The Conduct of Major Maxim

Chapter 19

The house was part of a terrace, narrow and rising four stories from the level of the semi-private road running alongside Kensington High Street. Victorian, of course, but if you spend sixty-four years on the throne then a lot of building styles are going to be named after you. There was no entryphone, just a column of assorted bellpushes and their faded name-cards. It would be a long walk down for whoever had the top flat. Agnes found a card lettered neatlypfaffinger and pushed the bell.

She had just pressed it a second time when she heard a faint voice above the High Street traffic. A small head was poking out of the topmost window.

"I'm Algar!" she yelled up. "I rang you!"

The head ducked back and out again, and a crumpled piece of paper fell fast to the pavement. It was a brown envelope with a Yale key inside. Certainly cheaper than an entryphone.

Leni was waiting at the foot of the last flight of stairs, which was partitioned off to give her a flimsy front door of her own. Despite the thick skirt and cardigan, Agnes was surprised at the delicate frailness of her, like one of those rather coy Parian ware figurines, and with much the same over-large blue eyes. They went on up.

"Would you like some coffee? It will only be a moment."

"Very much. Thank you." Agnes sat down gingerly on a worn green velvet wing chair. The room was low-ceilinged, comfortable, long-lived in. Sagging plank bookshelves covered most of the walls, with papers and magazines scattered over all the flat surfaces. From atop one pile on the desk under the window, a very fat long-haired black cat gazed impassively at Agnes.

Leni came back with the coffee and poured it into twonon-matching teacups. It was real and freshly made.

"Are you really from the Security Service? A young girl like you?"

"Of course. " Agnes reached for her bag.

"No, no. I believe you. But why? Can you tell me why?"

"It's a living. " No, that was too flip for this shrewd little old lady. "I like it and I'm good at it. "

Leni smiled quickly, thenjust sat, very upright as if setting a good example, and seemed to be thinking something out. "Two other men came: were they from your service? They said they were attached to the Ministry of Defence – that's what you usually say, isn't it?"

"We have a card that says that. Do you want to… "

"No, they didn't show me their cards. But is it still true you only recruit people who are born British?"

Forty years of political broadcasting and handling refugees had probably given Leni as good a sense of how the twilight world worked as Agnes had herself.

"That's broadly true, yes."

"These men were German. At times we spoke German, it was easier for them."

"What did they want?"

"The same as you: to talk about Mina."

"Did they know she was alive, in this country?"

Leni hesitated. "Are you sure she is?"

"Oh yes. She came to visit you a week ago, at Bush House. She was issued with a security pass in the name of Linnarz." That was true, and if it suggested they had been alerted by the security pass and not by a friend in the underpaid BBC World Service, then so much the better.

"Look," Agnes went on, "these people werenot from my service. I'd like you to be quite sure that I'm who I say I am. I can get anybody you name at the BBC to talk to my office and then vouch for me. "

"I believe you. But who were the men?" 'I hope they were from our Intelligence Service, playing silly tricks. If not, then God help us. And Mina."

"You're saying that just to frighten me."

Agnes waited, sipping her coffee.

"I'm sorry,"Leni said. "That was silly, like a radio play." For her, radio was too serious for plays.

"When did they come?"

"On… on Friday."

"What did you tell them?"

"They knew I had seen Mina, too. How did they know?"

Agnes shook her head helplessly, but knew that Guy Husband would also have his contacts at Bush House. Most likely the SSD had a friend in need, too. "Did you tell them where Mina lives now?"

"Oh no. She didn't tell me. "

Agnes smiled and put her cup carefully down on an uneven surfaceof Der Spiegelsand Encounters. "Good. Can you tell me something about Mina?-just talk about her. How you met her, how she got on when she first came over here…"

"You must have it all in your files. "

"We have a lot of paper in our files. I rather prefer people. "

They had met a few days after Mina had stood up at the end of a recital in the Usher Hall at Edinburgh to announce that she would very much like to stay here in England (a tiny mistake the Scots reporters had kindly ignored) rather than return to East Germany. In the early 1950s every defection by either side was exploited like a battle won. The Home Office granted her political asylum with uncharacteristic haste and from then on she was interviewed constantly by every newspaper and radio network represented in Britain – including, of course, the BBC's German language service, which was aimed directly at the East Zone.

Leni had taken pity – more than pity – on the young woman who was so grateful for a friendly German voice and so bemused by the political carnival she had unleashed. Leni soon realised that Mina had defected simply to join the Hollywood dream that the East Berlin loudspeakers were always denouncing. She merely wanted to be whisked from luxury hotel to draught-free concert hall in a big limousine, there to play to an attentive, elegant audience and be driven away again surrounded byencores and orchids. This wasn't selfishness or greed, just a feeling that it was due. She had no idea, Leni was certain, that she had even harmed her brother's career, letalone collapsed it. He had his ships and politics, she had her piano which she had practised for over twenty years, so now let the dream come true.

And for a few years it hadjust about done so. Looking back, nobody could now say how much of her success was due to her defection and how much to her playing. She had made only one recording for posterity to judge her by, and that was of Chopin, never her strongest point. She toured Britain and West Europe, she broadcast constantly – but she preferred recitals to the teamwork of symphonies, so never got taken up by one conductor, and in the long run that can be very important. Her agent – perhaps he wasn't the best in the world – never got her an American tour which, again, might have made all the difference. But probably the biggest shock, Leni thought, was the unexpected competitiveness of the top musicians in the West. In the East you worked, you were paid, there was no need to compete and no reward for it. In London, some of the stories about what pianists would do to secure a tour, a recording contract, a broadcast, had left Mina shattered. The Dream was real, but so were some of the things the Berlin loudspeakers had said about it.

Her career dwindled gently. She took to spending more time at Bush House, playing for very little except the chance to gossip in her native language. Oddly, she had never shown much interest in touring in West Germany – perhaps she was scared to go that close to the border – and had not even taken out a West German passport, to which she was automatically entitled. She lived day to day, as dear Mina always had – or rather, year to year, on a British Certificate of Identity renewed annually.

Agnes knew that already. "She never married?" She knew that, too, but preferred to imply that she hadn't seen the files.

"She went out with some men, yes, when she was here. She was not… not abnormal. But she talked about a boy she had loved in the war and who had been killed. That happened often enough, God knows. And then looking after Gustav's boy, I think after that she wanted a life for herself. Then she went to South Africa. No, she went on a Commonwealth tour, but it was in South Africa that she had her new success, and shestayed on there. She wrote to us about it, it was like the first days in Britain except the weather was much better. She sent us some notices of her recitals…"Leni smiled wistfully; "… and then we heard nothing. I thought… perhaps I thought she was dead."

"Did she marry out there?"

Leni didn't answer, didn't look at Agnes, just sat with her hands held primly in her lap. The big cat climbed stiffly down off the desk and squatted on a box of cat-sand under a corner table, staring straight ahead with a sublime conviction that it was invisible.

Agnes said: "She must have got some new identity. Her British certificate hasn't been renewed for twenty years."

Leni got up briskly and sprayed around the cat-box with an air-freshener. "Oh yes, she did get married."

That was all it took. Given a new name, she got a new nationality, new passport – a new life that was far more fundamental a change than she had managedjust by defecting. It is much easier to vanish than most people realise, particularly if you're a woman and ready to cut yourself off from family and friends – most of which Mina had already done by coming West.

"She told you this last week?"

"Yes…"Leni hesitated; "… yes, she told me then."

"Was he British?"

"I… I suppose he must have been, to bring her back here. "

That 'suppose' seemed a bit odd. "Can you tell me his "1" name?

The delicate face was lined with anguish. "But why do you want to know?"

"Because others want to know. I suppose that's the best answer. And merely because you didn't tell them her new name and address doesn't mean to say they'll stop looking."

"She didn't tell me."

There was one last hope of invisibility, as dignified as the cat's, although this time for her friend. And maybe a little shame that Agnes had to dispel.

"I know that," she said gently. "But somebody who cares as much as you do, you'd want to know." She waited, but Leni stayed obstinately silent. "She, played the piano for you, one last time. The men who came to see you, they wouldn't think of somebody having to empty their pockets before they play the piano – but that's really what a woman does, isn't it? She puts her bag down, somewhere aside, not on top of a grand piano, with her new name and address inside…"