by Ian Mcewan
‘Honestly, this was different. People cared about each other.’
What she was saying was familiar. There had been pieces in the newspaper and a TV documentary reporting in triumph that East Germany had finally overtaken Britain in living standards. Years later, when the Wall came down and the books were opened, it turned out to be nonsense. The GDR was a disaster. The facts and figures people had believed, and had wanted to believe, were the Party’s own. But in the seventies, the British mood was self-lacerating, and there was a general willingness to assume that every country in the world, Upper Volta included, was about to leave us far behind.
I said, ‘People care about each other here as well.’
‘Well, fine. We all care about each other. So what are we fighting against?’
‘A paranoid one-party state, no free press, no freedom to travel. A nation as prison camp, that sort of thing.’ I heard Tony at my shoulder.
‘This is a one-party state. Our press is a joke. And the poor can’t travel anywhere.’
‘Oh, Shirley, really!’
‘Parliament’s our single party. Heath and Wilson belong to the same elite.’
‘What nonsense!’
We had never talked politics before. It had always been music, families, personal tastes. I assumed that all my colleagues had roughly the same sort of views. I was looking at her closely to see if she was teasing me. She looked away, reached roughly across the table for another cigarette. She was angry. I didn’t want a full-on row with my new friend. Lowering my tone I said softly, ‘But if you think that, Shirley, why join this lot?’
‘I dunno. Partly to please my dad. I mean, I’ve told him it’s the Civil Service. I didn’t think they’d let me in. When they did everyone was proud. Including me. It felt like a victory. But you know how it is – they had to have one non-Oxbridge type. I’m just your token prole. So.’ She stood. ‘Better get on with our crucial work.’
I stood too. The conversation was embarrassing and I was glad it was over.
‘I’ll finish off in the sitting room,’ she said, and then paused in the kitchen doorway. She looked a sad figure, bulging under her plastic apron, her hair, still damp from her exertions before our tea break, sticking to her forehead.
She said, ‘Come on, Serena, you can’t think all this is so simple. That we just happen to be on the side of the angels.’
I shrugged. Actually, in relative terms I thought we were, but her tone was so scathing that I didn’t want to say so. I said, ‘If people had a free vote across Eastern Europe, including your GDR, they’d kick the Russians out, and the CP wouldn’t stand a chance. They’re there by force. That’s what I’m against.’
‘You think people here wouldn’t kick the Americans off their bases? You must have noticed – the choice isn’t on offer.’
I was about to reply when Shirley snatched up her duster and a lavender canister of spray-on polish and left, calling out as she went down the hall, ‘You’ve soaked up all the propaganda, girl. Reality isn’t always middle class.’
Now I was angry, too angry to speak. In the last minute or so Shirley had upped her Cockney accent, the better to use some notion of working-class integrity against me. How dare she condescend like that? Reality isn’t always middle class! Intolerable. Her ‘reality’ had been ludicrously glottal. How could she traduce our friendship and say she was my token prole? And I’d never given a moment’s thought to the college she was at, except to think that I would have been happier at hers. As for her politics – the outworn orthodoxy of idiots. I felt I could have run after her and shouted at her. My mind was filled with withering retorts, and I wanted to use them all at once. But I stood in silence and walked around the kitchen table a couple of times, then I picked up the vacuum cleaner, a heavy-duty affair, and went to the small bedroom, the one with the bloody mattress.
That was how I came to clean the room so thoroughly. I went at it in a fury, running the conversation over and over again, merging what I’d said with what I wished I’d said. Just before our break I had filled a bucket to clean the woodwork round the windows. I decided I would clean the skirting boards first. And if I was going to be kneeling on the floor, I would need to vacuum the carpet. To do that properly I carried out into the corridor a few pieces of furniture – a bedside locker and two wooden chairs that were by the bed. The only electric socket in the room was low down on the wall under the bed and a reading lamp was already plugged in. I had to lie on my side on the floor and reach in at full stretch. No one had cleaned under there in a long time. There were dust balls, a couple of used tissues and one dirty white sock. Because the plug was a tight fit it took an effort to pull and jiggle it clear. My thoughts were still on Shirley and what I would say to her next. I’m a coward in important confrontations. I suspected we would both choose the English solution and pretend that the conversation had never happened. That made me angrier still.
Then my wrist brushed against a piece of paper concealed by one of the legs of the bed. It was triangular, no more than three inches along the hypotenuse, torn from the right-hand top corner of The Times. On one side was the familiar lettering – ‘Olympic Games: Complete programme, page 5’. On the reverse, faint pencil writing under one of the straight edges. I backed out and sat down on the bed to take a closer look. I peered and understood nothing until I realised I was holding the scrap upside down. What I saw first were two letters in lower case. ‘tc’. The line of the tear sliced right through the word below. The writing was faint, as though there had been minimal downward pressure, but the letters were clearly formed: ‘umlinge’. Just before the ‘u’ was a stroke that could only have been the foot of the letter ‘k’. I turned the piece of paper upside down again, hoping to make the letters do something else for me, demonstrate that I was simply projecting. But there was no ambiguity. His initials, his island. But not his handwriting. In a matter of seconds my mood had shifted from intense irritation to a more complex mix – of bafflement and unfocused anxiety.
Naturally, one of my first thoughts was of Max. He was the only one I knew who knew the name of the island. The obituary had made no mention of it and Jeremy Mott probably didn’t know. But Tony had plenty of old connections in the Service, though very few were active now. Perhaps a couple of very senior figures. They surely wouldn’t have known of Kumlinge. As for Max, I sensed it would be a bad idea to ask him for an explanation. I would have been giving away something I should hold on to. He wouldn’t tell me the truth if it didn’t suit him. If he knew anything worth telling, then he had already deceived me by keeping silent. I thought back to our conversation in the park and his persistent questions. I looked at the scrap of paper again. It looked old, faintly yellowish. If this was a significant mystery, I didn’t have enough information to solve it. Into this vacancy came an irrelevant thought. The ‘k’ on the side of our van was the missing letter, dressed up like a housemaid – just like me. Yes, everything was connected! Now that I was being really stupid, it was almost a relief.
I stood up. I was tempted to turn the mattress back just to look at the blood again. It was right under where I’d just been sitting. Was it as old as the piece of paper? I didn’t know how blood aged. But that was it, here was the simplest formulation of the mystery and the core of my unease: did the name of the island and Tony’s initials have anything to do with the blood?
I put the paper in the pocket of my apron and went along the hallway to the lavatory, hoping I didn’t run into Shirley. I locked the door, knelt by the pile of newspapers and began sorting through it. Not every day was there – the safe house must have stood empty for longish periods. So the copies reached back many months. The Munich games were last summer, ten months ago. Who could forget, eleven Israeli athletes massacred by Palestinian guerrillas? I found the copy with the missing corner only a couple of inches from the bottom and pulled it clear. There was the first half of the word ‘programme’. August 25th, 1972. ‘Unemployment at its highest level for August since 1939’.
I faintly remembered the story, not for the jobless headline but for the article about my old hero Solzhenitsyn across the top of the page. His 1970 Nobel Prize acceptance speech had just surfaced. He attacked the United Nations for failing to make acceptance of the declaration of human rights a condition of membership. I thought that was right, Tony thought it was naive. I was stirred by the lines about ‘the shadows of the fallen’ and ‘the vision of art that sprang from the pain and solitude of the Siberian waste’. And I especially liked the line, ‘Woe to the nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power.’
Yes, we’d spent some time talking about that speech, and disagreeing. And that would have been not long before our parting scene in the lay-by. Might he have come here afterwards when his plans for retreat had already taken shape? But why? And whose blood? I had solved nothing, but I felt clever in making progress. And feeling clever, I’ve always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful. I heard Shirley coming and quickly put the pile in order, flushed the lavatory, washed my hands and opened the door.
I said, ‘We should remember to put lavatory rolls on the list.’
She was standing well back along the corridor and I don’t think she heard me. She was looking contrite and I felt suddenly warm towards her.
‘I’m sorry about just now. Serena, I don’t know why I do this. Bloody stupid. I go right over the top for the sake of argument.’ And then she added as a jokey softener, ‘It’s only because I like you!’
I noted that she deliberately sounded the ‘t’ of ‘right’, in itself a muted apology.
I said, ‘It was nothing,’ and meant it. What had passed between us was nothing to what I had just found. I’d already decided not to discuss it. I’d never said much to her about Tony. I’d saved all that for Max. I might have got this the wrong way round, but there was nothing to be gained from confiding in her now. The piece of paper was tucked deep into my pocket. We chatted in our usual friendly way for a while and then we went back to work. It was a long day and we were not completely done, cleaning and shopping, until after six. I came away with the August copy of The Times in case I could learn more from it. When we dropped off the van in Mayfair that evening and parted, I thought Shirley and I were once more the best of friends.
7
The following morning I received an eleven o’clock invitation to Harry Tapp’s office. I was still expecting to have my wrists slapped for Shirley’s indiscretion at the lecture. At ten to eleven I went to the ladies’ to check on my appearance and as I combed my hair I imagined myself taking the train home after being sacked, and preparing a story for my mother. Would the Bishop even notice I’d been away? I went up two floors to a part of the building that was new to me. It was only slightly less dingy – the corridors were carpeted, the cream and green paint on the walls was not peeling. I tapped timidly on a door. A man came out – he looked even younger than me – and told me in a nervous, pleasant way that I should wait. He indicated one of the bright orange plastic moulded chairs that were then spreading through the offices. A quarter of an hour passed before he appeared again and held the door open for me.
In a sense, this was when the story began, at the point at which I entered the office and had my mission explained. Tapp was sitting behind his desk and nodded expressionlessly at me. There were three others in the room besides the fellow who had shown me in. One, by far the oldest, with sweptback silver hair, was sprawled in a scuffed leather armchair, the others were on hard office chairs. Max was there and pursed his lips in greeting. I wasn’t surprised to see him and simply smiled. There was a large combination safe in one corner. The air was thick with smoke and moist with breath. They had been in conference a good while. There were no introductions.
I was shown onto one of the hard seats and we sat in a horseshoe facing the desk.
Tapp said, ‘So, Serena. How are you settling in?’
I said I thought I had settled in well and that I was happy with the work. I was aware that Max knew it wasn’t so, but I didn’t care. I added, ‘Am I here because you think I’m not up to scratch, sir?’
Tapp said, ‘It wouldn’t take five of us to tell you that.’
There were low chuckles all round and I took care to join in. ‘Up to scratch’ was a phrase I’d never used before.
There followed a session of small talk. Someone asked me about my lodgings, another about my commute. There was a discussion about the irregularities of the Northern line. Canteen food was gently mocked. The more this went on, the more nervous I became. The man in the armchair said nothing, but he was watching me over the steeple he formed with his fingers, with his thumbs tucked under his chin. I tried not to look in his direction. Guided by Tapp, the conversation shifted to the events of the day. Inevitably, we came to the Prime Minister and the miners. I said that free trade unions were important institutions. But their remit should be the pay and conditions of their members. They should not be politicised and it was not their business to remove democratically elected governments. This was the right answer. I was prompted to speak of Britain’s recent entry to the Common Market. I said I was for it, that it would be good for business, dissolve our insularity, improve our food. I didn’t really know what to think, but decided it was better to sound decisive. This time I knew that I’d parted company with the room. We progressed to the Channel Tunnel. There had been a White Paper, and Heath had just signed a preliminary agreement with Pompidou. I was all for it – imagine catching the London–Paris express! I surprised myself with a burst of enthusiasm. Again, I was alone. The man in the armchair grimaced and looked away. I guessed that in his youth he had been prepared to give his life to defend the realm against the political passions of Continentals. A tunnel was a security threat.
So we went on. I was being interviewed, but I had no idea to what end. Automatically I strove to please, more so whenever I sensed that I was not succeeding. I assumed that the whole business was being conducted for the benefit of the silver-haired man. Apart from that single look of displeasure, he communicated nothing. His hands remained in their praying position, with the tips of his forefingers just touching his nose. It was a conscious effort not to look at him. I was annoyed with myself for wanting his approval. Whatever he had in mind for me, I wanted it too. I wanted him to want me. I couldn’t look at him, but when my gaze moved across the room to meet the eye of another speaker, I caught just a glimpse, and learned nothing.
We came to a break in the conversation. Tapp indicated a lacquered box on the desk and cigarettes were offered around. I expected to be sent out of the room as before. But some quiet signal must have emanated from the silvery gentleman because Tapp cleared his throat to mark a fresh start and said, ‘Well then, Serena. We understand from Max here that on top of your maths you’re rather well up on modern writing – literature, novels, that sort of thing – bang up to date on, what’s the word?’
‘Contemporary literature,’ Max supplied.
‘Yes, awfully well read and quite in with the scene.’
I hesitated, and said, ‘I like reading in my spare time, sir.’
‘No need for “sir”. And you’re up to date on this contemporary stuff that’s coming out now.’
‘I read novels in second-hand paperbacks mostly, a couple of years after they’ve appeared in hardback. The hardbacks are a bit beyond my budget.’
This hair-splitting distinction seemed to baffle or irritate Tapp. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for several seconds and waited for the confusion to disperse. He didn’t open them again until he was halfway through his next sentence. ‘So if I said to you the names of Kingsley Amis or David Storey or …’ he glanced down at a sheet of paper, ‘William Golding, you’d know exactly what I was talking about.’
‘I’ve read those writers.’
‘And you know how to talk about them.’
‘I think so.’
‘How would you rank them?’
‘Rank them?’
&nbs
p; ‘Yes, you know, best to worst.’
‘They’re very different kinds of writer … Amis is a comic novelist, brilliantly observant with something quite merciless about his humour. Storey is a chronicler of working-class life, marvellous in his way and, uh, Golding is harder to define, probably a genius …’
‘So then?’
‘For pure reading pleasure I’d put Amis at the top, then Golding because I’m sure he’s profound, and Storey third.’
Tapp checked his notes, then looked up with a brisk smile. ‘Exactly what I’ve got down here.’
My accuracy evinced a rumble of approval. It didn’t seem much of an achievement to me. There were, after all, only six ways to organise such a list.
‘And do you know personally any of these writers?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know any writers at all, or publishers or anyone else connected with the business?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever actually met a writer, or been in a room with one?’
‘No, never.’
‘Or written to one, as it were, a fan letter?’
‘No.’
‘Any Cambridge friends determined to be writers?’
I thought carefully. Among the Eng Lit set at Newnham there had been a fair amount of longing in this direction, but as far as I knew my female acquaintance had settled for various combinations of finding respectable jobs, marrying, getting pregnant, disappearing abroad or retreating into the remnants of the counter-culture in a haze of pot smoke.
‘No.’
Tapp looked up expectantly. ‘Peter?’
At last the man in the armchair lowered his hands and spoke. ‘I’m Peter Nutting by the way. Miss Frome, have you ever heard of a magazine called Encounter?’
Nutting’s nose was revealed as beakish. His voice was a light tenor – somehow surprising. I thought I had heard of a nudist lonely-hearts small-ads news-sheet of that name, but I wasn’t sure. Before I could speak he continued, ‘It doesn’t matter if you haven’t. It’s a monthly, intellectual stuff, politics, literature, general cultural matters. Pretty good, well respected, or it was, with a fairly wide range of opinion. Let’s say centre left to centre right, and mostly the latter. But here’s the point. Unlike most intellectual periodicals it’s been sceptical or downright hostile when it comes to communism, especially of the Soviet sort. It spoke up for the unfashionable causes – freedom of speech, democracy and so on. Actually, it still does. And it soft-pedals rather on American foreign policy. Ring any bells with you? No? Five or six years ago it came out, in an obscure American magazine and then the New York Times I think it was, that Encounter was funded by the CIA. There was a stink, a lot of arm-waving and shouting, various writers took flight with their consciences. The name Melvin Lasky means nothing to you? No reason why it should. The CIA has been backing its own highbrow notion of culture since the end of the forties. They’ve generally worked at one remove through various foundations. The idea has been to try to lure left-of-centre European intellectuals away from the Marxist perspective and make it intellectually respectable to speak up for the Free World. Our friends have sloshed a lot of cash around by way of various fronts. Ever hear of the Congress of Cultural Freedom? Never mind.
