The Looking Glass War (5 page)

‘I’ve never seen a dead man before,’ Avery said.

They were standing on a street corner in Kennington, looking for a taxi; a gas works on one side of the road, nothing on the other: the sort of place they could wait all day.

‘John, you’ve got to keep very quiet about that side of it; about putting a man in. No one’s to know, not even in the Department, no one at all. I though we’d call him Mayfly. Leiser, I mean. We’ll call him Mayfly.’

‘All right.’

‘It’s very delicate; a question of timing. I’ve no doubt there’ll be opposition, within the Department as well as outside.’

‘What about my cover and that kind of thing?’ Avery asked. ‘I’m not quite—’ A taxi with its flag up passed them without stopping.

‘Bloody man,’ Leclerc snapped. ‘Why didn’t he pick us up?’

‘He lives out here, I expect. He’s making for the West End. About cover,’ he prompted.

‘You’re travelling under your own name. I don’t see that there’s any problem. You can use your own address. Call yourself a publisher. After all you
were
one. The Consul will show you the ropes. What are you worried about?’

‘Well – just the details.’

Leclerc, coming out of his reverie, smiled. ‘I’ll tell you something about cover; something you’ll learn for yourself. Never volunteer information. People don’t
expect
you to explain yourself. After all, what is there to explain? The ground’s prepared; the Consul will have our teleprint. Show your passport and play the rest by ear.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Avery.

‘You’ll succeed,’ Leclerc rejoined with feeling, and they both grinned shyly.

‘How far is it to the town?’ Avery asked. ‘From the airport?’

‘About three miles. It feeds the main ski resorts. Heaven knows what the Consul does all day.’

‘And to Helsinki?’

‘I told you. A hundred miles. Perhaps more.’

Avery proposed they took a bus but Leclerc wouldn’t queue, so they remained standing at the corner. He began talking about official cars again. ‘It’s utterly absurd,’ he said. ‘In the old days we had a pool of our own, now we have two vans and the Treasury won’t let us pay the driver overtime. How can I run a Department under those conditions?’

In the end they walked. Leclerc had the address in his head; he made a point of remembering such things. It was awkward for Avery to walk beside him for long, because Leclerc adjusted his pace to that of the taller man. Avery tried to keep himself in check, but sometimes he forgot and Leclerc would stretch uncomfortably beside him thrusting upwards with each stride. A fine rain was falling. It was still very cold.

There were times when Avery felt for Leclerc a deep, protective love. Leclerc had that indefinable quality of arousing guilt, as if his companion but poorly replaced a departed friend. Somebody had been there, and gone; perhaps a whole world, a generation; somebody had made him and disowned him, so that while at one moment Avery could hate him for his transparent manipulation, detest his prinking gestures as a child detests the affectations of a parent, at the next he ran to protect him, responsible and deeply caring. Beyond all the vicissitudes of their relationship, he was somehow grateful that Leclerc had engendered him; and thus they created that strong love which exists between the weak; each became the stage to which the other related his actions.

‘It would be a good thing,’ Leclerc said suddenly, ‘if you shared the handling of Mayfly.’

‘I’d like to.’

‘When you get back.’

They had found the address on the map. Thirty-four Roxburgh Gardens; it was off Kennington High Street. The road soon became dingier, the houses more crowded. Gas lights burnt yellow and flat like paper moons.

‘In the war they gave us a hostel for the staff.’

‘Perhaps they will again,’ Avery suggested.

‘It’s twenty years since I did an errand like this.’

‘Did you go alone then?’ Avery asked, and wished at once that he had not. It was so easy to inflict pain on Leclerc.

‘It was simpler in those days. We could say they’d died for their country. We didn’t have to tell them the details; they didn’t expect that.’ So it
was
we, thought Avery. Some other boy, one of those laughing faces on the wall.

‘They died every day then, the pilots. We did reconnaissance, you know, as well as special operations … I’m ashamed sometimes: I can’t even remember their names. They were so young, some of them.’

There passed across Avery’s mind a tragic procession of horror-struck faces; mothers and fathers, girl friends and wives, and he tried to visualize Leclerc standing among them, naïve yet footsure, like a politician at the scene of a disaster.

They stood at the top of a rise. It was a wretched place. The road led downward into a line of dingy, eyeless houses; above them rose a single block of flats: Roxburgh Gardens. A string of lights shone on to the glazed tiles, dividing and redividing the whole structure into cells. It was a large building, very ugly in its way, the beginning of a new world, and at its feet lay the black rubble of the old: crumbling, oily houses, haunted by sad faces which moved through the rain like driftwood in a forgotten harbour.

Leclerc’s frail fists were clenched; he stood very still.

‘There?’ he said. ‘Taylor lived there?’

‘What’s wrong? It’s part of a scheme, redevelopment …’ Then Avery understood. Leclerc was ashamed. Taylor had disgracefully deceived him. This was not the society they protected, these slums with their Babel’s Tower: they had no place in Leclerc’s scheme of things. To think that a member of Leclerc’s staff should daily trudge from the breath and stink of such a place to the sanctuary of the Department: had he no money, no pension? Had he not a little bit beside, as we all have, just a hundred or two, to buy himself out of this squalor?

‘It’s no worse than Blackfriars Road,’ Avery said involuntarily; it was meant to comfort him.

‘Everyone knows we used to be in Baker Street,’ Leclerc retorted.

They made their way quickly to the base of the block, past shop windows filled with old clothes and rusted electric fires, all the sad muddle of useless things which only the poor will buy. There was a chandler; his candles were yellow and dusty like fragments of a tomb.

‘What number?’ Leclerc asked.

‘You said thirty-four.’

They passed between heavy pillars crudely ornamented with mosaics, followed plastic arrows marked with pink numbers; they squeezed between lines of aged, empty cars, until finally they came to a concrete entrance with cartons of milk on the step. There was no door, but a flight of rubberized steps which squeaked as they trod. The air smelt of food and that liquid soap they give in railway lavatories. On the heavy stucco wall a hand-painted notice discouraged noise. Somewhere a wireless played. They continued up two flights, and stopped before a green door, half glazed. Mounted on it in letters of white Bakelite was the number thirty-four. Leclerc took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his temples. He might have been entering church. It had been raining more than they realised; their coats were quite wet. He pressed the bell. Avery was suddenly very frightened; he glanced at Leclerc and thought: this is your show; you tell her.

The music seemed louder. They strained their ears to catch some other sound, but there was none.

‘Why did you call him Malherbe?’ Avery asked suddenly.

Leclerc pressed the bell again; and then they heard it, both of them, a whimper midway between the sob of a child and the whine of a cat, a throttled, metallic sigh. While Leclerc stepped back, Avery seized the bronze knocker on the letter box and banged it violently. The echo died away and they heard from inside the flat a light, reluctant tread; a bolt was slid from its housing, a spring lock disengaged. Then they heard again, much louder and more distinctly, the same plaintive monotone. The door opened a few inches and Avery saw a child, a frail, pallid rag of a girl not above ten years old. She wore steel-rimmed spectacles, the kind Anthony wore. In her arms, its pink limbs splayed stupidly about it, its painted eyes staring from between fringes of ragged cotton, was a doll. Its daubed mouth was lolling open, its head hung sideways as if it were broken or dead. It is called a talking doll, but no living thing uttered such a sound.

‘Where is your mother?’ asked Leclerc. His voice was aggressive, frightened.

The child shook her head. ‘Gone to work.’

‘Who looks after you, then?’

She spoke slowly as if she were thinking of something else. ‘Mum comes back tea-times. I’m not to open the door.’

‘Where is she? Where does she go?’

‘Work.’

‘Who gives you lunch?’ Leclerc insisted.

‘What?’

‘Who gives you dinner?’ Avery said quickly.

‘Mrs Bradley. After school.’

Then Avery asked, ‘Where’s your father?’ and she smiled and put a finger to her lips.

‘He’s gone on an aeroplane,’ she said. ‘To get money. But I’m not to say. It’s a secret.’

Neither of them spoke. ‘He’s bringing me a present,’ she added.

‘Where from?’ said Avery.

‘From the North Pole, but it’s a secret.’ She still had her hand on the doorknob. ‘Where Father Christmas comes from.’

‘Tell your Mother some men were here,’ Avery said. ‘From your Dad’s office. We’ll come again tea-time.’

‘It’s important,’ said Leclerc.

She seemed to relax when she heard they knew her father.

‘He’s on an aeroplane,’ she repeated. Avery felt in his pocket and gave her two half-crowns, the change from Sarah’s ten shillings. She closed the door, leaving them on that damned staircase with the wireless playing dreamy music.

They stood in the street not looking at one another. Leclerc said, ‘Why did you ask that question, the question about her father?’

When Avery did not reply he added incongruously, ‘It isn’t a matter of liking people.’

Sometimes Leclerc seemed neither to hear nor to feel; he drifted away, listening for a sound, like a man who having learnt the steps had been deprived of the music; this mood read like a deep sadness, like the bewilderment of a man betrayed.

‘I’m afraid I shan’t be able to come back here with you this afternoon,’ Avery said gently. ‘Perhaps Bruce Woodford would be prepared—’

‘Bruce is no good.’ He added: ‘You’ll be at the meeting; at ten forty-five?’

‘I may have to leave before the end to get to the Circus and collect my things. Sarah hasn’t been well. I’ll stay at the office as long as I can. I’m sorry I asked that question, I really am.’

‘I don’t want anyone to know. I must speak to her mother first. There may be some explanation. Taylor’s an old hand. He knew the rules.’

‘I shan’t mention it, I promise I shan’t. Nor Mayfly.’

‘I must tell Haldane about Mayfly. He’ll object, of course. Yes, that’s what we’ll call it … the whole operation. We’ll call it Mayfly.’ The thought consoled him.

They hurried to the office, not to work but for refuge; for anonymity, a quality they had come to need.

His room was one along from Leclerc’s. It had a label on the door saying, ‘Director’s Aide’. Two years ago Leclerc had been invited to America, and the expression dated from his return. Within the Department, staff were referred to by the function they fulfilled. Hence Avery was known simply as Private Office; though Leclerc might alter the title every week, he could not alter the vernacular.

At a quarter to eleven Woodford came into his room. Avery guessed he would: a little chat before the meeting began, a quiet word about some matter not strictly on the agenda.

‘What’s it all about, John?’ He lit his pipe, tilted back his large head and extinguished the match with long, swinging movements of his hand. He had once been a schoolmaster; an athletic man.

‘You tell me.’

‘Poor Taylor.’

‘Precisely.’

‘I don’t want to jump the gun,’ he said, and settled himself on the edge of the desk, still absorbed in his pipe.

‘I don’t want to jump the gun, John,’ he repeated. ‘But there’s another matter we ought to look at, tragic as Taylor’s death is.’ He stowed the tobacco tin in the pocket of his green suit and said, ‘Registry.’

‘That’s Haldane’s parish. Research.’

‘I’ve got nothing against old Adrian. He’s a good scout. We’ve been working together for over twenty years.’ And therefore you’re a good scout too, thought Avery.

Woodford had a way of coming close when he spoke; riding his heavy shoulder against you like a horse rubbing itself against a gate. He leant forward and looked at Avery earnestly: a plain man perplexed, he was saying, a decent man choosing between friendship and duty. His suit was hairy, too thick to crease, forming rolls like a blanket; rough-cut buttons of brown bone.

‘John, Registry’s all to the devil; we both know that. Papers aren’t being entered, files aren’t brought up on the right dates.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘We’ve been missing a policy file on marine freight since mid-October. Just vanished into thin air.’

‘Adrian Haldane put out a search notice,’ Avery said. ‘We were all involved, not just Adrian. Files do get lost – this is the first since April, Bruce. I don’t think that’s bad, considering the amount we handle. I thought Registry was one of our best things. The files are immaculate. I understand our Research index is unique. That’s all Adrian’s doing, isn’t it? Still, if you’re worried why not speak to Adrian about it?’

‘No, no. It’s not
that
important.’

Carol came in with the tea. Woodford had his in a pottery jumbo-cup, with his initials drawn large, embossed like icing. As Carol put it down, she remarked, ‘Wilf Taylor’s dead.’

‘I’ve been here since one,’ Avery lied, ‘coping with it. We’ve been working all night.’

‘The Director’s very upset,’ she said.

‘What was his wife like, Carol?’ She was a well-dressed girl, a little taller than Sarah.

‘Nobody’s met her.’

She left the room, Woodford watching her. He took his pipe from his mouth and grinned. Avery knew he was going to say something about sleeping with Carol and suddenly he’d had enough.

‘Did your wife make that cup, Bruce?’ he asked quickly. ‘I hear she’s quite a potter.’