Spy Line

17

It was easy to know when Dicky was having a new love affair. I suppose it is easy for the casual observer to know when any husband is having a new love affair. There was that tiger look in his eye, that stiffened sinew and summoned-up blood that Shakespeare associated with Mars rather than Venus. His detailed evaluation of expensive restaurants had become even more rigorous. The plats du jour of some of the favoured ones were sent to him each morning on the fax. And there were jokes.

'Ye Gods, Bernard! As far as ethnic food goes – the less authentic the better!' He looked at the fingernail he'd been biting and gave it another brief nibble.

He'd been striding around his office, pausing sometimes to look out of the window. He was jacketless, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, a dark blue shirt and a white silk bow tie. His shoes were black patent leather of a design that simulated alligator hide.

Dicky had mentioned his planned weekend in Berlin several times. He said he was 'mixing business with pleasure' but then immediately changed the topic of conversation by asking me if it would be a good idea if Pinky came to work here in London. I found the idea appalling but I didn't say so. Answering that sort of question in London Central was fraught with dangers. Almost everyone here was related to, or at school with, someone else in the building. It could easily turn out that Pinky was Dicky's distant cousin or shared nannies with the D-G's son-in-law, or some such connection. 'Fiona said she couldn't spell,' I told him.

'Spell!' said Dicky, and gave one of those little hoots of laughter that indicated how ingenuous I was. 'Even I can't spell properly,' he said, as if that clinched the matter for all time.

I felt like saying, well, you can't bloody well do anything properly, but I just smiled and inquired whether Pinky was asking for a transfer.

'Not officially, but she was at school with your sister-in-law.' A tiny smile. 'It was Tessa who mentioned it to me, actually.' When I didn't react Dicky added, 'At my dinner party.'

'It's a small world,' I said.

'It is,' said Dicky. There was an audible sigh of relief in his voice as if he'd been trying to make me admit to that fact all the morning. 'And strictly between the two of us, Tessa is also going to be in Berlin next weekend.'

'Is she?'

'Yes,' he ran a fingertip around his mouth as if showing me where it was. 'As a matter of fact, she…' He looked at his watch. 'Look here, can you hang on for a cup of coffee?'

'Yes, thanks.' I'd enjoyed many cups of coffee with Dicky in his office but that didn't mean that the Kaffeeklatsch was part of his everyday routine. Dicky usually cloistered himself away from the hurly-burly to have his coffee. It was, he said, a time for him to wrestle with his thoughts, to struggle with difficult ideas, a time to confront his innermost self. Invitations to join him in his spiritual melee were not extended lightly or without thought of recoupment. I can truly say that most of the worst experiences of my life sprang from some notion, order, favour or plan that I first encountered over a cup of Dicky's wonderful coffee.

With coffee Dicky smoked a cheroot. It was a bad habit, smoking – a poison really – he was trying to cut himself down to three a day. I suppose that's why he didn't offer one to me.

'The fact is…'started Dicky, sitting back in his swing-chair, coffee in one hand and cigar in the other, 'that is to say, an important detail of next week's trip is that I need your help and cooperation.'

'Oh, yes?' I said. This was an entirely new line for Dicky, who had always denied his need for anyone's help or cooperation.

'You know how much I depend upon you, Bernard.' He swivelled an inch or two from side to side but didn't spill his coffee. 'Always could: always can.'

I found myself looking for the fire escape. 'No,' I said, 'I didn't realize that.'

Delicately Dicky placed his cigar in the cut-glass ashtray and used his free hand to tug at one end of his bow tie so that it came unknotted. On the wall behind him there was a framed colour photo of Dicky and the D-G in Calcutta. They were standing at a stall offering a huge array of crude portrait posters. Lithographs of famous people from the Ayatollah and all the Marxes to Jesus Christ and Laurel and Hardy surrounded Dicky and his boss. They were all looking straight ahead: except Dicky. He was looking at the D-G.

'I don't want to hurt Daphne,' said Dicky, as if suddenly deciding upon a new approach. 'You understand…'

He left it there and looked at me. By now I was beginning to guess what was coming, but I wasn't going to make it easy for him. And I wanted time to think. 'What is it, Dicky?' I said, sipping my coffee and pretending not to be giving him my whole attention.

'Man to man, Bernard, old sport. You see what I mean?'

'You want me to go instead?'

'For God's sake, Bernard. You can be dense at times.' He puffed at his cigar. 'No, I'm taking Tessa.' A pause. 'I've promised and I'll have to go through with it.' He added this rider woefully as if a call of duty prevailed over his personal wishes. But then he fixed his eye on me, and, with a quick glance towards the door to be sure he wasn't overheard, he said, 'For the weekend!' He said it fiercely, through almost gritted teeth, as if my failure to understand was about to cause him to run amok.

'We all go? Gloria too?'

He shot to his feet as if scalded and came round to where I was sitting. 'No, Bernard; no, Bernard; no, Bernard. No!'

'What then?'

'You come along. You stay at Tante Lisl's but for all practical purposes you are in the hotel suite with Tessa.'

'For all practical purposes? Surely for all practical purposes you will be there with Tessa.'

I'm not in the mood for your bloody comedy,' he barked. But then, remembering that I was designated to fulfil an indispensable role in his curious scenario, he became calm and friendly again. 'You check into the hotel. Okay?' He was standing by the lion's skin rug and now he gave the head of it an affectionate little kick with the toe of his shiny patent leather shoe. He'd always been an animal lover.

I said, 'If it's just the propriety of it, why don't you check in under an assumed name?'

He became huffy. 'Because I don't care to do that,' he said.

'Or get Werner to let you have a room at Lisl's?'

I watched his face with interest. I don't think even Lisl herself would put the hotel high on a list of Berlin accommodation suitable for a lovers' tryst.

'Jesus Christ! Are you mad?' I saw then that he was nervous. He was frightened that the desk clerk at some big hotel would challenge him in some way and he'd be revealed not just as an adulterer but as a bungling adulterer. Certainly Tessa in such a situation would not make it easy for him. She'd revel in it and make the most of it. 'Lisl's,' he said. 'What a thought.'

He chewed a nail. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at this aspect of Dicky. I'd discovered long ago that womanizers like him are often uneasy and incapable when faced with the minor logistics of such adventures: hotel bookings, plane tickets, car rentals. The sort of man who will boast of his doings to all comers at his club will go to absurd lengths in attempts to deceive the concierge, the waiters or the room maid. Perhaps that's why they do it.

'Well,' I said. 'You won't…'

He cut me short. He wasn't going to let me give him a negative reply. Dicky was a grandmaster at squeezing the right sort of replies from people. Now would come the softening up: a barrage of incontrovertible platitudes. 'Your sister-in-law is one of the most remarkable women I've ever met, Bernard. Glorious!'

'Yes,' I said.

He poured more coffee for me without asking if I wanted it. Cream too. 'And your wife of course,' he added. 'Two truly extraordinary women: brainy, beautiful and with compelling charm.'

'Yes,' I said.

'Fiona took the wrong road of course. But that can happen to anyone.' By Dicky's standards this was an astonishingly indulgent attitude to human frailty. Perhaps he saw that in my face, for he immediately added, 'Or almost anyone.'

'Yes, almost anyone.'

'Daphne is astonishing too,' said Dicky, delivering this accolade with distinctly less emphasis. 'Creative, artistic.'

'And hard-working,' I said.

He was less sure of that. 'Well, yes, I suppose she is.'

'Daphne was in good form the other night,' I said. 'Did I thank you for dinner?'

'Gloria wrote.'

'Oh, good.'

'I only wish I could give Daphne the sort of support and encouragement she needs,' said Dicky. 'But she lives on a mountain top.' He looked at me. I nodded. He said, 'Artists are all like that: creative people. They live in harmony with nature. But it's not so easy for those around them.'

'Oh, really? What form does this take? In Daphne's case, I mean?'

'She's only truly happy when she's painting. She told me that. She has to have time to herself. She spends hours up in her studio. I encourage her, of course. It's the least I can do for her.'

'You won't find Tessa needs any time to herself,' I said.

He smiled nervously. 'No. Tessa is like me: very much a social animal.'

'May I ask why you are going to Berlin?'

'Why we are going,' Dicky corrected me. 'You'll have to come along, Bernard. No matter what reservations you may nurture about my peccadilloes… No, no.' He raised a hand as if warding off my interjections but in fact I had not moved. 'No, I understand your reservations. Far be it from me to persuade any man to do something against his conscience. You know how I feel about that kind of thing.'

'I didn't say it was against my conscience.'

'Ahh!'

'It's not against my conscience, it's against the German legal code. The old German law, that made incest a crime, still applies in the case of a man committing adultery with his sister-in-law.'

'I've never heard of that,' said Dicky, suspecting, rightly, that I was inventing this historic clause on the spur of the moment. 'Are you sure?'

I turned slightly towards the phone on his table and said, 'I can get someone in the legal department to look it up for you.'

'No,' said Dicky. 'Don't do that for the moment. I might go downstairs and look it up myself.'

I said, 'You didn't explain why I had to go.'

'To Berlin? It has been ordained that you, me and Frank Harrington have a pow-wow in Big B to go through some damned stuff the Americans want.'

'Can't it wait?'

'Written instructions from the D-G himself. No way to wriggle out of that one, Gunga Din.'

'And you're taking Tessa?'

'Yes. She has these bonus tickets that airlines give to first-class passengers who fly a great deal. She has to use up the free mileage.'

'So you don't have to pay Tessa's fare?'

'It was too good an opportunity to turn away.'

'I suppose it was.'

'I should have married someone like Tessa, I suppose,' said Dicky.

I noticed it wasn't Tessa's unique attractions he wanted but only someone in her category. Whether this left Daphne wanting in brains, wealth, beauty, chic, charm or sexual performance was left unspecified. 'Tessa is already married,' I said.

'Don't be so priggish, Bernard. Tessa is a grown-up woman. She's sensible enough to decide these things for herself.'

'When is this meeting?'

'Frank is being difficult about precise times. We have to fit in around his golf and bridge and his jaunts with his army cronies.'

'You've booked the hotel?'

'They get so full at this time of year,' said Dicky.

I heard a defensive tone in his voice. On a hunch I said, 'Have you booked it in my name?'

'Yes…' Momentarily he was flustered, but he recovered quickly. 'I told the hotel that we are not yet sure who will be using the suite. They think we are a company.'

I was damned angry but Dicky had played his cards with customary finesse. I couldn't see anything specific that I could complain about that Dicky wouldn't be able to explain away. 'When do we leave?'

'Friday. Tessa insists on going to some bloody opera that's only on that night. Pinky is arranging the tickets. I'm hoping for a preliminary meeting with Frank and his people on Friday afternoon. We should be through by Monday evening. Tuesday evening at the latest.'

There goes my weekend with Gloria and the children. Dicky saw my face and said, 'You'll have days off to make up for the loss of the weekend.'

'Yes, of course,' I said, although it wasn't much fun to be monitoring the weeds in the garden, and fixing my own lunch, while the children were at school and Gloria was slaving in the office.

'You're getting to be very surly lately,' Dicky observed while he was pouring the last of the coffee for himself. 'Don't fly off the handle: I'm just telling you that for your own good.'

'You're very considerate, Dicky.'

'I can't understand you,' Dicky persisted. 'You've got that gorgeous creature doting on you and still you go around with a long face. What's the problem? Tell me, Bernard, what is the problem?' Although the words were arranged like questions, Dicky made it quite clear from his tone and delivery that he didn't want an answer.

I nodded. It was best to nod with Dicky. Like the Japanese he framed his questions in the expectation of affirmative responses.

'Brooding won't bring Fiona back. You must pull yourself together, Bernard.' He gave me a 'chins up' smile.

I felt like telling Dicky exactly what I thought about him and his plan to implement me in the cuckolding of George but he wouldn't have understood the reasons for my anger. I nodded and left.

At the end of the working day I drove homeward with Gloria but we didn't go directly to number thirteen Balaklava Road. She said she wanted to collect some clothes from her parents' home. The actual reason for the visit was that she'd promised to look in and see the house was safe while they were away on holiday. They lived in a smart, burglar-afflicted suburb near Epsom, a few stations beyond us on the Southern Railway's commuter routes.

The Kents – her parents had changed their name after escaping from Hungary – lived in a four-bedroom double-glazed neo-Tudor house with a gravel 'in and out' front drive on which their two cars could be parked and still leave room enough for the tanker that delivered their heating oil.

This evening the front drive was empty, the cars locked away. Her parents were spending ten days at their holiday villa in Spain. Gloria went through an elaborate routine of unlocking doors and switching off burglar alarms within the prescribed sixty seconds. Then we went inside.

The house smelled of a syrupy perfume resembling violets. Gloria said their cleaning woman was coming in every morning and systematically 'shampooing' the carpets. 'I'll make you a cup of coffee,' she suggested. I agreed. It was interesting to watch her in her parents' home. She became a different person: not a more diffident or childlike one, but vicariously proprietorial, as if she were a real estate clerk showing the house to a prospective purchaser.

We sat in the kitchen. It was a designer kitchen: Marie-Antoinette at her most rustic. We sat on uncomfortable stools at a plastic Louis Seize counter and watched the coffee dripping through the machine. The overhead light – bleak and blue – came from two long fluorescent tubes which buzzed.

It gave me a chance to look at her. All day she'd been her usual warm and good-natured self. It was almost as if she'd forgotten yesterday's clash. But she hadn't. She didn't forget anything. How beautiful she was, with all that energy and radiance that is the prerogative of youth. No wonder people such as Dicky envied me. Had they realized that Fiona would soon be returning perhaps they would have envied me even more. But for me it was a miserable dilemma. I couldn't look at Gloria without wondering if I was going to be able to handle the personal crisis that Fiona's return would bring. The idea of Fiona being kept in deep cover for six months made it even more irresolvable. And what about the children?

'I don't think you've been listening to a word of what I've said,' I suddenly heard Gloria say.

'Of course I have,' and with an inspired evasion tactic I added, 'Did I tell you who Dicky is going to Berlin with?'

'No.' Her eyes were wide open. She swung her blonde hair back and held it as she leaned very close so that I was conscious of the warmth of her body. She was wearing a crimson shirt dress. On most women it would have looked awful but she brought a dash to such cheap bright clothes, just as small children so often do.

'Tessa,' I said.

'Your Tessa?'

'My sister-in-law. Yes.'

'So Tessa is up to her old tricks. I thought the affair with Dicky was over long ago.'

'Yes. That's been puzzling me too.'

'It's hardly a puzzle, darling. People like Dicky, and Tessa too, are capricious.'

'But Dicky was warned off last time.'

'Warned off seeing Tessa? By Daphne, you mean?'

'No. The Department didn't like it. Clandestine meetings with the sister of a defector looked like a potential security risk.'

I'm surprised Dicky took any notice.'

'You shouldn't be. Dicky may wear funny bow ties and play the Bohemian student, but he knows exactly how far to go. When the bugle sounds and the medals are being awarded he toes the line and salutes.'

'Except when it comes to Tessa you mean. Perhaps it's love.'

'Not Dicky.'

'So perhaps he's had official permission to bed Tessa,' she joked.

'That's what it must be,' I agreed, and not long afterwards I was to reflect upon her joke. 'Perhaps what Dicky found irresistible was not having to pay her fare.'

'What a swine he is. Poor Daphne.' She poured the coffee and, in a dented biscuit tin, discovered a secret supply of chocolate biscuits.

'And he's booked his hotel in my name. What about that?'

She took it very calmly. 'Why?'

'I suppose he's going to tell Daphne some story about me going off with Tessa.'

'But you're not going?'

'I'm afraid I am.'

'The weekend?' I nodded. She said, 'I told the Pomeroys to come to dinner on Saturday.'

'Who the hell are the Pomeroys?'

'The parents of Billy's friends. The children were eating with them last night. They are terribly kind.'

'You'll have to put them off,' I said.

'I've put them off twice before when you went on trips.'

'It's an order from the D-G. You know what that means. There's no way I can get out of it.'

'The weekend?'

'I go on Friday morning; back on Monday or Tuesday. Dicky's secretary will know what's happening over there.'

'And on Sunday there's Billy's car club meeting. I said you'd take him.'

'Look! It's not my idea, darling.'

For a long time she drank her coffee without speaking. Then she said, 'I know it's not,' as if responding to some other question that only she knew about. 'But you said there was going to be a party at Werner's hotel. I know you wanted to go.'

'It's just to promote the hotel. We'll go some other time. They are always having parties, and anyway it would be no fun without you.'

After the coffee I went with her to the room she had when living here with her parents. They kept it for her as if they were expecting her every night. Toys, teddy bear, dolls, children's books, school books, a Beatles poster on the wall. The bed had been made up with freshly laundered linen. Taking her away from them was my doing and there were times when I felt bad about it. And I hadn't even married her. How would I feel if some time my daughter Sally disappeared with some middle-aged married man? Sometimes I wondered how I would be able to deal with the inevitable separation from the children. Would I find myself keeping their bedrooms as shrines at which I could pray for a return of their childhood days with me?

Looking out from the bedroom window I could see the flat roof of a large single-story building that had been added to the house. Seeing me looking at it, Gloria said, 'I cried when they ruined my view of the garden. There was a lovely chestnut tree there and a rhododendron.'

'Why did you need extra space?'

'It's a surgery and workshop for Daddy.'

'I thought he had a surgery in town.'

'This is for special jobs. Didn't you know?'

'Why would I know?'

'Want to see? It's where he does work for the Department.'

'What kind of work?'

'Come and see.'

She got the big bunch of keys that her father had left with her and we went down into the neat little dental surgery. She opened the door, and while she searched for the light switches the room was only lit from a glass box in the corner where tropical flowers appeared under ultraviolet lights. When she switched on the light, apart from seeming unusually cramped with apparatus, it was like any other dentist's workplace: a modern fully adjustable chair and elaborate drill facing a large window. There was a big ceramic spittoon, a swivelling cold-light and many glass-fronted instrument cabinets, packed with rows and rows of curiously shaped drills, forceps, sealers and other spiky implements.

Gloria went round the room naming the equipment and describing what it was for. She seemed to know a lot about dentistry despite having resisted her father's wish that she should become one. This she said was her father's secret sanctum.

'Who comes here for treatment?' I asked.

'Not so many nowadays, but I can remember a time when Daddy worked more hours here than at his proper surgery. I remember one poor Polish boy who was in the chair for at least six hours. He was so exhausted that Daddy let him come and sit in the drawing room with Mummy and me, to take his mind off things.'

'Agents?'

'Yes, of course. At university, Daddy wrote a thesis on the history of European dentistry. After that he began his collection of old dental tools. Now he can look into anyone's mouth and know where they had their teeth fixed, and when. Look at that.' She held up a particularly barbarous-looking instrument. 'It's very old… from Russia.'

'I was lucky,' I said. 'My teeth were always fixed by a Berlin dentist and my cover story was always German. I didn't have to have any of my dental work changed.'

'I've known my father to completely eliminate all previous dentistry to give an agent a completely new mouth: Russian, Polish, Greek… Once he did old-fashioned Spanish dental work for a man who was going to be using the identity of a Civil War veteran.

'Come and look at the workshop.' She unlocked the door of an adjoining room and we went inside. This was even more cramped, with filing cabinets and racks of tools and equipment. There was a tiny lathe, a bench drill and even a small electric kiln. On a large table near the window there was the work in progress. A desk light was centred upon something concealed under a cloth. Gloria removed the cotton dust-cloth and gave a little shriek as a human skull was revealed. 'Alas, poor Yorick! We mustn't touch it. It's probably a demonstration piece that will be photographed for a textbook. He does replicas of old dentistry and sends them as examples to police pathologists and coroner's departments all over the world. This one must be a special job, from the way he's covered it over so carefully.'

I went closer to look at the skull. It was shiny, like plastic, and there were gold inlays and porcelain crowns fitted into it. 'Did you never want to be a dentist?'

'Never. And Daddy was always so considerate that he never really pressed the idea on to me. It was only recently that I realized how much he'd always hoped I'd become interested in his practice, and his collection. Sometimes he had students work with him. Once I remember he brought a young newly qualified dentist home for dinner. I've often wondered if he was hoping that a romance would blossom.'

'Let's lock up and go home,' I said. 'Shall we take some fish and chips back for everyone?'

'Do let's.'

'I'm sorry if I've been a bit bad-tempered lately, darling.'

'I haven't noticed any difference,' she said.