Chapter Six

Anselm cut the engine dead. The wipers swung home with a soft thud. Outside autumn rain fell quietly in the darkness, the drizzle lit a strange yellow by the distant street lamps. A mist had drifted east off the river Cam smudging the clean-lined portico of Cambridge station. It was the same back at Larkwood: an afternoon of intense sunshine had brought a fog off the Lark to hide the fields and smooth the tangled roofs and walls of the monastery. An apple wood fire blazed in the calefactory and Anselm was keen to get back to the hearth and warm his hands.

‘I need a lawyer,’ quoted Anselm, pensively tapping the steering wheel.

Those had been John’s exact words. Not, it seemed, a monk.

‘I’d better explain in person. You know I don’t like the phone.’

‘When do you want to come?’

‘Tonight.’

Anselm had put down the receiver and shuffled off to the woodshed. There, musing and recollected, he’d split some green logs and sized them for a decent fire.

John Fielding was Anselm’s oldest friend. They’d been to the same boarding school where, following a walk around the cricket square, they’d become allies in mutual understanding, a hallowed state that was later sealed over a bottle of purloined altar wine. While at university — John at Exeter, Anselm at Durham — they’d skilfully negotiated the transition from boyhood to manhood, that time of awkward flowering when, in making momentous decisions, many who were once close find themselves subtly apart. John, a linguist, had chosen journalism. Anselm, drawn by the thrilling mix of courtesy high theatre and linguistic violence, had opted for the Bar. Both noted, with satisfaction, that the distance between Fleet Street and Gray’s Inn was negligible.

While Anselm had forged a career defending the washed and unwashed alike, John had secured a position as foreign correspondent, serving first in East Berlin with Reuters and then landing a prized BBC posting to Warsaw in early 1982. He’d arrived just after the Communist Junta put its troops on the streets in their doomed fight against Solidarity. He’d covered the scrap meticulously until, much to the surprise of his employer, he’d been shown the door. More accurately he’d been tossed on to a plane bound for Heathrow Following which he’d told Anselm that he needed a lawyer.

Only there’d been a short interlude; a brief time when John was something of a reluctant hero in the pubs scattered around Gray’s Inn and the watering holes favoured by writing hacks at the bottom end of Chancery Lane. John had clout. He’d been a friend of Lech. And everyone wanted to know what had happened out there in the cold. John parried questions from all quarters, only disclosing — with reluctance — the barest of details. He’d gone to a graveyard for a clandestine meeting with an underground activist (a remark that pulled a few laughs) but no sooner had he arrived at the chosen spot when agents of the security service appeared, arresting both John and his contact. Three days later his accreditation had been withdrawn. No amount of coaxing or flattery from the audience would persuade John to add anything further, either about the activist, or the candidates for betrayal — the person close to home who’d sold him down the river. The troubled disinclination to elaborate simply buffed up John’s unwanted glamour and increased the aura of mystery surrounding his narrative.

Alone with Anselm, however, he’d been a fraction more informative, not so much about the events that had led to his arrest as to the nature of his work, its risks and obligations. But Anselm had sensed a link between the two, as if John were examining the chain of causation that had led to his expulsion.

Investigative journalism (he’d said, without preamble, while they were playing chess) involves talking to anyone with insight and authority, regardless of their standing or the provenance of their information. It’s about the search for truth, and sometimes you had to put your hand into the sewer. One of his sources had been a disaffected official with access to the darker corners of the government’s mind. He’d phoned John cold. He’d called himself ‘The Dentist’.

‘As in teeth and fillings?’

‘Is there another kind?’

‘I suppose not.’ Anselm was distracted, considering a dramatic sacrifice late in the game. His queen for a pawn. Something unheard of in the annals of their many confrontations. ‘What about him?’

‘Well, he was just a voice at the end of the line, feeding me inside stories… he remained hidden… until, one day I met him.’

‘Really? He dropped his guard?’ All sacrifice involves a gamble, thought Anselm coldly He made his move.

‘Yes,’ replied John, his voice light with surprise. ‘He came to see me just before I left Warsaw’

Anselm looked up.

‘You know — ’ John hesitated, his brown eyes alight with subdued anxiety — ‘I think I might have reached too far.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Into the sewer.

‘Why?’

‘He was a hood. The stories had been jam. Something sweet to get me on side.’

‘To do what?’

‘I don’t know… and it doesn’t matter any more. Because they kicked me out.’

Even as he spoke, John withdrew into himself. He looked at the board in confusion and, three moves later, trapped Anselm’s king with vicious intellectual satisfaction, the brutality — Anselm was sure — having nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with the lingering memory of that ‘Dentist’.

Anselm wondered if there was some connection between this shady individual and John’s arrest in the graveyard, an intuition that acquired sudden weight when Anselm raised the matter, delicately and John brushed it away with the same gesture one might use to slam a door. The conversation, he seemed to say, was over.

The subject appeared to have died a friendless death until, one morning, it gave John a sudden kick, demonstrating that it was very much alive — for others if not for him. A short article appeared on the third page of a national broadsheet intimating a more involved explanation for the sudden ejection of John Fielding from Warsaw Its substance, fleeced of insinuation, lay beneath the headlines of two major tabloids.

‘They’re saying I was moonlighting for MI6,’ seethed John. ‘That I’d been using journalistic cover to gather intelligence.’

And so much more: that he was a key player on the ground with access to dissidents in hiding and liberals in the government. A spy.

‘How do you hide a “dead drop” in a graveyard?’ asked Anselm, not displaying the supreme tact advertised by his clerk.

‘Don’t you realise what this means for me?’ barked John. ‘For my career?’

They were sitting in the upstairs bar of the Bricklayers’ Arms in Gresse Street, near Soho, lodged deep in soft armchairs near a low-lit corner. Perhaps it was the clinking and raised voices — the sense of festival away from the office — that had nudged Anselm’s sensibilities off course. He apologised profusely but John wasn’t listening.

‘Don’t you see?’ His deep brown eyes were anguished. ‘If I leave the accusation unchallenged, I’m finished. No media outlet will employ me. It means I’m tainted. I can’t be trusted.’

‘What do you mean by unchallenged?’ Anselm was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You’re not squaring up for a fight, are you?’

‘Not personally It’s your round,’ said John, pointing at his empty glass.

John wouldn’t listen — either that night, the following day, or during the tense weeks after the writ of libel had been served. He’d resolved to sue the most powerful news corporations in the United Kingdom. No warning or cautionary tale from Anselm would deter him. He remortgaged his flat in Hampstead to pay his solicitors’ costs. He duly begged Anselm to handle the trial, despite compelling evidence that his old friend’s speciality was bread and butter crime, cut from the rough end of the loaf at that, and served with margarine. In the end, worn down, Anselm agreed, insisting on a CD of Johnny Hodges in lieu of payment.

Then relations between the two friends became strained. John wouldn’t give any detailed instructions about his arrest in 1982. No information was forthcoming beyond what he’d revealed to his recently disbanded fan club.

‘I’m protecting a contact,’ he said, blinking like a mule.

‘Which one?’

‘The person I went to meet in the graveyard.’

‘Tell me about him or her.’

‘I can’t. I made a promise.’

‘To whom?’ Anselm was twirling a pencil, conscious that it wasn’t going to be used.

‘The contact.’

‘Promising?’

‘To do and say nothing.’

‘About what?’

‘I’m not falling for that one.’

‘John, I need an account. I need an explanation stronger than theirs.’

‘Forget it. Put them to proof.’

Anselm bit the pencil, watching John sat cross-legged in the chair facing his desk. He was a worried man — one knee bobbing, a moist hand constantly smoothing back his combed sandy hair — but he wouldn’t help himself. He was the worst kind of client.

‘What about the Dentist?’

‘He was a legitimate source.

‘This is like pulling teeth,’ sighed Anselm. He leaned back and pulled a little harder. ‘He was — I use your words — a hood.’

‘But our dealings were purely journalistic. He was channelling information into the western media. I was just the conduit. Like I said, he gave me jam. It never got to the point where he asked for anything from me.

Anselm came from another angle.

‘Did you keep any private papers when you were in Warsaw?’

‘Like?’

‘A diary, taped or written.’

‘Yes.’

‘Which kind.’

‘Written.’

‘Did it contain material germane to the matter in hand?’

‘Decidedly’

‘Can I see it?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I burned it.’

‘You didn’t. Tell me it’s a joke. Okay it’s not a joke. Tell me why?’

‘Pique. I’d hoped to use it later for a book. Cold War memoirs.’

‘Why pique?’

‘Because a handful of British newspapers accused me of spying and the substance of my experiences — rich, varied and well worth recounting — would, if printed, be interpreted from that perspective.’

‘You shouldn’t tell me you destroyed evidence.’

‘You should be careful what you ask.’

‘I’ll have to tell the other side.’

‘Go right ahead. Tell them I burned it after they burned my career.

Anselm chewed his pencil. The mule with the bobbing leg wasn’t going to budge.

‘Character witnesses,’ he said, hopefully ‘Do you know anyone who was close to the ground in Warsaw who can vouch for your professional integrity?’

‘No.’

Anselm was getting nowhere. He decided to bring the conference to an end.

‘Forget the cemetery and your burned journal and the friends you might have had. While in Warsaw, or anywhere else for that matter, did you have any form of contact — be that written, oral, signs, numbers, sounds — with any individual or organisation or their representatives which was inconsistent with your status as a foreign correspondent or any other capacity that you might have held or assumed, given the limitations conferred by your visa?’

‘None whatsoever.’

Anselm dropped his pencil and closed his empty pad. ‘It’s a fight, then.’

The defendants had pleaded justification, implying that hard evidence would be forthcoming, presumably from credible persons with knowledge about John and the work of the intelligence community. However nothing was disclosed. Like John, they claimed to be protecting their source. Which, while admirable, was not a recognised defence to libel. They’d thought the little man wouldn’t stand his ground. Negotiations began at the court door.

What should have been one of those rare experiences of uncomplicated joy for Anselm — knowing he’d won before he’d opened his mouth — turned out to be a remarkably unpleasant tutorial in humiliation. He was pitted against the most renowned performers from London’s specialised libel chambers who viewed him, not altogether unfairly as a mole on their lawn. Every offer of settlement refused by Anselm was met with soaring contempt.

‘Now you’re being greedy’ said one, with a slow, patrician sneer.

‘I’d thought your client was being better advised,’ mused another, a short man who seemed to look down while looking up.

They eventually caved in. And John won a retraction, a public apology, and what is always called, enticingly ‘undisclosed substantial damages’. That outcome ought to have been the signal for celebration: he’d recovered his reputation with compound interest. But within two weeks neither meant anything to him. He’d lost far more than his standing or its abstract value. Tragedies are like that. They redefine what is important.

Anselm tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. The train from London rumbled out of the darkness, its brakes screeching, the carriages shuddering. The tannoy crackled and a low Suffolk voice announced the arrival from London and a few pending departures. Anselm got out of his car, opened his umbrella and shambled pensively towards the station entrance.

The first tragedy to strike John took place the day following his victory. He’d not been alone in quitting Warsaw A dissident and colourful intellectual had taken the same plane to London. Celina Something-or-other had irked the censors for years through her ambiguous documentary films but she’d finally had enough of the intimidation and restrictions placed upon her work. She’d chosen exile. John had adored her, from the tangled dyed hair, past the plastic belt, and down to the green canvas shoes. Anselm had imagined that before long they’d marry and that tiny feet with garish, painted nails would patter round Hampstead — a happy vision that was only blurred by his inclination to anticipate all manner of crises best expressed in German.

Though unfounded, his angstlichkeit turned prophetic. John’s association with Celina came to an abrupt conclusion on the very day that the agreed apologies were printed in the various newspapers. John never spoke of the matter save to say, in clinical terms, that things hadn’t worked out.

‘It’s over.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

The accident occurred within a month of that conversation, though John refused at any point afterwards to call it a tragedy He’d been screaming up the Al when he went off the road after skidding in slurry. It turned out the farmer was on his way back to clean up the mess, but John had got there first, blown through a fence and hit a couple of trees. After a few weeks in intensive care, surgeons in Leeds and London achieved quite astonishing results in facial reconstruction.

‘You wouldn’t know the difference,’ Anselm said, polishing his glasses on the lining of his jacket.

‘I’d banked on improvement,’ observed John, his voice flat and dry.

A year or so later Anselm left the Bar to join the community at Larkwood. The sound of monastic bells had been ringing in his memory ever since he’d stumbled on the Suffolk retreat in his youth. He’d been stung by simple words on a leaflet… something about tasting a peace this world cannot give. Like water dripping on a stone, some moisture in the phrase had finally got through to his heart. Surreptitiously, he’d gone back to the quiet valley He’d mooched around the enclosure, knowing, even before he knew why that this remote place was home. When John had said he was off to Warsaw, Anselm had lured him up the bell tower, intending to reveal the strange longing that had seized hold of him: but they’d ended up talking cross purposes. Looking down upon the fiery green of the cloister Garth, they’d spoken of love and reasons — that the twain would never meet — and John had thought Anselm meant an ample Jazz singer who reigned over a basement club near Finsbury Park. When, following the accident, Anselm finally disclosed his intention to leave the Bar, John had been hurt and stunned.

‘You’re not serious?’

‘I am.’

‘A monk? Sandals? Sackcloth?’

‘Yes.’

‘Covert flagellation?’

‘No, communal.’

‘You kept that to yourself.’

‘Sort of.’

‘Bloody hell. Why didn’t you tell me when we were up the bell tower?’

And yet, in a curious way Anselm’s departure proved decisive for John’s long-term rehabilitation: a deeper healing beyond the visible injuries. Unsure of where his future might lie now that his career as a journalist was over, he came to Larkwood. For months he shared the simple rhythm of Anselm’s life, the experience communicating with depth what his friend could never have expressed in words. He returned to Hampstead understanding not only Anselm but his own future, bent on academia with a resolution only comparable to his first day at Reuters.

Over the following years John frequently made the trek to Larkwood. He told Anselm everything, from the contents of his dissertation to the underground politics that shaped the common room rebellions. They chewed over the past, as old friends do. But 1982 remained the year they never spoke about. Which, of course, made it for ever present. Because that was the time John had been in Warsaw Whatever had happened over there he’d come home to lose everything that had once mattered. And a little bit more.

Passengers appeared in the mist. They moved quickly and purposefully shoulders hunched, hands buried in pockets. John was the last to leave the station. He stepped outside, tapping his stick in a wide arc before his feet. Anselm had cut it down shortly after John had moved into the guesthouse. The bottom half had been painted white in deference to city life and the conventions that announce disability.

‘I need more than a lawyer,’ he said, knowing that Anselm was out there, reaching for his arm. ‘I need you to be my eyes and hands.’

Загрузка...