London Match (38 page)

She sat up in bed and switched on the dim bedside light. She was wearing a black chiffon nightdress. Her pale blonde hair was long enough to touch her shoulders. 'Did you go on?'

'No, I didn't "go on", if you mean to a nightclub or fancy-dress party.'

'You don't have to snap at me.' There was enough light for me to see the neat way in which she'd folded her clothes before going to bed. It was a bad sign; such fastidious attention to detail was often a sign of her suppressed bad temper.

'Do you think I like spending the evening with Dicky?' I said.

'Then why stay so late?'

'He'd rented a video. I couldn't leave before it had finished.'

'Did you have dinner there?'

'Supper; a sandwich and a cup of soup.'

'I ate with the children. Doris cooked a meat pie.'

'I wish you'd call her "Nanny",' I said. The nanny was young and I wanted to keep my distance from her. 'She'll start calling me "Bernard" next.'

'You should have told me before. I can't suddenly change now,' said Gloria. 'She'd think she'd upset me or something.' Her hair was falling over her face; she pushed it back with her hand and held her hand to her head as if posing. 'So it wasn't business?'

'Of course it was business. I told you that Dicky insisted that I bring the first draft of my report with me.'

'Who else was there?'

I sat down on the bed. 'Look, darling. If I'd mentioned you, Dicky would have included you in the invitation. We both know that. But didn't we agree that it's better to keep a low profile. We don't want everyone in the office talking.'

'That depends what they're saying,' said Gloria, who felt that we should be together every minute of our free time and especially resented being left alone for any part of the weekends.

I leaned forward and embraced her tightly and kissed her.

'What did you talk about?' she said.

'Bret is in trouble,' I said.

'With the Department?'

'Dicky is the last of the big-time wishful thinkers. But even allowing for Dicky's exaggeration, Bret is facing the music for everything that's gone wrong with the Stinnes debriefing. Now they're going to start saying it's all been done on Moscow's orders.'

'It's Bret's own fault, darling. He thought it was all so easy. You said that yourself.'

'Yes, he's brought it on himself, but now they're going to heap everything they can think of on him. Whether he's KGB or not, they'll make him the scapegoat.'

'Scapegoat's not the word,' she said. 'Scapegoats were released into the wilderness. You mean Bret will be delivered to MI5 as the person who's been usurping all their powers and functions. Not so much a scapegoat as a hostage. Am I right?'

'Perhaps consolation prize is-the expression we're looking for,' I said bitterly. I'd seen too many severed heads delivered to the Home Office under similar circumstances to be optimistic about Bret's fate. 'Anyway, Bret is probably going to face more serious charges than that,' I said.

She looked at me quizzically and said, 'He's a KGB mole?'

'I don't know.'

'But that will be the charge?'

'It's too early for charges. Maybe there won't be any. No one's told me anything, but there's been some sort of top-level meeting about Bret. Everyone is beginning to think he's working for Moscow. Dicky seems to have told Daphne. She thought I'd already been told, so she gave the game away.'

'What a bombshell when the newspapers get the story,' said Gloria.

I kissed her again, but she didn't respond.

'They should be shot,' she said. 'Traitors. Bastards.' She didn't raise her voice, but her body stiffened in anger and the depth of her feeling surprised me.

'It's all part of the game.'

'No, it's not. People like Rensselaer are murderers. To appease their social conscience they'll turn over men and women to the torture chambers. What swine they are!'

'Perhaps they do what they think is right,' I said. I didn't exactly believe it but that was the only way I could do my job. I couldn't start thinking I was part of a struggle of good against evil or freedom against tyranny. The only way I could work was to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the job and do it as well as I could do it.

'Then why don't they go to Russia? They know it's not the kind of world we want or we'd have voted the Communists into power long ago. Why don't they just go to Russia?'

'Well, why don't they?' I said.

'They want to have their cake and eat it. They're always rich and well educated, aren't they? They want their privileged status in a rich West while they're appeasing their guilt about enjoying it.'

'Are you talking about Bret?' I said. I stood up. 'Or are you talking about my wife?'

'I'm talking about traitors,' she said.

I went over to the wardrobe and opened it. Somewhere there was a tweed suit that I hadn't worn for years. I sorted through the clothes until I found it hung inside a plastic bag — Fiona put all my suits into plastic bags — and then I felt through the pockets. 'I suspected Bret of having an affair with my wife. Did I ever tell you about that?'

'If you're looking for cigarettes, I threw them all out.'

'I suddenly remembered leaving a packet in that tweed suit,' I said. The suit brought back memories. The last time I'd worn it I'd been to a horse show with Fiona and my father-in-law. It was a time when I was working very hard at being nice to him. He'd won a prize for jumping over fences, and he took us all to a fancy restaurant on the river near Marlow. I ran out of cigarettes and my father-in-law wouldn't let me pay cash for some more; he insisted they be added to his dinner bill. The incident stuck in my mind because it was in the restaurant that I first heard that he'd set up trust funds for the children. He hadn't told me, and Fiona hadn't told me either. Worse still, he'd told the children but told them not to tell me.

'Yes, I threw them out. If there are cigarettes in the house, you'll start smoking again, you know that. You don't want to, do you?'

I closed the wardrobe door and abandoned the notion of a cigarette. She was right; I didn't want to start smoking again, but given my present level of stress I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to resist the temptation.

'You have to have someone to look after you,' she said in a conciliatory tone.

'Once, I was certain that Bret was having an affair with Fiona. I hated him. My hatred for him influenced everything I thought, said, and did.' My need for a cigarette had abated. Even if I'd found a carton on my pillow, I wouldn't have bothered to open it. 'It was only with great effort that I could listen to anything that was said about him without reprocessing it and distorting it. Now I've got that feeling under control. I don't even care if they
did
have an affair. I can look at Bret Rensselaer with a clear mind. When I tell you I don't know whether he's guilty, I mean exactly that.'

'Jealousy, you mean. You were jealous of Bret Rensselaer because he's rich and successful and maybe had an affair with your wife.'

'Yes,' I said.

'That's natural enough, Bernard. Why shouldn't you be angry and prejudiced? Why should you be impartial to any man who treats you badly?'

'Are you going to tell me why?'

'Because you like to play God, Bernard. You killed two men the other night in the launderette. You didn't gloss over it. You told me. You told Dicky. I have no doubt it's in your report, with you taking unequivocal responsibility for their deaths. You're not an insensitive brute, you're not a thug or a killer. The only way you can cope with the guilt you suffer over those deaths is by convincing yourself that you observe the world around you with total objectivity. That's playing God, darling. And it's not the way to assuage your guilt. Admit that you're fallible, accept the fact that you're only human, admit that if Bret goes to the Old Bailey, you'll be delighted to see him get his comeuppance.'

'But I won't be delighted. Not even a wronged husband wants to see the other man in the Old Bailey. And in Bret's case, I have no real evidence. As far as I know, Fiona was never unfaithful to me.'

'If you don't hate him for betraying you, then hate him for selling out to the Communists. In that sort of hatred I'll join you.'

'Your father was one of our agents, wasn't he?'

'How did you find out?'

'I just guessed. There always has to be some special reason for the daughter of a foreign national to get into the Department.'

'My uncle and my father . . . the secret police took my uncle away. They killed him in the police station. They were looking for my father.'

'You don't have to talk about it,' I said.

'I don't mind talking about it. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of both of them. My father is a dentist. London sent him dental charts — it was part of his regular correspondence with other dentists — and he used the dental charts to identify agents. The dental surgery was a perfect cover for messages to be passed, and the secret police never succeeded in infiltrating the organization. But all the agents had met my father. That was the big disadvantage — everyone in every cell knew my father. The police finally got his name from someone they picked up photographing the frontier. He talked. They made a mistake and arrested my uncle because he had the same name. He managed to keep silent until my father and mother got away. I hate the Communists, Bernard.'

'I'm going to have a drink,' I said. I took off my jacket and tie and kicked off my shoes. 'Whisky. Would you like one?'

'No thanks, darling.'

I went into my study and poured myself a stiff drink. When I got back to the bedroom, Gloria had combed her hair and plumped up the pillows. I went on undressing. I said, 'Dicky is having an affair with Tessa, and Daphne's found out about them.'

'She told you that?'

'A friend of hers saw them in a hotel.'

'There are always wonderful friends who'll bring you bad news.'

'It's difficult, isn't it? You become a party to a secret and suddenly you have a terrible responsibility. Whatever you do is likely to be wrong.'

'You're talking about that Cabinet memo, aren't you?'

'Perhaps I am.'

'You did nothing,' she said.

'It looks as though I didn't have to. The Department knows about Bret. Daphne actually mentioned the Cabinet memo.'

'What does she want you to do?'

'Daphne? She wants to talk to George. She says she's going to name Tessa in a divorce action.'

'Is she serious?'

'You tell me.'

'That would ruin Dicky's career, wouldn't it?'

'It depends. If it looked like becoming the messy sort of divorce that got into the newspapers, then the Department would get rid of Dicky very quickly.'

'Does Daphne know that?'

'She's very bitter.'

'She's put up with a lot.'

'Has she?'

'You told me that Dicky was constantly unfaithful to her.'

'Did I?'

'Of course you did. And everyone in the office has noticed the way he's been dandying up on certain evenings. And his wife is always phoning asking where he is.'

'Everyone knows that?'

'All the girls know.'

'Does his secretary talk about it?'

'You mustn't ask me questions like that, darling. I can't be the office stool pigeon.'

'I don't like the idea of a secretary who talks about her boss. It's a short step from that to official secrets . . . .'

'Don't be pompous, darling. Dicky gives her a rotten time. I think she's wonderfully loyal under the circumstances.'

I don't know whether Bret Rensselaer was officially ordered to keep away from Erich Stinnes or even discouraged from doing so, but obviously someone from the Department had to keep in touch with him. Had he been left at Berwick House and neglected, there was always the chance that London Debriefing Centre would encourage the Home Office to take him over.

When Stinnes suddenly stopped talking to the interrogator, the matter became urgent. I was sent to talk with Stinnes. There was a note initialled by Bret waiting on my desk. I don't know who chose me for the job, but I suppose there weren't many on the shortlist of suitable visitors.