The Long Room

by Francesca Kay

  ‘Are they real?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, real diamanté. Four or five worn together look very elegant.’

  Not quite sure, Stephen drifted towards a counter where the shiny things were in locked cases, and the price tags reversed so that he could not read them. Earrings, bracelets, chains of varying thicknesses and lengths; he had never looked at jewellery before. Most of it struck him as too glittery but there was one piece that stood out: a flower and crescent moon of gold and tiny pearls, with a diamond at its centre. ‘May I look at that one?’ he asked of a male assistant, who unlocked the case and reverentially plucked it out. ‘We also do the chains,’ he said. Stephen peered at the little label. It cost a lot of money.

  ‘For your wife, sir?’

  Stephen imagined the pearls on Helen’s skin, nestling on her breastbone, and he answered: yes.

  With the pendant and a fine gold chain wrapped and in his pocket, Stephen turned to finding a present for his mother. Did she actually own any jewellery other than the wedding ring and the watch she always wore? He couldn’t really remember. There was a little drawer in her dressing table in which she kept some beads and a pin or two but nothing of any value. What would she say if he were to give her real gold? That he shouldn’t have wasted his money on her, of course. Had it been sad to be a woman whom no man imagined wearing pearls against her skin? He returned to the girl with the diamonds and chose for Coralie a brooch in the shape of a flying swallow.

  Now Christophine. Nothing on the ground floor of this shop was likely to meet Louise’s rules on budget but Stephen was enjoying himself and didn’t feel like going anywhere else. It was a real pleasure, this extravagance of love. He went back to the part of the shop where scarves were sold and spent time admiring the softness and the colours of them, running them through his fingers, finding for Christophine a square of silk in swirling peacock blues.

  He had a little time to spare. On an impulse he took an escalator to the second floor. It delivered him into the midst of improbably miniature clothes, in white and blue and pink. There was a lacy cardigan with fasteners of ribbon on display. It looked too small for any human creature but the label on the hanger said that it would fit a child aged between 0 and 3 months. He supposed that Charlotte’s niece, being quite new and having been so ill, must be very tiny.

  *

  He walked the quick way back to the Institute, his shopping bag in hand, stoking the warmth in his heart to keep it going. He would need it as insulation against Rollo. The prospect of the Cube was loathsome. Had Rollo said ‘conference’ or ‘meeting’? Conference possibly, but that would be of a piece with his usual self-importance. Stephen was also looking ahead with a certain amount of dread to the evening with Alberic. Why had he not made his excuses yesterday, in that awkward encounter in the Fox and Grapes? What had seemed last Friday like a generous burst of spontaneity now promised nothing but embarrassment. He hardly knew the man. What would they find to talk about for an entire evening? And anyway, where was he supposed to meet him? He was positive that Alberic had specified the Festival Hall but last night he had definitely said the Wigmore instead. Perhaps the man was mad. Shouldn’t he forget the whole absurd idea?

  Rollo had brought a sandwich and a cup of coffee with him to the Cube, which reminded Stephen that he had eaten nothing since a slice of toast at breakfast. He was alone but said that his Director was planning to join them later. ‘We have concerns,’ he added.

  Stephen gave him the envelope with the report from the weekend and watched him read. Rollo was good at staying expressionless, and he took his time. When he had finished, he breathed in deeply and breathed out. Then he studied Stephen closely. Stephen looked away, but spoke to break the tension. ‘Why does PHOENIX sometimes speak to his mother in Italian?’

  ‘Because she speaks it, I suppose. She’s from Argentina.’

  ‘Don’t they speak Spanish there?’

  ‘Yes, of course they do,’ Rollo said impatiently. ‘PHOENIX speaks that too. But evidently some people from Argentina speak Italian. I don’t know why, I just know that they do. He has family connections there.’

  ‘Well that would explain his raven hair.’

  ‘What?’

  Stephen realised his mistake at once. ‘Oh it’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s a quote. From Beckett, Samuel. I was only joking.’

  ‘Please don’t. We need to stay focused here. Let’s go through all this carefully again. The wife was absent from the flat for several hours, and during that time the subject only left it once?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you don’t know where he went?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘To church, I think, but I don’t know what she might have done afterwards; she wasn’t talking to the subject when she got back.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They had a fight. It says there. They are always fighting. It is not a happy marriage.’

  ‘That is not my impression.’

  ‘Excuse me, but you don’t know what they are like when they are on their own. I see it all the time with married couples: one thing in public, quite another behind their own front doors.’

  ‘But they will be together at Christmas?’

  ‘For the barest minimum of time. He’s leaving as soon as he can, as it says there, at crack of dawn on Boxing Day.’

  ‘When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even. It’s a quote.’

  Rollo read the report to himself a second time and began to eat his sandwich. Ham and cheese. Stephen watched him as he ate, his working jaw, his straight white teeth. ‘The Boxing Day meet,’ he said at last.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Stephen said.

  ‘That will be the twenty-seventh as a matter of fact – Monday. I may be there too, at Harcourt Mill.’

  ‘I don’t shoot myself,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Vienna?’

  ‘That sounded likely.’

  ‘May I listen to that call that you reported?’

  ‘Absolutely. Oh no, wait a moment, damn, I think I’ve already sent that one out for wiping and re-use. Well, I’m sure I have. I’m sorry.’

  If he was irritated by the answer, Rollo Buckingham didn’t show it. ‘Vienna,’ he said again.

  Stephen had known that mention of Vienna would ignite a reaction. Everybody knew that enemy operatives, banned from travelling freely outside London, preferred to meet their agents in the cities of nearby countries in which neither they nor the agent would be known to the local trackers. Paris, Brussels, Lyon, yes of course, but Vienna – convenient for Czechs, Yugoslavs, Hungarians and East Germans – was particularly favoured. ‘Will you be able to follow PHOENIX there?’ he said to Rollo.

  ‘I don’t know yet. There is something here that does not square with what I know from my other sources.’

  Just as Stephen was opening his mouth to ask what sources Rollo meant, Binks pulled open the door. ‘Frightfully sorry to disturb, but Rollo, there’s a message from Sub-director Six for you. He’s frightfully sorry but his other meeting is overrunning. He’ll call you when he gets back and will fix a time for a conference later on. But it could be a bit late. He is frightfully sorry.’

  ‘Thanks, Binks. We’ll be finished in a minute,’ Rollo said. ‘Stephen, when will you be able to finish Monday’s take?’

  ‘Now. I mean this afternoon.’

  ‘Good. Well then, we can fit in a meeting with the sub-director at close of play today.’

  ‘Actually, I can’t stay late today, it’s not possible. I have another engagement. I am meeting a friend, we are going to a concert and I’d have no way of letting him know if I was going to be late.’

  Now Rollo does look irritated. His lips tighten into a straight line but ‘Tomorrow then,’ is all he says.

  *

  Tomorrow? But yesterday Jamie Greenwood drove his wife to Liverpool Street in time for the 9.47 train to Woodbridge. Afterwards, Stephen supposed, he went to work. The fl
at stayed empty through the day, bereft of Helen. A barren place, a cold expanse of nothingness, as is anywhere and any time without her. Not knowing when she will come home, how shall he survive this time, these hollow days of desolation? She leans her head against the grimy window of the train and, in the fields she travels through, the cattle and sheep, the stalks of corn, form a guard of honour and salute her. The winter trees bow their bare branches in homage to her beauty. The train takes her further and further away and, because she is not here, there is no purpose in today. Stephen listened to the tapes of Monday but he didn’t need to; he could have predicted that there would be nothing to report. PHOENIX came home late that night, alone. No one telephoned him and he did not say a word.

  *

  Coralie was at her kitchen table wrapping Mr Fisher’s gloves. She had decided on a green pair this year, to make a change from blue or brown. To wrap up a parcel nicely was not as easy as it had been when her knuckles were less swollen but she did like the finished effect. She had already wrapped the jumper she had bought for her son. That jumper had been in her chest of drawers for weeks, hiding beneath her own clothes – not that Stephen would ever have thought to look. Every morning, as she was rootling around for a vest or a petticoat, she gave it a little stroke. It was gorgeous. So soft, so luxurious. She had made a special journey by taxi and train to Oxford just to buy it. Since he had started that job in London, her son had become very fussy about clothes. It was funny, that. He had never shown any sign of caring how he looked when he was at school. Mind you, of course he wore a uniform all day. Coralie approved of uniforms; great levellers they were, apart from looking smart. Just look at any soldier, any FANY. Spencer had never seemed as handsome in civilian clothes as he had when he was in the Army. Anyway, that jumper was one she’d seen being modelled in a magazine, it was in a feature called ‘Get the Brideshead Look’, which had also helpfully listed stockists. Stephen had a look of that Sebastian, only not so blond or girlish. Nor as susceptible to dangerous temptations, she must hope. No, of course not, he was a sensible boy. But it was a bit of worry that he didn’t seem to have made many new friends in London. It never sounded very sociable, that office. Where else do you meet people except in the place you work? Well, he’d never been the sort of child who goes round in a great big happy gang; more of a loner, really, maybe a little shy, or maybe choosy. At school, though, there had been his good friend Giles. She must remember to ask Stephen if he was planning to meet up with Giles during the festive season. Perhaps he’d care to come to tea? With a bit of notice, she could always rustle up some more mince pies. She’d like to see him again herself, now he’d got so famous. But just talk about girlish looks! Him in his tight white satin and his eyes made up like a geisha’s. Speaking for herself, she’d go for Jeremy Irons any day. Although he’d probably make even more of a fuss about his cufflinks than her Stephen. Do you suppose it might put the girls off, dressing like an old gent in wartime when today’s boys all went round in jeans? For her part, she really couldn’t be bothered about what to wear, as long as she was warm and decent. Life was far too short.

  The shortest day of the year, the longest night, but uphill from now on. These were good days, the days between the winter solstice and the eve of Christmas; all the lights on in the house and every single item ticked off on her list bar those she really could not do more than two days in advance. Her cards were sent, her presents wrapped, her cupboards full and the turkey sleeping the sleep of the just in the boot of Stephen’s car. In her mind she ran through the last-minute list again: peel chestnuts, peel potatoes, peel parsnips, do sprouts, giblet stock and Stephen’s stocking. Not many surprises in there, she was sorry to say! A tangerine and chocolate coins, because they were what he always had when he was a little boy. In those days she’d have put in a Dinky car and a Ladybird book – Piggly Plays Truant! – a bright rubber ball or a bag of marbles. Beautiful those marbles were, positively jewel-like, but costing next to nothing, except for the extra-large. And Britains animals! Stephen had adored those animals and played with them for years. You could get farm animals and zoo ones; he was always very stern about keeping them apart, lest the lion ate the lamb. Calves and polar bears and piglets – pink and black – and rhinos. Those were the days, oh dear! Now it was a bar of soap and a pair of socks. Mind you, this year’s socks were really rather superior, patterned in a sort of Fair Isle, like the jumper.

  Odd how Christmas involves a lot of peel. Chestnuts are the worst; you always get that inner skin beneath your thumbnails and it hurts. Just one of those things, like losing the end of the Sellotape, those minor irritations, small thorns in the flesh, which you need in life as a Christmas cake needs salt to give the sweetness savour.

  Coralie got up and went to the living room to put Mr Fisher’s present next to Stephen’s under the decorated tree. The tree was looking a bit the worse for wear, it had to be admitted, rather threadbare, but what could you expect, when it had done such service down the years? Yet even so, it was brave enough, and gay enough, under its load of lights and tinsel. There! What else did she have to do tonight? Nothing. Put her feet up, heat some soup, watch The Bridge on the River Kwai. Snow was falling hard again; she drew her curtains closed.

  *

  The snow caught Stephen by surprise. Who would have thought it could snow again, so soon after last week’s storms? It must have been falling for a while, silently, stealthily; it was already deep on roofs and pavements. Standing at a window of the long room, about to close the blind, he watched the thick flakes drifting down like dying birds, or shreds of cloud, and thought of the white sky he had seen earlier in the day. A skin of sky holding back the snow. Vol de nuit. To escape on the wings of the night, to soar above the long room and the Institute, to start again from the beginning, in a new place, a new story – if only it were possible. Behind him Louise was calling the group together. ‘Two things, chaps,’ she said. ‘One, don’t forget the party! As if you could! I vote we do our pressies just before. And two, have I got everybody’s leave sheet? Harriet, you’re taking Thursday off, aren’t you? Christophine? Good! Stephen, did you give me yours?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing yet,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid that last-minute requests for leave will probably not be granted. With Department Four still running around like headless chickens and something very odd afoot in Department Six, we’ll almost certainly have to have some holiday cover. That reminds me Stevie, could you manage an hour or so of overtime this evening? Martin’s off sick for the rest of the week and Ana’s tearing her hair out next door.’

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry but I have to leave on time today. I’m meeting somebody at six.’

  ‘Never mind, I’ll see if Solly can do it. I thought you might be busy,’ Louise said, without irony or rancour. ‘I’d do it myself but for the rehearsal, which of course I cannot miss.’

  Stephen nodded sympathetically. He was used to Louise’s habit of assuming that he and everyone else knew all about her outside life, the people in it and its small events. Charlotte clearly did. ‘Will there be tickets on the door?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, I got those tickets for Cockney Rebel! Yes, I know, petal, not your cup of tea! Actually, Steve you might like …?

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m going to a concert tonight,’ he interrupted. ‘Brahms piano sonatas.’

  ‘All right, all right, Mr Clever-clogs! I bet you’re going in white tie and tails with your Oxford friends?’

  ‘I adore Brahms,’ Louise began to say but Stephen did not wait.

  ‘I must pack up’, he said, ‘or I’ll be late.’

  ‘Don’t forget your umbrella,’ Charlotte said.

  *

  He didn’t have an umbrella. Snowflakes fell upon his hair and combed their chilly little feelers through it, shivering his scalp. He stood irresolute on the street outside the Institute and felt the coldness of the pavement through the thin soles of his shoes. Where should he go now? He cou
ldn’t have stayed on at work, for fear of being found out by Rollo Buckingham. He wasn’t dressed for this weather. This December was turning out to be so strangely cold; what if the sun had spurned the world for ever, condemning it to endless winter? If he were to stay here any longer, would he be frozen to the spot? Suddenly he felt as if he really could not move at all. But he must. People were coming out of the Institute; he would be observed. Should he just go home? Another cheerless night, alone? Or might he find a refuge in the quiet of the staircase outside Helen’s flat, where an element of her will linger still? I need to know that she is near me, he said to the darkness; tell me where to go.

  And of course it was entirely obvious: the Wigmore Hall. He didn’t expect Alberic to be there; the man was probably some sort of fantasist. But there was no reason why he could not buy himself a ticket and attend the concert. What better bridge to Helen than an evening of the music that she loved? And in the strange dominion where their souls connect, she might hear that music too.

  He had time to kill. The invitingly lit doorway of the Fox and Grapes across the road promised instant shelter from the snow if he dared defy Security again. Why not? It was warm in there. He would tuck himself away in the corner furthest from the bar and hide behind the paper.

  He was on his second whisky and halfway through the crossword when he heard the voice of Rollo Buckingham ordering two pints of IPA. The pub was busier than it had been on Monday and a small crowd was standing near the bar, forming a screen for those who were, like Stephen, sitting down. He opened his newspaper to its full extent and peered cautiously round it. Buckingham, in his beautiful coat, was paying for the drinks. There was no reason why he should look in Stephen’s direction now but until he left the pub he was a barrier between Stephen and the exit. If Stephen were to get to the Wigmore Hall by seven, he would need to set off soon. He watched as Rollo, taller than anyone else in the room, shouldered his way to the opposite end and then he saw with a sinking sense of inevitability that the other pint was for Greenwood. The two men stood close together, near the door, talking intently. At this distance Stephen was unable to hear what they were saying. He felt like a rabbit in a snare, trapped unless it chews its own paw off. He also felt affronted. Security’s instructions were explicit: this pub was out of bounds. How arrogant it was of the two men to behave as if the rules did not apply to them.