The Flowers of the Forest

by Joseph Hone

  ‘I won’t waste your time,’ the Prime Minister said, in a way which suggested he was rather more anxious not to waste his. ‘You’re one of our best men, I understand,’ and again, before I could contest this, he seemed about to put his hand on my arm, as though he too was uncertain of the truth in this statement and was anxious to persuade me of it by touch. But at the last moment he withdrew his hand and started to light up his pipe instead.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. But I’m not –’ I looked across at Basil in the far seat. He was leaning out towards me, the PM between us, his face a mask of official rectitude.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not one of your men at all, Prime Minister. There’s been some misunderstanding –’

  ‘No, of course you’re not one of our men – not officially. But it was you, wasn’t it, whom we have to thank for that business in Cheltenham 5 or 6 years ago? The names of those Soviet diplomats you got for us – a hundred of them or more, not a bad bag – half the KGB men they had over here. We owe you a great deal for that.’

  ‘I was involved in that – yes. Regretfully –’

  ‘We all have regrets, Mr Marlow. We wouldn’t be human otherwise. I have many myself. The point is –’ He cleared his throat and picked a piece of burning ash from the bowl of his pipe. Then he re-lit again, with another consequent delay, before he found his stride with it and began to puff vigorously. ‘Point is, something rather serious has come up which I think you can help us on.’

  ‘I don’t work for Intelligence any more.’

  ‘No, of course you don’t. And that’s just why we need you. Let me explain briefly. Then Fielding here can fill in all the details afterwards. Primarily – at the moment – this is a political problem …’ Again he stopped to tend his pipe.

  ‘I’m not a politician.’

  ‘You mustn’t keep saying “No”, Mr Marlow. I’m not just a politician either. I’m also head of the Security and Intelligence services in this country. And that’s why I’ve asked to meet you – unofficially of course.’ He glanced round the room, smiling broadly, a happy old King Cole taking appropriate obeisance from his courtiers, while apparently chatting to me about nothing more important than next week’s cricket with the West Indians.

  ‘I wanted to meet you,’ he went on, turning to me without dimming his smile a fraction, ‘because I know you’ve had your doubts about working for us in the past –’ I was about to assent to this but before I could, this time he really did put his hand on my arm. ‘Now I understand those doubts, Mr Marlow. Doubts are part of every considered response. I’ve had them myself. But in this instance I wanted to see you myself – personally – to reassure you that this directive comes right from the top and isn’t some hare-brained scheme dreamed up by a lot of backroom Intelligence crackpots. ‘He stopped once more and sucked hard at the dying bowl. Then he looked for his lighter. ‘This job has my personal authority – right down the line. And Mr Fielding here is answerable to me over it, as well as to his own department. It’s a matter of possibly the utmost importance. I say “possibly” because as yet we simply don’t know how real the threat is. However, after this morning’s incident with McKnight at the church there’s no question – we’re in deep.’

  ‘So he was killed, wasn’t he?’ I looked across at Basil.

  ‘It seems so,’ Basil replied diffidently, as though options lay even beyond the grave.

  ‘And there’s the point,’ the Prime Minister said, his smile gone and a deep seriousness flooding his face; he was obviously winding up towards his peroration. ‘McKnight is the third to go in as many months. Dearden, Phillips and now McKnight.’

  ‘What links them?’ I asked.

  The Prime Minister took his pipe out and looked at me carefully, essaying a shade of deep drama. ‘That’s my out cue line, Mr Marlow. I have to get back to the House. Fielding will give you the rest of details. I’m here just to give you my word: this is “official” – no tricks involved. We need you.’

  He stood up and his seat whipped back with a loud bang. Basil and I stood up – and there were two more loud bangs. People glanced at us. The Prime Minister took my hand, leaning towards me. ‘I need you,’ he said finally in the soft, steely tones of a false lover. And then he was gone, an aide touching his arm and leading him forward to the top of the billiard-table where toasts were about to be proposed. The Prime Minister made the first, raising a tulip-shaped glass of champagne:

  ‘To Sir George – his memory: to you – his colleagues in adversity: and to all those who fell secretly in the cause of a better world.’

  There was silence in the long dark room as everyone raised their glasses. A dead, smoky heat rose up to the clerestory windows. I was stunned and suddenly very tired and the drink had quite deserted me.

  ‘Come on.’ Basil nudged me, whispering. ‘Drink up. Your country needs you.’

  *

  ‘You are a cheat, Basil. My God – I should have seen it the moment you stumbled up to me this morning, spilling the wine: you were playing the Trojan horse.’

  We’d left the club and taken the underpass over into Hyde Park and had paused now at the beginning of the sandy ride down Rotten Row, looking along the sloping avenue of heavy chestnut trees. Basil had taken one of his shoes off and was shaking some grit out of it.

  ‘Let’s walk on the grass,’ he said.

  There had hardly been any rain since the start of April. Spring had come and gone in a weekend and the sky was cloudless now – a tired, dusty blue as though it had been summer for a long time. I felt as if I’d been with Basil for a week, too, and not a few hours – and I was tired of him, as a host who had betrayed me, yet with whom I still had to tie things up before exchanging formal goodbyes.

  ‘A cheat?’ Basil said carefully, as we struck off towards the Serpentine. He looked hot in his old pinstripe and the long lobes of his ears were red with excitement. ‘Nonsense, Peter. You heard the Prime Minister –’

  ‘I suppose you followed me this morning – the whole thing was arranged. Barker must have told you about my coming up. Well, let me tell you –’ I said aggressively.

  ‘Wait a minute –’

  ‘You wait a minute. The short answer is “No”. I’m not doing any more jobs for you – or the Prime Minister.’

  Basil said nothing. He looked up at me and smiled gingerly, like someone admiring the bravery of a fool.

  ‘I’ve been caught twice before with you people,’ I went on. ‘The first time gave me four years in Durham Jail – and the second a bullet in the leg. I’ve had all that,’ I stormed.

  ‘You also had £15,000,’ Basil said vaguely, looking aside at a half-naked couple throwing a frisbee over a prancing dog. ‘Don’t blame Barker, by the way. He only confirmed what we knew already. You’re broke, Peter. Stony broke.’

  ‘I can sell my cottage. I can get a job.’ I lied.

  ‘What? With four or five thousand on the mortgage still to pay? That won’t leave you with much. And a job? At 40, with your experience: a few years teaching at some wog prep school, ten years thumbing through Al Ahram with us, and a criminal record. You could get a job – washing up dishes, Peter, and you know that. So let’s stop talking cock, my old man. You need money – and we’ll give it to you. More than the £15,000 you had last time. And something substantial to open the account.’

  Basil loosened his tie and blinked in the hard light. ‘God, if this is only April, what’s it going to be like later on? Never mind, we’ll have some tea in a minute. I want to take you to an hotel near here. Because it’s not just the money. There’s something else that will interest you about this job – partly why we’ve asked you to do it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come. I’ll show you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Tea-time. Should have started by now. We’re going to have some tea: some iced lemon tea and some expensive cream cakes, Peter. You can make up your mind after that – and I’ll tell you about the job then too.’

  How confident he was, I t
hought. And yet I had to admit that I shared some of his confidence: with this money I wouldn’t have to lose the cottage – that was my first thought. The wine bill could be paid, all that San Patricio sherry – and the new radials that my car needed all round. We turned off before the Serpentine and walked south towards Knightsbridge.

  ‘Tea and tuck, Basil,’ I said. ‘It’s just blackmail. You think I can be bought for that – like Billy Bunter?’

  Basil shrugged his shoulders. ‘You were always such a moral fellow, Peter. Well, you simply can’t afford them any more. That’s the long and short of it. Besides, this isn’t immoral: you can see it’s straight. Why else the PM?’

  ‘You people could con even him,’ I said.

  I should have walked away and left Basil then, sweating on the pavement, waiting for a break in the traffic, before we crossed over to Wilton Place. But I thought then that my life had been too full of what I ought to have done. Besides, Basil had set the whole thing up so skilfully that I couldn’t resist moving on to this next carrot: what could he possibly have in store for me over a glass of iced tea and a plate full of cream cakes? It was as simple as that – and Basil knew it, looking at me confidently when we finally managed to cross over and made our way towards the Grand Hotel.

  *

  The lobby was quiet and nearly empty, for this was a small Grand Hotel. But once through the bevelled glass doors and into the gilded tearoom, we sank into a pool of gentle privilege, the tact of money, a crowded well-being. We took a table right at the back, while the rich chatted softly over Royal Worcester teasets, nurtured by attentive waiters sailing round their tables, hands held high with plates of hot scones and Viennese chocolate cake.

  A samovar of tea, a huge silver-plated edifice, bubbled in the centre of the room – and beyond it, standing by the window like a dark exclamation mark against the long white net curtains that filtered the afternoon sun and gave the room the feel of a watery, lemon-grey aquarium, was a woman – dark-haired and deeply bronzed, playing the flute.

  They say you never forget a face. But I did then; it was clear that Basil, looking at me carefully and then up at the dais, wanted me to recognise something, to remember someone.

  ‘Well?’ I said, looking at the £5 a head tea menu. ‘You normally do your business here? Never miss a trick to ham it up, do you? I’ll have the Welsh rarebit – and a beaker of cold tea.’

  Basil smiled ominously. ‘It’s ten or fifteen years, isn’t it? Or have you seen her since?’

  ‘Who?’

  Basil glanced up again at the woman in the pale smock dress, her copper-coloured arms floating up and down as she nursed the instrument, which obscured her lips and chin. Perhaps that was why I hadn’t recognised her sooner – as I did then, a second before he mentioned her name.

  ‘Rachel Phillips.’

  It was her short parting, just an inch or so long, right above her brow, and the bouncy, untutored hair that ran away from it down either side, enclosing her head in a windy circle of dark curls, that jogged my memory and made my stomach turn suddenly: hair that I’d run my hand through with such pleasure years ago. And then, before I’d fully appreciated her identity and presence here, I remembered a time on the lake in Scotland, below her house in Perthshire – the first time I’d done this, out in a rowing boat, when I’d leant forward on my oars and ruffled that hair, nearly twenty-five years before.

  And my first thought then was: did Basil know about this too? Had he been hiding there then – on the wooded shore with binoculars? And I thought, yes, Basil must know practically everything, even that far back perhaps. And I wasn’t angry to begin with, as one isn’t when an outsider, a relative or a friend, admires someone one loves, when one has first introduced them into the family circle. Instead, for a moment, I was grateful to Basil, as though he were a long-lost uncle come to commend my choice of wife almost a generation after the engagement. And indeed, having run the gamut of childish infatuation and advanced on love, Rachel and I had once thought to marry and had met with little encouragement – either from ourselves or our circles.

  Subsequently, in our twenties, and until she had married ten or so years before, we had shared each other intermittently, but without any permanency, for when she had wished that, I hadn’t, and by the time I changed my mind she had moved on to other dreams. We had grown together, home from boarding schools through years of holidays, in thoughtless leaps and bounds but with as many angry retreats. And when we had loved afterwards it had been with the same extremes of pain and excitement. Our exaggerated feelings for each other always retained the flavour of nursery antagonisms: petty squabbles over toys or idyllic trysts behind the laurels, which had become the bitter quarrels and loves of adulthood without any change in their childish nature: antipathies and desires which never benefited from growth or reason.

  That Basil should bring me to her again, in the tearoom of a London hotel, her cool music flooding the spaces all around us – well, as I say, I was charmed at first. But a moment afterwards I was afraid. Basil rarely did anything without the long view in mind: I remembered a seemingly innocuous quarrel he had once inaugurated with a young visa clerk in our travel section which had ended in the man’s being sent down for fourteen years at the Old Bailey. Basil had spotted a flaw in the fellow long before anyone else. And now Rachel, for some reason, had swum into his sights – in a matter which, for some other reason, I was to be joined to her in. If I feared for her, I feared as much for us as well.

  Basil intended some meeting between us – I sensed that clearly; it was part of his plan. But had he any idea of what such a renewal would mean to me? Had he really spied out that personal terrain – from a lakeside perch gazing across the water at us, children touching each other in a boat, or seen us through the window of that shabby blitzed flat we had once shared at the back of Notting Hill Gate? Did he know only the softness and easy humour we had found together in those early days in London: lying on that broken sofa, as I had done, listening to her practise behind a closed door in the bathroom, the only privacy she needed then. Or had he waited till the weekend, and been another customer in the small corner store in Ladbroke Grove, and seen the whirlwind row over what to buy and how much to spend on provisions for the following week?

  Was my past that far back, long before I’d spied or married myself or come to such ruin in Durham Jail – all the life which had come before me now as precisely as an old scrapbook – was that untouched part of me to be opened to the casual view? – released by Basil from an airtight box and become, with all the other failed emotion, heir to corruption?

  ‘I want you to meet her – again,’ Basil said.

  ‘I thought as much.’

  I breathed hard, restraining my anger in the polite room full of delicate music. A meeting, Basil would have thought, hardly different from one of his own held in those airless basement rooms in Holborn: hardly different indeed – in that it would have been just as devious. Rachel had always been proud of what she saw as her innocent carelessness in human affairs. She herself was a gift, she thought – like her music – which would inevitably be appreciated. In fact she knew well how wrong this view was, how frightened she was of herself – and so, like a spy, she constantly hid her tracks and changed her identity the better to avoid the unacceptable reality of her person.

  Thus it was that a casual involvement with her took the course of a prolonged adolescence, while a commitment was a return to the heart-stopping trials of childhood. She had surprised me then, to depths unknown. I’d come to accept that music was her only passion – the one thing, besides her father, that she really cared about.

  ‘You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you?’ I turned on Basil with some bitterness. ‘How did you dig her out of my life? No one in the department could have known.’

  The waiter arrived before Basil could reply and he spoke to him with heavy humour. ‘… yes, don’t forget, a double ration of pancakes …’ For a thin man Basil had an inordina
te greed in everything: a fat man was desperately trying to get inside him. He leant forward now and tinkered with the carnations in a small silver vase between us.

  ‘It’s years since I last saw her – properly,’ I went on when the waiter had left, ‘before I joined the section in Holborn, before I went to Egypt.’

  ‘Your file, Peter – the forms you had to complete when you came to us: you gave her father as a reference. And why not? He was an old friend – of yours and your family: and a distinguished man. But she was always more than a friend, wasn’t she?’

  That was true, I thought – unfortunately. How much better simply to have been a friend of Rachel’s.

  And how she would have laughed at the idea – that crystal, mocking, serious laughter, all in one: laughter like a wild bell. Friendship required balance, foresight, discretion – and Rachel had few gifts there. She viewed friendship as a kind of failure, something second-best, a slur on the real potential of human association which she saw in primary colours, in terms only of extravagant love or hate.

  ‘But I left Holborn nearly ten years ago,’ I said. ‘My file must be pretty dead by now. How did you pick me out of the bag?’

  ‘The files never die with us, Peter. You know that.’ Basil crushed a carnation bud and put his fingers to his nose. ‘In fact, with computers, they’ve taken on a whole new life. When this Phillips business came up six weeks ago we ran his tape through. Part of it included all official contacts made by or to him while he was in the service: the names of people he’d dealt with overseas and at home here – a complete business directory in fact. We have them on everyone now. Well, there was your name, among some hundreds of others. And I said to myself, well, that’s funny: what’s friend Marlow got to do with Lindsay Phillips? They weren’t in the same section, years between them. A look at your own file and the matter became clear: an old family friend: especially the daughter – a few discreet enquiries. Forgive me.’