A Little White Death (20 page)

He took to the conservatory on the southern side of the house. It was warm in the mornings, and since he could not sleep, it suited him well enough to sit there before breakfast and through the
morning that crawled towards noon. If it overheated, he could simply throw open the doors, with a view across the rhododendrons – Himalayan weeds his mother had always called them, and would
not have them in her garden at Mimram – out over the meadow and its leisurely herd of milk cows. He could watch the dazzling play of dragonflies across the pond in the late westerly sun. And
when the sun had set a small army of grumbling toads would emerge from the shrubbery, toad-strutting like miniature bulldogs, to share the pond and debate the night with their elegant, long-legged,
vociferous cousins, the frogs. All the while a short-eared owl would watch from the lower branches of a birch, wondering which was which and which was edible.

Few others seemed to care for the place. Catesby would occasionally come in and chat, or if Troy was particularly uncommunicative he would read, unbidden and aloud, from the national newspapers,
as though Troy were in some way part of his duty. Alfie would pass through, but like the best of bores would always move on in minutes in search of new audiences, and the nurses soon tired of
asking Troy how he was. He did not answer. He had fallen down a glass well.

The lid came off Britain exactly as Charlie said it would, and Troy saw it like watching the world through a blown bubble. Finer than glass, streaked like a rainbow,
shape-shifting, distorting, bursting to the touch only to find another blown, floating down around him, a renewable, permanent membrane between him and the world.

The first he knew of it was Catesby reading to him. But for this, it often struck him later, he would not have known for days – weeks, even. How little of it would have
broken through the bubble?

‘What do you suppose this means? Here, in the Henry Esmond column on the back page.’

The old man was holding a copy of the
Sunday Post
folded over a couple of times to make it manageable.

‘“What larks I hear at Uphill Park. As the black Zim roars out of one entrance, the black Humber growls in another.” Now what on earth is that about?’

Troy knew. ‘Henry Esmond’ was the
Post
’s William Hickey. Gossip, unattributable gossip, and anyone with a story he wouldn’t dare put his name to was free to use
it. This was undoubtedly the work of Troy’s nephew Alex, staying just the right side of the libel laws by not naming the individuals frequenting Uphill. Only the makes of car. But, cabinet
ministers drove Humbers, and few, if any, outside the Soviet Embassy staff drove Zims . . . just the odd British defector in Moscow.

It was an old technique. It might just work. Flush out your bird by daring the other newspapers to run with what they have. Let the competition beat for you. Then run with the whole damn
shooting match and claim prior publication as your defence.

Sure enough, the following day Catesby appeared with the London
Argus
, still trying to make two and two make four.

‘Blowed if I understand it. Like a damned crossword puzzle. “Dr Patrick Fitzpatrick’s weekend parties at Uphill Park have of late been graced by guests of some distinction.
Indeed it is reported that East has met West, and that Dr Fitzpatrick’s flatmates, the former fashion models Tara and Caroline Ffitch, are among the most obliging of hostesses to be found
along the prime meridian. Oh lucky man who passes a weekend at country matters in this delightful Sussex retreat, long home to Viscount Athelnay.” D’ye think it’s in
code?’

Troy did not as a rule read gossipcolumns and for a moment he wondered why Catesby did, then he realised that he read everything in the paper – cover to cover. It was his way of getting
by. This was crude. ‘Country matters’ was the crudest of Shakespearian puns – too crude to need explanation, he thought. And if it did, he would not offer it.

Three days later the tabloids all ran with photographs of the Ffitch girls. None of them mentioned Tereshkov or Woodbridge. Oh, lucky Woodbridge. At the weekend, the
Sunday Times
ran a
profile of ‘Harley Street socialite – Patrick Fitzpatrick’. The Observer interviewed him on the subject of his garlic beds. He must, Troy thought, have been drunk or desperate. Or
perhaps this was Fitz’s way of containing the damage – give them a photo-opportunity and an interview on something absolutely harmless? But nothing Fitz could say now was harmless.
They’d got him in their sights, and he was a fool not to see it.

Then, after ten days of unsubtle innuendo, Alex took his finger from the dyke and let the flood burst.

Catesby read it to Troy. He felt like a bad actor making far too much use of the man in the prompt box.

‘“Passing Dreyfus Mews the other day who should I find popping out from number 21 but that man-about-the-corridors-of-power Tim W**dbr*dge MP, Minister of State at the F*r*ign
Office. Stopping to tie my shoelace I saw his red Mini Minor leave the mews at the northern end, and deciding that public safety necessitated I retie the other lace, I found myself still there when
a dark blue Morgan rolled in the south end and that man-about-the-KGB Anton Tereshkov rang on the bell to be greeted with hugs and kisses by the delightful Ffitch sisters, the house guests of that
man-about-everywhere Patrick Fitzpatrick. I sincerely hope the ladies do not catch cold, for it seemed to me that they were somewhat scantily clad for the time of year.”’

Catesby did not, for the first time, ask what it meant. It was all too obvious.

‘There’ll be questions,’ he said. ‘At least there’d better be.’

‘Could I see?’ said Troy.

Alex had swapped the symbolic vehicles for the real ones. Woodbridge did drive an outrageously red Mini, and Tereshkov had parked his expensive, un-Soviet, British-built Morgan next to
Troy’s Bentley at Uphill. All the same, the precision of the encounter – in one end of the mews and out the other – seemed just that, symbolic, as it had in the first snippet, and
it left Troy wondering about the extent of the real evidence. He wondered at the blanking out of five vowels. It did not keepthe
Post
the right side of libel and he doubted that they
expected it to do so. It was a red rag to a bull. It showed exactly the direction they expected to take issue – it would not be Fitz or the sisters, and if it were Tereshkov it would be the
first time in history that an agent of a foreign power had issued a writ for libel.

‘D’ye suppose he’ll sue?’ Catesby asked.

‘He’ll have no choice. They want him to.’

‘They want him to sue!’

‘They’ve got proof. Cast-iron proof, I should think. They clearly have much more than they’re saying. They’ve blanked his name to make him think they’re being coy
for safety’s sake. In reality they want him to stepoutside the Commons and enter a realm where he has no immunity. If he sues he’s a fool. The most he can hope for is that it
doesn’t get raised in the Commons. And I don’t think he stands a cat in hell’s chance of not being asked about it. Then the best he can do is say he does not have the time or the
inclination to answer every piece of scurrilous gossip and whichever honourable member has raised it ought to have better uses for his time and so on.’

‘I see. What do you think he’ll do?’

‘I think he’ll deny it. And if he does, protocol demands he sue – last refuge of honour after all – and then the
Post
will produce God knows what, photographs,
letters, and they’ve got him.’

‘It wasn’t like this when I was young.’

‘Yes it was,’ said Troy. ‘You just didn’t know it.’

It took less than a day. That evening, Jack Dorking, Woodbridge’s opposite number on the Labour benches, rose to ask if he would deny an affair with the mistress of a Soviet agent. It was
more subtly put – one of those ‘Is the House aware?’ openers, when all of Britain was aware – and addressed not to Woodbridge but to the Home Secretary, Nicholas Travis, in
his capacity as the man who should investigate should the gossip prove unfounded and a slur upon ‘a member of this House’. It defied logic, but it worked. Woodbridge got together with
half a dozen cronies and denied it to the House the following day.

Just before lunch on the day after that, Troy and Catesby met as usual. Catesby shuffled into the conservatory, the morning papers under his arm and read out the ‘Woodbridge Statement Mark
III ’.

‘“I wish to deny any rumour or allegation of any impropriety between myself and Miss Tara Ffitch or her sister Caroline. I have met the misses Ffitch, they are house guests of Dr
Fitzpatrick of Harley Street. Dr Fitzpatrick maintains a weekend cottage on the estate of Lord Athelnay. Lord Athelnay and I are old friends – we have known one another since the war –
indeed there are many in this House who would claim such friendship with Lord Athelnay. I have been a frequent recipient of his hospitality at Uphill, and I have met the misses Ffitch both at Lord
Athelnay’s lodge and at the cottage of Dr Fitzpatrick. I can only recall two meetings with Mr Tereshkov. The first at a reception given by the Soviet Embassy for the visit of Mr Khrushchev in
1956, and the second at a reception given by the Prime Minister some eighteen months ago for the Russian cosmonaut Major Gagarin. I have accordingly instructed my solicitor to begin proceedings
against the
Sunday Post
for libel.’

‘Well?’ said Catesby.

‘He’s damned,’ said Troy. ‘Damned for a tart.’

The last person he wanted to see usually turned out to be whoever came to see him – a moveable feast. The
real
last person he wanted to see finally arrived. Anna,
less than a week after Woodbridge’s statement.

Troy stood. He had the memory of her power over him, her life sentence. To sit seemed to give away too much. He let her kiss him and ask after his health like a friend and pronounce on his
health like a physician.

‘You’re looking better. That’s a very good sign. Bit of colour in your cheeks.’

This to Troy sounded as medically precise as reading the weather in seaweed and bunions. He had no idea whether he was better or not – a regime that froze him with fresh air and stabbed
him with hypodermics left him little sense of his own wellbeing. He stood in the conservatory window. Half looking at her, half not.

‘And you,’ he said, not caring what she said as long as she did not talk about him. ‘What about you?’

She slipped one hand into the other, twisted the rings on her fingers like changing the combination on a safe.

‘I hardly know where to begin. There’s been so much happened. Tommy Athelnay died, you know.’

‘No. I didn’t know.’

Catesby read obituaries, he was sure, but never out loud, never to him. Some things there were that never crossed the generations.

‘Heart. Died last Thursday. Poor old Tommy. I think this whole damn thing finally did for him. And then there’s Fitz, of course. They’re hounding him, you know.’

‘The press, well . . . he’s asked for that. He should never have agreed to talk to them in the first place.’

‘No. Not the press. The police.’

‘Which police. The Yard?’

‘Chap called Blood. A chief inspector. In the Vice Squad.’

‘I know Blood. He’s in Special Branch, not Vice.’

‘He told meVice.’

‘You?’

‘He’s been talking to most of Fitz’s friends. Harassing them would be a better word. He came to see me in Harley Street. He asked me about Fitz and Tony. I said I was not at
liberty to discuss the relationship between my partner and one of his patients. I was well aware that appealing to the conventions of confidentiality was wasted on him, so I said something that
perhaps I shouldn’t. I said, “On the other hand Tim Woodbridge is a patient of mine and so’s Commander Troy – perhaps you’d care to discuss their medical histories
instead.” Did the trick though – shut ’im up. He’d nothing more to say after that. I didn’t hear from him again. He pestered a lot of Fitz’s patients, and
I’m not at all sure how he worked out that they were Fitz’s patients. But he left mine alone and he left me alone. I’m sorry, I used your name to scare him off.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘But he won’t be scared off. He’s wrecking Fitz’s practice just trying to get something on him. He’d talked to old Tommy. Tommy might be alive now if he
hadn’t.’

She came up behind Troy. One hand upon his shoulder. Trying to break the illusion of indifference he tried so fiercely to maintain.

‘Look, I’ve never asked this before, and I wouldn’t be asking now if it weren’t such a bloody mess. Fitz has done nothing wrong. You told me so yourself. Couldn’t
you get that through to this Blood chap? He’s looking for a scapegoat. Couldn’t you tell him not to?’

‘I don’t run the Branch. It’s wholly separate.’

‘He’s Vice. Really he told me he was Vice.’

‘I don’t run that either.’

‘I thought Vice was C section?’

‘It is, but Onions took it away from me not long before he retired. It’s had its own deputy commander for quite a while.’

‘But you could have a word, all the same.’

‘No I couldn’t.’

‘Troy, they’re persecuting Fitz!’

‘If he’s done nothing wrong, he’s nothing to fear.’

‘How many times have you told me the opposite? That the law is an ass, that justice isn’t blind, it’s blind drunk?’

‘There is nothing I can do.’

‘I mean it’s not as if—’

‘I know what you mean and I cannot do it. I’m on sick leave. I am stripped of all responsibility. Those bastards at the Yard are cockahoop, because they think I’ll never make
it back. I’m on sick leave, I’m out of it. I’m not at the Yard, I’m here, waiting for death. I’m here where you put me. I have no more power! It’s all used up!
I’m on the sick list where you put me!’

‘Couldn’t you just—’

Troy took her face between his hands, his fingers spread to the temple, the palms flat across her cheeks.

‘Do you know what you’ve done to me? Do you know?’