by Ian Mcewan
Then Shirley said, ‘So you’re actually seeing Tom. Amazing. Lucky girl! I mean, he’s lucky too. I’m just pulp fiction, but he’s one of the best. I’m glad he got the Prize, but I’m not sure about that funny little novel, and it’s rough what he’s going through now. But Serena, I don’t think anyone believes he knew where his grant money came from.’
‘I’m glad you think that,’ I said. I’d been keeping an eye on the clock mounted above the bar, behind Shirley’s head. My arrangement with Tom was for seven. I had five minutes to get clear and find a quiet phone box, but I lacked the energy to do it gracefully. Talk of beds had revived my exhaustion.
‘I’ve got to be going,’ I muttered into my beer.
‘First you’ve got to hear my theory of how this got into the press.’
I stood and reached for my coat. ‘Tell me later.’
‘And don’t you want to know why they threw me out? I thought you’d be full of questions.’ She stood close to me, blocking my way out from behind the table.
‘Not now, Shirley. I’ve got to get to a phone.’
‘Perhaps one day you’ll tell me why they put the Watchers on you. I wasn’t going to start informing on my friend. I was really ashamed of myself for going along with it. But that’s not why they sacked me. There’s a way they have of letting you know. And don’t call me paranoid. Wrong school, wrong university, wrong accent, wrong attitude. In other words general incompetence.’
She pulled me towards her and embraced me and kissed me on the cheeks again. Then she pushed a business card into my hand.
‘I’ll keep the beds warm for you. And you think about it. Be the manager, start a chain, build an empire! But off you go, darling. Turn left out of here and there’s a phone box at the end. Give him my best.’
I was five minutes late getting to the phone. There was no reply. I replaced the receiver, counted to thirty and tried again. I phoned him from Green Park Tube station and again from Camden. At home I sat on my bed, still in my coat, and read Tony’s letter again. If I hadn’t been worrying about Tom, I might have seen the beginnings of some relief there. The slight easing of an old sorrow. I waited for the minutes to pass until it seemed right to go out to the box on the Camden Road. I made the journey four times that evening. The last was at eleven forty-five, when I asked the operator to check if there was a fault on the line. When I was back at St Augustine’s Road and ready for bed, I came close to getting dressed and going out one last time. Instead, I lay in the dark and summoned all the harmless explanations I could think of in the hope of distracting myself from the ones I didn’t dare frame. I considered going to Brighton right away. Wasn’t there such a thing as a milk train? Did they really exist and didn’t they come into London in the early hours rather than out of it? Then I kept my thoughts off the worst possibilities by dreaming up a Poisson distribution. The more often he didn’t answer the phone, the less likely it was he would answer the next time. But surely the human factor made a nonsense of that, for he was bound to come home at some point – which was when my weariness from the night before overcame me and I knew nothing until my alarm rang at six forty-five.
I got all the way to Camden Tube the next morning before I realised that I’d left home without my key to Tom’s flat. So I tried him again from the station, letting the phone ring for over a minute in case he was asleep, then gloomily walked back to St Augustine’s Road. At least I wasn’t carrying luggage. But what was the point of my mission to Brighton if he wasn’t there? I knew I had no choice. I had to see for myself. If he wasn’t there, the search for him would begin in his flat. I found the key in a handbag and set out again.
Half an hour later I was crossing the concourse of Victoria station against the flow of commuters pouring off the suburban trains from the south. I happened to glance to my right, just as the crowd parted, and I saw something quite absurd. I had a momentary glimpse of my own face, then the gap closed and the vision was gone. I swung to my right, pushed through the crush, got clear and ran the last few yards into the open shop front of Smith’s newsagents. There I was, on the rack. It was the Daily Express. I was arm in arm with Tom, our heads lovingly inclined, walking towards the camera, with Wheeler’s restaurant out of focus behind us. Above the photograph, the ugly block capitals shouted out, HALEY’S SEXY SPY. I grabbed a copy, folded it double and queued to buy it. I didn’t want to be seen next to a picture of myself, so I took the newspaper to a public lavatory, locked myself in a cubicle and sat there long enough to miss my train. On the inside pages were two more photographs. One showed Tom and me coming out of his house, our ‘love nest’, and another was of us kissing on the seafront.
Despite the breathless tone of excitement and outrage, there was hardly a word of the article that didn’t have an element of truth. I was described as an ‘undercover agent’, working for MI5, Cambridge educated, a ‘specialist’ in mathematics, based in London, given the task of liaising with Tom Haley to facilitate a generous stipend. The money trail was vaguely but properly described, with references to the Freedom International Foundation as well as Word Unpenned. Tom’s statement that he had never had any connection with a member of the intelligence services was highlighted in bold. A spokesman for the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, told the newspaper that the matter was of ‘grave concern’ and that the relevant officials had been called to a meeting later today. Speaking for the Opposition, Edward Heath himself said that, if true, the story showed that the government had ‘already lost its way’. But most significant of all, Tom had told a reporter that he had ‘nothing to say on the matter’.
That would have been yesterday. Then he must have gone into hiding. How else to explain his silence? I came out of the cubicle, binned the paper and just made the next train. All my journeys to Brighton lately had been on Friday evenings, in the dark. Not since that first time, when I travelled to the university in my best outfit to interview Tom, had I crossed the Sussex Weald in full daylight. Staring at it now, at the charm of its hedgerows and bare trees just thickening in early spring, I experienced again the vague longing and frustration that came with the idea that I was living the wrong sort of life. I hadn’t chosen it for myself. It was all down to chance. If I hadn’t met Jeremy, and therefore Tony, I wouldn’t be in this mess, travelling at speed towards some kind of disaster I didn’t dare contemplate. My single consolation was Tony’s farewell. For all its sorrow, the affair was put to rest and I had at last my token. Those summer weeks were not my private fantasy, they were shared. It had meant as much to him as to me. More, in his dying days. I had evidence of what had passed between us, I had given some comfort.
It had never been my intention to obey Nutting and Tapp’s order to break off with Tom. The privilege of ending the affair belonged to Tom. Today’s headlines meant my time with the Service was over. I didn’t even need to be disobedient. The headlines also meant that Tom had no choice but to be shot of me. I almost hoped that I wouldn’t find him in the flat, that I’d be spared the final confrontation. But then I’d be in agony, it would be intolerable. And so I went round my problem and my scrap of consolation and I was in a daze until the train stopped with a jolt in the lattice steel cavern of the Brighton terminus.
As I climbed the hill behind the station I thought the cawing and keening of the herring gulls had an emphatic falling note, a far stronger terminal cadence than usual, like the predictable final notes of a hymn. The air, with its taste of salt and traffic fumes and fried food, made me feel nostalgic for the carefree weekends. It was unlikely that I would ever come back. I slowed as I turned into Clifton Street, expecting to see journalists outside the building where Tom lived. But the pavements were empty. I let myself in and began to climb the stairs to the attic flat. I passed the sound of pop music and the smell of cooked breakfast on the second floor. I hesitated on his landing, gave the door a hearty innocent knock to scatter the demons, waited, then I fumbled with the key, turned it first the wrong way, cursed in a whisper, and shoved the door
wide open.
The first thing I saw were his shoes, his scuffed brown brogues, toes pointing slightly inwards, a leaf stuck to the side of a heel, laces trailing. They were under the kitchen table. Otherwise, the room was unusually neat. All the pans and crockery had been put away, the books were in tidy piles. I went towards the bathroom, heard the familiar creak of the boards, like an old song from another time. My small inventory of cinema suicide scenes included a corpse collapsed considerately over the bath with a bloodied towel around its neck. Fortunately, the door was open and I didn’t have to go in to see that he wasn’t there. That left the bedroom.
The door was shut. Again, stupidly, I knocked and waited because I thought I heard the sound of a voice. Then I heard it again. It was from the street below, or from a radio in one of the flats downstairs. I also heard the thud of my own pulse. I turned the handle and pushed the door open, but remained where I was, too frightened to go in. I could see the bed, all of it, and it was made, and the Indian print bedspread was smoothly in place. It was usually in a tangle on the floor. The room was too small for there to be anywhere else to hide.
Feeling sick and thirsty, I turned back into the kitchen for a glass of water. It was only as I came away from the sink that I saw what was on the kitchen table. The shoes must have distracted me. There was a parcel done up with brown paper and string, and, lying on top of it, a white envelope with my name on it in his writing. I drank the water first, then I sat down at the table, opened the envelope and began to read my second letter in as many days.
22
Dear Serena,
You may be reading this on the train back to London, but my guess is that you’re sitting at the kitchen table. If so, my apologies for the state of the place. When I started clearing out the junk and scrubbing the floors I convinced myself I was doing it for you – as of last week your name is on the rent book and the flat may be of use. But now that I’ve finished, I look around and wonder if you’ll find it sterile, or at least unfamiliar, stripped clean of our life here together, all the good times wiped away. Won’t you miss the cardboard boxes filled with the Chablis empties and those piles of newspapers we read in bed together? I suppose I was cleaning up for myself. I’m bringing this episode to an end, and there’s always a degree of oblivion in tidiness. Consider it a form of insulation. Also, I had to clear the decks before I could write this letter, and perhaps (do I dare say this to you?) with all this scrubbing I was erasing you, you as you were.
I apologise too for not answering the phone. I’ve been avoiding journalists, and I’ve been avoiding you because it didn’t seem the right time for us to be talking. I think by now I know you well enough and I’m confident that you’ll be here tomorrow. Your clothes are all in one place, at the bottom of the wardrobe. I won’t tell you my state of mind as I folded your things away, but I did linger over the job, as one might over an old photo album. I remembered you in so many guises. I found at the bottom of the wardrobe, screwed up in a ball, the black suede jacket you wore in Wheeler’s the night you tried to explain the Monty Hall problem to me. Before I folded it, I did up all the buttons with a sense of locking something down, or locking it away. I still don’t understand probability. Similarly, under the bed, the short pleated orange skirt you wore to our rendezvous at the National Portrait Gallery, the skirt that helped kick the whole thing off, as far as I was concerned. I’ve never folded a skirt before. This one wasn’t easy.
Typing ‘folded’ reminds me that at any point before I’ve finished you could put this letter back into its envelope, in sorrow or anger or guilt. Please don’t. This is not an extended accusation, and I promise you it will end well, at least in certain respects. Stay with me. I’ve left the heating on in order to tempt you to remain here. If you become weary, the bed is yours, the sheets are clean, all traces of our former selves lost to the launderette opposite the station. It was a service wash, and the kind lady there agreed for an extra pound to do the ironing. Ironed sheets, the uncelebrated privilege of childhood. But they remind me too of the blank page. The blank page writ large and sensual. And that page was certainly large in my thoughts before Christmas, when I was convinced that I would never write fiction again. I told you about my writing block after we went to deliver The Levels to Tom Maschler. You were sweetly (and ineffectually) encouraging, though I know now that you had good professional reasons. I spent most of December staring at that blank page. I thought I was falling in love, but I couldn’t summon a useful thought. And then something extraordinary happened. Someone came to see me.
It happened after Christmas, when I’d taken my sister back to her hostel in Bristol. I was feeling emptied out after all the emotional scenes with Laura and I wasn’t looking forward to the dull drive back to Sevenoaks. I suppose I was a little more passive than I am usually. When a stranger approached me as I was getting into the car, my defences were down. I didn’t automatically assume he was a beggar or a con artist. He knew my name and he told me he had something important to tell me about you. Since he seemed harmless and I was curious, I let him buy me a coffee. You’ll have guessed by now that this was Max Greatorex. He must have tailed me all the way from Kent, and perhaps before that, from Brighton. I never asked. I own up to lying to you about my movements. I didn’t stay down in Bristol to spend time with Laura. I listened to your colleague for a couple of hours that afternoon, and I stayed in a hotel for two nights.
So we sat in this dim evil-smelling relic of the fifties, tiled like a public lavatory, drinking the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted. I’m sure Greatorex told me only a fraction of the story. First, he told me who you and he worked for. When I asked for proof he produced various internal documents, some of which referred to you, others were notes in your handwriting on headed paper, and two included photographs of you. He said he’d taken these papers from his office at great risk to himself. Then he laid out the Sweet Tooth operation for me, though he didn’t tell me the names of other writers. Having a novelist in the scheme was, he said, a whimsical afterthought. He told me he was passionate about literature, knew and liked my stories and articles and that his own principled opposition to the project hardened when he heard that I was on the list. He said he was concerned that if it ever came out that I was funded by an intelligence agency, I would never outlive the disgrace. I couldn’t know it at the time, but he was being less than honest about his motives.
Then he talked about you. Because you were beautiful as well as clever – actually, the word was cunning – you were considered ideal for the job of getting down to Brighton and signing me up. It wasn’t his style to use a vulgar locution like honeytrap but that was what I was hearing. I got angry and had a shoot-the-messenger moment and almost popped him one on the nose. But I have to hand it to him – he took care not to appear to relish what he was telling me. His tone was sorrowful. He gently let me know that he would far rather be enjoying his short holiday break than discussing my squalid affairs. He was risking his prospects, his job, even his freedom in this breach of security. But he cared for openness and literature and decency. So he said.
He described your cover, the Foundation, the precise sums and all the rest – in part, I suppose, as corroboration for his story. And by this time I had no doubts. I was so worked up, so hot and agitated that I had to go outside. I walked up and down the street for a few minutes. I was beyond anger. This was a new dark place of hatred – for you, for myself, for Greatorex, for the Bristol Blitz and the grisly cheap horrors the post-war developers had heaped upon the bomb sites. I wondered if there was a single day when you hadn’t told me an outright or implicit lie. That was when I leaned into a doorway of a boarded-up shop and tried and failed to throw up. To get the taste of you out of my gut. Then I went back inside Kwik-Snax for more.
I felt calmer when I sat down and was able to take in my informant. Even though he was the same age as me, he had an assured, patrician manner, the touch of the smooth civil servant about him. He may have been talking down to me. I d
idn’t care. He had an extra-terrestrial look, the way his ears were mounted on mounds of flesh or bone. Since he’s a scrawny fellow, with a thin neck and a shirt collar a size too big for him, I was surprised to learn that you were once in love with him, to the point of obsession, to the point at which his fiancée walked out on him. I wouldn’t have thought he was your type at all. I asked him if bitterness was his motive for talking to me. He denied it. The marriage would have been a disaster, and in a way he was grateful to you.
We went over the Sweet Tooth stuff again. He told me that it wasn’t at all unusual for intelligence agencies to promote culture and cultivate the right kind of intellectuals. The Russians did it, so why wouldn’t we? This was the soft Cold War. I said to him what I said to you on Saturday. Why not give the money openly, through some other government department? Why use a secret operation? Greatorex sighed and looked at me, shaking his head in pity. He said I had to understand, any institution, any organisation eventually becomes a dominion, self-contained, competitive, driven by its own logic and bent on survival and on extending its territory. It was as inexorable and blind as a chemical process. MI6 had gained control over a secret section of the Foreign Office and MI5 wanted its own project. Both wanted to impress the Americans, the CIA – which over the years had paid for more culture in Europe than anyone would ever realise.
He walked with me back to the car and by this time it was raining hard. We didn’t waste much time in parting. Before he shook my hand he gave me his home phone number. He said he was sorry to be the bearer of such news. Betrayal was an ugly matter and no one should have to deal with it. He hoped I would find a way through. When he was gone I sat in the car with the ignition key drooping from my hand. The rain was coming down like it was the end of the world. After what I’d heard I couldn’t face the drive or my parents or coming back to Clifton Street. I wasn’t going to see the New Year in with you. I couldn’t imagine doing anything but watch the rain clean the filthy street. After an hour I drove to a post office and sent you a telegram, then I found a hotel, a decent one. I thought I might as well use up the last of my suspect money on luxury. In a mood of self-pity, I ordered up to my room a bottle of Scotch. An inch of that with an equal amount of water was enough to persuade me that I didn’t want to get drunk, not at five in the afternoon. I didn’t want to be sober either. I didn’t want anything, even oblivion.
