by Alan Judd
The file gave the facts of the evening in a single paragraph. The next entry was an account of his subsequent meeting with Martin in London, arranged through Sarah that night. But the facts were incomplete.
They said nothing about the hour-long journey that was supposed have taken half that, nor her unfamiliarity with her friend’s Volvo.
‘I can’t be doing with clutches,’ she said after another juddering down-change. ‘Our car in London is automatic. Why aren’t all cars? It’s so much easier.’
‘Perhaps they will be one day.’
‘You don’t have to be so irritatingly self-restrained. You know I’m a rubbish driver. I always was.’
‘You probably don’t do enough of it.’
‘But I am rubbish, aren’t I?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘That’s what I always liked about you, Charles. You give a girl such confidence.’
He wondered what it would do to her confidence to know about Martin. After twice retracing their route they arrived in a dark, deserted yard at the rear of a large unlit house. There were no other cars. It was easy, too easy, to imagine his door opening and someone ordering him out.
‘We must have come the back way,’ she said.
She opened her door, flooding them in light. It would be now if it was at all, he thought.
‘Aren’t you coming, then?’ she asked.
‘I’m just folding the map.’
‘I’m just this, I’m just that, you haven’t changed a bit, you know.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘You decide.’
He overcame the map and got out. His shutting the door was the only sound apart from the rain on roofs. They stood in pitch darkness. ‘The house must be that way,’ he said.
‘I’m told there’s a back entrance.’ They felt their way to the front of the car and headed towards the looming bulk of the house. After a few steps they brushed against each other. Both parted smartly. When they reached a door their hands touched as they felt for the handle. It was locked. They set off back across the yard to find a way round to the front. Charles had good night vision and soon began to pick out puddles as darker patches. She slipped her gloved hand under his arm, releasing it as soon as they were on the road. At the front of the house were two cars and, reassuringly, lights in curtained windows.
‘You’re sure this is a restaurant?’ he asked.
‘It had better be. You know why I insisted on something a bit special, don’t you? On this day.’
He knew the date – he had written it three or four times that day – and he knew that was the date of her birthday, but somehow he had failed to connect the two. He put it down to having been in business mode, thinking only of Martin and not expecting to see her.
‘Of course I did. But I haven’t got you anything, because I didn’t know I was going to see you.’
‘Liar, you’d plain forgotten. Anyway, this can be your present to me. If it really is the restaurant.’
There was no bell but the wide oak front door opened into a panelled hall, with a panelled dining room off it. There was an open fire and only half a dozen tables. A party of four and another couple were making enough noise to drown out whatever he and Sarah said. He ordered rabbit and pigeon pie, which reminded him of rough shooting with his father in Chiltern beechwoods. She had venison; she had always been a good eater, he remembered, unlike many of the women he’d been out with, and was lucky it didn’t show.
‘What did Nigel give you?’ he asked.
‘He rang from Paris just before I came out. That’s something, I s’pose. Normally he’s in meetings and I get a call at about midnight. I expect he’ll bring back something expensive and easy to find. But at least he remembered.’
‘He’s still keen on his European crusade, isn’t he?’
‘Very.’
‘No sign of defecting to Brussels or the UN yet?’
‘No, but the talk goes on. He wouldn’t see it as defecting, of course. He’d see us as the defectors, the un-idealists. I told him I was seeing you. He sent his regards.’
‘Does he mind?’
She shrugged. ‘No idea.’
She asked what was to happen with Martin. ‘I hope you do find something else for him,’ she said after Charles had explained. ‘I doubt he’d find the law exciting enough. I think he’s a bit in love.’
‘Who with?’
She smiled. ‘No need to look so alarmed. We’ve had tea a couple of times recently. I think it’s because I know what he’s doing and he feels he can talk about it a bit. Or ask questions, most of which I can’t begin to answer. He’s in love with spying, MI6 and all that. He reads books about it, knows the names of all the chiefs. Doesn’t he ask you about it?’
‘Never. If he refers to it at all he’s usually ironic or mocking.’
‘He strikes me as a boy – man – who needs a cause, something to believe in. A bit like Nigel in that respect. Martin used to have the Cause, of course. Perhaps he still does to an extent, even though he’s spying on it. But he certainly has your cause in a big way, too. He likes the fun of it, always refers to you as uncle. He’s a nice boy. I like him, don’t you?’
It was the perfect moment to tell her, an intimate dinner, rare time alone; there would never be a better. He rehearsed the words, tried to imagine how she would take it, considered whether it might be best done over coffee, all the time feeling sorry for her because she was so unsuspecting and because it was her birthday. But still he hesitated; it could change the rest of her life, hers and Martin’s, a change he couldn’t quantify.
‘Funny how he’s taken to spying,’ she continued. ‘I’d never have thought of him as the sort of person who becomes a spy.’
‘There’s no such thing. We’re all spies. We tell each other’s secrets all the time. It’s human. It just depends on the context.’
‘Very wise, Mr Smiley.’
Over coffee she continued happily, relaxed, talkative, even slightly flirtatious. They paused only once, while their coffee was being refilled. The waitress turned away but they waited until she was out of earshot before resuming. That was the other chance to tell her. He knew it, and let it pass.
The drive back was easier. When she drew up outside Jury’s she kept wipers and engine running. The message was clear, but the space between them was suddenly filled with the unspoken, which for him was that earlier birthday dinner at the Elizabeth, on the night of snow.
‘Well, happy birthday,’ he said. ‘No snow this time.’
She smiled. ‘Dangerous stuff, snow.’
‘And no Nigel and no umbrella.’
‘There is an umbrella. In the back.’
‘I wonder what you’d write in the snow now.’ He had not intended to say it.
‘I’d write, “Thank you for a lovely dinner.” That would be enough, don’t you think?’
‘Of course.’ He kissed her on the cheek and made to get out, but paused with the door open. He would say something, not all he wanted to say, but something of it. There might never in life be another chance and he wanted her to know. ‘No, it’s not. It’s not enough.’
She looked at him.
‘I loved you and I thought I’d stopped loving you, but seeing you again has made me realise I haven’t, that I never have.’ He said it to the windscreen wipers. There was no response from her. When he turned to look she too was staring at the wet windscreen. She sighed.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I’m not going to go on about it. You don’t have to say anything.’
She continued staring at the screen. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘I wanted you to know.’
‘But all that time when you—’
‘I know. I’m sorry. But it’s always been you. It’s always and only been you.’
‘Is that what you say to all your girlfriends?’
‘I’ve never said it to anyone.’
‘You might as
well close the door.’
He closed it. They sat in silence. ‘Don’t worry, this wasn’t meant to be a seduction ploy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t plan it.’
She looked at him again. ‘Well, it’s not a bad start.’
Later that night, in his room in the Chesham, she sat up abruptly in bed. Just enough city light showed through the curtains for him to make out the mole on her right shoulder blade. He had forgotten the mole. Her body had the strangeness and familiarity of home after a long absence. He stroked her back, feeling each rib with his finger-tips. She had lost weight in the decade since he had last done that.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ he said.
‘I was, then I was suddenly awake, hearing myself speaking. Perhaps I was dreaming. I heard myself saying, “I’m the first woman in my family ever to have done this.” Adultery, I mean.’
‘You can’t know that.’
‘I do.’
He ran his fingers down her back again.
She turned and leaned over him, her breasts pendulous. ‘I can’t leave him, you know. Nigel. He’s – he needs me. He wants children.’ She pushed her hair away from his face. ‘No need to look so alarmed, it’s not about to happen again. Your timing’s better this time.’
When Charles awoke to another grey wet dawn she was already up, sitting on the arm of a chair. She was wearing one of the white hotel dressing gowns and staring through a gap in the curtains at the moving streets of Dublin.
He sat up. ‘A perfect morning, a perfect moment. You look beautiful.’
She did not look round but he could see she was smiling. ‘It’s miserable, awful, wretched. I shall never understand your passion for rain.’
‘I guarantee an endless supply of umbrellas.’
‘D’you think you’ve always been frightened of your own feelings?’
He hooked his arms around his knees. ‘Probably. I don’t like emotional incontinence. Either that or I don’t have the right feelings. Except that I did with you. Do, with you.’
‘We can’t go on.’ She continued gazing at the traffic. ‘Not because I don’t want you. I want you too much. It would tear me in half.’
His eyes rested on her still profile. If he insisted, pleaded that he couldn’t live without her, urged her to leave Nigel before it was too late, to re-start with him the life they should have had, if he importuned enough, begged enough, she might just be persuadable.
But he didn’t want her by conquest or theft. Nor did he want only half of her, an affair burdened by deceit. His role in her life had been destructive enough already. He wanted her to give herself freely, or not at all. Besides, it wouldn’t be true to swear he couldn’t live without her; he could, he had, people did despite what they said, as she had without him.
Yet something, anything, was better than nothing. He got up and went over to her, kneeling by the chair, his hand on her thigh.
She turned her head away. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t say anything, don’t touch me. Please.’
It was years before he made up his mind whether obeying her was the best or worst thing he could have done.
There was no hint of any of this in the file, which simply recorded Martin’s transfer to London as an agent and his subsequent reassignment. ‘He should become a Z agent,’ Matthew Abrahams had minuted, ‘if he’s willing and has the talent for it. And the time. It will be useful money while he’s doing his legal training. His current case officer should remain in touch for the time being. We should not forget that he will still have some residual PIRA contacts, even though he’s no longer in Dublin. If the current peace talks break down we should be prepared for him to use them, but with care.’
The Z Organisation was a section named after a 1930s predecessor, in those days a part of MI6 that was supposed to be run under business rather than official cover. The section comprised a group of agents with useful jobs in the outside world, who were trained in clandestine skills and could be deployed in operational support.
Martin was keen to do it but worried about combining it with being a trainee solicitor with a large City firm. ‘It sounds like 24/7 there,’ he said. ‘No more student hours. Plus I have to go back to Dublin now and again until my mum moves back over here. Presumably I could do a spot more spying there. Not all my Provisional friends will accept a ceasefire.’
‘Not in Dublin, not any more. You must be as clean as whistle over there. By all means keep in touch with any of their contacts here, but not there. How is your mum?’
Martin did not often mention his adoptive parents and when he did, it was usually his late father. ‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘Can’t make up her mind what she wants to do with her life or where she wants to live, but that’s normal with her. Right now she wants to be back in Newcastle near her old friends. Give that a few years and she’ll want to be in Dublin near my aunts.’
He never showed any sign of being unhappy with his parents, and never remarked on his background. Presumably a successful adoption, Charles concluded; all the more reason for not interfering.
The Z training ate into Martin’s spare time, devouring what would have been his social life. However, it paid well enough for him to rent a flat in Marylebone and run a car. Mostly he was in the hands of his trainers, but Charles kept in touch and helped out with exercises.
He joined the end of one to pick Martin up in an SAS Land Rover in a remote Shropshire lane. Martin had spent three days and nights of precious leave alone in a hide, reporting all movement in and around a barn that was supposedly an arms cache. Exfiltration took place at night at a point where the lane narrowed to a rising double bend, densely hedged, forcing any vehicle to slow right down. The Land Rover never quite stopped but as it slowed, Charles, sitting in the back, lowered the tailgate with a rope. At the mid-point of the bend the hunched figure, encumbered with weapon, radio and rucksack, struggled free of the hawthorn and threw himself aboard, beneath the rear canvas. Charles pulled up the tailgate before they emerged from the bend. Martin lay unmoving on the floor amidst his kit.
‘You okay?’ asked Charles.
‘Do I stink?’
‘You do.’
‘Did I do all right?’
‘Spot on. You clocked everything and you weren’t seen. All you missed was the two girls sunbathing.’
Martin hauled himself up onto the bench seat. ‘Girls my arse. There wasn’t a trace of bloody sun either. Not once. How d’you know I clocked everything, anyway? Don’t tell me there was someone else there, watching alongside me?’
‘There was. It’s called a camera.’
‘Jesus.’
As time went on their relationship relaxed and deepened. They developed an understanding, expressed largely through ironic reference and understatement, interspersed with discussions of the ethics of espionage, loyalty, patriotism and the moral and psychological consequences of living a double life. Once, Martin asked, ‘Could I join MI6 proper? I mean, be a case officer like you?’
‘Provided you got through selection, like everyone else.’
‘Would I?’
‘I don’t see why not. I’ll put you up for it if you like. But you’d have to become a bureaucrat. The fun bits, the operational stuff which you do all the time, are only part of it. The rest is officialdom.’
‘You mean poncing about pretending to be an embassy diplomat? Or sitting behind a desk in London like you? Not sure I could put up with that.’
‘And you want to be a lawyer? But at least that’s a meal-ticket for life, unlike spying.’
‘Trying to put me off?’
‘Just being a good uncle.’
Charles would have put him forward, as he had offered, but was relieved not to be asked. He felt a strong but inchoate desire to protect Martin from something; disillusionment, perhaps. Maybe he had a touch of the paternal after all. Although he never for a moment forgot that Martin was his son, he still could not fully realise it. He watched constantly for mannerisms or reminders, not so much
of himself – he was invisible to himself – but more of Sarah. A fleeting expression, a movement of the hand, an intonation, an angle of the head sometimes cut him with a stab of recognition. But still he said nothing, except once, over a pizza in Covent Garden, when Martin himself raised the subject.
‘My sisters are just like my mother,’ he said, ‘despite us all being adopted. You know all about that, I guess? On my file, is it?’
Charles nodded.
‘They’re all three of them busy, constructive, practical people. Salt of the earth, you know. The world functions because of people like them. But I’m more like my father, bit of a dreamer, bit restless. And a lawyer. He was a successful barrister on the northern circuit. Never left the law, but he was always about to, always wanting to move house, always buying a new car whenever he felt rich, always talking about moving to Colorado or New Zealand or the bloody book he was forever going to write. Christ knows what it would have been about. It would’ve been another Tristram Shandy. He had that sort of mind.’
‘Have you ever been tempted to find your natural parents?’ Charles hoped he sounded casual.
Martin shook his head, his mouth full of pizza. ‘Maybe one day.’ He swallowed. ‘Doesn’t seem much point. The formative influences on my life were the people who brought me up. The rest is just biology.’
Charles nodded.
The main Gladiator file gave an unnecessarily full account of the Herefordshire exercise and of others that followed, along with occasional progress reports. It was thorough and boring, constructed deliberately, as Charles well knew, in order to conceal a gap. More than a gap, a chasm: one that would be visible now to Nigel Measures.
Part of the concealment was a lengthy account of an operational trip Charles made with Martin to Paris. It was prompted by intelligence that two of Martin’s former Provisional contacts, who had joined a splinter group of dissident republicans opposed to the peace process, were to visit Paris in connection with an arms deal. The information had come from the Garda in response to the gift of Martin’s intelligence. The A desk proposed that Martin should make contact with the couple. He would fly over for the weekend with his latest girlfriend, a trainee in another firm. She would of course be unaware of – unconscious to was the term used – what was going on, and would assume she was being treated to a weekend in Paris. During this idyll, with the discreet help of French surveillance, Martin would bump into his old contacts and try to find out what they were doing. Charles would go as his case officer and act as liaison between him and the French.
