Reckless

by William Nicholson

  ‘Very.’

  ‘They’re not a bad crowd.’

  ‘I feel quite out of my depth,’ said Pamela. ‘I know it’s all just fun. But does it ever get serious?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Stephen. ‘I brought Bronwen here when she was still modelling. Now she’s married to Billy Astor.’

  Pamela found this confusing. In the other world, the world of her parents, male desire was channelled into marriage. But here, in this riverside Garden of Eden, men and women were naked and unashamed.

  ‘To be honest,’ said Stephen, ‘I’m not sure I did Bronwen any favours there. It’s not easy being Lady Astor. And he is twenty-three years older than her.’

  ‘What about Christine?’ said Pamela.

  ‘Oh, Christine. She’s virtually uneducated, you know? But she knows more than any girl I’ve ever met.’

  ‘What do you mean? Knows what?’

  ‘How men work. How to get what she wants. But she’s no gold-digger. She wants to have fun, and she wants to be looked after, but she’s as likely to sleep with a roadsweeper as a duke.’

  Pamela was mystified.

  ‘Why? What is it she wants?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her that.’

  Christine herself now appeared, bleary-eyed, wearing only a long man’s shirt. She stroked Stephen’s shoulder.

  ‘Morning, darling.’

  ‘Pamela wants to know what it is you want.’

  ‘Coffee,’ Christine said.

  Then Eugene appeared, and the room was filled with noise and laughter.

  ‘Stephen, my friend. I have been thinking. You must introduce me to Lord Mountbatten. He is Chief of Defence Staff. He can tell me many things.’

  ‘I don’t know him, old chum.’

  ‘What nonsense is this! You know everybody!’

  ‘I believe he did hear about me, when I was working as an osteo in the Army in India. He was a great help, actually. But I never met him.’

  ‘So arrange to meet! I must be his friend.’

  ‘What kind of spy do you call yourself?’ Stephen appealed to the others. ‘Aren’t spies meant to operate undercover? You can’t just go up to the enemy and say you want to be his friend.’

  ‘Why not? We must love one another or die!’

  ‘Oh, Eugene! You’re quoting Auden.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I and the public know

  What all schoolchildren learn,

  Those to whom evil is done

  Do evil in return.’

  Eugene embraced Stephen, kissing him on both cheeks.

  ‘That is beautiful, Stephen, and it is true.’

  Pamela asked Stephen to drive her home. It was now past eleven on Sunday morning, and it had finally occurred to her that Hugo and Harriet would be worried about her. She made her goodbyes to the others. André was still not up.

  In the car heading into town they talked about Christine.

  ‘I never knew girls could be like that,’ said Pamela.

  ‘Ah, Christine is special,’ said Stephen. ‘No one owns Christine.’

  ‘But she has boyfriends?’

  ‘Certainly. Men fight over her. But she doesn’t care.’

  ‘How can she not care?’

  ‘She’s not the possessive type. Sex doesn’t really interest her. But then, a lot of girls are like that. The bed part of it does nothing for them. Not very surprising when you think how useless most men are in that department.’

  ‘So why does she do it?’

  ‘It’s how she gets by. Before she started at Murray’s she was working in a dress shop. She got bored, she wanted more. More fun, more pretty things. You can’t blame her.’

  ‘Oh, no. I don’t blame her.’

  Pamela’s thoughts went all the other way. It seemed to her that Christine had got too little, not too much. This power that Christine possessed seemed to Pamela to be like a weapon of limitless force. So armed, the world lay at your feet.

  Stephen said, ‘I wouldn’t follow Christine’s example, if I were you.’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘Have a little fun. Break a few hearts. Then find yourself a good man to love, and settle down with him.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘After marriage? There is no life after marriage. That’s the happy ending.’

  Pamela thought then of André. Eerily, Stephen read her thoughts.

  ‘I think you made quite a hit with André.’

  ‘But who is André?’ said Pamela. ‘He hardly said a word.’

  ‘André Tillemans. He inherited a large part of a large fortune. Steel, I believe. His passion is art, eighteenth-century miniatures in particular. He’s recently bought a house in Mayfair. He isn’t married.’

  ‘I wonder why not.’

  ‘He’s never had what you might call a lady friend, as long as I’ve known him. Plenty of girls have had a shot at him, but no one’s got him.’

  This had the effect of raising his status even higher in Pamela’s eyes.

  ‘By all means enjoy his company,’ said Stephen. ‘Just don’t expect too much.’

  ‘I don’t expect anything,’ said Pamela.

  ‘He’s planning a party for his new house. Would you like to go?’

  ‘What sort of a party?’

  ‘There’s only one sort of party, isn’t there? Lots of guests. Lots of drink. Beautiful people in beautiful clothes.’

  ‘I’m not sure I have anything to wear.’

  ‘My dear, you could wear a sack and you’d be the most heavenly creature in the room.’

  ‘Oh, Stephen. You are sweet.’

  ‘I shall arrange it. I’ll tell André you accept.’

  He dropped her off on Hammersmith Road and she walked back up Brook Green to the Caulder house. It was early afternoon on Sunday and all the family were at home. She let herself in with the key she had been given. Hugo came rushing wildeyed into the hall.

  ‘Where in God’s name have you been?’

  ‘At Susie’s. I told you.’

  ‘Not all night! You never said all night!’

  ‘We got talking. It was late.’

  ‘And you never thought of phoning? My God, Pamela!’

  ‘I am eighteen, you know.’

  Harriet called from the front room.

  ‘Is it Pamela? Is she all right?’

  ‘Yes. She’s fine.’

  ‘I don’t see why you have to get so worked up,’ said Pamela, simulating anger to cover her guilt. ‘I don’t see why you have to treat me like a child.’

  Hugo gave her an agonised look.

  ‘I know you’re not a child, Pamela.’

  Pamela stared back, and as she looked at his exhausted features she understood. Hugo, her father’s business partner, who had known her almost all her life, was staring at her as André had stared at her, with a kind of hunger in his eyes.

  She relaxed. There was no need to make excuses, or to apologise. He didn’t want courtesy from her. He wanted so much more.

  She reached out one hand as she had seen Christine do, and smiled, and lightly stroked his arm. He softened. He smiled back.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Good to have you home.’

  19

  Junior naval attaché Yevgeny Mikhailovich Ivanov, Captain 2nd Rank, was at his office desk in the Russian embassy by nine o’clock on Monday morning. His first task was to prepare his report on his weekend activities. General Pavlov, the GRU rezident, looked in on him as he himself arrived for the day.

  ‘Well, Zhenya? How was the weekend?’

  ‘I am planting seeds, Anatoly Alexandrovich,’ said Ivanov. ‘I am watering soil.’

  ‘Judging by your requisition slips for vodka,’ said Pavlov, ‘you must be watering the soil with your piss.’

  ‘That too, General,’ said Ivanov.

  He and the rezident got on famously, which was just as well, since his immediate boss, naval attaché Sukhoruchkin, Captain 1st Rank, was a bumpkin
. As Ivanov complained daily to his great friend Tolya Belousov, Sukhoruchkin wouldn’t have been allowed through the doors of the London clubs where he, Ivanov, was a familiar figure.

  ‘I’ve had Moscow Centre on my back again,’ said Pavlov. ‘They want to know if you’ve got anywhere with Mountbatten.’

  ‘These things take time, Anatoly Alexandrovich.’

  General Pavlov wagged a warning finger at Ivanov, and retired into his own much grander office. Ivanov completed his report, listing the guests at the cottage, and also those at the big house he’d been able to identify round the pool. The Cliveden connection was his great coup, and much was expected of it. Lord Astor’s circle included members of the royal family such as Mountbatten, several ministers of the Crown and a wide range of foreign leaders. Ivanov had been present at one gathering that included Ayub Khan of Pakistan, Nubar Gulbenkian and Lord Hailsham. For all this, his social connections had yielded nothing of concrete value to the service so far.

  Scratching his head, he pondered whether to bother to list the newcomer to the group, the pretty girl called Pamela. As far as he could tell she was of no interest. But you never could be sure. Some important man might take a fancy to her; in which case it would be useful to have the record show that he, Ivanov, had spotted her first.

  Also present at Spring Cottage, Cliveden, he typed, a young woman associate of Stephen Ward, name Pamela. Second name to follow. Young, very attractive. Ward claims he picked her up in a café.

  Ivanov had noted André’s interest in the new girl, but André had no professional value for him. A wealthy young man with artistic interests, he was just the type of dilettante that did not exist under socialism; as Ivanov told him regularly, over a glass of his excellent claret.

  Christine Keeler present, he typed. Confirmed that all is over between her and Profumo, as I reported 11.11.61. She has refused to move out of Ward’s flat.

  Ivanov did not add that he suspected he himself was the cause of this development. John Profumo didn’t like him, and especially didn’t like coming across him in Ward’s flat. Ivanov was philosophical about this. Profumo was Minister for War; he had political considerations to worry about. They were all playing a game that required them, from time to time, to do disagreeable things. After all, there had been a few heady weeks when Moscow Centre, excited by Ivanov’s reports, had planned an operation to entrap Profumo. Ivanov had told them that it was pointless, that such affairs as Profumo’s with Christine Keeler were tolerated in the British establishment, and that anyway it had been of very brief duration. Better by far to demonstrate discretion, and so make a lifelong friend. But intelligence services the world over are infatuated with entrapment.

  ‘Remember, Stephen,’ Ivanov had said laughingly to Ward, ‘it is my duty to my country to entrap you if I can, and it is your duty to try to entrap me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to,’ said Stephen.

  ‘D-Branch will tell you what to do. You find something out about me that compromises me.’

  ‘What on earth could compromise you, Eugene? Everyone knows you work for the Russians.’

  ‘Ah, perhaps you can discover I am a secret capitalist. Then I will be shot!’

  Ivanov understood very well that it was just this combination of intrigue and openness that made him a success in London’s clubs and dinner parties. Also, a little to his surprise, they admired his patriotism, and his vigorous and well-informed defence of socialism. That and the fact that he played a good hand of bridge.

  His boss Sukhoruchkin came in and slapped some papers on his desk. He mumbled some idiotic suggestion about a trip to Holy Loch in Scotland.

  ‘Grigory Vasilovich,’ said Ivanov, ‘if you order me to hide in a Scotch bush and count submarines I will of course obey. But that is a job anyone can do. I must ask you to confirm with the rezident that he considers it the best use of my time.’

  As usual, that was the end of that.

  Ivanov had lunch with Tolya Belousov in the Italian bistro by Notting Hill Gate. Belousov, an easy-going fellow whose only failing was that he had no idea how to dress, was the junior Air Force attaché at the embassy.

  ‘Men like Grigory Vasilovich,’ Ivanov said to Tolya over his plate of spaghetti, ‘think that only secrets have value. They think that what is learned through deception is worth more than what is openly shared. I’m beginning to think this is nonsense. Why don’t we stop trying to trick each other, and try to learn about each other?’

  ‘Ah, Zhenya,’ said his friend, ‘you say that because you’re a warm-hearted fellow and you want to love everyone.’

  ‘No, listen to me. Isn’t it true that what we need more than spies and secrets is friends we can trust? Friends who will tell us what the other side is actually thinking?’

  ‘Why should they tell us? Information is power.’

  ‘Accurate information is power. It’s more than power, Tolya, it’s reality. It’s the ground beneath our feet. But you see’ – he raised his voice in his eagerness to persuade his friend, confident that as they were speaking Russian they would not be understood by the other diners – ‘we all share the same need, which is to make decisions based on reality. Not on false information, or fantasy, or paranoia. So why not speak openly?’

  This was Ivanov’s big idea. He had talked it over with his wife Maya, and she agreed with him, though she had cautioned him to be careful who he discussed it with. Her father, Alexander Fedorovich Gorkin, had been secretary of the Presidium, and Maya was no fool.

  ‘Of course you’re right, Zhenya,’ she said, ‘but there are many careers built on the control of information.’

  ‘Information is part of a nation’s assets,’ said Ivanov. ‘Under true socialism it will be shared by all.’

  At that Maya rolled her eyes, as she always did when he spoke of true socialism.

  ‘You’re not at one of your London dinner parties now,’ she said.

  And yet, for all the cynicism that came as standard issue in their set, Ivanov did truly believe in socialism. He knew it had not been achieved yet; but he believed it was coming. This was one of the reasons for his success. He did all he did with a whole heart. His childhood hero had been the Baltic seaman Artyom Balashov in the film We Are From Kronstadt, who cried so famously and so rousingly, ‘Well, who else will rise for the Soviet Union?’

  ‘What we need,’ he told Tolya over the spaghetti, ‘is bridges. We stand on opposite sides of a great chasm, and we live in fear of each other, because we believe, socialists and capitalists both, that our enemy seeks to destroy us. Do you believe that?’

  ‘Do I believe the Americans seek to destroy us?’ said Tolya.

  ‘Yes. Do you genuinely believe that if they could they would destroy the Soviet Union and all its people?’

  ‘Unprovoked?’

  ‘Yes. Unprovoked.’

  ‘No. I don’t believe that,’ said Tolya.

  ‘There! You’re a fine fellow!’ Ivanov was pleased. ‘And would we destroy the United States if we could, without provocation?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘So you see! That is what we must tell each other! That is real information! It’s not secret, but nor is it official. Khrushchev can’t say to Kennedy, “Don’t worry, Jack, we’ll never attack you,” because it would make the Soviet Union look weak. But you know it’s true, and I know it’s true. So you see, we need bridges.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’re right,’ said Belousov, ‘but if I were you I’d take care not to do anything without permission. You need cover, just in case it goes wrong.’

  ‘Oh, Tolya! Doesn’t it break your heart? None of us can make a move without some kind of official permission. Our system is so constipated we can’t even shit without a signed order. In capitalism, initiative is rewarded. We should learn from that.’

  ‘Even so. Talk to Pavlov.’

  At the end of the afternoon Ivanov joined in a volleyball game on the court behind 10 Kensington Palace Gardens, an informal gam
e between the rezidenturas of the GRU, which was Army Intelligence, and the KGB, the state intelligence apparatus. Ivanov, even now at the age of thirty-seven, was the stand-out player, and the GRU team trounced their opponents 30–5. General Pavlov did not conceal his delight. The KGB had a way of looking down on the GRU, because their budget was so much greater.

  ‘Zhenya,’ said Pavlov, coming alongside him in the men’s room and undoing his flies, ‘let’s give our best to the Lubyanka.’

  They then pissed together on the KGB.

  Pavlov put his arm round Ivanov’s shoulders as they walked back together to his office.

  ‘Now we drink a toast.’

  There would never be a more suitable opportunity. As they drank together, Ivanov outlined his ‘bridge’ plan to his rezident. Pavlov listened attentively.

  ‘What you’re describing,’ he said, ‘is a back channel. A means of communicating between governments that doesn’t commit them, and is subsequently deniable.’

  Ivanov knew all about back channels. He had meant something far more significant, amounting to a shift of emphasis away from paranoia towards trust. However, he understood that it would be wise to proceed one step at a time.

  ‘Of course, Anatoly Alexandrovich,’ he replied. ‘You may describe it as a back channel.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘I would like to establish a bridge of trust,’ said Ivanov, ‘based on honour and friendship. A chain of trust, perhaps I should say.’ The metaphor shifted as he began to construct the reality. ‘The first link would be my friend Stephen Ward. I believe that through him I can gain access to the very highest levels of the British government. Through myself, and through yourself, Anatoly Alexandrovich, we would then build a bridge, a chain, from Downing Street to the Kremlin.’

  General Pavlov lifted his bushy eyebrows and gazed into the distance. Ivanov could tell that his boss was silently calculating whether or not such a move would be to his advantage.

  ‘Do nothing for now, Zhenya,’ he said at last. ‘I will make enquiries.’

  That night, at home in Bayswater in his modest flat with Maya, Ivanov permitted himself a little self-congratulation.

  ‘Maybe your dolt of a husband, whose father was a peasant from Mytishchi, will turn out to be one of the men who change the world.’