She looked abruptly across to her left. “Whatever do you mean?”
He now spoke slowly. Surely these were rehearsed lines. “You were recruited while you were at university, weren’t you?”
“Recruited?”
“Quit the games for once, Christine.” And Cartwright suddenly sprang to his feet - sorry, foot - and, in what seemed like a single movement, mounted the balcony and launched himself into the water. It was almost as if he had thrown a rubber bone to Christine with an instruction to gnaw, while he busied himself elsewhere. Barely three minutes later, he was back at her side, dripping into his chair.
“You needed a pee.”
“There’s no denying the obvious.” He turned again to face her to add emphasis to what followed. “Is there, Chris?”
She did not respond. Her drink was almost finished. “I think there’s enough for one more,” she said, as she began the developing ritual that would allow her to stand. But Cartwright caught her arm, forced her back, his grip still light, but now determined.
“You were recruited before you left college, I am told. And that’s how you managed to land all these plum ‘journalistic’ assignments over the years, the ones that have made what you call your professional name. It’s true isn’t it? And you’re still on the payroll.”
“Can I get a drink?” She gave an assertive tug of the arm against his grip. He removed his hand.
She got up, pushing herself upright off the chair arms, but this time pushed too hard and almost overbalanced. The balustrade behind her was at hand, however, and a mere placement of a palm steadied the pose.
But he had already sprung to his feet, perfectly balanced, and in position to assist, his reactions automatic, his assistance precise, as if the whole sequence had been rehearsed. Thus he embraced her, he seemingly fixed on his stilt, without a semblance of passion or affection, only stability. It was a sensation I knew Chris had longed for. Through its implied support, the contact clearly took her back those four decades to relive the mutual reassurance of their shared teens.
“I can manage,” she said, just before she pecked a tiny kiss, perfunctory, but offered with more than mere recognition of proximity, onto his breastbone. “Do you want anything?”
“I just had a mouthful of sea, thanks,” he said as he flopped back towards his chair.
There was a clatter this time as Christine made her way along the balcony edge, her right hand sliding along its rail. She moved more quickly this time, stumbling, but not faltering. It was a matter of style. Just a couple of minutes later, she was back in her seat, newly refilled, her left hand having provided the sliding support on her return trip.
“The deal, as far as I understand it, Chris, is that you are not exactly on the payroll, but you take on freelance assignments. You have, though, signed the Official Secrets Act, so you can’t discuss it. I, therefore, will have to discuss it for you.”
“Anything you like,” he said. He was acting Christine’s response to his own question, leaning abruptly to his right, well into Christine’s space, catching her off guard and making her jump. He had half-turned his back towards her to mimic her position, and raised his voice to an exaggerated caricature of a feminine squeak. And thus he continued, now back to his own pose.
“As I said, you’re freelance. You get the assignments. The television and the other media assignments are your day job, and they provide the cover for you to talk to contacts, gather intelligence, drop letters and briefs, and generally poke your nose wherever you can stick it.”
“That’s quite accurate, except it pays a lot better than the day job, at least by the hour,” he squeaked in reply to himself, again leaning right across her.
“And when you have done your bit, you go home, broadcast the goodies, pick up the awards, receive praise, even adulation for your journalistic integrity, your balance, your innovatory investigatory work, and then you bank your salary, not to mention the sponsorship for the freelance assignment on the side, and all the time you are a state security operative doing the dirty work for the intelligence services.”
“Again true,” he squawked at his oblique angle, “except that the last phrase in an oxymoron.”
“Tom!” Christine pushed him away, back to his side of the chair arm. This time, his thrust to his right had been too decisive, and he had encroached on her space. “What are you trying to prove?”
Cartwright now turned to look at her. His expression was one of smiling disbelief. “Aren’t words of one syllable simple enough, Chris?”
I needed no second guess. I have seen that expression on my wife’s face often enough, though not as often as I would have liked in recent years. It can only be described as predatory: there is no other word. There exists an object of her desire. Her focus becomes complete and the object complies. The couch where Christine had slept was barely two metres behind them, a mere stumbled, interlocked dance across the intervening bamboo for the two of them. They collapsed onto the thin mattress that covered the hard surface and raised a giant creaking groan from a structure unused to such use. All they had been wearing between them amounted to two pairs of light shorts and Christine’s loose blouse and, amidst the dance, they cast these off on the hoof, so they hit the ground running, so to speak. I watched them become reunited, but in a way they had previously never known, two sixty-year-old kids returned to their blissfully-shared but now forgotten teens. I thus found a moment to reflect, to reconsider and recollect. They were done in just a few instants, and then lay together in silence for a quarter of an hour before they began again, this second encounter slower, more overtly affectionate, and satisfying, well beyond the call of mere duty.
And so for some time there was little to report, for afterwards they slept together and, it needs to be said, without recourse to extra covers on that wide sofa, just inside the house’s permanently open door. I wonder why I refer to it now, because it had never once been closed, or even moved, since Christine had arrived. Now, still tied back by a string from handle to wall bamboo, it provided the almost symbolic backdrop, visible over the back of that couch where they lay. My angle was perfect, if viewing the open door was my goal, but the internal camera Christine had placed that first morning, an angle I had hardly used thus far, was mounted on the room’s back wall, looking straight at that door, but across the back of the couch. In that house, from my perspective, the only, and I stress the only private, invisible place was the mattress on which Christine had slept, where she now lay with Cartwright, her target, her object, and now her subject. Clearly, they slept, the detail of their encounter lost to me.
The change of tack had worked. That much was clear. But it remained only a partial success. I referred to it earlier, but only in passing. It had come about earlier than I personally had expected, but possibly later than had been the general assumption. A tough, direct approach was always going to be our opening tactic, certainly as far as the first interview. It was that first programme where the general consensus had predicted we might expect a breakdown, certainly on the first take. We had predicted anger, which I suppose we got, but we did not expect the control that went with it. After all, Cartwright had no media experience, as far as we knew, since he had shunned all approaches, of whatever type, since his rise to prominence.
The tactic, our general consensus agreed, was to attack for as long as possible. Eliciting a reaction from him, an impassioned outburst of any kind, was essential. But then, as soon as it became clear that this approach would deliver nothing more, we had always planned a softening, a gentler, co-opting tenor that might draw him along. The intention then was to inter-cut the material from the failed first take or with subsequent attempts that broke down with a more cooperative later version to create the personality we wanted to impart on Cartwright’s identity.
Now, personally, I had never subscribed to the above. I had raised my objections during the
planning sessions, but had been consistently overruled. I had thought that we were underestimating Cartwright’s commitment to the project. After refusing all forms of media contact for over two years, despite having received offers from veritable queues of journalists, film-makers and television producers alike, he had finally accepted a commission. He had not done that lightly, nor was he likely to allow a breakdown, and certainly not a quick one. He undeniably had something personal, however opaque, invested in the project and would want to see it come to fruition. Thus I argued, suggesting that, if a breakdown were to come about, it would be towards the end, when he might begin to realise that he was not, and would not have any form of control over the eventual message the material would convey.
In the event, we were all wrong. The breakdown came in the second programme, not the first, so Christine’s change of approach from confrontation to accommodation could only have been a decision on the hoof, which may go some way towards explaining why it quickly became a significantly greater shift of tone than any of us had anticipated. I was aware of what might happen, and of course I had many years of experience of working with Chris, but this time the change in approach seemed too abrupt, too obviously pre-meditated. I hesitate to use the word ‘mistake’, since I have had repeated demonstrations over the years of my wife’s good judgment, in contrast with my own marked tendency to over-cautiousness. But this time, having initially applauded Christine’s professionalism and her ability to think on her feet, or foot, should I say, I had actually begun to question her grasp of the current plot. When the change of tactic materialised in the second interview, I acknowledged that she had used the tactic well, if at a time none of us had expected. What I had not anticipated, obviously, was that her application of the change of tack might go as far as sleeping with him, though it would not, of course, be the first time events had thus deteriorated.
My own attitude to such things, incidentally, is somewhat relaxed. Now that, given my background, might come as something of a surprise. Military backgrounds are often caricatured as straight-laced, unemotional, correct, rarely passionate. And on the surface, the Greens senior did fit such a bill. Stan, my father, or really Stanley, as he was always known in public, was a career officer, British Army, Oxford, Sandhurst et cetera. He upheld any rule, questioned none. Mother was a Weston, another military family of note, Boer War, First World War, India for a while, admin, even procurement, I believe. My parents were made for one another and were married by thirty-nine, just in time to be separated by a wartime posting, a lengthy series of assignments that took my father across the globe and back again, predominantly on active service, single status. Mummy was always the patient one, always in control, the manageress of a beautiful house, pretty much an estate in rural Hampshire. But there were no children.
When Stanley Green finally took up his post behind a desk in Aldershot, he needed a year or two to settle back into the inactivity demanded. War had scarred him mentally, not physically, since he came through the conflict bodily unscathed. Stanley and Helen had certainly never given up on the idea of starting a family, at least that’s what they always told me many years later. The opportunity had never really arisen until I came along in forty-seven, an upper-class military son, a winter child, a lad with a life determined, mapped out by a tradition no-one dare even consider breaking.
So for me it was prep school, public school, Sandhurst as an eighteen-year-old, and then, almost on second thoughts, Oxford for the degree that would help my career in the army. But by the time I was ready to contribute my own labour, it was data that needed management, rather than men. Eventually, it felt almost as if the desk in the establishment I cannot name had been ordered and set in place at my birth. Even the cushion seemed to have my name on it. And now I’ve done forty years in the service - long enough if you ask me! - and these days I have the sense that things have been round the roundabout many times. The Cold War may have been a big news headline, but in reality little has changed over the decades. Empires always compete.
But it has been the partnership with Christine that has really made both of our careers. We met at Oxford, of course, and became immediate friends. I was older than her, because I had taken time out to do my cadet training before the modern languages degree at Oxford. I did my officer training in parallel, and then returned to college to study my specialism, which is when I met Christine. Effectively I was an old hand, while she was vulnerable, insecure, lacking confidence and, if truth be told, completely phased out by the experience. She was still struggling to cope with her limb and, from the start, was guaranteed one of the prime residential spots available in her college. She had resisted all suggestion that she take a year off from her studies, so that she might develop some confidence with her health and physical stability, so the college did everything in its power to assist her, and help it most certainly did. Her rooms were so convenient, of course, that sooner rather than later they became something of a focus for a group of friends who enjoyed one another’s company and quite a lot more. It suited everyone. Chris could stay at home, so to speak, and not have to struggle with mobility; we could socialise in comfort and, more important still, we could be private - not necessarily legal, but at least private.
And it was there, in that very suite of rooms, with its easy chairs, sofas, stone fireplace and carpets - not real student fare at all! - where we partied, hard, on that wet November night, just a few weeks into Christine’s first term. It was from that night that we became inseparable, Christine and I, a double act born of deception, perhaps, but immediately and in perpetuity effective.
My father had died some years before. He had only just retired and, having dedicated himself for decades to his work, the sudden change seemed simply to kill him. He had never gardened, never taken up golf. He had no interest in sports, save for a passing interest in cricket or rugger, and didn’t read. He had never really been one to socialise. He brought papers home every weekend and on midweek evenings he ate, smoked a pipe, drank a brandy, watched a little television and then slept. His dedication and solidity, dependability and, as it turned out, vulnerability were trademark. It was only at his funeral that I met Harvey, the man my mother had been seeing on a regular basis, presumably for sex, and with the knowledge of my father, I later learned, since well before I was born, perhaps since my father’s absence in the war years. For my parents, life was a front, a purely public face by which you were recognised as respectable, establishment figures, as likely to demand the forelock touched as a country squire of old. Behind the mask, they suffered. Their solution to threat was to keep everything at arm’s length, including me, it seemed.
Father had died in sixty-seven, to be precise, his funeral being a small, uncomplicated event in our parish church. He had specifically requested there be little fuss, something my mother also wanted to avoid at all costs. But still Harvey was invited to the funeral. They had even planned that he stay over, which frankly appalled me, so I went back to Sandhurst school in a huff, privately resolving that deception would never play a part in my life. How we all fail to realise our cherished ideals!
It was, after all, only a couple of years after my father’s death that I met Christine at Oxford. Somehow, my loss was still close to the surface and I suppose it still showed through. Christine was full of sympathy, so full it felt like she was the one who was supporting me.
We had met in the first week of term at one of those university-wide do’s, designed to break the ice that hasn’t yet had time to set. I had taken to illicit drinking at school, had matured the habit at Sandhurst, and was practised enough by then to have got completely drunk that night, probably on something as obnoxious as brandy and Coke. The soft drink, I had assumed, hid the habit, though the effect was the same.
I do remember talking to Christine at length. Specifically, I do remember pouring out my heart about my mother and her infidelity, since I had just had an appalling bust up with her over the phone. A
nd it all poured out onto Christine, who was full of concern and sympathy. We soon became almost inseparable, and she was adopted by my circle of friends. I cannot remember which of us first introduced the idea, but quickly it became de rigueur for our little group to meet regularly, and then round off an evening’s celebrations with a little something to enhance the experience. We were children of our age, even if I was a little older than the others, and should have known better.
We were already in breach of the rules, of that let’s be clear. Neither Christine, nor any of the other women in that august, gender-specific establishment was supposed to have a gentleman even in their room without specific permission and an entry in the visitor’s book, an entry that had also to be cancelled on departure by the porter’s counter-signature. That particular night, Christine had multiple guests, all unannounced and unrecorded. They had all stayed beyond the eleven o’clock witching hour, when the gates were officially locked and the porters went into night prowler mode. But it is amazing how the specifics of local agreements have, through time, been able to supersede such general principles, especially when small, though regular incentives can be offered as persuasion.
I will spare the old codger the indignity of identification, but of course he could be easily traced, since we know which college Christine attended, a well-known establishment for ladies, and I have already been quite specific with dates, so it would be a trivial matter to put a face to the nameless. That unsuspecting gaffer who was on duty, if nothing else, could be done at least for not declaring cash payments, being the tenner I stuffed in his hand that Saturday night towards the end of November, nineteen-seventy. There would be few candidates that fit this bill.
We had already been out for a jar or two around town and then, well before college gate closing time, we had gone back to Christine’s digs to round off the evening in more communal style. I greased the doorman’s palm with said tenner, a note that would oil the mechanism and ensure smooth running of what we all hoped would follow. By ten o’clock we were all well oiled ourselves and, though we would have been less than aware of it, the rooms would already have reeked a bit of you know what. By kick out time at eleven, it was also quite apparent that one of our number - there were just the four of us that night - had perhaps partaken of something chemical in addition to the organic matter the rest of us had burned. Said person, who shall remain nameless, since a political career might be in jeopardy, was out for the count and certainly going nowhere public. Luckily, she was female - many she’s are, I am told! - and could, I say could, just have stayed over with Christine and slept it off without too much risk, while I, and the other chap involved, might just have slipped out over the fence, after hours. The problem was not lack of strategy, but lack of coordination. After an evening of beer, wine, an odd g’n’t, and brandy for me, followed by organic matter and chemical input, logistical coordination was in rather short supply.
One-On-One Page 17
