by John Lawton
McNeil had had enough. He hadn’t joined in the laughter. Rod had told Troy that McNeil had privately expressed relief when Burgess had transferred to the Far Eastern section of the FO. How relieved must he now be to have him out of the country altogether? Troy doubted McNeil would stay a moment longer, and resolved to leave when he did in the interests of discretion. His mind was made up. If this really did turn into an orgy he wanted no part of it.
A few minutes later he sought out Burgess and made his farewells.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “We’ve been at peace with the USA since 1814 or thereabouts.”
“You think I can fuck it up all on my own?”
“Surprise me, Guy.”
Walking home, Troy found relief mixing with alarm. The Burgess cocktail—stirred not shaken, since Guy managed to stir up everything he touched. Relief, that he might be free of the social quagmire that Burgess pulled him into every so often, a world that was over-sexed, loud, careless rather than carefree, and constantly striving to outrage. Alarm that World War III might be just around the corner and that Burgess might be the blue touch paper.
He parted from McNeil at the next corner. They said goodnight, and Troy could not for the life of him recall that they had exchanged any more words all evening. They had both been out on a limb, and neither wanted to mention it. They had both put up with Burgess for years out of a mixture of affection and apprehension, and neither wanted to mention that either.
Troy wondered if this time he really had seen the last of Burgess.
§19
It was scarcely even dark. A month after the equinox, to the day. One of those seemingly endless summer evenings that made him want to be out at Mimram, on the verandah, looking westward, all the windows open, a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, Tommy Beecham turned up loud … “Summer Night on the River” … “A Song of Summer” … not stuck in London.
He sat an hour watching the light vanish, undecided. It was Friday night. He could just drive out. Nothing to stop him. Or he could stay and get up at dawn. Drive north on empty roads. His car keys were not in the drawer of the hall stand. He picked up the Macintosh he’d worn in that day’s brief morning shower, the one he’d just walked home in. The keys were in the left-hand pocket, but his black policeman’s notebook wasn’t.
He thought back to where the coat had been hung. On a peg in his office? If it had fallen out he’d surely have noticed. On the bed in Burgess’s bedroom? Oh bugger. He could easily have missed it there. The last thing he wanted was his notebook falling into the hands of one of Burgess’s disreputable friends.
He went in search of it. Across Soho, to Mayfair and Bond Street once more.
The party was winding down. Only stragglers left. Men like Burgess who only left when they were thrown out. Not that Burgess would ever throw anyone out. A dozen men, not a woman in sight, were hunched around the ashtrays, cavemen around a campfire, talking loudly, no one listening to anyone, flicking fag ash everywhere, spilling whisky, nodding off, throwing up.
Burgess was not among them.
“Where’s Guy?” elicited no response.
Troy asked again.
“Fucked if I know. Bedroom mos’ likely.”
That was what Troy had feared.
He tapped lightly on Burgess’s bedroom door. Then he tapped a little louder. Then he eased the door open.
A bedside reading lamp cast its arc halfway across the room. Burgess was stretched out on his back, snoring intermittently, stark naked, half-priapic, the cock just beginning to wilt.
On the floor was the discarded uniform of a Royal Navy commander. Three rings and a loop on the cuffs, a peaked cap with a dash of scrambled-egg braid. Burgess had got lucky, sex with a sailor. Troy’s idea of lucky would be to find his notebook and get out without Burgess waking up.
It was on the floor, half-hidden by a chest of drawers. As he picked it up the pile of bedding next to Burgess moved. The sheets and blankets slipped to the floor in a cotton avalanche. A man he’d never seen before sat bolt upright, as naked as Burgess, and saluted Troy.
“Captain on the bridge!”
He stayed rigid, as though cast in plaster. It occurred to Troy that pissed as he was, naked as he was, the man was at attention, as erect as his cock, waiting for Troy to return his salute.
Troy saluted.
“At ease, commander.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
And with that he fell back on the mattress, cock waving like a hoisted pennant.
§20
Enough was enough. Troy went home, threw a bag in the back of his tatty old Bullnose Morris and drove out to Mimram. Now, he was fairly confident that Burgess was the bad penny in his life. He’d never “see the last of him,” the man would always turn up somewhere—and by and large Troy would not mind, but right now he’d rather have a Beecham than a Burgess.
He wound down the window, blew Old Bond Street, queer London, and Burgess out into the summer night.
§21
London: May 25, 1951
Ted Wilmott was an old-school copper. Or perhaps he was just old. He had been pushing forty when Troy had joined J Division at the Leman Street nick that served Whitechapel and Stepney. He was well-liked, and as he lived in the community handled the occasional—perhaps frequent—arrest of people he knew with aplomb. Aplomb is not the same as discretion and was frequently accompanied with what Ted called “a punch up the bracket.” He was not Troy’s mentor, that had been George Bonham, a gentle giant of a man, lacking Ted’s rumbustious sense of humour, never known to sing on duty, and a man who handled street fights by lifting a combatant in each arm and banging them together like conkers. Troy had not seen Ted—or heard Ted, as he unfailingly did sing on duty, especially “Men of Harlech” and “A Bicycle Made for Two”—for several years.
On May 24, 1951, just after noon, Ted was on point duty at the junction of Sidney Street and the Mile End Road, opposite the Blind Beggar, when a Bedford truck loaded with first early potatoes from Jersey ran over him. By one thirty he was on a slab in the morgue of the London Hospital, two hundred yards down the road.
Bonham had called Troy.
“Run over by a lorryload o’ spuds. Would you believe it? A bloke as larger than life as Ted.”
Troy could not help but wonder if Ted had been singing at the time, and what he might have been singing.
“Perhaps it was the way he might have chosen to go.”
“Eh?”
“Well, he was awfully fond of a bag of chips.”
“Y’know, young Fred, the longer you spend at the Yard, the less I understand you. Talk about iron in the wossermacallit. Funeral looks to be next Tuesday. Gladys Wilmott’ll have her hanky out and be in tears till the first bottle of stout gets popped. Try and find something pleasant to say to her. Oh, and dust off your uniform.”
“Eh?”
“We don’t bury coppers in our civvies. At least not in Stepney we don’t.”
This presented a dilemma. The obligation to attend was inescapable. But Troy could not remember when he had last worn uniform.
At home, in Goodwin’s Court, he found it, at the back of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom. Surprisingly, it fit. But the moths had been at it, and it still bore sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves. He was short an inspector’s pip or two or three on the shoulder.
Bugger.
He’d have to get it fixed.
He needed a tailor rather urgently.
In particular, he needed Gieves and Co. of Bond Street, who’d tailored his cadet’s uniform all those years ago, and who had made this one bespoke for him just before the outbreak of war.
The next day, the twenty-fifth, he left Scotland Yard around half past two and headed for Bond Street.
§22
Mr. Tom and Mr. Albert had long since retired. Mr. Harold served Troy. He too looked to be about seventy-five, as though the firm had an unlimited supply of men of just the right age.
“You don’t think, I
nspector Troy, that perhaps a new uniform might be in order. The moth damage is considerable and when we remove your sergeant’s stripes, there will more than likely be a visible scar.”
“You may well be right. However, I need the uniform by Tuesday morning. A funeral, you see.”
Troy hated the thought of spending money on a uniform he might never wear again. Troy hated the thought of wearing a uniform ever again.
“One moment, Inspector. I’ll have a word in the workroom and see if we can expedite.”
Troy drifted round to the other side of the large glass display case that divided the counter. A stoutish bloke was trying to open the locks on a second-hand suitcase, a case bedecked with exotic labels that might make its owner the envy of all who saw it—Cunard, P&O … Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, Istanbul, Trieste, Venice, Belgrade, Cracow, Moscow—an account of a pre-war, probably pre–Great War grand tour in stick-on labels, the paper triangles and circles of record.
Two loud clicks as the locks and the lid flew open.
The man turned to see who was standing next to him.
Burgess.
“Guy?”
“Troy!”
“Back so soon? Washington didn’t work out?”
Burgess looked sad for a moment and shook it off with a flick of his often errant forelock.
“No. Did not work out in spades, as a matter of fact. My fault, in all probability. What on earth made me think I could live in a nation of prudes? I mean they can’t even bring themselves to say arse … they call your backside an ‘ass.’”
“You didn’t …”
“Of course I did, but not in public. Not in the street. Didn’t want to frighten the Cadillacs. No, I got done for speeding, the epitome of innocence, but enough for the zipped-up buggers at our embassy to send me packing. Can’t say I mind all that much. Got back a couple of weeks ago. Bit of a break. Look for a new job. Overseas back pay. Not exactly broke. Daily Telegraph interested in taking me on. The world might just be my oyster, after all.”
This sounded false. Every word of it.
Gieves’s man approached with a white Macintosh. Held it open while Burgess slipped his arms into the sleeves.
“Whaddya say, Fred?”
“White doesn’t suit you.”
“Except when used in the same sentence as sepulchre.”
“Oh no. I’d never accuse you of that.”
“You’re too kind, sir, too kind.”
“And now you sound like Sydney Greenstreet.”
“Do I? … oh bugger. It would be so good, so rare to sound like me.”
This Troy understood. The false self was a concept he grasped and was quite certain Burgess did too. Oh, the relief in being who you are.
Gieves’s man reappeared.
“Will sir be purchasing the suitcase?”
“Yes, yes, and I think I’ll take the mac too.”
He sloughed it off. Gieves’s man took it away to be wrapped.
“Planning a trip, Guy?”
“Yeeees. S’matter of fact. Chap I met on the Queen Mary coming over. An American. I thought I might show him a few bits of Blighty. Y’know, the North … Scotland … all those bits one never thinks about if at all possible.”
“Do you know Scotland?”
“No. I was thinking of Glen This, Strath That. You know, Scotland … as in … Scotland … as in whisky.”
“So you’re clueless?”
“Pretty much.”
“And you’re not really going to Scotland at all, are you?”
“Nope. But try not to think any the less of me. It would help enormously to know that someone believed in me.”
“If that really bothered you, you could just tell me now. Whatever it is.”
“No, I couldn’t. And if I did, I’d be doing you no favours.”
He reached into the open suitcase, just before the neatly wrapped macintosh was dropped into it.
“Hullo, what’s this? Can’t read a word of it.”
He handed a large, time-faded sheet of paper to Troy.
Отель Метрополь
Театральный проездъ
Москва
12. августa 1908 Γ.
за внимание
Господина Родерикa Cпoдa
$$295
При первой возможности
Съ сердечным уважением Менеджера
ПРОСРОЧЕНО
“It’s a bill from the Hotel Metropol in Moscow. An unpaid one. See … that large red stamp reads ‘overdue.’ Overdue since August 1908.”
“You owe them two hundred ninety-five rubles. The manager sends his compliments, but he’d like you to settle the bill ‘at your earliest convenience.’ All rather understated and English, wouldn’t you say?”
Burgess began to giggle. And the giggle ripped to laughter. For the best part of a minute his mirth seemed uncontrollable.
“Well, fuck me. Story of my life. A trail of unpaid bills and in debt to Moscow before I’ve set a foot outside of London. At my earliest bloody convenience? God, life piles on the little ironies, doesn’t it?”
Out on the pavement, Burgess’s mood seemed to change, the man to sag, as though drained by his own laughter. Troy was about to ask what he was thinking when Burgess said, “Do you ever get out to that Georgian pile your old man had in Hertfordshire? Or did you sell it when he died?”
“No, we never sold it, and probably never will. I get to Mimram most weekends. My mother still lives there. Hearty if not hale.”
“Childhood. Childhood enshrined?”
“If you like.”
“That book. Came out in the war. Can’t remember the title. Something like You Can’t Go Home Again?”
“I think it was called that. Never read it, I’m afraid.”
“I remember a line from it … quite haunting … ‘You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of … something something … back home to exile.’”
Troy said, “I don’t think I understand that. Home, yes. Exile, yes. But back home to exile?”
“Me neither. Till yesterday. I went back to Ascot, to the house my people had until about ten years ago. Never been back before, never much wanted to. But I did. God knows why. Nothing had changed. I think it might have been better if things had. Changes that would rightly rob me of nostalgia and void the maudlin mood in which you find me. But nothing had changed, except my mother doesn’t own it anymore—and so it was home and so it was exile.”
“I still don’t get it,” Troy said.
“Oh, I’ll send you a postcard,” Burgess replied, a faint smile returning to his face.
They parted on the pavement, quite close to Burgess’s flat. Burgess, ever the one to be “going on somewhere,” did not ask him in, did not suggest a local pub. That in itself struck Troy as odd. But everything about Guy was odd—his abiding characteristic was to be odd. The cryptic hints, or the lack of hints, about where he might be going and with whom weren’t worth a moment’s thought. There was almost always a lover involved and Troy had long ago learnt that some were secret and some were not. And try as he might he could make nothing of “try not to think any the less of me” and “back home to exile.” So he didn’t.
II
Burgess & Maclean
Burgess and Maclean must have felt, as they worked out their long stint of treason, that they were proving themselves much better adapted to their time than any saint or hero could have been.
—Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason, 1965
§23
London: Twenty Minutes Later
Burgess dumped the suitcase in his flat and walked over to the Courtauld Institute in Portman Square on the far side of Oxford Street. Blunt was in his office, facing south-west, summer sun streaming in. He was viewing slides—just holding them up to the beam of light betwee
n thumb and forefinger, the image screened across his face in vivid blues and reds.
“Titian,” he said simply as Burgess entered.
“Well, we all like a bit of Titian now and again,” said Burgess, hardening the second T.
Blunt looked grumpy and set the slide back in its tray.
“I do hope you haven’t come with a problem, Guy? You did buy the tickets, didn’t you?”
“Of course I bloody did. I did everything you told me. Rented the sodding car. Even bought a suitcase. Just came over to … to say … goodbye.”
“Goodbye?”
“Can’t a chap say goodbye to his oldest friend?”
“You’re only going away for the weekend.”
Blunt paused, pushed the box of slides away, and stood up, head and shoulders taller than Burgess, in faux headmaster mode—an attitude he could switch on faster than Burgess could crack a joke.
“Or are you? Guy, listen to me.”
Burgess felt like the reprobate of the Lower Fifth … the “Fat Owl of the Remove.”
“Do not even think of going the whole way with Maclean. Whatever state he’s in—and believe me I know him a damn sight better than you do. When you get to Saint-Malo put him on the train to Paris, finish the cruise, and come back. No one will be suspicious. It’s a floating knocking shop. Permanent Secretaries and their mistresses … junior ministers and their shorthand typists. Anyone who sees you will assume you had an assignation—of some sort.”
“Really? I shall look forward to sniffing out the whiff of illicit sex.”
“Guy, do take this seriously.”
“I am, honestly. And you’re right, I don’t really know him. Truth to tell I’ve seen bugger all of him since Cambridge. He came to the occasional party at my last flat, but he never really fitted in and …”
Blunt put a hand on each of Burgess’s shoulders.
“Guy! Put him on the train and then come home.”
