Charlie’s Apprentice

Nineteen

They met again at The Spaniards, so Charlie Muffin guessed she lived somewhere in the Swiss Cottage or Hampstead area. As before he got there first, managing one drink ahead of her arrival. She was shiny-faced again. The top, over the same jeans, was all-enveloping but a different colour, tonight a subdued brown. Charlie hadn’t ordered for her, in case she wanted something different, but again she chose beer. He waited until the second drink before suggesting dinner again. She accepted after a token hesitation.

Charlie let the conversation drift for a while before saying: ‘Surprised I haven’t heard by now from the stony Miss Elder.’ He decided, too late, that it was a clumsy effort but the other toss-and-catch conversation was becoming a pain in the ass.

Her reply was interesting. ‘Do you think she’s stony?’

‘Rocklike,’ he insisted. Exaggerating, he said: ‘She frightens the shit out of me.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true,’ persisted Charlie. ‘Miss Elder is the original ball-breaker. No humanity. No feeling.’

‘You’re wrong.’

What the hell did that mean? ‘I don’t think I am,’ he said, inviting the contradiction.

‘Professionally, maybe. She can be very kind, otherwise.’

That hadn’t come out as well as he’d wanted. ‘Well hidden,’ he said, still encouraging a contrary argument.

‘She’s definitely very controlled,’ agreed the girl.

Still not good enough, judged Charlie, signalling for more drinks. ‘She was hard-assed towards me. Take it or leave it ultimatum: except that I couldn’t leave it. The other choice was to be a caretaker.’

The idea amused Julia. She sniggered and said: ‘I don’t really see you as a caretaker.’

‘Neither do I,’ said Charlie. ‘So here I am, stuck.’

‘Maybe things will change, in time.’

A pointer, from some inner-circle knowledge! seized Charlie. Or a casual, meaningless remark? Pressing the exchange, he said: ‘I’d certainly like to think so.’

‘What’s so important, about being actively operational?’

‘It’s what I know how to do.’

‘You seem to have adjusted well enough to the new role.’

That had to be an indication. But then she’d already intimated he’d done well with John Gower. Very briefly – contravening his own prohibitions on personal involvement – Charlie thought of the young and eager entrant, hoping that whatever assignment Gower was given would work out all right. Charlie was the first, with his Teflon-edged cynicism, to acknowledge it was impossible to generalize, but he tried to convince himself that it should do: Gower had learned a lot, even if everything he’d tried to teach the man hadn’t been absorbed to the point of it being reflexive. He said: ‘It might be nice, to be told.’

‘Come on!’ erupted Julia, in mock sneer. ‘Ten out of ten for Mr Muffin!’

Too clumsy again, conceded Charlie, irritated. ‘It will be necessary for me to be officially told by her, or by Miller, that it’s going as they want.’

‘That will only come from the practical successes of people you train. Or lack of success,’ the girl pointed out. ‘And if it doesn’t work out as she wants, you’ll know about it soon enough!’

Back on track, decided Charlie, relieved. ‘Hard taskmaster, even though you think she’s got a lot of hidden feelings?’

‘The hardest, professionally.’

The opening beckoned, a chasm of opportunity. ‘That why Miller brought her across with him? Sure of her professional ability?’

Julia Robb stood looking directly at him in the crowded bar. Pointedly refusing the response, she said: ‘I liked the place where we ate last time.’

Intentionally Charlie did not speak until they reached the restaurant in Heath Street. Julia didn’t try to break the silence, either. Charlie ordered a bottle of wine rather than an aperitif, and deep fried eggplant to pick at, while they decided what properly to eat. Without looking at her, he said finally: ‘You didn’t answer my question, in the pub.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ she agreed.

‘She’s not married,’ insisted Charlie. ‘He is, though. Wife’s got an hereditary title. And a stud-farm and racing stables. Lives out of London.’

‘Really?’ Julia sounded indifferent, the menu before her.

‘It’s all listed in Who’s Who.’ So was a Regent’s Park address he intended to visit.

Julia put the menu down on to the table: the plastic covering made a slapping sound. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have come here tonight after all. Thanks anyway …’

‘Don’t go!’ said Charlie, urgently.

‘I think I should.’

‘I’m sorry. Really. I mean it.’

‘I thought we had an understanding.’

‘We have.’

‘You seem to have forgotten it. Again.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated.

‘I don’t want it always to be an interrogation. We’re not at the department now, not that it would make any difference anyway. I won’t answer your questions. Not any of them.’

‘I don’t think you have to,’ said Charlie, meaning it.

‘I didn’t say anything!’ Her reaction unsettled him. Her face broke and momentarily he thought she was going to cry.

‘You didn’t!’ Lying, he said: ‘I haven’t inferred anything.’

‘It’s their business. No one else’s.’

‘Sure.’ So obvious was her distress that although he’d spent so much of the evening trying to guide the conversation in this direction Charlie now wanted to get away from it. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Honestly. It won’t happen again. I promise.’

Julia smiled, faintly and with difficulty. ‘Who said there’s going to be an again?’

‘I deserved that,’ accepted Charlie. A blown situation, he decided. He supposed he’d learned what he set out to discover, but he really hadn’t intended to bring her close to tears. Her near breakdown intrigued him. He definitely couldn’t pursue it now.

‘Maybe you deserve something more,’ she said.

Charlie frowned, confused. ‘You’re losing me.’

‘I don’t think I’m being very fair. In fact I know I’m not being fair.’

‘I’m still lost.’

‘I’m married,’ blurted Julia. At once she corrected herself. ‘Was married. Not any more.’

‘So?’ queried Charlie. If she wanted to unburden herself, it was all right with him.

Julia stared down into her glass, appearing unable to meet his look. ‘I enjoyed the last time. And tonight …’ She looked up briefly, smiling. ‘Most of it, that is. But I don’t want it to go beyond … get difficult … lead to your expecting something that can’t happen …’ She stopped, the smile hopeful now. ‘Do you know what I’m saying?’

Forced to speak finally, Charlie said: ‘Some of it. Not all.’

‘His name was …’ She smiled, apologetically. ‘…is, Andrew: I still can’t get the tenses right. Andrew …’ Babbling now, wanting to get the explanation out of the way, she said: ‘He’s a finance lawyer: specializes in international tax affairs, always on aeroplanes to Europe and America and those tiny islands with special arrangements for those who can afford them. Absolutely brilliant. Directorship promised before he’s forty, eventual chairmanship of the group a foregone conclusion. We had a hell of a life: the whole yuppie bit …’ She gulped at her wine, further steeling herself. Flat-voiced, Julia went on: ‘I thought everything was wonderful: I suppose it was. But do you know what? All the time it was wonderful for him with someone else, too.’ Julia stared directly at Charlie. ‘And can you guess who that was?’

She seemed to expect a reply, so Charlie said: ‘No, I can’t.’

‘My own sister!’ declared Julia. ‘How about that? My own sister! One night, eighteen months ago, he came home and we went to bed and made love and then he announced it was over. I actually laughed, thinking there was some joke …’

‘Are you sure …?’ started Charlie, but she interrupted him back. ‘Yes! Let me, please! I want to talk about it!’

‘OK,’ accepted Charlie, waiting.

‘He told me who it was, too. While we were lying there, side by side. Not just wrecking my marriage. Wrecking the family, too. I didn’t know what to do … still don’t, I suppose. That’s what I meant about using you. Wanted to see what it would be like, going out with someone again. I hadn’t, you see. Not for years. No one apart from Andrew. Didn’t know if I could still do it properly …’ She smiled, wanly. ‘Classic Agony Aunt stuff. Destroyed wife, destroyed confidence.’

‘I didn’t guess. It was a great performance,’ said Charlie.

‘I don’t want anything!’ she said, in another of her blurted announcements. ‘Not someone else … romance … sex. I really don’t. I’m not going to become a man-hater or anything ridiculous like that. I’m just more comfortable – happier – by myself. Trusting myself.’

It was a classic case history of a dumped wife, decided Charlie. ‘I can understand that.’ Particularly the bit about only trusting oneself. He remembered lecturing Gower about it.

She looked at him uncertainly. ‘Can you?’

‘It’s kind of a personal philosophy of mine.’

‘But I get so damned lonely,’ Julia admitted. ‘I go out and do things by myself and just sometimes – very occasionally – I forget where I am and what I am doing but mostly I am as lonely as hell.’

‘I can understand that, too,’ said Charlie. There’d been aching loneliness, after Edith had been killed. That brief, wonderful, impossible period in Moscow with Natalia had probably been the only time since that he hadn’t lived permanently with the feeling.

‘I mean what I said,’ insisted the girl. ‘I really don’t want sex. I don’t want a lover or any sort of complication that is going to end up hurting more: I’ve had enough of that. You know what I want?’

‘What?’

‘A friend. Someone I can trust: feel safe with.’

Charlie didn’t speak for several moments, like Julia drinking his wine to cover his hesitation. Finally he said: ‘Can I apply?’ What about trust, after the way he’d used her?

‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ she said, positively. ‘That’s why I’ve told you. Didn’t want you to think there was anything … you know.’

‘And now I do,’ said Charlie. ‘So why not?’

‘Platonic relationship?’Julia queried, doubtfully.

‘That’s what it’s called,’ agreed Charlie.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, uncertainly.

‘We won’t be, until we give it a shot.’

‘You mean it?’

‘Sure.’ Did he? wondered Charlie.

Natalia discovered Fyodor Tudin was spying on her from routine bureaucracy.

It was an inviolable rule, dating from the KGB period, that archives were registered against the name of whoever requested them, with the file cover itself dated with all previous withdrawals. When she called for Charlie’s records for yet another search, in the hope she might have missed something the first time, she found a date immediately following her initial examination. A simple cross-reference to the main register revealed Tudin’s name, which was also recorded against her own personal records, which the man had consulted soon after their respective appointments.

What else had he already done, in the hope of undermining her? And how, she wondered, could she protect herself? She’d have to find a way. It wasn’t just danger to her: it was danger to Sasha.