Close Call

Chapter 32

Since Peggy Kinsolving had joined MI5, and particularly since she had been working with Liz Carlyle, she had found out a lot of things about herself that she didn’t know. At school and university she had been a quiet, studious, and rather shy girl. She loved acquiring information, categorising it, sorting it out so she could access it and apply her considerable intelligence and her almost photographic memory to it.

These were the qualities that had taken her from her grammar school in the north of England to Oxford, where as predicted she had obtained a good 2:1 degree. No one, including Peggy herself, had ever thought she had the intellectual confidence and verve that makes a first-class scholar.

Her social life at university had followed the same cautious pattern. She had joined a few societies of the intellectual type and one day, showing much daring, she had gone with a friend to a meeting of the college dramatic society, who were looking for backstage staff. Everyone in the society, it seemed, wanted to be on the stage and in the limelight, and no one was prepared to do the behind-the-scenes work. Peggy thought that job would suit her very well, and it did. She brought her formidable information-sorting skills to organising the props, the scenery, the sound effects; eventually she became completely indispensable to any performance.

She would stand in the wings, noticing every detail, knowing everyone’s part better than they did themselves and making sure that at least from a technical point of view the performance was perfect. She loved the drama but only from behind the scenes. She could never be persuaded to take even the smallest role on the stage. The thought of appearing before an audience petrified her.

Satisfied with her 2:1 and pursuing what she thought was her métier, Peggy had taken a job in a small research library, working on sorting and cataloguing the papers of an obscure female Victorian novelist. But after a couple of years she had begun to find the work dull and unsatisfying, and her social life in a small town where she knew no one was practically non-existent.

So when she saw an advertisement for a research post in a government department in London, with some hesitation she applied and found herself working as a research assistant in MI6. A chance secondment to MI5 a few years later led to her working with Liz Carlyle. At first her work had been purely research, but Liz had seen something in her young assistant that made her think there was more to Peggy than met the eye, and she had gradually encouraged her to take on a more upfront role.

At first Liz had given her some simple interviews to do, then she had moved her on to situations where Peggy had to play a role, to pretend to be someone other than an MI5 officer.

This was when they both realised that Peggy had a penchant for acting a part. Though she would still rather die than go on stage and act before an audience, put in a one-to-one situation she could convincingly present herself as anything from a housewife to a hedge-fund manager – and enjoy doing it.

Today she was an electoral registration officer. She’d dressed primly: a mid-length blue skirt, matching tights, sensible shoes, and dark paisley shirt under a navy blue blazer. She carried a clipboard and pen, and with her glasses firmly in place on her nose looked entirely like the local authority bureaucrat she was pretending to be.

At two o’clock that afternoon she knocked on the door of 29 Ashby Road. Most of the area seemed to be lived in by Muslim families, but she knew from the electoral ­register that this house was occupied by a Mrs Margaret Donovan. The door was opened by a large red-faced woman whom she guessed to be in her early seventies.

‘What can I do for you, luv?’

‘Mrs Donovan, is it?’ asked Peggy, and she explained that she was from the electoral office, confirming the names of the occupants of voting age in each house along the street.

‘Wasn’t there someone here a few months ago about that?’ the woman asked.

Peggy sighed. ‘Probably. There seems to be a lot of duplication in this job. I’ve only been at it three weeks, but you’re not the first one to tell me it’s all been done before.’

The woman smiled sympathetically, and just then the phone in the hall rang. ‘I’d better get that,’ she said. Peggy started to make her excuses but Mrs Donovan waved her in. ‘Come inside and close the door before you catch your death.’ While she went to the phone, Peggy waited patiently in the hall. The woman wasn’t long. ‘Bloody tele sales,’ she announced, coming back into the hall.

‘They are a nuisance,’ said Peggy, shivering slightly. It was a raw day outside, and in her anxiety to look authentic she had not put enough clothes on. The weather had been hovering between autumn and winter for several days, but today for the first time you could sense the months of real cold ahead.

‘You look like you’re freezing, dearie. Come into the kitchen and have a cuppa and warm yourself.’

Peggy didn’t even pretend to protest, foreseeing a golden opportunity to gossip about the neighbours. As the kettle warmed on the gas hob, she looked around the room, which had family photographs all along the top of a sideboard. ‘Your children?’ she offered.

‘All five of them. Grown up now,’ the woman added sadly, ‘and my poor Leonard gone ten years now. Still, mustn’t grumble.’

‘Have you been in this house a long time then?’

Mrs Donovan gave a little laugh. ‘Each one of my children was born and raised here. It will be forty years come October.’

‘Gosh,’ said Peggy appreciatively. ‘I suppose the neighbourhood’s changed a bit since then.’

The woman gave Peggy a sideways look. ‘Not for the worse,’ she said firmly.

‘Not at all,’ said Peggy. ‘I can see that. It looks a fine street to me.’

The woman relaxed. ‘It’s just that so many left when the Asians came. Not me, mind; I wasn’t going anywhere. I always said, there’s good and bad – white, black, and all the in-betweens. Why should I up sticks if people treat me right? Who cares what colour they are?’

‘Who indeed?’ said Peggy, taken aback by the old woman’s almost aggressive tolerance and the implication that she – Peggy – might not agree.

The old lady went to the stove and poured boiling water from the kettle into two waiting mugs. ‘Milk?’ she asked and Peggy nodded. When she brought the mugs over she pushed the sugar bowl along the kitchen table, and Peggy shook her head and pushed it back.

They sipped in quiet contentment for a moment. Then Peggy said casually, ‘You’ve got good neighbours then?’

‘The best,’ Mrs Donovan declared. ‘The Desais live on that side,’ she said, and proceeded to talk about the Hindu family next door. Peggy nodded as the old woman took her through three generations of Desai family tree, little realising that her listener was entirely uninterested in them, and was only waiting for her to talk about her neighbours on the other side.

Peggy’s cup had been refilled by the time she felt able to ask about the other neighbouring family. ‘Mrs Atiyah,’ Mrs Donovan said, and her face seemed to light up. ‘Isn’t it a lovely name?’

‘Very pretty. What kind of name is it?’

‘The family was from Yemen, luv. What we used to call Aden before they went and got themselves independent. Though then there was a lot of trouble, and that’s when the Atiyahs moved here.’

This time Peggy paid close attention while Mrs Donovan went through the generations of Atiyahs. Mr Atiyah senior had passed away several years before, leaving Mrs A solitary in the house, though she had two daughters (and five grandchildren) living nearby, and almost every day one of them paid a visit on their mother. ‘She’s seventy-two next March, not that she looks a day over seventy if you ask me yourself.’

‘It’s nice she’s got daughters to look after her,’ said Peggy, resisting the temptation to finish her tea, since she couldn’t be sure she would be offered another refill. ‘Though I suppose she would have liked a son as well.’

‘Oh she’s got a son, all right. He’s the youngest child and the apple of her eye. And Mrs A spoils him rotten. You’d think he was still a schoolboy from the way he lets his mum take care of him – I’ve seen him lug his laundry home for her to do, and him living all the way down in London.’

‘He’s got no family then?’

Mrs Donovan shook her head. ‘No, he’s still a student. If you ask me, it’s all very well everyone going to university these days, but sometimes they carry it on too long. Mika is twenty-six if he’s a day. By that age my Leonard had been working for ten years, yet this lad’s still at his books.’ She shook her head uncomprehendingly. ‘My nephew Arnold—’ she started to say, but Peggy cut in quickly to impede the diversion. ‘Do you reckon his mum minds? I mean, his being a student and all?’

For a moment the old lady looked confused, as if her nephew Arnold was being discussed, then she realised Peggy was talking about the Atiyah boy and she shook her head decisively. ‘No, his mum thinks the sun shines out of that boy’s eyes. Even when it’s grey and overcast outside.’ She gave a little chuckle.

‘They say Middle Eastern lads are very dutiful sons.’

The woman gave a little harrumph, and Peggy realised she didn’t like her neighbour’s son much. She said nothing but waited patiently, and sure enough there was more to come. ‘Like I say, the boy’s been spoilt. Why, last year he said he wanted to go back to his homeland – he meant Yemen – and his mum coughed up the air fare. What was the point, I ask you? He’s born and bred British just like you and me, so why start pretending you’re not? Never go backwards, that’s my motto.’

‘Maybe he wanted to explore his roots. Like that programme on the TV.’

‘I can’t see him sobbing over his great-grandmother like what’s-his-name did. He’s a hard little bugger, our Mika.’

‘Did he like it in Yemen?’

Mrs Donovan shrugged. ‘I didn’t think it was my business to ask. Mrs A knows I don’t approve of the boy – he’s not polite, at least not to the likes of an old lady like me.’

‘Really?’ said Peggy, trying to sound indignant.

‘Not since he went to the Middle East. He hardly says hello when he sees me.’

‘Are they a very religious family?’

Mrs Donovan paused, as if she had never thought about this before, and said reflectively, ‘The old man was, but not Mrs A. Since he died I don’t think she goes to the mosque much. And when one of her daughters married an English bloke, she didn’t bat an eye.’

‘And Mika?’

She shrugged, and looked at the mugs on the table. Peggy realised she was in danger of outstaying her welcome; the old lady liked to talk, but on her own terms, and that didn’t seem to include answering too many of a stranger’s questions. Peggy got up from her chair. ‘Golly, what you’ve said has been so interesting I could stay and listen all day. But duty calls, and I have to get back to work. Thanks so much for the tea, Mrs Donovan.’

‘Call me Maggie, dear.’

‘Right, Maggie. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘Have I?’ asked Maggie, and her face was suddenly cheerful again. ‘That’s kind of you to say, luv, though I don’t see how.’

‘I’ll just leave you this,’ said Peggy, putting a small printed leaflet on the kitchen table. ‘It explains about the Electoral Registration process and it’s got my phone number on it in case there’s anything you want to inquire about.’

‘Thanks, luv,’ said Mrs Donovan, picking up the leaflet and putting it on the sideboard beside the photographs.