The Other Side of Silence

TWENTY-ONE

Under a salmon-pink sky the following evening, Somerset Maugham, Robin, Alan Searle, and I waited for the old man’s chauffeur to fetch the British from their hotel on the Cap. A cold buffet dinner had been prepared and was being laid out on the terrace by the cook, Annette, while the four of us were in the drawing room with cocktails and cigarettes. The Grundig tape recorder remained on the refectory table, ready for action. The atmosphere was tense and expectant and, as usual, more malevolent and cattish than the chorus line in an old Weimar cabaret.

“Look at that sky,” said Robin. “It’s Leander pink, isn’t it?”

“More Garrick Club pink, I’d say,” remarked his uncle. “Not that you’d know the difference, dear.”

“I’ve never been to the Garrick Club,” said Alan. “Willie’s never taken me. Although he is a member.”

“You’re much too young for the Garrick, love,” said Maugham. “You’re not allowed through the door until there is a significant amount of hair growing out of your ears and nostrils. In fact, it’s a condition of membership.”

“Then you ought to be the club secretary,” said Alan.

Maugham turned in his chair to address Annette. “Make sure we use the Victorian champagne glasses,” he instructed her. “One of these men who are coming tonight is a knight of the realm.”

“Oh? Who?” asked Alan. “Who are these people, Willie?”

“Sir John Sinclair and a chap called Patrick Reilly,” said Maugham. “Sinclair’s the current director of MI6 and Reilly’s a Foreign Office mandarin. I believe he used to be chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The people who oversee MI5 and MI6. They’re going to make sure I’m not about to buy a pig in a poke and, hopefully, underwrite my purchase.”

“So why if they’re so damned important are they staying at the Belle Aurore?” asked Robin.

“Because it’s a lot cheaper than the Grand or La Voile d’Or,” said Maugham.

“Why aren’t they staying here at the villa? It’s not like there isn’t plenty of room.”

“They’ve brought some thugs from Special Branch with them. Just in case this is all some sneaky Russian plot to kidnap two of our top spooks. But as usual, Her Majesty’s Government is also being tight with money. Besides, Sinbad will much prefer staying at the Aurore. It’s rather more modest and low-key than those other hotels.”

“Who’s Sinbad?” asked Robin.

“Before he was director of MI6, Sir John Sinclair was a major general in Royal Artillery,” said Maugham. “But prior to that he went to Dartmouth Naval College and for two years he was a midshipman in the Royal Navy. Sinbad the sailor. And that’s how I know him. He served with the Murmansk force in northern Russia and for a while, in a small way, was one of my field agents.”

“I don’t even know where the Belle Aurore is,” Searle said peevishly.

“It’s on Avenue Denis Semeria,” I explained. “Just down from the Villa Ephrussi.”

“I say, listen to the hotel concierge,” said Robin.

“On the main road to Villefranche?” said Alan.

I nodded. “I drive past it almost every day.”

“Sounds a bit noisy to me,” said Alan.

“Guy Burgess went to Dartmouth Naval College, didn’t he?” I said. “At least that’s what he said on the tape.”

“Yes, he did,” said Robin.

“Sinbad is much older than Guy Burgess,” said Maugham. “About fifteen years older, probably. So there was no chance of an overlap there. Besides, Burgess isn’t Sinbad’s type at all.”

“You don’t mean he’s queer?” said Alan.

“No, I don’t. Sinbad is happily married.”

“Stands to reason someone must be,” I said.

“To Esme, I believe. For many years.”

“Anyone married to someone called Esme for many years must be queer,” said Robin.

“I find it hard to imagine that anyone who was a midshipman in the Royal Navy isn’t a bit queer,” objected Alan. “If they’d ever put it on the recruiting posters that the traditions of the Royal Navy were rum, sodomy, and the lash I’d have joined immediately. But instead I ended up in the army. In fucking Yorkshire. That’s enough to cure anyone of homosexuality, for life.”

“Is this all you people ever talk about?” I said. “Who’s queer and who isn’t?”

“It’s that or bloody Suez,” said Alan, “and right now I think I’d rather not talk about Suez.”

“No, indeed,” murmured Robin. “The gyppos are going to drop us all in the shit again.”

“Don’t think for a minute we haven’t discussed you in the same vein, Walter,” said Maugham. “Before the Nazis, Berlin was a poof’s paradise. I find it very hard to imagine that you are not without something more interesting in your extremely secret history than a couple of unfortunately dead wives.”

I shifted uncomfortably on my chair, lit a cigarette, and told myself that the sooner I could leave the Villa Mauresque the better. The atmosphere always made me uneasy, as though it had been calculated to make me feel as if I were the queer one. Perhaps I was at that. A fish out of water, certainly; out of water, and out of oxygen. I helped myself to another drink and tried to remain affable.

“I don’t know that I’d call it a secret history,” I said. “I think I told you quite a bit already, didn’t I?”

“If you were a fictional narrator, my friend,” said Maugham, “I should say that you were a narrator who was not to be trusted. Like Tristram Shandy. Please don’t get me wrong. That’s not a bad thing. Not in his case, nor in yours. It’s merely entertaining.”

Robin frowned at me and then looked irritably at his uncle. “What’s Walter doing here anyway? That’s what I’d like to know. He’s a German. Surely an evening like this should be Brits only. I can’t imagine someone like Sir John will welcome a Jerry at a meeting like this.”

“You’re right, of course,” said Maugham. “An Englishman has an instinctive knowledge of what’s right and wrong. And can always be relied on not to let the side down, unlike some fucking kraut. Especially someone who went to Eton and Cambridge. Someone like Guy Burgess, perhaps.”

Alan laughed.

“Besides, Sinbad isn’t the only one who can put on a bit of maximum security,” said Maugham. “So can I.”

“Well, I think he’s a little too old to be a bodyguard,” sniped Robin.

“Isn’t that right, Walter?”

I slipped the automatic Spinola had given me back at La Voile d’Or out of my trouser pocket for a moment to let everyone see it, but mainly the sight of the gun was for Robin’s benefit.

“So that’s what it is,” said Robin. “And here was me thinking that lump in his trousers might be his cock.”

I smiled calmly; it seemed a little more socially adept than whipping him across his pink, sweaty face with the gun. But there’s more than one way to slap a bitch hard.

“Perhaps, sir,” I said to Maugham, “your nephew might be interested to know that Anthony Blunt is also coming tonight.”

“Blunt? Coming here?” Robin Maugham was agitated. I didn’t blame him. It must be awkward to meet someone socially when you’ve been blackmailing them. He stood up, red-faced and puffing like one of the carp in his uncle’s ornamental pond, and flung away his cigarette. “No one told me. Why the fuck is Anthony Blunt coming here as well? I don’t understand. Who asked him anyway?”

“Sir John suggested he might join us,” said Maugham. “Blunt knows Guy Burgess as well as anyone. Besides, during the war Anthony worked for MI5. Which makes him doubly qualified to be here. Alan, please go and retrieve that cigarette end before it starts a fire. Everything in the garden is so very dry right now. Do try to be more thoughtful, Robin.”

Alan stood up, found the cigarette, and returned it to the ashtray while Robin continued to sound off on the subject of Blunt’s imminent arrival.

“Thank you, Alan.”

“I didn’t know he worked for MI5,” said Robin. “I thought he was an art historian, not a fucking spy.”

“Art historians make good spies,” said Maugham. “In art as in life, things are never quite what they seem. During the last war I myself did some work for MI6 in Lisbon. And then, in New York, I helped Bill Stephenson run British Security Coordination from the Rockefeller Center. But I’m still not allowed to say too much about that.”

“Is there a queer in London who doesn’t work for the security services?” Robin Maugham whined. “That’s what I’d like to know. Well, I wish someone had told me he was coming, that’s all.”

“I’m telling you now,” said Maugham.

“If you’re planning to be around when they get here,” I told Robin, adding to his now obvious discomfort, “maybe now would be a good time to tell your uncle what he doesn’t know. I mean about you and Blunt.”

“Good Lord, you haven’t fucked him, too,” said Maugham, and started to laugh his gravelly old laugh. “You little devil.”

Robin Maugham regarded me with pinpoint hatred.

“Perhaps before Blunt tells your uncle himself. Which he might well do, don’t you think? It’s just a suggestion, Robin. To save you any needless embarrassment.”

“You bastard.”

“He has fucked him, hasn’t he?” Maugham was still laughing delightedly in his almost Satanic way. “Do tell.”

But Robin had had enough and marched off the terrace like an angry terrier. A few minutes later we heard his Alfa Romeo take off.

“Now I really am fascinated,” said Maugham, continuing to cackle. “What on earth’s the matter with the boy?”

It was time. I told the old man about the photograph, how his nephew had used it to blackmail Anthony Blunt and how Blunt had alleged it had later been stolen from his flat in London. “It might just be that Robin and Harold Hebel were in cahoots to make some money from you,” I explained. “Fifty thousand dollars, if you see where I’m going.”

“Yes, I do see. Oh dear. Poor Robin. No, it’s not funny at all, is it?”

Composing himself again, Maugham sipped his martini, ate the olive, and then sighed. “Look, Walter, I don’t expect you to understand this in the slightest, but for men like me and Robin and Alan, silence about who and what we are is not a choice so much as a matter of constant vigilance. In fact, it’s nothing short of an obsession. We inhabit a dog-eat-dog world of extortion and blackmail the way some people live with religion or politics. Blackmail infects us to the extent that we’re not merely its victims but, just as often, its perpetrators. Lovers spurned become our most painful tormentors. Boys we fondly kept in toys and treats and money—always lots of money—turn around and bite the hand that once fed them so generously in the name of their own freedom. Letters we’ve written are the tools of our own torture and potential downfall. It would be easy for me to condemn my nephew’s actions out of hand, but I’m not going to. As you yourself no doubt remember, I myself blackmailed you to come and help me out with this business. So, you see, I’m just as rotten and unscrupulous as Robin is.”

“I think you’re making excuses for him,” I said.

“Of course I am. Robin is my nephew, and in spite of his manifest failings I’m very fond of him. I’ll always be making excuses for him. He is the only member of my family I like. No, that’s not quite true—I have a niece, Kate, my brother’s daughter, of whom I am rather fond. But Robin is a weak man. And needs me. ‘Need’ is a more important word than ‘love,’ Walter. Especially at my time of life. Although perhaps it always was. It’s good to be needed. Perhaps one day you’ll realize that.”