Another Kind of Country (15 page)

‘Never mind that,’ the general said. ‘I’ll fix a trail that leads to one of the hacks in Bonn.’

The general stood up. ‘Time to go, Herr Miller. We’ll drop you at a station.’ He shook his head at Miller. ‘Just leave the coffee things.’
Somebody else takes care of such things
.

The darkness met them when Miller opened the door. He could just make out the
driver, sitting motionless in the small unlighted car. Beyond the heavy, steel shutter the city waited in its own bisected space of light and dark.
Waiting for what?

‘Twenty-four hours,’ General Reder said. ‘We’ll get in touch about picking up your article.’

‘You’re setting a lot of store by one little article, General.’

The general’s shrug said it all:
a campaign of attack and/or defence is organized on many fronts; NCOs need knowledge only of their own little bit of the front
.

Once more Miller sat in the back between the rucked, almost feminine curtains; this time the driver turned towards him with a blindfold in his hands.

‘It’s for your own safety,’ General Reder said.

Miller took the blindfold, tied it behind his head. Behind the cloth he blinked in the enveloping blindness. He felt hands positioning the blindfold around his eyes and nose. Heard the rasp of the ignition key, the cough of the engine, the hum of the steel shutter rising.

They backed out into the cobbled alley and he heard the sounds of the city, at once near and still distant. He could smell the city through his blindfold: sweaty and sour, sweet and perfumed, fresh and petrolly. The blindfold didn’t matter: Miller could see in his mind this scattered city that he loved. He breathed it in, the horns and blares and music of the street as the driver went through his circling routine.

He waited for his blindfold to be removed when they stopped.

He blinked, focused, failed to recognize the narrow street, the shuttered windows, locked down.

‘Turn left at the corner,’ the general said, ‘then a couple of rights and you’ll see Savigny Platz station.’

Miller nodded, shook the
general’s proferred hand.

On the pavement he stretched, breathed in the night. He smiled to himself, tapped at the passenger side window before the car could pull away.

General Reder’s lined, tired face looked up at him from the open window.

‘Yes?’

‘You really have photographs of Redgrave with a young fellow?’

‘Of course.’ A smile, almost beatific, on the weathered features. ‘You know that in the GDR we can manufacture
any
kind of photographs.’

Miller flinched.

General Reder winked.

‘Only joking, Herr Miller.’

The window went up.

Miller stared after the departing car.
This city
. You loved it, thought you understood it. And then you couldn’t even tell whether or not it was joking.

In the darkness he couldn’t help smiling. He moved quickly now towards the station. You have promises to keep, an article to write, words to plead for the life of a country on the edge.
And toothpaste for Heinz-Peter at Checkpoint Charlie
. As for Redgrave, Miller told himself – not without satisfaction – that buying toothpaste for a border guard would have been the last thing on Warwick Redgrave’s mind all those years ago in the King’s Arms in Putney.

January 1980

Putney

London

Miller knew what they
were as soon as they stepped inside the pub. They stood in the open doorway for a moment, scanning the quiet midday clientele, and he knew –
just knew
– that they were looking for him. He’d never seen either of them before but he’d been confronted often enough by their clones in his pre-
Guardian
days. Lend your name to a piece in
Marxist News
or
Fighting Fist
and you learned to expect the occasional visit from the guardians of state security and the morals of society.

He looked up from his notes on the pad as they approached his table. Their shoes clicked out a counterpoint rhythm on the pub’s wooden floor, the man’s shiny brogues squeaking in an odd falsetto against the female’s medium-height, clacking heels.

Miller didn’t invite them to join him; he knew they’d sit at his table anyway.

‘Patrick Miller?’ The words clipped, the voice as sure of itself as you’d expect from the crombie coat and pinstripe suit, the gleaming brogues.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘Redgrave.’ A flash of an ID card in a leather folder. ‘Office of European Cooperation.’

Miller laughed. ‘That’s a new one on me. Let me see.’

Redgrave shrugged, handed
over the ID.
Warwick Redgrave, Office of European Cooperation
.

Miller looked at the mugshot, at the ginger-haired owner of the card.

‘Like to show me a driving licence, Mr Redgrave, or would that be in a different name?’

Redgrave ignored that. ‘This is my colleague Dr Shearing.’

The woman nodded but said nothing.
A Thatcher clone, down to the blue suit, the helmet-like perm, handbag chastely guarding her middle-aged lap
.

‘These days,’ Miller said, ‘I’m a respectable
Guardian
columnist. You can’t lock me up overnight like some freelancer from
Fighting Fist
– well, you can, but if you do you’ll find yourself on the front page of a national newspaper.’

‘People don’t just get “locked up” here, Miller.’ Redgrave pocketed his ID. ‘This is not the Soviet Union or,’ eyes narrowing, ‘the German Democratic Republic.’

‘What d’you people want?’
What does Sophie want? And whose is that voice answering her phone?
Miller took a long drink from his beer, tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. ‘Just tell me what you want and then leave me alone to do my work.’
To remember her smell, her taste, her touch
.

‘We’re here to help you, Miller.’

Patrick Miller laughed out loud. He saw Bernie, the barmaid, glance over at him; she winked, then went back to polishing glasses. ‘You’re going to
help
me? At what? Winning votes for Thatcher and harassing students?’

‘We want to help you, Mr Miller.’ The woman had a surprisingly deep voice. ‘You and your family, Mr Miller.’

Miller’s interest was piqued. Over the Christmas and New Year break he’d stayed away from Wolverhampton and his mother’s needy voice, had clung to the bedsit in Putney with its imagined
nearness to Sophie. In a way he almost envied Sophie: he knew that he could never leave his mother behind. Her face was stamped on his heart like the words on a stick of rock from the seaside. He just didn’t want to be reminded of the detached house in Compton, least of all by this hatchet-faced woman with the ramrod in her back and the sensible handbag in her lap.

‘What about my family? What are you saying to me?’

‘We’re saying,’ Dr Shearing went on, ‘that your parents are experiencing some difficulties at present and that we are in a position to relieve their problems.’

‘What the fuck are you on about?’ From the corner of his eye he saw the sharp look Bernie gave him, knew he was almost shouting.

‘Why don’t we calm down, Miller?’ Redgrave’s voice smooth. ‘Why don’t we order drinks and take things more slowly, yes?’ In the King’s Arms you ordered at the counter but Redgrave’s raised finger brought Bernie to the table in an instant. Even in his anger and irritation Miller could see how the barmaid, usually brassy and offhand with customers, bent herself to Redgrave’s tone of authority. In the exchange between master and mastered he saw much of what he detested about England. He simmered while she took the order, brought the two dry sherries – in his sullenness he refused a drink – and almost curtsied as she accepted payment and her tip.

When she was back behind the counter, he glared at Redgrave and Shearing.

‘So?’

Redgrave raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’ He sipped, smacked his lips. ‘Not bad.’

Miller pushed his chair back. ‘Fuck you, I’m getting out of here.’

‘Sir Roger and Lady Miller might not appreciate that, Miller.’

‘What?’ Miller thought
he must be hearing things. ‘What’s my mother got to do with anything?’

‘She’s married to your father—’

‘Of course she’s married to my father.’

‘Who was knighted by Her Maj.’

Through the window of the pub Miller could see cars idling on the High Street, bundled-up pedestrians waiting at a pedestrian crossing. The street had the usual limbo-like look that follows the consumer frenzy of Christmas and the New Year: it looked dull, bland, uninteresting.

And Patrick Miller wished he were part of it.

‘So?’ Even to himself his voice sounded unsteady. ‘My father is a gynaecologist.’ He spread his hands, waiting. He couldn’t bring himself to mention his father’s title.

‘We could put this delicately.’ Shearing paused.

‘But it’s better to call a spade a spade,’ Redgrave continued. ‘Charges of sexual assault have been laid against your father by a number of his patients and of course the British Medical Association is also getting ready to conduct its own inquiry into these allegations of professional misconduct. We’ve seen the evidence, Miller, and it’s very likely that your father, Dr Sir Roger Miller, will be found guilty in the courts and will be struck off by the BMA.’

Miller watched Redgrave sip his drink. Watched Redgrave watching him. He picked up his own drink, tilted the glass to his lips. Anything to hide his face, to hide the memory of that open doorway. He drained the glass, felt the colour drain from his face. The only surprise was that he hadn’t heard such an accusation before.

‘Bullshit,’ he said.

Redgrave laid some coins on the table, pointed at the phone in the corner. ‘So call your father.’

‘Or talk to your
mother.’ Shearing’s expression was waspish. ‘Ask her if your father is taking a break from the surgery for a while.’

‘Of course, she doesn’t know the real reason why her husband is taking some time off from his practice,’ Redgrave said, ‘and that’s the way we’d like to keep it.’

Miller felt the shiver begin in him, hated himself for allowing his tormentors to see how he trembled.

‘I think you could use a drink now, Miller.’ Redgrave stood, went to the counter.

Miller avoided the woman’s eyes, sought instead the safety of life –
boring life
– on the street outside the window.

‘Here.’

He took the bumper of whisky from Redgrave, swallowed half of it.

‘Everything we’ve told you,’ Redgrave said, ‘is the truth.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Obscenities won’t help.’ Primness in Shearing’s voice. ‘Not you, not your mother.’

‘I thought your accusations were against my father.’

‘So they are, Miller, but your mother is going to be the real victim here. You know that better than we do.’

He knew from Redgrave’s expression that they knew it all: the drinking, the depression, the insane bouts of house-work. Long ago Miller had concluded that his mother willingly turned a blind eye to her husband’s extra-curricular activities; now he wondered if this pair in the bar also knew that his mother knew. They don’t know, he thought, that my mother has known for years – knows but hides that truth from herself. Take away the much-prized title of Lady Miller and there would be more pills strewn on the table in Wolverhampton.

‘The scandal would
destroy your mother, Mr Miller.’

Redgrave nodded. ‘It would,’ he said, ‘if all of this were to get out.’

If:
that one word said it all. Miller didn’t doubt the story these two had told; now and again, over the years, he had wondered how such accusations against his father had never surfaced.

‘What,’ he asked, ‘has all this got to do with your – what did you call it? – your Office of European Cooperation? And why haven’t I read or heard anything about these serious accusations?’

‘You can thank our little organization for keeping a lid on this,’ Redgrave said. ‘We had a word with the West Midlands constabulary, persuaded them to keep mum about it. The BMA was a little easier, vested interests always are – doctors can’t see any benefit in having one of their own being caught with his,’ he paused, looked at Shearing, ‘well, shall we say with his hand in the till.’

‘But why should the . . .’ Miller swallowed, ‘the “doings” of a doctor in a provincial town like Wolverhampton come to the attention of a bunch of security spooks?’

Redgrave tut-tutted, shook his head. ‘Naughty, Miller! After all, we’re here to help you.’

‘And your mother, Mr Miller.’

Fuck you
, Miller thought, looking at Shearing. ‘So,’ he said, ‘why?’

‘The Queen’s peace, Miller.’ Redgrave had decided to play the reluctantly stern schoolmaster. ‘And of course the security of Her Majesty’s realm.’

‘What the fuck has a provincial doctor to do with the security of the realm?’

‘You,’ Redgrave said. ‘You, Patrick Miller, scourge of Mrs Thatcher’s capitalist society, left-wing
columnist, our socialist star of chat shows on TV and radio.’ Eyebrows raised, large head nodding sagely. ‘Just your little self, Miller, that’s your father’s connection with the security of this United Kingdom.’

He got it, could see it coming –
but fuck them
.

‘Why don’t I just write up this cosy little meeting in my next column in the
Guardian
?’

‘You do that, Miller,’ all irony gone now from Redgrave’s tone, ‘and next day your father’s name will be splashed across every newspaper in the land.’

‘And see what that does to Lady Miller.’ Shearing’s voice as dry as her sherry.

He wanted to walk outside, feel the bitter wind of January on his face. He wanted Sophie to hold him, hold him tighter than she’d ever held him. He wanted to tell Redgrave and Shearing to leave him alone, to go fuck themselves or each other.

What he wanted didn’t count. All his adult life Miller had despised his father for the way he had emotionally abandoned his mother; Miller himself would be no better if he now walked away from Shearing and Redgrave.

‘What d’you want from me?’ he asked.