by Colin Murray
I got his drift all right. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘And the other one?’
‘Mr Cavendish, looking even more disagreeable than usual,’ he whispered. Then he smiled brightly. ‘Come back and see us soon,’ he said, at his normal pitch again.
‘I will, Roger,’ I said.
He bustled off back to the bar, carrying our glasses.
I rolled my shoulders, stretched and looked around the room as nonchalantly as possible. But I couldn’t see anyone who looked like Special Branch. Cavendish was looking at me, though, his eyes narrowed and his lips pinched together.
The city at night is a beautiful place. The gentle light from the ornate lamp-posts is reflected on the damp pavement in golden pools and hangs in the smoky air in wispy haloes. It’s eerie too, though. Yellowish fog drifts off the river and licks at the shadowed doorways of darkened buildings. It’s a place of clandestine encounters, hushed whispers and secrets. I like the city at night.
It was getting on for midnight when we emerged on to Old Compton Street. No wonder Ghislaine had been bored.
The pubs, dance halls and cinemas had long since closed, and most of the girls in their bright dresses and the boys in their shiny hand-me-down suits had hurried off to catch the last buses and Underground trains to Hackney and Clapham. There were still a few ragged groups of stragglers, boisterously failing to hail one of the few taxicabs that occasionally puttered by, but this wasn’t the roaring city of a few hours before. It was a dozing city, and it was very quiet.
As we walked up the Charing Cross Road towards Bloomsbury and Ghislaine’s little boarding house, our footsteps echoed dully in the relative silence.
And so did those of the man following us.
I didn’t say anything to the others, and I didn’t look back.
Oddly, recognizing and dealing with someone following you was not one of the skills I was taught in the army. But I have been followed before. Pretending I didn’t know he was there was probably the best option for the moment.
He followed us all the way to New Oxford Street and was still with us when, after another corner or two, we turned into Great Russell Street. We passed a shuttered shop that stood directly opposite the British Museum. There were old coins in the window. Ghislaine gave me a knowing look. I should have realized that she had long since clocked our follower. We came up to a scruffy publisher’s office, and Ghislaine grabbed me and drew me into the doorway. She put her arms around my neck.
‘You do know we are being followed,’ she whispered in French.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s been following us since we left the club.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she said.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘This is London.’
‘That’s not the Antoine I remember,’ she said, teasing and challenging at the same time.
It was sly of her, but I responded as she probably knew I would. Danger always excited her and, being foolishly brave herself, she only respected the bold and courageous. It was why Robert, the boldest and most courageous of us all, had fascinated her. She was always going to end up with him.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s see who he is.’
‘Right,’ she said and pulled me out of the doorway and back on to the pavement.
Jerry was looking faintly embarrassed. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said.
‘Jerry,’ I said, fumbling in my pocket, ‘here’s a quid. Go back to Oxford Street and find a cab. Then come and pick us up. If you can’t find us, don’t worry. Just go on home.’
‘You sure?’ he said, pocketing the money and looking relieved. It was far more than he should need, but cabbies sometimes required an inducement to head for Leyton.
He didn’t wait to be told again, but set off back the way we had come. Ghislaine and I turned and waved him off. Our pursuer was standing outside the coin shop, pretending to peer into the window.
Ghislaine took my arm, and we hurried along the road while our pursuer was wondering what Jerry was up to. We slipped into a side road and waited. It seemed strange to be standing so close to Ghislaine, listening to her rapid breathing, her body taut and tensed, staring across at the bulk of the British Museum. We should have been in a wood in France, listening for breaking twigs, the bark of a fox, hoping that clouds would dim the moon, waiting to spring an ambush. If Great Russell Street had been a railway line we were planning to blow up and our follower a German soldier the illusion would have been complete.
After about twenty seconds we heard footsteps and then he appeared, striding across the road, tension and anxiety apparent in his stiff movements.
‘Hello,’ I said, and Ghislaine giggled.
The man turned, and I looked into the ruined face of David Jameson.
He stood still. The skin grafts he had undergone meant that his expression was difficult to read, but his open mouth and rapidly moving eyes suggested confusion.
‘Why are you following us, Mr Jameson?’ I said.
‘Doctor,’ he said.
It was my turn to be confused. ‘What?’ I said.
‘It’s Dr Jameson,’ he said.
‘Well, why are you following us, Dr Jameson?’
Ghislaine giggled again.
‘To be honest, I don’t really know. I suppose I was hoping that you would know where to find Jon,’ he said. ‘Jon Harrison. He’s one of my students.’ He paused. ‘I’m worried about him. I saw you talking to Ellis and I thought . . .’
I looked up and down the street. There was no one about. If Jameson wasn’t on his own, then his back-up was very professional. But Jameson didn’t seem to me to be Special Branch material. For one thing, Special Branch officers needed to be able to use their hands.
‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ I said, ‘but I’m looking for him too.’ I took another look back along Great Russell Street and relaxed. ‘I’m Tony Gérard, Dr Jameson. This is an old friend of mine, Ghislaine Rieux.’
‘Excuse me for not shaking hands,’ he said, looking down at his mittened claws, ‘but it’s not really possible.’ He inclined his head slightly. ‘Madame Rieux, Mr Gérard.’ He looked at Ghislaine. ‘Are you by any chance related to Robert Rieux? I know him slightly.’
‘He is my husband,’ she said very quietly.
‘Walk with us back to Madame Rieux’s hotel,’ I said. ‘Tell me why you’re worried about Jon Harrison.’
‘It’s a longish story,’ he said.
‘We’ll walk slowly,’ I said.
FOUR
As I had promised, we ambled slowly along and listened to Dr Jameson. The story he had to tell was not so very long. Nor was it particularly illuminating. He was, though, easy to listen to. He had a reassuringly deep voice, but there was a huskiness in the lower register and a crack in it that reminded you that, although beauty may be only on the surface, burn damage went much, much deeper.
‘It’s no secret,’ he said, ‘that Cambridge before the war was a hotbed of communist sympathizers. Most were idealistic young men excited at the prospect of changing our class-ridden society into something fairer. Few joined the Communist Party or did more than attend a meeting or two where Marxism was discussed. However, some were more committed. And it’s widely rumoured in the senior common rooms that a few of those went even further and were working for the Russian government. Well, you must remember that ghastly business a few years back. We hoped that that was it. But it’s possible that one or two still work for them, recruiting bright and susceptible students.’ He paused and looked up at the murky sky. I followed his gaze. It was difficult to tell if there was dark cloud gathering or if the murk was just the usual cocktail of coal smoke and other industrial effluent. There was a sickly yellowish edge to it.
‘I don’t know the truth of it,’ he continued, ‘but I do know that Jon is exactly the kind of brilliant, vulnerable boy such men might look at. He comes from a modest background and is encountering privilege for the first time. And I do know that his
whole demeanour changed a while ago. He became withdrawn, less forthcoming. I assumed that it was a girl. Then he stopped attending lectures. And two weeks later he disappeared.’ He paused again. ‘I received a letter from him saying that he had to talk about his studies and that he was in the Imperial Club most nights. This was the first opportunity I had to come to London. I saw you with Ellis and thought it just possible that you would lead me to Jon.’
We walked on in silence for a few moments. We were approaching Ghislaine’s boarding house, and I slowed down even more. I suddenly realized that I’d been thinking more about Dr Jameson and what he must have suffered than what he’d been saying.
Like most people, I suppose, I’d read all the stuff in the papers about Burgess and Maclean and was vaguely aware that the story was still rumbling on with sensational headlines about ‘The Third Man’, but I hadn’t thought much about it. So, two minor diplomats had been spying for Russia. Shocking, of course, but I don’t know that I’ve ever expected much from my social betters. It’s probably the revolutionary inheritance from my staunchly republican and egalitarian grandfather. His view of the Foreign Office, and the British upper class in general, allowed that while they might not have been quite as bad as the hated Boche, they had raised deceit to an art form.
I met a young, seriously drunk lieutenant in a drab bar in the Boul’ Mich’ after the Liberation. I was well on the way to being seriously drunk myself, but I do still remember a lot of what he said. He had spoken in unflattering terms about Cambridge and its fellow travellers, expressing the view that some of them were in Military Intelligence and passing secrets to the Ruskies. ‘OK,’ he’d said, ‘they’re our allies now, but what about when they’re bloody well not?’ He’d added that I should never take what a Cambridge man said at face value. They were all devious and dishonest. Of course, that had been the booze talking, and he had been at Oxford, so I assumed that he was not an impartial observer, but his words had stayed with me.
I hadn’t knowingly come across too many Cambridge scholars in the intervening years. But David Jameson seemed honest and straightforward enough. The fact that he had been one of Churchill’s few counted in his favour. And Richard Ellis, the only other Cambridge man I’d encountered recently, had been like an unmuddied pool.
A new, dark Humber Super Snipe, gleaming under a street light, swept grandly towards us, catching Ghislaine in its headlamps. She was looking thoughtful. It was difficult to tell how much she had followed, but she had been paying close attention.
‘How do you know Robert?’ she suddenly said.
‘What?’ Jameson said airily. ‘Oh, I met him at a conference, I expect.’ He gave the impression of vagueness, but I thought he was being evasive. Maybe my lieutenant had been on to something.
Ghislaine pursed her lips. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, ‘he attends many conferences.’
We had arrived at Ghislaine’s boarding house. It was in a little terrace sandwiched between two university buildings and it looked very closed. The black front door was firmly locked, and there was no light leaking from any of the windows. I suspected that it would have a proprietor bloody-minded enough to lock out any guest who had the temerity to stay out after ten o’clock.
Jameson took out a small notebook and, clutching the pen awkwardly in the claw of his right hand, laboriously wrote the telephone number of his college in it, handed it to me and asked me to call him with any news. I gave him one of my cards. Les would have been proud of me. I’d distributed more in one night than I’d used in the previous year. Jameson slipped the card into his notebook, bade us good night and headed off.
Ghislaine watched him for a few seconds and then climbed the steps to the door.
‘I doubt they’ll answer,’ I said before she rang the bell.
‘Why not?’ she said.
‘Because English hotels disapprove of their guests staying out late.’
She shrugged and pressed the bell. There was a slight noise within, like the fluttering of a pigeon’s wings.
I snorted. ‘They’ve put cardboard between the clapper and the bell,’ I said.
Ghislaine looked puzzled, then she angrily stabbed at the button again. ‘But my valise is there,’ she said, ‘and I have paid for the night.’ She frowned and looked up. Then she relaxed. ‘So, I’ll come back tomorrow. Tonight, I’ll stay with you.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Let’s find a taxi.’ I didn’t know if I was pleased about this turn of events or not.
My history with Ghislaine was not an entirely happy one.
I was pleased to see her and flattered that she’d sought me out, but I felt awkwardly adolescent, and the brandy roiled around in my uneasy stomach. I was nervous.
She came slowly down the steps and slipped her arm into mine. ‘That man,’ she said, indicating with a slight tip of her head the direction that Jameson had walked. ‘If he knows Robert, he is not to be trusted.’
I laughed. ‘Ghislaine, I know that Robert has upset you, but that doesn’t mean that anyone who knows him is untrustworthy.’
‘Yes,’ she said darkly, ‘it does if he met Robert at a conference. The conferences Robert attends are not academic discussions about the place of literature in modern life.’
I suddenly remembered that Ghislaine had a penchant for melodrama and a tendency to hint at secrets, double-dealing and little conspiracies. In the often febrile atmosphere of a clandestine war, it hadn’t seemed particularly inappropriate, but I had learned that questioning such apparently resonant statements rarely led to clarification. If there was anything behind the comment, it would all come out in good time, so I said nothing and looked down the street to see if there was any chance of Jerry appearing with a cab. I didn’t much want to pay for two.
But the calm, elegant street was empty. We walked back to New Oxford Street.
I had lost touch with everyone I had known in France during the war. It hadn’t been a conscious act. It had just happened. And no one there would have found it easy to contact me. Ghislaine, who had, she told me on the journey home, tried, had her letters returned with something like ‘unable to deliver’ written across them. Well, the postman couldn’t be blamed: it’s difficult to put letters through a door that no longer exists.
It had been surprisingly easy to find a taxi and then persuade the cabbie to go to Leyton. When he dropped us off and continued up Lea Bridge Road towards Walthamstow I suspected that the half-crown tip had been unnecessarily extravagant, as he lived in the area and was just knocking off for the night. I’d have to contact Les in the morning about some expenses.
After talking a little about teaching and meeting up with Robert again, Ghislaine had been quiet and thoughtful on the journey back. I wasn’t sure if she was just tired or if she was as apprehensive as I was.
I fumbled the key into the lock and we squeezed into the narrow passageway. If Ghislaine had been nervous she didn’t show it. She pressed me against the wall before I had even closed the door, put her arms around my neck and rested her head on my chest.
‘I have thought about you often, dear Antoine,’ she whispered in French.
I leaned back against the wall in that dark, chilly passageway, feeling her warm, vibrant body against mine, and tried to think of something sophisticated to say. She smelled of cigarette smoke, perfumed soap and a little sweat, and her strong, elegant hands stroked the back of my head. All I managed was a pathetic echo of her words.
‘Yes, I’ve thought a lot about you too,’ I mumbled.
She lifted her head, and I felt her soft, moist lips on mine.
I reached out awkwardly and pushed the door to, then put my arms around her waist. It all felt curiously unreal, as if I wasn’t really there, but looking on as someone else fidgeted uncomfortably in what should have been a passionate embrace. I didn’t feel very passionate. After a few seconds I pulled my head away.
‘Perhaps we should go upstairs,’ I said.
She didn’t move.
It wa
s possible that she’d forgotten or recalled things differently but, silly though it was, I found myself waiting for Robert to walk in and laugh at us – or, rather, at me. He never laughed at Ghislaine. He may have treated her shabbily, but he did take her seriously. I was patronized and ridiculed because I couldn’t do anything about it. I needed him. Ghislaine didn’t.
I half disengaged myself from Ghislaine and manoeuvred us, her clinging tightly to me, up the narrow staircase.
But Robert’s dismissive view of me as a rival was only half of the story. Callow though I was, I’d suspected that the attention that Ghislaine had shown to me was not because she found me irresistible, but had more to do with making a public statement to Robert. Ungallantly, I wondered if that was what she was doing again.
There was also Mrs Williams – Ann – and our Saturday night ‘arrangement’ to consider. It wasn’t that there was the remotest chance of Ann discovering anything about Ghislaine. How could she? She lived on the other side of London in Hammersmith, and I couldn’t imagine that she ever came further east than Gray’s Inn, where her late husband’s solicitor had his chambers. It was really that, for all my flaws, and despite the oddity and curious formality of our relationship, I had been steadfastly faithful to her for the last six years. I suppose it must have been something like love. I’d even joined a football club over in Ealing so I could turn up at her house by six thirty, muddy boots in my army haversack, for a drink before dinner. And Mrs Williams was clearly fond of me too. Two years ago she’d finally accepted that I really didn’t drink beer and had discovered that Berry Bros and Rudd sold very decent red wine.
Ghislaine had not asked about my domestic arrangements.
Jerry had obviously made it back. I could hear the faint, mellow sound of the cherished radiogram he kept in his room behind the shop. I couldn’t quite make out what he was playing, but it sounded bluesy so it could have been Bird.
Ghislaine did not appear to be too fazed by the accommodation, not even when I explained about the steps that led down to the washing facilities in the scullery and the outside loo, which I shared with Jerry. She shrugged and said it was not so very different to the appartement in Paris she’d lived in before she married. She did, however, look askance at my single bed. I explained that I would haul my grandfather’s old chair into the office and sleep there. She rolled her eyes at me and pouted, but seemed to accept the situation. Then she announced that she was hungry. I told her that I had some eggs.
