Yesterday's Spy

Chapter 16

‘So this is the south of France?’ I said, as the servant took my coat. Champion leaned forward in his big wing armchair, and reached for a log. He placed it upon the fire before looking up at me. The logs were perfect cylinders cut from young trees, a degree of calculation that extended to everything in the house. The three matching antique corner cupboards, with their japanned decoration, fitted exactly to the space outside the carpet, and the colours harmonized with the painting over the fireplace and with the envelope card table. It was the sort of home you got from giving an interior decorator a blank cheque. After a lifetime of bedsitters and chaotic flats I found the calculated effect disconcerting. Champion had the whisky decanter within arm’s reach. That morning it had been full. Now it was almost empty.

Billy was full-length on the floor, drawing monsters in his animal book. He got to his feet and advanced upon me with an accusing finger.

‘The fishes can’t hear when you call them.’

‘Can’t they?’ I said.

‘No, because they have no ears. I spent hours and hours today, calling to the fishes, but Nanny says they can’t hear.’

‘So why do they follow me?’

‘My nurse says you must have thrown bread into the pond.’

‘I hope you didn’t tell her I did, because she gets angry if I don’t eat all my bread.’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Billy wistfully. ‘I won’t tell her, you needn’t worry.’

Champion was watching the exchange. He said, ‘You’ll give him a complex.’

‘What’s a complex?’ Billy said.

‘Never mind what it is,’ said Champion. ‘You go with Nurse now, and I’ll come up and say goodnight.’

Billy looked at me, and then at his father, and back to me again. ‘I’d like a complex,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry, Billy,’ I said. ‘I know a man who can get them wholesale.’

There was a discreet tap at the door. Topaz entered. She wore a white apron. Her face had no make-up, and her blonde hair was drawn tight into a chignon high on the back of her head. I knew it was what she always wore when giving Billy his bath but it made her look like some impossibly beautiful nurse from one of those hospital films.

She nodded deferentially to Champion, and smiled at me. It was the same warm friendly smile that she gave me whenever we saw each other about the house, but she had not visited my room since that first night together.

Love has been defined as ‘a desire to be desired’. Well, I’d been in love enough times to think it unlikely that I was falling in love with Topaz. And yet I knew that curious mixture of passion and pity that is the essence of love. And, in spite of myself, I was jealous of some unknown man who might deprive her of this exasperating composure.

I looked at Champion and then I looked back to her, always watchful for a hint of their relationship. But the secret smile she gave me was more like the rapport two sober people share in the presence of a drunken friend.

‘Come along, Billy,’ she said. But Billy did not go to her; he came to me and put his arms round me and buried his head.

I crouched down to bring our faces level. Billy whispered, ‘Don’t worry, Uncle Charlie, I won’t tell her about the bread.’

When Billy had finally said goodnight and departed, Champion walked round to the table beside the sofa. He opened the document case I’d brought from Valmy, and flicked his way through it with superficial interest. ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘The same old crap. I’ll look at it later. No need to lock it away upstairs.’

‘Does Gus know that it’s crap?’ I said.

‘It makes him feel he’s part of the class struggle,’ said Champion.

‘He won’t feel like that if he gets ten years for stealing secrets.’

‘Then you don’t know him,’ said Champion. ‘I fancy that’s his most cherished dream.’

‘What’s for dinner?’

‘She’s doing that bloody tripes à la mode again.’

‘I like that.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ said Champion. ‘Don’t you ever think about anything but food? How about a drink?’

‘You do that journey up the road to Valmy three times a week, in that little Fiat, and maybe you’ll start thinking about it, too.’ I waved away the decanter he offered.

‘All right. You think it’s a waste of time seeing Gus. But we’ll need Gus soon — really need him — and I don’t want him getting a sudden crisis of conscience then.’

‘This is just to implicate him?’

‘No, no, no. But I don’t want him picking and choosing. I want a regular channel out of that place. I’ll sort it out when it gets here.’

‘Dangerous way of buying crap,’ I said.

‘For you, you mean?’

‘Who else?’

‘Don’t worry your pretty little head. If they are going to clamp down, I’ll hear about it. I’ll hear about it before the commandant.’ He gave me a big self-congratulatory smile. I’d never seen him really drunk before, or perhaps until now I’d not known what to look out for.

‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ I said, but the sarcasm didn’t register upon him.

He said, ‘You should have seen Billy this afternoon. Ever seen those toy trains the Germans do? They sent a man from the factory to set it up: goods wagons, diesels, restaurant cars and locomotives — it goes right around the room. Locomotives no bigger than your hand, but the detail is fantastic. We kept it a secret — you should have seen Billy’s face.’

‘He wants his mother, Steve. And he needs her! Servants and tailored clothes and model trains — he doesn’t give a damn about any of that.’

Steve furrowed his brow. ‘I’m only doing it for the boy,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

‘Doing what?’

He drained his Scotch. ‘He wants his mother,’ he repeated disgustedly. ‘Whose damn side are you on?’

‘Billy’s,’ I said.

He got to his feet with only the slightest hint of unsteadiness, but when he pointed at me his hand shook. ‘You keep your lousy opinions to yourself.’ To moderate the rebuke, Champion smiled. But it wasn’t much of a smile. ‘For God’s sake, Charlie. She gets me down. Another letter from her lawyers today … they accuse me of kidnapping Billy.’

‘But isn’t that what you did?’

‘Damn right! And she’s got two ways of getting Billy back — lawyers or physical force. Well, she’ll find out that I can afford more lawyers than she can, and as for physical force, she’d have to fight her way through my army to get here.’ He smiled a bigger smile.

‘He wants his mother, Steve. How can you be so blind?’

‘Just do as you’re told and keep your nose clean.’

‘Tripes à la mode, eh,’ I said. ‘I like the way she does that. She puts calves’ stomach and ox-foot in it, that’s what makes the gravy so thick.’

‘Do you want to make me sick!’ said Champion. ‘I think I shall have a mushroom omelette.’ He walked round the sofa and opened the document case. He shuffled through the Xerox copies that Gus had made at considerable risk. This second look at them confirmed his opinion. He tossed them back into the case with a contemptuous Gallic ‘Pooof!’ and poured the last of the Scotch into his glass.

I was surprised to find how much his contempt annoyed me. Whatever Champion felt about my fears, and Gus’s motives, we deserved more for our pains than that.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She puts those garlic croutons into the omelettes. Perhaps I’ll have one of those as a starter.’