Uncommon Enemy (16 page)

The drive to Dublin was wet and vexatious, the car-hire queue writ large. He was stopped by police on both sides of the border, and on the way into Dublin took a wrong turn that led into a maze
of housing estates whose grim neglect and anarchy resembled those he had known in Belfast with the army years before. Eventually he found the Chesham, checked in, then drove over to Jury’s,
where he had arranged to meet Martin in the bar. He checked in there, too, under another name. They would use his room for the meeting, but he would spend the night at the Chesham.

Arriving thirty-five minutes early, he sat at the side of the foyer with a copy of the
Irish Times
. This gave him a view of the approach outside, of the doors and of the entrance to the
bar; he would watch Gladiator in to see whether he brought surveillance with him, leaving him in the bar for ten minutes before joining him. The foyer was loud with Americans who had just arrived
for a conference. The appointed time came and went. It was unusual for Martin to be late.

‘You were supposed to meet in the bar. What are you doing here?’

It was Sarah, from behind his chair. He moved as if shot at, which made her laugh. ‘I might ask the same of you,’ he said.

‘I’ve come to meet you. You weren’t trying to spy on Martin coming in, were you? Playing spy games?’

He struggled to control the broadsheet
Irish Times.
‘No, I was just – I thought I’d watch him in, make sure he was okay. Is he?’

She retrieved an errant page. ‘You’re really not a very good spy, Charles. You’re so obvious, I’m always telling you. Martin’s fine. But he wasn’t sure the
Garda weren’t following him earlier today – sorry, too many negatives – and didn’t want to risk bringing them to you this evening. He went to a callbox and rang the number
you gave him in London, but they said you were travelling and they couldn’t contact you. So he rang me and asked me to come instead and tell you.’

There were people nearby. He moved her away. ‘We were going to eat early,’ he said. ‘I’ll still need to get a message to him about another meeting – through you, if
that’s all right. But the table’s booked, so shall we eat, you and I – assuming you can stay?’

‘I’ve got a better idea.’ She was smiling and looking straight at him. ‘I’ve booked a table at a place out of town called Charlie’s. I’ve never been
there, but people say it’s really good. Appropriate name, I thought.’

Charles had planned the evening, seeking as always when on business to control the agenda. It was still a business evening, but his sense of control was draining like water through his fingers.
He stared back at her. She was confident and somehow different, wearing boots, an expensive-looking beige raincoat, a black skirt and a red jersey that suggested her figure without clinging to it.
He felt the agenda was hers now.

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

‘No – I am, I am. I was just thinking. I’ve got a room here, you see, where Martin and I were going to talk. I’ll keep it on – it would look odd if I check out now
– but I’ll have to slip upstairs to get my car keys.’

‘We’ll go in mine.’

‘You’ve got a car?’

‘Not mine. One I borrow from my landlady friend once in a blue moon. She’s only too pleased to have it used.’

Charles hesitated again. Mixing the professional and the personal troubled him, especially with Sarah, and especially with what he now knew. Porous borders threatened the compartmentalisation of
his life.

‘We don’t have to,’ she said, more seriously now. ‘You look as if you don’t trust me, or something.’

His immediate reaction was to query her and Martin’s motives, to suspect some sort of alliance, to ask whether he was being set up. That was a professional reaction. He dismissed it as
soon as he thought it, resenting it, but he couldn’t help thinking it. Martin – yes, he could just about imagine Martin betraying him because there was something unknown about
Martin’s motivation, some part of him that remained invisible. But Sarah – that was inconceivable. If Sarah betrayed him, then anyone was capable of anything. Yet he did conceive of it,
and for a moment hated himself for it.

He smiled. ‘It’s not that, I’m just working out the logistics with the hotels, this one and my other one. It’s okay, it’s not a problem. Even though the place is
called Charlie’s.’

The file gave the facts of the evening in a single paragraph. The next entry was an account of his subsequent meeting with Martin in London, arranged through Sarah that night. But the facts were
incomplete.

They said nothing about the hour-long journey that was supposed have taken half that, nor her unfamiliarity with her friend’s Volvo.

‘I can’t be doing with clutches,’ she said after another juddering down-change. ‘Our car in London is automatic. Why aren’t all cars? It’s so much
easier.’

‘Perhaps they will be one day.’

‘You don’t have to be so irritatingly self-restrained. You know I’m a rubbish driver. I always was.’

‘You probably don’t do enough of it.’

‘But I am rubbish, aren’t I?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘That’s what I always liked about you, Charles. You give a girl such confidence.’

He wondered what it would do to her confidence to know about Martin. After twice retracing their route they arrived in a dark, deserted yard at the rear of a large unlit house. There were no
other cars. It was easy, too easy, to imagine his door opening and someone ordering him out.

‘We must have come the back way,’ she said.

She opened her door, flooding them in light. It would be now if it was at all, he thought.

‘Aren’t you coming, then?’ she asked.

‘I’m just folding the map.’

‘I’m just this, I’m just that, you haven’t changed a bit, you know.’

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘You decide.’

He overcame the map and got out. His shutting the door was the only sound apart from the rain on roofs. They stood in pitch darkness. ‘The house must be that way,’ he said.

‘I’m told there’s a back entrance.’ They felt their way to the front of the car and headed towards the looming bulk of the house. After a few steps they brushed against
each other. Both parted smartly. When they reached a door their hands touched as they felt for the handle. It was locked. They set off back across the yard to find a way round to the front. Charles
had good night vision and soon began to pick out puddles as darker patches. She slipped her gloved hand under his arm, releasing it as soon as they were on the road. At the front of the house were
two cars and, reassuringly, lights in curtained windows.

‘You’re sure this is a restaurant?’ he asked.

‘It had better be. You know why I insisted on something a bit special, don’t you? On this day.’

He knew the date – he had written it three or four times that day – and he knew that was the date of her birthday, but somehow he had failed to connect the two. He put it down to
having been in business mode, thinking only of Martin and not expecting to see her.

‘Of course I did. But I haven’t got you anything, because I didn’t know I was going to see you.’

‘Liar, you’d plain forgotten. Anyway, this can be your present to me. If it really is the restaurant.’

There was no bell but the wide oak front door opened into a panelled hall, with a panelled dining room off it. There was an open fire and only half a dozen tables. A party of four and another
couple were making enough noise to drown out whatever he and Sarah said. He ordered rabbit and pigeon pie, which reminded him of rough shooting with his father in Chiltern beechwoods. She had
venison; she had always been a good eater, he remembered, unlike many of the women he’d been out with, and was lucky it didn’t show.

‘What did Nigel give you?’ he asked.

‘He rang from Paris just before I came out. That’s something, I s’pose. Normally he’s in meetings and I get a call at about midnight. I expect he’ll bring back
something expensive and easy to find. But at least he remembered.’

‘He’s still keen on his European crusade, isn’t he?’

‘Very.’

‘No sign of defecting to Brussels or the UN yet?’

‘No, but the talk goes on. He wouldn’t see it as defecting, of course. He’d see us as the defectors, the un-idealists. I told him I was seeing you. He sent his
regards.’

‘Does he mind?’

She shrugged. ‘No idea.’

She asked what was to happen with Martin. ‘I hope you do find something else for him,’ she said after Charles had explained. ‘I doubt he’d find the law exciting enough. I
think he’s a bit in love.’

‘Who with?’

She smiled. ‘No need to look so alarmed. We’ve had tea a couple of times recently. I think it’s because I know what he’s doing and he feels he can talk about it a bit. Or
ask questions, most of which I can’t begin to answer. He’s in love with spying, MI6 and all that. He reads books about it, knows the names of all the chiefs. Doesn’t he ask you
about it?’

‘Never. If he refers to it at all he’s usually ironic or mocking.’

‘He strikes me as a boy – man – who needs a cause, something to believe in. A bit like Nigel in that respect. Martin used to have the Cause, of course. Perhaps he still does to
an extent, even though he’s spying on it. But he certainly has your cause in a big way, too. He likes the fun of it, always refers to you as uncle. He’s a nice boy. I like him,
don’t you?’

It was the perfect moment to tell her, an intimate dinner, rare time alone; there would never be a better. He rehearsed the words, tried to imagine how she would take it, considered whether it
might be best done over coffee, all the time feeling sorry for her because she was so unsuspecting and because it was her birthday. But still he hesitated; it could change the rest of her life,
hers and Martin’s, a change he couldn’t quantify.

‘Funny how he’s taken to spying,’ she continued. ‘I’d never have thought of him as the sort of person who becomes a spy.’

‘There’s no such thing. We’re all spies. We tell each other’s secrets all the time. It’s human. It just depends on the context.’

‘Very wise, Mr Smiley.’

Over coffee she continued happily, relaxed, talkative, even slightly flirtatious. They paused only once, while their coffee was being refilled. The waitress turned away but they waited until she
was out of earshot before resuming. That was the other chance to tell her. He knew it, and let it pass.

The drive back was easier. When she drew up outside Jury’s she kept wipers and engine running. The message was clear, but the space between them was suddenly filled with the unspoken,
which for him was that earlier birthday dinner at the Elizabeth, on the night of snow.

‘Well, happy birthday,’ he said. ‘No snow this time.’

She smiled. ‘Dangerous stuff, snow.’

‘And no Nigel and no umbrella.’

‘There is an umbrella. In the back.’

‘I wonder what you’d write in the snow now.’ He had not intended to say it.

‘I’d write, “Thank you for a lovely dinner.” That would be enough, don’t you think?’

‘Of course.’ He kissed her on the cheek and made to get out, but paused with the door open. He would say something, not all he wanted to say, but something of it. There might never
in life be another chance and he wanted her to know. ‘No, it’s not. It’s not enough.’

She looked at him.

‘I loved you and I thought I’d stopped loving you, but seeing you again has made me realise I haven’t, that I never have.’ He said it to the windscreen wipers. There was
no response from her. When he turned to look she too was staring at the wet windscreen. She sighed.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I’m not going to go on about it. You don’t have to say anything.’

She continued staring at the screen. ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

‘I wanted you to know.’

‘But all that time when you—’

‘I know. I’m sorry. But it’s always been you. It’s always and only been you.’

‘Is that what you say to all your girlfriends?’

‘I’ve never said it to anyone.’

‘You might as well close the door.’

He closed it. They sat in silence. ‘Don’t worry, this wasn’t meant to be a seduction ploy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t plan it.’

She looked at him again. ‘Well, it’s not a bad start.’

Later that night, in his room in the Chesham, she sat up abruptly in bed. Just enough city light showed through the curtains for him to make out the mole on her right shoulder
blade. He had forgotten the mole. Her body had the strangeness and familiarity of home after a long absence. He stroked her back, feeling each rib with his finger-tips. She had lost weight in the
decade since he had last done that.

‘I thought you were asleep,’ he said.

‘I was, then I was suddenly awake, hearing myself speaking. Perhaps I was dreaming. I heard myself saying, “I’m the first woman in my family ever to have done this.”
Adultery, I mean.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘I do.’

He ran his fingers down her back again.

She turned and leaned over him, her breasts pendulous. ‘I can’t leave him, you know. Nigel. He’s – he needs me. He wants children.’ She pushed her hair away from
his face. ‘No need to look so alarmed, it’s not about to happen again. Your timing’s better this time.’

When Charles awoke to another grey wet dawn she was already up, sitting on the arm of a chair. She was wearing one of the white hotel dressing gowns and staring through a gap
in the curtains at the moving streets of Dublin.

He sat up. ‘A perfect morning, a perfect moment. You look beautiful.’

She did not look round but he could see she was smiling. ‘It’s miserable, awful, wretched. I shall never understand your passion for rain.’

‘I guarantee an endless supply of umbrellas.’

‘D’you think you’ve always been frightened of your own feelings?’

He hooked his arms around his knees. ‘Probably. I don’t like emotional incontinence. Either that or I don’t have the right feelings. Except that I did with you. Do, with
you.’

‘We can’t go on.’ She continued gazing at the traffic. ‘Not because I don’t want you. I want you too much. It would tear me in half.’