The Flowers of the Forest

by Joseph Hone

  ‘You could raise the dead, couldn’t you? – with your bloody files. But what “Phillips business”? He was just a diplomat, surely – in the Foreign Office.’

  ‘He wasn’t. He’s been with us for over 40 years. And he’s disappeared. That’s the business.’

  I laughed. ‘This is where I came in, Basil – just like old Henry going down the Nile: you want me to find him.’

  Basil nodded. The waiter glided up to us with a feast of goodies, placing them carefully all over the small table, while Basil relished them in advance, seducing the eclairs and undressing the sandwiches with his eyes.

  He nodded now again, sagely, licking his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re good at finding people: so find him – if he is to be found.’ He took a buttery pancake and manoeuvred a bowl of strawberry jam through the other dishes towards it.

  ‘How does she fit in?’ I asked, looking over at Rachel. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘She plays here. Three afternoons a week – in the season.’

  ‘She used to be better known. I’m surprised.’

  ‘Why? They pay well.’

  I laughed. ‘She never needed money. That used to be our problem: she had too much of it.’

  Basil took no notice, biting into his jam-laden pancake. ‘Yes, they pay well,’ he said at last. ‘She needs the practice. But really – she likes an audience, doesn’t she?’

  That was true, I thought. Rachel had never really sought private admiration – for she feared the ensuing commitment. In that sphere she preferred to give: to dominate in particular – or else to weep. It was only from a public, I remembered well from her early concerts, that she properly ‘received’ – taking from the eyes of many an approval she refused in her personal affairs. So often ‘unworthy’ – of me, or of life – in the light of a crowd her skin began to glow.

  Basil paused before his next pancake and listened to the music. ‘Gluck’s Dance of the Spirits,’ he said. ‘Delicious. She does it beautifully, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t follow you, Basil.’

  ‘And beautiful herself, too. Wonder she hasn’t married again.’

  ‘I hear the last one sank with all hands. That’s probably why.’

  Rachel had once tried to be her age – in marriage. But she had failed: not from any lack of fidelity, I’m sure, but because the only fidelity she cared about was impossible: she wished at all costs to be true to herself, while yet ensuring that her soul should surprise her every hour. She walked into a new country each morning and threw away the map at bedtime. I had found it difficult to share these abrupt journeys she made about herself: the young German conductor I’d heard she’d married had obviously found it impossible. In exchange for certainties she offered a complete lack of restraint. But there never had been any real certainty, apart from her father. She and I had separated: the German had moved on, finding her, I suppose, the one score he couldn’t interpret, and she had been left holding mysterious gifts – which only her music could give a satisfactory form to.

  Basil continued to look across at her, his eyes becalmed for a moment, trying to focus on some more sensual greed. ‘That nose – straight down from her brow like a ruler and eyes like black ink bottles. Greek god department. No? And that skin …’

  ‘She used to say anyone really in love with her was queer. Do you fancy her, Basil? Or are you pimping for her?’

  He signed, turning back to the table, before considering the merits of the creamy eclairs or the soft almond icing on the Battenberg cake.

  ‘We’ve been trying to help her, that’s all. I told you – her father disappeared. Two months ago, up in their house in Scotland.’

  ‘You work for the missing persons bureau, do you?’

  ‘You don’t understand. Latterly Phillips was head of Nine: the Soviets – as well as Tito and the rest of that Balkan crew down there. That’s been his stamping-ground since he rejoined after the war. And now – thin air. At least there were the bodies left over from the other two, Dearden and McKnight.’

  ‘They were in Nine as well?’

  Basil nodded. ‘Dearden headed a circle out of Zagreb – he was a businessman there – covering Croatia, Slovenia, the Hungarian border areas: McKnight was his case officer, ran him from London – and Phillips, well, he was control – directly responsible for the whole operation.’

  ‘Head of Section personally responsible? I’m surprised.’

  ‘Not in this case you wouldn’t be. This was grade A stuff – all the way: the Soviet threat to invade Yugoslavia, grabbing a good-looking Med port, Split or Rijeka: a takeover after Tito’s death – all that. I’ll give you the details later.’

  ‘I’ve had quite a lot already. And I’ve not agreed to anything.’

  Basil had chosen an eclair – and now the cream inside had squashed out all over his chin. He dabbed at his face with a napkin.

  ‘Nothing you couldn’t get from the papers, Peter – if you read any down there on the wolds. And as far as Western intelligence is concerned, you don’t suppose we’re looking the other way over all this, do you? Any fool must know that. Balance of Power in the scales here: sovereignty of non-aligned nations: Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad Soviet wolf. Used to be brave little Belgium – and that set off quite a rocket, as I recall. Well, now it’s brave little Yugoslavia we’re having to go out and bat for.’

  ‘And that’s where I come in – third wicket down? With the first three dead. Thanks. But I think this bowling is too fast for me, Basil.’

  Basil munched away before looking up at Rachel again and clearing his throat. ‘You come in – with her. Where you left off, maybe all those years ago. With her – and her mother too.’

  ‘Madeleine?’

  ‘Yes. She’s down in London at the moment. We want you to meet them both.’

  I smiled. ‘Officially?’

  ‘Just the opposite. Officially we’ve got nowhere – which is why we need you. The Scots police, Interpol, his own section, half the special branch down here – we’ve turned the man inside out these past two months and found nothing. Just nothing.’

  ‘Maybe there is nothing. A lot of people these days walk out the door one morning and never come back. It’s inflation.’

  Basil pursed his lips and sipped his tea for the first time. ‘You don’t disappear one morning if you’re Lindsay Phillips. A happy man: well married, nice family, lot of money, work he liked and six months off retirement in a beautiful country house. You don’t walk out on all that.’

  ‘Maybe he lost his memory then. Amnesia. That happens too.’

  ‘Unlikely – when you consider Dearden and McKnight. Very unlikely.’

  ‘Kidnapped, murdered?’

  Basil nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Or perhaps he defected?’ I said lightly.

  ‘Hardly. Do you remember him?’

  I had to agree. Lindsay Phillips, I remembered, had been like an early idealised map of the world: everywhere you looked were the legends of honour and duty, the trade winds of patriotism and hard work; the cherubs in each corner blew long scrolls of charity and faith and each Cape was one of hope. Major Lindsay Phillips was to me, at least when I was young and had stayed in his house during the war, the epitome of the good soldier – a man who, home from leave and reading the lesson in the little church on the edge of his moorland estate, seemed hardly different from his eminent forebears, commemorated there in bad stained glass above the pews: Victorian officers killed in the Ashanti wars or Governor-Generals buried in Westminster, emblemised now as St George or the Good Shepherd; sunny coloured pictures: Camelot knights in armour or strong men with sheep on a green hill, which I gazed on then as on the pages of some boy’s adventure book: ‘Brigadier General Sir William Phillips: Queen’s Own 11th Hussars: Died at Glenalyth, November 1936: Faithful unto Death.’ That was the father.

  ‘It doesn’t make much sense, Basil – my succeeding where you’ve all failed. How am I supposed to find out any m
ore than you did?’

  Basil humphed. ‘A friend always knows more than an outsider: a close friend, an old friend.’ Basil tolled the bell of friendship as if he really believed in it – the one true faith which he had lost and I still in some way possessed.

  ‘I’m to use my friendship with these people to spy on them, is that it?’

  ‘Not at all. Not for a moment. Can’t you see it from their point of view? – stop thinking about spying: they want to find out what’s happened to him, more than we do. Don’t you see? You’ll be helping them.’

  ‘But without telling them I’m working for you – why that?’

  ‘Because you tell things to a friend you wouldn’t to a policeman. That’s one obvious reason,’ Basil said impatiently.

  ‘That’s a real cheat: you assume the family has something to hide?’

  ‘They may have,’ Basil said judiciously. ‘But that’s not the point – as you know perfectly well. It’s a matter of familiarity, long-standing association: in such circumstances people say things … one is in a position to learn.’ Basil left this idea of inquisitive friendship hanging on the air.

  ‘Exactly. It’s called placing an agent, Basil. A deep-cover illegal. The target here is the Phillips family and I’m to be dropped over the landing zone at the next full moon. Well, that’s nonsense. I can’t do it.’

  Basil stopped eating for a moment, starving himself to give weight to his next pronouncement. ‘Listen, the end justifies the means in this case: if you can help them, would you refuse to? And if you do manage to find out what’s happened to him – well, they’ll tell us in any case. So you need deal only with them if you like. And I’ll make another offer: we’ll leave it up to them, see if they make the first move. Madeleine Phillips is down here for the Chelsea Flower Show. You remember the family business they have up on their estate in Perthshire: bee suppliers and that honey of theirs – “Glenalyth Heather”. Well, they’ve got a stand at the show. Both the women will be there tomorrow. I want you simply to go round there and introduce yourself, show your face – and we’ll take it from there. I can’t do fairer than that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Basil eyed the final eclair like an executioner – moved his hand towards it, but then, at the last moment, reprieved it. ‘I think they’ll ask you to help them, Peter, without your doing anything.’

  ‘That’s a long shot.’

  Basil looked up at the chandelier. ‘God help us.’ Then he shifted in his chair, taking a firm grip on himself. ‘I don’t think you realise the situation, Peter: how desperate these two women are: a husband and a father – just disappearing one afternoon. Someone you loved – not knowing. Not knowing anything, you see. Not even a body. People have an enormous need to tidy things up that way, you know. It preys on their mind: the corpus delicti. And they need it, dead or alive, the flesh or the bones. It becomes a kind of passion – to find out. “Love’s last gift: remembrance” – that’s what it’s all about. But they can’t remember. They don’t know what shape or form or place to remember him in.’

  Basil killed the last eclair now, biting deeply into the chocolate icing. ‘Yes, I think they may well ask you to help them. They’re rather lost just now,’ he added, trying to master the cream filling.

  ‘They must have fifty close friends, Basil, here and in Scotland. That won’t wash – that I’m the only friend they’d think might help them.’

  ‘You’re the only friend with a foot in both camps, though, the personal and the professional: the family friend and the intelligence expert. And Phillips kept those two worlds quite separate. Anyway, we better get out of here before she stops.’ He gave a last longing look up at Rachel on the dais, then took out a crisp £10 note and left it on the table for the waiter. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said before he saw me looking at the money. ‘Yes, and that too. I told you: this is important, right the way along. And though I know you’d never do anything simply for money – you’re far too serious for that – don’t forget it: you need it. Sherry is going up all the time and the beer is falling, even those Liffey-water dividends.’

  ‘You’re everywhere, Basil, aren’t you? The bloody Light of the World. Who did you have looking through my window in the village?’

  Basil leant across to me, confidingly, so that I thought I was about to hear some trusting revelation: Mrs Bentley the Postmistress or the nosey vicar.

  ‘More things in heaven and earth, Peter. You can’t expect to know everything. But that’s why I fancied you for this: you want to know, don’t you? You have a great need there: to find out, get to the heart of the matter. Well, here’s your chance – with Lindsay Phillips. Go to the flower show, see what happens, and I’ll come round to your club tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Can’t I call you?’

  ‘No. That’s another problem – there’s a leak somewhere in our section at the moment. Anything you and I do will be person-to-person for the time being. Six o’clock, shall we say, the club?’

  I nodded. Basil touched my arm: ‘Don’t be so serious. You can always say No.’

  I glanced at Rachel away on the far side of the room, coming to the end of a piece, her eyes far away somewhere. She had dropped out of life, as if down a hole underground, into the heart of her music. I envied her that ability: I envied her this recurrent artistry which kept her young, and gave her a secret world where she could happily spend a lifetime growing up. I have always been impatient for some kind of maturity.

  Basil was right – though about the wrong person: I needed to know again about Rachel, not her father. Though I hadn’t seen her for more than ten years, I suddenly felt the thought clearly in the sweet, cake-scented air: that as in the old days she and I could happily tease each other once again. We need to tease one another more than we know, and love may come to depend on it.

  3

  The big man in the crumpled, candy-striped summer suit and loafers strolled along the southern rim of Hampstead Heath, towards where they were flying the new dual-stringed stunting kites, which swooped and fell about in the warm afternoon breeze, high up in the air above Jack Straw’s Castle.

  He turned to his companion – older, more formally dressed – speaking quietly in Russian. ‘I’ve not seen these kites – they’re extraordinary. Could you send some home for me?’ Fyodor Kudashkin gazed wistfully up into the sky. ‘The children would love them,’ he added.

  ‘Yes. We’ve sent some back already,’ the London Resident said. ‘I’ll send some for you. How many children do you have?’

  Kudashkin didn’t answer, his eyes fixed on the sky – sharp, clever blue eyes – with laughter in them, and a thinly bridged, straight nose with an equally forceful, dimpled chin: nose and chin jutting out now like pincers, savouring the air, while the bright eyes were downcast for a moment, a hint of sentimentality creeping in over the edges, the eyes of an exile dreaming of home for the first time.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re about old enough.’ Then he turned to the Resident and now he was precise, intent, his dream quite gone. ‘Are they difficult to use? I can’t quite see how they work.’

  ‘They come with full instructions,’ the Resident said patiently. ‘I’ll send some home for you.’

  The two men had moved on now, between the old beech trees, down the hill from the heath, towards Frognal.

  ‘How is your accommodation? Do you need anything?’ the Resident asked. ‘Since ‘I’m your only contact here and we are not likely to be meeting again, you’d better let me know now.’

  ‘No. I have everything.’

  ‘Everything we know – I’ve given you.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve been most helpful. Apart from McKnight this morning. That may hamper my operations.’

  No change of tone or hint of criticism emerged in these last sentences. But the Resident knew that in voicing such a comment at all Kudashkin must equal or outrank him in the KGB hierarchy. Yet since he did not know – indeed, he thought, specifically had not been told
– of this man’s exact place on the ladder, the Resident, by way of professional revenge, did not attempt to placate Kudashkin or exonerate himself.

  ‘They were my instructions. From Centre,’ he replied simply.

  ‘Not the intent. I speak of the method – and the place: messy, risky.’ Kudashkin used his words judiciously, without rancour, just as the Resident had been equally restrained and unruffled. They might have been two bored agricultural inspectors, far from their Moscow homes, in some backward province discussing an outbreak of fowl pest that had got out of control.

  ‘Since we put Dearden down in Zagreb, McKnight was under twenty-four-hour close surveillance,’ the Resident went on. ‘Sleeping at his office and never out of his own house at weekends. But we knew he was going to the church this morning. He was an old friend of Alkerton’s. It was quite straightforward.’

  But Kudashkin didn’t appear to be listening, lost once more, looking up at the sky again at a last vision of the kites dancing in the early evening light.

  ‘You won’t forget, will you, to send some home for me?’

  They took a path down the hill now and were soon in the narrow streets above old Hampstead village, deserted at the fag end of the hot afternoon.

  ‘But what about Phillips?’ Kudashkin suddenly broke the silence again. ‘He’s the one we want, yet he went to ground before either of them. I don’t follow that – unless they’re hiding him somewhere.’ His tone was intimate, almost possessed, the Resident thought, as if this search for Phillips had already absorbed half his career.

  ‘His family certainly think he’s disappeared. So do his colleagues. We know that. It seems genuine.’

  ‘It “seems”. But that’s not enough. We have to know exactly where he is – dead or alive. Unless we can account for Phillips his whole Yugoslav operation must be considered still active – which limits our operations over there severely. We have to know.’