Madrigal for Charlie Muffin (5 page)

‘Come in,’ he said.

Charlie had visited once before but there had been a lot of people and he hadn’t been aware of the size of the place. There was a large central corridor, with doors leading off either side; those into the drawing room were double-fronted and open, giving an expansive entry.

‘Clarrisa’s out,’ said the underwriter, leading Charlie in. ‘Got herself involved with some charity for abandoned animals.’

Charlie thought he made it sound a sudden hobby that would soon be discarded, like collecting train numbers or cigarette cards. ‘You should have called if it was inconvenient,’ he said.

‘She wouldn’t hear of it,’ said Willoughby. ‘And it gives us time to go through the insurance file.’

A man appeared at the door and Willoughby motioned him away. ‘It’s all right, Robert; I’ll do it.’ The underwriter came back to Charlie. ‘Drink?’ he said.

‘Scotch,’ said Charlie. He was glad Willoughby was wearing a lounge suit. On the way from Sloane Square underground Charlie had wondered if he were expected to dress: he’d hired a dinner suit the last time and kept being mistaken for someone brought in to help for the evening.

Willoughby handed Charlie the drink and said, ‘I’ve got the stuff in the study.’

It was miniscule by comparison to the City office, but still opulent, red-felt walls, a small antique desk and chair, a soft light apart from the single anglepoise lamp, a storage bureau, roll-top and antique again, and some photographs. They were predominantly of Willoughby, at school and university, but then Charlie saw the wedding group and moved closer to it.

‘Father used his influence and managed to get Westminster church,’ said the underwriter. ‘It was 1970.’

‘I remember,’ said Charlie. He had an operation to date it. Moscow: July. A randy MP crying foul because he’d been photographed with his trousers around his ankles with an Intourist interpreter looking irritated because she hadn’t been able to take her suspender belt off for the camera. Charlie had done the only thing he could to reverse the scandal; exposed the silly bugger himself and made a fuss about entrapment of British politicians on a supposedly friendly trade visit. Charlie peered closer at the picture. This was how he would remember Sir Archibald. Cherub-faced and bright-eyed, like a garden gnome by a goldfish pond. Not like the last time, at Rye, after he’d been dumped: a food-stained, shaky old man, his memory so whisky-blurred that sentences never had a coherent ending. Next to Sir Archibald lounged Clarissa in a veil and engulfed in cascades of fashionable satin. Narrow-featured even then, high cheek-boned, her face chiselled by the permanent diet. Calorie-free tonic water for social appearances and hand-rolled cigarettes for highs, remembered Charlie. Did she still smoke or had that been a passing hobby, like stray animals?

‘I’ve got the file here,’ interrupted Willoughby.

Charlie turned back into the room, seeing for the first time the small chair that had been set for him alongside the desk. In front of the underwriter was a spread of documents and diagrams. Charlie took the side chair and twisted the lamp, needing the illumination in the shaded room. It was an extensive dossier, with illustrations of the protection system and lists of the jewellery indexed against individual pictures of each piece, taken from several different angles. The correspondence between the ambassador and Willoughby was included, together with biographies of Sir Hector and Lady Billington. It was thirty minutes before Charlie looked up.

‘Wealth I ask not, hope nor love …’ quoted Charlie. In the early days in the department he’d habitually made remarks like that, in a futile attempt to convey the impression of an education he didn’t have.

‘They’re important people, Charlie.’

‘I’ll tug my forelock and keep my place,’ promised Charlie. Sir Archibald wouldn’t have made a point like that, even with cause.

‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ said Willoughby hurriedly.

‘You haven’t,’ said Charlie. Why did people always suspect he’d break wind in a quiet moment?

They both started, surprised, when the study door burst open. Clarissa entered theatrically, opening her arms towards them. ‘Darlings!’ she said.

Both men stood. Charlie felt a pop of excitement, deep inside. She
hadn’t
changed since New York. Even the hairstyle was the same, bubbled out and frothing to her shoulders, accenting the length and narrowness of her face. He’d forgotten the eyes and their startling blueness and the way she accented that, too, limiting the make-up just to the palest lip colouring. She looked stunning.

‘Charlie!’

Self-consciously, Charlie took her hands and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

‘It’s so
good
to see you!’ she said.

‘And you.’

‘It’s been
ages
!’

She still talked in italics. ‘Yes,’ he said.

The butler appeared at the door and Willoughby said to his wife. ‘Do you want to change?’

‘No.’ She didn’t even look at him. To Charlie she said, ‘You’ve got fat.’

‘The good life,’ he said.

‘What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘This and that.’ Charlie retreated behind the familiar cliché. The social difficulty, the impossibility of any normal, inconsequential conversation about the past week or the past month was what got to Edith first, before the fear. Despite an education which had ended in Switzerland and the time she’d worked before their marriage as Sir Archibald’s secretary, which Charlie would have expected to widen her attitudes, Edith had remained the suburban woman. She liked dinner parties with neighbours and holiday photographs and gossip about children, even though they didn’t have any themselves. ‘
We’re dead, Charlie; we might as well go to Russia or the bloody moon. We haven’t
got a life any more
.’

‘I’m working,’ announced Clarissa proudly, offering her arm for him to go with her into the dining room.

‘So Rupert said.’

She seemed to remember her husband. ‘There was a committee meeting tonight and I’ve agreed to give a charity supper here.’

‘If you like,’ he replied.

‘I like!’

Willoughby said nothing.

‘Let’s eat,’ said Clarissa, coming back to Charlie.

The dining room was an unusual construction. Fifty people could easily have been accommodated, but there were sliding partitions which criss-crossed in dividing positions, so areas could be closed off to suit the number of people to be seated. With only three, the room was reduced to an annex. A round table was set and Clarissa stood waiting for Charlie to help her to her chair. He held back for Willoughby to do it.

‘It’s a worthwhile charity,’ said Clarissa to Charlie. ‘You must come.’

‘I’ll try,’ he said. He wouldn’t. He was unsure even whether tonight was a good idea. Clarissa had always been dismissive of her husband but he hadn’t suspected it would be this bad. He and Edith had never got like this, not even towards the end when there was every reason for the resentment and recriminations.

Under the butler’s direction, a Latin-looking woman served pheasant, while he poured claret from a cut-glass decanter.

‘Must be a year since you two were in New York,’ said Willoughby.

‘And two weeks,’ added Clarissa. Charlie wished she hadn’t.

‘You must have enjoyed it there,’ said the underwriter. ‘Clarissa could hardly stop talking about it when she got back.’

‘We did, didn’t we Charlie? It was fun!’

‘Fun’ was a favourite word of Clarissa’s, remembered Charlie. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We had a few laughs.’

‘Rupert doesn’t laugh a lot, do you Rupert?’ she said.

‘I don’t have much to laugh about.’

They’d probably squabble over whether every day began with a dawn, thought Charlie. He felt like a piece of rope, being yanked over a dividing line between them.

‘Did you ever?’

‘It seems a long time ago.’

‘I can’t even remember.’

‘I don’t expect much time for sightseeing,’ said Charlie quickly. ‘I’ll only be away for two or three days.’

‘No need to hurry back,’ said Willoughby.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Check the protection of some jewellery.’

‘I’d forgotten,’ said Clarissa, pushing her plate away practically untouched. ‘That’s what you did with Rupert’s father, didn’t you?’

‘Not really,’ said Charlie, side-stepping. ‘I was more in administration: a clerk.’

She disregarded the qualification. ‘
Was
it like all the books?’

Charlie considered the question. No, he decided. In the books he’d read there was a beginning and a middle and a neat tidy end. Charlie couldn’t remember many occasions when all the questions were answered and the uncertainties resolved, with the good guys winning and the bad guys losing. He’d always found it difficult deciding who were good and bad anyway. ‘From where I was it seemed all paperwork and records and bureaucracy,’ he said.

‘Sounds dull.’

‘It was.’ He’d never thought it so. Trap or be trapped, trick or be tricked: the normal shitty chess game with too many sacrificial pawns.

‘Charlie must still be governed by the Official Secrets Act,’ warned Willoughby.

And liable under it for what he’d done to a maximum of fourteen years in jail, thought Charlie. He knew he couldn’t be prosecuted under the Treason Act, because it had happened more than three years ago. Charlie had checked that in the reference section of Chelsea public library, between three o’clock pub closing and six o’clock opening.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ demanded Clarissa.

‘That we shouldn’t embarrass him by asking questions.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Rupert!’

They were talking as if he weren’t there, thought Charlie. The nobody man again; it didn’t upset him. Another course was changed and with it the wine. Charlie sipped appreciatively: it had been decanted like the first but he wasn’t good enough to identify it.

‘Rupert has always been in awe of his father,’ said Clarissa, including him at last.

‘So was I,’ said Charlie, irritated at her posturing.

Silence frested around the table and Charlie tried to think of something to say. Then he thought, sod it. If they wanted to behave like spoiled kids, it was all right with him. The pheasant had been just as he liked it, not too high, and the ubiquitous Robert was always at his elbow with the decanter. He’d have a better class of hangover tomorrow.

‘Have you finished your business?’ demanded Clarissa.

‘Yes,’ said Willoughby.

‘So you don’t expect the rigmarole of port and cigars?’

Willoughby looked inquiringly at Charlie, who’d never been to a dinner where women withdrew. ‘Whatever you prefer,’ he said.

‘I prefer you to come with me,’ she said.

Charlie walked with her into the drawing room. The curtains were undrawn and there was just sufficient light to show up the silhouette of the trees. As soon as they entered, Willoughby said, ‘Damn, there isn’t any brandy.’

‘Call Robert,’ said Clarissa.

‘He’s downstairs: quicker if I get it myself.’

Clarissa turned as her husband left the room. ‘Hello Charlie Muffin,’ she said.

‘Hello.’

‘It’s nice to see you again.’

He fell another stir, the feeling he’d known earlier. ‘And vou,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you call?’

‘I didn’t think it was a good idea.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not.’ Charlie looked towards the large doorway through which Willoughby had gone. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you two?’

‘Just normal.’

‘That’s not normal.’

She made an uncaring gesture. ‘Your number’s not in the book. I looked.’

‘Why don’t we leave it as it was, Clarissa?’

‘How was that?’

‘A novelty thing – the dustman and the duchess.’

‘Is that how you thought it?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No,’ she said, all the brittleness of the evening gone. ‘I’m surprised you did.’

There was a sound from the corridor and Willoughby reappeared, the refilled brandy decanter in his hand. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.

He poured large measures into three balloons and handed them round.

‘Here’s to a successful trip,’ he said.

‘Can’t imagine it being anything else, can you?’ said Charlie.

‘I hope not,’ said the underwriter.

It had been a mistake to accept the invitation, Charlie decided, walking back towards Sloane Square. He still fancied her rotten and she knew it. He wouldn’t see her again.

Clever though it had been, the British entrapment had a flaw and Kalenin seized it. Albania and Yugoslavia were not included in the list of countries to which the damning advisory message had been sent. Which left six. To the foreign ministries and the intelligence services in Warsaw, East Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia he sent demands for any inquiry which had come back from any embassy, once it had been relayed. Kalenin was using the English plan in reverse. It shouldn’t take long; it was very clever, after all.

6

Between his office and that of his deputy there was a room formerly occupied by someone with the title of Forward Planning Executive, which Sir Alistair Wilson properly regarded as a piece of bureaucratic nonsense and abandoned after his appointment. It was here that he and Harkness created their incident room, bringing in document benches, filing cabinets for analysis folders, and three progress boards on easels to chart the direction of the inquiry. The conference was scheduled for ten and Harkness entered as the clock was striking, dossiers parcelled on his outstretched arms. He dumped them on the prepared table and looked without expression towards the intelligence chief.

‘Well?’ demanded Wilson.

‘Potentially bad,’ said Harkness. ‘Rome had grade two listing on the access list. I’ve gone back three years. If he’s been leaking that long, Moscow has virtually been sitting in on most of the cabinet discussions affecting Europe. And, because of NATO, there’s a lot of cross referencing with America.’

‘So Naire-Hamilton’s right about the possible embarrassment?’

Harkness hesitated, conscious of how the Permanent Under Secretary wanted the matter resolved. Reluctantly he said, ‘Yes. We’d look very stupid.’