The Long Room

by Francesca Kay

  He had stayed in the Fox and Grapes for a long time, drinking lager and then whisky. The rain was falling hard on his way home. Having transferred the tapes in their envelope from his jacket to his coat pocket, he did not take his hand off it until he reached his own front door.

  Later he had fallen asleep to Helen’s voice on his portable machine. Helen on the pillow next to him, whispering to him from Sunday afternoon. But it had not been her voice solely, for although Stephen tried to shut it out there had been Jamie’s too, and they were making love.

  In his dream the leader of the firing squad tied a bandanna round his head to close his eyes.

  What is it that exists between a husband and a wife? Marriage is confounding. Stephen is intimate with Helen’s and yet he does not understand it. How can a man and a woman slide between dispositions as swiftly as shadows moving on wind-blown water, how do they forgive? He knows that Helen is unhappy. Helen cries alone at night. Her husband is unkind to her; he tells her to fuck off. Her in-laws are contemptuous and cold. But out of the blue on Sunday, inexplicably, her mourning turned to dancing. Why? Why? Living with Helen and PHOENIX over the past two days has been like watching clouds fast-skimming over stormy skies and Stephen does not like it. Listening to the pair of them is giving him a heartache, making his head spin; it hurts to be always on the outside looking in. Why is Helen so easily deceived? Stephen can sympathise with early infatuation. But to allow herself repeatedly to be seduced after God knows how much time with him? Surely by now the scales should have fallen from her eyes to lie like flakes of old confetti trodden into dirt. Is the answer in that word ‘seduced’ – is that what keeps her captive?

  Seduction, seducer. Even the sounds of the noun, of the verb, are sordid in their sibilance, like those other slithery words: espionage and blasphemy. And here’s a key. She does not know that her husband is a traitor. If she did, her flesh would crawl and she would shrink from him instead of making love.

  Making love. He would rather pluck out his own eyes than think of that. But the images are so much more disgusting now he knows who PHOENIX is, and so much harder to banish from the blank screen of his mind. Dark head hovering over golden one; flesh against soft flesh.

  What is this quintessence of dust? Half a man, an incomplete thing, a man who is afraid of going to his grave unloved. No. No. These were words heard in a dream, they have nothing to do with waking life, or with the man who knows exactly where he’s going.

  This hunger is exhausting, though. Is it too much to ask: to love and to be loved?

  *

  On arriving at the Institute at nine o’clock that morning Stephen met Rollo Buckingham by the lifts.

  ‘Glad I’ve bumped into you,’ Rollo said. ‘Was just about to give you a buzz. About time for a conference, don’t you think? Should we aim for the Cube at two – meet me there unless you hear from me before?’

  In the long room Louise was looking worried. ‘Ah, there you are, Stevie,’ she said. ‘Muriel wants you. She’s lost a tape and she thinks it’s one of yours.’

  A gush of fear sluiced through Stephen, followed by a wave of heat. But surely Muriel could not be searching for the tapes he took last night? He had left them both at home this morning, which might have been unwise. Then he recalled that other tape from days ago, which cracked when he hurled it at a metal cabinet. It is still in a drawer, with his socks and handkerchiefs, at home. He had somewhat vaguely thought that as it had been paired with an orange-label tape, Muriel might have accounted for the two together. ‘I’ll go and see her,’ he assured Louise.

  Muriel was in her scented cubbyhole, with her arcane ledgers spread open on the desk. She raised her head when Stephen knocked on the half-open door. ‘Ah, honeybun!’ she said. ‘Now, PHOENIX. The tapes from 9 December, Thursday. The afternoon delivery – 12.00 to 24.00. I logged the orange-label coming back but not its usual companion. I must have thought that you were still working on it, although I know that usually the non-specials in this investigation don’t take long to process. But that was on Monday last week: have you still got it in your cupboard? I’m checking because we’re due a Security inspection any minute now.’

  Stephen looked surprised. ‘Offhand I really can’t remember what was happening on the tenth, but I’ll have a look at the duplicate report sheet, if you like. Oh, except that I’ve probably put that one out already for your pending files. I’m absolutely up to date.’

  Muriel got tiredly to her feet. ‘I’ll find it,’ she said. She unlocked the cabinet in which, as Stephen knew, she kept the safe-box, and pulled that box towards her by its handles. ‘Allow me,’ said Stephen. ‘That looks very heavy.’

  ‘I can manage,’ Muriel said. ‘But it is a bloody nuisance having to hoick it out.’

  ‘Aren’t this month’s duplicates in the current pending file?’

  ‘Not this one,’ Muriel said.

  He watched her fingers closely as she spun the lock on the box but her fingers were nimble and he could not read the code. She saw him staring and looked at him askance. He tried to seem indifferent to what she was doing but could not resist craning to see what the box contained. Muriel held the lid at such an angle that it hid the papers inside. There was evidently more than one file in it for she had to flick through several to find PHOENIX. It looked exactly like any other Individual Case File, except that its dun-coloured cover bore in red the words: TOP SECRET X LIST EYES ALONE.

  She opened the file, turned a couple of pages and extracted the duplicate report sheet. ‘Here it is.’

  9 December:

  Subject of interest arrived home at 19.33. Stated he had been working late and further delayed by faulty bicycle chain. Made one telephone call: to father. Arrangements made previously for Friday 10–Sunday 12 confirmed.

  ‘Oh yes, now I remember. Obviously there was nothing on that tape that needed to be saved. I would have cleared it for wiping and re-use. I’m quite certain that I would have put it in my out-tray with the rest. I’m always extra-careful about PHOENIX.’

  ‘So am I. About it and all the other X lists. That’s why I am especially worried about the tape.’

  ‘Could I have a look through that?’ Stephen asked, holding his hand out for the file.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Do you need me to find another report?’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll check my casebook. But, it has just occurred to me, you know what might have happened? As there was nothing at all important on the tape and it was a no-label, I wonder if I might just conceivably have had a moment’s inattention and put it in with ODIN? I seem to recall that I had a lot to do with him that week.’

  ‘But then I would have seen there was one extra,’ Muriel objected.

  ‘You’re an absolute wonder,’ Stephen said. ‘To keep track of all those tapes and all those sheets of paper every single day, in and out, it must sometimes feel like counting grains of sand. I’m pretty sure that I bundled several of ODIN’s no-labels in one envelope last week and that the missing tape was with them.’

  Muriel did not seem entirely convinced. She’d have to report it to Security, she said, but the fact that it was only a no-label would hopefully be enough to save her bacon.

  Stephen said he hoped so too. ‘When’s your birthday?’ he asked as he was leaving the room.

  ‘May the seventeenth,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because today I’m going shopping!’

  Muriel laughed.

  *

  Back at his desk, off the hook and pleased by having got away with the borrowed tapes, Stephen fabricated the weekend for PHOENIX on a new report sheet. He alluded to the real argument on Sunday morning but omitted all the detail. He claimed that Mrs PHOENIX was absent from the flat for several hours and that while she was away the subject of interest left it briefly. He reported an incoming call from Wednesday evening’s male visitor, still identified by his first name only: Michael. Call made from a call-box. Thanking subject for dinner. He accurately
described the subject’s intended movements from now until 27 December, with an extra twist of his own.

  There had indeed been a telephone call from Michael Bennet-Gilmour on the unlabelled tape that Stephen had quickly run through yesterday. He had called at 11.59 on Sunday morning to say thank you and how pleased he was that they were back in touch. ‘What happened then was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘It should be forgotten now.’ Greenwood made a sound of assent, with perhaps a note of hesitation in it, but said nothing to shed light on his friend’s puzzling remark. Stephen let it pass. It did not add to the picture he was making.

  Other telephone calls, and conversations between Jamie and Helen on Sunday afternoon, were festering like thorns in Stephen’s memory. Listening to them in bed last night had made them all too vivid. Whatever her temper when she left silently on Sunday morning, Helen came back at 12.22 apparently restored. ‘Hello!’ she called from the front door. Jamie must have been in the bedroom, for his response was indistinct and then she too faded out of earshot for a time. When they were within hearing again, he was saying: ‘I know that you were tired. We both were. We shouldn’t have stayed out so ridiculously late.’

  ‘Let’s go back to bed,’ she said.

  Afterwards they cooked and ate cheese omelettes. They went for a walk by the river. It was dusk: silver-blue light, seagull cry, scent of cold grey water. They walked home through the park holding hands. White flowers on black branches, winter-sweet; the voices of children playing their last games before being called inside. A father swings a baby high into the air to make her laugh and Helen laughs with them. When he kissed her he felt how chill she was from the evening mist. On their return he made hot chocolate with cream.

  While Helen was in the bathroom getting dressed to go out to supper with her godmother – a long-standing engagement – Greenwood rang his parents. His mother answered the telephone. ‘We’ve sorted it out,’ he told her. ‘I’ll definitely make the meet.’

  Stephen had listened to what Jamie said on both sorts of tape and therefore as one-sided conversation and as dialogue. ‘But not for Christmas?’ Lady Greenwood asked.

  ‘No. I’m sorry, Mamma. Helen feels that we must go to Joan’s. Yes, it’s true we spent last Christmas there as well, but that’s the thing when you are an only child.’

  ‘But you did tell her that Joan would be most welcome here?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. But she didn’t think that would really work. She’s tired, she’s a bit under the weather – I didn’t want to make an issue of it. In any case, I don’t suppose Joan would have changed her mind at such short notice. But I mean the main thing is we will be there. We’ll get up early in the morning and drive down.’

  ‘How long will you stay? And for New Year?’

  ‘Only until Wednesday. Because then we are going away.’

  ‘Just like that? All of a sudden? Where are you going to go?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Paris, maybe. Or Vienna. Somewhere scenic and romantic. Venice. Biarritz. Somewhere with a really good hotel. It’s a surprise for Helen, a Christmas present.’

  ‘And a surprise for you, apparently. Do you intend to turn up at the airport and take the first available flight?’

  ‘No! It’s not quite that last-minute. I’ll go and see the nice little man at Thomas Cook. The one you always use. He’ll recommend a good hotel and he’ll make the bookings.’

  ‘Dear Mr Railton! He’s been there so long; he must be about to retire. Where would Helen like to go?’

  ‘I haven’t asked her. I told you, it’s supposed to be a surprise. Of course she knows that we’re going to have a few days away, just the two of us, but she’ll be expecting Norfolk or the Lakes.’

  ‘Well then, don’t forget to pack her passport. You know, Jamie, very good hotels can be very expensive.’

  ‘Yes, but you only live once and anyway Claudio has given me some money.’

  ‘Really? What for?’

  ‘A late wedding present is what he said.’

  ‘He told me he wanted you to have a painting.’

  ‘Well, maybe he’ll give us one another time.’

  ‘Allora, tesoro mio, you are quite sure about the Boxing Day? You will be here? You will come home for that?’

  ‘Ma certo, Mamma; te l’ho promesso. Look, I have to go now, Helen’s finished in the bathroom – she might hear me talking. I’ll telephone you from Joan’s.’

  *

  ‘Who were you talking to? And why did you have to hang up in case I overhead?’

  ‘It’s Christmas, darling! It’s the season of secrets! I was talking to Mamma.’

  ‘Oh yes, right, I will phone mine.’

  Helen’s mother, Jamie’s mother – so unalike they might as well belong to different species. They must have things in common: they were mothers, in sorrow had they brought forth children, but there resemblance ended. Jamie’s mother with her operatic voice, her marked emphases, her swooping intonation, her implied inverted commas and something exotic in her speech, like the reverberation of a plucked string beneath the sharp notes of her precise enunciation, and Helen’s with the soft tones she had passed down to her daughter, breath indrawn in the slightest of sighs, a way of listening, as if she were a piano tuner waiting for the silences between each separate note. In her voice the echoes of another land, much further west than the place where she now lives. Stephen was suddenly flooded with nostalgia for somewhere he had never been: a place where curlews cry and saints pray on lonely outcrops, listening to wild seas and the saddest of laments.

  ‘Mum,’ Helen had said, ‘it’s me. And everything is fine now, everything is fine. I’ll see you tomorrow. Jamie will drive up on Christmas Eve. Yes, I’ll take the train.’

  Was that a break or a small sob he heard in Helen’s voice? No, she sounded happy. That man pulls the wool over her eyes time and time again; if ever he thinks that she may see him clearly, he clouds her vision anew, a hobgoblin painting the juice of magic herbs upon her sleeping eyelids to make her madly dote. Oh God, will the only way to end this be by slitting Greenwood’s throat?

  When he had written his report, he put it in an envelope to give to Rollo later and then he asked Louise if he might claim his extra hour at lunch today. He told her that he had to be back by two o’clock, but, if licensed to leave a little early, would be able to do his Christmas shopping. She gave her permission and would have liked to hear where he was going and what was on his list but he pretended not to hear the enquiry implicit in what she said. Before he went out, having made sure that the people nearest him had their headphones on and could not overhear, he made a call to VULCAN’s doctor. The same obstructive receptionist who had spoken to VULCAN last week answered the telephone. Stephen told her he was a neighbour and concerned that the old man was seriously ill. Could the doctor please go round today?

  ‘We are very busy’, the woman said, ‘because it’s Christmas.’

  ‘I know that. But he’s on his own and very poorly.’

  ‘If it’s an emergency, you need to call an ambulance.’

  ‘It’s not that bad as yet but he does need to see a doctor. He needs medicine, I think.’

  Reluctantly the receptionist agreed to put VULCAN on the list. ‘What’s your name, please?’ she asked.

  ‘Michael Bennet-Gilmour,’ Stephen said on the spur of the moment, for no reason at all.

  Outside, the day was strangely still and lightless. Stephen took the long way, through Shepherd Market and down Hertford Street toward the park, allowing himself more time for planning. He had no clear idea of what to look for when he got to the shop but if Helen did her shopping there, it must stock things she liked. In previous years he had not needed to give any thought to Christmas presents; he had always bought his mother a scarf from Marks and Spencer and, for whichever colleague he had happened to draw in the listeners’ lottery, a bottle of wine. This time he was going to be more imaginative. He pulled his overcoat tightly round him and clasped his arms
against the cold. From the bare branches of a tree a flock of starlings flew and swirled like cinders in the milk-white sky.

  Harvey Nichols loomed over the street with its curving corner like the prow of a ship. It was another world inside: thickly scented, busy, brightly lit and very hot; a bizarre cathedral. For a moment Stephen felt like a refugee inside it but he knew he did not look like one, in his gentleman’s coat and brightly polished shoes. He straightened his back. The entrance he had taken into the shop had led to counters piled with lipsticks and scent bottles; lights glinted off the glass, the varnishes, the colours, the painted ladies and their smiles. He inspected the rank of bottles closest to him; they were prettily shaped and bore intriguing names – Shalimar, Mitsouko, Vol de Nuit – and he considered buying one of them. He knew Helen’s scent – the scent of freshness, of rose petals after rain, of falling snow, and a deeper element within it, a trace of musk – like lost Titania’s – but he did not know its name. He picked up a bottle and held it to his nose: the liquid inside smelled sweet and heavy, like violet creams; it would be quite wrong for Helen.

  He wandered through the ground floor of the shop, past racks of scarves and leather gloves displayed on severed hands, bags and shoes and things to be worn in women’s hair, until he came to jewellery. She walks in beauty, like the night; she doth teach the torches to burn bright; fairer than the finest gold she needs no adorning. And yet, to see the look in her eyes, surprised by diamonds.

  Diamonds at first appeared to be not at all expensive. Hoops of them on gilt and silver were hanging on a plastic tree beside a till. Seeing Stephen eyeing them, a shop assistant asked if she could help.