And Is There Honey Still For Tea? (35 page)

60

Moscow

11 December, 1965

Bernard Wesley Esq, QC

2 Wessex Buildings

Temple

London EC4

My dear Bernard,

I won't apologise for not turning up for the trial. I am sure you didn't expect me. Perhaps I should have stayed and faced the music. Perhaps that would have been the right thing to do. But I couldn't see that any useful purpose would be served by allowing myself to be locked up for the rest of my life. That is what would have happened, isn't it? They would have prosecuted me and I would have rotted away in prison, watching from behind bars as Britain's privileged élite continue to ignore the inevitable march of history, and carry on as they always have. I am not naïve enough to think that I can do much about that from where I am now, but I certainly couldn't from some cell in Wandsworth.

Please don't think that I am ungrateful to you or Herbert, or to Ben and Barratt. On the contrary, I appreciate the candour with which you all dealt with me, which was not always comfortable at the time, but was in the end the only thing that saved me. Of course, I particularly appreciate Barratt's subtle
Nunc Dimittis
, which confirmed me in a course of action I already knew was inevitable.
I regret that I could not thank you all in person. That, obviously, was out of the question. Once the decision had been taken to extract me, I was not allowed to see anyone, even Bridget. I was whisked away very efficiently, if in a somewhat roundabout manner. I can't talk about the details, of course, but there was no doubt about my ultimate destination.

They say I can get back in touch with Bridget soon. They may even bring her over to join me in a year or so, when the fuss has died down a bit and it can be done quietly. I don't know whether she will come. I have betrayed her greatly. I have left her with the care of our London house and the estate, without enough money to manage; and we have no child, no heir, to hold us together. She has ties to England which do not involve me; her parents are growing old. In truth, I can think of little reason why she would give up England to come to live with me in these circumstances in Moscow. But I have always loved her, and so I hope against hope that she will.

They have made good on the promises they made when I first agreed to work with them. They are giving me a teaching role in the Chess Academy, teaching not only chess theory, but also English and German; at last, knowledge of foreign languages is beginning to be seen as a valuable skill, rather than evidence of sedition or disaffection. I have picked up a fair amount of Russian over the years, and I have been studying the language intensely since I arrived, so I am confident that I can manage for teaching purposes. Chess, in any case, is an international language by means of which teacher and student can communicate with few words. I will be allowed to play in a number of domestic chess tournaments each year; and so, for the first time, I can properly class myself as a professional chess player. It is too late for me now, I think, to aspire to the title of grandmaster, especially as no foreign travel will be allowed, certainly for many years. In any case, judging by the youngsters I see at the Academy, you have to start young these days if you are to scale the heights, and my liberation has not come in time for that.

When I first came into contact with organised socialism, at Cambridge in the early 1930s, there were many men who proudly told everyone who would listen that they would gladly leave England behind to live in Moscow. They regarded Moscow as their spiritual home. But almost all of the men who were loudest in their fervour had never seen Moscow. Their enthusiasm was based on some idealised image of a proletarian paradise, where Marxist principles governed daily life and from which capitalism and class structure had been forever banished. Hardly anyone had seen the reality, which was that Moscow was by then a second-rate European capital, impoverished more than enriched by the Revolution, its capacity to flourish stunted and curtailed by the elementary flaws inherent in Marxist economics. Hardly anyone pictured a city of shortages and poverty; the grey drudge of everyday Muscovite living; the endless queues for bread; the power outages; the phones without lines; the endless cajoling and bribing of self-important bureaucrats; for which a nominal freedom from class oppression is poor compensation. Those who did visit the city found themselves closely guarded, shepherded everywhere from one approved site to the next, visiting and seeing only what was permitted; lest they see too much, and lest the image of the proletarian paradise be sullied.

I myself visited Moscow many times before I came here to live. But visiting the city, however often, cannot prepare you for living in it, for being part of it, for having your fortune inextricably linked to it. As a visitor, you can overlook a great deal, forgive a great deal. When you know that you are to return to the familiar comforts of England within a few days, you can harbour the illusion that the hardships you see are simply the growing pains of a new socialist society seeking to adapt itself to the complex challenges of twentieth-century life. But as a resident, you see the hardships too often and in too many places. As a resident you notice the faces of the people, you hear their voices; and you begin to see that Marxism is just as powerless to create happiness and contentment in the midst of such surroundings as the religions it has sought to replace. In the face of the reality of Moscow in 1965, illusions vanish into thin air almost as soon as they are born. To many of the people, communism is only serfdom under another name, only another chapter in an endless saga of exploitation and misery, and the course of history moves on indifferently without sweeping those things away, despite Marx's promise that it must and would. The Czar has been reborn as the Communist Party, and his henchmen as its henchmen. And so life goes on.

But despite this, Bernard, I have no complaint about being here. I am quite content to be here in my tenth floor flat in a tower block uncomfortably distant from the city centre: the block with its unkempt, smelly corridors, its flaking paint and its soulless graffiti; the flat with its single small bedroom; its small living room; its kitchen in which the power is not always on; its bathroom in which the hot water does not always flow; the view from its windows looking out on a sea of endless grey which seems to suffocate any thought of individualism or originality. I am content, not because I can ignore the reality of life here; but because I prefer, if you will, communist oppression to capitalist oppression, communist misery to capitalist misery; because I believe that here, it can and will get better.

But I was never one of those who couldn't wait to leave England behind to live in the brave new world of Moscow. I never fell prey to the illusion that I would be leaving misery behind and entering paradise. You see, Bernard, I was brought up to love England and, despite my socialist ideals, I have never ceased to love her. My goal in everything I did was not to harm England, not to bring her under a Soviet yoke; but to sweep away those old relics of the past – the social prejudices, the class system, the economic oppression – which hold England back and deprive her people of the freedom to realise their true potential. That is what I wanted to achieve, or help to achieve. I have never wanted to change England's true essence. I hoped to bring about change from within. I never looked for a life anywhere else. England is my home. So for me, my exile is a painful one, one which I did not willingly seek, and one I embrace only because I must. There are days when the thought of never seeing England again drives me to despair. I will miss her every day for the rest of my life.

What do I miss? I miss the estate, where I played so happily with Roger when we were children on those hot summer days. I miss my house in Chelsea, where I lived with Bridget, and which was the chief source of our happiness together. I miss Lincoln's Inn and my chambers, where I found such an enjoyable way of making enough money to live comfortably. I miss the Reform Club, where I last saw Roger alive, and where I have so often enjoyed the company of many good friends. Most of all, I miss Cambridge.

I miss Cambridge because so much of my life was formed there. I miss it because of the people who surrounded me daily – those bright vibrant people, so full of ideas and so full of life, steeped in academia but also firmly planted in the world. It was there that I grew into my maturity as a chess player and learned the extent and limitations of my talent for the game. It was there that I learned to see chess as, not merely a game, but an art form which in the right hands could help to transform Society; and from this I gained a broader picture of the importance of art and culture in any Society which places the welfare of its people first. It was in Cambridge that I embraced socialism and accepted it as the antidote to fascism and to the injustices I saw in Society. It was where I formed my vision for a new, changed England. It was where I was accepted into the Brotherhood of the Apostles, and learned from them about the freedom to think and to speak out; about friendship and loyalty to one's brothers; about placing that loyalty above all loyalties except that of being true to oneself.

I miss Cambridge, not only for its symbolism in my life, but also for its timeless beauty. I miss the colleges; the simple dignity of the Senate House; the magnificence of King's Chapel; the elegance of the Great Court at Trinity. I miss the river at Grantchester, where at the dawning of a beautiful day I made love to Bridget for the first time, and where we briefly wished we could stay for the rest of our lives. When I look out over the grey concrete of Moscow from the small windows of my flat as the light is fading on a winter afternoon, and realise that I shall never see Cambridge again, it is all I can do to carry on. At those times, some lines come back to me, lines written by Rupert Brooke – a brother Apostle, by the way, in case you didn't know – three years before his death on foreign soil; expressing his yearning for a time that had passed and the city he would never see again.

Say, is there Beauty yet to find?

And Certainty? And Quiet kind?

Deep meadows yet, for to forget

The lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yet

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?

And is there honey still for tea?

That's all I have to say, really, Bernard. I don't seek any forgiveness or absolution. I don't even ask for understanding. I don't think that will be possible before significant time has elapsed. In a generation or two, the history of our time will have been written, and the world may look rather different by then. At least feelings will have subsided to some extent.

Oh, there is one thing you might do for me, if it's not too much trouble. Could you pass on the enclosed sheet of paper to Professor Hollander, by way of his solicitor?

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

James Digby

Moscow

11 December, 1965

Dear Professor Hollander,

Please don't be concerned. This isn't in code. There is no hidden message. It's just a reminder of something beautiful we have in common. A peace offering of a kind, if you will.

London 1912

White: Edward Lasker

Black: Sir George Thomas

1. d4 f5

2. e4 fe

3. Nc3 Nf6

4. Bg5 e6

5. Nxe4 Be7

6. Bxf6 Bxf6

7. Nf3 0-0

8. Bd3 b6

9. Ne5 Bb7

10. Qh5 Qe7

11. Qxh7+! Kxh7

12. Nxf6+ Kh6

13. Neg4+ Kg5

14. h4+ Kf4

15. g3+ Kf3

16. Be2+ Kg2

17. Rh2+ Kg1

18. Kd2++

Isn't it wonderful?

Yours sincerely,

James Digby

AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is a novel. Sir James Digby QC and Professor Francis R Hollander are fictitious characters. But for the purposes of the story, they had to blend into the periods of history and the institutions with which the book is concerned; to participate in certain well-documented events; and to encounter certain well-known historical figures. This inevitably results in some historical anomalies, for which I make no apology. But I have done my best to do justice to those historical institutions, events and figures which feature in the novel – including my Club, the Reform, membership of which I have in common with one or two important figures in my story. To do that required a good deal of research, both about the Cambridge Spies and the world in which they grew up and lived; and about the world of chess, whose fringes I inhabited for a while much earlier in my life. I gratefully acknowledge my debt to the following sources in particular.

Miranda Carter,
Anthony Blunt: His Lives
, Macmillan (London, 2001)

John Fisher,
Burgess and Maclean: A New Look at the Foreign Office Spies
, Robert Hale Limited (London, 1977)

Kim Philby,
My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy
, Modern Library, Random House Inc (New York, 1968)

Ben Macintyre,
A Spy among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (London, 2014)

Richard Deacon,
The Cambridge Apostles: A History of Cambridge University's Elite Intellectual Secret Society
, Robert Royce Limited (London, 1985)

Russell Burlingham and Roger Billis,
Reformed Characters: The Reform Club in History and Literature
, Reform Club (London, 2005)

Antony Beevor,
The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, 2006)

Dr Max Euwe,
Wereld Kampioenschap Schaken 1948
, De Tijdstroom, Lochem (The Netherlands, 1948)

Alexander Kotov and Mikhail Yudovich,
The Soviet School of Chess
, Foreign Languages Publishing House (Moscow, 1958)

Irving Chernev,
1000 Best Short Games of Chess
, Hodder & Stoughton (London, 1957)

It is from Chernev's book that I took the text of Edward Lasker v Sir George Thomas, London 1912. Other sources give a slightly different order for the first few moves. But there is no doubt about the position after 10 … Qe7, or the magnificent devastation wrought by Lasker beginning with 11. Qxh7+!