The Crocus List

28

Agnes made no pretence of escaping any following car by 'accident'. Being a skilled driver, particularly in towns, was part of her job, but the only skill she displayed that evening was in not actually hitting anything. After making unsignalled turns and abrupt lane changes through Chevy Chase and Bethesda, she blasted to a highly illegal speed south on the Beltway, ducked off it, rejoined a few miles along and finally came down to a leisurely cruise through the Virginia countryside.

Maxim knew her driving well enough to be relaxed about it, and spent his time folding and refolding a road map. Finally Agnes said: "Dostop it, Harry. / know where we are. Just trust me."

"It isn't that. I just hate not being able to put my finger on a map and say, 'I'm there.' "

"Oh Lord. I suppose that's the soldier in you."

"Be thankful I'm not a Gunner: I'd've brought my theodolite along and surveyed us down to the inch every five minutes."

"A small mercy, I suppose. Where we are, however, is south-west of Alexandria. From here it's a pretty direct route back to National Airport tomorrow. Happy now?"

"Yes." But she noticed he didn't put the map away until he'd located himself precisely.

They registered as Mr and Mrs Alan J. Winterbotham, although the motel clerk was more interested in the car's licence plate.

"That's America for you, " Agnes said, shaking out her hastily packed clothes. "If you aren't on wheels, you must be on the skids. Some states even issue a non-driver's licence: it actually says This Is Not A Driver's Licence, because you need something for identification. I thought you handled that well, Mr Winterbotham. Anybody would think you'd spent your life checking unmarried ladies into motels."

Maxim looked back expressionless, knowing she was babbling from nervousness, knowing his own stolid attitude was nervousness, too. The motel was made up of separate cabins, wide-spaced and private among trees-but more to the point, the cabin had its own phone extension and twin beds.

"I'm going to have a bath," Agnes announced. "You'd better ring your hotel and leave this number there. If Jerry Lomax or anybody tries to get hold of you… I'll ring my office in the morning. "

She spent a long time in the bathroom. When she came back in her long nightdress, Maxim was in the bed by the window, bare-shouldered and riffling through a handful of motel pamphlets.

She hopped into her own bed. "Are you reading?"

"This stuff?"

She snapped off the light between the beds and lay listening to the night. It was quiet except for the murmur of the highway a mile off. After a time, she said: "You did all right, back there… followed the rules."

"I didn't follow you very far."

"I told you: I took a risk. Sorry. I just wanted to make the point that the rules aren't everything… it's an attitude. If you're going to be Winterbotham out there, think about him. Not just job, address, past history-get into the habit of thinking Why am I Aere? Where have I come from? Where am I going next? Have a reasonable answer ready at every point, but don't be too quick to explain yourself. Sorry, I'm lecturing." She fumbled for her cigarettes and lit one. In the brief flare of the lighter she saw he was lying back, hands clasped under his head, staring at the ceiling.

"Go ahead."

"I may as well… Forget anything you've heard or read about 'living the part'. It can't be done, and if it could, it wouldn't be any use. If you play innocent and unnoticing too well, you won't attract suspicion, but you won'tnotice anything, either. Act the part and know you're acting it-and thatthey don't know.

"That's really the key. You've got to love that idea, really love it: they don't know. Relish it, wallow in it. Let it give an extra colour, spice, dimension, to everything you do. At the bad moments, don't look back and think, Well, at least I'm a major in the British Army. And don't look forward to a time when you can tell somebodyal! about it. You've got to live in the moment, and the way to do that is to thinkthey don't know and really enjoy it. The only way. Believe me."

Halfway through, her voice had become an echo, disorientating Maxim until his memory came to rest in a stone-walled lecture room with the Scottish wind rattling the windows. "Did somebody tell you that, once?"

"A Miss Dorothy Tuckey, on my first training course. A long time ago."

"I didn't know you'd met her."

"She taught me how to react and not to react. The least I could do when you told me… An unknown grave, I suppose. She might have thought that was appropriate."

After a time, Maxim asked: "Did you ever live that sort of life?-for any length of time?"

Agnes took her own time deciding to answer. The glow of her cigarette briefly outlined her snub-nosed profile against the dark wall. "Yes… right at the beginning, before my face got known. I got myself a job as typist and general dogsbody on a small magazine we thought was being financed from Moscow. We didn't care about the magazine, we just wanted to trace back the gold chain, see who handled it. After a time they used me as a courier: everybody else on the staff thought they were being watched. They were quite right, too, by then."

"How long did it last?"

"Eighteen months, about. Living and working with those people, eating and drinking with them, and the only taste I learnt to like wasthey don't know." The taste, relearnt that afternoon in New York, was still in her mouth.

"What happened in the end?"

"Nothing special. It just got too obvious that nobody bought the magazine so Moscow hauled in the chain. Orperhaps I made a mistake: you can see which I'd rather believe. The magazine folded and we all got drunk on Bulgarian wine and I made a speech about going out to penetrate the government and cut the arteries of the police state right at its heart-you need Bulgarian wine to say things like that, it makes me faint to think of it now. And the next day-well, nearly-the Service put me on the list as an Administration Trainee.

"I suppose we got a few more names on a few more files, learnt a bit about Moscow's accountancy procedures. And I learnt a lot-mostly about myself… about giving everything but keeping something back because you'll have to start giving again tomorrow. Is there some secret You inside that rather activist exterior?"

"I don't know… I don't think there was; you live a very open life in the Army, the secrets aren't personal ones… I suppose I used to think the worst that could happen was that I got killed. Just Lights Out and somebody else's problem from then on. Now… it's getting a lot more complicated. The Army can teach you to handle anything-except loneliness."

She breathed the last gasp of smoke towards the ceiling and stubbed out her cigarette. "Do you want to come into my bed, Harry?"

"Yes."

"Promise me one thing: don't say you love me."

From then on, everything went dreadfully and completely wrong. Perhaps it was too small a bed, because it had to hold the ghosts of Mo Magill and Jenny, Maxim's dead wife, as well. And perhaps they were hoping for an innocence that was long past both of them… It went wrong.

Sitting weeping in the bathroom, Agnes demanded of herself how she could have been so responsive to every whim of Magill's mood, and so dull but demanding and clumsy with Maxim… When she went back he was asleep, or pretending to be, in his own bed.

In the dawn, grey with sea mist, she drove him to the airport.