She blushed again, this time with embarrassment at her innocence and the warmth of the blush quickly turned to a chill. She had assumed that she would be believed, that she was above doubt.
‘From all I know of you and have heard of you,’ he said, ‘you are a sound officer. But I think, on reflection, you might see why others would doubt you, suspect personal motives — that perhaps he has in some way injured you, wronged you.’
She sat in silence, confounded by this shift in the course of the matter. Then she nodded; she understood. ‘Could I perhaps drop the whole thing then?’
‘You could. How would you be then in relationship to him?’
‘An accomplice by default.’
‘Precisely. And even though this is not yet a formal matter, I would have to personally adopt some precautions on behalf of the League, without Major Westwood knowing, and perhaps precaution against you unwittingly serving Major Westwood, and we would all find ourselves in some unspoken conspiracy against each other. It is best that we know just what it is that he’s doing.’
‘I agree,’ she said, reluctantly.
‘You are probably, at times, alone in his apartment. You will perhaps find what he has sent. It will almost surely be in a locked place and you might need a locksmith who is friendly to the cause. I will help you there.’
Talk of locksmiths and talk of distinctions between secrecy and conspiracy was new to her and she would have to digest it. But anyhow, the whole thing had shifted to her. Now she was in the position of having to establish that she was not driven by a personal malice.
Shaking Under Secretary Bartou’s hand, she went away from the interview — she in one direction, he in another, like conspirators. She was suffering a second kind of shock and with no one to whom she could turn to ease it. Under Secretary Bartou, while counselling her on her initial moral quandary, had left her with a second quandary. She was really alone with both.
Later, sitting in her rooms, she felt influenced by Under Secretary Bartou’s hard wisdom and by a need to rest upon his guidance as an escape from her own moral confusion. Yet by so doing she would have to suffer the wound of Ambrose’s betrayal of her. She had been avoiding this wound. It was a friend betraying friendship. Or was he just an ‘imperfect friend’? Where did imperfect friends fit in one’s life? They could become an obstacle to one’s life. There was a borderline between the imperfect friend and the bad friend and between the bad friend and the enemy.
Yet during the evening she was gradually overtaken by another mood, if not a position, a dishonourable mood — it was a swelling, morbid need to know what it was that Ambrose had been doing, not only with the League but with her, with his life, to know what else it was that he concealed from her. Her thoughts had returned to the Molly Club and the suspicions she’d had about the depth of his involvement in it. This morbid mood was followed closely by an incitement to strike back at Ambrose — not a very nice urge, but an insistent one. The morbid desire to know and the desire to strike at him, both overwhelmed her moral dilemmas and swept them away, anaesthetised her. She found herself burning to be at his apartment and to be searching his things. It was the morbid need of a wounded and suspicious lover. It was the desperate need to be sure, or to know the worst about a lover. It was a demented feeling. It was a need to know everything. Regardless of what sort of lovers they were and even though their love had never been pledged, she was driven by a lover’s rampaging need to know all about the desired one. That alone was sufficient to justify her. She could now see how a stronger love than the love she felt for Ambrose could disorder all judgement, all ethics. And his behaviour justified her in whatever she might decide to do against him. That was a new dispensation — the dispensation of being a fevered lover, the single-minded drive of jealous suspicion. Perhaps love was also a form of spying. ‘Everyone believes that something is being hidden from them,’ as Robert Dole would say.
This morbid torment of suspicion and the need to know was with her still in the morning, and she went to Under Secretary Bartou’s office, wondering if by going to his office she was changing the status of the situation to ‘official’. She told him that she would search Ambrose’s apartment and report what she found. He gave her the telephone number of a ‘friendly’ locksmith should she need one.
She saw that Under Secretary Bartou had Ambrose’s personnel file on his desk and then she saw her own.
He saw her looking at the files. ‘Would you like to know more about Major Ambrose Westwood?’
She said she would. Was he whetting her?
He opened the file. ‘Schooled at Exeter. Medical studies, Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Won the Parkes Memorial Prize. Practised medicine for a few years, gave it up to go into the FO. Was there for a few years, a spell in the embassy in Durban. In 1915 went into the RAMC, thus back to medicine. Divisional Sanitary section in the War. Commended for effective measures against trench fever and cerebro-spinal fever. Five mentions in dispatches. Seems he did see some fighting. Brevet of majority. Came out of the War briefly back to the FO and then to the Peace Conference where he worked with Sir Eric and then joined the League. Major Westwood has a good record.’
She nodded. She knew most of this. ‘How old is Major Westwood?’
He glanced at the file. ‘Forty.’
Ambrose seemed at times much younger and, at other times, much older. She couldn’t remember what age he’d given her.
She had a question. ‘You say that he may have copied only those things which are available to member states. What would he be able to copy in the League that the public shouldn’t know?’ She hoped the question wasn’t naïve.
He raised his eyebrows with interest at her question. ‘Even an organisation pledged to open diplomacy has its secrets.’ He paused, seeking an example, then held up Ambrose’s personal file. ‘This is an example of a confidential document, the files of personnel. Armament statistics sent by member states which are available only to those nations which themselves supplied statistics. The advantage which could be gained by spying on the League would only be to know something in advance of other countries. You are correct — ultimately, nearly all we know becomes public knowledge. Except minutes of secret meetings of Council.’
She nodded, letting the question of secret meetings of Council problem pass by. At the door to his office, she turned and said, ‘Will he be dismissed from the Secretariat?’
‘You are now assuming that this is an official matter?’
She saw that she was but tried to hold off the moment of crisis a little longer. ‘Not until we know how guilty. If he is guilty, will he be dismissed?’
‘Sir Eric will decide that. Not necessarily dismissed. Oh, and another thing — I would be very glad if you would copy for me the report on this American, Shearer. That might interest Sir Eric and the Supervisory Commission. Perhaps the Council.’
She recalled the mention of Sapphists. ‘I’ll try.’
They arranged that she should call on the telephone if she found tangible evidence which he should see.
It occurred to her that she could go to the apartment, satisfy her own burning need ‘to know all’ but report back that she’d found nothing. It was possible that she would find nothing. However, she felt a need to establish herself in the eyes of Under Secretary Bartou and not leave any suspicion that her allegation grew from some silly personal malice. And if she did lie to protect him, she would still have to face the fact that their friendship was deeply injured.
She gave herself the whole day to systematically search his things while he was at the office. Once inside the apartment, she detected a rather pleasant agitated part of herself, a Girl Guide self with an important adventure unfolding, but she found she couldn’t run away from the moral and other discomforts of this matter by seeing it as a Girl Guide ‘adventure’. That picture of it dissolved away almost immediately, and she was left with the pain of it and the compulsion of her morbid needs.
The morbid and suspic
ious part of herself charged on. She wanted to read all his personal letters, his diary, to know his income, to see his childhood mementoes, anything. She wondered if she would find things to shock her, evidence of another lover, say, but she knew so much of his private life, that had been the delight of their affair, but she also saw that their shared candour had been a delimited candour, confined to the carnal appetites, especially. Although the passion which drove her carried with it a willingness to imagine and to believe that anything was possible, that monstrous secrets might lay hidden.
She began with the drawing room, systematically looking in all the drawers, behind paintings for a safe, under carpets. She riffled through every one of his books. She found that his sexology books now bore a gummed label saying ‘From the personal library of Dr Ambrose Westwood’, and that in case of death, the books should not be opened but should be sent to the medical school in Edinburgh. He hadn’t told her of this eccentric label. Then to his bedroom, under the mattress. In one drawer she found copies of a German magazine, Transvestismus, which he’d shown her from time to time. Again, the magazines now bore the same queer gummed label. She shook her head. There was one drawer of women’s underwear, some of which she had bought for him. There were some of her things permanently there. She pondered whether to take them now, but to do that would alert him to what was happening. She kept seeing in her mind the horrible parting of the ways which was almost certainly ahead of them.
Having looked for his private papers as well as for the evidence of his spying, she found nothing. In his desk she found the name of his solicitor, Allen and Overy, 3 Finch Lane, EC3. His London bank, Lloyds of St James’ Street, SW1 and his accountant, Allan Charlesworth and Co., 17 Helen’s Place, EC3. His Swiss bank account was overdrawn and in the three-monthly statement she saw no income from any source other than the League. His English account contained hardly anything and showed no recent deposits. A few bills. A letter from Professor Clérambault thanking him for the ‘costume’ photographs. What photographs were they? She had found Professor Clérambault an unsettling person on that one meeting in Paris. But no private letters. A letter from White’s telling him about changes to the club’s constitution. A notice of a meeting of the Saintsbury Club. Nothing personal at all. Either they were hidden or they did not exist. Why would he hide them? He’d talked of his family but most of them were dead. A brother somewhere in the colonies. Was it possible that she alone constituted his private life? She felt a creeping sickness arising within her; it would make the break with him even more wounding for him and therefore for her. She put the meagre things back as she’d found them and got up to continue her search for his spy papers.
In the kitchen she searched in the pots and pans cupboard and then the cleaning cupboard and poked in the potted plants on the balcony with a knife blade.
Having found nothing, she stood in the apartment and looked slowly about her.
She had an intuition. Ambrose was a fine cook and the vegetable bin was always freshly full. She went to the vegetable bin and pulled out the vegetables. Under them she discovered a sheet of frosted glass sitting on four corks, and under the glass a dossier. She experienced a sense of empty-hearted cleverness but her morbid drive was waning.
She took out the dossier and went through it. It contained reports all headed ‘MI-c’ with ‘Attn’. Only the Shearer file was directed to the NO. There was a code book. Not all the documents were from the League; a few were from foreign legations. She saw a report on Mr Huneeus and Azerbaijan. She saw the armaments statistics mentioned by Under Secretary Bartou. There was an address of an agency which she also noted down. She read the Shearer report and to her dismay saw that Ambrose had not altered it as he’d promised. It still mentioned a sub-agent and Sapphists, but then it hadn’t gone to the Secretariat and her identity was surely not known at Whitehall. Worry descended on her as she considered this possibility. She sat down and copied out the report on Shearer for Under Secretary Bartou, deleting the references to Sapphists or to any woman ‘sub-agent’. She didn’t consider that the deletion of these references constituted hiding things from Under Secretary Bartou. They were an aberration within an aberration.
As arranged, she called Under Secretary Bartou on the telephone and described what she’d found. He said that it sounded as if it were important enough for him to sight the material with his own eyes and that he would drive straight over to the apartment.
As she put down the telephone handpiece she wondered if she should place a coin in the telephone money box which Ambrose kept by the telephone for payments from his neighbours when they used it.
She rehearsed how she might bring her version of the Shearer report to the attention of Under Secretary Bartou and steer him away from examining the original report in any detail.
He arrived and she handed him her list and gave him her version of the Shearer report. He glanced at the report and grunted. He leafed through the other material in the cache and made notes.
She watched with relief as he turned away from the cache without looking closely at the original Shearer report. He said that the matter was now reasonably serious.
After she’d replaced it all the way she’d found it, she pointed out to him Ambrose’s bank account statements which showed no income other than from the League.
‘Maybe he’s an honorary spy,’ he said.
She let them out of the apartment, but before closing the door, she looked back sadly. Under Secretary Bartou went on down the stairs, discreetly leaving her standing there. She and Ambrose had made the apartment together, had found the furnishings with such laughter and with hours of discussion and searching for the right pieces, the right colours, the right shapes. They had held joint dinner parties there. It had almost been domestic, almost. She thought of what she would like to take from the apartment into her own life and decided that there was nothing she would now wish to include into her life. It would possibly be the last time she saw it. Except to get her things. She wished she could take them now and for it all to be over. An ignoble exit. She closed the door.
They returned to Under Secretary Bartou’s office where he went through the notes he’d taken, pipe in mouth, grunting. ‘Much of this is available to the public or to member states. It’s simply drawing the British attention to some documents. But some of the statistics — there he has made an infraction.’
‘What will happen now?’
‘I still don’t consider it so much a deeply alarming problem — more an unfortunate one. We all Like Major Westwood.’ He smiled at her as a doctor might smile at a worried patient.
‘He’ll be dismissed?’
‘It is not for me to say.’ Under Secretary Bartou looked at her closely. ‘Are you not suffering? Remorse perhaps?’
‘It’s mostly anger and disappointment now.’
‘How do you fortify yourself? To defeat your remorse?’
‘“To spy on a spy is no crime”,’ she replied, and they both smiled without the zest of humour.
‘If it will help, I can contribute another maxim: to lie to a spy is no crime.’
Had Ambrose within this hour ceased to be a lover and become simply ‘a spy’?
She then said something which she had been saying to herself to justify her actions: ‘I believed that he and I shared that higher allegiance to the League. He betrayed it — and me — by having, in fact, a concealed allegiance.’
Under Secretary Bartou nodded, making a gesture of under standing. ‘This secret allegiance which Major Westwood has is sometimes not fully understood by the person who has sworn it. It begins often as a patriotic virtue but it can lead that person into very savage and grim decisions in times of conflict of interest. The secret allegiance can ask of its servant that he turn against all around him.’
‘It’s a clear case of rebus sic stantibus,’ she said, thinking that it was such a case where the conditions of the original treaty of love and friendship between Ambrose and she had changed, had been nullifi
ed, adding, ‘both in my relationship to him and his to the League.’
Under Secretary Bartou thought for a moment and said, ‘There is a strict view of rebus sic stantibus which says that no party can ever liberate itself from a treaty without the consent of the other party.’
‘But what if conditions have changed?’ She didn’t want a diplomatic argument. She wanted comfort.
‘You say conditions have changed. But you are right, the strict view is untenable. But so, too, is the lax view which would allow any party to disregard a treaty on any pretext.’
Her hold on rebus sic stantibus began to collapse in her mind. This must have showed.
‘A nation has to be very skilful sometimes in deciding whether conditions have changed. Or whether the dishonouring of a treaty is going to carry penalties unforeseen.’
She didn’t know if Under Secretary Bartou was warning her about treaties and penalties. ‘Are you warning me? Is there something that I do not understand which I should fear?’ she asked, fearing his answer.
‘More a lesson than a warning.’ He said that for him the sad part of the matter was that Ambrose was ‘a spy with nothing upon which to spy’, playing at espionage at great professional and personal risk. A spy without value. ‘I suspect that he wanted to keep a special relationship with his FO. I also suspect that they didn’t treat it all that seriously.’
He stared out the window and she prepared to leave although she felt unable to return to her everyday work, too pent up with diverse feelings, most of which were disturbing.
‘Why are treaties ever made if they are so fragile?’ she asked.
‘Because they are sometimes respected.’ He began cleaning his pipe. ‘And to use a treaty as a trick works only once.’
‘Will we ever need spies? The League?’ she asked, trying to extend the discussion of the whole matter and to have the afternoon exhaust itself, and so as not to be alone. Looking afresh at what she had always thought of as the abominable custom of espionage.
Grand Days Page 44
