A Spy in the Family

by Alec Waugh

  Once again the long colloquy was interrupted.

  ‘Have you met many men like that?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘All foreigners?’

  ‘Except one. One of them was a Moslem, an Iraqi. I liked him the best.’

  ‘What about the English?’

  ‘I’d rather expected to find one here. I haven’t.’

  They laughed together. Myra found it strange to feel herself so utterly in tune with this foreign girl with whom up till now she had been on such formal terms, and whom she would never, in all human probability, ever see again. ‘With these other men,’ she asked, ‘did you know what they were like before?’

  ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before it started. With the German you said it was a surprise. The second time, did you guess beforehand?’

  ‘There’s a freemasonry about these things. If you have a kink yourself, you recognise it in other people. You’ll find that out. One doesn’t make a mistake very often.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot to learn.’

  ‘You’ll learn it.’

  Again they laughed. It was fun that they could laugh together; that’s what Naomi had said. Don’t be solemn and serious and invoke high heaven. Treat it as light-hearted entertainment.

  ‘Do you know what a partouze is?’ Myra asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Have you ever tried one?’

  ‘Not a strict partouze; a partietrois I have.’

  ‘Is that very different?’

  ‘I think so, yes. A partouze is four people at least; and that’s an orgy. There can’t be any intimacy. With a partieàtrois there is. It’s an added intimacy.’

  ‘Tell me. Do you mean a man and two women, or one woman and two men?’

  ‘In my case it would be two women and one man. It would be only with homosexual men that you’d get one woman and two men; there’d be the kick there of seeing someone you’re attracted to doing things and having things done to him.’

  ‘So you yourself get a kick out of seeing things done to a girl that you’re in love with?’

  ‘Provided it’s by the kind of man that I’ve described, then it would be something that we could share, she and I; it would be an added bond between us. But if it was a man who liked normal things, it wouldn’t be something we could share. Besides, I would feel jealous, I might lose her. She might prefer the things she did with him. I’ll probably lose her anyhow eventually. I don’t want to anticipate that day.’

  ‘I think I see it, but it is a whole new world to me.’

  ‘That’s how it was once with me. It’s involved psychologically. Love comes into it. The need to give, you provide someone with a pleasure that you can’t give yourself. That leads to gratitude. Then there’s the devious attraction of, I won’t say actually corrupting someone, though that perhaps is the word, but of initiating someone into practices that without you they’d never have known. There’s a very definite attraction about that. She’s more yours afterwards. Especially so with that Iraqi, his being a Moslem and dark-skinned.’

  ‘And you introduced him to girls you were in love with?’

  ‘Girls I was having an affair with.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Have you done that with Lena?’

  ‘No,’ she paused. ‘Not yet,’ she added, and they laughed together. I’ll remember every minute of this night, as long as I remember anything, Myra thought.

  9

  Once again, on a Tuesday morning at ten o’clock the telephone bell rang. Myra’s heart sank. She had been expecting this, she had been dreading this. For days on end she would forget that such a person as Montagu Frank existed. Her life was moving happily and smoothly. The nursery was well run; the two new Swedish girls were easy to get on with. They could not have been more different from their predecessors. They each went out with men on separate dates, different men too, as far as she could judge. The children did not seem to miss Anna and Lena in the least. Her marriage was as vivid and vital as it had been tame and routine before. It was hard for her to remember that this shadow was threatening to drift across the sun. For days she would forget. Then suddenly she would remember, I’m on borrowed time.

  She took the call in her bedroom. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Have you any news for me?’

  There it was again, the flat, neutral voice with an accent she could not place.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t yet.’

  ‘Isn’t it nearly time you had?’

  ‘It isn’t as easy as you think.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s easy at all. If it were, my friends and I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to enroll you.’

  ‘How long did it take to enroll me?’

  ‘Rather less time than you might suppose. And I don’t think that your predecessor was any more attractive or more competent than you. But perhaps she was more in a hurry than you are. She wanted to be rid of the whole business. Why not follow her example? You’ll be so much happier when you have got this out of your system, so much more at peace.’

  ‘Suppose I don’t do anything. Suppose I simply say to hell with you. You’ve got your package, you must be content with that.’

  ‘In that case the tapes would go to certain interested persons, and that would be the end of your husband’s Treasury career.’

  ‘Would that do you any good?’

  ‘Not immediately. We should have to regard this particular operation as a loss; but you would provide us with a very useful piece of ammunition. Suppose some other lady was to prove difficult, as you are now. It would be easy to say to her, “You may not yourself remember a very promising young civil servant in the Treasury, but your husband is certain to have heard of him. Victor Trail. Ask your husband what happened to that promising young official and he will say, ‘Now it’s very curious that you should have asked me that. It’s something I’ve always wondered. He resigned and went abroad. I don’t know where; none of us knows why. It’s quite a mystery.’ “ Then I shall be able to tell that lady, “I can solve that mystery for your husband. Mr. Trail’s wife, who was in exactly the same position that you are, found herself dependent on our good services. But she was very foolish, as I am sure, my dear lady, you are not going to be. She would not do what was required of her, so we had no alternative to sending some very injudicious tapes to the people on whose good graces her husband’s career depended.” ‘

  He paused. She said nothing. He went on. ‘So you see if you are foolish, but I am sure that you won’t be, we can make some use out of you, even so. But you aren’t going to be foolish, are you?’

  He’d do it, she thought. He isn’t bluffing. He might even be rather glad to have someone to quote as an example. There was a silence, then he spoke again.

  ‘I wonder if you are setting about this in the right way. Grantie told me that you visited the Bamboo Club, but that isn’t the place to meet the people who can be of use to you. I gather that you realised that yourself. Anyhow you’ve not been back. The people that you’d meet there have no social or business status. They couldn’t do anything that could damage them, or, if they did, it would be so outside the law that you wouldn’t want to be involved in that; you’d be picked up in the Thames with your throat cut. No, no, you want to concentrate on the Establishment. They’re the vulnerable ones. They stand to lose a lot. Thirty years ago you could have operated in a country house, but country houses belong to a closed world today. You may have the entrée to it, but I doubt it. Better to stick to what used to be called Café Society, to the luxury hotels where the big spenders go, the men with expense accounts. You don’t have to go outside England. What’s that place in Kent where James Bond went? The one that’s near the golf courses. Go when the big tournaments are on, and before you know where you are, you’ll have seen the last of this dingy character. Good luck!’

  She stared at the receiver she had replaced. The Royal Sandwich: it was not a ba
d idea. The children needed some sea air. She wouldn’t mind a little change herself. Victor could come down for weekends. The Swedish girls could take alternate weeks off. What was there against it? Nothing that she could see. The family was in funds.

  The Amateur Mixed Doubles were due to start early in September. Both the Bath Club and the Guards had held their meetings earlier. It would be a very social time. The sea water might be too cold for Myra and for Victor, but not for the children. Anyhow there was a heated swimming pool. There was no reason why it should not be a relaxing holiday.

  Myra, the children, and the Swedish girl called Olga arrived in the early afternoon. She had booked a first-floor suite for them. From its terrace she could look over the Channel. She could see the stretch of the links with the white Coast Guards bungalows, and the fairway of the sixteenth green. She could see the port of Ramsgate in the distance. She wished that she had taken up golf at school. There’s plenty of time, she thought, but wondered if there was.

  The front terrace of the hotel faced the eighteenth green. It was crowded by the time she got there, soon after six o’clock.

  The first round of the Amateur Mixed Doubles was being played. She had never followed golf closely, though Victor had. She did not know who was who in the golf world. The buzz of talk around her conveyed very little. She was content to look about her, to absorb the atmosphere of the hotel, its elegance and wealth. Tomorrow she would try to find out who was who. She could relax tonight.

  Suddenly, however, she became aware of a heightened interest around her. There was a murmur of ‘Ah, here they come.’ Then a queried ‘Who’s got the honour?’ As the match had not ended on the seventeenth, was someone dormy, and if so, who? Or was the game still tied?

  From the murmur around her she gathered that this was the key match of the day; two possible winners had drawn each other in the first round. She saw a tall, youngish man, slim and graceful, stand upon the tee. There was a hush of silence. The crack of the club upon the ball, then a murmur as it was seen that the ball had streamed straight down the middle of the fairway. ‘That won’t cause Heather any worry,’ someone said.

  The opponent took his place upon the tee. He was a short, squat man. He was bald and seemed middle-aged. His swing was short, but he appeared to put his full weight into his stroke. His ball too went straight down the middle of the fairway, finishing a few yards behind the first. The two players and their caddies left the tee. The first player had walked to join a rather short, slim, youngish woman, who was wearing green slacks and a yellow, long-sleeved sweater. She had on a cap with a long peak, which gave her a nautical air. They were a handsome couple.

  ‘Who are they?’ Myra asked.

  The man to whom she had spoken looked surprised. ‘Heather Bennett and Gerald Armitage. They won last year, you know. I heard someone say they were one up.’

  Someone who overheard them turned his head. ‘They were one down on the fifteenth green. They won the last two holes.’

  I suppose, Myra thought, I should have heard of them. They’re probably quite famous.

  They had now reached their ball. They stood aside while their opponents played. It was a par four hole, but a wind was blowing, the green was over a hundred and fifty yards away. Most women would have preferred to play short. The green was guarded by an awkward bunker. The woman hesitated. She consulted with her partner and her caddy. She took out a wood from the bag. She was out to reach the green. She was one down and could afford to run a risk. She needed to win this hole. There was silence as she took her stance, silence as she swung her club. The ball rose into the air, white against the blue. It rose and flew, and then just as it was losing height and strength, it seemed to gather power and resist the pull of gravity. It fell to the left of the bunker and rolled to the edge of the green. There was a burst of clapping.

  Heather Bennett walked to her ball. She did not hesitate. She took an iron. Clearly she was going to play short for safety. She had her back to Myra. She was a graceful creature, slim legs, firm, rounded hips, well-covered shoulders. She had an easy swing. She did not appear to be hitting at all hard; there was no sense of effort. The ball rose clear against the sky, straight, straight towards the green, clearly to fall short of it, but well to the right, with a run up to the pin. There was a much smaller burst of clapping. ‘They’ll have to work for their four,’ Myra heard someone say.

  Armitage deliberated behind his ball. He then walked up to the green, looked back from it towards his ball, then returned to it. He took what seemed to be a seven iron from his bag. He wasn’t going to run it up then. He was going to pitch. There was a dead silence once again. He swung, the club cut into the turf, lifting a large divot, the ball rose high. It landed only a few inches from the hole, but it had a heavy back spin on it. It bit the green and checked, trickling to the very rim of the cup. This time there was a real burst of clapping. That was the match all right unless his opponent sank a putt right across the green. He didn’t.

  Armitage and his partner handed their clubs over to the caddies and walked towards the hotel terrace. He was certainly good-looking, in the classic Attic way, with a high forehead, a straight nose, and a firm chin. She was a good match for him, dark where he was blond, pale-skinned, with what Myra had heard described as an appealing pushed-in face. Her figure was firm and trim: the breasts pressing against the sweater. Myra looked again at Armitage. He had the look of a Greek god, yet he had an air of nonchalance, of being at ease with himself, self-confident but not aggressively. She watched him, fascinated.

  As she watched, he turned his head towards her, became aware of her watching him, then checked, surprised, a look of recognition in his face. He seems to know me, Myra thought. I’m certain I don’t know him. I wouldn’t forget anyone like that.

  He stared at her, hesitated, seemed on the point of coming over to her, then thought better of it and went away.

  I must remind him of somebody. Lucky somebody, thought Myra.

  But that was not the case. Within two minutes he was back. ‘Mrs. Victor Trail. I was sure it was you, but I couldn’t be certain. I asked the reception desk. They told me, yes, that you were here alone with your two children and a Swedish nanny. I don’t think we’ve ever met. But I know your husband. As you’re alone, I wonder if you would have a drink with Mrs. Bennett and myself. We’re thirsty after that round. I’ve got a suite. Let’s go to it. I don’t want to be caught up with golf fans in the bar.’

  He had not mentioned his own name. He had assumed that she would know who he was.

  ‘I can’t think how you recognised me,’ she said. ‘I know we’ve never met.’

  ‘I’ve a good memory for faces, where pretty women are concerned. I’ve seen your photograph in the papers, and you were pointed out to me at a party “across a crowded room”. Victor Trail’s a lucky chap, I thought.’

  ‘Do you know Victor well?’

  ‘Not very. We’ve met at wine tastings.’

  ‘What a lot of time Victor does spend at wine tastings.’

  ‘And at Lord’s. I’ve seen him there quite often.’

  All the same she was astonished at being recognised. She was flattered.

  His suite was on the second floor, with the same view as hers, but one room smaller. ‘I bet you pay the earth for it,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you for yours?’

  ‘I don’t pay for anything. Hotels think I have publicity value.’

  ‘Do they set up your bar as well?’ The cocktail cabinet was well stocked with bottles, with glasses and an ice bucket.

  ‘They don’t, but my employers do. I work for a wine firm. As long as I win tournaments they trust me to sell their booze. How long they’ll go on doing it is another matter.’

  ‘As long as you go on winning tournaments, of course.’ This interpolation came from Heather Bennett. She was stretched out in a long chair with a long, cool drink beside her.

  ‘From the way I was playing today, I shan’t be doing that much
longer.’

  ‘I didn’t see anything wrong with your play today.’

  ‘I saw your last two shots,’ said Myra. ‘They couldn’t have been better.’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with that final one, but there were a number in the middle that were …’ He paused. He raised his glass. ‘It’s very nice to be meeting you, Mrs. Trail. ‘I’ve wanted to for quite a while. They told me at the desk that you were booked in for two weeks, so that should give us several opportunities.’

  ‘When is your next match?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon, at three.’

  ‘Then I’ll gallery the match.’

  He shrugged. ‘Let’s hope we take them as far as the eighteenth green.’

  ‘Now, Gerald, you mustn’t talk like that.’

  ‘I mustn’t, I know, but something’s telling me that this is the last time I’ll ever be your partner in this tournament.’

  ‘You’ll be my partner as long as you can get around that course on crutches.’

  He laughed. ‘That wouldn’t do you any good.’ He turned to Myra. ‘Mrs. Bennett is in her way as much an amateur professional as I am, though I’m sure that you don’t need telling this. She’s games mistress at that great school for young ladies, Annandale. It is as important for Annandale that she should win tournaments as it is for my employers that I should. The trouble is that while Mrs. Bennett is twenty-seven, I am thirty-eight.’

  ‘Thirty-eight’s nothing. You don’t look any different.’

  ‘But I feel different. After thirty-five one year takes as much toll as three did. Something gives. It’s hard to say what it is, but one becomes conscious of it.’

  He spoke lightly, humorously. It did not seem to worry him very much. He had probably a number of irons in the fire. And Mrs. Bennett teased him in an easy, affectionate way. They seemed very much at ease with one another.

  That evening, after dinner, she called Victor.

  ‘I met a friend of yours today. Gerald Armitage.’

  ‘Of course you would. He always plays in that tournament—and I suppose Mrs. Bennett was there as well.’