“I don’t know how you cope,” said William.
Sebastian shrugged. “With difficulty. Here’s me working on a Saturday – just for instance. My wife wanted us to go down to Sussex to see her mother, but we had to beg off because I had to meet you. Not that it’s your fault, of course – it’s the rota. The rota’s a mess.”
William thought for a moment; he felt he should at least try to say something. “Can’t C do something about it?”
Sebastian considered the suggestion. “He could, I suppose, but I don’t think that he should have to concern himself with that sort of stuff. No, the answer’s to recruit more staff. But try telling that to the establishment people. A flat refusal is what you get. Public spending restraints and so on.”
“Everybody’s feeling the pain,” said William. “My own margins are down a lot.”
Sebastian turned to him. “You’re in the booze trade, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I was wondering if you could recommend a not-too-expensive bubbly for an occasion? It’s my mother-in-law’s sixty-fifth coming up, and we need to get something that will keep about forty people – no, maybe a few more – happy. Somebody suggested cava, but frankly I’m not too keen.”
William smiled. The absurdity of what was happening was now complete. “New Zealand produces a number of very good champagne-style wines,” he said. “They’re more expensive than cava, but well worth the extra .” He was on the point of saying something more, but his companion seemed suddenly to have lost interest.
“You do realise that all this is potentially fairly dangerous,” Sebastian said.
William stopped walking. “Dangerous? For me?”
Sebastian shook his head. “No, not for you.” He pointed down at Freddie de la Hay. “Dangerous for him. As our friends in the Italian secret service are rather fond of saying, pericolo di morte.”
Chapter 20: The Open Society and Its Enemies
“Look,” said William. “I agreed to meet you because Angelica asked me and I … well, I suppose I felt it was my duty.”
William wanted to stop walking, but Sebastian Duck, although he inclined his head sympathetically, took hold of his arm and pressed him onwards. “Just make it look natural. Two colleagues taking a stroll during a quiet hour at the office.”
“It’s Saturday,” pointed William. “And one of us has a dog. Not very credible, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Sebastian smiled. “Office dog,” he said. “Quite a few places have them these days, I’m told. Helps staff to bond, I believe.”
William said nothing.
“However,” Sebastian continued, “I fully understand your concerns. It probably seems a bit strange to you, meeting me in the park and all this cloak and dagger stuff …”
“Precisely,” said William emphatically. “Ridiculous , if you ask me.”
Sebastian was silent for a moment. Then, when he answered, there was a note of steely seriousness in his voice. “Oh, you think so? You think this is all play-acting? Well, let me tell you something: this isn’t a game. Kipling talked about the Great Game – remember? Kim? You ever read that? Well, it isn’t a game any more, I can assure you. You know the stakes?”
William shook his head. “I know nothing about intelligence work,” he said. “Which makes me wonder what on earth I’m doing here.”
“You’re helping us,” said Sebastian. “And I can assure you, we’re extremely grateful.”
“Well—”
Sebastian cut him short. “The reason I mentioned the stakes is that many people just don’t know what we’re up against. We’re an open society, Mr French. And any open society is in one sense extremely weak – vulnerable, indeed. We have great strengths and resilience because we’re open, but there are numerous people willing to take advantage. People who abuse our hospitality. People who hate us for one reason or another. And then there are people who use this city as a playground for battles which are really nothing to do with us, but which can be fought by proxy on our streets.
“I suspect that you understand all that. What you may not know, though, is that every one of us involved in this work is a potential target. You may think that I’m being unnecessarily furtive, but I assure you I’m not. Over the last three years I’ve lost two people I’ve worked with closely. One drowned in Ireland. Where was his lifejacket? He had it on when he went out in his boat, but he wasn’t wearing it when they fished him out of the water. Another died of food poisoning. Very sudden. Where had he had his last meal? In a restaurant that had opened up at the end of his street the previous month and closed two days after his demise. And where was the proprietor? Nobody knew. One of the staff said that he heard him being addressed by three different names. Interesting.
“So if you think I’m being too careful, let me tell you, I am not. Let me also reveal to you that the woman who was sitting on the bench when you arrived is known to us. She was arrested by the police five minutes after she left the bench – charges of littering – just to get her out of the park and prevent her from witnessing our meeting. Yes. You may well be surprised. And you’d be surprised to know who she works for. Which I can’t tell you, I’m afraid.”
Sebastian paused now and looked at William. “So, does that put a different complexion on the matter?”
William nodded. He was beginning to feel miserable; the farce had turned to dark drama within the space of a few minutes. He had no doubt about the seriousness of these people, but what he did not know was what they wanted of him. Sebastian had said nothing about that.
But the explanation soon came. “Look, William – you don’t mind if I call you William, do you? Look, I can’t tell you absolutely everything, but I can give you the broad outlines. We – that is, my section – are currently involved in watching a group of Russians who have taken a year’s lease on a flat near Notting Hill Gate. These people are simply not who they claim to be. They have form, as we put it – lots of form. We suspect that they’re in this country to buy sensitive commercial and military information. I can’t really say much more than that.”
William shrugged. “I suppose I don’t really need to know.” He was keen not to know, in fact; some information, he thought, was best left well alone.
But Sebastian had more to tell him. “We’ve obtained the flat next door to them and put one of our people in it. A woman. Often women are less the objects of suspicion than men. So as far as they’re concerned she’s just the neighbour – a harmless, middle-aged woman, who likes dogs.” He paused. “Which is what the head Russian likes too. He’s called Anatoly and he’s talked to our woman on a number of occasions. He told her that he had a dog until about eight months ago, when it died. He said it was a Pimlico Terrier.” He stopped, and looked at William. “He said that he could never bring himself to have another breed. It would have to be a Pimlico Terrier. And yet there were so few of them around …”
William held his breath. He glanced down at Freddie de la Hay, who was, of course, a Pimlico Terrier. Freddie gazed back up at him with mild curiosity. He had given up on the hope of finding a squirrel and he was now vaguely thinking of going home, where he might be given something to eat.
“You will no doubt see where this is going,” said Sebastian.
William was not sure. “Well, Freddie’s—”
Sebastian did not let him finish. “Exactly,” he said. “So our woman said that as it happened she was just about to get a Pimlico Terrier, although she was worried about having to put him in kennels when she went off to Swansea to visit her sister, who was not very well.”
Sebastian watched William’s expression as the story unfolded. By now, he thought, it would be obvious what MI6 had in mind, and he was sure that William would pick it up.
He was right. William gasped.
“Yes,” said Sebastian. “Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
Sebastian smiled. “Well, I assumed that you had worked out what we had in mind, which is
to borrow Freddie de la Hay for a while – a couple of months perhaps.”
“And?”
“And get the Russian to look after him for a few days now and then.”
“And put a transmitter on his collar?”
Sebastian inclined his head, as if to acknowledge praise. “Exactly,” he said.
William grimaced. It was very annoying when somebody said exactly all the time. When he was fourteen there had been a boy at school who had said d’accord to virtually everything anybody said to him. Eventually, William had punched him, quite hard, breaking his nose in the process, which was something he had regretted down the years, and still did. He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case. He wanted to punch this man, this enigmatic Sebastian Duck – if that was his real name – but he knew that he could not. Wine Merchant Punches Duck in Royal Park … that was how his son, Eddie, with his annoying habit of talking in headlines, would put it. No, he could never do it. Wine Merchant Shows Restraint in Meeting with Spy. So he simply said, “Oh well,” and Sebastian Duck, interpreting this as agreement, nodded and said, “Exactly.”
But there was no agreement – at least yet. “I’ll need time to think about it,” William said. “Can you give me a telephone number? I’ll get back to you.”
Sebastian Duck nodded, and took a small card out of his pocket with a telephone number printed on it. “Here,” he said. “Don’t pass it on, though.”
Oh really, thought William. You people are ridiculous. He grunted.
“Exactly,” said Duck. “I’m pleased you understand.”
Chapter 21: Recycled Sandwiches
After his meeting with Sebastian Duck, William walked all the way back to Corduroy Mansions. He wanted to give Freddie the exercise – even though only a small part of the walk would be through the park – and he wanted, too, some time to think. William had always found that walking encouraged thought. Unlike the unfortunate American president who waspish critics said found it difficult to walk and chew gum at the same time, William could walk and think very effectively. He did not chew gum, of course, and indeed chewing gum was one of his pet hates. “People look so bovine when they chew gum,” he said to Marcia once. “Like cows chewing the cud.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marcia. “If people enjoy it, then why shouldn’t they do it?”
Marcia was fundamentally libertarian at heart. She might not have described herself as a Benthamite, but that was what she was, and she would have enthusiastically endorsed Bentham’s view that the only things that should be prohibited are those things that harm others.
“Because it’s disgusting,” said William. “As I said, it makes people look bovine.”
“But if that’s what they want to do,” said Marcia, “why shouldn’t they? If I want to look bovine, then surely I’m entitled to do so. It’s not as if I’m harming anybody by chewing gum. It’s not that—”
“But it is harmful,” William interjected. “It makes a terrible mess. That’s why Lee Kwan Yew objected to it. That and failing to flush the lavatory. That’s an offence too in Singapore.”
Marcia looked astonished. “Your own loo?”
“No,” said William. “Just public ones. And why not prohibit it? It harms people.”
Marcia shook her head. “Hardly. Offends them, maybe. Doesn’t really harm them.”
William was not going to let Marcia get away with that. “But it does harm them. Public health. Same with spitting. Spitting should be illegal because it spreads disease, and that harms other people – it harms us all.” He paused. “And anyway, I still think chewing gum is awful. It’s on a par with eating with one’s mouth open in public. It’s just … “ He tailed off; he and Marcia would never agree over some matters – rather a lot of matters, in fact – and that was one of the reasons why it was not to be … There could be no romantic attachment to somebody who might at any moment take out a stick of chewing gum and start to chew like a cow.
But their difference of opinion on that matter did not prevent him from deciding, as he walked back across the park, that he would discuss the meeting with Marcia when he saw her that evening. She had told him that she would drop in on her way back from a catering engagement for the Romanian embassy.
“They’re having a cocktail party,” she had explained. “But it’ll be over by seven – poor dears, they can only rise to two canapés per guest and one and a half glasses of wine. But I’ll throw in a few bottles free, just to give them a slightly better party. And some free sandwiches, which will be only slightly second-hand – leftovers from a lunchtime reception for a firm of solicitors. They never eat very much – they’re far too driven – and there are bound to be bags of sandwiches left over that can be diverted to the poor old Romanians.”
“Quite right,” said William. “One would not want to waste sandwiches. Particularly in these straitened times.”
Marcia nodded in agreement. “And very few sandwiches are wasted,” she said. “Did you know the Prime Minister passes on his extra sandwiches to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for use at his receptions? Did you know that? That’s why you never get any egg mayonnaise sandwiches at the Chancellor’s parties –because the egg sandwiches always go before the cucumber and the cheese ones. It always happens that way.”
William smiled at the thought. It was the cascade system – the same system that allocated older rolling stock to less prosperous railway regions. It was exactly the same, it seemed, with sandwiches.
Marcia was smiling too. “I’m not sure if I should tell you this,” she said, “but I heard the most wonderful story. It’s been going round catering circles for the last few weeks, but everybody who tells it to you asks you to keep it under your hat.”
“Then you shouldn’t tell me,” said William firmly.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Marcia. “I know how discreet you are, William. You won’t pass it on.”
William said nothing; he was wondering what sensitive stories there could possibly be about sandwiches.
Marcia lowered her voice to a whisper. “There are plenty of receptions in the House of Commons, you know. Members of Parliament are always giving parties in honour of this, that and the next thing. The Commons Antarctic Treaty Group, the Joint Committee on South American Relations and so on. Every evening without fail.”
William made a gesture, the gesture of one who knows that things are going on, but knows too that he is never invited. The parties of others – or those that one doesn’t attend – are always so self-indulgent. For most of us, the knowledge that somebody, somewhere, is enjoying himself more than we are is strangely disturbing. A common human response is to disapprove, and to try to stop the enjoyment; that has been the well-established response of the prude in all ages. William was not like that, but he did feel the occasional pang at the thought that London was full of parties and yet when he contemplated his own social diary, it was virtually empty. Very occasionally he received an invitation to dinner somewhere, and there were always the occasions when Marcia dropped in. And of course there was his club – the Savile – where the conversation sparkled at the members’ table, but the members all seemed so much better informed than he was, and he felt too shy to push himself forward in conversations where he was at a disadvantage.
“Well,” continued Marcia, “I heard from a catering friend that MPs have developed a racket in wine. There’s a group of them who call themselves the Parliamentary Committee on Sustainable Receptions and go round at the end of these occasions, pour all the dregs from the glasses into large containers and then rebottle it. Yes! They pour it back into bottles and re-cork the bottles. Then, when it comes to the next reception, they serve the dregs and take the full, untouched bottles for themselves.”
William was appalled. “I thought we’d heard the end of all that,” he said. “What if the Telegraph got hold of this?”
Marcia shook her head. “This story will ne
ver end up in the Telegraph.”
“But that’s dreadful!” William exploded. “And it’s not just because I’m a wine dealer. Think of all the bits and pieces – the crumbs, the lipstick … It’s disgusting. It’s … it’s beyond belief.”
“Precisely,” said Marcia. “And do you know something? They’re all members of one party.”
William frowned. An all-party scandal was one thing, a single party scandal quite another. “Which one?”
Marcia waved a hand in the air. “Oh, I can’t remember, I’m afraid. They all seem so alike these days.”
Chapter 22: Codes and Things
Of course William knew what Marcia would say about his meeting with MI6; she had already said it. He owed these people nothing; they had no right to make any demands of him. They were playing games, these espionage people – that’s what they did, and there was no difference, no difference at all between what they did and what boys, mere boys, did when they played in the playground. William knew that, didn’t he? He had been a boy, hadn’t he? (Absurdly distant prospect.) It was ridiculous, all this cloak and dagger business in the middle of London in broad daylight!
But as he walked back to Corduroy Mansions, he tried to put Marcia’s voice out of his mind. You are not my mother, he muttered. And Marcia, or the idea of Marcia, looked askance at him, as if to disclaim any such notion. “Why on earth should you imagine that I think of myself as your mother?” He shook his head; it was too complex even to begin to explain, but every son knew instinctively what the problem with mother was. It was mother who fussed; who told you what you could or could not do; it was mother who was always there … providing love, and security, and solace; who was prepared to stand up for you whatever you did. He sighed. That was the problem: mother provided all that, but at the same time a boy wanted to be free of his mother, wanted to go out into the world and do things on his own account, to lead his own life. Mother and freedom, then, stood in contradiction to one another.
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