"Loyalty to women is a load of junk," Larry declares as he pokes out his coated tongue and studies its reflection. "How can I be responsible for a woman's feelings when I'm not responsible for my own?" He flops into an armchair. Why does even his clumsiest movement have such a careless grace? "With women, the only way to find out what's enough is to do too much," he announces, and practically tells me to write that down for posterity.
I try not to think critically of Larry at times like this. My job is to cosy him along, accommodate his moods, talk up his courage, ride his insults, and come up smiling every time.
"Tim?"
"Yes, Emma."
"I need to know."
"Whatever you like," I say generously, and close my book. One of her women's novels, and I am finding it hard going.
We are in the breakfast room, a circular pepper pot stuck onto the southeast corner of the house by Uncle Bob. The morning sun makes it a pleasant place to sit. Emma is standing in the doorway. Ever since she went alone to Larry's lecture, I have scarcely seen her.
"It's a lie, isn't it?" she says.
Drawing her gently into the room, I close the door so that Mrs. Benbow cannot overhear us. "What's a lie?"
"You are. You don't exist. You made me go to bed with someone who wasn't there." "You mean Larry?"
"I mean you! Not Larry. You! Why should you think I've been to bed with Larry? You!"
Because you have, I think. But by now, in order to hide her face from me, she is embracing me. I look down and am surprised to see my right hand operating on its own initiative, patting her back and bestowing comfort on her because I have misunderstood her cover story. And it occurs to me that when there's nothing useful left for you to do on the whole of God's earth, patting someone's back is as good a way to pass the time as any. She is choking and sobbing against me, she is blurting Larry, Tim, and accusing me in preference to accusing herself, though much of what she is saying is mercifully lost in my shirtfront. I catch the word façade, or perhaps it is charade. And the word fiction, but it could have been friction.
Meanwhile I am doing a good deal of thinking about who is ultimately to blame for this scene and others like it. For in the world where Larry and I did our growing up, it would be quite wrong to suppose that merely because the right hand is bestowing consolation, the left is not considering covert action of its own.
And still she can't leave me. Sometimes in the depth of night she creeps into my room like a thief and makes love to me without saying a word. Then creeps away, leaving her tears on my pillow before the daylight finds her out. A week goes by with scarcely a nod passing between us while each inhabits his separate space. The only sound from her side of the house is the tap-tapping of her typewriter: Dear Friend, Dear Supporter, Dear God, get me out of here, but how? She telephones, but I have no idea who she speaks to, though I guess. Occasionally Larry telephones, and if I take the call I am all sweetness and so is he, as befits two spies at war.
"Hi, Timbo. How's tricks?"
There is only one trick I can think of, and he has played it. But who cares when we are such good friends?
"Very chirpy, thanks. Just fine. It's for you, darling. From Mission Control," I say, passing the call through to her on the internal exchange.
Next day I instruct the exchange to disconnect my telephone, but still she neither runs nor stays.
"Just for information, how will I know when you've left me?" I ask her one night when we meet like ghosts on the landing between our two sides.
"I'll have taken my piano stool with me," she replies.
She means the fold-up stool for her back that she brought to the house on the day she moved in with me. A friendly Swedish osteopath made it for her; how friendly I may only guess.
"And I'll give you the jewellery back," she adds severely. And I see in her face a glance of angry panic, as if she has misspoken and is cursing herself for doing so.
She means the ever growing collection of costly trinkets that I have been buying her from Mr. Appleby of Wells in order to fill gaps in our relationship that can't be filled.
The next day being Sunday, it is required practice that I go to church. When I return, there are the marks of the departed piano stool in the carpet in front of the Bechstein. But she has not left the jewellery behind. And such is the madness of deceived lovers that the absence of her jewellery provides me with a certain forlorn hope—though never enough to weaken the resolve of my left hand.
I lay dressed on my bed, my reading light switched on. I lay to my side of it—my pillows, my half. Try her; my tempter whispered. But sanity prevailed, and instead of lifting the receiver, I reached down and pulled the jack from the wall, sparing myself the humiliation of being passed yet again from one slack-mouthed cutout to another:
"Emma's not here, I'm afraid, Tim, no. . .. Better try Lucy....”
“Hang on, Tim, Luce is playing in Paris. Try Sarah....”
“Hey, Deb, it's Tim; what's Sarah's number these days?" But Sarah, if she can be found, knows no better than anyone else where Emma is. "Maybe at John-and-Gerry's, Tim, only they've gone to the rave. Or try Pat, she'll know."
But Pat's phone gives only a high-pitched wail, so perhaps she's gone to the rave as well.
The village clock chimed six. But in my mind's eye I was watching the two policemen's faces floating in the fish-eye lens. And somewhere behind them, Larry's face, drowned and swollen like their own, staring up at me from the moonlit water of Priddy Pool.
THREE
A SUBVERSIVE AFTERNOON rain made grubby curtains across the Thames as I huddled under my umbrella on the south side of the Embankment and contemplated my former service's new headquarters. I had caught the mid-morning train and lunched at my club, at a single table by the food lift, set aside for the discomfort of country members. Afterwards I had bought a couple of shirts in Jermyn Street and was wearing one of them now. But nothing could console me for the sight of the appalling building that rose before me. Larry, I thought, if Bath University is the Lubyanka, how about this?
I had had fun fighting world Bolshevism from Berkeley Square. To sit at my desk charting the unstoppable progress of the great proletarian revolution and in the evening to step onto the golden pavements of capitalist Mayfair, with their scented ladies of the night, glittering hotels, and whispering Rolls-Royce cars—the irony never failed to put a spring into my tread. But this—this sullen multistorey blockhouse, rooted amid tearing traffic, all-night cafes, and down-at-heel clothing shops: whom did it think it was scaring or protecting with its scowl?
Grasping my umbrella, I set off across the road. Already the first glum lights had appeared in the net-curtained windows: chrome chandeliers and cut-price desk lamps for the upper levels, neon for the unwashed lower down. A breeze-block chicane led to the front door. Unsmiling young acolytes in chauffeurs' suits hovered at a temporary reception desk of plywood. Cranmer, I said, as I handed over my umbrella and the shirtmakers' pretty box inside its carrier bag:
I'm expected. But I had to empty my pockets of keys and loose change before the metal detectors would accept me.
"Tim! Fab! Long time no see! How's the world been using you? Pretty good, man, judging by what I see, pretty bloody good! Hey, listen, have you remembered your passport?"
All this as Andreas Munslow pumped my hand, clapped me on the shoulder, snatched a slip of pink paper from the acolyte, signed for me, and gave it back.
"Hullo, Andy," I said.
Munslow had served as a probationer with my section until I abruptly had him moved elsewhere. And I'd sack you again tomorrow, I told him cheerfully in my mind as we processed down the passage, chatting like old buddies reunited.
The door was marked H/IS. In Berkeley Square, no such post had existed. The anteroom was furnished in plastic rosewood. In Berkeley Square we had rather gone for chintz. A notice said PRESS BELL, AWAIT GREEN. Munslow glanced at his deep-sea-diver's watch and muttered, "Bit early." We sat down without pressing bell.
"I'd have thought Merriman would have wangled himself something on the top deck," I said.
"Yeah, well, you see, Jake thought he'd turn you straight over to the people who handle this stuff, Tim, catch up with you later kind of thing."
"What stuff?"
"Well, you know. Post-Sov. New Era."
I wondered what was new era about an ex-agent disappearing.
"So what does is stand for? Inquisitors' Section? Imminent Sackings?"
"Best ask Marjorie that one, actually, Tim."
"Marjorie?"
"I'm not totally versed, know what I mean?" He made a show of brightening. "Hey, great to see you. Really super. Not a day older, all that."
"You too, Andy. You haven't changed a bit."
"If I could just have that passport, actually, Tim."
I gave it to him. Time went by.
"So how's life in the Office these days?" I asked.
"Tim, the overall feeling is good. It's a great place to be. Really hopping."
"I'm glad."
"And you're making wine, Tim. Right?"
"I tread a few grapes."
"Great. Fabulous. They say British wine is really up and running."
"Do they indeed? How very nice of them. Unfortunately, there's no such thing. There's English wine. There's Welsh wine. Mine's inferior English, but we're studying to improve."
I remembered that he had a hide like a horse, for he seemed quite unmoved.
"Hey, how's Diana? The queen of vetting, they used to call her, back in the old days. Still do. That's quite a compliment."
"She's well, I hope, thank you, Andy. But we've been divorced these seven years."
"Oh, Christ, sorry about that."
"Well, don't be. I'm not. Neither is Diana."
He pressed bell and sat down again while we awaited green.
"Hey, listen, how's the back?" he asked in another spurt of inspiration.
"Thank you for remembering, Andy. Not a murmur since I left the Service, I'm proud to say."
It was a lie, but Munslow was one of those people with whom you do not want to share the truth, which was why I wouldn't have him in my section.
Pew, she said. As in church. Marjorie Pew.
She had a good handshake and a straight gaze, grey-green and slightly visionary. She wore pale face powder of a translucent quality. She was dressed in broad-shouldered navy blue, with the white stock at her throat that I associate with women banisters, and a gold fob-chain round it which I guessed had been her father's. She had a young figure and a very English carriage. Bending from the hip and holding out her hand to me, she lifted her elbow sideways, suggesting country girl and public school. Her brown hair was cropped like a boy's.
"Tim," she said. "Everyone calls you Tim, so I shall too. I'm Marjorie with an i-e. Nobody calls me Marge."
Not twice they don't, I thought as I sat down.
No rings on her fingers, I noticed. No framed photographs of hubby ruffling the spaniel's ears. No gap-toothed ten-year-olds on a camping holiday in Tuscany. Would I like tea or coffee? Coffee, please, Marjorie. She lifted a telephone and ordered it. She was used to giving orders. No papers, pens, toys, or tape recorder. Or none visible.
"So shall we take it from the top?" she suggested. "Why not?" I said, equally hospitably.
She listened to me the way Emma listens to music, motionless, sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning, never quite at the places I expected. She had the judicious superiority of a psychiatrist. She made no notes and waited till I had finished before asking her first question. I was fluent. Part of me had been rehearsing my act all day and probably all night. The arrival of a half-forgotten colleague distracted me not at all. The door opened—a different door from the one I'd come in by—and a well-dressed man set a coffee tray between us, winked at me, and said Jake would be along in a minute, the FO was in a flap. With a start of pleasure, I recognised Barney Waldon, king of the Office's police liaison team. If you were mounting a domestic burglary or planning a small kidnapping or your daughter had been caught, drugged out of her mind, racing her souped-up Mini round the M25 at three in the morning, Barney was the one who made sure the Might of the Law was on your side. I felt a little safer for his presence.
Marjorie had placed her hands primly below her chin. While I spoke she observed me with a saintly concern that put me on my guard. I omitted all mention of Emma, I made light of changing my telephone number—vague talk of misrouted computer calls making one's life utter hell—and I confessed I had rather welcomed the chance of a respite from late-night drunken conversations with Larry. I made a rueful joke of it: something about anyone who shoulders the burden of Larry's friendship becoming an instant expert in the arts of self-protection. It won a watery smile from her. Perhaps I should have been more frank with the police, I said, but I was concerned not to appear close to Larry in case they drew the wrong conclusions—or the right ones.
Then I sat back in my chair in order to show her I had told her the whole truth and nothing but. I exchanged a friendly glance with Barney.
"Tough one," he said.
"A bit uncalled for," I agreed. "But typical Larry.”
“You bet."
Then we both looked at Marjorie with an i-e, who had not spoken. She was staring at a spot on her desk as if she had something to read there. But she hadn't. I noticed two doors behind her, one to each side. It occurred to me that this was not her room but an anteroom, and that real life was lived elsewhere. I had a feeling we were being listened to. But in the Office you have that feeling anyway.
"Forgive me, Tim. Didn't it cross your mind to tell the police to come back later, and phone us immediately? Instead of simply opening your doors to them?" she asked, still studying the desk.
"I had a choice—as in any operational situation," I explained, perhaps a trifle patronisingly. "I could have sent them packing and phoned you, which would have sounded their alarm bells. Or I could play it as it lay, normally. Just a normal police enquiry about a normal missing friend. That's how I played it."