The Long Room

by Francesca Kay

  Saturday midday to midnight: nothing but the sirens in the distance heralding emergency, the traffic passing, an unanswered ring on the doorbell, the dog that sometimes barks. In a neighbouring flat that night there is a party. Stephen fast-forwards through it all.

  Saturday midnight–Sunday midday: the tape that Muriel had fished out from the bag that was delivered to the Institute very late last night. Someone had driven an unmarked van to the rear entrance of the building and the garage doors had opened for him – or for her. Did they simply sling the bag out or was there a formal handover that required signatures and conversation? Who took delivery of the bag and where did they store it before Muriel arrived? There is much that Stephen does not know. In this place there is a hidden cast of nameless people who keep things running day and night – operating the machines, locking and unlocking doors, watching the cameras that watch the vans arriving. They’re like an army of ghosts or the faceless ones who drift through Stephen’s dreams, and when he allows himself to think of them he feels that other dream-like sense of dread: that there are corridors beyond the ones he knows and rooms where no one but the nameless go and mirrors that are also doors that lead to where the real work is done in secret and in silence.

  Stephen broke the orange tag. 03.21, and Helen and her husband fighting. That’s a new sound to him and he couldn’t tell what they were quarrelling about. ‘We can’t let her down like that,’ Helen was protesting. ‘I just don’t understand why you said that to Harry. She’s my mother. You were so unpleasant.’

  ‘If we’re going to talk about unpleasantness, I’d invite you to consider your own behaviour tonight. You have been in a sulk all evening. And you were rude to Harry.’

  ‘I was not rude! It’s quite clear he doesn’t have a clue.’

  Back and forth they went – accusation, counter-accusation, indignation and the original grievance, whatever it was, re-opening unhealed ones. ‘You’ve never been fair to my mother,’ Helen says tearfully, ‘but yours can do no wrong. But remember that time she said that I was “ordinaria”? That’s what she said, in Italian, as if I wouldn’t understand her, and you didn’t contradict her. You didn’t stick up for me!’

  ‘But she didn’t say that! You’re forever bringing that up but that’s not what she said …’

  ‘Yes, she did! She’s never really liked me,’ and on she wails, with ‘That’s not true and that’s not fair …’ until she can no longer speak for weeping.

  At the centre of this there’s something else upsetting Helen that Stephen doesn’t understand: something about Allegra and always seeing Marlow too. They only met a month ago and already he’s moved in and that can’t be right; it’s far too soon. He isn’t right for her, there’s something wrong with him – she’s so shy and he’s so bloody vain. Exploitative. She loves Allegra, she’s a true friend, and a colleague, but that doesn’t mean she wants to see Marlow all the time. Especially not at Christmas. The more upset she is, the more incoherent she becomes. Jamie tries to make some sense of what she’s saying but not enough for Stephen to deconstruct the argument. It ends when Jamie tells her to shut the fuck up and Helen slams the bedroom door.

  Stephen punched the air in vindication. He had known it all along. Girls like Helen – the pure and vestal, the innocent and the good – believe in reciprocity, that they must love if they are beloved. He supposed that Helen had met Greenwood when she was still a student, inexperienced and very young; he was probably the first man, the only man, she’d ever kissed. Of course she’d think she was in love. The moment he set eyes on her, Greenwood, determined and ruthless as he was, would have been out to get her, indeed to trap her, and she, once trapped, being of a constant nature, would have made the best of what she had. She might have been charmed by his raven hair and his romantic looks. But PHOENIX was the devil in disguise. And in the early hours of Sunday morning, Helen, like a damsel tested to the limit in the castle of an ogre, would finally have seen him in his true and cruel colours. She would know there was no future for her with Greenwood and his kin and that no amount of patience or forbearance or of love would turn this dissembler into a prince. Rescue was essential now.

  After the bedroom door was slammed, a running tap and a chink of glass – water or more wine? Helen must have gone to bed alone. Good. Greenwood would have to spend the night on the sofa in the sitting room, which would not be nearly long enough for a man so tall. He’d have nothing but his overcoat for coverlet, no pillow for his head; he would be uncomfortable and cold.

  Greenwood snored and stirred in the night but there was nothing else until 10.27 when Helen came out of the bedroom and, thirteen minutes later, left the flat without a word. Stephen knew where she was going. He had already seen that she went to church on Sundays when she was in London, and that she went alone. Greenwood woke at 11.44, before Helen was back, and began to make his breakfast. The tape stopped at a minute before noon, just as the telephone rang.

  Thirty-six hours of recorded time, even scanned at speed, took Stephen to late afternoon. He kept his headphones on all day, and a deep look of absorption, defying Louise to give him extra work. Around him the other listeners were as focused but the atmosphere was calm – perhaps Department Four had found what they were looking for, or there were enough listeners in the Institute today to handle the extra load. He saw Louise in conclave with Ana, the Group II Supervisor, and a pair of analysts; maybe there’d be news before the evening. There was no sign of Rollo Buckingham. Stephen guessed that he could get away without a written report on PHOENIX till the next day, as Rollo would assume that everyone was still preoccupied by the explosion. While he waited for the second of Sunday’s tapes, he would check the telephone intercepts and have a quick look in on VULCAN.

  VULCAN was in a bad way. Stephen had listened to him on Thursday trying to make an appointment at the doctor’s and being told that there were none available until next Friday at the earliest. He heard the old man fighting for breath enough to speak, and the receptionist’s impersonal tone: ‘Sorree,’ she said, with the emphasis on the second syllable. ‘We’re extra-busy now because it’s close to Christmas.’

  But he might be dead by then, you stupid cow, Stephen said to her. Can’t you hear how ill the poor man is? Because it’s close to Christmas? What sort of excuse is that? Because it’s Christmas you should be working overtime to heal the sick and get them back onto their feet so that they too can have their rightful share of the blessings of the season. But VULCAN, conditioned by his class and generation, by the abasement and humility of age, to take no for an answer if it was spoken by a medical authority, however spurious, meekly booked with Dr Mather at 9.50 on Christmas Eve and did not complain. There was no further traffic on his line that day or the next.

  Because it’s close to Christmas. Where would VULCAN spend the day, with whom? The ODINs, Stephen knew, would stay at home, as they had to do, having nowhere else to go. Last summer they had sent their daughter away for a week – the first time she had been anywhere without them, the first respite they had had in years – availing of a charity that sent disabled people on holiday to a boarding school in Suffolk. But when Diane came home she had a great bruise on her thigh, and there was not one word of apology or explanation. Anyway, as Mrs ODIN told her cousin on the telephone, they had missed her terribly. ‘Everyone thought we’d be pleased to have some time off and to catch up on our sleep, but as a matter of fact we couldn’t hardly sleep at all for worrying how she was. Because, if a person has no words to say whether they’re all right or whether they’re unhappy, how can you tell unless you look into their eyes?’ It would be the three of them on Christmas Day, as usual, a weepy telephone call to Canada and a wheelchair decked with tinsel.

  He ran through the rest of his caseload. Some of his targets will make a point of disregarding Christmas, a capitalist conspiracy if there ever was one, but they’ll struggle to do anything that would interest the strategists when the rest of the country is half-asleep and slumped in f
ront of the telly. Whether Stephen checked their telephone calls during the holiday or days later would make no difference at all. But what of PHOENIX? PHOENIX, who shared his living space as well as his telephone line with Stephen, who alone of Stephen’s targets posed a serious threat to national security, whose every breath was meant to be recorded and yet whose Christmas plans were still unknown?

  Then Louise was coming towards him, making signs to show that she needed to talk. Stephen removed his headphones. ‘Good news!’ she said. ’We’re cleared for take-off on Wednesday afternoon!’ Charlotte was following in her wake. ‘Talk about the eleventh hour,’ she said. Louise carried on down the long room but Charlotte stopped at Stephen’s desk.

  ‘Good weekend, or what there was of it?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m sorry about the baby,’ Stephen said. ‘I hope she’s all right now?’

  ‘She will be. Thanks for asking. For a while it was touch and go. Isn’t modern medicine a marvel? She’d be dead without it. We are lucky, aren’t we, to have been born when we were? I always think that, when people say they’d like to have lived in ancient times so that they could have had a chat with Shakespeare or discovered a new continent. I point out that they probably would have died at birth or, if not then, in childbed for certain.’

  She sat down heavily on the edge of the desk. ‘How’s your tooth? I’m sorry I forgot to ask you on Friday. There was so much going on.’

  ‘It’s better now. It wasn’t an abscess, the dentist said.’

  ‘Teeth! Honestly you can see why people used to get them all pulled out on their twenty-first birthdays!’ She bared her own. ‘You’ve been keeping your nose to the grindstone. What’s so interesting today?’ Picking up his headphones, she waved them at him in an interrogative way.

  ‘Nothing really. I’m just trying to catch up.’

  ‘Mine have mostly gone quiet. Apart from my dear little fascist and even he can’t get much action this week. His calls all go unanswered. Everywhere things are running down or about to close. Except for us. At your service round the clock and every day of the year. Have you ever done the Christmas shift? It’s okay actually, a lot of Dunkirk spirit, and the Director comes round with mince pies; other kinds of spirit too, though not doled out by him.’

  ‘Were you conscripted into it?’

  ‘No, you get asked to do it if there’s a real emergency like last week’s and you have the right language or the background. When I did it, it was for Baader-Meinhof. Nothing happened in the end. Plus ça change. Except! That reminds me; did you know that there’s going to be an official inquiry into what went wrong?’

  ‘Went wrong?’

  ‘Yes, about CUCHULAINN. Evidently something significant was missed. A warning. Sub-director Four is seething and Ana’s talking about handing in her notice.’

  ‘But was there a connection?’

  ‘Who knows? As with everything else in here, it’s anybody’s guess. Martin’s going round saying that the Department Four boys didn’t actually have a source; it was just a rumour that a local rozzer happened to overhear. Which, if true, means that we were all fossicking around in completely the wrong places. Par for the course, I say. Anyway. Did you hear Lou-Lou saying that we had to take that extra hour off tomorrow or we’d lose it? So, I thought I might come in an hour later in the morning but then I thought no, maybe we could go to lunch together, you and me?’

  Stephen looked up at her where she was sitting, her open, round and rosy face, her expectant smile, the faintest shading of dark fuzz above her lips. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that would have been nice but I’m afraid I already have another engagement.’

  ‘Another time then,’ Charlotte said vaguely, sliding from the desk onto her feet and walking off.

  The working day was coming to an end. Muriel, hindered by backlogs and conflicting priorities and late with the second delivery of tapes, had just reached Stephen when all the lights in the room went out and the machines came to a sudden halt. Behind the blinds it was pitch-dark. The listeners stayed where they were, waiting for an announcement; Charlotte struck her lighter and the small flame flickered gold. After some time a voice came crackling through the rarely used address system: ‘This is Security,’ it said. ‘There is an electricity failure, due to unknown cause. Staff are ordered exceptionally to draw open the black-out screens and to lock away equipment by the light of the street outside. They should thereafter proceed to leave the building in an orderly manner. There is no present danger. Do not attempt to enter the lifts.’

  ‘Poor buggers who are already in them,’ Solly said. ‘They could be there all night.’

  ‘And the people in the basement!’ Charlotte added. ‘No street light gets in there!’

  ‘No,’ Solly agreed. ‘They’ll all be striking matches and the building will catch fire.’

  ‘Come on, team,’ Louise said. ‘Let’s do as we are told.’

  She and Harriet began to open the blinds and a sallow light seeped in. Stephen, reaching out his hand, felt for the envelope that Muriel had just dropped into his tray. He picked it up and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket before he joined his colleagues in the complicated business of making things secure in the almost undiluted dark.

  ‘D’you want to go for a drink?’ asked Solly. ‘Seeing as it’s early? Outside, because the upstairs bar won’t be open, I don’t suppose.’

  Stephen hesitated. What would Helen be doing now? But then he thought how much he’d like a drink and how rare were Solly’s invitations and he replied: ‘Why not?’

  Damian and Charlotte joined them as they fumbled their way down the dark corridor to a stairwell dimly lit by torches held in the hands of Security staff posted on the landings.

  ‘This is exciting,’ Charlotte said. Solly said it reminded him of the three-day week. ‘Do you remember? We got used to doing things in the dark.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we always worked by candlelight?’

  ‘Yes dear,’ said Damian. ‘But we’d have no work. Unless we went back to the days of listening at keyholes or with our ears pressed to glasses on the wall.’

  ‘Silence please,’ a guard said, which made them laugh.

  The world outside seemed bright by contrast and they blinked at each other in their little huddle on the pavement. ‘Fox and Grapes?’ asked Solly. ‘It’s by far the closest.’

  ‘Is that the one with the stuffed bunnies in a case?’ said Charlotte. ‘Yes, let’s go there, it’s nice and quiet and it probably won’t be crowded. I can only stay for a few minutes; I’ve got to get back to my sister’s. God, I’m knackered. I really need a drink!’

  ‘But isn’t it out of bounds now?’ Stephen said.

  ‘Who cares? No one pays any notice to those stupid lists.’ Solly laughed. ‘I’ve seen half of Department Six in there on more than one occasion. That young Buckingham poncing around, and the other one, his chum, yeah, McPherson.’

  ‘Ah, the dishy Marlow,’ Charlotte said, rolling her eyes and flapping at her chest. ‘Be still, my beating heart.’

  *

  The man behind the bar is the one who was there on Friday night but he gives no sign of recognising Stephen. Not so Alberic, who is standing at the corner of the bar, fussing with his pipe. He looks up when he hears people coming into the pub and at first does not pick out Stephen from the group. When he does he seems a bit surprised but immediately comes towards him, smiling and waving his pipe in a gesture of welcome. ‘Capital!’ he cries. ‘I was exactly on the point of leaving in the intention of I telephone you. You have saved me the call! Tomorrow? Yes? You remember? Don’t be letting me down? Let’s meet at 7.15; the concert’s at 7.30. Wigmore Hall. You know it? It’s Oxford Street, or near. Brahms and Liszt. Hahaha. Very funny, don’t you think, to be saying that in the pub! I’ll be in the foyer!’

  During this conversation the others had moved to the bar and Solly was getting in an order.

  ‘Won’t you join us?’ Stephen says to Alberic, dreading
his reply. But Alberic declines the invitation. ‘Too kind,’ he says, ‘but I am in a dash. Tomorrow then. See you later, alligator.’ And with that he bustles out, his coat over his arm, leaving a half-drunk pint on the bar behind him.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ says Damian, for the sake of politeness, it would seem, rather than curiosity, as he doesn’t ask any other questions when Stephen answers vaguely that he is a casual acquaintance. But Solly is amused. ‘Sly-boots,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen that bloke in here before. So you’re a regular yourself? Out of bounds, my foot! You just didn’t want us queering your pitch!’

  ‘No one would want you two, queering or otherwise,’ interrupts Charlotte, distracting Solly’s attention. ‘So, why is it out of bounds then, this nice pub?’

  ‘Because once upon a time somebody must have seen somebody from a hostile agency in here. But everybody knows that no one but a half-wit would even think of trying to make a pick-up in a pub that’s on our doorstep! So, you see, it’s completely safe. That’s why the operatives use it.’

  ‘Unless it’s a double-bluff,’ Damian says quietly, but Solly isn’t listening; he’s asking Charlotte concerned and kindly questions about the baby. ‘Open-heart surgery,’ she says. ‘Poor little thing. She has to be fed through a horrible tube.’

  They take their drinks and sit at the table by the door. After Charlotte leaves, Stephen buys a second round but the other two do not stay long: Solly has to get home to his wife, and Damian, as always, has mysterious arrangements of his own. Stephen, left alone, decides he might as well have another pint of lager; what else is there for him to do tonight?

  Tuesday

  What is this quintessence of dust? Stephen, on Tuesday morning, woke from a dream in which he faced a firing squad, to those words hissing in his ear. It had been a haunted night, after his solitary evening. Returning to his flat he had felt as if he had been away for longer than two days; time was taking new, distorted shapes and the person who had left on Saturday seemed strange to Monday’s man. I am growing old by leaps and bounds, he thought, and weary. Nothing tethers me to the ground; I am the spaceman lost in space, trapped in a tiny capsule, and doomed to circle round and round in the starlit blackness until his heart stops beating and his lungs no longer fill with breath.