“I was wondering whether you had any news of Arnold.”
“Arnold?—ah, the mysterious Dr Bluhm. Not a murmur, I’m afraid. We must fear the worst,” she said, without revealing what the worst might be. “Still, he’s not a British subject, is he?”—cheering up—“we must let the good Belgians look after their own.”
Her room was two floors high, with gilded friezes and black wartime radiators and a balcony overlooking very private gardens. There were two armchairs and Alison Landsbury kept a cardigan over the back of hers so that you didn’t sit in it by mistake. There was coffee in a thermos so that their tryst need not be interrupted. There was the mysteriously thick atmosphere of other bodies just departed. Four years Minister in Brussels, three years Defence Counsellor in Washington, Justin rehearsed, quoting from the form book. Three more back in London on attachment to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Appointed Head of Personnel six months ago. Our only recorded communications: one letter suggesting I trim my wife’s wings—ignored. One fax ordering me not to visit my own house—too late. He wondered what Alison’s house was like, and awarded her a red-brick mansion flat behind Harrod’s, handy for her bridge club at weekends. She was wiry and fifty-six and dressed in black for Tessa. She wore a man’s signet ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Justin assumed it was her father’s. A photograph on the wall showed her driving off at Moor Park. Another—somewhat ill-advisedly, in Justin’s view—had her shaking hands with Helmut Kohl. Soon you’ll get your women’s college and be Dame Alison, he thought.
“I’ve spent the whole morning thinking of all the things I won’t say to you,” she began, projecting her voice to the back of the hall for the benefit of latecomers. “And all the things we simply mustn’t agree on yet. I’m not going to ask you how you see your future. Or tell you how we see it. We’re all far too upset,” she ended, with didactic satisfaction. “By the way, I’m a Madeira cake. Don’t expect me to be multi-layered. I’m the same wherever you slice me.”
She had set a laptop on the table in front of her, and it could have been Tessa’s. As she spoke she prodded at the screen with a grey baton hooked at the end like a crochet needle. “There are some things I must tell you, and I’ll do that straight away.” Prod. “Ah. Indefinite sick leave is the first thing. Indefinite because obviously it’s subject to medical reports. Sick because you’re in trauma, whether you know it or not.” So there. Prod. “And we do counselling, and I’m afraid that with experience we’re getting rather good at it.” Sad smile and another prod. “Dr Shand. Emily outside will give you Dr Shand’s coordonnées. You’ve got a provisional appointment tomorrow at eleven, but change it if you need to. Harley Street, where else? Do you mind a woman?”
“Not at all,” Justin replied hospitably.
“Where are you staying?”
“At our house. My house. In Chelsea. Will be.”
She frowned. “But that isn’t the family house?”
“Tessa’s family.”
“Ah. But your father has a house in Lord North Street. Rather a beautiful one, I remember.”
“He sold it before he died.”
“Do you intend remaining in Chelsea?”
“At present.”
“Then Emily outside should have the coordonnées of that house as well, please.”
Back to the screen. Was she reading from it or hiding in it?
“Dr Shand isn’t a one-night stand, she’s a course. She counsels individuals, she counsels groups. And she encourages interaction between patients with similar problems. Where security permits, obviously.” Prod. “And if it’s a priest you’d like, instead of or as well, we have representatives of every denomination who’ve been cleared for most things so just ask. Our view here is, give anything a chance, provided it’s secure. If Dr Shand doesn’t fit, come back and we’ll look for someone who does.”
Perhaps you also do acupuncture, thought Justin. But elsewhere in his head he was wondering why she was offering him security-cleared confessors when he had no secrets to confess.
“Ah. Now would you like a haven, Justin?” Prod.
“I’m sorry?”
“A quiet-house.” The emphasis on quiet, like greenhouse. “An away-from-it-all until the hue and cry dies down. Where you can be totally anonymous, recover your balance, take long country walks, pop up to London to see us when we need you or vice versa, pop back again. Because it’s on offer. Not wholly free of charge in your case, but heavily subsidised by HMG. Discuss with Dr Shand before deciding?”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Prod. “You’ve suffered an awful amount of humiliation in public. How has this affected you, to your knowledge?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t been in public very much. You had me hidden away, if you remember.”
“All the same you suffered it. Nobody likes to be portrayed as a deceived husband, nobody likes to have their sexuality raked over in the press. Anyway, you don’t hate us. You don’t feel angry or resentful or demeaned. You’re not about to take revenge. You’re surviving. Of course you are. You’re old Office.”
Uncertain whether this was a question, a complaint or merely a definition of durability, Justin let it alone, fixing his attention instead on a doomed peach-coloured begonia in a pot too close to the wartime radiator.
“I seem to have a memo here from the pay people. Do you want all this now or is it too much?” She gave it to him anyway. “We’re keeping you on full pay of course. Married allowances, I’m afraid, discontinued, effective from the day you became single. These are nettles one has to grasp, Justin, and in my experience they’re best grasped now and accepted. And the usual return-to-UK cushioning allowances pending a decision about your eventual destination, but again obviously at single rates. Now Justin, is that enough?”
“Enough money?”
“Enough information for you to function for the time being.”
“Why? Is there more?”
She put down her baton and turned her gaze full on him. Years ago, Justin had had the temerity to complain at a grand store in Piccadilly, and had faced the same frigid managerial stare.
“Not as yet, Justin. Not that we’re aware of. We live on tenterhooks. Bluhm’s not accounted for, and the whole grisly press story will run and run until the case is cleared up one way or the other. And you’re having lunch with the Pellegrin.”
“Yes.”
“Well, he’s awfully good. You’ve been steadfast, Justin, you’ve shown grace under pressure and it’s been noted. You’ve suffered appalling strain, I’m sure. Not only after Tessa’s death but before it. We should have been firmer and brought you both home while there was time. Erring on the side of tolerance looks in retrospect very like the easy way out, I’m afraid.” Prod, and scrutinise screen with growing disapproval. “And you’ve given no press interviews, have you? Not talked at all, on or off the record?”
“Only to the police.”
She let this go. “And you won’t. Obviously. Don’t even say ‘no comment.’ In your state, you’re perfectly entitled to put the phone down on them.”
“I’m sure that won’t be hard.”
Prod. Pause. Study screen again. Study Justin. Return eyes to screen. “And you’ve no papers or materials that belong to us? That are—how shall I say it?—our intellectual property? You’ve been asked, but I’m to ask you again in case something has come up, or comes up in the future. Has anything come up?”
“Of Tessa’s?”
“I’m referring to her extramarital activities.” She took her time before defining what these might be. And while she did so, it dawned on Justin, a little late perhaps, that Tessa was some kind of monstrous insult to her, a disgrace to their schools and class and sex and country and the Service she had defiled; and that by extension Justin was the Trojan horse who had smuggled her into the citadel. “I’m thinking of any research papers she may have acquired, legitimately or otherwise, in the course of her investigations or whatever she called
them,” she added with frank distaste.
“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Justin complained.
“Neither do we. And really it’s very hard for us here to understand how she ever got into this position in the first place.” Suddenly the anger that had been simmering was forcing its way out of her. She hadn’t meant it to, he was sure; she had gone to great lengths to contain it. But it had evidently slipped from her control. “It’s really quite extraordinary, looking at what’s since come to light, that Tessa was ever allowed to become that person. Porter has been an excellent Head of Mission in his way but I can’t help feeling he must share a good deal of the blame for this.”
“For what exactly?”
Her dead stop took him by surprise. It was as if she had hit the buffers. She came to a halt, her eyes firmly on her screen. She held the crochet needle at the ready, but made no move with it. She laid it softly on the table as if grounding her rifle at a military funeral.
“Yes, well, Porter,” she conceded. But he had made no point for her to concede.
“What’s happened to him?” Justin asked.
“I think it’s absolutely marvellous the way the two of them sacrificed everything for that poor child.”
“I do too. But what have they sacrificed now?”
She seemed to share his bewilderment. To need him as an ally, if only while she was denigrating Porter Coleridge. “Terribly, terribly hard, in this job, Justin, to know where to put one’s foot down. One wants to treat people as individuals, one longs to be able to fit each person’s circumstances into the general picture.” But if Justin thought she was tempering her assault on Porter, he was dead wrong. She was simply reloading. “But Porter—we have to face it—was on the spot and we weren’t. We can’t act if we’re kept in the dark. It’s no good asking us to pick up the pieces ex post facto if we haven’t been informed a priori. Is it?”
“I suppose not.”
“And if Porter was too starry-eyed, too tied up with his awful family problems—nobody disputes that—to see what was developing under his nose—the Bluhm thing and so on, I’m sorry—he had an absolutely first-class lieutenant in Sandy, with a very safe pair of hands, at his elbow, any time, to spell it out for him in words a foot high. Which Sandy did. Ad nauseam, one gathers. But to no effect. So I mean it’s perfectly clear that the child—obviously—the poor girl—Rosie or whatever its name is—claims all their out-of-hours attention. Which isn’t necessarily what one appoints a High Commissioner for. Is it?”
Justin made a meek face, indicating his sympathy with her dilemma.
“I’m not prying, Justin. I’m asking you. How is it possible— how was it possible—forget Porter for a moment—for your wife to engage in a range of activities of which, by your account, you knew nothing? All right. She was a modern woman. Jolly good luck to her. She led her life, she had her relationships.” Pointed silence. “I’m not suggesting you should have restrained her, that would be sexist. I’m asking you how, in reality, you remained totally ignorant of her activities—her enquiries—her—how shall I put it? I’d like to say meddling, actually.”
“We had an arrangement,” Justin said.
“Of course you did. Equal and parallel lives. But in the same house, Justin! Are you really saying she told you nothing, showed you nothing, shared nothing? I find that awfully hard to believe.”
“I do too,” Justin agreed. “But I’m afraid it’s what happens when you put your head in the sand.”
Prod. “So now did you share her computer?”
“Did I what?”
“The question is perfectly clear. Did you share, or otherwise have access to, Tessa’s laptop computer? You may not know it, but she addressed some very strong documents to the Office, among others. Raising grave allegations about certain people. Accusing them of awful things. Making trouble of a potentially very damaging kind.”
“Potentially damaging to whom, actually, Alison?” Justin asked, delicately fishing for any free gifts of information she might care to bestow.
“It’s not a matter of whom, Justin,” she replied severely. “It’s whether you have Tessa’s laptop computer in your possession and, if not, where is it, physically at this moment in time and what does it contain?”
“We never shared it, is the answer to your first question. It was hers and hers alone. I wouldn’t even know how to get into it.”
“Never mind getting into it. You have it in your possession, that’s the main thing. Scotland Yard asked you for it, but you, very wisely and loyally, concluded that it was better in the Office’s hands than theirs. We’re grateful for that. It’s been noted.”
It was a statement, it was a binary question. Tick box A for yes I have it, box B for no I haven’t. It was an order and a challenge. And, judging by her crystal stare, it was a threat.
“And disks, obviously,” she added while she waited. “She was an efficient woman, which makes it all so odd, a lawyer. She’s sure to have made copies of whatever was important to her. In the circumstances these disks also constitute a breach of security and we’d like them as well, please.”
“There aren’t any disks. Weren’t.”
“Of course there were. How can she have run a computer without keeping disks?”
“I looked high and low. There weren’t any.”
“How very bizarre.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“So I think the best thing you can do, Justin, on reflection, is bring everything you’ve got into the Office as soon as you’ve unpacked it, and let us handle it from then on. To spare you the pain and the responsibility. Yes? We can do a deal. Anything that isn’t relevant to our concerns belongs to you exclusively. We’ll print it out, and give it to you, and nobody here will read it or evaluate it or commit it to memory in any way. Shall we send somebody with you now? Would that help? Yes?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure you want a second person? You should be. A sympathetic colleague of your own grade? Someone you can trust entirely? Now are you sure?”
“It was Tessa’s, you see. She bought it, she used it.”
“So?”
“So I’m not sure you should be asking me to do that. Give you her property to be plundered just because she’s dead.” Feeling sleepy, he closed his eyes a moment, then shook his head to wake himself. “Anyway, it’s not an issue, is it?”
“Why not, pray?”
“Because I haven’t got it.” He stood up, taking himself by surprise, but he needed a stretch and some fresh air. “The Kenyan police probably stole it. They steal most things. Thank you, Alison. You’ve been very kind.”
Recovering the Gladstone from the head janitor took a little longer than was natural.
“Sorry to be premature,” Justin said while he waited.
“You’re not premature at all, sir,” the head janitor retorted, and flushed.
“Justin, my dear fellow!”
Justin had started to give his name to the club porter at the door, but Pellegrin was ahead of him, pounding down the steps to claim him, smiling his decent chap’s smile and calling out, “He’s mine, Jimmy, shove his bag in your glory-hole and put him down to me,” before grasping Justin’s hand and flinging his other arm round Justin’s shoulders in a powerful un-English gesture of friendship and commiseration.
“You’re up to this, are you?” he asked confidingly, first making sure no one was within earshot. “We can take a walk in the park if you’d rather. Or do it another time. Just say.”
“I’m fine, Bernard. Really.”
“The Beast of Landsbury didn’t wear you out?”
“Not a bit.”
“I’ve booked us in the dining room. There’s a bar lunch, but it’s eat off your crotch and a lot of ex-Office wrinklies moaning about Suez. Need a pee?”
The dining room was a risen catafalque with painted cherubs posturing in a ceiling of blue sky. Pellegrin’s chosen place of worship was a corner she
ltered by a polished granite pillar and a sad dracaena palm. Round them sat the timeless Whitehall brethren in chemical grey suits and school haircuts. This was my world, Justin explained to her. When I married you, I was still one of them.
“Let’s get rid of the hard work first,” Pellegrin proposed masterfully, when a West Indian waiter in a mauve dinner jacket had handed them menus shaped like ping-pong bats. And that was tactful of Pellegrin and typical of his decent chap’s image, because by studying menus they were able to settle to each other and avoid eye contact. “Flight bearable?”
“Very, thank you. They upgraded me.”
“Marvellous, marvellous, marvellous girl, Justin,” Pellegrin murmured, over the parapet of his ping-pong bat. “Enough said.”
“Thank you, Bernard.”
“Great spirit, great guts. Bugger the rest. Meat or fish?—not a Monday—what have you been eating out there?”
Justin had known Bernard Pellegrin in snatches for most of his career. He had followed Bernard in Ottawa and they had briefly coincided in Beirut. In London they had attended a hostage survival course together and shared such gems as how to establish that you are being pursued by a group of armed thugs not afraid to die; how to preserve your dignity when they blindfold you and bind you hand and foot with sticky plaster and sling you into the boot of their Mercedes; and the best way to jump out of an upper-storey window if you can’t use the stairs, but presumably have your feet free.
“All journalists are shits,” Pellegrin declared confidently, still from inside his menu. “Know what I’m going to do one day? Doorstep the buggers. Do what they did to you, but do it back to ’em. Rent a mob, picket the editor of the Grauniad and the Screws of the World while they’re having it away with their floozies. Photograph their kids going to school. Ask their wives what their old men are like in bed. Show the shits what it feels like to be at the receiving end. Did you want to take a machine-gun to the lot of ’em?”