The Cilla Rose Affair

by Winona Kent

  In the London of Now—in the slick public relations job that was presented to the rest of the world—the decay was gone. Brave new edifices of concrete, glass and steel lined the famous scenic postcard curve of the river.

  In the tourists’ London there were Burger Kings and golden arches.

  In the southern suburbs, there was Tooting.

  The bus lurched and lumbered along the narrow main road, passing the church at Amen Corner, the cinema—it was a bingo palace now—the red brick police station—blue lamps and Wanted posters—careening up and over the junction to the Marsh.

  It wasn’t a marsh at all, but a rhomboid-shaped field that had been rimmed with centuries old oaks and elms. The changes were small, but significant: the air raid shelters, the two camel-backed humps in the grass that were the last visible remnants of the war, were gone. The playground was gone, too, done away with by vandals and the local council.

  Anthony walked across the square bit of asphalt where he and Robin had commandeered the roundabout and ridden it, shrieking with the exuberance of youth, one glorious morning at half past three.

  His grandmother’s house was the third one from the corner, a dark little piece of a working class terrace, its tiny garden behind the low brick wall a jungle of overgrowth—long grass and wildflowers, shrubs and moss.

  Anthony stood for a moment, one hand on the rough grey gate, looking at the small haphazard parade of shops midway down the block: off-license, hardware, newsagent. Fish and chips on the corner, frying tonight, halibut and cod, malt vinegar, pickled onions floating in a huge jar of brown liquid on top of the counter.

  She was a towering pillar of a woman, their Gran. Anthony remembered her, having refused all offers to relocate to a better neighbourhood, standing on the step in her flowered pinafore, her arms folded. She’d written to them regularly in Canada, her letters filled with vehement opposition to Margaret Thatcher and the evil menace of privatization.

  He walked up the short path, and let the knocker drop on the door.

  He could hear her footfall in the hallway, and the lock being turned.

  “Hello, my darling.” She was warm and wonderful and she smelled of violets and hand cream and face powder from Boots. “Come along in—I’ve put the kettle on for tea—are you hungry?”

  He didn’t notice the young man who had got off the bus after him, and followed him across the marsh and the playground to the road. Indeed, he wasn’t aware that he was being watched at all, and that the young man in the sweatshirt and trainers had been with him from the time he had descended in the lift at Chalk Farm.

  The green-painted front door closed behind Anthony, its knocker tapping against its striking plate. The young man lingered at the corner for a few moments, then crossed the road and went into the newsagent’s to buy himself some chewing gum and a Sunday Sport.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Monday, 02 September 1991

  “The trouble’s definitely not with this set.” The repairman replaced the cover of the computer. “Could be something to do with the line, though. Where’s your other unit?”

  “Do us a favour,” Maureen said, “and take him up.”

  She was, Sara noted, engaged in the manual calculation of an airfare. Point A to Point B. Not a difficult proposition, by any stretch of the imagination. “Follow me,” she sighed, and she led the man from Agency Automation through to the back, past filing cabinets filled with spent holidays and visa forms and passport applications and obsolete inoculation booklets, and up the narrow stairs to Harry Dailey’s office.

  Harry, when he was in attendance, occupied a small suite on the upper floor of the agency. There were a number of tall, potted plants, which Maureen forgot to water more often than she remembered; there was a comfortable armchair; there was a small fridge and a microwave oven; a small table, and a large desk.

  Harry Dailey’s office, when Harry Dailey was not in attendance, doubled as the staff lunch room, and more than once Maureen had sprinted up there for a fast 40 winks in between clients.

  Harry Dailey’s desktop contained stacks of unread bulletins from an assortment of airlines; travel magazines; client files in used and used-again cardboard folders; reservation cards; a calendar from British Airways and a paperclip holder from TWA. There was a small globe of the world that you turned upside down and made into a pencil sharpener, and there was a coffee mug from Lufthansa.

  “Here we are.”

  Sara exhumed Harry’s computer.

  The repairman set down his caseful of tools.

  “Worked here long?” he asked, conversationally, while he unscrewed the cover.

  “About six months, actually. I used to be with another firm down the road.”

  “Why’d you leave?” He wasn’t English. American, she thought. Good-looking chap. Red hair and very green eyes. A surprising absence of freckles.

  “I didn’t. They left me. Went out of business.” She wondered whether she’d seen him before somewhere. He looked, she thought, vaguely familiar.

  “You get a lot of free trips?”

  “Discounted,” Sara said. “When you can afford to take them—which isn’t often, these days. And Harry’s not all that generous with his fams.”

  The repairman looked at her, warily, and feigned a step backwards.

  “Fam trip,” Sara said. “Educational tour. Twenty-five travel agents on an escorted rampage.”

  “Only the way you said it, I thought it was an exotic travel industry euphemism for something else.” He removed something small and black from Harry’s computer, looked at it, and replaced it with another. “Where’s your boss this morning?”

  “Harry? Gone to France. Back Thursday.” Sara slid off the desk. “I’d love to stay and chat, but—my glamorous career does beckon.” She paused. “Where in America are you from?”

  “Canada, actually,” he said.

  “Oh—sorry. Only, I wondered…you look familiar. Have I met you before anywhere, d’you suppose…?”

  “Don’t think so,” he answered, glancing up at her with a smile. “I’d have remembered.”

  Downstairs, Maureen was still immersed in her airfare. “How was Bournemouth, by the way?”

  “Very nice,” Sara said, sitting down.

  “Come on, then. Give us the intimate details.”

  “No.”

  “You boring old prude.”

  “We’re old friends, Maureen, not bloody Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.”

  “Who was it told me that all those years ago in Vancouver you two were nothing short of Romeo and Juliet in the throes of phenomenal tragedy?”

  Sara smiled. “We were very young. And very innocent.”

  “That’s the best sort. Anyway, you’re not very innocent anymore, are you. And I daresay he’s not—”

  “No,” Sara said, resting her chin on her fist. “He’s definitely not.”

  “Well, then.”

  “No,” she said, adamantly, seeking refuge in a brochure.

  She glanced at the back of the office.

  “Wonder what they earn, those computer people.”

  “More than us,” Maureen grumbled, from the depths of the air tariff.

  Her hair tucked under a sensible black beret, her feet clad in flat laced walking shoes and grey ankle socks, her identity concealed beneath a drab, belted mackintosh, Emma Braden observed from the sidewalk as Nora Darrow wandered around the bus stops at Euston Station, studying posted schedules, scrutinizing departure times, until she found the route she wanted.

  A 168 stood waiting, and Emma followed Nora aboard and up to the top deck, where she made herself comfortable in the back.

  The ride up Haverstock Hill was slow and lumbering, with frequent stops that appeared to irritate Nora, but which gave Emma a secret delight. From her mobile lookout, she was able to observe all of the commerce and trade of this little corner of North London: Camden Town, Camden Locks, a rag market, old stables, bookstalls and derelict brick railway catacombs.
The Roundhouse, which had once turned locomotives.

  Chalk Farm.

  Evan’s middle son lived over that way. Evan had once lived here, too, in a block of flats on the slope of Haverstock Hill. Those ones, there—or the building after it—she wasn’t altogether certain.

  The 168 continued up the hill, past carpet shops and hairdressing salons, Chinese restaurants, Kentucky Fried Chicken, newsagents, a pub.

  Belsize Park, where Emma herself lived.

  The Post House Hotel and the Roman Catholic Primary School…a gas station…the Royal Free Hospital. The bus was turning off, having come to the end of its run. Its other passengers—two well-heeled women who’d complained all the way up about the road works and the traffic delays, an elderly man with a shopping bag, and a dark girl who looked as though she might have been an au-pair—disembarked.

  Emma lingered for a moment on the upper deck, observing the village scene—it had the air of an ancient market with its stone fountain and rows of small shops—and the congress of passengers at Hampstead Heath station, on the other side of the square. Then she, too, got off, and followed Nora Darrow across the square and into the trees.

  “Victor!” Nora exclaimed, greeting him on the footpath. “Our meetings are usually so much more sedate. What on earth are you up to? Cryptic messages directing me to the old Mitcham Common drop…vague notes pointing me to Hampstead Heath…”

  Victor Barnfather did not share her flippant mood. He glanced behind him, but saw only a bookish oddball of an old woman, bent over, examining something on the path, and a young lady in jogging shorts, out for her daily run. He walked in silence until he felt an appropriate distance had been achieved, and then, he spoke.

  “I’ve been told, Nora, that you have been approached by an individual who wishes to sell you an item of some value.”

  Nora was surprised. “That’s right, Victor. A diary.”

  “Trevor Jackson’s diary, to be specific. One of your young men, was he not?”

  “He was,” she replied. “But why on earth should it concern you, Victor? I’m almost certain there’s no mention of you in those pages.”

  Victor ignored her. “I understand the other interested party is Evan Harris.”

  “Well yes, but—”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not to speak to, no. But I know who he is, Victor—he’s the annoying little man who tried to coerce Simon into telling him who his Soviet contacts were in 1966. He approached him with some nonsense he’d dug up—some old bits and pieces of writing that appeared to implicate Simon in the Cilla Rose episode—and stupid Simon, of course, panicked, and came running to me for help. I soon put a stop to that particular line of questioning.”

  They were walking again, towards the ponds.

  “I’d wondered about Simon’s death,” Victor said.

  “Yes, well. He was a weak man. He crumpled far too easily. Survival of the fittest, Victor.”

  “What an extraordinarily nasty woman you are, Nora,” Victor remarked, without smiling.

  “Yes, but I’m still here, aren’t I, which is more than I can say for some others I’ve come to know over the years.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you can worm your way into the computer registry at Macdonald House.”

  “Not officially. Why?”

  “Harris,” Nora said. “He’s got three sons. The eldest, Ian, has a cross-reference attached to his name, and I’d dearly love to know why.”

  “Access to the database might be arranged,” Victor replied. “It will leave footprints.”

  “I’m prepared to risk that,” Nora said.

  “Yes, but I’m not. I’ll have to find somebody else who’s willing to go hunting by moonlight. Meanwhile, Nora, let me tell you why I requested this meeting.”

  “Yes, Victor, please do.”

  “I have certain concerns about your reliability.”

  “My reliability!” Nora laughed. “Is that all you were worried about?”

  “Concerns, possibly, that you could be pressured into a confession in much the same way Simon was.”

  Nora stopped, and met her companion’s hard gaze. “I can’t be blackmailed, Victor. Especially by some trumped up agent of a third rate Canadian intelligence service. You ought to give me more credit than that.”

  Victor did not remove his eyes from her face. “Is the diary genuine?”

  “From what I’ve been able to read of it so far, yes.”

  “And from what you’ve been able to read of it…does it contain entries which might be used against you in a British court of law?”

  “Well, yes, Victor, but—”

  “Then I’d advise you to make damned certain, Nora, that Harris is unsuccessful in his bid to obtain that information. I have too much at stake to risk you—”

  “You have too much at stake!” Nora exclaimed, derisively.

  “I have too much at stake,” Victor repeated, “to risk allowing you to spoonfeed tidbits of your personal history to a sympathetic magistrate in exchange for immunity from prosecution and a guaranteed mention in the next comprehensive paperback exposé of the British intelligence community. Do I make myself clear, Nora?”

  “Yes, Victor,” Simon Darrow’s widow replied, angrily. “You do.”

  It was odd, Sara thought, that she should find herself so peculiarly attracted to a knee. It was a perfectly plain body part, clothed, in this case, in much-washed blue jean material, the fabric wearing thin in all of the expected places. The knee in question was bent at a 45 degree angle, its cap of bone and muscle an intriguing detail beneath the faded denim.

  She caught herself staring, but instead of looking away, followed the straight line of the leg down, to the ankle, and the foot, which, bereft of shoe and sock, was nested in a clump of grass punctuated with tiny white daisies.

  The ankle was slender, the foot long and narrow and chiselled with ridges of bone and blood vessel. A meadow of hairs, red-gold, had been scattered across the instep; and the toes were what her mother, the psychologist, would call prehensile: curious, independent, capable of interesting exploratory excursions.

  She’d sworn off men. She’d made a pact with herself, after Jon, that there would be no more relationships.

  Dear Jon—who was still capable of overwhelming her, on those brave occasions when she dared test the waters, allowing him back into her mind from his distant banishment.

  Jon, with whom she had lived in a houseboat in the nether regions of Putney, who had been fond of white, fisherman-knit pullovers from Ireland and songs by Kate Bush. Jon, who was now somewhere in Scotland, pitching concerts for the preservation of the rain forests.

  Jon, who had driven her to distraction with his untruths—she knew he was lying but had no proof—who claimed, in the end—after a friend of a friend had rung her in an alcoholic haze at two o’clock in the morning (more out of malice towards the friend than any genuine concern for Sara)—that he’d only told untruths to prevent her feelings from being hurt.

  Dear Jon.

  She’d sworn off men, and now, here she was, teetering hopelessly on the brink of involvement again.

  The owner of the knee, having finished his sandwich and carton of milk, stretched his arms above his head, and watched, idly, as the last of the lunchtime joggers made their way back through the park, towards their towers and turrets in nearby Whitehall.

  “By and large,” Sara said, watching a second group of office-dressed men and women, “we’re quite a shabby lot—don’t you think? Our men always seem to look a bit rumpled. And our architecture’s absolutely hideous—everything’s a hodge-podge of styles and tastes, all thrown in beside one another, nothing unifying, no themes, no schemes—Prince Charles was quite right, you know, when he called it a national disgrace.”

  She went back to her investigation of Robin’s knapsack.

  “I think London’s tried to become very American very quickly—but the trouble is, we seem to have adopted the worst of everything instead of t
he best. What on earth have you got in here?”

  “Nothing much,” Robin said, distantly, exploring the hem of her skirt with his toe.

  “Nothing much.” She took his toe prisoner in her fist. “Citizenship card, birth certificate—Santa Monica, September 13, 1968—you’ve got a birthday coming up and I can’t stand Virgos—social insurance, American Express, drivers license, Long Distance telephone card…Ah, look—I’ve found your passport.” She held it, open, at arm’s length. “You’ve got the most incredibly sad, blue eyes.”

  Robin was momentarily taken aback. They were quite blue, it was true. But sad? “It must be a result of my tragic life,” he concluded. “The youngest child from a broken home. Forced to grow up in middle class British Columbia…”

  “We wanted to expose him at birth,” Anthony said, coming back from his expedition to locate ice cream, “but our mother objected.”

  He distributed his cache: orange ices on wooden sticks, wrapped in paper.

  “He was actually quite an angelic little creature when he was a child. And then, on his fifteenth birthday, tragedy struck. He became hideous. So hideous, in fact, that old women would cross themselves whenever he passed them in the street. So hideous—”

  “Anthony,” Robin objected.

  “So hideous,” Anthony continued, animatedly, “that entire planeloads of faith healers from the Philippines would arrive daily at our front door, with offerings of pigs’ bladders and dogmeat—”

  “Excuse me,” Robin interrupted, “but who was it who, one Halloween, put a hollowed-out pumpkin over his head, with little red light-up eyes and a black cap and cape, and went as The Elephant Man to a party where the invitation had specifically stated No Costumes?”

  “Robin,” Anthony said, in a hurt voice.

  “‘I am not an animal,’” his brother quoted. “‘I am a human gourd.’ Very adult, Ant. Very sophisticated.”

  “And here’s your airline ticket!” Sara interrupted, silencing them. “God, you only picked this up the day before you travelled. Full fare economy, open return—issued in exchange for a Miscellaneous Charges Order and paid for in cash in Britain—someone with a lot of money to spare wanted you over here quite badly, from what I can see. Who was it?”