The Looking Glass War (3 page)

Taylor hated waiting. He had a notion that people who waited were people of no substance: it was an affront to be seen waiting. He pursed his lips, shook his head, and with an ill-tempered ‘Goodnight, lady,’ stepped abruptly into the freezing air.

Taylor had never seen such a sky. Limitless, it curved downward to the snowbound fields, its destiny broken here and there by films of mist which frosted the clustered stars and drew a line round the yellow half-moon. Taylor was frightened, like a landsman frightened by the sea. He hastened his uncertain step, swaying as he went.

He had been walking about five minutes when the car caught him up. There was no footpath. He became aware of its headlights first, because the sound of its engine was deadened by the snow, and he only noticed a light ahead of him, not realizing where it came from. It traced its way languidly over the snowfields and for a time he thought it was the beacon from the airport. Then he saw his own shadow shortening on the road, the light became suddenly brighter, and he knew it must be a car. He was walking on the right, stepping briskly along the edge of the icy rubble that lined the road. He observed that the light was unusually yellow and he guessed the headlamps were masked according to the French rule. He was rather pleased with this little piece of deduction; the old brain was pretty clear after all.

He didn’t look over his shoulder because he was a shy man in his way and did not want to give the impression of asking for a lift. But it did occur to him, a little late perhaps, that on the continent they actually drove on the right, and that therefore strictly speaking he was walking on the wrong side of the road, and ought to do something about it.

The car hit him from behind, breaking his spine. For one dreadful moment Taylor described a classic posture of anguish, his head and shoulders flung violently backwards, fingers extended. He made no cry. It was as if his entire body and soul were concentrated in this final attitude of pain, more articulate in death than any sound the living man had made. It is quite possible that the driver was unaware of what he had done; that the impact of the body on the car was not to be distinguished from a thud of loose snow against the axle.

The car carried him for a yard or two then threw him aside, dead on the empty road, a stiff, wrecked figure at the fringe of the wilderness. His trilby hat lay beside him. A sudden blast seized it, carrying it across the snow. The shreds of his pebble-weave coat fluttered in the wind, reaching vainly for the zinc capsule as it rolled gently with the camber to lodge for a moment against the frozen bank, then to continue wearily down the slope.

Avery’s Run

‘There are some things that no one has a right to ask of any white man’

John Buchan,
Mr Standfast

It was three in the morning.

Avery put down the telephone, woke Sarah and said, ‘Taylor’s dead.’ He shouldn’t have told her, of course.

‘Who’s Taylor?’

A bore, he thought; he only remembered him vaguely. A dreary English bore, straight off Brighton pier.

‘A man in courier section,’ he said. ‘He was with them in the war. He was rather good.’

‘That’s what you always say. They’re all good. How did he die, then? How did he die?’ She had sat up in bed.

‘Leclerc’s waiting to hear.’ He wished she wouldn’t watch him while he dressed.

‘And he wants you to help him wait?’

‘He wants me to go to the office. He wants me. You don’t expect me to turn over and go back to sleep, do you?’

‘I was only asking,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re always so considerate to Leclerc.’

‘Taylor was an old hand. Leclerc’s very worried.’ He could still hear the triumph in Leclerc’s voice: ‘Come at once, get a taxi; we’ll go through the files again.’

‘Does this often happen? Do people often die?’ There was indignation in her voice, as if no one ever told her anything; as if she alone thought it dreadful that Taylor had died.

‘You’re not to tell anyone,’ said Avery. It was a way of keeping her from him. ‘You’re not even to say I’ve gone out in the middle of the night. Taylor was travelling under another name.’ He added, ‘Someone will have to tell his wife.’ He was looking for his glasses.

She got out of bed and put on a dressing-gown. ‘For God’s sake stop talking like a cowboy. The secretaries know; why can’t the wives? Or are they only told when their husbands die?’ She went to the door.

She was of medium height and wore her hair long, a style at odds with the discipline of her face. There was a tension in her expression, an anxiety, an incipient discontent, as if tomorrow would only be worse. They had met at Oxford; she had taken a better degree than Avery. But somehow marriage had made her childish; dependence had become an attitude, as if she had given him something irredeemable, and were always asking for it back. Her son was less her projection than her excuse; a wall against the world and not a channel to it.

‘Where are you going?’ Avery asked. She sometimes did things to spite him, like tearing up a ticket for a concert. She said, ‘We’ve got a child, remember?’ He noticed Anthony crying. They must have woken him.

‘I’ll ring from the office.’

He went to the front door. As she reached the nursery she looked back and Avery knew she was thinking they hadn’t kissed.

‘You should have stuck to publishing,’ she said.

‘You didn’t like that any better.’

‘Why don’t they send a car?’ she asked. ‘You said they had masses of cars.’

‘It’s waiting at the corner.’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’

‘More secure,’ he replied.

‘Secure against what?’

‘Have you got any money? I seem to have run out.’

‘What for?’

‘Just money, that’s all! I can’t run around without a penny in my pocket.’ She gave him ten shillings from her bag. Closing the door quickly behind him he went down the stairs into Prince of Wales Drive.

He passed the ground-floor window and knew without looking that Mrs Yates was watching him from behind her curtain, as she watched everybody night and day, holding her cat for comfort.

It was terribly cold. The wind seemed to come from the river, across the park. He looked up and down the road. It was empty. He should have telephoned the rank at Clapham but he wanted to get out of the flat. Besides, he had told Sarah the car was coming. He walked a hundred yards or so towards the Power Station, changed his mind and turned back. He was sleepy. It was a curious illusion that even in the street he still heard the telephone ringing. There was a cab that hung round Albert Bridge at all hours; that was the best bet. So he passed the entrance to his part of the Mansions, glanced up at the nursery window, and there was Sarah looking out. She must have been wondering where the car was. She had Anthony in her arms and he knew she was crying because he hadn’t kissed her. He took half an hour to find a taxi to Blackfriars Road.

Avery watched the lamps come up the street. He was quite young, belonging to that intermediate class of contemporary Englishman which must reconcile an Arts degree with an uncertain provenance. He was tall and bookish in appearance, slow-eyed behind his spectacles, with a gently self-effacing manner which endeared him to his elders. The motion of the taxi comforted him, as rocking consoles a child.

He reached St George’s Circus, passed the Eye Hospital and entered Blackfriars Road. Suddenly he was upon the house, but told the driver to drop him at the next corner because Leclerc had said to be careful.

‘Just here,’ he called. ‘This will do fine.’

The Department was housed in a crabbed, sooty villa of a place with a fire extinguisher on the balcony. It was like a house eternally for sale. No one knew why the Ministry put a wall round it; perhaps to protect it from the gaze of the people, like the wall round a cemetery; or the people from the gaze of the dead. Certainly not for the garden’s sake, because nothing grew in it but grass which had worn away in patches like the coat of an old mongrel. The front door was painted dark green; it was never opened. By day anonymous vans of the same colour occasionally passed down the shabby drive, but they transacted their business in the back yard. The neighbours, if they referred to the place at all, spoke of the Ministry House, which was not accurate, for the Department was a separate entity, and the Ministry its master. The building had that unmistakable air of controlled dilapidation which characterises government hirings all over the world. For those who worked in it, its mystery was like the mystery of motherhood, its survival like the mystery of England. It shrouded and contained them, cradled them and, with sweet anachronism, gave them the illusion of nourishment.

Avery could remember it when the fog lingered contentedly against its stucco walls, or in the Summer, when the sunlight would briefly peer through the mesh curtains of his room, leaving no warmth, revealing no secrets. And he would remember it on that Winter dawn, its façade stained black, the street lights catching the raindrops on the grimy windows. But however he remembered it, it was not as a place where he worked, but where he lived.

Following the path to the back, he rang the bell and waited for Pine to open the door. A light shone in Leclerc’s window.

He showed Pine his pass. Perhaps both were reminded of the war: for Avery a vicarious pleasure, while Pine could look back on experience.

‘A lovely moon, sir,’ said Pine.

‘Yes.’ Avery stepped inside. Pine followed him in, locking up behind him.

‘Time was, the boys would curse a moon like this.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Avery laughed.

‘Heard about the Melbourne test, sir? Bradley’s out for three.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Avery pleasantly. He disliked cricket.

A blue lamp glowed from the hall ceiling like the night light in a Victorian hospital. Avery climbed the staircase; he felt cold and uneasy. Somewhere a bell rang. It was odd how Sarah had not heard the telephone.

Leclerc was waiting for him: ‘We need a man,’ he said. He spoke involuntarily, like someone waking. A light shone on the file before him.

He was sleek, small and very bland; a precise cat of a man, clean-shaven and groomed. His stiff collars were cut away; he favoured ties of one colour, knowing perhaps that a weak claim was worse than none. His eyes were dark and quick; he smiled as he spoke, yet conveyed no pleasure. His jackets had twin vents, he kept his handkerchief in his sleeve. On Fridays he wore suede shoes, and they said he was going to the country. No one seemed to know where he lived. The room was in half-darkness.

‘We can’t do another overflight. This was the last; they warned me at the Ministry. We’ll have to put a man in. I’ve been going through the old cards, John. There’s one called Leiser, a Pole. He would do.’

‘What happened to Taylor? Who killed him?’

Avery went to the door and switched on the main light. They looked at one another awkwardly. ‘Sorry. I’m still half asleep,’ Avery said. They began again, finding the thread.

Leclerc spoke up. ‘You took a time, John. Something go wrong at home?’ He was not born to authority.

‘I couldn’t get a cab. I phoned the rank at Clapham but they didn’t reply. Nor Albert Bridge; nothing there either.’ He hated to disappoint Leclerc.

‘You can charge for it,’ Leclerc said distantly, ‘and the phone calls, you realise. Your wife all right?’

‘I told you: there was no reply. She’s fine.’

‘She didn’t mind?’

‘Of course not.’

They never talked about Sarah. It was as if they shared a single relationship to Avery’s wife, like children who are able to share a toy they no longer care for. Leclerc said, ‘Well, she’s got that son of yours to keep her company.’

‘Yes, rather.’

Leclerc was proud of knowing it was a son and not a daughter.

He took a cigarette from the silver box on his desk. He had told Avery once: the box was a gift, a gift from the war. The man who gave it to him was dead, the occasion for giving it was past; there was no inscription on the lid. Even now, he would say, he was not entirely certain whose side the man had been on, and Avery would laugh to make him happy.

Taking the file from his desk, Leclerc now held it directly under the light as if there was something in it which he must study very closely.

‘John.’

Avery went to him, trying not to touch his shoulder.

‘What do you make of a face like that?’

‘I don’t know. It’s hard to tell from photographs.’

It was the head of a boy, round and blank, with long, fair hair swept back.

‘Leiser. He
looks
all right, doesn’t he? That was twenty years ago, of course,’ Leclerc said. ‘We gave him a very high rating.’ Reluctantly he put it down, struck his lighter and held it to the cigarette. ‘Well,’ he said briskly, ‘we seem to be up against something. I’ve no idea what happened to Taylor. We have a routine consular report, that’s all. A car accident apparently. A few details, nothing informative. The sort of thing that goes out to next of kin. The Foreign Office sent us the teleprint as it came over the wire. They knew it was one of our passports.’ He pushed a sheet of flimsy paper across the desk. He loved to make you read things while he waited. Avery glanced at it: ‘Malherbe? Was that Taylor’s cover name?’

‘Yes. I’ll have to get a couple of cars from the Ministry pool,’ Leclerc said. ‘Quite absurd not having our own cars. The Circus has a whole fleet.’ And then, ‘Perhaps the Ministry will believe me now. Perhaps they’ll finally accept we’re still an operational department.’

‘Did Taylor collect the film?’ Avery asked. ‘Do we know whether he got it?’

‘
I’ve
no inventory of his possessions,’ Leclerc replied indignantly. ‘At the moment, all his effects are impounded by the Finnish police. Perhaps the film is among them. It’s a small place and I imagine they like to stick to the letter of the law.’ And casually, so that Avery knew it mattered, ‘The Foreign Office is afraid there may be a muddle.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Avery automatically. It was their practice in the Department: antique and understated.