The Long Room

by Francesca Kay

  Coralie had taken that day of shopping seriously. She carried a list, based partly on the recommendations made in a helpful letter from a second-year student at Stephen’s college, and partly on her own notion of what an up-and-coming man should have. A kettle, sheets and towels and coffee cups were obvious; cut-glass ashtrays, a decanter and a leather desk-set not.

  Addicted to lists she was, his mother, then and even more so now. She’d be composing one this very moment. She had a special pad for them, with each sheet headed ‘Shopping’, and an illustration of cottage loaves and wheat sheaves at the foot.

  Harpic

  Whiskas

  Raspberry jam

  Sardines

  Trifle sponges

  Domestic litanies, the rosary beads of Coralie’s week.

  Later today, after dinner – after lunch? – Coralie will tear this new list from her pad and read it aloud to Stephen. Then she’ll tuck it carefully into her handbag and prepare for their expedition to the shops. Now that her arthritis has made it hard for her to leave the house, that expedition will be one of the few she makes this week. Coralie can just about reach the bus stop on her own but even that short walk will tire her, and anyway she isn’t fit to carry any weight. Her condition has worsened steeply over the past year and she is increasingly dependent on her son. Without perhaps intending to, they have fallen into a routine: Stephen will drive down on Saturdays and, since he is there, and the drive not inconsiderable, he might as well stay the night.

  And so, that Saturday, as usual, Stephen rings his mother’s front-door bell. It was his own front door for many years, and he keeps a key, but he doesn’t like to use it. She takes a while to open the door; in greeting they do not touch or kiss. Lunch is almost on the table, as he knew it would be; the soup in its saucepan ready; the meat and the vegetables in the oven staying warm.

  Coralie is fretting about turkey. Christmas falls on a Saturday this year and Stephen doesn’t get off work until the day before. That’s Christmas Eve, of course. The shops will be extra busy that day and there is a risk they may run out of what she needs. If she could, she would do the necessary shopping at least two days before. But, as it is, she has a problem on her hands. She doesn’t own a freezer, having made do until now with the ice-making compartment of her fridge. And, although for most of the year that’s perfectly adequate, it’s obviously too small for a large bird. If she and Stephen were to buy the turkey next Saturday, would it keep in the cupboard that she uses as a larder until Christmas Day? What does he think? Because otherwise it would take up almost all the space that there is in the fridge and then what was she supposed to do with the other things she needs to store? It’s awkward, isn’t it? Some people do say that you can keep a turkey safely in the garden shed or in a coal bunker but Coralie is doubtful: what about the foxes and the rats? If only the weather forecast were reliable. Because, if you knew there’d be a cold snap, you’d not be taking that much of a gamble on the larder. But it can be peculiarly warm round Christmas, all of a sudden and to everyone’s surprise. You get primroses and violets some years, as well as snowdrops. Wouldn’t it be unpleasant to have your turkey nibbled at and gnawed away by a nasty rat? The boot of a car – now that’s a place which must be rat-proof, fox-proof and reasonably cold? Or possibly not if the sun were to shine unseasonably upon it. And would Stephen mind having the turkey in his car for a week? Of course he doesn’t use it all that often, does he? Or should she just bite the bullet and buy a proper freezer? A snag is that there’s nowhere really sensible to put one. The kitchen’s cramped enough already. You could perhaps squeeze one of those chest types in the toilet, underneath the coat-pegs, but it might be a bit difficult lifting things out, if they were heavy things – like a turkey is. Would she be able to reach them, if they were at the bottom? And besides, she doesn’t really hold with frozen food, although she does love those Martians in the advertisement for mashed potatoes. Though that’s not precisely frozen, it’s freeze-dried. They make her laugh every time she sees it, with their chortling away at the stupidity of humans! For mash get Smash. A very useful standby, she has found. But, going back to freezers, does it seem a good idea to buy one just for Christmas? They’re expensive, aren’t they? Does he think they will want ham?

  ‘Well, ham is nice,’ says Stephen. ‘But you can buy that in a packet. Can a turkey be reserved? If so, it could be collected from the butcher’s any time on Christmas Eve.’

  Mother and son sit facing each other across the kitchen table; the same table they have sat at for the whole of Stephen’s life. It’s made of pine, thickly knotted, and long ago it split along one edge; in the fissures there are crumbs of food. Mrs Donaldson used to dislodge them as best as she could with a blunt knife-blade but lately she has left them to accumulate: layers of sediment, bread and cake and spilled meat juices decomposing slowly into an undifferentiated sludge. After dinner she reminds Stephen that he must fetch the Christmas decorations from the loft.

  Monday

  After a sudden snow storm from the west, Monday morning is cold and dreary; the pavements are slippery, the coats of the crowd crushed together in the trains reek of frying and wet dog, but Stephen is on his way to work with a lift of the heart, in spite of feeling a bit queasy. Monday mornings are good mornings now; they bring new hope and an end to the barren wastes of the weekend that are devoid of Helen. Mondays used to weigh leadenly on him, but ever since one morning in October they have been as welcome as a lovers’ reunion.

  *

  Stephen had heard tales of the Cube, of course, but had never seen it. ‘What have I done?’ he had asked Louise, when she told him he was wanted there. ‘Nothing, you silly boy,’ she said. ‘It’s one of “those” operations and it’s time you were assigned one.’

  The cellars of the Institute form a warren that extends beyond its above-ground boundaries, and beneath the street. To get there Stephen took a lift. Its door opened onto a lobby in which an armed and uniformed guard was sitting at a desk. ‘ID?’ he asked, politely.

  Stephen showed the guard his badge. ‘The Cube?’ he said.

  ‘Through the double doors, take the passage on the left, not the one that leads to the garage. Follow the painted arrows.’

  Windowless corridors, chill and faintly clammy. Behind a second set of double doors, Stephen found a tall man leaning against the wall, and a young woman, laughing. She was pretty, wearing a pink cardigan that looked as if it would be very soft to touch. ‘Donaldson?’ asked the man. ‘Good. Rollo Buckingham. And this is Binks. Binks is going to lock us up together.’

  ‘And throw away the key,’ Binks teased. The two men followed her though a door that she unlocked and into a room where the Cube stood, in the centre. The Cube is exactly what the name suggests. The size of a large shipping crate, matte-grey, walls smooth and unmarked except for an entrance cut into one side. Binks undid its combination lock and the heavy door swung open. ‘It gets stuck sometimes,’ she said.

  There was a table, chairs, and a bright light inside the Cube, cramped space enough for six. ‘Bit of a squash’, said Rollo, ‘when it’s full.’ They stepped in through the door and it shut tight behind them. ‘Grab a pew,’ said Rollo. Stephen wondered if there was an inlet for fresh air. The interior walls were completely covered in leathery grey material, slightly wrinkled, like a dinosaur’s skin.

  Rollo took a packet of Marlboro from the breast pocket of his jacket, shrugged the jacket off, opened the packet and offered it to Stephen. Stephen shook his head. Rollo tapped out a cigarette for himself. His lighter was shiny gold, like the links that held together the beautiful cuffs of his white shirt. ‘Before I say anything,’ he said, ‘I need you to sign this.’

  He removed a sheet of paper from a file he had dropped onto the table. The paper was stamped TOP SECRET. He skimmed it across to Stephen who, glancing at it quickly, saw that it was headed by the code-word PHOENIX and held nothing but a typed list of departments and initials. He put his signature against hi
s own. He didn’t have time to decipher the other nine names on the list apart from the Director’s.

  ‘Right,’ said Rollo, through his cloud of smoke. ‘Now, I cannot emphasise too strongly that security is paramount. When I asked your group-controller to nominate a listener for this case she recommended you. She says that you will be discreet. I did rather expect her to take it on herself but she explained that she is working at full stretch and couldn’t guarantee the sort of commitment that this investigation might in due course require. Potentially full-time. She said that you had capacity to spare and would do it very well.’

  ‘I can only do my best,’ said Stephen. Rollo smiled then, with a flash of warmth. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I cannot give you the usual background briefing. This case is complicated and extremely secret. The original source of the intelligence is ultra-delicate. No one who is not on this list is authorised to know anything about it. All I can really say at this point is that we are investigating a question of loyalty. Or should I say, disloyalty rather. Internally.’

  ‘What do you mean? A traitor?’

  ‘Well, that’s perhaps too categorical a word.’

  ‘But, are you talking about someone in here, someone in the Institute?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Christ almighty! What’s his name? Or is it actually a woman?’

  ‘No, the subject of interest is a man. Look, please don’t ask me any questions. Our view is that this particular investigation absolutely must proceed without prejudice or preconception. Otherwise it’s just not fair. I’m aware that usually a listener gets a whole dossier of facts – history, dates, personality traits and description – as well as details of the intelligence case, in advance of taking on a new investigation but just for once I’m asking you to do without. Begin with a clean slate and fill in the details for yourself, gradually, as they emerge. Discover him through what you hear. Because that way we will have a truer picture. Or at least that’s what I hope.’

  ‘But that won’t work! I’ll be completely in the dark!’

  ‘Yes, but not for long. We have level Bravo Plus – telephone intercept and eavesdropping – orange-label naturally – so that’s coverage for twenty-four hours a day. You’re going to be with him every minute that he spends at home. You’ll soon get to know him as well as you know your closest friend.’

  ‘What about when he’s at work?’

  ‘Separate coverage,’ Rollo said. ‘For entirely obvious reasons.’

  ‘Hang on, they’re not that obvious to me.’

  Rollo sighed. ‘I’ve already said that I can’t discuss the details. It must be obvious to you that we can’t deploy the same techniques in here that we can outside. Ergo, there have to be different operations at his home and when he is at work. And at this point the latter is no concern of yours.’

  ‘What if I already know him? If I’ve worked with him before?’

  ‘I’ve considered that. He has nothing to do with your group of listeners. And so there’s no particular reason why you should know him out of all the hundreds of people working in this building. But, if by chance you find you do, please inform me soonest. Meanwhile, please don’t try to find out anything about him other than what emerges from the stuff you’re hearing. I’m sorry to repeat myself but it’s very important. We must not load the dice. Just note down every move he makes, everyone he sees, anything he says that strikes you as unusual. Note everything, in other words. We won’t know what we are looking for until we’ve found it.’

  ‘All right. I’ll give it a go,’ said Stephen.

  *

  Now, on this Monday morning, he must take Friday’s report up to the seventh floor, where Rollo Buckingham has his office. It’s too soon, though: Buckingham probably won’t get in until ten o’clock, and the tapes from the weekend won’t be sorted until lunchtime at the earliest. Stephen whiles away the spare time by reading through the weekly bulletin, copies of which are circulated to each department. Every member of the Institute must certify they’ve read it by putting their initials on the cover-sheet; by such means the Executive ensures that no one can plead ignorance of new rules. They intersperse their admonitory messages with snippets of Institute news, the canteen menus, and the weather for the week ahead. The news is necessarily pruned of sensitive intelligence and tends to be mystifyingly anodyne. A planned bomb attack was foiled in County Antrim. Two East German diplomats have been declared personae non gratae and will leave the country. The special of the day is chicken curry. Tomorrow there will be no more snow but it may rain.

  The current bulletin contains an updated list of pubs and restaurants in which hostile operatives have been spotted and which are consequently out of bounds to Institute staff. Some of the pubs are close to the Institute – The Fox and Grapes, The Queen’s Head – but others are unfamiliar to Stephen. The Windsor Castle, The Sherlock Holmes, The Eight Bells – he had better write them down.

  He wonders if these faceless officials of foreign powers are similarly forbidden to visit places frequented by members of the Institute. Or would they conversely be exhorted to drink in them as often as they could? How would the different factions recognise each other, unless against all the rules, they were talking shop? Stephen knows enough to know that spies do not loudly advertise themselves but are mostly shabby little men whom no one notices in the quiet corners of rundown cafés. He was shown photographs on his training course for new recruits. Now, imagining opposing ranks of operatives facing each other across the patterned carpet of a busy saloon bar, Stephen is reminded of the model soldiers with which he used to play for hours on end, when he was a boy.

  While he is carefully inscribing names onto a blank page of his diary – Le Caprice, J. Sheekey, Porters English Restaurant – Charlotte comes lolloping up. ‘Morning, petal,’ she says. ‘I’m on coffee duty this week. Do you want a cup? Twelve o’clock for Rafiq’s birthday – you hadn’t forgotten, had you? Delivery’s held up today, glory be and hallelujah; Muriel’s delayed by last night’s weather – snow on the tracks in Kent apparently, though there was barely a flake in my neck of the woods – and won’t be in till later. We might not get any morning tapes. Hurray! We can really go to town at lunchtime! Did you have a nice weekend? The blizzard didn’t get you? I did think about you last night, wondering if you might be having a tough time driving back; it was ghastly around Croydon, I heard, but maybe it was better in the west. You are a jammy dodger, escaping the old smoke like that; I wish I could. I dream of a little cottage, miles from anywhere, surrounded by green fields. With a river. No, a stream. A stream running through the garden; I’d have heliotrope and roses, honeysuckle … but what do I actually have, as a matter of fact, excuse me? A window box in Crouch End! Never mind. One day. One day my prince will come and I’ll be out of that door before you know it, leaving my headphones behind me. But then you’d miss me, wouldn’t you, Stevie-love?’

  ‘Indeed, I would,’ Stephen agrees. Charlotte scoops up his coffee mug and moves on to the next desk, where silent Harriet, who never says much more than please and thank you and hello, is already plugged into her machine. Stephen watches Charlotte mouthing ‘Coffee?’ at her in an exaggerated way, as if Harriet were deaf and an inept lip-reader. Harriet just shakes her head with a tight little nervous gesture.

  No product that Monday morning means that Stephen has nothing to do. If she had not been late, Muriel, who is the clerk and registrar of the listeners, would have sorted through the Friday p.m.–a.m. tapes and the weekend’s recordings too, logged them individually into her black book, labelled them with the code-words that correspond to the numbering system used by the furtive couriers, sealed the tapes in envelopes and then, very slowly, as she is near retirement age and has a problem with her hip, she would have deposited them envelope by envelope into each listener’s tray. Without Muriel, there is no one who can correctly manage the bags of tapes that the couriers deliver twice a day. No one else can understand the arcane system.

>   Muriel’s lateness is a blow to Stephen. A weekend is too long to be away from Helen, who has become essential. He has felt a real connection to other targets and their families; he is still close to poor old VULCAN, to Mrs ODIN, to OBERON, a young Jamaican militant – they are like friends to him. But there’s something about Helen that makes her very different. With her, and only with her, he feels no need to pretend, he is at ease in his own skin, he begins to like himself. She gives him back his truthfulness and when he thinks of her he thinks in poetry, not ordinary humdrum words. Her beautiful voice speaks poems to him, and her piano playing, and the sweetness of her nature. My mother wore a yellow dress; gentle, gently, gentleness. She’s a listener, just like Stephen. She permits her friends to chatter on about their own concerns and she never interrupts or tries to hurry them. Even when she’s racing against time, with an engagement to keep or work to finish, she shows no signs of impatience. She never tells her callers that she is in a rush. Gentle, gently, gentleness. Only she and Stephen know that if the caller doesn’t shut up soon she’ll have to fly across the city to her next appointment in half the time she’d planned.

  That worries him. He hates it when he knows that she’ll be making an arduous journey on her own. If he could, he’d summon Pegasus for her, whistling for the white-winged horse to sweep down from the skies and carry beloved Helen where she wants to go, at the speed of light. As it is, he can only wish she were more extravagant with taxis. It has crossed his mind to book her a mini-cab in advance, when he knows that she will be going out at night, and the forecast is for fog and mist. If only he could pay for it without needing to give a name. He can see her running down the stairs and out of her front door, dressed in something long and silky, that liquefaction of her clothes, smelling sweet, a silver girl in high-heeled sandals, already late and wishing she did not have to travel alone through the dark and frosty streets, and finding then a driver waiting, a taxi, warm and lit. If only he could be sure she would get in it. If only she were more often on her own. If only. He keeps her diary in his head and, whenever she is going out, he thinks of her and begs her to stay safe.