine, her neck relaxed, and he was glad. “We were shown into a sitting room. I stood in the middle, probably with my mouth open, and stared. Hennessey said, “I believe you have met. Mrs. McAllister, Miss Ramsay, we'll leave you to it.”

“Westland knew. I could see he knew. I was furious with Hennessey, with all of them. I told him so, and all he said was to ring if I needed him, pointing to a bell next to the mantelpiece marked ‘Butler.' ”

“What was Miss Ramsay doing?”

“Nothing. Sitting by the fire, legs crossed, watching, waiting. When the men had left, she said, ‘Hello, Joanne, I never thought we'd meet again.' I said, ‘Me neither.' ”

As she said it, McAllister could hear her
Me neither
. That slightly perplexed, slightly cross expression that usually preceded an offhand remark like
me neither
or
you're kidding
or
oh, really
he knew to be her well-brought-up-daughter-of-the-manse way of hiding anger.

“You were so persistent in your belief that I would not take my own life you had my colleagues worried. Good for you.” Alice smiled.

Not
former
colleagues, Joanne noted as she waited and watched. This is not the person I remember, she thought, but I can't fathom how just yet.

“I can only offer a partial explanation. I hope it is enough.”

Joanne said nothing, just waited.

“I joined the service in the mid-nineteen-thirties, not long after I'd left art school. We ‘gals' were recruited in an informal way, through family connections and acquaintances. They were particularly interested in women like me who spoke languages, had traveled abroad, so we already knew our way around the continent.

“Initially, I was a clerk listening in to German radio chatter, translating documents, and all that. From meetings, discussions, and the circulation of top-secret documents, we were excluded, even though we knew the content. They believed only men could decipher the intelligence. Ha! What arrogance!

“Then my talent for drawing came up. I used to do party sketches to amuse my friends. The head of my section also discovered my photographic memory.” She was shaking her head. “Serves me right for being such a show-off. It would have been much, much safer if I'd stuck to being a lady artist.”

“Is that how you met Dougald Forsythe?”

“He was plain Douglas then. Dougie to his friends. Yes. After school in Switzerland, I didn't know what to do, so I enrolled in the Glasgow School of Art—it has an excellent reputation for drawing. We were lovers until I overheard him showing off in a bar that I was his ‘posh totty.' ”

Again, Joanne noticed that smile, a knowing smile, a smile that said,
What a fool I was
. “It went both ways. He was definitely not one of us.”

“He can be charming.” Joanne was remembering his heavy hair, his wide smile, the way he spoke on the phone, implying the possibility of an affair.

“Oh, yes. Charm aplenty. But unscrupulous in the way a man from an impoverished family, with huge ambition and not enough talent, can be.” She reached for the bell rope and pulled.

Superintendent Westland quickly appeared.

“Would you order fresh tea?” Alice asked. “And sandwiches?” She didn't ask what Joanne would prefer. And she did not seem aware she was treating a very senior policeman as a butler.

“Is there anything I can get you, Mrs. McAllister?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” she replied. And they smiled at each other with their eyes only.

The pause in the telling felt like the interval in a play. Their theater was this large high-ceilinged room, with long casement windows looking out over a stone terrace and the loch beyond. The theatrical backdrop was a layer of mountains aching to be painted. The silence was not uncomfortable; neither had much to say to the other outside of the story.

When the tea came, after they ate and drank and chatted about the weather being delightfully clear for December, Alice continued. She spoke rapidly. She wanted the meeting over with.

“My wartime activities I can't discuss. Nor the present debacle. Official Secrets Act, you know.”

This remark had a tinge of superiority to it that Joanne didn't appreciate. But she let it all pass. And Joanne could well believe Alice's account of working for the government. In her own brief stint as an army messenger, some officers treated her as an object to be patted, physically and metaphorically. “Good girl,” they'd say, in the same tone as they'd say “Good dog.”

“Of course, it was disastrous when Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean went missing.”

Joanne sensed a hesitation over the name Donald, but couldn't be certain.

“I felt there was something not quite right in the department for years but assumed the big boys knew what they were doing. When it was revealed those two were traitors and in Moscow, so much codswallop of denials and damage limitation was published. The prime minister made a statement assuring the public that that was an end to it. But I and a few others were never convinced.”

Alice leaned forward. In her sturdy corduroy trousers, stout brown boots, Aran jumper, closely clipped hair, and a body that was feminine, yet not, her face resembled a classical statue. Not marble. Perhaps basalt. Joanne also saw that Alice might pass as a man.

“I am—was—only an intelligence operative whose department reinvented people, creating an imagined past with all the documents and folderol to complete the new identity.”

“Much like an author,” Joanne commented.

“Absolutely.”

“So why did—”

“There was suspicion that there was a third man who'd warned Maclean and Burgess that they were about to be uncovered. It couldn't be proved. In fact, in a formal inquiry, it was dismissed as paranoia. Before I left, I told Ruraidh my plans.”

She saw Joanne's question.

“Oops. Security breach. Forget the name, or we may have to lock you in the Tower.”

“Mary Queen of Scots was locked in the Tower.”

“I also mentioned that I agreed with the third-man theory. He expressed no opinion, only asked if I'd shared this with anyone else. My head of division, I said. As my superior is so senior, and such a brilliant operative, and a charming, well-connected man, I knew I was safe. But still I felt uneasy and wanted out of the service.”

She said she remembered Burgess as a fop but a funny and entertaining man. Maclean she'd known as a child, and she had been besotted with him as a young woman. “I told them Burgess and Maclean had broken my faith. They accepted that, as everyone connected with the service was feeling the same. Then I retired to the glen to paint.”

“So what were you doing with those lists of numbers? And why fake your death? And who helped you escape? And Stuart, is he a . . .”
Goodie or baddie
, she was about to say, then realized she was being silly. What with traitors, break-ins, invisible ink, forgeries, and fake artworks, she felt she was in a spy novel, not in the reality of a cold winter in late 1959.

Alice began to laugh. “My dear Joanne. Stop right there. You know I can't tell you. And I should warn you, it is unwise ever to ask these questions even of your friends.”

Joanne smiled in acceptance. “I had to ask.”

“I know. As for Stuart, my dear friend and colleague Mr. Stuart, again I can't answer, because I really don't know.” Alice turned her head away.

Joanne fancied she saw her eyes brighten. No, she dismissed the thought. Perhaps, she reconsidered. No, she thought again, he couldn't be! Yet it made sense. Ruraidh and his lot, they were the rescue team. Stuart had to be a traitor. Or at least in cahoots with the traitor.

“Joanne, there is no point in continuing to speculate. If you did perhaps stumble on some incident, some scrap of information, please, don't explore further. Enjoy your life. Do not live always looking over your shoulder. I have only myself to look after. You have children.”

Joanne felt the threat in the mention of her children. That shook her, making her want to run home as fast as possible. “I brought the manuscript,” she said. “As you requested.”

Alice nodded, understanding Joanne's stiff posture, her clipped voice. “Thank you. I've been told you put a lot of work into it. We're sorry it will never see the light of day.” The cliché rolled out, the meaning that it would never be published clear, yet there was no indication that Alice cared.

“I've also handed over the drawing of the men. Why is it important?”

“You could ask Hennessey—but don't expect an answer,” Alice said. “You are owed an explanation. They could possibly shoot me for telling you—sorry, joke.” She stood. “I need a whisky. You?”

Joanne shook her head and watched as Alice went to the decanter and poured a Don McLeod–sized dram of amber liquid.

Alice continued, “I know you will have seen the numbers on the back of the drawing. That is what they wanted. Just before the outbreak of war, I was on assignment in Cairo and came across the list in Donald's bedroom.”

Joanne longed to know what Alice was doing in the spy's bedroom but didn't ask.

“One small drawing, one short list of agent identification numbers, but enough to trap a spy, and look at all the trouble that simple sketch has caused. Goodness knows how they weren't caught sooner. So careless. So unprofessional. Later that night, I met them dining together. They were absolutely sloshed and didn't even notice me spying from another table. Later in my room, I did a quick sketch of the four men. I remembered most of the numbers perfectly and wrote them on the back of the paper.”

Joanne had the feeling that Alice was pleased to talk but needed to remain aloof; the professional self was paramount.

“It is a conceivable coincidence that three of those men could be together. Two of them were close friends, and the three worked in different but connected sections of the service. The fourth man's identity I didn't and still don't know. I now know he was their contact, the man who recruited those wretchedly naive idiots to commit treason.” Abruptly she stood, and the bitter word hung between them, making the bright, high-ceilinged drawing room feel claustrophobic.

Joanne stared out at the midafternoon sun, about to drop behind the hills, departing with a burst of red-gold reflections in the loch
. Or is it “lough”?

Alice valued light. Walking in it, memorizing it, painting it—subtle changes in light enchanted her. She stood. “Let's walk. Never know when we will have another afternoon like this.”

Taking a well-worn track that circled the loch, Alice began, “I miss the house. I miss the glen. Unfortunately, returning is not an option. I was persecuted by that Mackenzie woman—though God knows why—I became a victim of Dougie's self-aggrandizement, and my cover was blown and my whereabouts revealed in that newspaper article. That is how they found me. So no. No going back.” Alice kicked a broken branch of oak lying across their path.

Nice boots,
Joanne thought.

They'd walked the circumference of the water. It was colder than it looked from indoors. Joanne, aware the audience was about to end, attempted more questions.

“Who faked your death?”

Alice said, “Sorry, I can't tell you.”

“The paintings I bought at the auction, what do you want me to do with them?”

“Keep them.” Alice relented. She stopped, shaded her eyes with one hand, and stared towards a blood-red sun fast disappearing into a mountain with a curiously fractured peak. “The paintings were part of my cover. The drawing Dougie bought is a very good fake, if I do say so myself.” She smiled. “And a Civil Service pension is paltry. The paintings, when I occasionally sell one I make clear they are studies, and they are very popular. The still life with onions, that one I'm holding on to—my pension fund.”

“So it's an original?”

“Couldn't you tell?” The slight hint of condescension hurt, and Joanne was glad they had arrived back at the castle.

Hennessey came out to meet them. Superintendent Westland followed.

“Ladies, sorry, but we need to leave.”

Alice turned to Joanne and held out her hand. “Thank you for all you have done for me. And you are correct. I would never take my own life.” Their hands met. Alice stepped closer. “Please don't tell anyone I am alive. It would put me in enormous danger.”

“I won't.” Looking at Alice, seeing into her eyes, sensing her loneliness and her courage, Joanne took back all thoughts of Alice Ramsay being difficult, being unfriendly.
She can't afford friends
, Joanne now knew. “I saw your drawing of Muriel Galloway. It's beautiful.”

Alice stared into the far distance—perhaps to her kitchen in the house in the glen in the northern wilds. “Yes, it is good, isn't it?” She smiled. “That house, the glen, they made me a better person. I miss them.” She gave Joanne a quick hug. “Good-bye, Joanne Ross. Have a wonderful life.”

She walked quickly up the steps to the doors large enough to allow through a knight in shining armor, on horseback.

She did not look back.

The car ride to the airstrip, the flight home in the dark, went by fast. Hennessey did not come with them. Superintendent Westland opened the box of sandwiches, along with two slices of a rich fruitcake, on the flight.