After the Cabaret (15 page)

Meanwhile, Greg himself was not sure if Pym would talk to him, or even be fit enough to do so. To Greg he seemed a fantastic, legendary figure, like a dragon, a man left behind by Khrushchev, then Gorbachev and the ending of the Cold War.

Alistair said now, ‘Be careful, Greg. Russia's not a safe place unless you know what you're doing. Any doubts, check with me.'

Greg regarded him dubiously. Since the end of Empire men like Alistair had reverted to the old buccaneering habits of their ancestors, travelling the world looting like privateers. How could he tell that Alistair wouldn't shaft him – sell him – lie to him? He'd do it to anybody else.

Meanwhile, Alistair had moved on from his sexual war wounds to the grim obsession of his class. Greg wasn't sure which monologue he liked least. ‘The heap … needs a new roof – water coming in everywhere – Heritage … entail …' No point in asking why not get rid of the ancestral home. Hard-up Hall, there to be passed on to young Rupert, Hereward, Joe or Nick, was as close to a religion as Alistair would get, and was probably the basic reason for this trip, this bit of business, and so many before and to come. His roof would be repaired if it took blood – other people's – to do it.

They got off the plane into the grey of Moscow's October and repaired to a hotel, marbled, gilded, luxurious. There was a bowl of fruit in Greg's room, peaches, apples, grapes, plums. Outside the hotel were tired grey Russians, groups of youngsters in Levi's, girls in heavy makeup.

Greg made a phone call. To his astonishment there, suddenly, at the end of the phone, was the legendary spy, Adrian Pym. ‘Do come round, dear boy. Any time will do. I'm not going anywhere.' In Pym's light, rather sardonic voice he heard the tone and accent he sometimes caught in Bruno's speech. Like the clothes in an old photograph, those voices had the style of their times.

If he had expected to find Adrian Pym in a two-room flat in a tower block miles from the centre of Moscow, up four flights of concrete stairs, he had been mistaken. Somehow Pym had made a deal. He lived a short walk from Greg's hotel. Greg took wide and windy streets under a grey, swirling sky, past the American Express office, with its crowd of hopeful crooks and traders outside, to find
himself opposite a park and outside a big pre-Revolution house in the expensive Patriarch's Ponds area.

He entered the hall, where a man in uniform dozed on a gilt chair, and walked up a handsome staircase to the first floor of the silent building.

He was let in by a thin young man with cropped blond hair, wearing a faded Russian Army uniform and trainers.

‘I've come to see Mr Pym,' Greg said, trying to glance into a rather gloomy interior, from which came the smell of soup. The young soldier nodded, and Greg stepped into a large twilit hall then into a high-ceilinged room where, in near-darkness, Adrian Pym sat. From his window, Greg guessed, he had a pleasant view of the pond, the yellow and white pavilion, trees and bushes.

‘Mr Phillips, welcome,' said Pym. ‘Forgive me for not standing up.' Greg advanced, holding out his hand. The face turned up to him was thin and lined. The hand he shook was limp, wrinkled and cold. Pym was a sick man. He smiled up at Greg from the huge, ornately carved wooden chair in which he sat. A brightly coloured rug was tucked over his knees and a big enamelled stove blasted out heat.

He gestured to the chair opposite him, an upholstered armchair of the kind you might find in any house in Britain or the USA. The hieratic chair in which Pym sat gave him the air of some old, cunning medieval Pope and was, perhaps, for show, Greg reflected. He noted that from where he himself sat he could see a small television set peeping out from under the carved legs of a wooden table. The light from the window was on his own face; Pym was
sitting in shadows. Now Pym clapped his hands and the soldier reappeared. Pym spoke to him in Russian.

‘This is Ivan,' he said. ‘He speaks very little English. He's in the Army but he helps me for pay. The Russian Army's starving, as you'll know. We'll have a drink.' During this speech Ivan left the room and Pym said, ‘As for speaking next to no English, how can one tell? If you have anything confidential to say, wait until he's out of the room.'

It was very quiet. The dark walls, on which paintings hung and two icons, seemed scarcely visible in the gloom. It was as if Pym and Greg were on an island of heat, thrown out by the stove into the vast room.

Ivan returned noiselessly on his trainers with an elaborate metal tray on which stood a bottle of vodka, one of Scotch and a carafe of water. He bent over the low table, which stood in front of the red-hot stove, and placed the tray on it. ‘Hop off, Ivan,' Pym said dismissively, and this Ivan seemed to understand, for he left the room.

‘Good-looking, isn't he? So are you,' Pym said.

Greg, who had previously suspected, uncomfortably, that a factor in Bruno's co-operation with him had been his own youth and good looks, was now embarrassed by the same sensation. Worse, he wondered if Pym wanted anything from him, like some form of sex, in exchange for information.

‘I'm very grateful that you've agreed to talk to me about Sally Bowles, sir,' he began. ‘I'm sure anything you have to say would be enormously useful. I wonder – why have you decided to speak to me?'

‘Well, first,' Pym said, ‘there's no question of recording what I say. I hope you understand that. Do you agree?'

‘I'd have preferred to tape it,' responded Greg. ‘But, of course, if you don't wish me to …'

‘I'm afraid I have to ask you to be searched by Ivan on your way out.'

‘I assure you I'd never tape anything secretly,' Greg said sharply.

‘I don't believe you would. But I must be careful.'

‘I suppose so. I agree,' Greg said. The idea of Ivan searching him was not one he relished, but having got as far as Pym's apartment in Moscow he saw no point in refusing to jump the last fence.

‘Good,' said Pym. ‘Now, will you pour me a Scotch, with just a little water? Make it a large one. And one for yourself, of course.'

As Greg did so, he continued, ‘You ask me why I'm ready to co-operate with you, give you information for your book.' As Greg bent to give the old man his drink Pym gave him a sharp look from his dimming eyes. ‘I want you to do something for me.'

Greg took a step back. ‘What's that, Mr Pym?'

‘I want to come back to England. It's terrible here. Everything's falling apart. My pension is sometimes unpaid. The hospitals are collapsing. Sometimes the doctor doesn't come. I need to go back to Britain.'

‘You tried some years ago, I heard,' said Greg. ‘Perhaps the British administration would be more sympathetic now Communism has gone from Eastern Europe. Have you made a request to them?'

‘It's a bit more complicated than that,' Pym told him. ‘I want you to take a message to a certain person.'

Greg's eyes widened: this man was a fugitive traitor in exile from Britain, officially still subject to trial and even execution there.

Greg turned over the problem in his mind. He knew that he was dealing with a notoriously cunning brain, that Pym was blackmailing him crudely. He was to act as Pym's mouthpiece in return for Pym's co-operation over his book. Greg was not surprised, and on the face of it there was no great harm in it from his point of view. On the other hand he had to recognise that Pym was almost certainly cleverer and more subtle than he was. Was he being led into more trouble than he could imagine? He played for time. ‘I'll do as you ask, Mr Pym,' he said. ‘But couldn't you do it just as well, maybe better, yourself from here?'

‘They won't talk to me, dear boy,' Pym said. ‘I've become a subject they don't want to think about. There are those who got away with it, you see, informing on me, pushing a lot of paper into the kitchen boiler, calling in a network of favours carefully built up over the years. These people want me here and quiet, far, far away.'

‘Aren't you afraid that I'll agree to do what you ask and that after you've talked to me about Sally I'll go back and forget about it?'

‘You won't,' Pym said, giving him a knowing, complicitous look, as if he knew more about Greg than he did himself. ‘No, that'll be all right. I trust you.'

That's great, Greg thought, Adrian Pym, one of the most notorious spies of his generation, the man who had been
the conduit for atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, who had been responsible for sending hundreds, thousands to their deaths, trusted him. Yet, he thought, having given his word, he would probably keep it, as Pym believed. Let's face it, that was the type of person he was, even though he suspected the deal he was keeping would not be the deal he'd thought it was when he bought in. How could it be, when it had been made with this old, experienced spy, a byword for treachery, a name to be mentioned in the same breath along with Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot?

He said, ‘So, Mr Pym, let's say I know what you want me to do and that I'll do it. Will you tell me something about Sally Bowles?' He stood up and refilled Pym's glass.

‘Sally? God knows why anyone would be interested in that ghastly slut. Still, I gather things have changed in the West, with women's rights and all that. Hard to live with, I'd imagine. Well, Sally,' he continued, recalling himself, ‘I remember her from Cambridge, in the early thirties when she was always hanging about. How she came to join us is a mystery. I believe her father had met Briggs's father, in the First World War. Briggs's father was the padre, of course, and the two men wouldn't have known each other well. Of course, the minute Miss Bowles found Briggs, Pym and all the rest of us, Charles Denham, Francis Keene, Geoffrey Forbes and so forth up at Cambridge, she wouldn't go away. We were too fascinating, the
jeunesse dorée
, we were going to do everything, change everything. Handsome, gifted, intelligent – strange, isn't it, how it came out?' He paused, then said, ‘First, she ran away from school to Cambridge. She was sixteen and had no money. Briggs had to rescue her
and return her. She did it again. He found it a nightmare. She latched on to Theo, who was her first lover. After that, there was no stopping her. Theo encouraged her, of course. We kept telling him to get rid of her but he wouldn't. Next thing, he took off for Germany, to work for
The Times
. I don't know if he took her with him or she followed him. She began her career, so-called, as a singer. Even I, though, was never sure whether it was all as innocent as it seemed. Theo was a Communist. I don't know if Sally was ever a Party member.'

This was a statement Greg found hard to believe.

‘Still, who wasn't, duckie, in those days?' Pym said. Then he leaned over the side of his chair and, his hand unsteady, pushed the arm of an old-fashioned record-player. Loud, energetic music filled the room. ‘Prokofiev,' declared Pym. Ivan stole into the room – to listen, perhaps. ‘Sit down!' Pym said autocratically, and Ivan slid down the wall and sat on the floor, his legs in the faded military trousers extended in front of him.

‘We spend many hours together, listening to music,' Pym remarked wearily.

‘Are you tired? Would you like me to go and return tomorrow, perhaps?' Greg offered.

‘No, no, dear boy. Better out than in,' he said. ‘I remember Henley. We all turned out for Theo – whites, boaters, what tarts we were, all for the Party, of course. Ladies in hats and floaty frocks, champagne, champagne, champagne. Green, green grass and tight-bummed oarsmen. I remember Sally there, in a little straw hat, all legs, looking as if she should still have been at school. Perhaps she was.
She was on Theo's arm, the handsome devil. He must have seduced her by then. God – I was in love with him. Funny – I was never in love with anyone else except, perhaps, myself, and in any case I was always drunk, but Theo…' He paused.

Greg remembered Bruno Lowenthal's perception that some of Pym's animosity towards Sally came from his thwarted love for Theo Fitzpatrick. ‘What a day. We were all young, we all believed we were working for a better world – you have to remember that all this sunshine and glamour was set against the background of the depression. There were millions out of work. Still,' he said, ‘what a day! We wouldn't have turned out to queen around like that if Theo hadn't dictated we must improve our social standing, make our mark in circles that mattered. I suppose he'd had instructions.'

‘From the Russians?' asked Greg.

‘Well, it wasn't from the Portuguese,' Pym stated, holding out his glass for more. ‘Hand me one of those cigarettes,' he requested, and Greg, having replenished his glass, took a Marlboro from a packet on the table. He lit it for Pym, who started to cough.

‘I've not long to go,' Pym gasped, when he had finished coughing. ‘Stress that when you talk to them in Britain.'

Greg nodded. ‘Bruno Lowenthal remembers that day at Henley,' he told Pym.

Pym started to speak then began to cough again. Finally he got the words out, ‘That old bugger. Is he still alive? You've been talking to Lowenthal? How astonishing. I first met him in Berlin, after Briggs picked him up. That
was when Theo and Sally were there, him reporting for
The Times
, her singing and dancing in louche cabarets, all working for the Party, so in love. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven,” as the poet remarked about the French Revolution, which was a considerably more successful effort. Christ – Lowenthal. Where is he?'

‘He runs a rather successful antique shop in Portobello Road.'

‘Bloody hell. That was where he elected to go when Briggs turned him out, wasn't it? The last I heard was that he was selling rags and any old iron. I wouldn't believe all he tells you – in fact, if I were you I'd believe very little of it. I'd hate to write a book based on Lowenthal's distorted memories.'