The Diplomat's Wife

by Michael Ridpath

  This was a very different quarter of Paris from those frequented by Roland and me. The streets were narrower and dirtier, the people poorer, the shops less sophisticated, yet they had a vibrancy that I found exciting. There were craftsmen of every description plying their trade in small workshops-cum-stores: tailors, milliners, glove-makers, furriers, silversmiths, leather-workers, carpenters, pawnbrokers. On the streets, Yiddish mixed with French, and men in long black coats with wide-brimmed hats, full beards and curls dangling from above their ears scurried about their business.

  I wondered whether Lemberg was like this.

  With one last look over my shoulder, I rang the bell marked ‘6’ as instructed.

  ‘Kay?’ I exclaimed as I recognized the woman opening the door. ‘I didn’t know you lived here?’

  ‘Well, I do,’ said Kay. ‘It’s cheap and it’s easy to keep an eye on; we have comrades here. Lothar is upstairs.’

  She led me up to a tiny flat at the back of the house one floor beneath the top. Lothar was waiting for me. I was pleased to see him; I was pleased to see her. But after bringing us some coffee, Kay left, saying she would be back in a couple of hours.

  ‘Kay is a cut-out,’ explained Lothar. ‘She doesn’t know my real name; she doesn’t know what we talk about or whom I report to. She is the one who rents this flat. If ever she was arrested she wouldn’t be able to divulge much of use.’

  ‘She knows who I am,’ I said.

  ‘She does,’ admitted Lothar. As he sipped his coffee, I noticed his mangled finger. ‘The idea is that Kay won’t be arrested. But if she is, we will look after you. We look after the people who work for us.’

  ‘Except for Hugh.’

  Lothar nodded his acknowledgement. ‘That took us by surprise. We have lost very few agents.’

  His intense dark blue eyes met mine. ‘I don’t want to deceive you, Emma. This is a dangerous business, and you should know that from the outset. You’ve had a few days to think about it. Do you want to work for us?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  We discussed details for two hours. I found what he told me fascinating – exciting, even. Counter-surveillance techniques, such as waiting for a tram, letting it pass, then jumping on the next one as it was leaving; or stopping to look at a shop window and examine the street behind in the reflection. Emergency contact procedures, places where a coded message could be left, and the codes themselves, which involved six hours being added to any time mentioned and three days subtracted from a date. Phrases to be used at meets with unknown agents, the back-up plans in case a meet was missed, signals that either I or Lothar had been discovered. Lothar gave me a camera and showed me how to use it to photograph documents. We discussed how I would credibly return to Roland.

  My first assignment was to photograph papers from Roland’s briefcase. I knew Roland often took papers home from the embassy to work on; at this stage I didn’t know what they were. Lothar wanted me to photograph whatever was there; in due course he would become more specific about what I should look for. He told me to be very careful: better I arrive empty-handed at our next meeting than not arrive at all because I had been arrested.

  I returned to the Rue de Bourgogne the following night after eleven days away. I had filled my days with reading, and had spent a couple of evenings with Dick, on one of which we went to the cinema to watch the western. He seemed to love it; I found it banal. But he was good company. I didn’t tell him what I was up to, or even that I was planning to go back to Roland.

  I had decided to stay at the hotel on the Île Saint-Louis despite its simplicity, or rather because of its simplicity. I was feeling more and more guilty about my coddled life; if Dick could handle his bugs in his garret, I could handle mine in my hotel. At least they scuttled rather than bit.

  One evening, I persuaded Dick to take me with him to a bistro he had discovered in a scruffy street in the Latin Quarter near the Panthéon. It was frequented by the poor workers and the workless, by the hopeful and the hopeless. The proprietor was as wide as she was tall, and wielded a knife-edged tongue. Dick seemed to have made friends with a group of serious drinkers, including a muscular brute who worked in the sewers, a Breton porter at Les Halles, a Polish dishwasher at the Hôtel Meurice, a Russian émigré who claimed he was a former cavalry officer, but who barely had enough to eat, and an Arab navvy who had taken a particular shine to Dick. Dick played the part of a penniless English writer. With a shock, it occurred to me that he might not, in fact, be playing that part, but might be actually living it.

  I had worn my simplest clothes, but they could tell I had money.

  Wine was drunk by the litre. The Pole and the Russian shook dice to decide which of them would pay for their drinks. As everyone became drunker, the singing started, led by the sewerman who burst into ‘Les Fraises et les Framboises’. The Marseillaise was followed by the Internationale, in which I tentatively joined. Despite his shortcomings in French, Dick had no trouble making himself understood, and he seemed popular.

  Dick was there to research his subject, of course. He genuinely wanted to chronicle the daily lives of these people. But although I was for a few moments caught up in the alcohol-fuelled excitement and the bonhomie, most of the time I felt apart from these men, and the women who drifted by the table. I was an onlooker, an observer, a tourist of poverty. A hypocrite.

  This was why I had to help Lothar.

  Despite the drink and the singing, I couldn’t get Roland out of my mind.

  I had given careful thought as to how I was going to treat him. I couldn’t pretend to love him or even show any affection for him. That might work for a night – or a week at most – but not for the years that would be required if I was to help Lothar. I was wary of trying to come up with a logical, consistent pretext for returning to him. Roland was clever. He would question my motives; I would slip up.

  I needed to keep him on the back foot. Inconsistency would be my watchword, illogicality, mystery. I needed to make sure that he didn’t understand me. I hated him and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

  I telephoned Muriel, his secretary, asking her which evenings he would be in that week, so I could give him a surprise. I don’t know what Muriel suspected – she had heard us arguing and she was no fool – but she told me there was nothing in his diary that evening. I bought some veal chops and celeriac at the market and started cooking.

  I heard his key in the door.

  ‘Emma?’

  I didn’t answer. He came into the kitchen. ‘Emma? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m cooking you supper.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you. I’m very pleased you’re home.’

  He moved towards me.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ I warned him.

  He withdrew and poured himself a pink gin. ‘Thank you for coming back.’

  I didn’t answer, but cooked dinner and took our two plates to the table. Roland poured us both a glass of wine.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  We ate dinner in silence, and then I put my knife and fork together on the plate.

  ‘This is how it’s going to be,’ I said, remembering the advice from my beloved mother about setting down the rules of whatever game he was playing. ‘I am going to live here. I am going to be civil to you but no more. I doubt we will speak to each other much.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You are never to touch me. But you are also never to touch my mother either, ever again.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘In public I will be polite to you, but you are never to take advantage of that and touch me in front of other people.’

  Roland listened, his face pained.

  ‘If you find you have physical needs, I expect you never to take them out on anyone I know. Preferably you should just pay for them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Roland said.

  ‘I mean go to a brothel. But don’t tell me about it. And above al
l, remember one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hate you.’

  Chapter 26

  I MADE MY move two nights later. Roland was in the spare bedroom, and the camera Lothar had given me was in my underwear drawer. I woke in the middle of the night and checked the alarm clock. Five and twenty to three.

  I crept out of bed, took out the camera and slunk into the hall, where Roland’s briefcase was lying. I took it through to the kitchen, turned on the light and opened the case. There was a ‘circulating file’ in there. I had seen these before. It was an odd procedure in the Foreign Office where a memorandum would be initiated by a junior third secretary and would meander its way upwards through an office, a series of typed minutes or handwritten comments embellishing it as it passed over each desk, before leaving the embassy by King’s Messenger on its journey to a desk in Whitehall, where it would be pummelled and primped in turn. Each contributor up the chain would take the opportunity to show off his erudition, publicly humiliate a subordinate and, occasionally, add a good idea. That was how you ran an empire.

  This file concerned the differing views of the three most recent French prime ministers, Flandin, Laval and now Sarraut, on the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. An important, but complicated, topic – in December the revelation of the secret Hoare–Laval pact on how to deal with Mussolini’s East African ambitions had brought down the Laval government in France and finished Samuel Hoare’s tenure as Foreign Secretary in Britain.

  I clicked away with the camera. There were dozens of pages, and although I was accurate, I was slow.

  I was carefully replacing the file in Roland’s briefcase when I heard the floorboard creak.

  Roland.

  The camera was on the kitchen counter. I tossed it into a cutlery drawer, grabbed the papers, and shoved them back into Roland’s briefcase, which was standing on the tiny kitchen table.

  ‘Emma?’

  I looked up at him. He was wearing the green pyjamas I had given him for Christmas. His eyes, red-rimmed, were blinking in their dark sockets. He looked confused.

  ‘Emma? What are you doing?’

  What was I doing? Stupidly, I hadn’t thought of an excuse in advance. What possible logical reason could there be for me to be rooting through his briefcase in the middle of the night? I couldn’t think of one.

  I glared at him, playing for time.

  ‘Emma? What are you doing in my briefcase?’ His voice was stronger now. He wasn’t yet suspicious, but he was very close.

  I remembered my strategy. I shouldn’t look for a logical explanation; I should look for an illogical one.

  ‘I’m looking for letters,’ I said. ‘Or notes.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  ‘But why would I put notes from Lavinia in my briefcase?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you? If she contacted you at work. I’ve searched your suits.’

  ‘Have you? Did you find anything?’

  ‘No,’ I said, hoping that there wasn’t actually anything incriminating in his jackets, because I hadn’t in fact searched them. ‘That’s why I’m looking here.’

  ‘But I told you I don’t have anything to do with her any more.’

  ‘You did tell me that, but I don’t believe you.’

  Roland looked at the briefcase. ‘Well, there’s nothing there. As you now know.’

  I was regaining the initiative. I pushed it further. ‘Do you have any letters from her?’

  He looked uncomfortable. He was tired and bewildered. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded.

  He sighed. ‘I have some.’

  ‘Show them to me.’

  Roland ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they will hurt you.’

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Yes. I care now.’

  In reality, I had no desire to see the letters at all. But I didn’t want to do the reasonable, logical thing. I wanted to keep Roland confused.

  I glared at him. ‘I want to see them.’

  ‘How about I destroy them? I don’t want them. I think it is better for both of us, but especially you, if you don’t read them. I will burn them.’

  That sounded like a good idea to me. ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘Now I’m going back to bed.’

  Roland destroyed the letters. I delivered the film to a tabac in the Rue Saint-Dominique the following day. It was barely a ten-minute walk from the flat, but I took half an hour over it, trying out the various counter-surveillance techniques Lothar had suggested. Once I had dropped the film, I took a more direct route back, aware all the time of who was behind me.

  So aware, that I forgot to look in front. I was only thirty yards from my building when I noticed a young man waiting outside it, and only twenty yards when I realized it was Kenneth Heaton-Smith. I stopped in my tracks, but before I could turn on my heel and walk back down the street, he had spotted me.

  He smiled and waved. I smiled and walked as confidently as I could towards him.

  My heart was thudding in my chest. Had the British secret service rumbled me already?

  It rather looked as if they had.

  Roland must have put two and two together and told Colonel Vivian and Heaton-Smith. Had Heaton-Smith’s colleagues tailed me going to the tabac? I had done my best to check for followers, but I was an utter novice at this game. I could easily have missed them. In which case they would soon be in possession of the film I had taken the night before.

  Oh Lord.

  I smiled as brightly as I could manage – too brightly probably. ‘Mr Heaton-Smith? Are you still in Paris? I thought you’d left ages ago.’

  ‘I’ve been in Rome a couple of days, but there were a couple of things I wanted to attend to before I returned to London. May I come in? I rang your bell, but I had just about given up.’

  ‘Of course.’ Heaton-Smith followed me up the stairs, and I led him into our flat. ‘Can I get you some coffee?’

  ‘I say, you don’t have any good old-fashioned English tea, do you?’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact. I’ll just put the kettle on. Have a seat while I make it.’

  I tried to compose myself as I made the tea, but it was very difficult. I was trying to come up with a plan. Brazen it out was the best thing. And then don’t say anything. It was all looking very rum.

  Heaton-Smith wasn’t acting as if he was about to arrest me. But he did look concerned.

  My hand shook and the saucer rattled as I placed his cup of tea down beside him.

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Meeke? You look upset.’

  So much for brazening it out. My first instinct was to insist that I was perfectly fine. Fortunately, my mind cleared quickly enough to realize that firstly I needed a good explanation for why I was flustered, and secondly that I had a ready-made one.

  I forced myself to hesitate. Look down at my own cup. ‘Oh, you know,’ I said. ‘Roland and I have just had the most frightful row. I suppose it happens all the time in marriages, I’m just not used to it myself yet.’ I smiled quickly. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you that. It’s just you did ask, and, well, I hoped a walk would clear my head, but it’s done just the opposite. I feel worse, really.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said Heaton-Smith. ‘And it’s absolutely none of my business. I’ll be gone in a tick.’ He seemed more embarrassed, in a rather charming way, than suspicious. He was a charming man.

  I smiled politely.

  ‘I really came to tell you about Cyril Ashcott.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Perhaps I wasn’t rumbled, after all. But I would keep my wits about me.

  ‘Yes. You asked me to let you know if it turned out he was innocent of giving information to the Germans.’

  ‘And is he?’

  Heaton-Smith sighed. ‘I’m afraid not. It looks as if you were right – he has been
passing secrets to the German Embassy. They were blackmailing him over his involvement with a German boy here in Paris. It’s likely the whole thing was a set-up – a “honey-trap” we call it.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ I felt a huge wave of relief sweeping over me, one I was desperate to prevent Heaton-Smith noticing. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. As I told you, I like Cyril. I’d rather hoped he was innocent. Have you arrested him?’

  ‘No. And we’re not going to.’

  ‘You are not going to?’

  ‘We are going to turn him.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means we keep him in post and he continues to feed information to the Germans. Most of it will be accurate but unimportant. But just occasionally we will give him something else to slip in, something that will mislead them.’

  ‘So he won’t be prosecuted?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  I was very glad to hear that. Especially since it looked like I was not going to be prosecuted either.

  Over the coming weeks and months Roland and I settled into a new routine for dealing with each other, the rules of which were set by me. We were polite, sometimes even considerate. We rarely argued, but that was because we rarely spoke. When he was home, I read.

  I was less rude to him, partly because I didn’t want to scare him away, and partly because I didn’t feel the urge. Whenever I remembered what he had done with my mother, I also remembered that I was stealing his secrets. When I thought of Hugh, and his death, I remembered that I was giving away the secrets of those who had killed him.

  I went to the doctor, who told me that there was indeed a life wriggling around deep inside me, and that it would emerge into the world that December. I told Roland as perfunctorily as I could; he couldn’t hide his pleasure.