Restless

6. A Girl from Germany

ON SATURDAY MORNING JOCHEN and I went down to the Westgate shopping centre in Oxford – a shopping mall, of sorts, concrete, ugly but useful as most malls tend to be – to buy some new pyjamas for Jochen (as he was going to be spending a night with his grandmother) and to pay the penultimate hire-purchase instalment on the new cooker I'd bought in December. We parked the car in Broad Street and walked up Cornmarket, where the shops were just opening and, even though it promised to be yet another fine, hot sunny day, there seemed to be a brief sensation of freshness in the morning air – a tacit conspiracy or wishful illusion that such hot sunny days were not yet so commonplace as to have become tiresome and boring. The streets had been swept, the rubbish bins emptied and the sticky bus-and-tourist-clogged hell that was a Saturday Cornmarket in reality was still an hour or two away.

Jochen dragged me back to look at a toyshop window.

'Look at that, Mummy. It's amazing.'

He was pointing to some plastic space gun, encrusted with gimmicks and gizmos.

'Can I have that for my birthday?' he asked plaintively. 'For my birthday and next Christmas?'

'No. I've got you a lovely new encyclopaedia.'

'You're joking with me again,' he said, sternly. 'Don't joke like that.'

'You have to joke a little in life, darling,' I said, leading him on and turning down Queen Street. 'Otherwise what's the point?'

'It depends on the joke,' he said. 'Some jokes aren't funny.'

'All right, you can have your gun. I'll send the encyclopaedia to a little boy in Africa.'

'What little boy?'

'I'll find one. There'll be masses who'd love an encyclopaedia.'

'Look – there's Hamid.'

At the foot of Queen Street was a small square with an obelisk. Clearly designed to be a modest public space in the Edwardian part of the city, now, with the modern redevelopment, it served only as a kind of forecourt or ramp to the maw of the Westgate centre. Now glue-sniffing punks gathered at the steps around the monument (to some forgotten soldier killed in a colonial skirmish) and it was a favourite spot for marches and demonstrations to begin or end. The punks liked it, buskers liked it, beggars liked it, Hare Krishna groups tinkled their cymbals and chanted in it, Salvation Army bands played carols in it at Christmas. I had to admit that, nondescript though it was, it was possibly the liveliest and most eclectic public space in Oxford.

Today there was a small demonstration of Iranians – students and exiles, I supposed – a group of thirty or so assembled under banners that read 'Down with the Shah', 'Long Live the Iranian Revolution'. Two bearded men were trying to encourage passers-by to sign a petition and a girl in a headscarf was listing, in a shrill singsong voice, the Pahlavi family's iniquities through a megaphone. I followed the direction of Jochen's pointed finger and saw Hamid standing some way off behind a parked car, taking photographs of the demonstrators.

We wandered over to him.

'Hamid!' Jochen shouted and he turned, visibly surprised at first, then pleased to see who it was greeting him. He crouched in front of Jochen and offered him his hand to shake, which Jochen did with some vigour.

'Mr Jochen,' he said. 'Salaam alaikum.'

'Alaikum salaam,' Jochen said: it was a routine he knew well.

He smiled at him, and then, rising, turned to me. 'Ruth. How are you?'

'What are you doing?' I said, abruptly, suddenly suspicious.

'Taking photographs.' He held up the camera. 'They are all friends of mine, there.'

'Oh. I would have thought they wouldn't want their photos taken.'

'Why? It's a peaceful demonstration against the Shah. His sister is coming here to Oxford to open a library they have paid for. Wait for that – there will be a big demonstration. You must come.'

'Can I come?' Jochen said.

'Of course.' Then Hamid turned, hearing his name shouted from the demo.

'I must go,' he said. 'I'll see you tonight, Ruth. Shall I bring a taxi?'

'No, no,' I said. 'We can walk.'

He ran over to join the others and for a moment I felt guilty and a fool, suspecting him in that way. We went into the Westgate to look for pyjamas but I found myself still brooding on the matter, wondering why anti-Shah demonstrators would be happy to have their photographs taken.

I was standing over Jochen as he packed his toys into his bag, urging him to be more ruthless in his selection, when I heard Ludger come up the iron stairs and enter through the kitchen door.

'Ah, Ruth,' he said, seeing me in Jochen's room. 'I have a favour. Hey, Jochen, how are you, man?'

Jochen looked round. 'I'm fine, thank you,' he said.

'I got a friend,' Ludger continued to me. 'A girl from Germany. Not a girlfriend,' he added quickly. 'She's saying she wants to visit Oxford and I'm wondering if she could stay here – two, three days.'

'There's no spare room.'

'She can sleep with me. I mean – in my room. Sleeping bag on the floor – no sweat.'

'I'll have to ask Mr Scott,' I improvised. 'There's a clause in my lease, you see. I'm really not allowed to have more than one person to stay here.'

'What?' he was incredulous. 'But it's your home?'

'My rented home. I'll just pop down and ask him.'

Mr Scott worked some Saturday mornings and I had seen his car was parked outside. I went down the stairs to the dentist's rooms and found him sitting on the reception desk, swinging his legs, talking to Krissi, his New Zealand dental nurse.

'Hello, hello, hello!' Mr Scott boomed, seeing me arrive, his eyes huge behind the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles. 'How's young Jochen?'

'Very well, thank you. I was just wondering, Mr Scott, would you object if I put some garden furniture out at the bottom of the garden? Table, chairs, an umbrella?'

'Why would I object?'

'I don't know – it might spoil the view from your surgery, or something.'

'How could it spoil the view?'

'That's great, then. Thanks very much.'

Mr Scott, as a young army dentist, had sailed into Singapore Harbour in February 1942. Four days after he arrived the British forces surrendered and he spent the next three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese. After that experience, he had told me – in all candour, without bitterness – he had made the decision that nothing in life was ever going to bother him again.

Ludger was waiting at the top of the stairs. 'Well?'

'Sorry,' I said. 'Mr Scott says no. Only one guest allowed.'

Ludger looked at me sceptically. I held his gaze.

'Oh, yeah?' he said.

'Yeah. In fact you're lucky he's let you stay for so long,' I lied, quite enjoying the process. 'My lease is at stake here, you know.'

'What kind of shit country is this?' he asked, rhetorically. 'Where a landlord can tell you who can stay in your home.'

'If you don't like it you can always bugger off,' I said, cheerfully. 'Come on, Jochen, let's go to granny's.'

My mother and I sat on the rear terrace of the cottage, looking out over the blond meadow at the dark green mass of Witch Wood, drinking home-made lemonade and keeping an eye on Jochen, who was galloping around the garden with a butterfly net, failing to catch butterflies.

'You were right,' I said, 'it turns out Romer is a lord. And a rich man, as far as I can tell.' Two visits to the Bodleian Library had furnished me with a little more information than the few facts provided by Bobbie York. I watched my mother's face intently as I documented Romer's life, reading from the notes I had made. He was born 7 March 1899. Son of Gerald Arthur Romer (deceased 1918). An elder brother, Sholto, had been killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Romer had been educated at a minor public school called Framingham Hall, where his father had taught classics. During the First World War he had become a captain in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and had won the Military Cross in 1918. Back to Oxford, post-war, to St John's College, where he obtained a first-class degree in history in 1923. Then there were two years at the Sorbonne, 1924-5. Then he joined the Foreign Office from 1926-35. I paused. 'Then it all goes blank, except that he was awarded the Croix de Guerre – the Belgian Croix de Guerre in 1945.'

'Good old Belgium,' she said, flatly.

I told her that the publishing enterprise had begun in 1946 – concentrating on learned journals, initially, with material from mainly German sources. The German university presses being moribund, barely under way or severely handicapped, German academics and scientists found Romer's journals very welcoming. On the back of this success, he moved increasingly into reference books, drily academic in character, expensive, and sold largely to academic libraries around the world. Romer's business – Romer, Radclyffe Ltd – soon had an impressive though specialised market presence, one that led to the firm's buyout in 1963 by a Dutch publishing group, netting Romer a personal fortune of some £3 million. I mentioned the marriage in 1949 to one Miriam Hilton (who died in 1972) and the two children – a son and a daughter – and she didn't flinch. There was a house in London – 'in Knightsbridge' was all I could discover, and a villa near Antibes. The Romer, Radclyffe imprint continued after its take-over (Romer sat on the board of the Dutch conglomerate) and he became a consultant to and director of various companies in the publishing and newspaper industries. He had been made a life-peer by Churchill's government in 1953, 'for services to the publishing industry'.

Here my mother chuckled sardonically: 'For services to the espionage industry, you mean. They always wait a bit.'

'That's all I can dig up,' I said. 'There's not much at all. He calls himself Lord Mansfield now. That's why it took some tracking down.'

'His middle name is Mansfield,' my mother said. 'Lucas Mansfield Romer – I'd forgotten that. Any photographs? I bet you there aren't.'

But I had found a fairly recent one in Tatler, of Romer standing beside his son, Sebastian, at his twenty-first birthday party. As if aware of the photographer, Romer had managed to cover his mouth and chin with one hand. It could have been anyone: a lean face, a dinner-jacket and bow tie, a head now quite significantly bald. I had had a photocopy made and I handed it over to my mother.

She looked at it expressionlessly.

'I suppose I might just have recognised him. My, he's lost his hair.'

'Oh yes. And apparently there's a portrait of him by David Bomberg in the National Portrait Gallery.'

'What date?'

'Nineteen thirty-six.'

'Now that would be worth seeing,' she said. 'You might get some idea of what he was like when I met him.' She flicked the photocopy with a nail. 'Not this old chap.'

'Why do you want to find him, Sal? After all these years?' I asked as innocuously as I could manage.

'I just feel the time has come.'

I left it at that as Jochen wandered over with a grasshopper in his net.

'Well done,' I said. 'At least it's an insect.'

'Actually, I think grasshoppers are more interesting than butterflies,' he said.

'Run and catch another one,' my mother said. 'Then we'll have supper.'

'My God, look at the time,' I said. 'I've got a date.' I told her about Hamid and his invitation but she wasn't listening. I could see she was in Romer-land.

'Do you think you could find out where his house is in London?'

'Romer's?… Well, I suppose I could try. Shouldn't be impossible. But what then?'

'Then I want you to arrange to meet him.'

I put my hand on her arm. 'Sal, are you sure this is wise?'

'Not so much wise as absolutely vital. Crucial.'

'How am I meant to arrange to meet him? Why would Lord Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve want to meet me?'

She leant over and gave me a kiss on the forehead.

'You're a very intelligent young woman – you'll think of something.'

'And what am I meant to do at this meeting?'

'I'll tell you exactly what to do when the time comes.' She turned to the garden again. 'Jochen! Mummy's leaving. Come and say goodbye.'

I made a bit of an effort for Hamid, though my heart wasn't really in it. I rather relished these rare evenings alone but I washed my hair and put on some dark grey eyeshadow. I was going to wear my platform boots but didn't want to tower over him so I settled for some clogs, jeans and an embroidered cheesecloth smock. My burn-dressing was less conspicuous now – under the cheesecloth of the smock it formed a neat lump the size of a small sandwich. While I waited for him I set a kitchen chair outside on the landing at the top of the stairs and drank a beer. The light was soft and hazy and dozens of swifts jinked and dived above the treetops, the air filled with their squeakings like a kind of semi-audible, shrill static. Thinking about my mother, as I sipped my beer, I concluded that the only good outcome of this Romer-search was that it seemed to have cut down on the paranoia and the invalid play-acting – there was no more talk of her bad back, the wheelchair stood unused in the hall – but then I realised I had forgotten to ask her about the shotgun.

Hamid arrived, wearing a dark suit and a tie. He said I looked 'very nice' though I could tell he was a little disappointed at the informality of my outfit. We walked down the Woodstock Road in the golden, hazy evening light. The lawns of the big brick houses were parched and ochreous and the leaves on the trees – usually so vividly, so densely green – looked dusty and tired.

'Aren't you hot?' I asked Hamid. 'You can take your jacket off.'

'No, I'm fine. Maybe the restaurant has air-conditioning?'

'I doubt it – this is England, remember.'

As it turned out, I was right, but in compensation numerous roof fans whirred above our heads. I had never been in Browns before but I liked its long dark bar and its big mirrors, the palms and greenery everywhere. Globe lights on the walls shone like small albescent moons. Some kind of jazzy rock music was playing.

Hamid didn't drink but he insisted on my having an aperitif – vodka and tonic, thanks – and then he ordered a bottle of red wine.

'I can't drink all that,' I said. 'I'll fall over.'

'I will catch you,' he said, with awkward suggestive gallantry. Then he acknowledged his awkwardness with a shy confessional smile.

'You can always leave some.'

'I'll take it home with me,' I said, wanting to end this conversation about my drinking. 'Waste not, want not.'

We ate our food, chatting about Oxford English Plus, Hamid telling me about his other tutors, how another thirty oil engineers from Dusendorf were arriving, and that he thought Hugues and Bérangère were having an affair.

'How do you know?' I asked – I'd seen no sign of any increased intimacy.

'He's telling me everything, Hugues.'

'Oh, well… I hope they're very happy.'

He poured some more wine into my glass. Something about the way he did this and the set of his mouth and jaw forewarned me of some serious conversation coming up. I felt a faint lowering of my spirits: life was complicated enough – I didn't want Hamid complicating it further. I drank half the glass of wine in preparation for the cross-examination and felt the alcohol kick in almost immediately. I was drinking too much – but who could blame me?

'Ruth, may I ask you some questions?'

'Of course.'

'I want to ask you about Jochen's father.'

'Oh, God, right. Fire away.'

'Were you ever married to him?'

'No. He was already married with three children when I met him.'

'So: how come you had this child with this man?'

I drank more wine. The waitress cleared our plates away.

'You really want to know?'

'Yes. I feel I don't understand this. Don't understand this in your life. And yet I know you, Ruth.'

'No you don't.'

'Well, I have seen you almost every day for three months. I feel you are a friend.'

'True. OK.'

'So: how did this happen?'

I decided to tell him, or to tell him as much as he needed to know. Perhaps the act of relating such a history would help me also, set it in some kind of a context of my life; maybe make it not less significant (because it had produced Jochen, after all) but provide its significance with some perspective and thereby transform it into a normal slice of autobiography and not some gaping, bleeding, psychological wound. I lit a cigarette and took another long sip of wine. Hamid, I saw, had leant forward on the table, his arms folded, his brown eyes fixed on mine. I am a good listener, his pose was telling me – no distractions, full focus.

'It all began in 1970,' I said. 'I had just graduated, I had a first-class degree in French and German from Oxford University – my life lay ahead of me, full of bright promise, all sorts of interesting potential options and avenues to explore, etcetera, etcetera… And then my father dropped down dead in the garden from a heart attack.'

'I'm sorry,' Hamid said.

'Not as sorry as I was,' I said, and I could feel my throat thicken with remembered emotion. 'I loved my dad – more than my mother, I think. Don't forget I was an only child… So I was twenty-one years old and I went a little crazy. In fact, I think I might have had some kind of a nervous breakdown – who knows?

'But I wasn't helped at this difficult time by my mother who, a week after the funeral – almost as if she'd been given orders by someone – put the family home on the market (a lovely old house, just outside Banbury), sold it within a month and, with the money she made, bought a cottage in the remotest village she could find in Oxfordshire.'

'Maybe for her it made sense,' Hamid ventured.

'Maybe for her it did. It didn't to me. Suddenly, I didn't have a home. The cottage was hers, her place. There was a guest room that I could use if I ever wanted to stay. But the message was plain: our family life was over – your father is dead – you're a graduated student, twenty-one years old, we will go our separate ways. And so I decided to go to Germany. I decided to write a thesis on the German revolution after the First World War. "Revolution in Germany" it was called – it is called – "1918- 1923".'

'Why?'

'I don't know – I told you, I think I was a bit mad. And, anyway, revolution was in the air. I felt like revolutionising my life. This was something suggested to me and I grabbed it with both hands. I wanted to get away – from Banbury, from Oxford, from my mother, from memories of my father. So I went to university in Hamburg to write a thesis.'

'Hamburg.' Hamid repeated the name of the city as if logging it in his memory bank. 'And this is where you met Jochen's father.'

'Yes. Jochen's father was my professor at Hamburg. A history professor. Professor Karl-Heinz Kleist. He was supervising my thesis – amongst other things like presenting arts programmes on TV, organising demonstrations, publishing radical pamphlets, writing articles for Die Zeit on the German Crisis…' I paused. 'He was a man of many facets. A very busy man.'

I put out cigarette number one and lit cigarette number two.

'You've got to understand,' I continued, 'it was in a very strange state, Germany, in 1970 – it's still in a strange state in 1976. Some sort of upheaval was happening in society – some sort of defining process. For example, when I went to meet Karl-Heinz for the first time – in the university building where he had his office – there was a huge hand-painted sign across the façade – put up by the students – saying: Institut für Soziale Angelegenheiten – "The Institute for Social Conscience"… Not "The History Faculty", or whatever. For these students in 1970, history was about studying their social conscience-'

'What does this mean?'

'It meant how – you know – the events of the past, particularly the recent past, had shaped their ideas of themselves. It really had little to do with documented facts, of forming a consensus around a narrative about the past…'

I saw I was losing Hamid but I found myself remembering that first meeting with Karl-Heinz. His dark, shadowy room was filled with towers of books, leaning against the wall – there were no bookshelves. There were cushions scattered on the floor – no seats – and there were three joss sticks burning on his low desk, a Thai bed in actuality – otherwise empty. He was a tall man with fine blond hair which fell to his shoulders. He was wearing several beaded necklaces, an embroidered pale blue silk chemise and crushed-velvet mulberry flared trousers. He had big emphatic features: a long nose, full lips, heavy brows – not so much handsome as unignorable. After three years in Oxford he came as something of a shock to me – and this was a professor. At his behest I lowered myself down on to a cushion and he dragged another over to sit opposite me. He repeated my thesis title several times as if testing it for residual humour, as if it contained some hidden joke I was playing on him.

'What was he like?' Hamid asked. 'This Karl-Heinz.'

'At first he was like nobody I had ever met. Then, as I got to know him over the next year or so, he slowly but surely became ordinary again. He became just like everybody else.'

'I don't understand.'

'Selfish, vain, lazy, careless, dishonourable…' I tried to think of more adjectives. 'Complacent, sly, mendacious, weak -'

'But this is Jochen's father.'

'Yes. Maybe all fathers are like that, deep down.'

'You're very cynical, Ruth.'

'No, I'm not. I'm not in the least cynical.'

Hamid clearly decided not to pursue this particular line of our conversation.

'So what happened?'

'What do you think?' I said, refilling my glass. 'I fell crazily in love with him. Totally, fanatically, abjectly, in love.'

'But this man had a wife and three children.'

'This was 1970, Hamid. In Germany. In a German university. His wife didn't care. I used to see her quite a lot for a while. I liked her. She was called Irmgard.'

I thought of Irmgard Kleist – tall as Karl-Heinz – with her long, breast-sweeping, hennaed hair and her carefully cultivated air of extreme, terminal languor. Look at me, she seemed to be saying, I'm so relaxed I'm almost comatose – yet I have a famous, philandering husband, three children and I edit political books in a fashionable left-wing publishing house and still I can barely be bothered to string three words together. Irmgard's attitude was contagious – for a while even I affected some of her mannerisms. For a while nothing could stir me from my self-regarding torpor. Nothing but Karl-Heinz.

'She didn't care what Karl-Heinz did,' I said. 'She knew, with absolute confidence, that he would never leave her – so she allowed him his little adventures. I wasn't the first and I wasn't the last.'

'And then comes Jochen.'

'I got pregnant. I don't know – maybe I was too stoned one night and I forgot to take my pill. Karl-Heinz said immediately he could arrange an abortion through a doctor friend of his. But I thought: my dad is dead, my mother is a gardening hermit who I never see – I want this baby.'

'You were very young.'

'So everybody said. But I didn't feel young – I felt very grown-up, very in control. It seemed like the right thing to do and an interesting thing to do. It was all the justification that I needed. Jochen was born. Now I know that it was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.' I said this instantly, wanting to pre-empt him asking me if I had any regrets – which I felt he was about to do. I didn't want him to ask me that question. I didn't want to consider if I had any regrets.

'So Jochen was born.'

'Jochen was born. Karl-Heinz was very pleased – he told everybody. Told his own children they had a new baby brother. I had a small apartment where we lived. Karl-Heinz helped me with the rent. He would stay a few nights a week with me. We went on holidays together – to Vienna, to Copenhagen, to Berlin. Then he got bored and started having an affair with one of the producers of his television show. As soon as I found out, I knew it was over so I left Hamburg with Jochen and came back to Oxford to finish my thesis.' I spread my hands. 'And here we are.'

'How long were you in Germany?'

'Nearly four years. I came back in January '75.'

'Did you try to see this Karl-Heinz again?'

'No. I'll probably never see him again. I don't want to see him. I don't need to see him. It's over. Finished.'

'Maybe Jochen will want to see him.'

'That's fine with me.'

Hamid was frowning, thinking hard, I could see, trying to fit the Ruth he knew into this other Ruth that had just been revealed to him. I actually felt quite pleased that I had told him my story in this way: I saw its shapeliness. I saw that it had ended.

He paid the bill and we left the restaurant and ambled back up the Woodstock Road in the warm muggy night. Hamid finally removed his jacket and tie.

'And Ludger?'

'Ludger was there, around and about. He spent a lot of time in Berlin. He was crazy – taking drugs, stealing motor bikes. He was always in trouble. Karl-Heinz would kick him out and he'd go back to Berlin.'

'It's a sad story,' Hamid said. 'He was a bad man that you fell in love with.'

'Well, it wasn't all bad. He taught me a lot. I changed. You wouldn't have believed what I was like when I went to Hamburg. Timid, nervous, unsure of myself

He laughed. 'No – this I don't believe.'

'It's true. When I left I was a different person. Karl-Heinz taught me one important thing: he taught me to be fearless, to be unafraid. I'm not fucking frightened of anyone, thanks to him – policemen, judges, skinheads, Oxford dons, poets, parking wardens, intellectuals, yobbos, bores, bitches, headmasters, lawyers, journalists, drunks, politicians, preachers…' I ran out of people I wasn't fucking afraid of. 'It was a valuable lesson.'

'I suppose so.'

'He used to say that everything you did should contribute in some way to the destruction of the great myth – the myth of the all-powerful system.'

'I don't understand.'

'That your life, in every small way, should be a kind of propaganda action to expose this myth as a lie and an illusion.'

'So you become a criminal.'

'No – you don't have to. Some people did – a very few. But it makes sense – think about it. Nobody needs to be afraid of anyone or anything. The myth of the all-powerful system is a sham, empty.'

'Maybe you should go to Iran. Tell this to the Shah.'

I laughed. We had reached our driveway in Moreton Road.

'Fair point,' I said. 'Maybe it's easy to be fearless in cosy old Oxford.' I turned to him, and I thought: I'm pissed, I drank too much, I'm talking too much. 'Thanks, Hamid. That was great,' I said. 'I really enjoyed myself. I hope it wasn't boring for you.'

'No, it was wonderful, fascinating.'

He leant forward quickly and kissed me on the lips. I felt his soft beard on my face before I pushed him off.

'Hey. Hamid, no-'

'I ask you all these questions because I have something to tell you.'

'No, Hamid, no – please. We're friends: you said so yourself

'I'm in love with you, Ruth.'

'No you're not. Go to bed. I'll see you on Monday.'

'I am, Ruth, I am. I'm sorry.'

I said nothing more, turning away and leaving him standing on the gravel as I strode down the side of the house towards our back stairs. The wine had gone so far to my head that I felt myself swaying and had to pause to touch the brickwork on my left to keep myself steady, and at the same time I was trying to ignore the mounting confusion in my head caused by Hamid's declaration. A little unbalanced, and miscalculating the position of the bottom step, I banged my shin heavily on a supporting bar of the handrail and felt tears of pain sting my eyes. I limped up the iron stairs, cursing to myself, and once in the kitchen pulled up my jeans to see that the blow had broken the skin – there were little bubbles of blood pushing through the smashed skin – and that a dark bruise was already forming – I was bleeding under my skin. My shin throbbed like some kind of malignant tuning fork – the bone must be bruised. I swore vilely to myself – funny how a torrent of fucks and bastards and cunts acts as a kind of instant analgesic. At least the pain had driven Hamid from my mind.

'Oh, hi, Ruth. It's you.'

I looked groggily round to see Ludger standing there, in jeans, but with no shirt on. Behind him stood a grubby-looking girl wearing a T-shirt and panties. Her hair was greasy and she had a wide, slack mouth, pretty in a sulky kind of way.

'This is Ilse. She had nowhere to stay. What could I do?'

New York, 1941

ROMER WAS A ROBUST and uncomplicated lover – except in one particular. At some juncture, while he and Eva were making love, he would withdraw and rock back on his haunches, taking whatever blankets and sheets and bed covers there were with him, and look at Eva lying naked, spread-eagled before him on the bed and then consider his own glossy tumescence and then, after a second or two, taking hold of himself, he would position his erect penis and carefully, slowly re-enter her. Eva began to wonder if it were the act of penetration that excited him more than the eventual orgasm. Once, when he had done this a second time to her, she had said: 'Be careful, I won't wait around for ever'. So he confined himself, by and large, to one of these contemplative withdrawals a session. Eva had to admit that the manoeuvre itself was, all things considered, rather pleasurable also, on her side of the sexual fence.

They had made love that morning, fairly swiftly, satisfyingly and with no interruptions. They were in Meadowville, a town outside Albany, New York State, staying at the Windermere Hotel and Coffee Shop on Market Street. Eva was dressing and Romer lay grandly in bed, naked, a knee up, the sheets bunched at his groin, his fingers laced behind his head. Eva clipped on her stockings and stepped into her skirt, hauling it up.

'How long will you be?' Romer asked.

'Half an hour.'

'You don't speak?'

'Not since the first meeting. He thinks I'm from Boston and work for NBC

She buttoned her jacket and checked her hair.

'Can't lie here all day,' Romer said, slipping out of bed and padded towards the bathroom.

'I'll see you at the station,' she said, picking up her handbag and her Herald Tribune and blowing him a kiss. But when he shut the door behind him she set her bag and newspaper down and quickly checked the pockets of his jacket hanging behind the door. His wallet was plump with dollars but there was nothing else of any significance. She checked his briefcase: five different newspapers (three American, one Spanish, one Canadian), an apple, a copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and a rolled-up tie. She wasn't sure why she did this – she was convinced Romer would never leave anything interesting or confidential to be found and he never seemed to take notes – but she felt he would almost expect it of her, think she was remiss not to take advantage of the opportunity (she was sure he did it to her) and so, whenever she had a minute or two, she looked, checked and poked around.

She went downstairs to the coffee shop. It was panelled in dark brown wood and there were small booths along two walls, with red leather banquettes. She looked at the display of muffins, cakes, bagels and cookies and marvelled yet again at the profligacy and generosity of America when it came to the business of eating and drinking. She thought of the breakfast that awaited her here in the Windermere Hotel Coffee Shop and compared it with the last breakfast she had had in England, in Liverpool, before she sailed for Canada: a cup of tea, two slices of thin toast and margarine spread with watered-down raspberry jam.

She was hungry – all this sex, she thought – and ordered eggs over-easy, bacon and potatoes as the proprietor's wife filled her mug with steaming coffee.

'All the coffee you can drink, miss,' she reminded her needlessly – signs everywhere proclaimed the same largess.

'Thank you,' Eva said, more humbly and more gratefully than she meant.

She ate her breakfast hungrily, quickly and sat on in the booth, drinking another two mugs of free coffee before Wilbur Johnson appeared at the door. He was the owner-manager of Meadowville's radio station, WNLR, one of two stations that she 'ran'. She spotted him step in, hat in hand, saw his gaze sweep round to take her in, sitting in her booth, saw his gaze judder a moment, and then he wandered into the coffee shop, just another customer, all innocence, looking for somewhere to sit. Eva stood up and quit her booth, leaving her Tribune on the banquette, and went to the cash desk to pay her bill. Johnson took her seat in the booth a moment later. Eva paid, stepped outside into the October sunshine and sauntered down Market Street towards the railway station.

In the Tribune was a cyclostyled news release from a news agency called Transoceanic Press, the news agency that Eva worked for. It carried reports from German, French and Spanish newspapers of the return to La Rochelle after a successful mission of the submarine U-549, the very submarine that had, the week before, torpedoed the destroyer USS Kearny, killing eleven American sailors. The Kearny, badly damaged, had limped into Reykjavik in Iceland. Visible on the conning tower of the U-549, Eva's news flash reported, as it moored in La Rochelle, were eleven freshly painted Stars and Stripes. The listeners of WNLR would be the first to know. Wilbur Johnson, a staunch New Dealer and supporter of Roosevelt and admirer of Churchill, just happened to be married to an Englishwoman.

On the train back to New York Eva and Romer sat opposite each other. Romer was staring at her, dreamily, his head propped on a fist.

'A penny for your disgusting thoughts,' Eva said.

'When's your next trip?'

She considered: her other radio station was far upstate, in a town called Franklin Forks near Burlington, not far from the border with Canada. The manager was a taciturn Pole called Paul Witoldski who had lost several members of his family in Warsaw in 1939, hence his keen anti-Fascism – she was due another visit: she hadn't seen him for a month.

'A week or so, I suppose.'

'Make it two nights and book a double room.'

'Yes, sir.'

They rarely spent a night together in New York, there were too many people who might see or hear of it, therefore Romer preferred to accompany her on these trips out of town, to benefit from their provincial anonymity.

'What're you doing today?' she asked.

'Big meeting at head office. Interesting developments in South America, it seems… What about you?'

'I'm lunching with Angus Woolf.'

'Good old Angus. Say hello from me.'

In Manhattan the taxi dropped Romer at the Rockefeller Center – where the British Security Coordination, as it was blandly called, now occupied two full floors. Eva had been there once and had been amazed to see the number of personnel: rows of offices off corridors, secretaries, staff running around, typewriters, telephones, teleprinters – hundreds and hundreds of people, like a real business, she thought, a true espionage corporation with its headquarters in New York. She often wondered how the British government would feel if there were hundreds of American intelligence staff occupying several floors of a building in Oxford Street, say – somehow she thought the level of tolerance might be different, but the Americans had not seemed to mind, had raised no objection, and the British Security Coordination accordingly grew and grew and grew. However, Romer, ever the irregular, tried to keep his team dispersed or at arm's length from the Center. Sylvia worked there but Blytheswood was at the radio station WLUR, Angus Woolf (ex-Reuters) was now at the Overseas News Agency, and Eva and Morris Devereux ran the team of translators at Transoceanic Press, the small American news agency – a near replica of the Agence Nadal – that specialised in Hispanic and South American news releases, an agency that BSC (through American intermediaries) had quietly acquired for Romer at the end of 1940. Romer had travelled to New York in August of that year to set everything up, Eva and the team following a month later – first to Toronto in Canada before establishing themselves in New York.

Unable to pull out because of a passing bus, her taxi stalled. As the driver restarted his engine Eva turned to look through the rear window, watching Romer stride along the concourse into the main entrance of the Center. She felt a warmth for him flood her suddenly, watching his brisk progress as he dodged the shoppers and the sightseers. This is what Romer is like to the rest of the world, she thought, a little absurdly – a busy, urgent man, suited, carrying a briefcase, going into a skyscraper. She sensed her privileged intimacy, her private knowledge of her strange lover and she briefly revelled in it. Lucas Romer, who would have thought?

Angus Woolf had arranged to meet her in a restaurant on Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street. She was early and ordered a dry Martini. There was the usual small commotion at the door as Angus arrived: chairs were moved, waiters hovered, as Angus negotiated the doorway with his twisted body and splayed sticks and made determinedly for the table where Eva was waiting. He swung himself into his seat with much grunting and puffing – refusing all offers of help from the staff – and carefully hung his sticks on the back of an adjacent chair.

'Eve, my dear, you look radiant.'

Eva coloured, ridiculously, as if she were giving something away and muttered excuses about a cold coming on.

'Nonsense,' Angus said. 'You look positively splendid.'

Angus had a big handsome face on his tiny warped torso and specialised in a line of extravagant polished compliments, all uttered with a slight breathy lisp as if the effort it took to inflate and deflate his lungs were another consequence of his disability. He lit a cigarette and ordered a drink.

'Celebrating,' he said.

'Oh, yes? Are we doing well, all of a sudden?'

'I wouldn't go as far as that,' he said, 'but we managed to get an America First meeting closed in Philadelphia. Two thousand photographs of Herr Hitler found in the organisers' office. Irate denials, accusations of a set-up – but, still, a little victory. All going out on the ONA wire today if you people want to pick it up.'

Eva said they probably would. Angus asked her how life was at Transoceanic and they chatted unguardedly about work, Eva admitting to a real disappointment about the response to the Kearny attack: everyone at Transoceanic had seen it as a godsend, thought it would provoke more shock. She told Angus about her follow-up stories, all designed to stir up a little more outrage. 'But,' she said, 'no one seems that concerned, at all. German U-boat kills eleven neutral American sailors. So what?'

'They just don't want to be in our nasty European war, dear. Face it.'

They ordered T-bone steaks and fries – still two ravenous Britons – and talked circumspectly about interventionists and isolationists, of Father Coughlin and the America First Committee, pressures from London, Roosevelt's maddening inertia, and so on.

'What about our esteemed leader? Have you seen him?' Angus asked.

'This morning,' Eva said, unthinkingly. 'Going into head office.'

'I thought he was out of town.'

'He had some big meeting to go to,' she said, ignoring Angus's implication.

'I get the impression they're not very happy with him,' he said.

'They're never very happy with him,' she said, unreflectingly. 'That's how he likes it. They don't see that his being a wild card is his strength.'

'You're very loyal – I'm impressed,' Angus said, a little too knowingly.

Eva had regretted the words the minute she had uttered them – she became flustered suddenly and spoke on, instead of shutting up.

'I mean, only that he likes being challenged, you know, likes being awkward. It puts everybody on their mettle he says. He functions better that way.'

'Point taken, Eve. Steady on: no need to defend yourself. I agree.'

But she wondered if Angus suspected something and worried that her uncharacteristic volubility might have given more away. In London it had been easy to be discreet, hidden, but here in New York it had been harder to meet regularly and securely. Here they – the British – were more conspicuous and, moreover, objects of curiosity too, fighting their war against the Nazis – with, since May of this year, their new allies the Russians – while America looked on concernedly but otherwise got on with her life.

'How're things generally?' she said, wanting to change the subject. She sawed away at her steak, suddenly not quite so ravenous. Angus chewed, thinking, looking first frowningly thoughtful, then slightly troubled, as if he were a reluctant bringer of bad news. 'Things,' he said, dabbing at his mouth prissily with his napkin, 'things are pretty much as they've always been. I don't think anything will happen, to tell the truth.' He talked about Roosevelt and how he didn't dare risk putting entry to the war to the vote in Congress – he was absolutely sure that he'd lose. So everything had to remain confidential, done on the sly, backhandedly. The isolationist lobby was incredibly powerful, incredibly, Angus said. 'Keep our boys out of that European quagmire,' he said, trying and failing for a convincing American accent. 'They'll give us arms and as much help as they can – for as long as we can hold out. But you know…' He tackled his meat again.

She felt a sudden impotence, almost a demoralisation, hearing all this and wondered to herself, if this was indeed the case, what was the point of all this stuff they did: all the radio stations, the newspapers, the press agencies – all that opinion and influence out there, the stories, the column inches, the pundits, the famous broadcasters, all designed to bring America into the war, to cajole and nudge, persuade and convince – if it were not going to make Roosevelt act.

'Got to do our best, Eve,' Angus said brightly, as if he were conscious of the effect of his cynicism on her and trying to counterbalance it. 'But, short of Adolf declaring war unilaterally I can't see the Yanks joining in.' He smiled, looking pleased, as if he'd just heard he'd been given a huge raise. 'We have to face it,' he lowered his voice, glancing left and right. 'We're not exactly the most popular people in town. So many of them hate us, detest us. They hate and detest FDR too – he has to be very careful, very.'

'He just got re-elected for the third time, for God's sake.'

'Yes. On an "I'll keep us out" ticket.'

She sighed: she didn't want to feel depressed today, it had started so well. 'Romer says there are interesting developments in South America.'

'Does he, now?' Angus affected indifference but Eva could sense his interest quicken. 'Did he give you any more details?'

'No. Nothing.' Eva wondered if she had blundered again. What was happening to her today? She seemed to have lost her poise, her balance. They were all crows after all, all interested in carrion.

'Let's have another cocktail,' Angus said. 'Eat, drink and be merry – and all that.'

But Eva did feel strangely depressed after her lunch with Angus and she also continued to worry that she had given away information, subtext, hints about her and Romer – nuances that someone with Angus's agile brain would be able to turn into a plausible picture. As she walked back to the Transoceanic office, across town, crossing the great avenues – Park, Madison, Fifth – looking down the wide, unique vistas, seeing everywhere around her the hurry, chatter, noise and confidence of the city, the people, the country, she thought that maybe she too, if she had been a young American woman, a Manhattanite, happy in her work, cherishing her security, her opportunities, with all her life ahead of her – perhaps she too, however much she might sympathise and empathise with Britain and her struggle for survival, would think: why should I sacrifice all this, risk the lives of our young men, to become involved in some sordid and deadly war taking place 3,000 miles away?

Back at Transoceanic she found Morris busy with the Czech and Spanish translators. He waved at her and she went to her office, thinking that there seemed to be every kind of community in the United States – Irish, Hispanic, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, and so on – but no British community. Where were the British-Americans? Who was going to put their case to counter the arguments of the Irish-Americans, the German-Americans, the Swedish-Americans and all the others?

To cheer herself up and to deflect her mind from these defeatist thoughts, she spent the afternoon compiling a small dossier on one of her stories. Three weeks previously, in a feigned-tipsy conversation with the Tass New York correspondent (her Russian suddenly very useful), she had let slip that the Royal Navy was completing trials on a new form of depth charge – the deeper it went the more powerful it became: there would be no hiding place for submarines. The Tass correspondent was very sceptical. Two days later, Angus – through the offices of ONA – covertly placed the story with the New York Post. The Tass correspondent phoned to apologise and said he was cabling the story back to Moscow. When it appeared in Russian newspapers, British newspapers and news agencies picked it up and the news agencies cabled the story back to the USA. Full circle: she ranged the clippings on her desk – the Daily News, the Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe. 'New deadlier depth charge to obliterate U-boat menace'. The Germans would read it now, now that it was an American story. Maybe U-boats would be instructed to be more cautious as they approached convoys. Maybe German submariners would be demoralised. Maybe the Americans would root for the plucky Britons a little bit more. Maybe, maybe… According to Angus it was all a waste of time.

A few days later Morris Devereux came into her office at Transoceanic and handed her a cutting from the Washington Post. It was headlined: 'Russian professor commits suicide in DC hotel'. She skimmed through it quickly: the Russian's name was Aleksandr Nekich. He had emigrated to the USA in 1938 with his wife and two daughters and had been an associate professor of international politics at Johns Hopkins University. Police were mystified as to why he should have killed himself in a clearly low-rent hotel.

'Means nothing to me,' Eva said.

'Ever heard of him?'

'No.'

'Did your friends at Tass ever talk about him?'

'No. But I could ask them.' There was something about the tone of Morris's questioning that was untypical. Something hard had replaced the debonair manner.

'Why's it important?' she asked.

Morris sat down and seemed to relax a little. Nekich, he explained, was a senior NKVD officer who had defected to the States after Stalin's purges in 1937.

'They made him a professor for form's sake – he never taught at all. Apparently he's a mine of information – was a mine of information – about Soviet penetration here in the US…' he paused. 'And in Britain. Which is why we were rather interested in him.'

'I thought we were all on the same side now,' Eva said, knowing how naive she sounded.

'Well, we are. But look at us; what're we doing here?'

'Once a crow always a crow.'

'Exactly. You're always interested in what your friends are up to.'

A thought struck her. 'Why are you concerned about this dead Russian? Not your beat, is it?'

Morris took back the clipping. 'I was meant to meet him next week. He was going to tell us about what had happened in England. The Americans had got everything they wanted out of him – apparently he had some very interesting news for us.'

'Too late?'

'Yes… very inconvenient.'

'What do you mean.'

'I would say it looked like somebody didn't want him to talk to us.'

'So he committed suicide.'

He gave a little chuckle. 'They're bloody good, these Russians,' he said. 'Nekich shot himself in the head in a locked hotel room, gun in his hand, the key still in the lock, the windows bolted. But when it looks like a hard-and-fast, grade-A, genuine suicide it usually ain't.'

Eva was thinking: why is he telling me all this?

'They'd been after him since 1938,' Morris went on. 'And they got him. Shame they hadn't waited an extra week…' He gave a mock-rueful smile. 'I was quite looking forward to my encounter with Mr Nekich.'

Eva said nothing. This was all new to her: she wondered if Romer was involved with these meetings. As far as she was concerned Morris and she were only meant to be preoccupied with Transoceanic. But then, she thought – what do I know?

'The Tass people haven't mentioned any new faces in town?'

'Not to me.'

'Do me a favour, Eve – make a few calls to your Russian friends – see what the word is on Nekich's death.'

'All right. But they're just journalists.'

'Nobody's "just" anything.'

'Romer's rule.'

He snapped his fingers and stood up. 'Your "German naval manoeuvres off Buenos Aires" story is doing well. All of South America very angry, protests all over.'

'Good,' she said flatly. 'Every little helps, I suppose.'

'Cheer up, Eve. By the way – the lord above wants to see you. Eldorado diner in fifteen minutes.'

Eva waited in the diner for an hour before Romer turned up. She found these professional encounters very strange: she wanted to kiss him, touch his face, hold his hands, but they had to observe the most formal of courtesies.

'Sorry I'm late,' he said, sitting down opposite. 'You know – it's the first time in New York, but I think I had a shadow. Maybe two. I had to go into the park to be sure I'd lost them.'

'Who would put shadows on you?' She stretched her leg out under the table and rubbed his calf with the toe of her shoe.

'FBI.' Romer smiled at her. 'I think Hoover's getting worried about how large we've grown. You've seen BSC. Frankenstein's monster. You'd better stop that, by the way, you'll get me excited.'

He ordered a coffee; Eva had another Pepsi-Cola.

'I've got a job for you,' he said.

She covered her mouth with her fingers and said softly, 'Lucas… I want to see you.'

Romer looked fixedly at her; she sat up straight. 'I want you to go to Washington,' he said. 'I want you to get to know a man there called Mason Harding. He works in Harry Hopkins's press office.'

She knew who Harry Hopkins was – Roosevelt's right-hand man. Secretary of Commerce, notionally, but, in reality, FDR's adviser, envoy, fixer, eyes and ears. Quite probably the second most important man in America – as far as the British were concerned.

'So I have to get to know this Mason Harding. Why?'

'Approach the press office – say you want to interview Hopkins for Transoceanic. They'll probably say no – but, who knows? You might meet Hopkins. But the key thing is to get to know Harding.'

'What then?'

'I'll tell you.'

She felt that little flutter of pleasurable anticipation; it was the same as when Romer had sent her into Prenslo. The strange thought came to her: maybe I was always destined to be a spy?

'When do I go?'

'Tomorrow. Make your appointments today.' He passed her a scrap of paper with a Washington telephone number on it. 'That's Harding's personal line. Find a nice hotel. Maybe I'll pop down and visit. Washington's an interesting town.'

Mention of the name reminded her of Morris's questions.

'Do you know anything about this Nekich killing?'

There was the briefest pause. 'Who told you about that?'

'It was written up in the Washington Post. Morris was asking me about it – if my Tass friends had anything to say.'

'What's it got to do with Morris?'

'I don't know.'

She could practically hear his brain working. His mind had spotted some link, some connection, some congruence that seemed odd to him. His face changed: his lips pouted then made a kind of grimace.

'Why should Morris Devereux be interested in an NKVD assassination?'

'So it was an assassination – not a suicide.' She shrugged. 'He said he was due to meet this man – Nekich.'

'Are you sure?' She could see that Romer found this unusual. 'I was meant to meet him.'

'Maybe you both were. That's what he told me.'

'I'll give him a call. Look, I'd better go.' He leant forward. 'Call me once you've made contact with Harding.' He raised his coffee-cup to his lips and spoke over the rim and mouthed something at her, an endearment, she hoped but she couldn't make it out. Always cover your mouth when you have something important to convey – another Romer rule – against lip-readers. 'We'll call it Operation Eldorado,' he said. 'Harding is "Gold".' He put his cup down and went to pay the bill.