The More Deceived

by David Roberts

  ‘What about him?’ she said, thrusting out her chin.

  ‘He doesn’t attract you? I promise anything you say to me won’t be repeated.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. To be honest, I tell them – both the boys – that I’ve got a boyfriend already . . . in the RAF.’

  ‘But you don’t?’

  ‘No, but I might have one day.’ She sounded so arch Edward wanted to spank her but then he thought, who was he to feel superior? A little fantasy makes the days go by that much quicker and it gave her status, too. No one wants not to be wanted.

  ‘So you like the job?’ he persisted.

  ‘It’s a job and it’s quite well paid . . . and people are impressed when I say I work in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘I’m sure they are and quite right too.’

  She smiled and Edward thought that, behind the make-up, the bobbed hair and the chatter, lurked a rather sweet girl and he hoped she would find the man to make her happy.

  ‘So you like the people here?’

  ‘They’re all right. The truth is Mr Lyall’s a friend of my father’s. I did a secretarial course and my father didn’t want me to go into anything . . . anything common, so he wrote to Mr Lyall and it just happened they were looking for a secretary, so here I am,’ she ended brightly.

  ‘And do you live at home – with your parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is that?’

  ‘Camberwell, my lord.’

  ‘Now, tell me about Mr Westmacott. As you know, we’re very worried about him. Is there anything you can think of which might help us find him?’

  ‘No,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I don’t have much to do with him. Miss Hawkins does his typing and Mr Lyall’s of course. I work for Mr Younger and Mr McCloud.’

  ‘I understand but did you happen to notice if Mr Westmacott looked worried or upset in the days before he disappeared?’

  ‘No, not really,’ she said slowly. ‘He looked the same as always but, as I say, I have very little to do with him. He hardly knows my name,’ she added ruefully.

  Edward tried another tack. ‘Would you have noticed if any files had gone missing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t. Filing isn’t my responsibility. Miss Hawkins keeps a record of any file taken out of the office. I don’t have much to do with them myself unless . . . unless Mr Younger or Mr McCloud asks me to get one for them or sort some file out.’

  ‘Yes, of course. So, no files are ever left lying about?’ Miss Williams looked puzzled. ‘I mean, could anyone go into Miss Hawkins’s office – say when she was out of the room – and take a file from her desk without being seen by you or anyone else?’

  She thought for a moment and then said slowly, ‘It is possible. I can’t see the whole of her office from where I sit. No one could take anything out of the filing cabinets – I would hear them being opened. They make quite a noise. But off Miss Hawkins’s desk . . . perhaps. But why should anyone . . . ?’

  ‘What happens to returned files? Are they put straight back in the cabinets?’

  ‘Not if Miss Hawkins is busy. They sit in the in-tray until she has time to put them away.’

  ‘You don’t put them away for her?’

  ‘No, I’m not allowed.’

  ‘Well, you have been most helpful.’

  Jane looked troubled. ‘You don’t think anything bad has happened to Mr Westmacott do you, sir?’

  ‘I very much hope not, Miss Williams. I very much hope not.’

  6

  It was not until he reached Brooks’s, his club in St James’s Street, that Edward remembered why the photograph of Lyall’s son had rung a bell with him. He had seen the young man arm-in-arm with Guy Baron in Gerda’s photograph of Republican soldiers which included David Griffiths-Jones. He was almost certain of it. As is so often the case, a person in your mind suddenly materializes. Feeling he had earned a break, after a late lunch – potted shrimps, kidneys and bacon, washed down with a passable claret – he had called on Mr Berry to ask his advice on laying down a burgundy of which he had heard good things. Then, feeling much better, he had gone into Sonerscheins and, on a whim, bought an Etruscan two-handled vase the colour of the many suns which had baked it. It was hideously expensive but Edward had found himself unable to resist adding it to his small collection of ancient art. As he was leaving with his new treasure, he literally bumped into Gerda.

  He apologized and raised his hat with one hand while clasping the vase tightly with the other. She was just about to move on, not appearing to have recognized him, when he said, ‘Miss Meyer, it’s me . . .’

  Gerda raised her eyes and a pink flush came into her cheeks. ‘Lord Edward, I’m so sorry. I was thinking of . . .’

  ‘André?’

  ‘No, not André. I was thinking of . . . something else. How is your eye? Did you put a steak on it?’

  ‘I did, thank you, and the swelling has all but gone, don’t you think?’

  She looked at him critically. ‘Yes, but it stills spoils the image.’

  ‘The image?’

  ‘You know, “the man-about-town”. What’s the word? The flâneur.’

  ‘That’s how you see me?’ He was hurt.

  ‘No, that’s how you try to appear but it’s not you at all.’

  Edward was wise enough to take this as a compliment. She changed the subject. ‘What have you been buying?’

  ‘Oh, this? It’s a vase – an amphora – very old and very beautiful. I say, why not come back to Albany with me and I’ll show you. It’s much more fun, when you’ve bought yourself a present, opening the parcel with someone else. Otherwise it’s a bit like drinking on your own – a vice more than a pleasure.’ Suddenly realizing he was being pretentious or at least over-elaborate, he changed tack. ‘Anyway, you look as though you could do with a cup of tea.’ He saw a look of doubt in her face and added quickly, ‘But, of course, you must be very busy.’

  ‘Where’s Albany? Not New York, I presume.’

  ‘No, it’s where I have rooms, round the corner in Piccadilly, don’t y’know.’ He was stuttering now and aware he was sounding rather an ass. ‘I expect you think I’m the most awful idiot boring you with all those stories of Africa at that awful dinner after the exhibition. I must have had too much wine. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have stayed.’

  ‘Was the exhibition awful as well?’

  ‘It was rather – not the pictures but the people. The Comrades en masse always give me the heebie-jeebies, but I did like your photographs.’

  ‘André’s, you mean?’

  ‘No, yours.’

  Gerda, pleased, relented. ‘I don’t think you are nearly the ass you would like people to believe. You know, André was beastly to me when we got home after the party. He said I had made a spectacle of myself and . . .’

  ‘And befriended a useless appendage of Verity’s who could not appreciate his art.’

  ‘Something like that,’ she conceded, grinning. ‘I’ve just finished at the gallery and, yes, I would like a cup of tea. Thank you.’

  They made an odd couple as they walked into Piccadilly: Edward, tall, hawk-faced, clutching his parcel, covering the ground with long strides, Gerda half-running after him, her red hair escaping from under a small triangular-shaped hat.

  ‘Could we walk a little slower?’ she begged him. ‘I’m pooped.’

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ he said, slowing down. ‘Verity always complains about the speed I travel but she’s smaller than you.’

  ‘How did you meet Verity?’

  ‘In a car crash. In fact, I sometimes think our relationship, if that is what it is, is a sequence of car crashes. Sorry! I’m talking nonsense again. I know what you’re going to say – we make an odd couple. She’s a red-hot Communist and I’m a . . . well, she calls me a superannuated member of a class consigned to the dustbin of history. Quite accurate, don’t you think?’

  Gerda laughed. ‘But you are a . . . couple . . . like André and me?’
<
br />   ‘How do you mean? Oh, I see. Well, that’s a rather difficult question to answer. I love her and I think she . . . cares about me but she’s a war correspondent – and a very good one, as you know – so she doesn’t have time for marriage or any of that kind of thing – bourgeois and redundant she calls it. And then, of course, it’s not very pleasant for her – being a Communist – to have to spend time explaining me away to the Comrades.’

  Gerda laughed again. ‘I don’t know Verity as well as you do but she has a reputation for liking to have her cake while eating it. Isn’t that the expression? But I’m sounding catty.’

  ‘No, but that’s what we all like, isn’t it? But most of us can’t quite manage it. You’re American – aren’t you?’

  ‘I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, but I have lived all over since I ran away from home when I was fifteen – mostly in Paris and Berlin until it got unbearable, and now England.’

  ‘And Spain?’

  ‘Yes, Bandi – André, I mean – we go there to take photographs but you can’t stay there all the time. It’s . . .’

  ‘It’s bad, I know. Verity’s told me some of it. She was at the siege of Toledo. Of course! You were there too. You told me.’

  ‘Yes, Bandi and I. There were a lot of press there who had been invited to see the good guys capture the Alcázar but, as you know, it didn’t work out that way. Didn’t Verity tell us you and she had been in Spain at the outbreak of war?’

  Edward was absurdly pleased to discover Verity sometimes talked about him to her friends. ‘Yes, but after a few weeks I came home. I decided it wasn’t my war after all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s very much Verity’s war. It is not just any old war. It means something special to her. She can literally stand up and fight for what she believes in. Sorry, I’m not being very clear. Look, for you and Verity the rights and wrongs are quite obvious. You are fighting the “good fight” – good against evil – but I think it’s more complicated than that. I had a brush with the SIM – the secret police – when I was in Spain and I realized Stalin and his minions are about as interested in seeing a free Republican Spain as . . . as Hitler is. Don’t get me wrong, I share the Party’s hatred for Franco and his Nazi friends but, if the Communists are the cure, I’m not sure I wouldn’t prefer the disease. I don’t expect you to agree with me – Verity doesn’t – but I find the Communist tyranny almost as frightening as the Nazi tyranny.’ Gerda looked shocked and he saw that he had gone too far. ‘No, of course I don’t mean that. We are all going to have to fight the Nazis before we start fighting among ourselves.’

  ‘But to beat Hitler there is no room for amateurism. Only Stalin can do it. The Western democracies are finished and my country won’t intervene in Europe again. Stalin is the only hope.’

  They had arrived at Albany and, when they were in the apartment, they tacitly decided to change the subject.

  ‘I just love these rooms,’ Gerda enthused. ‘Oh, now show me your vase.’

  Gently, Edward unwrapped it and set it on a side table where it glowed. They stood back and admired it. ‘It’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘It is, isn’t it? To possess something so old and so fragile gives me hope that perhaps what we value can survive despite everything.’

  Fenton came in and served them tea and cucumber sandwiches. Gerda started giggling as soon as Fenton had closed the door behind him.

  ‘Forgive me, but this is all so Importance of Being Earnest. I remember cucumber sandwiches and . . .’

  ‘Yes, Jack lived in Albany. But I’m not Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think you were,’ she said, putting her hand on his knee.

  ‘Gerda,’ he said, getting up hurriedly and spilling some tea, ‘you . . . shouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why? Because of Verity? I thought that was why you brought me back here.’

  ‘Yes . . . no. I’d feel so . . . so beastly if we . . . I mean, I think you are . . . wonderful but afterwards . . .’

  ‘It makes you guilty wanting to sleep with me when you love Verity?’

  ‘You can say that, yes,’ Edward said, shocked but grateful for her bluntness.

  ‘I hate that word “guilt”,’ she said vehemently. ‘It’s such a cold, ugly word. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that.’

  ‘Why do you think Verity would mind if you and I had some pleasure together? It’s not as if I want to steal you away or anything like that. It’s only sex.’

  ‘That’s the way you see it? I’m afraid my conscience is rather fragile. Sort of delicate. Won’t bear much betrayal.‘

  ‘That’s middle-class privilege. I don’t have time for conscience – not about sex, I don’t. I must take my pleasure now, when I can.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Gerda, much as I’m tempted, I think . . .’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind,’ she said, seeming unruffled by the rejection. ‘Life’s so short. I can’t see either André or I making old bones. “The grave’s a fine and private place but none I think do there embrace . . .”’

  ‘I know it but somehow . . .’

  ‘Say no more. Have I spoilt everything?’

  ‘Not at all! Actually, there was something I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Fire ahead.’

  ‘In one of your photographs, there was a picture of a young man standing between two friends, their arms entwined. One was Guy Baron. I don’t know who the second man was but the third – the one in the middle – was a boy called James Lyall. Do you remember him? David Griffiths-Jones was also in the photograph.’

  ‘I do remember him. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I met his father yesterday. He’s not heard from him for some time. I wonder if you know where he is?’

  ‘I took that photograph when we were all resting behind the front line. I can’t remember the name of the place but it was three months ago. I have no idea where he is now. Madrid, I expect. They are trying to raise the siege so everyone’s concentrated there.’

  ‘Do you know, the government has made it illegal to join the International Brigade?’

  ‘That won’t stop the boys. They’ll be even more eager to go . . . the great adventure. You should see them out there . . . raring to go. A few know what they are in for but most think it’s some sort of game.’

  ‘And then they get shot . . . not only by the other side, so I hear.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘The Stalinists . . . I met a school friend, Eric Blair, he’d been out there. He said the Comrades were taking the opportunity of rubbing out anyone who resisted their control. I gather Verity is going to prove it’s nonsense.’

  ‘I hope she does. I never saw anything like that,’ Gerda said. She seemed put out, almost angry. ‘I must go now. Thank you, Lord Edward, for the cup of tea and the cucumber sandwiches. It was just what I needed.’ She grinned wickedly and Edward wished his principles had permitted him to accept her invitation to partake of something more. She must have seen the look in his eyes because she said, ‘But you still look hungry. Next time you must have tea with me. But I forgot. That won’t be for a few months. André and I are off to Spain on Friday and who knows when we’ll get back.’

  She kissed him, first on the cheek and then quickly on the mouth. ‘Lucky Verity,’ she said.

  ‘Should I dust the vase on the side table, my lord, or would you prefer to do so yourself?’

  Edward was dismembering a kipper the following morning when Fenton posed this question.

  ‘Oh . . . ah! I see what you mean. If it were to fall to the ground . . .’

  ‘Precisely, my lord. I understand the objet d’art to be worth a considerable sum of money.’

  ‘Quite and it has managed to survive the Roman Empire and several major conflagrations, not least the Great War. It would be grossly irresponsible if it were to meet its end as a result of domestic carelessness. I intend to have a cabinet made
in which to display it. It needs subtle lighting and should, perhaps, sit on a revolving stand. I am going to take expert advice but, until that time, I think we should leave it undusted.’

  ‘My lord . . .’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ Edward spoke irritably. He liked, if possible, to eat breakfast without conversation and, since he knew Fenton was aware he preferred silence until he had downed his last slice of toast and his final cup of coffee, he was surprised and not a little annoyed that the man was persisting.

  ‘My lord, I thought I ought to mention that earlier this morning, while you were still sleeping, Sir Robert Vansittart telephoned.’

  ‘Did he, by Jove? He’s an early bird.’

  ‘I informed him that you were not available to speak to him and he asked me to convey his respects and inquire if you had made any headway with your investigation. He said the Prime Minister had been “pressing him”.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that might be uncomfortable. Did you . . . ?’

  ‘It would not have been my place to make any comment. I merely said I would pass on his message to you.’

  Edward put down The Times and stared thoughtfully at the amphora. ‘Perhaps you ought to have woken me. The trouble is, Fenton – I speak in complete confidence, naturally – I have been thinking.’

  ‘Indeed, my lord?’

  ‘Sir Robert has asked me to find out where Mr Churchill is getting his information concerning armaments – our armaments and German armaments. It seemed a relatively simple matter of talking to the twenty or thirty people with access to secret information and coming to a conclusion as to who was doing the dirty.’

  ‘But since you returned from Chartwell . . . ?’

  ‘That’s the nub of it. Mr Churchill may be everything they say – unreliable, given to impetuous and sometimes disastrous schemes of which the Gallipoli landings are the prime example – but the fact remains he is a patriot. He told me he did not solicit information from anyone in an official position and I believe him. However, many officials who are worried that we are unprepared for war come to him with their concerns.’