Neame sighed deeply in a way that Gaddis thought of as overly theatrical.
‘Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? But now you’re the man on the scene. You’re the chap tracking the story. And I suppose you want me to tell you all about Eddie.’
‘You approached me,’ Gaddis replied, because he was becoming slightly irritated by Neame’s manner. ‘You were the one who wrote the emails. You were the one who sent Peter. I have absolutely no idea how you knew that I was taking over from Charlotte. I can only assume that she told you we were planning to write a book together.’
‘That is correct.’ Gaddis did not suspect that Neame was lying. The metal trolley was again being dragged across a distant stone floor, the metal scream of wheels further adding to the combative atmosphere between them. ‘I’m assuming that you know about St Mary’s?’
‘I know about St Mary’s.’
Here at last was an area of the story with which Gaddis was familiar. The old man turned to face him again, a smell of lavender in the air. His teeth were faded to yellow-grey, his blue eyes as clear and as deep as stained glass.
‘Then you’ll know that Eddie’s death was a put-up job. You’ll know that the Office cooked the whole thing up to protect him.’
‘Protect him from what?’
‘Or from whom?’ Neame reached out to touch the handle of his walking stick. The answer to the question appeared to be as much of a mystery to him as it was to Gaddis. ‘All I know is that Eddie wanted to say goodbye. He told me what was about to happen. I knew that this would probably be the last time that I ever saw him.’
‘And was it?’
Neame produced another of his deep, regretful sighs. ‘Oh, he’s probably dead by now. Most of us are by the time you get to my age.’
Gaddis acknowledged the remark with a half smile but felt the familiar sting of disappointment. A dead Cambridge spy wasn’t as valuable to him as a Cambridge spy who was alive and well. More out of frustration than common sense, he decided to test the limits of Neame’s knowledge.
‘So you don’t know for sure that Edward Crane has died?’
Neame leaned back very slightly, tilting his head upwards and gazing at the distant ceiling. It became clear, after a few seconds, that he had no intention of responding to the question. Gaddis tried a different tack.
‘You’d known him since childhood?’
‘Since Trinity. That hardly qualifies as childhood. I will say this, though. Eddie sent me a document about a year after the St Mary’s operation. A sort of shortened autobiography, if you will. Highlights from the life of a master spy.’
This revived Gaddis. Here, at last, was something concrete. He felt a rush of satisfaction, a feeling of the pieces at last coming together. Charlotte had mentioned the document, but he did not want to betray to Neame too much of what he knew.
‘Jesus,’ he said, momentarily forgetting that he was sitting in the body of a thirteenth-century cathedral. Neame grinned.
‘This is a place of Christian worship, Doctor Gaddis. Do mind your language.’
‘Point taken.’ It was their first shared joke and Gaddis again tried to take quick advantage of Neame’s lighter mood. ‘So what happened to this document? Do you still have it? Have you attempted to get it published?’
‘Published!’
‘What’s so ridiculous about that?’
Neame coughed and again appeared to be seized by a short, intense pain in his chest. ‘Don’t be absurd. Eddie would have had a fit.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because he was a creature of habit. That habit was privacy. He gave me his memoirs on the tacit understanding that I would not disseminate them.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Neame looked as though nobody had questioned his judgement for forty years. Gaddis tried a different approach.
‘By writing down an account of his life and by sending it to you, wasn’t Crane subconsciously hoping that his story would see the light of day?’
‘Subconsciously?‘ Neame made the word sound utterly absurd.
‘I take it from your reaction that you’re not a Freudian.’
A thread of spittle appeared on the old man’s lower lip which he was forced to wipe away with a folded white handkerchief. The effort appeared both to annoy and to embarrass him; here were the small humiliations of old age. Replacing the handkerchief in the pocket of his tweed trousers, he turned to face the altar.
‘Look, I have arranged to meet you here today because I have made a decision to set the record straight about Eddie Crane, whom I believe was a hero to our country.’
‘A hero.’ Gaddis repeated the word without inflection.
‘That is correct. And not the modern sort of hero, either. These days a young man can dip his toe in Afghanistan and be given a VC. It’s a nonsense. I mean the proper sort of heroism, the hero who risks not just life and limb, but reputation.’ Neame coughed with the effort of driving home his point. ‘But I want to be able to tell the story in my own way and in my own time. I cannot simply betray Eddie’s confidence by releasing his manuscript to the highest bidder. I want to be able to control the flow of information. I want to be dealing with somebody that I can trust.’
Gaddis wanted to say: ‘You can trust me,’ but thought better of it. He knew that he was slowly earning Neame’s respect, moment by moment, but did not want to jeopardize that with an incautious remark.
‘The manuscript came to me with some information about Eddie’s new circumstances. There was also a set of instructions.’ Just as he had felt beside the canal, Gaddis longed to be writing notes, but he was obliged to commit everything to memory. ‘Eddie told me that he was living quietly in Scotland under a new identity, protected by his former masters in the Foreign Office. He was not, he said, in particularly good health and did not expect to see me again. “These are some private recollections of an unusual life,” he wrote. “I have set them down for my own personal satisfaction.” That sort of thing. I have no idea if he made other copies. I very much doubt that he did. As I said, Eddie was in the privacy business. But I believe in history, Doctor Gaddis. I think Eddie knew that about me. And I believe the world has a right to know what this man did for his country.’
‘For Russia?’
Neame suppressed a knowing smile and his eyes caught the light again. It was remarkable to see so much life, so many thoughts and ideas, pulsing through a man now in his tenth decade.
‘Not for Russia, Doctor Gaddis. For England.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, it will all become clear,’ he said, settling a featherlight hand on Gaddis’s knee. There was something startling about the sudden intimacy. ‘Why don’t we begin by walking the cat back?’
Chapter 15
‘Walking the cat back?’
‘An old spying term, isn’t it?’ Neame could see that Gaddis was confused. ‘Tracing a man’s steps. Taking a jigsaw apart so that you can put it back together.’
He wiped his nose a second time on the carefully folded handkerchief. ‘Perhaps it’s best if we go back to the winter of 1933.’
‘Whatever is easiest for you.’
Neame leaned back in his chair, preparing to begin. But his balance was off. Gaddis had to reach out to steady him and felt the rough tweed of Neame’s suit as it stretched tight against the hunch of his back. When, finally, Neame was comfortable, he folded his arms across his chest and glanced briefly towards the aisle.
‘How much do you know about Eddie’s time at Cambridge? How much have you been able to discover?’
‘Very little.’
Neame pursed his lips. He was perhaps wondering where to begin.
‘Eddie and I went up at the same time,’ he said. ‘Met on the first day. Both of us eighteen, both of us from fairly similar backgrounds.’
‘What kind of backgrounds?’
Neame’s response was quick. ‘Like yours, I should imagine, Doctor. Aspirational middle class. What
difference does it make?’
Gaddis was about to point out that it was Neame, and not he, who had raised the issue of class, but thought better of it. Best just to ignore his little slights and quips; they were evidence of the old man’s frustration at his ailing health, not criticisms to be taken seriously.
‘Could you tell me anything else about Crane’s family?’ he asked. Behind him, towards the main entrance, a party of perhaps twenty tourists were gathered in a loose group, listening intently to a guide. ‘How did you first come to be introduced to him?’
‘Oh, that’s quite straightforward.’ Neame’s tone implied that Gaddis was the only man in Winchester Cathedral who did not know the story. ‘We were both inveterate lovers of crossword puzzles. I came across Eddie and a copy of the London Illustrated News one evening in the junior common room. He was stuck on a rather ingenious clue. I helped him with it. Would you like to hear what it was?’
Gaddis reckoned Neame was going to tell him anyway, so he nodded.
‘“Are set back for a number of years.”’
‘How many letters?’
‘Three.’
Gaddis had a knack for crosswords and solved the clue in the time it took Neame to check the time on his wristwatch.
‘Era.’
‘Very good, Doctor, very good.’ Neame sounded impressed, but a restlessness in his hands betrayed his irritation. It was as if the speed of Gaddis’s mind was a threat to his intellectual superiority. ‘Well, after that introduction, the two of us became firm friends. Eddie’s father had been killed in the war, as had mine. There were rumours, never confirmed, that the senior Mr Crane had taken his own life. You might like to look into that, chat up a military historian or two. See what they make of it.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Gaddis told him.
‘Eddie’s mother, Susan, then remarried, a man whom Eddie detested.’ Neame’s mouth had tightened, but folds of skin hung loose beneath his chin. ‘His name escapes me, for some reason. I never met him. Scoundrel, by all accounts.’
‘Rather like Philby’s father.’
Gaddis hadn’t meant to draw other members of the Cambridge Ring into the conversation so quickly, but was pleased by the impact of his observation. Neame was nodding in agreement.
‘Precisely. Both absolute monsters. Kim’s father was an epic charlatan. Converted to Islam, if you can believe it, even took the name Abdullah and married a Saudi slave girl. Rumour has it he worked as a spy for the Saudi monarchy.’
‘I’ve heard that,’ Gaddis said. ‘Cherchez le pere.’
Neame understood the implications of the remark and again nodded his agreement.
‘Indeed. Every member of the Trinity cell, to a greater or lesser extent, had complicated, in some cases non-existent, relationships with their fathers. Guy’s died when he was very young, ditto Anthony’s. Maclean was the same. What would they call Sir Donald nowadays? “An absentee father”?’ Neame gave the phrase the same withering tone of dismissal that he had reserved for the word ‘subconsciously’. ‘Strict Presbyterian, too. More interested in furthering his political career than he was in looking out for the welfare of his own son. In my experience, men are all, to a greater or lesser extent, at war with their fathers. Would you agree, Doctor?’
Gaddis wasn’t one for sharing family confidences, so he proffered a joke instead.
‘You’re a Freudian after all, Tom.’
Neame did not react. It struck Gaddis that he was as covetous of his moods as a small child.
‘Tell me about Cambridge at that time,’ he asked, skidding over the awkwardness. ‘What were your impressions of the place?’
The question appeared to lift the old man’s spirits, because he turned to face him and smiled through his clear blue eyes.
‘Well, of course there has been a good deal of nonsense spoken about that period. If certain “experts” are to be believed, we spent our entire time at Cambridge eating cucumber sandwiches, punting along the Cam and singing “Jerusalem” in chapel. Believe me, times were a lot tougher than that. Of course, there were any number of highly privileged undergraduates from wealthy backgrounds in situ, but it wasn’t all Brideshead Revisited and picnics on the lawn.’
‘Of course.’ Gaddis was wondering why Neame felt the need to set the record straight.
‘But one thing is certainly true. Oxford and Cambridge in the pre-war years were both absolutely riddled with Communists. Any self-respecting young man - or woman, for that matter - with even the vaguest sense of social justice was profoundly sceptical about the direction Western capitalism was taking. This wasn’t too long after the Great Depression, don’t forget. Unemployment was running at three million. Throw into the mix the lovely Adolf and you had a climate of apprehension unmatched by anything since.’
‘Go on,’ said Gaddis. The lovely Adolf was a phrase he might steal for a lecture.
‘Well, it’s quite simple.’ Neame touched the perfect Windsor knot on his wool tie. There was a small stain on the fabric halfway down. ‘All of us became rather enamoured of the Russian experiment. Some more enamoured than others.’
‘You’re talking about Eddie?’
‘Eddie, certainly. But everyone in my circle of acquaintance was touched by an interest in Marx. To be a Communist in 1933 was as unremarkable as taking mustard with roast beef. We were everywhere. You couldn’t move for people who wanted to buck the system.’
‘People like Burgess and Maclean? People like Philby and Blunt?’
Neame shot him a sideways glance and Gaddis was concerned that he would now digress into yet more petty power games. Two tourists had appeared at the end of their row of seats wearing tracksuit trousers and bulging money belts, thousand-euro Nikons trained at the ceiling. They were speaking loudly to one another in German and Neame waited until they had moved along the aisle before continuing.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Guy and Anthony were particularly visible in the Party. Donald was a great protestor. Always manning the barricades, always first in the queue when there was an opportunity for dissent.’
‘But not Crane?’
Neame paused, seemingly concerned to render as accurate an account of his friend’s behaviour during this period as was possible at a distance of over seventy years.
‘Eddie was more subtle,’ he said finally. ‘Eddie kept his head down.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was known to Blunt, certainly, because he was a student in one of Anthony’s French classes, but he wasn’t active. He didn’t come into the orbit of Maurice Dobb, for example, who was the don responsible for pushing Guy in the direction of the Party. He never officially joined the Communists, either.’
This astonished Gaddis, not least because membership would have been a pre-requisite of working for the NKVD, the arm of Soviet foreign intelligence in operation in the UK at the time.
‘You look surprised, Doctor.’
Again, a pain appeared to jag across Neame’s back, cutting the end off the question. The old man bent forward slowly, wincing.
‘Are you all right?’ Gaddis was obliged to make sure that Neame was comfortable, yet he was loath to give him an opportunity to bring the interview to an end. It had taken an eternity to reach this point. They might never meet again. He had to try to extract as much information as possible.
‘I am fine,’ Neame reassured him, making a determined gesture with his hand. Gaddis noticed that he was once again squeezing it into a fist, fighting off the arthritis. ‘Look, I tried on many occasions to persuade Eddie to join the Party. Many of us did.’
‘But without success?’
‘Without success.’ Neame’s voiced had softened, almost into regret, but suddenly he was energized again, seized by the urge to defend Crane and to put his argument across more forcefully.
‘I concluded, largely in retrospect, that there was more than one way to skin a cat. One does not have to be a member of the Labour Party in order to vote for a Labour candidate. One
can hold right-wing views in England without subscribing to the Daily Mail. Do you follow?’
‘I follow.’
‘Eddie was a subtle animal. He wasn’t much for making an exhibition of himself. He played what you might call a long game. Now, did he do that because he didn’t want anything on his record that might jeopardize any future involvement in public service, or did he do that because he was a rather shy young man and, at that tender age, perhaps lacking in the sort of self-confidence which distinguished his more celebrated colleagues in the cell?’
‘What do you think?’
Neame weighed up his answer, and took his time about it. Almost half a minute passed before he responded.
‘I think a fairly hefty dose of the latter. To my mind, Eddie had no real ambition to join the Foreign Office, no heart set on a career in government. Bear in mind that he was only eighteen and just out of school. He wasn’t like Kim, who made a great song and dance about everything. Heavens, as I recall, Kim signed up for CUSS thirty seconds after landing in Cambridge.’
‘CUSS?’
‘The Cambridge University Socialist Society. He was so over-the-top the Soviets wondered if he might have been a plant.’
‘And Burgess?’
The mention of his name had a strange, almost melancholy effect on Neame, who looked into his lap and brought his hands together, gently knitting the fingers. In the distance, a young girl laughed.
‘Guy is certainly central to all this,’ he said quietly. ‘He had a huge impact on everybody, not just Eddie. In fact, Eddie writes at length about him in the memoirs. I myself have certainly thought back many times to the conversations I enjoyed with Guy.’
The memoirs. How could Gaddis get hold of them? It seemed a cruel twist of fate that Neame should be sitting on a document which would not only validate ATTILA but radically enhance the quality and historical importance of his own book. There was something of the narcissist in Neame; he was eager to play up his own role in the affair but also keen to taunt Gaddis with his proximity to Crane’s autobiography. Increasingly, it appeared that there would be a drip-feed of information, possibly over many weeks, and nothing Gaddis could do to control it.
The Trinity Six (2011) Page 9
