‘Tell me,’ said Woodford. They were by the door. ‘Do you remember a fellow called Leiser? Fred Leiser, a Pole? Used to be with our lot. He was in the Holland show.’
‘Still alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry,’ said the Major vaguely. ‘The foreigners have stopped coming; I don’t know why. I don’t discuss it with the boys.’
Closing the door behind him, Woodford stepped into the London night. He looked about him, loving all he saw – the mother city in his rugged care. He walked slowly, an old athlete on an old track.
8
Avery, on the other hand, walked fast. He was afraid. There is no terror so consistent, so elusive to describe, as that which haunts a spy in a strange country. The glance of a taxi driver, the density of people in the street, the variety of official uniform – was he a policeman or a postman? – the obscurity of custom and language, and the very noises which comprised the world into which Avery had moved contributed to a state of constant anxiety, which, like a nervous pain, became virulent now that he was alone. In the shortest time his spirit ranged between panic and cringing love, responding with unnatural gratitude to a kind glance or word. It was part of an effeminate dependence upon those whom he deceived. Avery needed desperately to win from the uncaring faces around him the absolution of a trusting smile. It was no help that he told himself: you do them no harm, you are their protector. He moved among them like a hunted man in search of rest and food.
He took a cab to the hotel and asked for a room with a bath. They gave him the register to sign. He had actually put his pen to the page when he saw, not ten lines above, done in a laborious hand, the name Malherbe, broken in the middle as if the writer could not spell it. His eye followed the entry along the line: Address, London; Profession, Major (retired); Destination, London. His last vanity, Avery thought, a false profession, a false rank, but little English Taylor had stolen a moment’s glory. Why not Colonel? Or Admiral? Why not give himself a peerage and an address in Park Lane? Even when he dreamt, Taylor had known his limits.
The concierge said, ‘The valet will take your luggage.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Avery, a meaningless apology, and signed his name, while the man watched him curiously.
He gave the valet a coin and it occurred to him as he did so that he had given him eight and six. He closed the bedroom door. For a while he sat on his bed. It was a carefully planned room but bleak and without sympathy. On the door was a notice in several languages warning against the perils of theft, and by the bed another which explained the financial disadvantages of failing to breakfast in the hotel. There was a magazine about travel on the writing-desk, and a Bible bound in black. There was a small bathroom, very clean, and a built-in wardrobe with one coat-hanger. He had forgotten to bring a book. He had not anticipated having to endure leisure.
He was cold and hungry. He thought he would have a bath. He ran it and undressed. He was about to get into the water when he remembered Taylor’s letters in his pocket. He put on a dressing-gown, sat on the bed and looked through them. One from his bank about an overdraft, one from his mother, one from a friend which began Dear Old Wilf, the rest from a woman. He was suddenly frightened of the letters: they were evidence. They could compromise him. He determined to burn them all. There was a second basin in the bedroom. He put all the papers into it and held a match to them. He had read somewhere that was the thing to do. There was a membership card for the Alias Club made out in Taylor’s name so he burnt that too, then broke up the ash with his fingers and turned on the water; it rose swiftly. The plug was a built-in metal affair operated by a lever between the taps. The sodden ash was packed beneath it. The basin was blocked.
He looked for some instrument to probe under the lip of the plug. He tried his fountain pen but it was too fat, so he fetched the nail file. After repeated attempts he persuaded the ash into the outlet. The water ran away, revealing a heavy brown stain on the enamel. He rubbed it, first with his hand then with the scrubbing brush, but it wouldn’t go. Enamel didn’t stain like that, there must have been some quality in the paper, tar or something. He went into the bathroom, looking vainly for a detergent.
As he re-entered his bedroom he became aware that it was filled with the smell of charred paper. He went quickly to the window and opened it. A blast of freezing wind swept over his naked limbs. He was gathering the dressing-gown more closely about him when there was a knock on the door. Paralysed with fear, he stared at the door handle, heard another knock, called, watched the handle turn. It was the man from Reception.
‘Mr Avery?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry. We need your passport. For the police.’
‘Police?’
‘It’s the customary procedure.’
Avery had backed against the basin. The curtains were flapping wildly beside the open window.
‘May I close the window?’ the man asked.
‘I wasn’t well. I wanted some fresh air.’
He found his passport and handed it over. As he did so, he saw the man’s gaze fixed upon the basin, on the brown mark and the small flakes which still clung to the sides.
He wished as never before that he was back in England.
The row of villas which lines Western Avenue is like a row of pink graves in a field of grey; an architectural image of middle age. Their uniformity is the discipline of growing old, of dying without violence and living without success. They are houses which have got the better of their occupants, whom they change at will, and do not change themselves. Furniture vans glide respectfully among them like hearses, discreetly removing the dead and introducing the living. Now and then some tenant will raise his hand, expending pots of paint on the woodwork or labour on the garden, but his efforts no more alter the house than flowers a hospital ward, and the grass will grow its own way, like grass on a grave.
Haldane dismissed the car and turned off the road towards South Park Gardens, a crescent five minutes from the Avenue. A school, a post office, four shops and a bank. He stooped a little as he walked; a black briefcase hung from his thin hand. He made his way quietly along the pavement; the tower of a modern church rose above the houses; a clock struck seven. A grocer’s on the corner, new façade, self-service. He looked at the name: Smethwick. Inside, a youngish man in a brown overall was completing a pyramid of cereal foods. Haldane rapped on the glass. The man shook his head and added a packet to the pyramid. He knocked again, sharply. The grocer came to the door.
‘I’m not allowed to sell you anything,’ he shouted, ‘so it’s no good knocking, is it?’ He noticed the briefcase and asked, ‘Are you a rep, then?’
Haldane put his hand in his inside pocket and held something to the window – a card in a Cellophane wrapper like a season ticket. The grocer stared at it. Slowly he turned the key.
‘I want a word with you in private,’ Haldane said, stepping inside.
‘I’ve never seen one of those,’ the grocer observed uneasily. ‘I suppose it’s all right.’
‘It’s quite all right. A security inquiry. Someone called Leiser, a Pole. I understand he worked here long ago.’
‘I’ll have to call my Dad,’ the grocer said. ‘I was only a kid then.’
‘I see,’ said Haldane, as if he disliked youth.
It was nearly midnight when Avery rang Leclerc. He answered straight away. Avery could imagine him sitting up in the steel bed, the Air Force blankets thrown back, his small, alert face anxious for the news.
‘It’s John,’ he said cautiously.
‘Yes, yes, I know who you are.’ He sounded cross that Avery had mentioned his name.
‘The deal’s off I’m afraid. They’re not interested … negative. You’d better tell the man I saw; the little, fat man … tell him we shan’t need the services of his friend here.’
‘I see. Never mind.’ He sounded utterly uninterested.
Avery didn’t know what to say; he just didn’t know. He needed desperately to g
o on talking to Leclerc. He wanted to tell him about Sutherland’s contempt and the passport that wasn’t right. ‘The people here, the people I’m negotiating with, are rather worried about the whole deal.’
He waited.
He wanted to call him by his name but he had no name for him. They did not use ‘Mister’ in the Department; the elder men addressed one another by their surnames and called the juniors by their Christian names. There was no established style of addressing one’s superior. So he said, ‘Are you still there?’ and Leclerc replied, ‘Of course. Who’s worried? What’s gone wrong?’ Avery thought: I could have called him ‘Director’, but that would have been insecure.
‘The representative here, the man who looks after our interests … he’s found out about the deal,’ he said. ‘He seems to have guessed.’
‘You stressed it was highly confidential?’
‘Yes, of course.’ How could he ever explain about Sutherland?
‘Good. We don’t want any trouble with the Foreign Office just now.’ In an altered tone Leclerc continued, ‘Things are going very well over here, John, very well. When do you get back?’
‘I’ve got to cope with the … with bringing our friend home. There are a lot of formalities. It’s not as easy as you’d think.’
‘When will you be finished?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘I’ll send a car to meet you at Heathrow. A lot’s happened in the last few hours; a lot of improvements. We need you badly.’ Leclerc added, throwing him a coin, ‘And well done, John, well done indeed.’
‘All right.’
He expected to sleep heavily that night, but after what might have been an hour he woke, alert and watchful. He looked at his watch; it was ten past one. Getting out of bed he went to the window and looked on to the snow-covered landscape, marked by the darker lines of the road which led to the airport; he thought he could discern the little rise where Taylor had died.
He was desolate and afraid. His mind was obsessed by confused visions: Taylor’s dreadful face, the face he so nearly saw, drained of blood, wide-eyed as if communicating a crucial discovery; Leclerc’s voice, filled with vulnerable optimism; the fat policeman, staring at him in envy, as if he were something he could not afford to buy. He realised he was a person who did not take easily to solitude. Solitude saddened him, made him sentimental. He found himself thinking, for the first time since he had left the flat that morning, of Sarah and Anthony. Tears came suddenly to his tired eyes when he recalled his boy, the steel-rimmed spectacles like tiny irons; he wanted to hear his voice, he wanted Sarah, and the familiarity of his home. Perhaps he could telephone the flat, speak to her mother, ask after her. But what if she were ill? He had suffered enough pain that day, he had given enough of his energy, fear and invention. He had lived a nightmare: he could not be expected to ring her now. He went back to bed.
Try as he might, he could not sleep. His eyelids were hot and heavy, his body deeply tired, but still he could not sleep. A wind rose, rattling the double windows; now he was too hot, now too cold. Once he dozed, only to be woken violently from his uneasy rest by the sound of crying, it might have been in the next room, it might have been Anthony, or it might have been – since he did not hear it properly, but only half knew in waking what kind of a sound it had been – the metallic sobbing of a child’s doll.
And once, it was shortly before dawn, he heard a footfall outside his room, a single tread in the corridor, not imagined but real, and he lay in chill terror waiting for the handle of his door to turn or the peremptory knocking of Inspector Peersen’s men. As he strained his ears he swore he detected the faintest rustle of clothing, the subdued intake of human breath, like a tiny sigh; then silence. Though he listened for minutes on end, he heard nothing more.
Putting on the light, he went to the chair, felt in his jacket for his fountain pen. It was by the basin. From his briefcase he took a leather holdall which Sarah had given him.
Settling himself at the flimsy table in front of the window, he began writing a love letter to a girl, it might have been to Carol. When at last morning came, he destroyed it, tearing it into small pieces and flushing them down the lavatory. As he did so he caught sight of something white on the floor. It was a photograph of Taylor’s child carrying a doll; she was wearing glasses, the kind Anthony wore. It must have been among his papers. He thought of destroying it but somehow he couldn’t. He slipped it into his pocket.
9
Homecoming
Leclerc was waiting at Heathrow as Avery knew he would be, standing on tiptoe, peering anxiously between the heads of the waiting crowd. He had squared the customs somehow, he must have got the Ministry to do it, and when he saw Avery he came forward into the hall and guided him in a managing way as if he were used to being spared formalities. This is the life we lead, Avery thought; the same airport with different names; the same hurried, guilty meetings; we live outside the walls of the town, black friars from a dark house in Lambeth. He was desperately tired. He wanted Sarah. He wanted to say sorry, make it up with her, get a new job, try again, play with Anthony more. He felt ashamed.
‘I’ll just make a telephone call. Sarah wasn’t too well when I left.’
‘Do it from the office,’ Leclerc said. ‘Do you mind? I have a meeting with Haldane in an hour.’ Thinking he detected a false note in Leclerc’s voice, Avery looked at him suspiciously, but the other’s eyes were turned away towards the black Humber standing in the privilege car park. Leclerc let the driver open the door for him; a silly muddle took place until Avery sat on his left as protocol apparently demanded. The driver seemed tired of waiting. There was no partition between him and themselves.
‘This is a change,’ Avery said, indicating the car.
Leclerc nodded in a familiar way as if the acquisition were no longer new. ‘How are things?’ he asked, his mind elsewhere.
‘All right. There’s nothing the matter, is there? With Sarah, I mean.’
‘Why should there be?’
‘Blackfriars Road?’ the driver inquired, without turning his head, as a sense of respect might have indicated.
‘Headquarters, yes, please.’
‘There was a hell of a mess in Finland,’ Avery observed brutally. ‘Our friend’s papers … Malherbe’s … weren’t in order. The Foreign Office had cancelled his passport.’
‘Malherbe? Ah yes. You mean Taylor. We know all about that. It’s all right now. Just the usual jealousy. Control is rather upset about it, as a matter of fact. He sent round to apologise. We’ve a lot of people on our side now, John, you’ve no idea. You’re going to be very useful, John; you’re the only one who’s seen it on the ground.’ Seen what? Avery wondered. They were together again. The same intensity, the same physical unease, the same absences. As Leclerc turned to him Avery thought for one sickening moment he was going to put a hand on his knee. ‘You’re tired, John, I can tell. I know how it feels. Never mind – you’re back with us now. Listen, I’ve good news for you. The Ministry’s woken up to us in a big way. We’re to form a special operational unit to mount the next phase.’
‘Next phase?’
‘Of course. The man I mentioned to you. We can’t leave things as they are. We’re clarifiers, John, not simply collators. I’ve revived Special Section; do you know what that is?’
‘Haldane ran it during the war; training …’
Leclerc interrupted quickly for the driver’s sake: ‘… training the travelling salesmen. And he’s going to run it again now. I’ve decided you’re to work with him. You’re the two best brains I’ve got.’ A sideways glance.
Leclerc had altered. There was a new quality to his bearing, something more than optimism or hope. When Avery had seen him last he had seemed to be living against adversity; now he had a freshness about him, a purpose, which was either new or very old.
‘And Haldane accepted?’
‘I told you. He’s working night and day. You forget, Adrian’s a professional. A real technic
ian. Old heads are the best for a job like this. With one or two young heads among them.’
Avery said, ‘I want to talk to you about the whole operation … about Finland. I’ll come to your office after I’ve rung Sarah.’
‘Come straight away, then I can put you in the picture.’
‘I’ll phone Sarah first.’
Again Avery had the unreasonable feeling that Leclerc was trying to keep him from communicating with Sarah.
‘She is all right, isn’t she?’
‘So far as I know. Why do you ask?’ Leclerc went on, charming him: ‘Glad to be back, John?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He sank back into the cushions of the car. Leclerc, noticing his hostility, abandoned him for a time; Avery turned his attention to the road and the pink, healthy villas drifting past in the light rain.
Leclerc was talking again, his committee voice. ‘I want you to start straight away. Tomorrow if you can. We’ve got your room ready. There’s a lot to be done. This man: Haldane has him in play. We should hear something when we get home. From now on you’re Adrian’s creature. I trust that pleases you. Our masters have agreed to provide you with a special Ministry pass. The same kind of thing that they have in the Circus.’
Avery was familiar with Leclerc’s habit of speech; there were times when he resorted entirely to oblique allusion, offering a raw material which the consumer, not the purveyor, must refine.
‘I want to talk to you about the whole thing. When I’ve rung Sarah.’
‘That’s right,’ Leclerc replied nicely. ‘Come and talk to me about it. Why not come now?’ He looked at Avery, offering his whole face; a thing without depth, a moon with one side. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said generously, ‘I hope you’ll keep it up.’ They entered London. ‘We’re getting some help from the Circus,’ he added. ‘They seem to be quite willing. They don’t know the whole picture of course. The Minister was very firm on that point.’