Blame It on the Bossa Nova

by James Brodie

  I knew that as soon as I told Chris about our being watched he’d go berserk if he hadn’t yet realized. He hadn’t - He did. On reflection I conceded to myself that I could have chosen a better day to break the news. Vassall’s charlady had taken the stand at the Redcliffe Tribunal hearings on the previous day and then Vassall himself had been questioned. The hearings were building up to a climax. Christopher hadn’t been mentioned but he told me in a moment of great stress that he expected to be. His first reaction was to pick up the phone and try to get through to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but his lemming instinct was thwarted this time by his inability to convince the switchboard operator the other end that he was important enough to be put through. He then dialled another number and left a message for the Attorney General to ring him back. Then he sat down to await the call and agreed to let me make him a camomile tea.

  “I’ve got to get out, Alex. I’ve got to get right out of town.”

  “Wouldn’t that be seen as a sign of guilt?”

  “I’m allowed to move about aren’t I? I am supposed to be innocent.”

  “It’s not a good time to go travelling, is it?”

  But he just kept repeating that he had to get away. I didn’t know his true position, but the copper opposite was real enough.

  “You couldn’t use your car,” I said. He thought about that.

  “You’re right. Could you get hold of one?”

  I owed the guy a favour. One way and another he’d indirectly kept me in cash and with a roof over my head for the past few months. For a second or two the thought rolled around my brain that I should save him from himself, not aid and abet this stupidity. Then I felt my ribs that still hurt and my balls that still ached, and about what Toby had told me he wanted me to do.

  “Yes.... probably.”

  “Where could we go?” he said. “.... They’ll know all my friends.”

  Friends? What Friends? I thought for a moment, then I decided I could stretch to two favours, if this was what he considered help.

  “I know a place... a cottage in Norfolk. I can use it any time I want.”

  “Whose is it?” he pounced on me.

  “A guy I know from Cambridge. Don’t worry, he won’t even know, we’ll get the keys from the old girl down the road... It’s isolated enough, right at the top, north of Fakenham.”

  He brightened up at this, then frowned.

  “But can you get a car?”

  It was Tuesday.

  “Give me a day. I should have one this time tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  “It might take a tenner to clinch it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Only I haven’t got a tenner.”

  *****

  That evening I kept an appointment in the Australian. Frank was already sitting in one of the alcoves when I arrived, pushing open the door with a clenched gloved fist in order to prevent my fingers dropping off. I had shuffled to the bar and ordered a large Jamesons with ice before I noticed him.

  “.....And how’s me fine smilin’ Broth of a Boyo today?” he shouted in reference to my order.

  “..... And a lager and lime for my friend,” I lisped to the barman. I joined him in his cosy nook and started trying to thaw out. I had been early and had been hoping for a few minutes peace and quiet and a read of ‘Catcher in the Rye’ before Frank arrived. It was sticking out of my coat pocket.

  “Great book,” said Frank noticing it. I was certain he had never read it.

  In the intervening time since his attempt on my life in Tulse Hill and my return from France we had kept in touch professionally, but the relationship had somehow lost its old zing. But because I was shit scared that he was a complete nutter and that the severance terms might be unreasonably drastic I had continued to develop my two mythical contacts, SMARTARSE 2 and SMARTARSE 3. I’d given Frank some stuff on the Common Market negotiations and a forewarning of De Gaulle’s rejection. I’d also kept him informed of the power struggle in the Labour Party and tipped him off that Wilson was going to get the leadership. All harmless stuff out of the ‘A-for-effort’ variety. This had been from SMARTARSE 2, Adrian. SMARTARSE 3 hadn’t gone so well, in fact I was stalling deliberately. Toby’s little chat with me had curbed my initiative and whereas previously I had been contemplating a trip to Cambridge to develop the background and for research generally, the effort now seemed both too great and too dangerous. To break the silence I spoke.

  “There’s someone I’ve met through Pascale, I think they could be co-operative. I was wondering if we couldn’t give them a coding.... I was thinking of a change - How about SHITHEAD 1?”

  Frank shook his head in vigorous dissent. “... No good, Alex.”

  “How come?”

  Firstly, all agents recruited by you must have the SMARTARSE prefix .... Secondly, all agents relating to UK activities must have codenames beginning with ‘SM’.”

  “Hence SMARTARSE?”

  He nodded.

  “I see... So it wasn’t entirely personal.”

  “Not entirely........”

  “Chris is pretty nervous right now,” I volunteered.

  “That so?” He seemed only vaguely interested. It surprised me.

  “We’re going away this weekend.”

  “That so?” He sipped his drink, whatever it was - Nothing ordinary, that’s for sure.

  “To the country.”

  “Anywhere in particular?”

  I wasn’t keen to tell him the truth. I gave a vague answer.

  He thought about it for a bit. I looked at him and tried to imagine William Bendix in his place.... He was certainly underplaying the news about Chris.

  “Must be off Alex.” He jumped up as he spoke. “.....Things to do, people to see.”

  “Of course.”

  He paused and looked at me, savouring the disquiet he imagined that accompanied my incertitude of his opinion.

  “Good work.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, good work Alex..... You’re on the ball, you’re delivering. That’s what I look for in an ..... Well you know what I look for.”

  “Sure do.” I remained sitting as he towered above me. He hovered like a preying mantis for a second or two, giving me the old ‘civilization is only a thin veneer’ bit. Then he turned and left abruptly hoping, no doubt, to unhinge me further by his unpredictable behaviour. I got up and ordered another Jamesons. I let the barman pour it into the old glass to mix with the melting ice. It was only when I went back to the alcove that I saw his briefcase on the seat - An obvious trick. I put it next to me for safekeeping and opened my book. Inside two minutes he’d be bounding back for it, he was too much of a pro to forget it. I wondered what had been his oblique motivation in leaving it.

  Half an hour later it was obvious that he wasn’t coming back. The pub was still half empty, not bristling with cold war veterans at all. I undid the straps and tried the lock. It wasn’t locked. ... Very strange. Inside there were four thin manilla files. All were foolscap size and had white adhesive labels with rounded corners, two thirds of the way up, centrally positioned - A tidy mind. The first said ‘SMASHERS’ 1, 2 and 3. Pretty boring stuff, centred around communist activity in the Hoover factory on the Great West Way, shop-floor politics.... Poor, misguided Frank. How could revolution ever take seed and flourish in such utopian surroundings as the Hoover factory on the Great West Way? The second file was titled ‘SMOKESCREEN’.

  Its contents concerned the efforts of an embryonic Scottish Nationalist group based in the Edinburgh University School of Architecture. One of their wilder schemes involved not only the theft of the Stone of Scone but its symbolic installation as foundation stone of a re-built Hadrian’s Wall. Forget Cuba, forget Berlin; here was the business that really had Kennedy burning the midnight oil. At this point I began, not for the first time, to question Frank’s sanity. I turned to the next file – ‘SMOOTHYCHOPS’ confidently expecting to find further evidence of his dementia.
The smile that had formed, if not on my lips, at least somewhere between my stomach and throat, froze as I looked at page one. ‘SMOOTHYCHOPS’ - Ronald Peregrine Forsythe, MP. Born: 5th May 1911, etcetera, etcetera - Fuck me. Ronnie Forsythe. I read at speed, skipping lines that didn’t contain pronouns, or at least interesting nouns or verbs. He was giving Frank the lot. Or at least all he had to give. As we were now beginning to adjust to our new role as minor world power this meant that Ronnie wasn’t overburdened with important military intelligence to impart despite his cabinet status. However, there was quite a bit on Porton Down, Klaus Fuchs, the Vassall business and a guy called Philby who I’d never heard of, also another guy called Blunt who apparently was big in the art history world. In fact I even remembered glancing over something written by him a year or two previously. I briefly read further. The gist of it seemed to be that Blunt was getting some kind of Royal Pardon for his role in getting Burgess and Maclean out of the country in the early fifties. This was in exchange for his eternal silence - The embarrassment would have been too much for the Government to take following everything else. Not for the first time I basked in the security that an education at a major public school gives one. Five Star Insurance indemnified at Lloyds. It may not set you up for life any more but it sure as hell ensures that you don’t go down the plughole with the plebs when the shit starts to sink. It also struck me that as long as the U.S. continued to give us information which they regarded as secret they were going to remain extremely interested in our security, particularly as our security seemed to be intent on continuing in the sixties as it had left off in the fifties. Furthermore, it struck me - and this in a slightly humorous, ironic kind of way - that there was money to be made in this business by anyone who knew the right way to go about it.

  The file at least put my perceptions of Ronnie in a new perspective. His behaviour at Battersea Park that night took on a fresh hue, that of the subordinate shitting himself in the presence of his boss - Sure, physical intimidation had played a significant part in Ronnie’s reactions, but if he was also on the payroll, and obviously on a far greater screw than me, then that explained a great deal. I turned to file four. If life was a Tom and Jerry cartoon then there would have been a spiky edged Alex shape in the wall behind me and a lot of jagged brickwork with daylight and snow streaming in ‘SMARTARSE’. I opened it. ‘Alexander Guy Marshall, student.’ - Student? ‘Born: 16th June 1940, Northampton.’ The record went on to detail minor events in my life, there were no major ones; it described the circumstances of my recruitment and omitted the circumstances of my attempted termination in Tulse Hill. Another section of what looked like a standard form listed my contacts - Chris, Ronnie, Sandie, Pascale and subsequent sheets gave details of my sub-agents and the information I had passed on from them. Another sheet recorded payments made.

  I nearly missed it. There were no secrets to be learnt from my file - not this one anyway. I was just closing it up with a feeling of relief that I had apparently not been rumbled despite the fact that Ronnie was a fellow agent, thankfulness that I had dared to open it and not left it unopened preferring not to know the truth. As I say I was just turning the cover back when it dropped out, this very unofficial looking scrap of paper, ruled foolscap, folded roughly, not strictly symmetrically. I picked it up from the floor. Its corners were dog-eared. Unfolding it I could see immediately the draft of a letter, a very rough draft, odd words crossed out and then replaced, then their replacements effaced. Whole sentences and paragraphs ruthlessly eliminated, sometimes with alternative passages written in tiny lettering in the spaces between the tops of the original letters. It was a document that had been worked on over a period of time by the looks of it. In one place there was even the brown ring of a stain from a cup. Much thought and trouble had gone into it.

  “Alex..... Darling, Dearest Alex...... Alex you beautiful tight assed boy..... You’re beautiful, beautiful..... I guess you think I must be crazy to write to you this way. I guess I must be crazy. I feel crazy. I think I’ve been crazy ever since the first day I met you, way back last fall.... Alex, don’t get mad at me for writing to you like this...... I know you must despise me, I deserve it. I’m nothing. But please Alex, I beg you, please read what I’ve got to say, because it’s so important to me...... Perhaps one day it could be important to you too. The first time I set eyes on you I got so shook up - You set things moving inside me I’d never felt before.... Then when I found out you were running with that filthy dog Bryant I couldn’t believe it. I hated you for a while, then I came round. I could see your position.... I guess you must have been pretty insecure all alone in a big city.... and he gave you friendship and comfort.... I began to see the reasons you could get yourself involved in a relationship with a guy like Chris... But I hated him for it... I wanted him - on the end of a skewer. And now I’ve got him.... He’s finished, Alex, he can’t hurt you anymore. He’s so fucked up now by British security his whistling days are all through. I admit it. I stuck the knife in him, they weren’t even looking at him before I pointed them in his direction. I guess you knew it was me who tried to kill you that day.... That day I felt so black. I saw you were through with Chris, that he’d dropped you like a rag-doll...... then I began to see the crush you had on Pascale. I couldn’t believe it. I liked her right enough. She was good for the bodily functions... but she couldn’t hold a candle to you Alex. You were so beautiful, your body... it was like one of those statues they have in Florence... I knew it must be -.... To see you so struck on a little commie tramp. I couldn’t stand it. I’d rather you were dead than have you debase yourself like that.... It was stupid, and thoughtless, I can see that now.... You must be allowed to live. You have the right to that..... whoever you want, whoever you like.... But Alex, whatever you think of me, I want you to know one thing.... Whatever I did..... To Bryant, to Pascale.... to you...... I did it because I love you..... I guess I always will.”

  That was the essence of the coherent passages, cutting through all the revisions. There were a couple of attempts at an ending, but neither fully worked up and both struck through in biro. I put the piece of paper back in the file, which I detached from the other three, then I went to the bar and got myself another large Jamesons. I sat there a long while. Jesus Christ, I was scared. To get out of London suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

  At closing time I walked up to Knightsbridge Underground and handed two of the files to the booking office to be collected by London Transport Lost Property. Then I went back to Pavilion Road. The next time Chris went out I took the opportunity to burn the other two files and all their contents.

  *****

  It was harder to get a car than I had expected. The first guy I tried suddenly remembered that I owed him twenty pounds half way through the conversation. When I tried to make light of it he turned uncooperative and in the end asked me to leave. I had a telephone number for someone else but nobody answered the phone.

  By four o’clock I was desperate. I’d got so low I’d even taken a 137 across the river to Battersea to ask the landlord of a pub I’d patronised when I was living on the park. But he pretended not to remember me, a poor thanks, I thought, for so many hours invested in his company, or at least in his pub. I was low, night was coming on fast, the pavements were treacherous as ever. As I walked past the end of a grimy mews on my way back to the bus stop I saw the interior of a garage, its doors fixed open. Like a tableau of the Holy Crib the light from within beckoned welcomingly in the cold night air. I shuffled up to the doors. A bald headed guy was underneath a jacked-up car inside and a young kid was fiddling about under the bonnet of a Riley parked in the mews. It wasn’t residential, all the other units looked to be taken up by commerce of some sort. At the end, some guys in white overalls were masking up a car for a re-spray. The guy under the car slid out and stood up, wiped his hands on an oily rag and looked at me with the hostile frankness that Cockneys unconsciously give to all, looks intended as neutral. Behind him a yellow, blue and white metal
Michelin chart gave the recommended tyre pressures for all cars known to man, and a green and white Castrol chart did a similar job for lubricants.

  “Can I help you?” he asked in a manner which de-coded read: “Fuck off”.

  Over the years my deportment has become aimless and this seems to communicate instantly. It says: “This man has no money and will waste your time if you let him.” Confronted like that I was obliged to answer.

  “Yes, I’d like to hire a car. I don’t suppose you could help me.”

  “Don’t hire cars,” he addressed himself to the gearbox of a transverse engine which was stripped down on a workbench next to him.

  “I can pay in advance. I really need it for this weekend. It’s quite urgent.”

  He continued to look at the gearbox and picking up a large screwdriver prodded it with a rough gentility.

  “Ask the boy,” he said without looking up. “... He might need the money.”

  Thus dismissed I turned and approached the kid. He heard me coming and looked up. His face although lacking in warmth had an angelic radiance after the old guy.

  “I hear you might be able to hire me a car this weekend,” I said.

  “Couldn’t hire a car...... a van.”

  “Great,” I said.”

  “Here, have you been in a punch-up?” he asked as we walked out of the mews towards a dark green Austin A35 van that was parked in the road. “I want it back Monday.”