Friends and Traitors

by John Lawton

  Burgess seemed not to hear the contempt in Nikolai’s voice.

  “No, actually, I was a fully paid-up member of the Communist Party at the time.”

  He looked around, well aware that he had taken centre stage, and, as far as Troy could tell, was loving it. Troy could not deny the charm, even as Burgess was uttering such show-stopping lines—bricks cascading down like demolition. If it weren’t for the fingernails, and the remnants of the soup course down his shirt-front, Troy might even concede that Burgess had style.

  “Such folly,” Nikolai gently stabbed.

  “Quite,” said Burgess. “I resigned last year.”

  “Ah … the visit opened your eyes?”

  “Forgive me, Professor Troitsky, if I say that my eyes weren’t closed. Let us say that I returned with a different perspective. I did not suffer an overnight conversion to become an anti-Soviet.”

  “Nor I. But I have been an anti-Soviet since before the USSR existed.”

  Moura Budberg said something so quietly to Nikolai that Troy did not catch it. All he knew was it was in Russian and sharp of tone.

  His father stepped in.

  “Nikolai, don’t be so hard. Guy has been to Russia, and only a year ago at that. When were any of us last there? I am sure he has things to tell us.”

  Burgess paused for a few seconds as his audience rearranged their thoughts. A quiet moment broken only by the sound of Macmillan clanking his fish knife. Troy was not at all certain Macmillan had been listening, but then the big, sad eyes looked up as though wondering at the gap in the conversation.

  “I came back not so much critical of Russia, that is of the Russian system, as critical of myself, of my own generation. Of all us fellow travellers, if you like. We hitched our wagon to the wrong star. The red star. We fell too readily into the folly, as you put it so aptly, of being starry-eyed utopianists in search of a workers’ paradise, and convinced ourselves that the Soviet Union was that paradise. What my visit to Russia taught me was that it may well be a workers’ paradise. There is much to admire. But it is a paradise only for Russian workers and only in the context of Russian history. It isn’t a model for the West.”

  “Ah,” said Nikolai. “You have seen the future and it doesn’t work.”

  Even Troy’s mother, a woman who could be fiercely humourless when she tried, laughed at this. It was a twentieth-century classic. Lincoln Steffens, the American journalist, had summed up the Soviet Union in a single quotable line after his visit in 1919. But that had been the trend … the exiles could not return, yet Western intellectuals seemed to descend upon the new country in droves, the publicity value of their visits being immeasurable.

  Bernard Shaw, an enthusiast, had visited in 1931 and had vigorously defended the Soviet Union, the Five-Year Plans and the “Workers’ Republic” in the pages of the Manchester Guardian. His odd choice of travelling companion had been the Tory MP Nancy Astor, a less-than-enthusiast who had boasted to Alex Troy that she had told Josef Stalin that Churchill was a spent force in English politics.

  “You’re wrong,” Alex had replied.

  H. G. Wells, lover of the Baroness Budberg, seemed to be in and out of Russia at the drop of a hat … but who among living English writers had been quite so troubled by so many dystopias? G. K. Chesterton’s sister-in-law had written about her “Russian Venture,” and the Labour politician Ethel Snowden had published a book with a title like Across Bolshevik Russia on a Dog Sled on her return. Troy hadn’t read either. He’d been brought up on the old Russia not the new one. A Russia of fading memories, peeling like the pea-green paint on a decaying dacha. His father had fled in 1905, an escape shrouded in mystery and carpeted with diamonds. His uncle and grandfather had stuck it out until 1910, protected from the Tsar’s secret police by the patronage of the most famous writer in the world, Count Leo Tolstoy. With Tolstoy’s death the protection stopped, and Nikolai had brought the old man to England to live out his days without learning a word of English, and to die at ninety—author of a dozen pamphlets on civil disobedience and numberless letters to The Times—without ever seeing Russia again. Troy doubted any of the old ones at table would ever see Russia again. He felt that Burgess had the advantage of him, of them all. Troy was fluent in Russian, but had never been to Russia. Burgess had. Whilst Troy had all but tuned out to muse awhile, he could see that Rod, whose dislike of Burgess was all too apparent, was listening to him intently. He was serving them Russia on a plate, between the fish and the meat, gently oscillating between reservation and endorsement, warning against expecting miracles whilst expecting them himself.

  Troy stopped daydreaming just as Burgess was saying something about encountering a woman on a Moscow tram with a pig under each arm.

  “It’s almost impossible to imagine how close contemporary Russia, in the midst of the most directed and planned society on earth, in its urban capital, is to the nineteenth century and to peasantry.”

  Nikolai was smiling now. He had no difficulty whatsoever in such a feat of imagination. Macmillan was smiling too.

  “I met a chap with an Aberdeen Angus on top of a 38 bus in Bloomsbury once,” he said.

  Troy thought his father and brother might die laughing. Burgess too—well, at least he could laugh at himself. No small virtue.

  §3

  Troy’s mother always liked him to play the piano after dinner. She liked to show him off. Troy’s father always liked him to play the piano after dinner. He liked the Great American Songbook, however indifferent the interpretation.

  Troy was partial to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and had only recently seen them dance their way through The Gay Divorcee, which had taught him some new Cole Porter songs. His repertoire already included “Love for Sale,” “You Do Something to Me,” and half a dozen others, and after rambling through them he settled on a new one, “Night and Day.”

  Much to Troy’s surprise, Burgess pulled up a chair next to the piano stool. Stuck his minute coffee can and his outrageous, bloated brandy balloon, in which he had what looked to be at least a triple shot, on the top of the piano.

  “Do you play, Guy?”

  “I tinkle. I don’t really think I’m much of a pianist. But you are.”

  “I don’t practice enough. Now, before my dad slides over and requests ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ or something just as raucous, do you have any requests?”

  “Not really. I suppose I like the odd music hall song … never quite got to grips with all this American stuff … the odd hymn too, you know, sort of thing we used to sing in school assembly … And of course one can never get enough Haydn or Mozart.”

  “Quite,” said Troy. “But if I belt out Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the nacht will soon be over.”

  And a demon whispered in his ear.

  “Glorious things of thee are spoken …”

  And Burgess joined in with the second line:

  “Zion, city of our God!”

  He had a poor voice, Troy’s was not much better, but as long as the same demon whispered they sang it through to the end.

  Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,

  All his boasted pomp and show;

  Solid joys and lasting treasure,

  None but Zion’s children know.

  And then they both burst out laughing.

  His mother appeared at his side.

  “Quoi, t’es devenu complètement fou? L’hymne national allemand?” Have you gone completely mad? The German national anthem?

  “Maman, it’s also an English hymn. Music by Haydn, words by some long-forgotten English poet. Rod and I used to sing it at that very expensive school you sent us to. Apparently they sang it at Eton too, eh Guy?”

  “S’il te plait, Freddie, joue quelque chose anglais.” Please, Freddie, play something English!

  Then she was gone.

  “Music hall, you said?” Troy asked.

  “Fine by me … if you think it will placate your mother.”

  Troy struck up “My old man said
follow the van …”

  Burgess joined in and they played a version for four hands and two voices:

  My old man said: “Follow the van,

  And don’t dilly-dally on the way.”

  Off went the van wiv me ‘ome packed in it.

  I walked be’ind wiv me old cock linnet.

  But I dillied and dallied,

  Dallied and dillied;

  Lost me way and don’t know where to roam.

  And you can’t trust a “Special”

  Like the old-time copper

  When you can’t find your way home …

  Across the room his mother glowered at him, and his father raised his glass and grinned.

  §4

  It occurred to Troy that Burgess was the kind of bloke who’d never leave a party until physically thrown out.

  Lady Troy was long abed, his father was postmidnight pottering in his study as was his wont, his sisters were in the kitchen giggling their way through the Calvados, he’d no idea where Rod was, and every other guest but Burgess had left at the witching hour. It occurred to Troy that Burgess was probably pissed, but he hardly seemed incapable.

  They sat on the west-facing verandah in the last vestiges of summer warmth. Troy often listened to the foxes and the owls this way, but now he was listening to a man, who whilst certainly not without charm, struck him as an endless blabbermouth.

  “Your brother tells me you’re a copper.”

  “Cadet. Well, almost. I don’t start for a week or so.”

  “Odd choice, if I may say so.”

  “You may. You were a cadet yourself, I hear.”

  “Oh, that was different.”

  Burgess reached down for the brandy decanter and finding it empty set it back down, the silver tag clinking gently on the Waterford crystal. Troy did not offer to fill it up again.

  “That was Dartmouth,” Burgess went on.

  “I know,” Troy said. “There are rumours.”

  “Oh fuck. Is there anyone in England who hasn’t heard? Completely untrue of course. I was not expelled for theft, although I think I’ll probably spend the rest of my life denying it.”

  “What was it?”

  “Oh, I dunno. General dissatisfaction, I suppose. Realising before it was too late that a life in uniform wasn’t for me. I was good at it. Passed everything with flying colours. I shone … that might be the word … I always have … that’s what I do, I pass exams with bugger all effort. I’ve never really failed at anything.”

  There was a long, sigh-soaked pause that Troy would rather not shatter.

  “Which … which is why I find this current feeling so odd. I feel I have not got off the ground since Cambridge. And that tastes remarkably like failure.”

  “When did you leave Cambridge?”

  “Oh, just now. In the spring. I’ve chased a couple of jobs. Eton wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole, and Tory central office passed on a glorious opportunity to hire me. Your father kindly took me on as a reviewer. A couple of other proprietors have been equally generous, and I’ve enough to live on quite comfortably. And I’m not a fussy man. I’m … I’m easily pleased. All I need to be content is wine, books, and the News of the World.”

  Burgess’s own joke set him giggling, a high-pitched whine.

  “Don’t ever let my old man hear you say you like the News of the World,” Troy said.

  Burgess drew breath and continued as though Troy had not spoken.

  “But … but I always thought my life would have taken off by now. And it hasn’t.”

  “Dreams of flying?”

  “We all have them. You too.”

  “Maybe. I turned down Oxford a couple of years ago.”

  “Bloody hell. How old are you?”

  “Twenty next month.”

  “Hmm … you look fifteen.”

  “Usually I’m told I look twelve. Glad to make it into the teens.”

  “And you turned down Oxford?”

  “Open Exhibition, Christ Church.”

  “I bet your old man was furious.”

  “No. He heard me out, then asked what I might be doing next, as he was rich enough to keep me but did not think it good for my soul to be kept without working. I asked for a job on one of his papers and he sent me to the Post as the lowest of the low—court reporter.”

  “Like Dickens?”

  “Giant footsteps to follow in. And that sparked my interest, my taste for crime.”

  “You want to be a beat bobby?”

  “Well, you can’t trust a special like the old-time copper.”

  Burgess giggled.

  “No,” said Troy. “Of course I don’t want to be a beat bobby. I want to be a detective at Scotland Yard. I don’t mind being in uniform, but I’d be a damn sight happier if I had one that fitted. I tried it on just before you got here. I look like a weasel lost in a sack of spuds.”

  “I used to get my Dartmouth cadet togs tailored at Gieves in Old Bond Street. They make uniforms for all our armed forces. Tell you what … if you’re doing nothing Monday morning, meet me there and I’ll introduce you to the old boys who stopped me looking like a weasel in a sack.”

  §5

  Mayfair, London

  They met at Gieves, 21 Old Bond Street, in the heart of what could be termed “a Gentleman’s London,” a little to the left of Savile Row and Cork Street, a little to the north of the Burlington Arcade, a district with more than its share of gold cufflinks, those stretchy things like dog collars that shorten your sleeves, and old school ties … windows full of stripes … Repton, Marlborough, Sherborne, Harrow, Eton. Burgess, Troy observed, wore his old school tie. Troy didn’t. He could happily do without a morning reminder in the mirror of what a hellhole school had been.

  Gieves flaunted no old school ties. They had settled for a window display that was simplicity itself—the dress uniform of a rear admiral, circa 1835, mounted upon a stuffed mannequin, complete with cocked hat, as in “knocked into.”

  Burgess had not been vague in describing the tailors as “old boys.” Mr. Tom looked seventy-five, and Mr. Albert old enough to be his father.

  They measured Troy all over.

  Burgess watched with an appraising eye, though precisely what he might be appraising, Troy was not quite sure. And when it was over, they took his blue-black serge uniform and said softly that it would be ready on Thursday.

  “We don’t have many police officers among our clients, sir, but we are pleased to say that the chief constables of both Hertfordshire and Kent are amongst them.”

  Out in the street Burgess said, “I think they just anointed you.”

  “God, I hope not.”

  “You’re not in any hurry, are you?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “The life of a freelance hack is much like that of the unemployed. There’s never a hurry about anything. Let’s adjourn to the Burlington Arms for a snifter.”

  “Of course,” said Troy, uneasily uncertain of what about him might make a man of twenty-five or so interested in a “boy” of nineteen.

  They stayed in the Burlington on what Troy began to perceive as the Burgess pattern, until chucked out at closing time.

  It was odd to be surrounded by midday boozers. Men, scarcely a woman in sight, who had nothing better to do than drink. Men of undetectable means, men in Savile Row suits, men in raggedy sleeves and elbow patches who’d look more at home on a Hertfordshire cabbage patch—all with the time and means to booze away the day in a fog of cigarette smoke and a hubbub of unrestrained gossip. He knew he didn’t look like one of them, he knew he didn’t look eighteen … but then no one was looking in the first place.

  Burgess asked a thousand questions.

  “Still living at home?”

  “Almost. It’s obligatory to live in at Hendon. But when my training’s done, I’ll be posted somewhere in the Met district, to one division or another, so my mother has picked out a small house just off St. Martin’s Lane for me. It’s central. T
here’s almost nowhere in London I couldn’t get to pretty sharpish.”

  “Any preferences when you are posted?”

  “I’ve asked for J Division. It covers most of the East End. Stepney, Whitechapel, Limehouse, and so on.”

  “Ah … the mean streets.”

  “If you like.”

  “Good luck with that. It sounds like you might have a taste for Chinese opium dens and the odd bit of rough trade.”

  “What’s ‘rough trade’?”

  Burgess giggled, the same high-pitched snort Troy had heard at Mimram … all but choking on his pint of mild.

  “My God, Freddie. Are you really such an innocent?”

  §6

  Church Row, NW3

  It was near four in the afternoon when Troy got back to his father’s town house in Hampstead. He still felt tiddly and hoped it didn’t show. He’d no fondness for beer but had been told that a chap doesn’t let a chap drink alone, so he’d drunk what Burgess drank, and to his detriment.

  Rod and his father were in the old man’s study. Men there were who held their studies to be hallowed ground. Alex was not among them. His room was open to all and sundry, a hub of activity from which he could retreat regardless of what was taking place right under his nose—and while being far from a model of neatness, he always seemed to know where everything was. The walls lined with books of every language the old man spoke, every surface littered with souvenirs of his past lives … the gun with which he claimed to have shot his way out of Russia … the typewriter on which he had recorded Lawrence’s entry into Damascus, the signed copy of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams inscribed “Dream on” … and the art … a life-size bronze copy of Donatello’s David … an original, if small, Van Gogh … a South Seas nude by Gauguin … half a dozen pale Turner watercolours—so pale, so watery you might look in vain for the colour. As a boy Troy had poked around in every corner, he felt he had got to know his father as much by reading the objects in his life as by listening to him. His father was standing behind his desk now … with that look on his face he had when he regretted giving up smoking.