A Very British Ending (Catesby Series)

by Edward Wilson

  ‘Show them to him – but don’t let him keep them. Bring them back to me.’

  Hampstead Garden Suburb: Saturday, 28 March 1953

  A well-polished Oxford Morris saloon was parked outside the house gleaming in the cold late-morning sun. It was a quiet tree-lined street. Catesby looked at the house. It was just as perfect and pristine as the car. He couldn’t take it all in and decided to keep walking. He had never been to this part of London before – and it seemed wrong to call it London. It was something else.

  Never before had Catesby felt such a complete alien. He knew city; he knew countryside. He had been in posh houses and squalid houses – but this was something completely different. It was every clerk’s and skilled worker’s dream of an English heaven. It was a garden suburb. Catesby continued walking until he came to a park with playing fields, tennis courts and a cricket pavilion. A football game was in progress and two couples were playing doubles. This, Catesby knew, was what the people wanted and deserved. But very few of them were going to get it. The place was indeed seductive – and a different Catesby in a different century might have been happy there. But today Catesby felt like a cuckoo invading a perfect English nest. He knew, of course, that the parent birds of the garden suburb were too polite and friendly to attack him with sharp beaks. Instead, they would invite him in for tea and engage him in witty conversation – a much more lethal way of dealing with him than sharp beaks. Catesby turned around and retraced his steps to the house with the Oxford Morris saloon. He had a job to do.

  The woman who answered the door was very pretty and tidy looking. The thing that most impressed Catesby was the warmth of her smile. She didn’t ask who he was or why he was there, just ‘Good morning.’ He could hear two children in the background.

  Catesby took off his trilby and tried a warm smile, but it was a facial expression that didn’t come natural to him. He fingered the brim of his trilby and looked down. He wished that he was a million miles away. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you on a Saturday morning, but … I’m from the Foreign Office.’ It was technically true. SIS was under the jurisdiction of the FO, just as MI5 was under the Home Office.

  ‘Please come in. Let me take your coat – and hat.’ She quickly had both. ‘Would you like tea – or coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll…’ Catesby had already been led into a lounge with lace antimacassars on the armchairs and an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Please take a seat, I’ll tell my husband you’re here.’

  As Catesby sat down, a shy boy of about four put his head around the door. He was wearing a Russian fur cap that was too big for him. An older boy’s voice summoned him, ‘Giles, come back here.’

  A minute later there were quick footsteps and the ex-minister appeared in the door. ‘Nice to see you again.’ The voice was just as Yorkshire in private as it was in public.

  Catesby looked up. They had met before, but Catesby was surprised that Wilson remembered.

  ‘We met at conference in 1945. You were still in uniform and had been given an unwinnable seat to contest.’

  Catesby smiled. The ex-minister was renowned for his remarkable memory. ‘And it was even more unwinnable after I took it on.’

  ‘Mary tells me you’re now with Foreign Office.’

  ‘Yes, but in a rather specialist branch.’

  Wilson gave Catesby a knowing look. It was obvious he knew who he was – and probably remembered seeing him with Bone in the BOT staff canteen. ‘Why don’t you come into my study so we can have a talk?’

  The ex-minister’s study was lined with shelves full of documents and books on economics. The window overlooked rear gardens with hedges. The neighbourhood ethos seemed very communal. There were no fences or tall light-blocking hedges. Everything was open and non-threatening. Mary and their two sons came in and out of the study at will. When Catesby heard footsteps on the stairs, he simply covered up the documents he had brought with him and talked about something else. The thing that most impressed Catesby about Wilson was his calmness. Nothing he said shocked him. The machinations of the Security Service and CIA against him seemed no more threatening than a football bounding over the garden hedge. In fact, Catesby was the far more nervous of the two. He looked on as Wilson once again picked up a photograph of himself and a woman near a bridge over the Moscow River.

  ‘I can’t remember her name. In fact, I was never told her name – but I believe that she was an interpreter.’

  Catesby smiled. ‘It is ridiculous. When the Sovs do blackmail photos, the snaps are naked bed scenes in full flagrante. And I’m also sure this photo has been cropped.’

  ‘It certainly has. I remember the walk well. We numbered about a dozen and four of us – including Mikoyan – lined up for a photo at the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge. You can’t see the others.’

  Catesby could see that any attempt to compromise the exminister in a honey-trap situation was doomed to fail. There was something very straight and puritanical about him. Catesby realised there was no smoking gun, but lots of innuendo. He was surprised that someone as ambitious and pragmatic as Wilson could also be so naive about his connections in Moscow – and how they could be used against him.

  ‘It is extraordinary,’ said Wilson picking up a document, ‘how facts are completely ignored. I had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to sell Rolls-Royce jet engines to the Soviet Union. The decision had already been made by Cripps and Attlee before I became President of the Board of Trade.’

  ‘But Cripps is dead and Attlee will stand down as leader before the next election – they need fresh meat to get their teeth into. And it’s you, Mr Wilson.’

  ‘But the actual date of my appointment to BOT is an easily verifiable fact.’

  ‘When you’re mounting a smear campaign, facts don’t matter.’

  ‘Surely there are people in MI5 who could be prosecuted for violating the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘It would fail,’ said Catesby. ‘There are no fingerprints linking those documents to any MI5 officer who could be identified. They are experts at covering their traces – and so are we.’

  ‘How did you get them?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘So you’re withholding information from me.’

  ‘I’m protecting a colleague who doesn’t want to be identified.’

  Wilson looked at Catesby. His blue eyes had turned cold and shrewd. ‘How do I know that you haven’t come here to frighten me, to threaten me – to warn me not to go to Moscow next month?’

  It was a reaction that Catesby had anticipated – and he had an answer ready. ‘I didn’t come here anonymously and undercover. You know my name and who I am. If you made a complaint about this visit, I would lose my job and probably go to prison – and, by the way, I didn’t know you were planning a trip to Moscow.’

  ‘I might call your bluff.’

  Catesby pointed at the black Bakelite phone on Wilson’s desk. ‘I recommend you ring Scotland Yard, the Cabinet Secretary and your best lawyer friend. But you don’t need to ring MI5 – they’ll be listening in already. That phone is tapped and so is your office line at Montague Meyer – where I believe you are a consultant.’

  The ex-minister gave a slight nod.

  ‘It would, by the way, be useless to get in an engineer to find a bug. Your lines are tapped at the exchange. Our mutual friends have an excellent relationship with the GPO.’

  Wilson continued to stare. His face showed no emotion. He finally broke a silence that had become more and more uneasy. ‘Why have you told me these things? What do you – or whoever you represent – hope to gain?’

  Catesby was a little shocked by the question, but then he remembered that politicians were pragmatists – and had to be. ‘I have ideals; I know that sounds stupid and naive.’

  Wilson’s face softened and his voice was a whisper. ‘And so do I.’

  The passion and sincerity of the words surprised Catesby. He realised for the first t
ime that Wilson was utterly different from anyone he had met in East Anglia, at Cambridge or in the Secret Intelligence Service. The Wilsons were Northerners from a Nonconformist religious background that encouraged hard work, plain living and personal propriety. There was also a tendency towards pacifism – but not an absolute one. When Congregationalists marched to war they did so with reservations. Catesby realised that the ex-minister was a more reliable and more rational man than himself, a sane person who hadn’t been poisoned by the horror of battle. Catesby could see that Wilson was capable of ruthlessness, but not violence. And there was a big difference between the two.

  ‘It’s nearly lunchtime,’ said Wilson. ‘Barbara and Ted Castle are coming to lunch – you’re very welcome to join us.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, but I think it best I slink back into the shadows where I belong.’

  ‘But please have a drink?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘That will be fine.’

  Wilson opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of very fine single malt. The strictures of Northern Nonconformity had at some point been loosened. The measures were generous too.

  ‘I am surprised that you didn’t know about the Moscow trip. I briefed the Prime Minister about it and he was very enthusiastic. In fact, he bought me a drink in the Members’ Bar. I’ve also promised to give him a full briefing when we return. I must say that Churchill is much more enthusiastic about East-West trade than his party colleagues.’ Wilson lifted his glass. ‘Cheers.’

  Catesby drank and looked through the window at the garden. It was all beginning – cherry blossom, prune and blackthorn. The suburb was turning into a fresh riot of unfolding green leaf and colour. He gave a weary smile. ‘Isn’t it odd?’

  ‘Isn’t what odd?’ said Wilson.

  ‘That we’re not using you. The company you work for, Montague Meyer, specialises, I believe, in importing timber from the Soviet Union.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘We should be making use of your visits to find out what’s happening in Moscow – especially while Stalin is still marinating in the embalming fluid. And, apparently, no one has asked you to keep your eyes and ears open, other than Churchill?’

  ‘No one at all. I do find the lack of interest from the intelligence services extraordinary.’

  ‘It looks like they’re more interested in spying on you than having you spy for them.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  Catesby sipped his whisky.

  ‘I think you need a top-up.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Catesby watched Wilson pour the fine whisky and wished that he had never come. He knew that he had dropped himself into a whirlpool that might drown him. He had already trampled all over the Official Secrets Act – and was now making accusations that he couldn’t support.

  The ex-minister looked concerned. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘What I am expressing, Mr Wilson, are personal thoughts – but there are facts too. MI5 doesn’t like East-West trade – and you can find minutes of meetings that bear this out. One practical and understandable reason is that it makes the job of the Security Service much more difficult. They only have a couple of dozen operatives to carry out surveillance. And if London and Birmingham and Manchester are going to be swarming with trade delegations from Moscow and the East Bloc, MI5 are going to be stretched beyond their resources.’

  ‘This assumes that trade representatives from the East will be engaged in espionage.’

  ‘Mr Wilson, everyone is a spy. Spend a weekend in an East Anglian village and see how many of your personal details remain personal.’

  ‘Lace curtains twitch in Huddersfield too.’

  ‘But there are issues other than surveillance problems. Basically, the intelligence and security services are not politically neutral.’

  ‘And neither are you,’ said Wilson.

  ‘That’s a fair point, but I would think that I’m a needed counterbalance to a predominantly right-wing bias.’

  ‘But what about Burgess and Maclean?’

  ‘They were public schoolboys playing at being Reds.’ Catesby lifted his whisky. ‘And usually totally pissed.’

  ‘Are there others like them?’

  Catesby had his views, but he wasn’t going to express them. Instead he made a joke. At least, he hoped Wilson took it as a joke. ‘Sometimes I think that I’m the only person spying for Britain, in a service where everyone else is either spying for Moscow or Washington.’

  ‘You know that you have friends in high places.’

  Catesby laughed.

  ‘How,’ said Wilson, ‘do you think you ended up in the Secret Intelligence Service?’

  Catesby stared blankly. It was a question that had always baffled him. ‘Who is this person?’

  ‘The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton.’

  Catesby nodded. It made sense. Dalton had been Minister for Economic Warfare during the war and responsible for setting up SOE, the Special Operations Executive. Churchill’s instructions to Dalton had been to ‘set Europe ablaze’.

  Wilson continued. ‘When Dalton was setting up SOE, your name, as a working-class grammar-school lad, stood out. You have, by the way, lost your accent.’

  Catesby gave an uncomfortable smile. He could see that the broad Yorkshire Wilson didn’t approve.

  ‘It was obvious to Dalton,’ said Wilson, ‘that most of those who had the language skills necessary for SOE came from posh public school backgrounds. That wasn’t a problem during the war – all of you were gallant – but, afterwards, it was. When we came to power in 1945, Dalton passed on your name.’

  ‘I find it remarkable that you remember – or even know – such details.’

  ‘I have a good memory – but I was also warned that you were coming.’

  Catesby smiled bleakly

  ‘By the way,’ said Wilson, ‘I am an enthusiastic supporter of East-West trade. It is a far better way of avoiding another war than doubling our defence spending – as the Americans want us to do. Trade relationships foster peace. No one wants to go to war with a trading partner.’

  Catesby remembered Wilson’s sensational resignation from the cabinet over Gaitskell’s introduction of prescription charges in order to finance more defence spending. Beneath the calm surface Britain was a country at war with itself – and the division within the Labour Party was particularly bitter and lethal. The convention of international law that forbids states to interfere in the domestic politics of other states is laughable. The British values that Catesby held most dear were values that America wanted to crush. He looked across at Wilson and remembered what he had told Kit Fournier in the U-boot bunker: the ex-minister wasn’t a Communist; he wasn’t even a socialist. He was a plain-living Northern Nonconformist who had views on war, international friendship and social welfare that the Americans didn’t like.

  Wilson picked up the documents that Catesby had brought and put them back in the envelope. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting these.’

  Catesby nodded.

  ‘It is illogical,’ said Wilson handing the papers back, ‘that they are trying to smear us as Communists. I once heard a trade union official accuse our government of having rescued capitalism from revolution. He then said, and I’m not sure he was joking, that he always voted Tory because Tory governments were the best way to get the workers angry enough to revolt. It is, of course, in the disease spots of uncontrolled capitalism where Communism is most likely to breed and spread. I want social reform through peaceful change.’

  Catesby felt a frisson of fear run down his spine. Not everyone shared Wilson’s peaceful vision. He sensed it was time to leave.

  As Catesby got up to go, he looked closely at the ex-minister. ‘There’s one thing,’ said Catesby, ‘that you should never forget. The Americans will never forgive you for selling those Rolls-Royce jet engines to the Soviet Union.’

  ‘But as I said before, it was
n’t my decision.’

  ‘That’s true, but the Americans always need someone to blame – and, as far as they’re concerned, the deal is stamped with your name.’

  Catesby never forgot his meeting with Wilson. He had just turned thirty and his encounter with a future prime minister became a benchmark by which to measure his own life. In most ways, Wilson seemed to be doing better. As Catesby got older, his own hopes began to extinguish like candles slowly blown out on a birthday cake. There was a brief expectation of a new family, but Frances had a miscarriage. After that his marriage was permanently on hold. He tried to be a good stepfather, but was useless at discipline or giving the twins a sense of direction. In fact, he made a point of never correcting or criticising the children at all. It sometimes infuriated Frances, but at other times she agreed. ‘You’re not, after all, their real father. If you tried to show authority over them, they would resent it.’ Catesby succeeded in keeping the relationship calm and relaxed. The kids called him by his first name and regarded him with bemusement. Catesby wasn’t so much a husband or father, as a stray dog that occasionally turned up and got fed.

  Meanwhile, his mother continued to rattle around in the cold draughty house in north Lowestoft. She occasionally made some extra cash by bookkeeping or doing translations. She was a mystery – and so was Catesby’s sister. Her relationship with Tomasz lurched from crisis to crisis. Catesby knew there was something fishy about the Polish lover – and even had some evidence – but he didn’t do anything about it. More ammunition for the Security Service if they ever decided to pounce on Catesby. The scales were finely balanced – and, after much soul-searching, tilted in favour of his sister’s happiness.

  Catesby’s own happiness was something he seldom considered. He didn’t always hate his job. At times he liked the excitement – and, although he was ashamed to admit it, the power and the influence too. But he also loved literature, art and intellectual discussion. He would rather have been a university don than a spy. But what Catesby wanted most was the security of family and love – with endless summers in Suffolk and France. Gardens, boats and rivers.