The One a Month Man

by Michael Litchfield

  ‘Which hospital is she in? The Royal Bournemouth or Poole General? I‘ll take a bunch of flowers with me, say they’re from her loving husband.’

  ‘I’d be obliged if you left her out of this,’ he said, pleadingly, and suddenly finding some civility.

  ‘Well, that depends….’

  We eyeballed one another for half a minute or so, in the manner of mongoose versus cobra, before he said, yielding, ‘I might be able to give you a lead, after all.’

  I refrained from the smugness of a poker player who has bluffed his way to the pot.

  ‘I always made it policy to treat the girls’ private lives in the strictest confidence,’ he said, as a face-saving preamble before the climbdown. ‘I got to hear lots of things, but they stayed here.’ He tapped his head, alluding to a brain, yet another ludicrous boast. ‘Most of the girls, I forget; and that’s the truth.’

  ‘But not Tina Marlowe,’ I said, finally abandoning sarcasm.

  ‘She called about a year after walking out.’

  ‘Called you?’

  ‘Not me personally; the agency. Spoke with Simone.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘She wasn’t then; is now. Tina had run out of money. Old story. Didn’t fancy office work or serving the pig-ignorant public in a shop.’

  ‘So she wanted you to bail her out?’

  ‘She didn’t come begging; that wasn’t her style. She wanted to know if she might be considered for special assignments.’

  ‘What’s a special assignment in your trade? Something like the special of the day at a greasy spoon joint or spicy takeaway?’

  ‘Only the best got special assignments.’

  ‘And how did you define best?’

  ‘A combination of brain and beauty. Tina was classy, all right. Very switched on. Really savvy. And as for looks, well, you can see for yourself. She had it all. Special clients would hire a girl for a weekend, or to take on holiday, perhaps on a yacht in the Mediterranean, or just for a one-off important event. Like a couple of times we had girls booked by wannabe Conservative MPs who needed female decoration at their side at candidate selection meetings.’

  ‘Posing as their wives?’ I said, incredulously.

  ‘No, just girlfriends, but giving the impression they were an item, with wedding bells possibly soon to be ringing.’

  ‘What did you say to Tina?’

  ‘That I’d bear her in mind. Couldn’t promise anything. She gave me a number to call her on.’

  ‘But not the one you’ve just given me?’ I challenged him.

  ‘No, she’d moved,’ he said, sheepishly.

  ‘I’m guessing something did turn up for her?’

  ‘About a week later, yeah. A new client. A Russian. An attaché at the Soviet Embassy. The Berlin Wall hadn’t yet been bulldozed. East was East and West was West. The big thaw was still some way off.’

  ‘Attaché was the cover name for spy, when it came to the Soviets,’ I said, conversationally now, even agreeably.

  ‘I keep out of politics; always have.’

  ‘So what did this attaché want, specifically?’

  ‘Good company for a weekend in the country. Intelligent conversationalist. Someone attentive. A good listener.’

  ‘And you thought of Tina?’

  ‘Not immediately.’

  ‘Why think of doing her a favour? She’d quit.’

  ‘She had class. None of our other girls had ever been to university, not even to them redbrick gaffs, let alone Oxford. Blimey! I mean, the others hadn’t even changed trains there.’

  ‘So Tina got the special assignment?’

  ‘I resurrected her photo and CV, inserting them in my A-list album, and left it to the Russki to make his choice. I didn’t lean on him. There was nothing in it for me to push Tina. We’d get our money whichever girl he got the hots for.’

  ‘And he went for Tina?’

  ‘No contest. “That’s the one for me,” he said. It must have been a Thursday because he wanted the booking to run from Friday evening through to Monday morning.’

  ‘A long haul,’ I observed, deadpan. Non-judgmental.

  ‘Longer than you think….’

  Surprisingly, he had me hooked now. ‘Go on,’ I said, without a clue where this was heading.

  ‘I called Tina, said I might have something for her. She wanted details; usual drill. I told her the punter was a Russki.’

  ‘How did that play with her?’

  ‘No problem. She’d already been with the League of Nations; Arabs to Amazonians. She did ask what his English was like. I told her it was better than most Brits; certainly better than mine, which didn’t carry too much weight.’ Self-deprecation didn’t suit him and he was awkward with it, because it was so forced.

  ‘Of course she wanted briefing on the arrangements,’ he went on, smirking unpleasantly.

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘She should come to the office for 6 p.m., when Simone would introduce them. “Pack enough things for the weekend,” I told her. I honestly didn’t know at that stage too much about what the Russki had in mind. My policy was not to ask too many questions. The less you know, the less you could be incriminated. ’Course, the girls were always fussing about what they should wear, which was a good attitude, really something I encouraged. It showed they cared about the impression they made, flying the flag of the agency.’

  Dropping their knickers instead of hoisting the banner, I thought mischievously. A new take on patriotism. He really did believe he’d been at the helm of Britain’s call-girl flagship.

  ‘Did she press you further?’

  ‘Naturally … about the most important issue of all: the dosh. She whistled when I told her the Russki had agreed to pay her a grand, and that was before any extras she might negotiate with him, which was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, my sneer camouflaged.

  ‘A grand was a helluva bundle of moolah all those years ago. In a weekend, she’d be pocketing a third of the average national annual income. But after her initial reaction, she became suspicious. She began wondering what the punter would expect for such a hefty outlay. She said something like, “Is he a kinky perv?”’

  ‘Were you able to reassure her?’

  ‘Only marginally. I couldn’t tell her much more because I was almost as much in the dark as she was.’

  ‘But she went for it?’

  ‘I knew she would. I was in the office when they met. He wasn’t my image of a Russki.’

  ‘So what was he like?’

  ‘Neat black hair, cut short. Tall and slim, pale-faced. He wore a sober lounge-suit and white shirt with a starched collar.’

  ‘Do you always have such detailed recall of your ancient punters?’

  ‘This one turned out to be very memorable. I guess he was about thirty years old. Good-looking in a conventional, conservative way. Very polite. Very courteous to Tina. She took to him straightaway, especially when he handed over the grand to her in readies, within five minutes of shaking hands. She asked him where they were going and he said he’d rented a cottage in Dorset at Lulworth Cove, apparently a smugglers’ paradise in Long John Silver’s days. The girls always liked us to know where they were being taken; you know, for security.’

  ‘Was she OK with that?’

  ‘Couldn’t wait to get on the road with the loot and punter. I could tell she was confident he was ripe for more milking; cash-register signs flashing in her eyes.’

  ‘Was this punter married?’

  ‘Not then.’ For some reason my question had struck a funny-nerve.

  ‘Was he using an official embassy car?’

  ‘Apparently not. He said he’d hired one from Hertz for the weekend.’

  ‘So off they went?’

  ‘As happy as Larry! And on the Monday afternoon she called the agency, wanting to speak with me, urgently. Simone asked if she could take a message, but Tina insisted that it had to be me.’

 
‘Where were you?’

  ‘At home. Simone called me right away and I rang Tina. By then, she was back in London, in her flat.’

  ‘Had something gone wrong over the weekend?’

  ‘That’s what I feared. Thought she might have been raped. By a Russki. That’s all my agency needed, to be responsible for World War Three! But no. Get this: she wanted me to give her away. The perishing Russki had proposed to her on the Sunday and she’d said yes. Yes! They were getting married. Shocks don’t come any bigger. Life’s rich tapestry, eh?’

  7

  Cullis was almost hyperventilating; he was so eager to return upstairs to push on with his pleasures, which had been put on hold. Nevertheless, there were a few more questions that had to be asked, much to his tumescent frustration.

  ‘Did it happen; did they get hitched?’

  ‘Damn right they did – Marylebone Register Office.’

  ‘There’s something missing in all this,’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘There’s something missing for me, too, and it’s waiting on ice upstairs,’ he protested, his eyes throwing flares.

  ‘Just a few more questions and I’ll be gone into the ether,’ I promised, struggling to keep this alight, like a candle in the rain. ‘Am I supposed to believe that Tina was bowled over in a couple of nights by this Russian?’

  ‘As Tina Turner sang so often, what’s love got to do with it?’ A ghost of a grin told me that I was expected to acknowledge his smart repartee. I obliged, mimicking a laugh. ‘Must have a drink,’ he said, shuffling with constipated inertness to a cabinet, where he poured himself a whisky. Declining to offer me one was an elaborate gesture; it wasn’t just a matter of deliberate inhospitality, he was anxious not to extend my stay so that he could surrender to the reverse pull of gravity, upwards, without too much further delay.

  ‘So it was a marriage of convenience?’

  ‘Very convenient.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Spell it out for me, Mr Cullis, then I really will be on my way.’ This clumsy dance of diplomacy was becoming increasingly hard to sustain.

  ‘The Russki wanted to defect.’

  That didn’t surprise me; those were the Cold War days. ‘But he didn’t need to get married for that, surely,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, but he did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he wasn’t privy to any great state secrets of Soviet plans. Nor was he a scientist or military specialist. He had no info about his country’s nuclear programme or military intentions to trade with.’

  ‘He’d have known something about the Soviet’s spy network in this country; after all, he was one of them.’

  ‘Worthless info. From what I gathered, our MI5 already knew the identities of most of the spies over here.’

  ‘But perhaps not the double agents,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, pecky as a parrot now. ‘But this fella was too far down the ladder to be trusted with really sensitive stuff, I should imagine. The truth was, he’d acquired a taste for our liberal nightlife. Get me?’

  ‘So what was the deal?’

  ‘Tina banked twenty grand.’

  ‘And how much did you pocket?’

  ‘What makes you so sure I got anything?’

  ‘Because you don’t strike me as the kind of businessman who’d trade just for sweet fanny.’

  ‘I didn’t know nothin’ about the plan and the offer until the Monday.’

  ‘But you did give away the blushing bride.’

  ‘Fuck you, yes! So what? It was a privilege.’

  This was too much, but I didn’t want to sever the pipeline, so I chilled.

  ‘Do you remember the groom’s name?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he said, petulantly.

  ‘Yet you can recall everything else, including the trivia.’

  ‘We’re still talking thirty years ago. Jesus!’

  ‘So, too, was the trivia, yet that’s stuck.’

  After a sulk, he said, ‘His name was typically Russki. Got me tongue-tied at the time. I couldn’t pronounce it then, so no surprise it went out of my head yonks ago.’

  ‘Did you keep in touch with Tina?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘I take that as a yes, right?’

  ‘She called a couple of times, that’s all.’

  ‘Did they set up home together?’

  ‘Not really. Apparently, he rented a place. I believe their names appeared on the electoral roll, just for appearances. But they never lived there together. Certainly not after the first couple of nights.’

  ‘So the marriage was consummated?’

  ‘Consummation took place a few weeks before the wedding.’ This amused him.

  ‘So there was no house-warming party?’

  He sidestepped the frivolity. Instead, he answered a question that hadn’t been asked.

  ‘Tina left the country with her money.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because she phoned me, to thank me for everything, the night before she flew out.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘The New World, the eternal land of opportunity.’

  ‘The States?’

  ‘Isn’t that what I just said?’

  ‘Did she say which city she was flying to?’

  ‘LA.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’

  ‘Because I bet you asked her. It would have been the natural thing to do: you know, “How are you going to survive?”’

  He downed his whisky with one head-jerk, banged down the glass as if using a gavel on my head, and folded his gorilla arms, resting them on a flabby cushion, his paunch.

  ‘She said something about trying to get into the movies. I didn’t take much notice. It was bullshit talk. Sort of thing all airheads say when breezing off to Tinseltown on a whim and a prayer.’

  ‘But she was no airhead,’ I pointed out.

  ‘You wouldn’t have thought so,’ he agreed, somewhat churlishly. ‘Nevertheless, I took it with a pinch of salt. I just said, “Oh, yeah. Best of luck, kiddo. Take care of yourself.” She thanked me again and that was it.’

  ‘Was she travelling alone?’

  ‘S’pose. As I said, she’d already ditched the Russki. Neither of them had any more use for the other.’

  ‘Did you ever hear from her again?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Scout’s honour! Now, are we done?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Holy Moses!’ he fretted.

  ‘You wouldn’t know if she travelled under her maiden or married name?’

  ‘No, I don’t know, though I’d have thought it highly unlikely that she’d have had time – or the inclination – to get her passport changed from Tina Marlowe.’

  ‘Good point,’ I complimented him. ‘Enjoy the rest of the day. Plenty of time left to visit your wife … I’ll let myself out.’

  ‘No, you won’t. I want to escort you off my property. I want to watch you disappear into the sunset. I want your footprints rubbed off my land and out of my life.’

  ‘You’re a real gent,’ I said, my smile as phoney as everything else in that room, especially Cullis.

  On my drive back to Oxford, I stopped for a fast-food meal at a motorway service station, where I called Sarah. While munching on French fries and a chilli burger, I briefed her synoptically on my day. ‘So tomorrow you can abandon the death-trail and concentrate on marriages,’ I said. ‘Should be a doddle. We have the year and the location of the crime.’

  There was a vacuum, diluted only by breathing that amounted scarcely to more than a murmur. Finally she spoke, much to my relief, proving that my staccato account hadn’t rocked her to sleep. ‘Since when has marriage been a crime?’

  ‘When it’s a sham. When it’s to open a back door to illegal entry.’

  Later, in bed, we talked through our res
pective schedules for the following day. While she was searching records of marriages, I intended making overtures to the spooks at MI5.

  ‘Spooks don’t do co-operation,’ she said. ‘Secrecy is their MO. Even what they have for breakfast is protected by the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘I have contacts,’ I said, optimistically.

  ‘Contacts who were in Intelligence all those years ago?’

  ‘No, but that’s why my prospects are good. The info I’m after isn’t current. It’s something from the archives. Although they wouldn’t have been personally involved, they’ll have the means at their fingertips to backtrack.’

  ‘Seems to me we’re wasting our time in Oxford, then. Although it all started here, it moved on long ago.’

  ‘I agree we are rather misplaced,’ I said, sort of helplessly. ‘Trouble is, old Pomfrey sees this case as an ideal opportunity to purge his major irritant from his system.’

  ‘And I’m dragged under in the wash of the sinking ship.’

  I embraced her, pulling her close, so that our flesh bonded, the coupling sympathetic rather than sexual. Her eyes were melancholy, but not gateways to her soul; their softness was an optical illusion, fortress walls rather than windows. One moment she could be so open, the next moment so closed, but it was this enigmatic chemistry to her personality that made her so piquant. She would never belong to anyone again, something that pleased me. Relationships should never be about ownership. No person should ever be someone else’s possession. Every partnership should be renewed each day. You should wake and consciously make a decision that the person at your side was the one you wished to continue to call your partner. Conversely, you should be free to make the reverse decision; to walk away unfettered, no one’s vassal. Relationships, especially in marriage, could so easily become claustrophobic and suffocating; a union should be a consensus, a unanimous democratic vote. Sarah and I gave each other breathing space. Spending the rest of my life with her hadn’t crossed my mind. The next forty-eight hours were far enough ahead for commitment; Sarah’s philosophy, too.

  Sleep came to us virtually simultaneously, without any further demands from either of us, perhaps underscoring our quirky compatibility.