The Human Factor

Graham Greene - The Human Factor

Castle, ever since he had joined the firm as a young recruit more than thirty years ago, had taken his lunch in a public house behind St James’s Street, not far from the office. If he had been asked why he lunched there, he would have referred to the excellent quality of the sausages; he might have preferred a different bitter from Watney’s, but the quality of the sausages outweighed that. He was always prepared to account for his actions, even the most innocent, and he was always strictly on time.

So by the stroke of one he was ready to leave. Arthur Davis, his assistant, with whom he shared a room, departed for lunch punctually at twelve and returned, but often only in theory, one hour later. It was understood that, in case of an urgent telegram, Davis or himself must always be there to receive the decoding, but they both knew well that in the particular sub-division of their department nothing was ever really urgent. The difference in time between England and the various parts of Eastern and Southern Africa, with which the two of them were concerned, was usually large enough-even when in the case of Johannesburg it was little more than an hour for no one outside the department to worry about the delay in the delivery of a message: the fate of the world, Davis used to declare, would never be decided on their continent, however many embassies China or Russia might open from Addis Ababa to Conakry or however many Cubans landed. Castle wrote a memorandum for Davis: If Zaire replies to No. 172 send copies to Treasury and FO.’ He looked at his watch. Davis was ten minutes late.

Castle began to pack his briefcase-he put in a note of what he had to buy for his wife at the cheese shop in Jermyn Street and of a present for his son to whom he had been disagreeable that morning (two packets of Maltesers), and a book, Clarissa Harlowe, in which he had never read further than Chapter LXXIX of the first volume. Directly he heard a lift door close and Davis’s step in the passage he left his room. His lunchtime with the sausages had been cut by eleven minutes. Unlike Davis he always punctually returned. It was one of the virtues of age.

Arthur Davis in the staid office was conspicuous by his eccentricities. He could be seen now, approaching from the other end of the long white corridor, dressed as if he had just come from a rather horsy country weekend, or perhaps from the public enclosure of a racecourse. He wore a tweed sports jacket of a greenish over-all colour, and he displayed a scarlet spotted handkerchief in the breast pocket: he might have been attached in some way to a tote. But he was like an actor who has been miscast: when he tried to live up to the costume, he usually fumbled the part. If he looked in London as though he had arrived from the country, in the country when he visited Castle he was unmistakably a tourist from the city.

‘Sharp on time as usual,’ Davis said with his habitual guilty grin.

‘My watch is always a little fast,’ Castle said, apologising for the criticism which he had not expressed. ‘An anxiety complex, I suppose.’

‘Smuggling out top secrets as usual?’ Davis asked, making a playful pretence at seizing Castle’s briefcase. His breath had a sweet smell: he was addicted to port.

‘Oh, I’ve left all those behind for you to sell. You’ll get a better price from your shady contacts.’

‘Kind of you, I’m sure.’

‘And then you’re a bachelor. You need more money than a married man. I halve the cost of living. ‘

‘Ah, but those awful leftovers,’ Davis said, ‘the joint remade into shepherd’s pie, the dubious meatball. Is it worth it? A married man can’t even afford a good port.’ He went into the room they shared and rang for Cynthia. Davis had been trying to make Cynthia for two years now, but the daughter of a major-general was after bigger game. All the same Davis continued to hope; it was always safer, he explained, to have an affair inside the department-it couldn’t he regarded as a security risk, but Castle knew how deeply attached to Cynthia Davis really was. He had the keen desire for monogamy and the defensive humour of a lonely man. Once Castle had visited him in a flat, which he shared with two men from the Department of the Environment, over an antique shop not far from Claridge’s-very central and W.1.

‘You ought to come in a bit nearer,’ Davis had advised Castle in the overcrowded sitting-room where magazines of different tastes-the New Statesman, Penthouse and Nature-littered the sofa, and where the used glasses from someone else’s party had been pushed into corners for the daily woman to find.

‘You know very well what they pay us,’ Castle said, ‘and I’m married.’

‘A grave error of judgement.’

‘Not for me,’ Castle said, ‘I like my wife.’

‘And of course there’s the little bastard,’ Davis went on. I couldn’t afford children and port as well.’

‘I happen to like the little bastard too.’

Castle was on the point of descending the four stone steps into Piccadilly when the porter said to him, ‘Brigadier Tomlinson wants to see you, sir.’

‘Brigadier Tomlinson?’

‘Yes. In room A.3.’

Castle had only met Brigadier Tomlinson once, many years before, more years than he cared to count, on the day that he was appointed-the day he put his name to the Official Secrets Act, when the brigadier was a very junior officer, if he had been an officer at all. All he could remember of him was a small black moustache hovering like an unidentified flying object over a field of blotting paper, which was entirely white and blank, perhaps for security reasons. The stain of his signature after he had signed the Act became the only flaw on its surface, and that leaf was almost certainly torn up and sent to the incinerator. The Dreyfus case had exposed the perils of a wastepaper basket nearly a century ago.

‘Down the corridor on the left, sir,’ the porter reminded him when he was about to take the wrong route.

‘Come in, come in, Castle,’ Brigadier Tomlinson called. His moustache was now as white as the blotting paper, and with the years he had grown a small pot-belly under a double-breasted waistcoat-only his dubious rank remained constant. Nobody knew to what regiment he had formerly belonged, if such a regiment indeed existed, for all military titles in this building were a little suspect. Ranks might just be part of the universal cover. He said, ‘I don’t think you know Colonel Daintry.’

‘No. I don’t think… How do you do?’

Daintry, in spite of his neat dark suit and his hatchet face, gave a more genuine out-of-doors impression than Davis ever did. If Davis at his first appearance looked as though he would be at home in a bookmakers’ compound, Daintry was unmistakably at home in the expensive enclosure or on a grouse moor. Castle enjoyed making lightning sketches of his colleagues: there were times when he even put them on to paper.

‘I think I knew a cousin of yours at Corpus,’ Daintry said. He spoke agreeably, but he looked a little impatient; he probably had to catch a train north at King’s Cross.

‘Colonel Daintry,’ Brigadier Tomlinson explained, ‘is our new broom,’ and Castle noticed the way Daintry winced at the description. ‘He has taken over security from Meredith. But I’m not sure you ever met Meredith.’

‘I suppose you mean my cousin Roger,’ Castle said to Daintry. I haven’t seen him for years. He got a first in Greats. I believe he’s in the Treasury now.’

‘I’ve been describing the set-up here to Colonel Daintry,’ Brigadier Tomlinson prattled on, keeping strictly to his own wavelength.

‘I took Law myself. A poor second,’ Daintry said.’ You read History, I think?’

‘Yes. A very poor third.’

‘At the House?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve explained to Colonel Daintry,’ Tomlinson said, ‘that only you and Davis deal with the Top Secret cables as far as Section 6A is concerned.’

‘If you can call anything Top Secret in our section. Of course, Watson sees them too.’

‘Davis-he’s a Reading University man, isn’t he?’ Daintry asked with what might have been a slight touch of disdain.

‘I see you’ve been doing your homework.’

‘As a matter of fact I’ve just been having a talk with Davis himself.’

‘So that’s why he was ten minutes too long over his lunch.’

Daintry’s smile resembled the painful reopening of a wound. He had very red lips, and they parted at the corners with difficulty. He said, ‘I talked to Davis about you, so now I’m talking to you about Davis. An open check. You must forgive the new broom. I have to learn the ropes,’ he added, getting confused among the metaphors. ‘One has to keep to the drill-in spite of the confidence we have in both of you, of course. By the way, did he warn you?’

‘No. But why believe me? We may be in collusion.’

The wound opened again a very little way and closed tight.

‘I gather that politically he’s a hit on the left. Is that so?’

‘He’s a member of the Labour Party. I expect he told you himself.’

‘Nothing wrong in that, of course,’ Daintry said. ‘And you…?’

‘I have no politics. I expect Davis told you that too.’

‘But you sometimes vote, I suppose?’

‘I don’t think I’ve voted once since the war. The issues nowadays so often seem well, a bit parish pump.’

‘An interesting point of view,’ Daintry said with disapproval. Castle could see that telling the truth this time had been an error of judgement, yet, except on really important occasions, he always preferred the truth. The truth can be double-checked. Daintry looked at his watch. I won’t keep you long. I have a train to catch at King’s Cross.’

‘A shooting weekend?’

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘Intuition,’ Castle said, ‘and again he regretted his reply. It was always safer to be inconspicuous. There were times, which grew more frequent with every year, when he daydreamed of complete conformity, as a different character might have dreamt of making a dramatic century at Lord’s.

‘I suppose you noticed my gun-case by the door?’

‘Yes,’ Castle said, ‘who hadn’t seen it until then, ‘that was the clue.’ He was glad to see that Daintry looked reassured.

Daintry explained, ‘There’s nothing personal in all this, you know. Purely a routine check. There are so many rules that sometimes some of them get neglected. It’s human nature. The regulation, for example, about not taking work out of the office…’

He looked significantly at Castle’s briefcase. An officer and a gentleman would open it at once for inspection with an easy joke, but Castle was not an officer, nor had he ever classified himself as a gentleman. He wanted to see how far below the table the new broom was liable to sweep. He said, ‘I’m not going home. I’m only going out to lunch.’

‘You won’t mind, will you…?’ Daintry held out his hand for the briefcase. ‘I asked the same of Davis,’ he said.

‘Davis wasn’t carrying a briefcase,’ Castle said, ‘when I saw him.’

Daintry flushed at his mistake. He would have felt a similar shame, Castle felt sure, if he had shot a beater. ‘Oh, it must have been that other chap,’ Daintry said. ‘I’ve forgotten his name.’

‘Watson?’ the brigadier suggested.

‘Yes, Watson.’

‘So you’ve even been checking our chief?’

‘It’s all part of the drill.’ Daintry said.

Castle opened his briefcase. He took out a copy of the Berkhamsted Gazette.

‘What’s this?’ Daintry asked.

‘My local paper. I was going to read it over lunch.’

‘Oh yes, of course. I’d forgotten. You live quite a long way out. Don’t you find it a bit inconvenient?’

‘Less than an hour by train. I need a house and a garden. I have a child, you see-and a dog. You can’t keep either of them in a flat. Not with comfort.’

‘I notice you are reading Clarissa Harlowe? Like it?’

‘Yes, so far. But there are four more volumes.’

‘What’s this?’

‘A list of things to remember.’

‘To remember?’

‘My shopping list,’ Castle explained. He had written under the printed address of his house, 129 King’s Road, ‘Two Maltesers. Half pound Earl Grey. Cheese-Wensleydale?? or Double Gloucester? Yardley Pre-Shave Lotion.’

‘What on earth are Maltesers?’

‘A sort of chocolate. You should try them. They’re delicious. In my opinion better than Kit Kats.’

Daintry said, ‘Do you think they would do for my hostess? I’d like to bring her something a little out of the ordinary.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Perhaps I could send the porter-there’s just time. Where do you buy them?’

‘He can get them at an ABC in the Strand.’

‘ABC?’ Daintry asked.

‘Aerated Bread Company.’

‘Aerated bread… what on earth…? Oh well, there isn’t time to go into that. Are you sure those-teasers would do?’

‘Of course, tastes differ.’

‘Fortnum’s is only a step away.’

‘You can’t get them there. They are very inexpensive.’ I don’t want to seem niggardly.’

‘Then go for quantity. Tell him to get three pounds of them.’

‘What is the name again? Perhaps you would tell the porter as you go out.’

‘Is my check over then? Am I clear?’

‘Oh yes. Yes. I told you it was purely formal, Castle.’

‘Good shooting.’

‘Thanks a lot.’

Castle gave the porter the message. ‘Three pounds did ‘e say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Three pounds of Maltesers!’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I take a pantechnicon?’

The porter summoned the assistant porter who was reading a girlie magazine. He said, ‘Three pounds of Maltesers for Colonel Daintry.’

‘That would be a hundred and twenty packets or thereabouts,’ the man said after a little calculation.

‘No, no,’ Castle said, ‘it’s not as bad as that. The weight, I think, is what he means.’

He left them making their calculations. He was fifteen minutes late at the pub and his usual corner was occupied. He ate and drank quickly and calculated that he had made up three minutes. Then he bought the Yardley’s at the chemist in St James’s Arcade, the Earl Grey at Jackson’s, a Double Gloucester there too to save time, although he usually went to the cheese shop in Jermyn Street, but the Maltesers, which he had intended to buy at the ABC, had run out by the time he got there-the assistant told him there had been an unexpected demand, and he had to buy Kit Kats instead. He was only three minutes late when he rejoined Davis.

‘You never told me they were having a check,’ he said. ‘I was sworn to secrecy. Did they catch you with anything?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘He did with me. Asked what I had in my macintosh pocket. I’d got that report from 59800. I wanted to read it again over my lunch.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Oh, he let me go with a warning. He said rules were made to be kept. To think that fellow Blake (whatever did he want to escape for?) got forty years freedom from income tax, intellectual strain and responsibility, and it’s we who suffer for it now.’

‘Colonel Daintry wasn’t very difficult,’ Castle said. ‘He knew a cousin of mine at Corpus. That sort of thing makes a difference.’

Castle was usually able to catch the six thirty-five train from Euston. This brought him to Berkhamsted punctually at seven twelve. His bicycle waited for him at the station-he had known the ticket collector for many years and he always left it in his care. Then he rode the longer way home, for the sake of exercise across the canal bridge, past the Tudor school, into the High Street, past the grey flint parish church which contained the helmet of a crusader, then up the slope of the Chilterns towards his small semi-detached house in King’s Road. He always arrived there, if he had not telephoned a warning from London, by half-past seven. There was just time to say goodnight to the boy and have a whisky or two before dinner at eight.

In a bizarre profession anything which belongs to an everyday routine gains great value-perhaps that was one reason why, when he came back from South Africa, he chose to return to his birthplace: to the canal under the weeping willows, to the school and the ruins of a once-famous castle which had withstood a siege by Prince John of France and of which, so the story went, Chaucer had been a Clerk of Works and who knows?-perhaps an ancestral Castle one of the artisans. It consisted now of only a few grass mounds and some yards of flint wall, facing the canal and the railway line. Beyond was a long road leading away from the town bordered with hawthorn hedges and Spanish chestnut trees until one reached at last the freedom of the Common. Years ago the inhabitants of the town fought for their right to graze cattle upon the Common, but in the twentieth century it was doubtful whether any animal but a rabbit or a goat could have found provender among the ferns, the gorse and the bracken.

When Castle was a child there still remained on the Common the remnants of old trenches dug in the heavy red clay during the first German war by members of the Inns of Court OTC, young lawyers who practised there before they went to die in Belgium or France as members of more orthodox units. It was unsafe to wander there without proper knowledge, since the old trenches had been dug several feet deep, modelled on the original trenches of the Old Contemptibles around Ypres, and a stranger risked a sudden fall and a broken leg. Children who had grown up with the knowledge of their whereabouts wandered freely, until the memory began to fade. Castle for some reason had always remembered, and sometimes on his days off from the office he took Sam by the hand and introduced him to the forgotten hiding-places and the multiple dangers of the Common. How many guerrilla campaigns he had fought there as a child against overwhelming odds. Well, the days of the guerrilla had returned, daydreams had become realities. Living thus with the long familiar he felt the security that an old lag feels when he goes back to the prison he knows.

Castle pushed his bicycle up King’s Road. He had bought his house with the help of a building society after his return to England. He could easily have saved money by paying cash, but he had no wish to appear different from the schoolmasters on either side-on the salary they earned there was no possibility of saving. For the same reason he kept the rather gaudy stained glass of the Laughing Cavalier over the front door. He disliked it; he associated it with dentistry-so often stained glass in provincial towns hides the agony of the chair from outsiders but again because his neighbours bore with theirs, he preferred to leave it alone. The schoolmasters in King’s Road were strong upholders of the aesthetic principles of North Oxford, where many of them had taken tea with their tutors, and there too, in the Banbury Road, his bicycle would have fitted well, in the hall, under the staircase.

He opened his door with a Yale key. He had once thought of buying a mortice lock or something very special chosen in St James’s Street from Chubb’s, but he restrained himself his neighbours were content with Yale, and there had been no burglary nearer than Boxmoor in the last three years to justify him. The hall was empty; so seemed the sitting-room, which he could see through the open door: there was not a sound from the kitchen. He noticed at once that the whisky bottle was not standing ready by the syphon on the sideboard. The habit of years had been broken and Castle felt anxiety like the prick of an insect. He called, ‘Sarah ‘, but there was no reply. He stood just inside the hall door, beside the umbrella stand, taking in with rapid glances the familiar scene, with the one essential missing the whisky bottle and he held his breath. He had always, since they came, felt certain that one day a doom would catch up with them, and he knew that when that happened he must not be betrayed by panic: he must leave quickly, without an attempt to pick up any broken piece of their life together. ‘Those that are in Judea must take refuge in the mountains…’ He thought for some reason of his cousin at the Treasury, as though he were an amulet, which could protect him, a lucky rabbit’s foot, and then he was able to breathe again with relief, hearing voices on the floor above and the footsteps of Sarah as she came down the stairs.

‘Darling, I didn’t hear you. I was talking to Doctor Barker.’

Doctor Barker followed her-a middle-aged man with a flaming strawberry mark on his left cheek, dressed in dusty grey, with two fountain-pens in his breast pocket; or perhaps one of them was a pocket torch for peering into throats.

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Sam’s got measles, darling.’

‘He’ll do all right,’ Doctor Barker said. ‘Just keep him quiet. Not too much light.’

Will you have a whisky, Doctor?’

‘No, thank you. I have still two more visits to make and I’m late for dinner as it is.’

‘Where could he have caught it?’

‘Oh, there’s quite an epidemic. You needn’t worry. It’s only a light attack.’

When the doctor had gone Castle kissed his wife. He ran his hand over her black resistant hair; he touched her high cheekbones. He felt the black contours of her face as a man might who has picked out one piece of achieved sculpture from all the hack carvings littering the steps of an hotel for white tourists; he was reassuring himself that what he valued most in life was still safe. By the end of a day he always felt as though he had been gone for years leaving her defenceless. Yet no one here minded her African blood. There was no law here to menace their life together. They were secure-or as secure as they would ever be.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘I was worried. Everything seemed at sixes and sevens tonight when I came in. You weren’t here. Not even the whisky…’

‘What a creature of habit you are.’

He began to unpack his briefcase while she prepared the whisky. ‘Is there really nothing to worry about?’ Castle asked. I never like the way doctors speak, especially when they are reassuring.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Can I go and see him?’

‘He’s asleep now. Better not wake him. I gave him an aspirin.’

He put Volume One of Clarissa Harlowe back in the bookcase.

‘Finished it?’

‘No, I doubt whether I ever shall now. Life’s a bit too short.’

‘But I thought you always liked long books.’

‘Perhaps I’ll have a go at War and Peace before it’s too late.’

‘We haven’t got it.’

‘I’m going to buy a copy tomorrow.’

She had carefully measured out a quadruple whisky by English pub standards, and now she brought it to him and closed the glass in his hand, as though it were a message no one else must read. Indeed, the degree of his drinking was known only to them: he usually drank nothing stronger than beer when he was with a colleague or even with a stranger in a bar. Any touch of alcoholism might always be regarded in his profession with suspicion. Only Davis had the indifference to knock the drinks back with a fine abandon, not caring who saw him, but then he had the audacity which comes from a sense of complete innocence. Castle had lost both audacity and innocence for ever in South Africa while he was waiting for the blow to fall.

‘You don’t mind, do you,’ Sarah asked, ‘if it’s a cold meal tonight? I was busy with Sam all evening.’

‘Of course not.’

He put his arm round her. The depth of their love was as secret as the quadruple measure of whisky. To speak of it to others would invite danger. Love was a total risk. Literature had always so proclaimed it. Tristan, Anna Karenina, even the lust of Lovelace-he had glanced at the last volume of Clarissa. ‘I like my wife’ was the most he had ever said even to Davis.

‘I wonder what I would do without you,’ Castle said.

‘Much the same as you are doing now. Two doubles before dinner at eight.’

‘When I arrived and you weren’t here with the whisky, I was scared.’

‘Scared of what?’

‘Of being left alone. Poor Davis,’ he added, ‘going home to nothing.’

‘Perhaps he has a lot more fun.’

‘This is my fun,’ he said. ‘A sense of security.’

‘Is life outside as dangerous as all that?’ She sipped from his glass and touched his mouth with lips which were wet with J. & B. He always bought J. & B. because of its colour a large whisky and soda looked no stronger than a weak one of another brand.

The telephone rang from the table by the sofa. He lifted the receiver and said ‘Hello,’ but no one replied. ‘Hello.’ He silently counted four, then put the receiver down when he heard the connection break.

‘Nobody?’

‘I expect it was a wrong number.’

‘It’s happened three times this month. Always when you are late at the office. You don’t think it could be a burglar checking up to see if we are at home?’

‘There’s nothing worth a burglary here.’

‘One reads such horrible stories, darling-men with stockings over their faces. I hate the time after sunset before you come home.’

‘That’s why I bought you Buller. Where is Buller?’

‘He’s in the garden eating grass. Something has upset him. Anyway, you know what he’s like with strangers. He fawns on them.’

‘He might object to a stocking mask all the same.’

‘He would think it was put on to please him. You remember at Christmas… with the paper hats…’

‘I’d always thought before we got him that boxers were fierce dogs.’

‘They are-with cats.’

The door creaked and Castle turned quickly: the square black muzzle of Buller pushed the door fully open, and then he launched his body like a sack of potatoes at Castle’s flies. Castle fended him off. ‘Down, Buller, down.’ A long ribbon of spittle descended Castle’s trouser leg. He said, ‘If that’s fawning, any burglar would run a mile.’ Buller began to bark spasmodically and wriggle his haunches, like a dog with worms, moving backwards towards the door.

‘Be quiet, Buller.’

‘He only wants a walk.’

‘At this hour? I thought you said he was ill.’

‘He seems to have eaten enough grass.’

‘Be quiet, Buller, damn you. No walk.’

Buller slumped heavily down and dribbled onto the parquet to comfort himself.

‘The meter man was scared of him this morning, but Buller only meant to be friendly.’

‘But the meter man knows him.’

‘This one was new.’

‘New. Why?’

‘Oh, our usual man has got the flu.’

‘You asked to see his card?’

‘Of course. Darling, are you getting scared of burglars now? Stop it, Buller. Stop.’ Buller was licking his private parts with the gusto of an alderman drinking soup.

Castle stepped over him and went into the hall. He examined the meter carefully, but there seemed nothing unusual about it, and he returned.

‘You are worried about something?’

‘It’s nothing really. Something happened at the office. A new security man throwing his weight about. It irritated me I’ve been more than thirty years in the firm, and I ought to be trusted by this time. They’ll be searching our pockets next when we leave for lunch. He did look in my briefcase.’

‘Be fair, darling. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of the job.’

‘It’s too late to change that now.’

‘Nothing’s ever too late,’ she said, ‘and he wished he could believe her. She kissed him again as she went past him to the kitchen to fetch the cold meat.

When they were sitting down and he had taken another whisky, she said, ‘Joking apart, you are drinking too much.’

‘Only at home. No one sees me but you.’

‘I didn’t mean for the job. I meant for your health. I don’t care a damn about the job.’

‘No?’

‘A department of the Foreign Office. Everyone knows what that means, but you have to go around with your mouth shut like a criminal. If you told me-me, your wife what you’d done today, they’d sack you. I wish they would sack you. What have you done today?’

‘I’ve gossiped with Davis, I’ve made notes on a few cards, I sent off one telegram-oh, and I’ve been interviewed by that new security officer. He knew my cousin when he was at Corpus.’

‘Which cousin?’

‘Roger.’

‘That snob in the Treasury?’

‘Yes.’

On the way to bed, he said, ‘Could I look in on Sam?’

‘Of course. But he’ll be fast asleep by now.’

Buller followed them and laid a bit of spittle like a bonbon on the bedclothes.

‘Oh, Buller.’

He wagged what remained of his tail as though he had been praised. For a boxer he was not intelligent. He had cost a lot of money and perhaps his pedigree was a little too perfect.

The boy lay asleep diagonally in his teak bunk with his head on a box of lead soldiers instead of a pillow. One black foot hung out of the blankets altogether and an officer of the Tank Corps was wedged between his toes. Castle watched Sarah rearrange him, picking out the officer and digging out a parachutist from under a thigh. She handled his body with the carelessness of an expert, and the child slept solidly on.

‘He looks very hot and dry,’ Castle said.

‘So would you if you had a temperature of 103: He looked more African than his mother, and the memory of a famine photograph came to Castle’s mind-a small corpse spread-eagled on desert sand, watched by a vulture.

‘Surely that’s very high.’

‘Not for a child.’

He was always amazed by her confidence: she could make a new dish without referring to any cookery book, and nothing ever came to pieces in her hands. Now she rolled the boy roughly on his side and firmly tucked him in, without making an eyelid stir.

‘He’s a good sleeper.’

‘Except for nightmares.’

‘Has he had another?’

‘Always the same one. We both of us go off by train and he’s left alone. On the platform someone-he doesn’t know who grips his arm. It’s nothing to worry about. He’s at the age for nightmares. I read somewhere that they come when school begins to threaten. I wish he hadn’t got to go to prep school. He may have trouble. Sometimes I almost wish you had apartheid here too.’

‘He’s a good runner. In England there’s no trouble if you are good at any sort of games.’

In bed that night she woke from her first sleep and said, ‘as though the thought had occurred to her in a dream, ‘It’s strange, isn’t it, your being so fond of Sam.’

‘Of course I am. Why not? I thought you were asleep.’

‘There’s no “of course” about it. A little bastard.’

‘That’s what Davis always calls him.’

‘Davis? He doesn’t know?’ she asked with fear. ‘Surely he doesn’t know?’

‘No, don’t worry. It’s the word he uses for any child.’

‘I’m glad his father’s six feet underground,’ she said.

‘Yes. So am I, poor devil. He might have married you in the end.’

‘No. I was in love with you all the time. Even when I started Sam I was in love with you. He’s more your child than his. I tried to think of you when he made love. He was a tepid sort of fish. At the University they called him an Uncle Tom. Sam won’t be tepid, will he? Hot or cold, but not tepid.’

‘Why are we talking about all that ancient history?’

‘Because Sam’s ill. And because you are worried. When I don’t feel secure I remember what it felt like when I knew I had to tell you about him. That first night across the border in Lourenco Marques. The Hotel Polana. I thought, “He’ll put on his clothes again and go away for ever.” But you didn’t. You stayed. And we made love in spite of Sam inside.’

They lay quietly together, all these years later, only a shoulder touching a shoulder. He wondered whether this was how the happiness of old age, which he had sometimes seen on a stranger’s face, might come about, but he would he dead long before she reached old age. Old age was something they would never be able to share.

‘Aren’t you ever sad,’ she asked, ‘that we haven’t made a child?’

‘Sam’s enough of a responsibility.’

‘I’m not joking. Wouldn’t you have liked a child of ours?’

This time he knew that the question was one of those which couldn’t be evaded.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘You want to look under stones too much, Sarah. I love Sam because he’s yours. Because he’s not mine. Because I don’t have to see anything of myself there when I look at him. I see only something of you. I don’t want to go on and on for ever. I want the buck to stop here.’

‘A good morning’s sport,’ Colonel Daintry remarked half-heartedly to Lady Hargreaves as he stamped the mud off his boots before entering the house. ‘The birds were going over well.’ His fellow guests piled out of cars behind him, with the forced joviality of a football team trying to show their keen sporting enjoyment and not how cold and muddy they really felt.

‘Drinks are waiting,’ Lady Hargreaves said. ‘Help yourselves. Lunch in ten minutes.’

Another car was climbing the hill through the park, a long way off. Somebody bellowed with laughter in the cold wet air, and someone cried, ‘Here’s Buffy at last. In time for lunch, of course.’

‘And your famous steak-and-kidney pudding?’ Daintry asked. ‘I’ve heard so much about it.’

‘My pie, you mean. Did you really have a good morning, Colonel?’ Her voice had a faint American accent-the more agreeable for being faint, like the tang of an expensive perfume.

‘Not many pheasants,’ Daintry said, ‘but otherwise very fine.’

‘Harry,’ she called over his shoulder, ‘Dicky’ and then ‘Where’s Dodo? Is he lost?’ Nobody called Daintry by his first name because nobody knew it. With a sense of loneliness he watched the graceful elongated figure of his hostess limp down the stone steps to greet ‘Harry’ with a kiss on both cheeks. Daintry went on alone into the dining-room where the drinks stood waiting on the buffet.

A little stout rosy man in tweeds whom he thought he had seen somewhere before was mixing himself a dry martini. He wore silver-rimmed spectacles which glinted in the sunlight. ‘Add one for me,’ Daintry said, ‘if you are making them really dry.’

‘Ten to one,’ the little man said. ‘A whiff of the cork, eh? Always use a scent spray myself. You are Daintry, aren’t you? You’ve forgotten me. I’m Percival. I took your blood pressure once.’

‘Oh yes. Doctor Percival. We’re in the same firm more or less, aren’t we?’

‘That’s right. C wanted us to get together quietly-no need for all that nonsense with scramblers here. I can never make mine work, can you? The trouble is, though, that I don’t shoot. I only fish. This your first time here?’

‘Yes. When did you arrive?’

‘A bit early. Around midday. I’m a Jaguar fiend. Can’t go at less than a hundred.’

Daintry looked at the table. A bottle of beer stood by every place. He didn’t like beer, but for some reason beer seemed always to be regarded as suitable for a shoot. Perhaps it went with the boyishness of the occasion like ginger beer at Lord’s. Daintry was not boyish. A shoot to him was an exercise of strict competitive skill-he had once been runner-up for the King’s Cup. Now down the centre of the table stood small silver sweet bowls which he saw contained his Maltesers. He had been a little embarrassed the night before when he had presented almost a crate of them to Lady Hargreaves; she obviously hadn’t an idea what they were or what to do with them. He felt that he had been deliberately fooled by that man Castle. He was glad to see they looked more sophisticated in silver bowls than they had done in plastic bags.

‘Do you like beer?’ he asked Percival.

‘I like anything alcoholic,’ Percival said, ‘except Fernet-Branca,’ and then the boys burst boisterously in Buffy and Dodo, Harry and Dicky and all; the silver and the glasses vibrated with joviality. Daintry was glad Percival was there, for nobody seemed to know Percival’s first name either.

Unfortunately he was separated from him at table. Percival had quickly finished his first bottle of beer and begun on a second. Daintry felt betrayed, for Percival seemed to be getting on with his neighbours as easily as if they had been members of the old firm too. He had begun to tell a fishing story which had made the man called Dicky laugh. Daintry was sitting between the fellow he took to be Buffy and a lean elderly man with a lawyer’s face. He had introduced himself, and his surname was familiar. He was either the Attorney-General or the Solicitor-General, but Daintry couldn’t remember which; his uncertainty inhibited conversation.

Buffy said suddenly, ‘My God, if those are not Maltesers!’

‘You know Maltesers?’ Daintry asked.

‘Haven’t tasted one for donkey’s years. Always bought them at the movies when I was a kid. Taste wonderful. There’s no movie house around here surely?’

‘As a matter of fact I brought them from London.’

‘You go to the movies? Haven’t been to one in ten years. So they still sell Maltesers?’

‘You can buy them in shops too.’

‘I never knew that. Where did you find them?’

‘In an ABC.’

‘ABC?’

Daintry repeated dubiously what Castle had said, ‘Aerated Bread Company.’

‘Extraordinary! What’s aerated bread?’

‘I don’t know,’ Daintry said.

‘The things they do invent nowadays. I wouldn’t be surprised, would you, if their loaves were made by computers?’ He leant forward and took a Malteser and crackled it at his ear like a cigar.

Lady Hargreaves called down the table, ‘Buffy! Not before the steak-and-kidney pie.’

‘Sorry, my dear. Couldn’t resist. Haven’t tasted one since I was a kid.’ He said to Daintry, ‘Extraordinary things computers. I paid ‘em a fiver once to find me a wife.’

‘You aren’t married?’ Daintry asked, looking at the gold ring Buffy wore.

‘No. Always keep that on for protection. Wasn’t really serious, you know. Like to try out new gadgets. Filled up a form as long as your arm. Qualifications, interests, profession, what have you.’ He took another Malteser. ‘Sweet tooth,’ he said. ‘Always had it.’

‘And did you get any applicants?’

‘They sent me along a girl. Girl! Thirty-five if a day. I had to give her tea. Haven’t had tea since my mum died. I said, “My dear, do you mind if we make it a whisky? I know the waiter here. He’ll slip us one!” She said she didn’t drink. Didn’t drink!’

‘The computer had slipped up?’

‘She had a degree in Economics at London University. And big spectacles. Flat-chested. She said she was a good cook. I said I always took my meals at White’s.’

‘Did you ever see her again?’

‘Not to speak to, but once she waved to me from a bus as I was coming down the club steps. Embarrassing! Because I was with Dicky at the time. That’s what happened when they let buses go up St James’s Street. No one was safe.’

After the steak-and-kidney pie came a treacle tart and a big Stilton cheese and Sir John Hargreaves circulated the port. There was a faint feeling of unrest at the table as though the holidays had been going on too long. People began to glance through the windows at the grey sky: in a few hours the light would fail. They drank their port rapidly as if with a sense of guilt-they were not really there for idle pleasure-except Percival who wasn’t concerned. He was telling another fishing story and had four empty bottles of beer beside him.

The Solicitor-General-or was it the Attorney General?-said heavily, ‘We ought to be moving. The sun’s going down.’ He certainly was not here for enjoyment, only for execution, and Daintry sympathised with his anxiety. Hargreaves really ought to make a move, but Hargreaves was almost asleep. After years in the Colonial Service-he had once been a young District Commissioner on what was then the Gold Coast he had acquired the knack of snatching his siesta in the most unfavourable circumstances, even surrounded by quarrelling chiefs, who used to make more noise than Buffy.

‘John,’ Lady Hargreaves called down the table, ‘wake up.’

He opened blue serene unshockable eyes and said, ‘A cat-nap.’ It was said that as a young man somewhere in Ashanti he had inadvertently eaten human flesh, but his digestion had not been impaired. According to the story he had told the Governor, I couldn’t really complain, sir. They were doing me a great honour by inviting me to take pot luck.’

‘Well, Daintry,’ he said, ‘I suppose it’s time we got on with the massacre.’

He unrolled himself from the table and yawned. ‘Your steak-and-kidney pie, dear, is too good.’

Daintry watched him with envy. He envied him in the first place for his position. He was one of the very few men outside the services ever to have been appointed C. No one in the firm knew why he had been chosen all kinds of recondite influences had been surmised, for his only experience of intelligence had been gained in Africa during the war. Daintry also envied him his wife; she was so rich, so decorative, so impeccably American. An American marriage, it seemed, could not be classified as a foreign marriage: to marry a foreigner special permission had to be obtained and it was often refused, but to marry an American was perhaps to confirm the special relationship. He wondered all the same whether Lady Hargreaves had been positively vetted by MI5 and been passed by the FBI.

‘Tonight,’ Hargreaves said, ‘we’ll have a chat, Daintry, won’t we? You and I and Percival. When this crowd has gone home.’

Sir John Hargreaves limped round, handing out cigars, pouring out whiskies, poking the fire. I don’t enjoy shooting much myself,’ he said. ‘Never used to shoot in Africa, except with a camera, but my wife likes all the old English customs. If you have land, she says, you must have birds. I’m afraid there weren’t enough pheasants, Daintry.’

‘I had a very good day,’ Daintry said, ‘all in all.’

‘I wish you ran to a trout stream,’ Doctor Percival said.

‘Oh yes, fishing’s your game, isn’t it? Well, you might say we’ve got a bit of fishing on hand now.’ He cracked a log with his poker. ‘Useless,’ he said, ‘but I love to see the sparks fly. There seems to be a leak somewhere in Section 6.

Percival said, ‘At home or in the field?’

‘I’m not sure, but I have a nasty feeling that it’s here at home. In one of the African sections-6A.’

‘I’ve just finished going through Section 6,’ Daintry said. ‘Only a routine run through. So as to get to know people.’

‘Yes, so they told me. That’s why I asked you to come here. Enjoyed having you for the shoot too, of course. Did anything strike you?’

‘Security’s got a hit slack. But that’s true of all other sections too. I made a rough check for example of what people take out in their briefcases at lunchtime. Nothing serious, but I was surprised at the number of briefcases… It’s a warning, that’s all, of course. But a warning might scare a nervous man. We can’t very well ask them to strip.’

‘They do that in the diamond fields, but I agree that in the West End stripping would seem a bit unusual.’

‘Anyone really out of order?’ Percival asked.

‘Not seriously. Davis in 6A was carrying a report-said he wanted to read it over lunch. I warned him, of course, and made him leave it behind with Brigadier Tomlinson. I’ve gone through all the traces too. Vetting has been done very efficiently since the Blake case broke, but we still have a few men who were with us in the bad old days. Some of them even go back as far as Burgess and Maclean. We could start tracing them all over again, but it’s difficult to pick up a cold scent.’

‘It’s possible, of course, just possible,’ C said, ‘that the leak came from abroad and that the evidence has been planted here. They would like to disrupt us, damage morale and hurt us with the Americans. The knowledge that there was a leak, if it became public, could be more damaging than the leak itself.’

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Percival said. ‘Questions in Parliament. All the old names thrown up Vassal’, the Portland affair, Philby. But if they’re after publicity, there’s little we can do.’

‘I suppose a Royal Commission would be appointed to shut the stable door,’ Hargreaves said. ‘But let’s assume for a moment that they are really after information and not scandal. Section 6 seems a most unlikely department for that. There are no atomic secrets in Africa: guerrillas, tribal wars, mercenaries, petty dictators, crop failures, building scandals, gold beds, nothing very secret there. That’s why I wonder whether the motive may be simply scandal, to prove they have penetrated the British Secret Service yet again.’

‘Is it an important leak, C?’ Percival asked.

‘Call it a very small drip, mainly economic, but the interesting thing is that apart from economics it concerns the Chinese. Isn’t it possible-the Russians are such novices in Africa-that they want to make use of our service for information on the Chinese?’

‘There’s precious little they can learn from us,’ Percival said.

‘But you know what it’s always like at everybody’s Centre. One thing no one can ever stand there is a blank white card.’

‘Why don’t we send them carbon copies, with our compliments, of what we send the Americans? There’s supposed to be a detente, isn’t there? Save everyone a lot of trouble.’ Percival took a little tube from his pocket and sprayed his glasses, then wiped them with a clean white handkerchief.

‘Help yourself to the whisky,’ C said. ‘I’m too stiff to move after that bloody shoot. Any ideas, Daintry?’

‘Most of the people in Section 6 are post-Blake. If their traces are unreliable then no one is safe.’

‘All the same, the source seems to be Section 6-and probably 6A. Either at home or abroad.’

‘The head of Section 6, Watson, is a relative newcomer,’ Daintry said. ‘He was very thoroughly vetted. Then there’s Castle he’s been with us a very long time, we brought him back from Pretoria seven years ago because they needed him in 6A, and there were personal reasons too-trouble about the girl he wanted to marry. Of course, he belongs to the slack vetting days, but I’d say he was clear. Dullish man, first-class, of course, with files-it’s generally the brilliant and ambitious who are dangerous. Castle is safely married, second time, his first wife’s dead. There’s one child, a house on mortgage in Metroland. Life insurance payments up to date. No high living. He doesn’t even run to a car. I believe he bicycles every day to the station. A third class in history at the House. Careful and scrupulous. Roger Castle in the Treasury is his cousin.’

‘You think he’s quite clear then?’

‘He has his eccentricities, but I wouldn’t say dangerous ones. For instance he suggested I bring those Maltesers to Lady Hargreaves.’

‘Maltesers?’

‘It’s a long story. I won’t bother you with it now. And then there’s Davis. I don’t know that I’m quite so happy about Davis, in spite of the positive vetting.’

‘Pour me out another whisky, would you, Percival, there’s a good chap. Every year I say it’s my last shoot.’

‘But those steak-and-kidney pies of your wife’s are wonderful. I wouldn’t miss them,’ Percival said.

‘I daresay we could find another excuse for them.’

‘You could try putting trout in that stream…’

Daintry again experienced a twitch of envy; once more he felt left out. He had no life in common with his companions in the world outside the borders of security. Even as a gun he felt professional. Percival was said to collect pictures, and C? A whole social existence had been opened up for him by his rich American wife. The steak and kidney pie was all that Daintry was permitted to share with them outside office hours-for the first and perhaps the last time.

‘Tell me more about Davis,’ C said.

‘Reading University. Mathematics and physics. Did some of his military service at Aldermaston. Never supported anyway openly the marchers. Labour Party, of course.’

‘Like forty-five per cent of the population,’ C said.

‘Yes, yes, of course, but all the same… He’s a bachelor. Lives alone. Spends fairly freely. Fond of vintage port. Bets on the tote. That’s a classic way, of course, of explaining why you can afford…’

‘What does he afford? Besides port.’

‘Well, he has a Jaguar.’

‘So have I,’ Percival said. ‘I suppose we mustn’t ask you how the leak was discovered?’

‘I wouldn’t have brought you here if I couldn’t tell you that. Watson knows, but no one else in Section 6. The source of information is an unusual one-a Soviet defector who remains in place.’

‘Could the leak come from Section 6 abroad?’ Daintry asked.

‘It could, but I doubt it. It’s true that one report they had seemed to come direct from Lourenco Marques. It was word for word as 69300 wrote it. Almost like a photostat of the actual report, so one might have thought that the leak was there if it weren’t for a few corrections and deletions. Inaccuracies which could only have been spotted here by comparing the report with the files.’

‘A secretary?’ Percival suggested.

‘Daintry began his check with those, didn’t you? They are more heavily vetted than anyone. That leaves us Watson, Castle and Davis.’

‘A thing that worries me,’ Daintry said, ‘is that Davis was the one who was taking a report out of the office. One from Pretoria. No apparent importance, but it did have a Chinese angle. He said he wanted to reread it over lunch. He and Castle had got to discuss it later with Watson. I checked the truth of that with Watson.’

‘What do you suggest we do?’ C asked.

‘We could put down a maximum security check with the help of 5 and Special Branch. On everyone in Section 6. Letters, telephone calls, bug flats, watch movements.’

‘If things were as simple as that, Daintry, I wouldn’t have bothered you to come up here. This is only a second-class shoot, and I knew the pheasants would disappoint you.’

Hargreaves lifted his bad leg with both hands and eased it towards the fire. Suppose we did prove Davis to be the culprit-or Castle or Watson. What should we do then?’

‘Surely that would be up to the courts,’ Daintry said.

‘Headlines in the papers. Another trial in camera. No one outside would know how small and unimportant the leaks were. Whoever he is he won’t rate forty years like Blake. Perhaps he’ll serve ten if the prison’s secure.’

‘That’s not our concern surely.’

‘No, Daintry, but I don’t enjoy the thought of that trial one little bit. What cooperation can we expect from the Americans afterwards? And then there’s our source. I told you, he’s still in place. We don’t want to blow him as long as he proves useful.’

‘In a way,’ Percival said, ‘it would be better to close our eyes like a complaisant husband. Draft whoever it is to some innocuous department. Forget things.’

‘And abet a crime?’ Daintry protested.

‘Oh, crime,’ Percival said and smiled at C like a fellow conspirator. ‘We are all committing crimes somewhere, aren’t we? It’s our job.’

‘The trouble is,’ C said, ‘that the situation is a bit like a rocky marriage. In a marriage, if the lover begins to be bored by the complaisant husband, he can always provoke a scandal. He holds the strong suit. He can choose his own time. I don’t want any scandal provoked.’

Daintry hated flippancy. Flippancy was like a secret code of which he didn’t possess the book. He had the right to read cables and reports marked Top Secret, but flippancy like this was so secret that he hadn’t a clue to its understanding. He said, ‘Personally I would resign rather than cover up.’ He put down his glass of whisky so hard that he chipped the crystal. Lady Hargreaves again, he thought. She must have insisted on crystal. He said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Of course you are right, Daintry,’ Hargreaves said. ‘Never mind the glass. Please don’t think I’ve brought you all the way up here to persuade you to let things drop, if we have sufficient proof… But a trial isn’t necessarily the right answer. The Russians don’t usually bring things to a trial with their own people. The trial of Penkovsky gave all of us a great boost in morale, they even exaggerated his importance, just as the CIA did. I still wonder why they held it. I wish I were a chess player. Do you play chess, Daintry?’

‘No, bridge is my game.’

‘The Russians don’t play bridge, or so I understand.’ Is that important’

‘We are playing games, Daintry, games, all of us. It’s important not to take a game too seriously or we may lose it. We have to keep flexible, but it’s important, naturally, to play the same game.’

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Daintry said, ‘I don’t understand what you are talking about.’

He was aware that he had drunk too much whisky, and he was aware that C and Percival were deliberately looking away from each other they didn’t want to humiliate him. They had heads of stone, he thought, stone.

‘Shall we just have one more whisky,’ C said, ‘or perhaps not. It’s been a long wet day. Percival…?’ Daintry said, ‘I’d like another.’

Percival poured out the drinks. Daintry said, ‘I’m sorry to be difficult, but I’d like to get things a little clearer before bed, or I won’t sleep.’

‘It’s really very simple,’ C said. ‘Put on your maximum security check if you like. It may flush the bird without more trouble. He’ll soon realise what’s going on if he’s guilty, that is. You might think up some kind of test-the old marked fiver technique seldom fails. When we are quite certain he’s our man, then it seems to me we will just have to eliminate him. No trial, no publicity. If we can get information about his contacts first, so much the better, but we mustn’t risk a public flight and then a press conference in Moscow. An arrest too is out of the question. Granted that he’s in Section 6, there’s no information he can possibly give which would do as much harm as the scandal of a court case.’

‘Elimination?

‘You mean…’

‘I know that elimination is rather a new thing for us. More in the KGB line or the CIA’s. That’s why I wanted Percival here to meet you. We may need the help of his science boys. Nothing spectacular. Doctor’s certificate. No inquest if it can be avoided. A suicide’s only too easy, but then a suicide always means an inquest, and that might lead to a question in the House. Everyone knows now what a “department of the Foreign Office” means. “Was any question of security involved?” You know the kind of thing some back-bencher is sure to ask. And no one ever believes the official answer. Certainly not the Americans.’

‘Yes,’ Percival said, ‘I quite understand. ‘He should die quietly, peacefully, without pain too, poor chap. Pain sometimes shows on the face, and there may be relatives to consider. A natural death…’

‘It’s a bit difficult, I realise, with all the new antibiotics,’ C said. ‘Assuming for the moment that it is Davis, he’s a man of only just over forty. In the prime of life.

‘I agree. A heart attack might just possibly be arranged. Unless… Does anyone know whether he drinks a lot?’

‘You said something about port, didn’t you, Daintry?’

‘I’m not saying he’s guilty,’ Daintry said.

‘None of us are,’ C said. ‘We are only taking Davis as a possible example… to help us examine the problem.’

‘I’d like to look at his medical history,’ Percival said, ‘and I’d like to get to know him on some excuse. In a way he would be my patient, wouldn’t he? That is to say if…’

‘You and Daintry could arrange that somehow together. There’s no great hurry. We have to be quite sure he’s our man. And now-it’s been a long day too many hares and too few pheasants sleep well. Breakfast on a tray. Eggs and bacon? Sausages? Tea or coffee?’

Percival said, ‘The works, coffee, bacon, eggs and sausages, if that’s all right.’

‘Nine o’clock?’

‘Nine o’clock.’

‘And you, Daintry?’

‘Just coffee and toast. Eight o’clock if you don’t mind. I can never sleep late and I have a lot of work waiting.’

‘You ought to relax more,’ C said.

Colonel Daintry was a compulsive shaver. He had shaved already before dinner, but now he went over his chin a second time with his Remington. Then he shook a little dust into the basin and touching it with his fingers felt justified. Afterwards he turned on his electric water-pick. The low buzz was enough to drown the tap on his door, so he was surprised when in the mirror he saw the door swing open and Doctor Percival pass diffidently in.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Daintry.’

‘Come in, do. Forgot to pack something? Anything I can lend you?’

‘No, no. I just wanted a word before bed. Amusing little gadget, that of yours. Fashionable, too. I suppose it really is better than an ordinary toothbrush?’

‘The water gets between the teeth,’ Daintry said. ‘My dentist recommended it.’

‘I always carry a toothpick for that,’ Percival said. He took a little red Cartier case out of his pocket. ‘Pretty, isn’t it? Eighteen carat. My father used it before me.’

‘I think this is more hygienic,’ Daintry said.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure of that. This washes easily. I was a general consultant, you know, Harley Street and all, before I got involved in this show. I don’t know why they wanted me-perhaps to sign death certificates.’ He trotted around the room, showing an interest in everything. I hope you keep clear of all this fluoride nonsense.’ He paused at a photograph which stood in a folding case on the dressing-table. Is this your wife?’

‘No. My daughter.’

‘Pretty girl.’

‘My wife and I are separated.’

‘Never married myself,’ Percival said. ‘To tell you the truth I never had much interest in women. Don’t mistake me not in boys either. Now a good trout stream…’

‘Know the Aube?’

‘No.’

‘A very small stream with very big fish.’

‘I can’t say I’ve ever had much interest in fishing,’ Daintry said, ‘and he began to tidy up his gadget.

‘How I run on, don’t I?’ Percival said. ‘Never can go straight to a subject. It’s like fishing again. You sometimes have to make a hundred false casts before you place the fly.’

‘I’m not a fish,’ Daintry said, ‘and it’s after midnight.’

‘My dear fellow, I really am sorry. I promise I won’t keep you up a minute longer. Only I didn’t want you to go to bed troubled.’

‘Was I troubled?’

‘It seemed to me you were a hit shocked at C’s attitude-I mean to things in general.’

‘Yes, perhaps I was.’

‘You haven’t been a long time with us, have you, or you’d know how we all live in boxes you know-boxes.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘Yes, you said that before, didn’t you? Understanding isn’t all that necessary in our business. I see they’ve given you the Ben Nicholson room.’

‘I don’t…’

‘I’m in the Miro room. Good lithographs, aren’t they? As a matter of fact it was my idea these decorations. Lady Hargreaves wanted sporting prints. To go with the pheasants.’

‘I don’t understand modern pictures,’ Daintry said.

‘Take a look at that Nicholson. Such a clever balance. Squares of different colour. And yet living so happily together. No clash. The man has a wonderful eye. Change just one of the colours-even the size of the square, and it would be no good at all.’ Percival pointed at a yellow square. ‘There’s your Section 6. That’s your square from now on. You don’t need to worry about the blue and the red. All you have to do is pinpoint our man and then tell me. You’ve no responsibility for what happens in the blue or red squares. In fact not even in the yellow. You just report. No bad conscience. No guilt.’

‘An action has nothing to do with its consequences. Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘The consequences are decided elsewhere, Daintry. You mustn’t take the conversation tonight too seriously. C likes to toss ideas up into the air and see how they fall. He likes to shock. You know the cannibal story. As far as I know, the criminal if there is a criminal-will be handed over to the police in quite the conservative way. Nothing to keep you awake. Do just try to understand that picture. Particularly the yellow square. If you could only see it with my eyes, you would sleep well tonight.’

An old-young man with hair which dangled over his shoulders and the heaven-preoccupied gaze of some eighteenth-century abbe was sweeping out a discotheque at the corner of Little Compton Street as Castle went by.

Castle had taken an earlier train than usual, and he was not due at the office for another three-quarters of an hour. Soho at this hour had still some of the glamour and innocence he remembered from his youth. It was at this corner he had listened for the first time to a foreign tongue, at the small cheap restaurant next door he had drunk his first glass of wine; crossing Old Compton Street in those days had been the nearest he had ever come to crossing the Channel. At nine in the morning the strip-tease clubs were all closed and only the delicatessens of his memory were open. The names against the flat-bells Lulu, Mimi and the like were all that indicated the afternoon and evening activities of Old Compton Street. The drains ran with fresh water, and the early housewives passed him under the pale hazy sky, carrying bulging sacks of salami and liverwurst with an air of happy triumph. There was not a policeman in sight, though after dark they would be seen walking in pairs. Castle crossed the peaceful street and entered a bookshop he had frequented for several years now.

It was an unusually respectable bookshop for this area of Soho, quite unlike the bookshop which faced it across the street and bore the simple sign ‘Books ‘ in scarlet letters. The window below the scarlet sign displayed girlie

magazines which nobody was ever seen to buy they were like a signal in an easy code long broken; they indicated the nature of private wares and interests inside. But the shop of Halliday & Son confronted the scarlet ‘Books ‘ with a window full of Penguins and Everyman and second-hand copies of World’s Classics. The son was never seen there, only old Mr Halliday himself, bent and white-haired, wearing an air of courtesy like an old suit in which he would probably like to be buried. He wrote all his business letters in long-hand: he was busy on one of them now.

‘A fine autumn morning, Mr Castle,’ Mr Halliday remarked, as he traced with great care the phrase ‘ Your obedient servant ‘.

‘There was a touch of frost this morning in the country.’

‘A bit early yet,’ Mr Halliday said.

‘I wonder if you’ve got a copy of War and Peace? I’ve never read it. It seems about time for me to begin.’

‘Finished Clarissa already, sir?’

‘No, but I’m afraid I’m stuck. The thought of all those volumes to come… I need a change.’

‘The Macmillan edition is out of print, but I think I have a clean second-hand copy in the World’s Classics in one volume. The Aylmer Maude translation. You can’t beat Aylmer Maude for Tolstoy. He wasn’t a mere translator, he knew the author as a friend.’ He put down his pen and looked regretfully at ‘Your obedient servant’. The penmanship was obviously not up to the mark.

‘That’s the translation I want. Two copies of course.’

‘How are things with you, if I may ask, sir?’

‘My boy’s sick. Measles. Oh, nothing to worry about. No complications.’

‘I’m very glad to hear that, Mr Castle. Measles in these days can cause a lot of anxiety. All well at the office, I hope? No crises in international affairs?’

‘None I’ve been told about. Everything very quiet. I’m seriously thinking of retiring.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir. We need travelled gentlemen like you to deal with foreign affairs. They will give you a good pension, I trust?’

‘I doubt it. How’s your business?’

‘Quiet, sir, very quiet. Fashions change. I remember the 1940s, how people would queue for a new World’s Classic. There’s little demand today for the great writers. The old grow old, and the young well, they seem to stay young a long time, and their tastes differ from ours… My son’s doing better than I am-in that shop over the road.’

‘He must get some queer types.’

‘I prefer not to dwell on it, Mr Castle. The two businesses remain distinctI’ve always insisted on that. No policeman will ever come in here for what I would call, between you and me, a bribe. Not that any real harm can he clone by the things the boy sells. It’s like preaching to the converted I say. You can’t corrupt the corrupt, sir.’

‘One day I must meet your son.’

‘He comes across in the evening to help me go over my books. He has a better head for figures than I ever had. We often speak of you, sir. It interests him to hear what you’ve been buying. I think he sometimes envies me the kind of clients I have, few though they are. He gets the furtive types, sir. They are not the ones to discuss a book like you and I do.’

‘You might tell him I have an edition of Monsieur Nicolas which I want to sell. Not quite your cup of tea, I think.’

‘I’m not so sure, sir, that it’s quite his either. It’s a sort of classic you must admit-the title is not suggestive enough for his customers, and it’s expensive. It would be described in a catalogue as erotica rather than curiosa. Of course he might find a borrower. Most of his books are on loan, you understand. They buy a book one day and change it the next. His books are not for keeps-like a good set of Sir Walter Scott used to be.’

‘You won’t forget to tell him? Monsieur Nicolas.’

‘Oh no, sir. Restif de la Bretonne. Limited edition. Published by Rodker. I have a memory like an encyclopaedia, so far as the older hooks are concerned. Will you take War and Peace with you? If you’ll allow me a five-minute search in the cellar.’

‘You can post it to Berkhamsted. I shan’t have time for reading today. Only do remember to tell your son…’

‘I’ve never forgotten a message yet, sir, have I?’

After Castle left the shop he crossed the street and peered for a moment into the other establishment. All he saw was one young spotty man making his way sadly down a rack of Men Only and Penthouse… A green rep curtain hung at the end of the shop. It probably held more erudite and expensive items as well as shyer customers, and perhaps young Halliday too whom Castle had never yet had the good fortune to meet-if good fortune were the right term, he thought, to employ.

Davis for once had arrived at the office ahead of him. He told Castle apologetically, I came in early today. I said to myself the new broom may still be sweeping around. And so I thought… an appearance of zeal… It does no harm.’

‘Daintry won’t be here on a Monday morning. He went off somewhere for a shooting weekend. Anything in from Zaire yet?’

‘Nothing at all. The Yanks are asking for more information about the Chinese mission in Zanzibar.’

‘We’ve nothing new to give them. It’s up to MI5.’

‘You’d think from the fuss they make that Zanzibar was as close to them as Cuba.’

‘It almost is-in the jet age.’

Cynthia, the major-general’s daughter, came in with two cups of coffee and a telegram. She wore brown trousers and a turtle-neck sweater. She had something in common with Davis, for she played a comedy too. If faithful Davis looked as untrustworthy as a bookie, Cynthia, the domestic minded, looked as dashing as a young commando. It was a pity that her spelling was so bad, but perhaps there was something Elizabethan about her spelling as well as about her name. She was probably looking for a Philip Sidney, and so far she had only found a Davis.

‘From Lourenco Marques,’ Cynthia told Castle. Your pigeon, Davis.’

‘Of absorbing interest,’ Davis said. ‘Your 253 of September 10 mutilated. Please repeat.” That’s your pigeon, Cynthia. Run along and code it again like a good girl and get the spelling right this time. It helps. You know, Castle, when I joined this outfit, I was a romantic. I thought of atom secrets. They only took me on because I was a good mathematician, and my physics were not too had either.’

‘Atom secrets belong to Section 8.’

‘I thought I’d at least learn some interesting gadgets, like using secret ink. I’m sure you know all about secret ink.’

‘I did once-even to the use of bird shit. I had a course in it before they sent me on a mission at the end of the war. They gave me a handsome little wooden box, full of bottles like one of those chemistry cabinets for children. And an electric kettle-with a supply of plastic knitting needles.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘For opening letters.’

‘And did you ever? Open one, I mean?’

‘No, though I did once try. I was taught not to open an envelope at the flap, but at the side, and then when I closed it again I was supposed to use the same gum. The trouble was I hadn’t got the right gum, so I had to burn the letter after reading it. It wasn’t important anyway. Just a love letter.’

‘What about a Luger? I suppose you had a Luger. Or an explosive fountain-pen?’

‘No. We’ve never been very James Bond minded here. I wasn’t allowed to carry a gun, and my only car was a second-hand Morris Minor.’

‘We might at least have been given one Luger between us. It’s the age of terrorism.’

‘But we’ve got a scrambler,’ Castle said in the hope of soothing Davis. He recognised the kind of embittered dialogue which was always apt to crop up when Davis was out of sorts. A glass of port too many, a disappointment with Cynthia…’

‘Have you ever handled a microdot, Castle?’

‘Never.’

‘Not even an old wartime hand like you? What was the most secret information you ever possessed, Castle?’

‘I once knew the approximate date of an invasion.’

‘Normandy?’

‘No, no. Only the Azores.’

‘Were they invaded? I’d forgotten-or perhaps I never knew. Oh well, old man, I suppose we’ve got to set our teeth and go through the bloody Zaire bag. Can you tell me why the Yanks are interested in our forecast for the copper crop?’

‘I suppose it affects the budget. And that could affect aid programmes. Perhaps the Zaire Government might be tempted to supplement its aid from elsewhere. You see, here we are Report 397-someone with a rather Slavic name had lunch on the 24th with the President.’

‘Do we have to pass even that on to the CIA?’

‘Of course.’

‘And do you suppose they will give us one little guided missile secret in return?’

It was certainly one of Davis’s worst days. His eyes had a yellow tint. God only knew what mixture he had drunk the night before in his bachelor pad in Davies Street. He said glumly, ‘James Bond would have had Cynthia a long while ago. On a sandy beach under a hot sun. Pass me Philip Dibba’s card, would you?’

‘What’s his number?

‘59800/3’

‘What’s he been up to?’

‘There’s a rumour that his retirement as director of the Post Office in Kinshasa was compulsory. He had too many stamps misprinted for his private collection. There goes our most high-powered agent in Zaire.’ Davis put his head in his hands and gave a doglike howl of genuine distress.

Castle said, ‘I know how you feel, Davis. Sometimes I would like to retire myself… or change my job.’

‘It’s too late for that.’

‘I wonder. Sarah always tells me I could write a book.’

‘Official Secrets.’

‘Not about us. About apartheid.’

‘It’s not what you’d call a best-selling subject.’

Davis stopped writing Dibba’s card. He said, ‘joking apart, old man, please don’t think of it. I couldn’t stand this job without you. I’d crack up if there wasn’t someone here with whom I could laugh at things. I’m afraid to smile with any of the others. Even Cynthia. I love her, but she’s so damned loyal, she might report me as a security risk. To Colonel Daintry. Like James Bond killing the girl he slept with. Only she hasn’t even slept with me.’

I wasn’t really serious,’ Castle said. ‘How could I leave? Where would I go from here? Except retire. I’m sixty-two, Davis. Past the official age. I sometimes think they’ve forgotten me, or perhaps they’ve lost my file.’

‘Here they are asking for traces of a fellow called Agbo, an employee in Radio Zaire. 59800 proposes him as a subagent.’

‘What for?’

‘He has a contact in Radio Ghana.’

‘That doesn’t sound very valuable. Anyway Ghana’s not our territory. Pass it on to 6B and see if they can use him.’

‘Don’t be rash, Castle, we don’t want to give away a treasure. Who knows what might spring from agent Agbo? From Ghana we might even penetrate Radio Guinea. That would put Penkovsky in the shade. What a triumph. The CIA have never penetrated as far as that into darkest Africa.’

It was one of Davis’s worst days.

‘Perhaps we only see the dullest side of things in 6A,’ Castle said.

Cynthia returned with an envelope for Davis. ‘You have to sign here and acknowledge receipt.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘How would I know? It’s administration.’ She collected a single piece of paper from the out-tray. Is this all?’

‘We are not exactly overworked at the moment, Cynthia. Are you free for lunch?’

‘No, I have things to get for dinner tonight.’ She closed the door firmly.

‘Oh well, another time. Always another time.’ Davis opened the envelope. He said, ‘ What will they think up next?’

‘What’s wrong?’ Castle asked.

‘Haven’t you received one of these?’

‘Oh, a medical check-up? Of course. I don’t know how many times I’ve been checked in my time. It’s something to do with insurance-or pension. Before they sent me to South Africa, Doctor Percival perhaps you haven’t met Doctor Percival-tried to make out I had diabetes. They sent me to a specialist who found I had too little sugar instead of too much… Poor old Percival. I think he was a bit out of practice in general medicine, being mixed up with us. Security is more important than a correct diagnosis in this outfit.’

‘This chit is signed Percival, Emmanuel Percival. What a name. Wasn’t Emmanuel the bringer of good tidings? Do you think they might be sending me abroad too?’

‘Would you like to go?’

‘I’ve always dreamt of being sent one day to Lourenco Marques. Our man there is due for a change. The port should be good, shouldn’t it? I suppose even revolutionaries drink port. If only I could have Cynthia with me…’

‘I thought you favoured a bachelor life.’

‘I wasn’t talking about marriage. Bond never had to marry. I like Portuguese cooking.’

‘It’s probably African cooking by now. Do you know anything about the place apart from 69300’s cables?’

‘I collected a whole file on the nightspots and the restaurants before their damned revolution. Perhaps they are all closed now. All the same I don’t suppose 69300 knows the half of what I do about what goes on there. He hasn’t got the files, and anyway he’s so damned serious I think he takes his work to bed. Think what the two of us could put down on expenses.’

‘The two of you?’

‘Cynthia and me.’

‘What a dreamer you are, Davis. She’ll never take you on. Remember her father, the major-general.’

‘Everybody has his dream. What’s yours, Castle?’

‘Oh, I suppose sometimes I dream of security. I don’t mean Daintry’s sort of security. To be retired. With a good pension, Enough for me and my wife…’

‘And your little bastard?’

‘Yes, and my little bastard too, of course.’

‘They aren’t very generous with pensions in this department.’

‘No, I don’t suppose either of us will realise his dream.’

‘All the same-this medical check-up must mean something, Castle. That time I went over to Lisbon-our man there took me to a sort of cave beyond Estoril, where you could hear the water washing up under your table… I’ve never eaten any lobsters as good as those were. I’ve read about a restaurant in Lourenco Marques…, I even like their green wine, Castle. I really ought to be there-not 69300. He doesn’t appreciate good living. You know the place, don’t you?’

‘I spent two nights there with Sarah-seven years ago. At the Hotel Polana.’

‘Only two nights?’

‘I’d left Pretoria in a hurry-you know that-just ahead of BOSS. I didn’t feel safe so near the frontier. I wanted to put an ocean between BOSS and Sarah.’

‘Oh yes, you had Sarah. Lucky you. At the Hotel Polana. With the Indian Ocean outside.’

Castle remembered the bachelor flat the used glasses, Penthouse and Nature. ‘If you are really serious, Davis, I’ll talk to Watson. I’ll put you up for an exchange.’

‘I’m serious enough. I want to escape from here, Castle. Desperately.’

‘Is it as bad as all that?’

‘We sit here writing meaningless telegrams. We feel important because we know a little bit more than someone else about the groundnuts or what Mobutu said at a private dinner… Do you know I came into this outfit for excitement? Excitement, Castle. What a fool I was. I don’t know how you’ve stood it all these years…’

‘Perhaps being married helps.’

‘If I ever married I wouldn’t want to live my life here. I’m tired to death of this damned old country, Castle, electricity cuts, strikes, inflation. I’m not worried about the price of food-it’s the price of good port which gets me down. I joined this outfit hoping to get abroad, I’ve even learnt Portuguese, but here I stay answering telegrams from Zaire, reporting groundnuts.’

‘I always thought you were having fun, Davis.’

‘Oh, I have fun when I get a little drunk. I love that girl, Castle. I can’t get her out of my head. And so I clown to please her, and the more I clown the less she likes me. Perhaps if I went to Lourenco Marques… She said once she wanted to go abroad too.’

The telephone rang. Is that you, Cynthia?’ but it wasn’t. It was Watson, the head of Section 6. Is that you, Castle?’

‘It’s Davis.’

‘Give me Castle.’

‘Yes,’ Castle said, ‘I’m here. What is it?’

‘C wants to see us. Will you pick me up on the way down?’

It was a long way down, for C’s office was one floor underground, established in what during the 1890s had been a millionaire’s wine cellar. The room where Castle and Watson waited for a green light to go on above C’s door had been the adjoining cellar for the coal and wood, and C’s office had housed the best wines in London. It was rumoured that, when the department had taken over the house in 1946 and the architect started to reconstruct the building, a false wall was discovered in the wine cellar and behind it lay like mummies the millionaire’s secret treasure of fabulous vintages. They were sold so the legend went by some ignorant clerk in the Office of Works to the

Army and Navy Stores for the price of common table wines. The story was probably untrue, but whenever an historic wine came up at a Christie auction, Davis would say with gloom, That was one of ours.’

The red light stayed interminably on. It was like waiting in a car for a traffic accident to he cleared away.

‘Do you know what the trouble is?’ Castle asked.

‘No. He just asked me to introduce all the Section 6 men whom he’s never met. He’s been through 6B and now it’s your turn. I’m to introduce you and then leave you. That’s the drill. It sounds like a relic of colonialism to me.’

‘I met the old C once. Before I went abroad the first time. He had a black eye-glass. It was rather daunting being stared at by that black 0, but all he did was shake hands and wish me good luck. They aren’t thinking of sending me abroad again by any chance?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Remind me to speak to you about Davis.’

The light turned green.

‘I wish I’d shaved better this morning,’ Castle said.

Sir John Hargreaves, unlike the old C, was not daunting at all. He had a brace of pheasants on his desk and he was busy on the telephone. I brought them up this morning. Mary thought you might like them.’ He waved his hand towards two chairs.

So that’s where Colonel Daintry spent the weekend, Castle thought. To shoot pheasants or report on security? He took the smaller and harder chair with a due sense of protocol.

‘She’s fine. A bit of rheumatism in her had leg, that’s all,’ Hargreaves said and rang off.

‘This is Maurice Castle, sir,’ Watson said. ‘He’s in charge of 6A.’

In charge sounds a little too important,’ Castle said. ‘There are only two of us.’

‘You deal with Top Secret sources, don’t you? You and Davis under your direction?’

‘And Watson’s.’

‘Yes, of course. But Watson has the whole of 6 in his care. You delegate, I suppose, a good deal, Watson?’

‘I find 6C the only section which needs my full attention. Wilkins hasn’t been with us long. He has to work himself in.’

‘Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Watson. Thanks for bringing Castle down.’

Hargreaves stroked the feathers of one of the dead birds. He said, ‘Like Wilkins I’m working myself in. As I see it things are a bit like they were when I was a young man in West Africa. Watson is a sort of Provincial Commissioner and you are a District Commissioner left pretty well to yourself in your own territory. Of course, you know Africa too, don’t you?’

‘Only South Africa,’ Castle said.

‘Yes, I was forgetting. South Africa never seems quite like the real Africa to me. Nor the north either. That’s dealt with by 6C, isn’t it? Daintry has been explaining things to me. Over the weekend.’

‘Did you have a good shoot, sir?’ Castle asked.

‘Medium. I don’t think Daintry was quite satisfied. You must come and have a go yourself next autumn.’

‘I wouldn’t be any good, sir. I’ve never shot anything in my life, not even a human being.’

‘Ah, yes, they are the best target. To tell you the truth, birds bore me too.’

C looked at a paper on his desk.’ You did very good work in Pretoria. You are described as a first-class administrator. You reduced the expenses of the station considerably.’

‘I took over from a man who was brilliant at recruiting agents, but he hadn’t much idea of finance. It came easily to me. I was in a bank for a while before the war.’

‘Daintry writes here that you had some private trouble in Pretoria.’

‘I wouldn’t call it trouble. I fell in love.’

‘Yes. So I see. With an African girl. What those fellows call Bantu without distinction. You broke their race laws.’

‘We’re safely married now. But we did have a difficult time out there.’

‘Yes. So you reported to us. I wish all our people when they are in a bit of trouble would behave as correctly. You were afraid the South African police were getting on to you and would try to tear you in pieces.’

‘It didn’t seem right to leave you with a vulnerable representative.’

‘You can see I’ve been looking pretty closely through your file. We told you to get out at once, though we never thought that you’d bring the girl with you.’

‘HQ had had her vetted. They found nothing wrong with her. Wasn’t I right from your point of view to get her out too? I had used her as a contact with my African agents. My cover story was that I was planning a serious critical study of apartheid in my spare time, but the police might have broken her. So I got her away through Swaziland to Lourenco Marques.’

‘Oh, you did quite right, Castle. And now you’re married with a child. All well, I hope?’

‘Well, at the moment my son has measles.’

‘Ah, then you must pay attention to his eyes. The eyes are the weak spot. The thing I really wished to see you about, Castle, was a visit we are going to have in a few weeks’ time from a certain Mr Cornelius Muller, one of the head boys in BOSS. I think you knew him when you were in Pretoria.’

‘I did indeed.’

‘We are going to let him see some of the material you deal with. Of course, only enough to establish the fact that we are cooperating in a sort of way.’

‘He’ll know more than we do about Zaire.’

‘It’s Mozambique he’s most interested in.’

‘In that case Davis is your man, sir. He’s more abreast of things there than I am.’

‘Oh yes, of course, Davis. I haven’t yet met Davis.’

‘Another thing, sir. When I was in Pretoria, I didn’t get on at all well with this man Muller. If you look further back in my file it was he who tried to blackmail me under the race laws. That was why your predecessor told me to get out as fast as I could. I don’t think that would help our personal relations. It would be better to have Davis deal with him.’

‘All the same you are Davis’s superior, and you are the natural officer to see him. It won’t be easy, I know that. Knives out on both sides, but he’ll be the one who’s taken by surprise. You know exactly what not to show him. It’s very important to guard our agents-even if it means keeping some important material dark. Davis hasn’t your personal experience of BOSS and their Mr Muller.’

‘Why do we have to show him anything, sir?’

‘Have you ever wondered, Castle, what would happen to the West if the South African gold mines were closed by a racial war? And a losing war perhaps, as in Vietnam. Before the politicians have agreed on a substitute for gold. Russia as the chief source. It would be a bit more complicated than the petrol crisis. And the diamond mines… De Beers are more important than General Motors. Diamonds don’t age like cars. There are even more serious aspects than gold and diamonds, there’s uranium. I don’t think you’ve been told yet of a secret White House paper on an operation they call Uncle Remus.’

‘No. There have been rumours…’

‘Like it or not, we and South Africa and the States are all partners in Uncle Remus. And that means we have to be pleasant to Mr Muller-even if he did blackmail you.’

‘And I have to show him…?’

‘Information on guerrillas, blockade-running to Rhodesia, the new chaps in power in Mozambique, Russian and Cuban penetration… economic information.’

‘There’s not much left, is there?’

‘Go a bit carefully on the Chinese. The South Africans are too much inclined to lump them with the Russians. The day may come when we need the Chinese. I don’t like the idea of Uncle Remus any more than you do. It’s what the politicians call a realistic policy, and realism never got anyone very far in the kind of Africa I used to know. My Africa was a sentimental Africa. I really loved Africa, Castle. The Chinese don’t, nor do the Russians nor the Americans-but we have to go with the White House and Uncle Remus and Mr Muller. How easy it was in the old days when we dealt with chiefs and witch doctors and bush schools and devils and rain queens. My Africa was still a little like the Africa of Rider Haggard. It wasn’t a bad place. The Emperor Chaka was a lot better than Field Marshal Amin Dada. Oh well, do your best with Muller. He’s the personal representative of the big BOSS himself. I suggest you see him first at home it would be a salutary shock for him.’

‘I don’t know if my wife would agree.’

‘Tell her I asked you to. I leave it to her-if it’s too painful.

Castle turned at the door, remembering his promise. ‘Could I have a word with you about Davis, sir?’

‘Of course. What is it?’

‘He’s had too long at a London desk. I think that at the first opportunity we ought to send him to Lourenco Marques. Exchange him for 69300 who must need a change of climate by now.’

‘Has Davis suggested that?’

‘Not exactly, but I think he’d he glad to get away-anywhere. He’s in a pretty nervous state, sir.’

‘What about?’

‘A spot of girl trouble, I expect. And desk fatigue.’

‘Oh, I can understand desk fatigue. We’ll see what we can do for him.’

‘I am a little anxious about him.’

‘I promise you I’ll bear him in mind, Castle. By the way, this visit of Muller’s is strictly secret. You know how we like to make our little boxes watertight. This has got to be your personal box. I haven’t even told Watson. And you shouldn’t tell Davis.’

In the second week of October Sam was still officially in quarantine. There had been no complication, so one less danger menaced his future-that future which always appeared to Castle as an unpredictable ambush. Walking down the High Street on a Sunday morning he felt a sudden desire to give a kind of thanks, if it was only to a myth, that Sam was safe, so he took himself in, for a few minutes, to the back of the parish church. The service was nearly at an end and the congregation of the well-dressed, the middle-aged and the old were standing at attention, as they sang with a kind of defiance as though they inwardly doubted the facts, ‘ There is a green hill far away, without a city wall ‘. The simple precise words, with the single Cache of colour, reminded Castle of the local background so often to be found in primitive paintings. The city wall was like the ruins of the keep beyond the station, and up the green hillside of the Common, on top of the abandoned rifle butts, had once stood a tall post on which a man could have been hanged. For a moment he came near to sharing their incredible belief-it would do no harm to mutter a prayer of thanks to the God of his childhood, the God of the Common and the castle, that no ill had yet come to Sarah’s child. Then a sonic boom scattered the words of the hymn and shook the old glass of the west window and rattled the crusader’s helmet which hung on a pillar, and he was reminded again of the grown-up world. He went quickly out and bought the Sunday papers. The Sunday Express had a headline on the front page-‘Child’s Body Found in Wood’.

In the afternoon he took Sam and Buller for a walk across the Common, leaving Sarah to sleep. He would have liked to leave Buller behind, but his angry protest would have wakened Sarah, so he comforted himself with the thought that Buller was unlikely to find a cat astray on the Common. The fear was always there since one summer three years before, when providence played an ill trick by providing suddenly a picnic party among the beech woods who had brought with them an expensive cat with a blue collar round its neck on a scarlet silk leash. The cat-a Siamese-had not even time to give one cry of anger or pain before Buller snapped its hack and tossed the corpse over his shoulder like a man loading a sack onto a lorry. Then he had trotted attentively away between the trees, turning his head this way and that-where there was one cat there ought surely to be another-and Castle was left to face alone the angry and grief-stricken picnickers.

In October however picnickers were unlikely. All the same Castle waited till the sun had nearly set and he kept Buller on his chain all the way down King’s Road past the police station at the corner of the High Street. Once beyond the canal and the railway bridge and the new houses (they had been there for a quarter of a century, but anything which had not existed when he was a boy seemed new to Castle), he let Buller loose, and immediately, like a well-trained dog, Buller splayed out and dropped his crotte on the edge of the path, taking his time. The eyes stared ahead, inward-looking. Only on these sanitary occasions did Buller seem a dog of intelligence. Castle did not like Buller-he had bought him for a purpose, to reassure Sarah, but Buller had proved inadequate as a watchdog, so now he was only one responsibility more, though with canine lack of judgement he loved Castle more than any other human being.

The bracken was turning to the dusky gold of a fine autumn, and there were only a few flowers left on the gorse. Castle and Sam searched in vain for the rifle butts which had once stood-a red clay cliff above the waste of Common. They were drowned now in tired greenery. ‘Did they shoot spies there?’ Sam asked.

‘No, no. What gave you that idea? This was simply for rifle practice. In the first war.’

‘But there are spies, aren’t there real spies?’

‘I suppose so, yes. Why do you ask?’

‘I just wanted to be sure, that’s all.’

Castle remembered how at the same age he had asked his father whether there were really fairies, and the answer had been less truthful than his own. His father had been a sentimental man; he wished to reassure his small son at any cost that living was worthwhile. It would have been unfair to accuse him of dishonesty: a fairy, he might well have argued, was a symbol which represented something which was at least approximately true. There were still fathers around even today who told their children that God existed.

‘Spies like 007?’

‘Well, not exactly.’ Castle tried to change the subject. He said, ‘When I was a child I thought there was a dragon living here in an old dug-out down there among those trenches.’

‘Where are the trenches?’

‘You can’t see them now for the bracken.’

‘What’s a dragon?’

‘You know-one of those armoured creatures spitting out fire.’

‘Like a tank?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose like a tank.’ There was a lack of contact between their two imaginations which discouraged him.’ More like a giant lizard,’ he said. Then he realised that the boy had seen many tanks, but they had left the land of lizards before he was born.

‘Did you ever see a dragon?’

‘Once I saw smoke coming out of a trench and I thought it was the dragon.’

‘Were you afraid?’

‘No, I was afraid of quite different things in those days. I hated my school, and I had few friends.’

‘Why did you hate school? Will I hate school? I mean real school.’

‘We don’t all have the same enemies. Perhaps you won’t need a dragon to help you, but I did. All the world hated my dragon and wanted to kill him. They were afraid of the smoke and the flames which came out of his mouth when he was angry. I used to steal out at night from my dormitory and take him tins of sardines from my tuck-box. He cooked them in the tin with his breath. He liked them hot.’

‘But did that really happen?’

‘No, of course not, but it almost seems now as though it had. Once I lay in bed in the dormitory crying under the sheet because it was the first week of term and there were twelve endless weeks before the holidays, and I was afraid of-everything around. It was winter, and suddenly I saw the window of my cubicle was misted over with heat. I wiped away the steam with my fingers and looked down. The dragon was there, lying flat in the wet black street, he looked like a crocodile in a stream. He had never left the Common before because every man’s hand was against him just as I thought they were all against me. The police even kept rifles in a cupboard to shoot him if he ever came to town. Yet there he was, lying very still and breathing up at me big warm clouds of breath. You see, he had heard that school had started again and he knew I was unhappy and alone. He was more intelligent than any dog, much more intelligent than Buller.’

‘You are pulling my leg,’ Sam said.

‘No, I’m just remembering.’

‘What happened then?’

‘I made a secret signal to him. It meant “Danger. Go away,” because I wasn’t sure that he knew about the police with their rifles.’

‘Did he go?’

‘Yes. Very slowly. Looking back over his tail as though he didn’t want to leave me. But I never felt afraid or lonely again. At least not often. I knew I had only to give a signal and he would leave his dug-out on the Common; and come down and help me. We had a lot of private signals, codes, and ciphers.’

‘Like a spy,’ Sam said.

‘Yes,’ Castle said with disappointment, ‘I suppose so. Like a spy.’

Castle remembered how he had once made a map of the Common with all the trenches marked and the secret paths hidden by ferns. That was like a spy too. He said, ‘Time to he going home. Your mother will be anxious…’

‘No, she won’t. I’m with you. I want to see the dragon’s cave.’

‘There wasn’t really a dragon.’

‘But you aren’t quite sure, are you?’

With difficulty Castle found the old trench. The dug-out where the dragon had lived was blocked by blackberry bushes. As he forced his way through them his feet struck against a rusty tin and sent it tumbling.

‘You see,’ Sam said, ‘you did bring food.’ He wormed his way forward, but there was no dragon and no skeleton. ‘Perhaps the police got him in the end,’ Sam said. Then he picked up the tin.

‘It’s tobacco,’ he said, ‘not sardines.’

That night Castle said to Sarah as they lay in bed, ‘Do you really think it’s not too late?’

‘For what?’

‘To leave my job.’

‘Of course it isn’t. You aren’t an old man yet.’

‘We might have to move from here.’

‘Why? This place is as good as any.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to go away? This house, it isn’t much of a house, is it? Perhaps if I got a job abroad…’

‘I’d like Sam to stay put in one place so that when he goes away he’ll be able to come back. To something he knew in childhood. Like you came back. To something old. Something secure.’

‘A collection of old ruins by the railway?’

‘Yes.’

He remembered the bourgeois voices, as sedate as the owners in their Sunday clothes, singing in the flinty church, expressing their weekly moment of belief. ‘A green hill far away, without a city wall.’

‘The ruins are pretty,’ she said.

‘But you can never go back,’ Castle said, ‘to your childhood.’

‘That’s different, I wasn’t secure. Until I knew you. And there were no ruins-only shacks.’

‘Muller is coming over, Sarah.’

‘Cornelius Muller?’

‘Yes. He’s a big man now. I have to be friendly to him - by order.’

‘Don’t worry. He can’t hurt us any more.’

‘No. But I don’t want you troubled.’

‘Why should I be?’

‘C wants me to bring him here.’

‘Bring him then. And let him see how you and I… and Sam…’

‘You agree?’

‘Of course I agree. A black hostess for Mr Cornelius Muller. And a black child.’ They laughed, with a touch of fear.

‘How’s the little bastard?’ Davis asked as he had done every day now for three weeks.

‘Oh, everything’s over. He’s quite well again. He wanted to know the other day when you were going to come and see us. He likes you-I can’t imagine why. He often talks of that picnic we had last summer and the hide-and-seek. He seems to think no one else can hide like you can. He thinks you are a spy. He talks about spies like children talked about fairies in my day. Or didn’t they?’

‘Could I borrow his father for tonight?’

‘Why? What’s on?’

‘Doctor Percival was in yesterday when you were away, and we got talking. Do you know, I really think they may be sending me abroad? He was asking if I’d mind a few more tests… blood, urine, radio of the kidneys, et cetera, et cetera. He said they had to be careful about the tropics. I liked him. He seems to be a sporting type.’

‘Racing?’

‘No, only fishing as a matter of fact. That’s a pretty lonely sport. Percival’s a hit like me-no wife. Tonight we thought we’d get together and see the town. I haven’t seen the town for a long while. Those chaps from the Department of the Environment are a pretty sad lot. Couldn’t you face being a grass widower, old man, just for one evening?’

‘My last train leaves Euston at 1.30.’

‘I’ve got the flat all to myself tonight. The Environment men have both gone off to a polluted area. You can have a bed. Double or single, whichever you prefer.’

‘Please a single bed. I’m getting to be an old man Davis. I don’t know what plans you and Percival have…’

‘I thought dinner in the Cafe Grill and afterwards a spot of strip-tease. Raymond’s Revue bar. They’ve got Rita Rolls…’

‘Do you think Percival likes that sort of thing?’

‘I sounded him out, and can you believe it? He’s never been to a strip-tease in his life. He said he’d love to take a peek with colleagues he can trust. You know how it is with work like ours. He feels the same way. Nothing to talk about at a party for reasons of security. John Thomas doesn’t even have a chance to lift his head. He’s morose-that’s the word. But if John Thomas dies, God help you, you might as well die too. Of course it’s different for you-you are a married man. You can always talk to Sarah and…’

‘We’re not supposed to talk even to our wives.’

‘I bet you do.’

‘I don’t, Davis. And if you are thinking of picking up a couple of tarts I wouldn’t talk to them either. A lot of them are employed by MI5-oh, I always forget they’ve changed our names. We are all DI now. I wonder why? I suppose there’s a Department of Semantics.’

‘You sound a bit fed up too.’

‘Yes. Perhaps a party will do me good. I’ll telephone to Sarah and tell her-what?’

‘Tell her the truth. You are dining with one of the big boys. Important for your future in the firm. And I’m giving you a bed. She trusts me. She knows I won’t lead you astray.’

‘Yes, I suppose she does.’

‘And, damn it all, that’s true too, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll ring her up when I go out to lunch.’

‘Why not do it here and save money?’

‘I like my calls private.’

‘Do you really think they bother to listen in to us?’ Wouldn’t you in their position?’

‘I suppose I would. But what the hell of a lot of dreary stuff they must have to tape.’

The evening was only half a success, though it had begun well enough. Doctor Percival in his slow unexciting fashion was a good enough companion. He made neither Castle or Davis feel he was their superior in the department. When Colonel Daintry’s name arose he poked gentle fun at him-he had met him, he said, ‘at a shooting weekend. ‘He doesn’t like abstract art and he doesn’t approve of me. That’s because I don’t shoot,’ Doctor Percival explained, ‘I only fish.’

They were at Raymond’s Revue Bar by that time, crushed at a small table, just large enough to hold three whiskies, while a pretty young thing was going through curious antics in a hammock.

‘I’d like to get my hook into her,’ Davis said.

The girl drank from a bottle of High and Dry suspended above the hammock on a string, and after every swallow she removed a piece of clothing with an air of ginny abandon. At long last they could see her naked buttocks outlined by the net like the rump of a chicken seen through a Soho housewife’s string bag. A party of businessmen from Birmingham applauded with some violence, and one man went so far as to wave a Diners Club card above his head, perhaps to show his financial standing.

‘What do you fish?’ Castle asked.

‘Mainly trout or grayling,’ Percival said.

‘Is there much difference?’

‘My dear fellow, ask a big-game hunter if there’s a difference between lion and tiger.’

‘Which do you prefer?’

‘It’s not really a question of preference. I just love fishing-any fly fishing. The grayling is less intelligent than the trout, but that doesn’t mean he’s always easier. He demands a different technique. And he’s a fighter-he fights until there’s no fight left in him.’

‘And the trout?’

‘Oh, he’s the king, all right. He scares easily-nail boots or a stick, any sound you make and he’s off. Then you must place your fly exactly, the first time. Otherwise…’ Percival made a gesture with his arm as though he were casting in the direction of yet another naked girl who was striped black and white by the lights like a zebra.

‘What a bottom!’ Davis said with awe. He sat with a glass of whisky half-way to his lips, watching the cheeks revolve with the same precision as the wheels of a Swiss watch: a diamond movement.

‘You aren’t doing your blood pressure any good,’ Percival told him.

‘Blood pressure?’

‘I told you it was high.’

‘You can’t bother me tonight,’ Davis said. ‘That’s the great Rita Rolls herself. The one and only Rita.’

‘You ought to have a more complete check-up if you are really thinking of going abroad.’

‘I feel all right, Percival. I’ve never felt better.’

‘That’s where the danger lies.’

‘You almost begin to scare me,’ Davis said. ‘Nail boots and a stick. I can see why a trout…’ He took a sip of whisky as though it were a disagreeable medicine and laid his glass down again.

Doctor Percival squeezed his arm and said, ‘I was only joking, Davis. You’re more the grayling type.’

‘You mean I’m a poor fish?’

‘You mustn’t underestimate the grayling. He has a very delicate nervous system. And he’s a fighter.’

‘Then I’m more of a cod,’ said Davis.

‘Don’t talk to me about cod. I don’t go in for that sort of fishing.’

The lights went up. It was the end of the show. Anything, the management had decided, would be an anticlimax after Rita Rolls. Davis lingered for a moment in the bar to try his luck with a fruit machine. He used up all the coins he had and took two off Castle. It’s not my evening,’ he said, ‘his gloom returning. Obviously Doctor Percival had upset him.

‘What about a nightcap at my place?’ Doctor Percival asked.

‘I thought you were warning me off the drink.’

‘My dear chap, I was exaggerating. Anyway whisky’s the safest drink there is.’

‘All the same I begin to feel like bed now.’

In Great Windmill Street prostitutes stood inside the doorways under red shades and asked, ‘Coming up, darling?’

‘I suppose you’d warn me off that too?’ Davis said. ‘Well, the regularity of marriage is safer. Less strain on the blood pressure.’

The night porter was scrubbing the steps of Albany as Doctor Percival left them. His chambers in Albany were designated by a letter and a figure D.6 as though it were one more section of the old firm. Castle and Davis watched him pick his way carefully towards the Ropewalk so as not to wet his shoes-an odd precaution for someone accustomed to wading knee-deep in cold streams.

‘I’m sorry he came,’ Davis said. ‘We could have had a good evening without him.’

‘I thought you liked him.’

‘I did, but he got on my nerves tonight with his damned fishing stories. And all his talk about my blood pressure. What’s my blood pressure to do with him? Is he really a doctor?’

‘I don’t think he’s practised much for years,’ Castle said. ‘He’s C’s liaison officer with the bacteriological warfare people-I suppose someone with a medical degree comes in handy there.’

That place Porton gives me the shivers. People talk so much about the atom bomb, but they quite forget our little country establishment. Nobody has ever bothered to march there. Nobody wears an anti-bacterial button, but if the bomb were abolished, there’d still be that little deadly test-tube…’

They turned the corner by Claridge’s. A tall lean woman in a long dress climbed into a Rolls Royce followed by a sullen man in a white tie who looked furtively at his watch-they looked like actors from an Edwardian play: it was two in the morning. There was a yellow lino worn into holes like a gruyere cheese on the steep stairs up to Davis’s flat. With W. I. on the notepaper no one bothered about small details like that. The kitchen door was open, and Castle saw a stack of dirty dishes in the sink. Davis opened a cupboard door; the shelves were stacked with almost empty bottles-the protection of the environment did not begin at home. Davis tried to find a whisky bottle containing enough for two glasses. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘we’ll mix them. They’re all blends anyway.’ He combined what remained of a Johnnie Walker with a White Horse, and obtained a quarter bottle.

‘Does no one here ever wash up?’ Castle asked.

‘A woman comes in twice a week, and we save it all for her.’

Davis opened a door. ‘Here’s your room. I’m afraid the bed’s not made. She’s due tomorrow.’ He picked a dirty handkerchief off the floor and stuffed it in a drawer for tidiness sake. Then he led Castle back into the sitting-room and cleared some magazines off a chair onto the floor.

‘I’m thinking of changing my name by deed poll,’ Davis said.

‘What to?’

‘Davis with an e. Davies of Davies Street has a certain classy ring.’ He put his feet up on the sofa. ‘You know, this blend of mine tastes quite good. I shall call it a White Walker. There might be a fortune in the idea-you could advertise it with the picture of a beautiful female ghost. What did you really think of Doctor Percival?’

‘He seemed friendly enough. But I couldn’t help wondering…’

‘What?’

‘Why he bothered to spend the evening with us. What he wanted.’

‘An evening out with people he could talk to. Why look further? Don’t you get tired of keeping your mouth closed in mixed company?’

‘He didn’t open his very far. Even with us.’

‘He did before you came.’

‘What about?’

‘That establishment at Porton. Apparently we are far ahead of the Americans in one range of goods and they’ve asked us to concentrate on a deadly little fellow suitable for employment at a certain altitude which at the same time can survive desert conditions… All the details, temperature and the like, point to China. Or perhaps Africa.’

‘Why did he tell you all that?’

‘Well, we are supposed to know a bit about the Chinese through our African contacts. Ever since that report from Zanzibar our reputation stands quite high.’

‘That was two years ago and the report’s still unconfirmed.’

‘He said we mustn’t take any overt action. No questionnaires to agents. Too secret for that. Just keep our eyes open for any hint in any report that the Chinese are interested in Hell’s Parlour and then report direct to him.’

‘Why did he speak to you and not to me?’

‘Oh, I suppose he would have spoken to you, but you were late.’

‘Daintry kept me. Percival could have come to the office if he wanted to talk.’

‘What’s troubling you?’

‘I’m just wondering if he was telling you the truth.’

‘What earthly reason…?’

‘He might want to plant a false rumour.’

‘Not with us. We aren’t exactly gossips, you and I and Watson.’

‘Has he spoken to Watson?’

‘No as a matter of fact he gave the usual patter about watertight boxes. Top Secret, he said but that can’t apply to you, can it?’

‘Better not let them know you told me all the same.’

‘Old man, you’ve caught the disease of the profession, suspicion.’

‘Yes. It’s a had infection. That’s why I’m thinking of getting out.’

‘To grow vegetables?’

‘To do anything non-secret and unimportant and relatively harmless. I nearly joined an advertising agency once.’

‘Be careful. They have secrets too-trade secrets.’

The telephone rang at the head of the stairs. ‘At this hour,’ Davis complained. ‘It’s anti-social. Who can it be?’ He struggled off the sofa.

‘Rita Rolls,’ Castle suggested.

‘Give yourself another White Walker.’

Castle hadn’t time to pour it out before Davis called to him. It’s Sarah, Castle.’

The hour was nearly half-past two and fear touched him. Were there complications which a child might get so late in quarantine as this?

‘Sarah?’ he asked. ‘What is it? Is it Sam?’

‘Darling, I’m sorry. You weren’t in bed, were you?’

‘No. What’s the matter?’

‘I’m scared.’

‘Sam?’

‘No, it’s not Sam. But the telephone’s rung twice since midnight, and no one answers.’

‘The wrong number,’ he said with relief. ‘It’s always happening.’

‘Somebody knows you’re not in the house. I’m frightened, Maurice.’

‘What could possibly happen in King’s Road? Why, there’s a police station two hundred yards away. And Buller? Buller’s there, isn’t he?’

‘He’s fast asleep, snoring.’

‘I’d come back if I could, but there are no trains. And no taxi would take me at this hour.’

‘I’ll drive you down,’ Davis said.

‘No, no, of course not.’

‘Not what?’ Sarah said.

‘I was talking to Davis. He said he’d drive me down.’

‘Oh no, I don’t want that. I feel better now I’ve talked to you. I’ll wake Buller up.’

‘Sam’s all right?’

‘He’s fine.’

‘You’ve got the police number. They’d be with you in two minutes.’

‘I’m a fool, aren’t I? Just a fool.’

‘A beloved fool.’

‘Say sorry to Davis. Have a good drink.’

‘Goodnight, darling.’

‘Goodnight, Maurice.’

The use of his name was a sign of love when they were together it was an invitation to love. Endearments dear and darling were everyday currency to be employed in company, but a name was strictly private, never to be betrayed to a stranger outside the tribe. At the height of love she would cry aloud his secret tribal name. He heard her ring off, but he stayed a moment with the receiver pressed against his ear.

‘Nothing really wrong?’ Davis asked.

‘Not with Sarah, no.’

He came back into the sitting-room and poured himself a whisky. He said, ‘I think your telephone’s tapped.’