After almost twenty-three years on the job, what conclusions would he draw? He would make two points. The first was the most important. The Cold War was not over, whatever people said, and therefore the cause of cultural freedom remained vital and would always be noble. Although there weren’t many left who held a torch for the Soviet Union, there were still the vast frozen intellectual hinterlands where people lazily adopted neutralist positions – the Soviet Union was no worse than the United States. Such people needed to be confronted. As for the second point, he quoted a remark by his old CIA friend turned broadcaster, Tom Braden, to the effect that the United States was the only country on the planet that didn’t understand that some things work better when they’re small.
This earned an appreciative murmur in the crowded room from our cash-strapped Service.
‘Our own projects have gotten too big, too numerous, too diverse and ambitious and over-funded. We’ve lost discretion, and our message lost its freshness along the way. We’re everywhere and we’ve become the heavy hand, and we’ve created resentment. I know you have your own new thing going here. I wish it luck, but seriously, gentlemen, keep it small.’
Pierre, if that was his name, was not taking questions and as soon as he finished he nodded curtly to the applause and let himself be guided by Peter Nutting towards the door.
As the room emptied, with the less senior automatically holding back, I was dreading the moment when Max turned and caught my eye and came over to tell me we needed to meet. For office reasons, of course. But when I saw his back and large ears among the crowd edging out of the door, I felt a mix of bewilderment and familiar guilt. I had hurt him so badly he couldn’t bear to speak to me. The idea horrified me. As usual, I tried to summon up protective indignation. He was the one who had told me once that women couldn’t keep their personal lives out of their work. Was it my fault that he now preferred me to his fiancée? I pleaded my own case all the way down the concrete stairs – I took them to avoid having to talk to colleagues in the lift – and my case intruded all day around my desk. Did I make a fuss, was I pleading and tearful when Max turned away from me? No. So why shouldn’t I be with Tom? Didn’t I deserve my happiness?
It was a joy two days later to be on the Friday evening train to Brighton, after a separation of almost two weeks. Tom came to the station to meet me. We saw each other as the train slowed, and he ran alongside my carriage, mouthing something I didn’t understand. Nothing in my life had been so sweetly exhilarating as stepping off that train into his embrace. His grip was so tight it knocked the air out of me.
He said into my ear, ‘I’m just beginning to realise how special you are.’
I told him in a whisper that I’d longed for this moment. When we pulled apart he took my bag.
I said, ‘You look different.’
‘I am different!’ He almost shouted it, and he laughed wildly. ‘I’ve got this amazing idea.’
‘Can you tell me?’
‘It’s so weird, Serena.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Let’s go home. Eleven days. Too long!’
So we went to Clifton Street, where the Chablis was waiting in a silver ice bucket which Tom had bought in Asprey’s. It was strange to have ice cubes in January. The wine would have been colder left in the fridge, but who cared? We drank it as we undressed each other. Of course, separation had stoked us, the Chablis fired us up as usual, but neither were sufficient to explain the hour that followed. We were the strangers who knew exactly what to do. Tom had an air of yearning tenderness about him that dissolved me. It was almost like sorrow. It brought out in me such a powerful feeling of protectiveness that I found myself wondering as we lay together on the bed and he kissed my breasts whether I would ask him one day if I should come off the pill. But it wasn’t a baby I wanted, it was him. When I felt and squeezed the small tight roundness of his buttocks and drew him towards me, I thought of him as a child I would possess and cherish and never let out of my sight. It was a feeling I had long ago with Jeremy in Cambridge, but that time I was deceived. Now the sensation of enclosing and possessing him was almost like pain, as though all the best feelings I’d ever had were gathered to an unbearable sharp point.
This was not one of those loud sweaty sessions that follow a separation. A passing voyeur with a view through the bedroom curtains would have peeped at an unadventurous couple in missionary pose, barely making a sound. Our rapture held its breath. We hardly moved for fear of letting go. This particular feeling, that he was now entirely mine and always would be, whether he wanted it or not, was weightless, empty, I could disown it at any point. I felt fearless. He was kissing me lightly and murmuring my name over and over. Perhaps this was the time to tell him, when he couldn’t get away. Tell him now, I kept thinking. Tell him what you do.
But when we came out of our dream, when the rest of the world poured back in on us, and we heard the traffic outside and the sound of a train pulling into Brighton station, and we started thinking about our plans for the rest of the evening, I realised how close I’d been to self-destruction.
We didn’t go to a restaurant that night. Lately the weather had turned mild, to the government’s probable relief and the miners’ irritation. Tom was restless and wanted to walk along the seafront. So we went down West Street and set off along the broad deserted promenade in the direction of Hove, cutting inland to stop in a pub, and at another point to buy fish and chips. Even down by the sea there was no wind. The street lamps were dimmed to save energy, but they still smeared a bilious orange on the thick low cloud. I couldn’t quite say what was different about Tom. He was affectionate enough, gripping my hand to make a point or putting an arm round me and drawing me closer to him. We walked fast and he talked quickly. We swapped Christmases. He described the scene, the terrible parting between his sister and her children, and how she tried to drag her little girl with the prosthetic foot into the car with her. And how Laura wept all the way to Bristol and said terrible things about the family, especially their parents. I recounted the moment when the Bishop embraced me and I cried. Tom made me go through the scene in detail. He wanted to know more about my feelings and how it had been, walking from the station. Was it like being a child again, did I suddenly realise just how much I missed home? How long did it take me to recover and why didn’t I go and talk to my father about it later? I told him I cried because I cried, and I didn’t know why.
We stopped and he kissed me and said I was a hopeless case. When I told him about my night walk around the cathedral close with Lucy and Luke, Tom was disapproving. He wanted me to promise never to smoke cannabis again. This puritan streak surprised me, and though it would have been an easy promise to keep, I simply shrugged. I thought he had no business demanding pledges from me.
I asked him about his new idea but he was evasive. Instead he gave me the news from Bedford Square. Maschler loved From the Somerset Levels and was planning to bring it out by the end of March, a speed record in the publishing world and only possible because the editor was such a force. The idea was to meet the deadline for the Jane Austen Prize for Fiction, easily as prestigious as the new-fangled Booker. The chances of making it onto the shortlist were remote but it appeared that Maschler was telling everyone about his new author, and the fact that the book was being raced into print specially for the judging panel had already been mentioned in newspapers. This was how you got a book talked about. I wondered what Pierre would have to say about the Service funding the author of an anti-capitalist novella. Keep it small. I said nothing and squeezed Tom’s arm.
We sat on a municipal bench, facing out to sea like an old couple. There was supposed to be a waning half-moon, but it had no chance against the heavy lid of tangerine cloud. Tom’s arm was round my shoulder, the English Channel was oily calm and silent, and for the first time in days I felt peaceful too as I shrank against my lover. He said he’d been invited to give a reading in Cambridge at an event for new young writers. He’d be sharing a stage
with Kingsley Amis’s son Martin, who would also be reading from his first novel, which, like Tom’s, would be published this year – and by Maschler too.
‘What I want to do,’ Tom said, ‘I’ll only do with your permission.’ The day after the reading he would travel on by train from Cambridge to my home town in order to talk to my sister. ‘I’m thinking of a character who lives on the margins, scrapes by, but quite successfully, believes in Tarot cards and astrology and that sort of thing, likes drugs, though not to excess, believes a fair number of conspiracy theories. You know, thinks the moon landings were in a studio. And at the same time in other spheres she’s perfectly sensible, a good mother to her little boy, goes on anti-Vietnam war marches, a reliable friend and so on.’
‘It doesn’t quite sound like Lucy,’ I said, and immediately felt ungenerous and wanted to make amends. ‘But she’s very kind really and she’ll like talking to you. One condition. You’re not to talk about me.’
‘Done.’
‘I’ll write and tell her you’re a good friend who’s broke and needs a bed for the night.’
We walked on. Tom had never given a public reading before and he was apprehensive. He was going to read from the very end of his book, the part he was most proud of, the grisly death scene of father and daughter in one another’s arms. I said it would be a shame to give away the plot.
‘Old-fashioned thinking.’
‘Remember, I’m a middle-brow.’
‘The end is already there in the beginning. Serena, there is no plot. It’s a meditation.’
He was also wondering about protocol. Who should go first, Amis or Haley? How did one decide?
‘Amis should. Top of the bill goes last,’ I said loyally.
‘Oh God. If I wake in the night and think about this reading, I can’t sleep.’
‘How about alphabetically?’
‘No, I mean, standing up in front of a crowd, reading stuff people are perfectly capable of reading for themselves. I don’t know what it’s for. It’s giving me night sweats.’
We went down onto the beach so that Tom could hurl stones into the sea. He was strangely energetic. I sensed again his agitation or suppressed excitement. I sat leaning back against a bank of shingle while he kicked the pebbles over, looking for the right weight and shape. He took little runs at the water’s edge and his throw went far out into the light mist, where the soundless splash was a faint patch of white. After ten minutes he came and sat beside me, breathless and sweaty, with a taste of salt in his kisses. The kisses began to get more serious and we were close to forgetting where we were.
He squeezed my face between his palms and said, ‘Listen, whatever happens, you need to know how much I like being with you.’
I was worried. This was the corny sort of thing a cinema hero says to his girl before he goes off to die somewhere.
I said, ‘Whatever happens?’
He was kissing my face, pushing me back against the uncomfortable stones. ‘I mean, I’ll never change my mind. You’re very very special.’
I let myself be reassured. We were fifty yards across the beach from the railed pavement above and it looked like we were about to make love. I wanted it as much as he did.
I said, ‘Not here.’
But he had a plan. He lay on his back and unzipped his fly while I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my tights and knickers and stuffed them into my coat pocket. I sat on him with my skirt and coat spilling around us, and each time I swayed slightly he groaned. We thought we looked innocent enough to any passer-by on the Hove promenade.
‘Keep still a moment,’ he said quickly, ‘or it’ll all be over.’
He looked so beautiful, with his head thrown back and his hair spilling over the stones. We stared into each other’s eyes. We heard the traffic on the seafront road and only occasionally a wavelet tinkling on the shore.
A little later he said in a distant toneless voice, ‘Serena, we can’t let this stop. There’s no way round it, I have to tell you. It’s simple. I love you.’
I tried to say it back to him, but my throat was too constricted and I could only gasp. His words finished us, right there together, with our cries of joy lost to the sound of passing cars. This was the sentence we’d avoided saying. It was too momentous, it marked the line we were wary of crossing, the transition from an enjoyable affair to something weighty and unknown, almost like a burden. It didn’t feel that way now. I brought his face near mine, kissed him and repeated his words. It was easy. Then I turned away from him and knelt on the shingle to rearrange my dress. As I did so, I knew that before this love began to take its course, I would have to tell him about myself. And then the love would end. So I couldn’t tell him. But I had to.
Afterwards we lay with our arms linked, giggling like children in the dark at our secret, at the mischief we had got away with. We laughed at the enormity of the words we had spoken. Everyone else was bound by the rules, and we were free. We’d make love all over the world, our love would be everywhere. We sat up and shared a cigarette. Then we both began to shiver from the cold, and so we headed for home.
19
In February a depression settled over my section of the Service. Small talk was banished, or it banished itself. Wearing dressing gowns or cardigans as well as overcoats, we worked through tea breaks and lunches, as if to atone for our failures. The desk officer, Chas Mount, generally a cheerful, unflappable sort, hurled a file against the wall and another girl and I spent an hour on our knees putting the papers back in order. Our group counted the failure of our men in the field, Spade and Helium, as our own. Perhaps they had been too emphatically briefed on preserving their cover, or they simply knew nothing. Either way, as Mount kept saying in different ways, there was no point in such dangerous and expensive arrangements if we were to have a spectacular atrocity like this on our doorstep. It was not our place to tell him what he already knew, that we were dealing with cells that knew nothing of each other’s existence, that according to a Times leader, we confronted the ‘best organised, most ruthless terrorist outfit in the world’. And even in those days the competition was intense. At other times Mount muttered the ritual curses against the Met and the Royal Ulster Constabulary that among Service people were as common as the Lord’s Prayer. Too many clodhopping coppers with no idea of intelligence gathering or analysis was the drift, though the language was generally stronger.
Our own doorstep in this case was a stretch of the M62 motorway between Huddersfield and Leeds. I heard someone in the office say that if it hadn’t been for the train drivers’ strike the servicemen and their families would not have been travelling on a late-night coach. But trade unionists had killed no one. The 25-pound bomb was in the luggage storage at the rear of the bus and it instantly eradicated an entire family sleeping on the back seats, a serviceman, his wife and their two children aged five and two, scattering their body parts across two hundred yards of road, according to one of the cuttings that Mount insisted on pinning on a noticeboard. He had two children of his own, just a little older, and that was one reason why our section was obliged to take this matter personally. But it still wasn’t clear that the Service was primarily responsible for preventing PIRA terrorism on the mainland. We flattered ourselves by thinking that if it had been, none of this would have happened.
A few days later, the Prime Minister, exasperated, bloated by an undiagnosed thyroid condition, plainly exhausted, addressed the nation on TV to explain that he was calling a snap election. Edward Heath needed a fresh mandate and told us that the question facing us all was – who governs Britain? Was it our elected representatives, or a small handful of extremists in the National Union of Mineworkers? The country knew the real question was would it be Heath again or Wilson again? A Prime Minister crushed by events, or the Leader of the Opposition, who, according to rumours that even we girls heard, was showing signs of mental illness? An ‘unpopularity contest’, one wag wrote in an opinion column. The three-day week was well into its second month.
It was too cold, too dark, we were too gloomy to think clearly about democratic accountability.
My immediate concern was that I couldn’t go to Brighton that weekend because Tom was in Cambridge, and then travelling on to see my sister. He didn’t want me to come to hear him read. It would ‘destroy’ him to know that I was in the audience. I had a letter from him the following Monday. I lingered over the salutation – My darling one. He said he was glad I hadn’t been there. The event had been a disaster. Martin Amis was pleasant, and perfectly indifferent on the question of the running order. So Tom took top billing and let Martin go first as the warm-up act. A mistake. Amis read from his novel called The Rachel Papers. It was obscene, cruel and very funny – so funny that he had to pause now and then to let the audience recover. When he was done and Tom came out on stage to take his turn, the applause kept on and on, and Tom had to turn back into the darkness of the wings. People were still groaning and wiping their eyes as he finally made it to the lectern to introduce ‘my three thousand words of buboes, pus and death’. During his reading some of the audience left, even before father and daughter had slipped into unconsciousness. People probably needed to catch last trains, but Tom found his confidence undermined, his voice became thin, he stumbled over simple words, missed out a line and had to go back. He felt the whole room resenting him for undoing the merriment. The audience applauded at the end because they were glad the torment was over. Afterwards in the bar, he congratulated Amis, who did not return the compliment. Instead he bought Tom a triple scotch.