William switched on the kettle and took two cups out of the cupboard above the sink. “And you?” he asked. “What are you up to these days?”
He hoped that the answer to the question might reveal the reason for this unexpected, though welcome, call. She could hardly just have dropped in, particularly after fifteen years; people rarely did that in London - not any more.
“I'm working for the government,” said Angelica. “After I closed the bookshop, I answered an advertisement in the papers. A job in information processing.”
William wondered what information processing was. The trouble with job descriptions like that was that they frequently disguised something much more mundane. There used to be clerks, until they were abolished and became … what had clerks become? Perhaps they had disappeared altogether.
“It was at GCHQ,” Angelica continued. “You must know the place.”
William did. Government Communications Headquarters was a vast building outside Cheltenham, a place that bristled with aerials, even if mainly metaphorical ones, and hummed with electronic activity. So information processing in ordinary English was eavesdropping.
“How interesting,” he said. “Monitoring radio traffic.”
Angelica smiled. “Yes. Or the equivalent. I hadn't intended to get into that line of things, but it was a regular job and I wanted to get out of London for a while. And I found I really enjoyed it.”
William agreed that it must be interesting. But what qualifications, he wondered, did Angelica have for the job? Or was a job at GCHQ like a place in the Windward Islands - allocated with no regard to desert?
“They took me because of my degree in Russian,” Angelica said. “I don't know if you were aware that I studied Russian at university.”
William was not.
“Well, I did,” said Angelica. “I went to St Andrews. Russian was quite a popular subject in those days. I didn't use it very much, of course - not when I was running the bookshop. But then it came in very handy when I went to GCHQ.”
“It would,” said William, picturing Angelica at a desk, in headphones, in front of a crystal radio, a frown of concentration on her brow.
“And then I was transferred,” Angelica continued. “Back to London. To MI6.”
William thought that he had misheard her. “MI6?”
“Yes,” said Angelica calmly. “Intelligence work. But of a different sort.”
Chapter 4: The Dangers of Boeuf Stroganoff
For a few moments after Angelica's revelation, William said nothing. He had read of MI6, of course, and had passed its building near Vauxhall Bridge on numerous occasions. For an organisation whose business was secrets, the building seemed hardly appropriate, being, as it was, quite open-looking, and apparently not at all suitable for shady work of the sort that MI6 - and presumably Angelica herself - engaged in.
He knew, as everybody did, that it was MI6 headquarters and had speculated on what went on within. He had seen people going in and out of the front door - quite openly - and they had seemed to him to be no different from the people who went in and out of any building in the City, for example. And perhaps their jobs were not all that different from the jobs of any others among the legions of civil servants who worked in London. They attended meetings, no doubt, wrote memos, and strove, he imagined, to meet targets. At the end of the day they probably went home in much the same mood as everybody else, leaving behind the cares of the office. He wondered if they had a clear-desk policy, as other organisations had, whereby there would be no papers left un-filed by the time work finished at five o'clock. He thought that they probably did; the sort of papers these people dealt with certainly could not be left lying about for the prying eyes of cleaners who might have been recruited by the other side. And it would be very easy, he reckoned, to recruit a cleaner; their weakness was tea, and they could doubtless be tempted by a large cup of Darjeeling …
He smiled at Angelica. “Well, I must say that I'm somewhat surprised. I've never met anybody who actually works there.”
Angelica returned his smile. There was nothing guarded about her manner; she seemed completely open and unembarrassed. “I know that it takes many people by surprise, but it's essentially an ordinary job. I don't really think about it, you know.”
“A daily grind like everything else?”
Angelica thought for a moment. “To an extent. A lot of what I do is pretty mundane, but there are times when things … well, when things hot up.”
William was intrigued. Did Angelica ever find herself in danger? He decided to ask her outright, and she shook her head. “I've never been in physical danger myself - as far as I know. But some of my colleagues have.”
William wanted to know more. “I suppose you can't say too much,” he said. “But can you give me an idea of what happened to these colleagues of yours?”
For a few moments Angelica appeared to be weighing the merits of saying more. “I have to be careful,” she said. “We're not meant to talk about our work, but …”
“I'm very discreet,” said William, putting a finger to his lips. “I really am.”
The tea was now ready, and William poured a cup for Angelica.
“You may recall a recent very unfortunate case of poisoning,” Angelica said, as she took a sip of her tea. “A Russian who had got on the wrong side of somebody powerful found that his drink contained a very nasty slow-acting poison. The poor man died.”
William remembered reading about this in the papers. “There was a row over extradition, wasn't there?”
Angelica nodded. “HMG was livid. And we didn't like it at the office. We don't like these people fighting their wars on British soil.”
“Of course not.”
“Well,” Angelica went on, “although that case got into the papers, there was nothing about another attempted poisoning that took place. One of our people was having dinner with a contact in a restaurant. The waiter brought them their main courses, but he had mixed up who had ordered what. Our man was given the boeuf stroganoff instead of the pan-fried salmon. So he swapped the plates around and his contact - a completely innocent member of a foreign embassy - took a couple of forkfuls of the boeuf stroganoff and became violently ill. It had been intended for our man, of course.”
William grimaced. “Just like the Pope.”
“The Pope?”
“Yes,” said William. “John Paul the First - the one who lasted thirty-three days, or whatever it was. He was entertaining some grandee of an Eastern Rite church - one of their patriarchs, or whatever - and his visitor took one sip of his coffee and keeled over.”
Angelica looked dubious. “In the Vatican?”
“In the Vatican,” said William. “And then, of course, the Pope himself succumbed later on. No autopsy. No normal procedures. Just popped into his red slippers and buried. It was very odd, if you ask me.”
Angelica smiled. “You have to be wary of these conspiracy theories,” she said. “Most untoward events have a very simple, rational explanation. The Pope's visitor probably had a heart attack - it was probably nothing to do with the coffee. And John Paul the First himself was certainly not murdered. We know that for a fact.”
William raised an eyebrow. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because we have our man in the Vatican,” said Angelica. “We had a very full report from him, and he indicated that all those rumours were groundless.”
William could not conceal his surprise. “You have your man in the Vatican? A spy?”
Angelica shrugged. “Of course we do. He's a highly placed cleric. A monsignor. He works in the Holy Office.”
“And he spies for you?”
Angelica held up a hand. “Steady on. I wouldn't call it spying. He reports, that's all.”
“But what possible interest do you have in Vatican affairs? They're hardly a threat to our security.”
It was Angelica's turn to raise an eyebrow. “You think not? You should study history, William. The Vatican has been med
dling in the affairs of other sovereign states for centuries. They have a very clear idea of what's in their interests and how to achieve it. And why not? If you look at it from their point of view, why not attempt to ensure that things work out in the way they want? Everybody else does precisely that.”
William was at a loss as to what to say. He was astonished by the disclosure that Angelica had made, but there was something else that was also puzzling him: why was she telling him all this, and, more than that, why had she come to see him in the first place? This, he thought, was not a purely social call.
He glanced at her tea cup, which was empty. “More?”
She slid her tea cup towards him. “You may be wondering-”
He cut her short. “I certainly am.”
She watched as he poured the tea into her cup. “Well, I'd expect you to wonder why I've come to see you and also why I'm speaking about my work - which is meant to be confidential.”
He nodded. “I was.”
“You know that we've been watching you?”
William gasped. Had he been under suspicion?
Angelica was quick to reassure him. “No, we don't have anything on you. We call it a friendly watch. Perfectly friendly.”
“Then what … ?”
“We want to ask a favour,” Angelica said. “You can say no, and we'll leave it right there. But if you say yes, then … well, HMG would be terrifically grateful.” She paused, watching him closely. “What did JFK say to his people at his inauguration? 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.' He said that, didn't he?”
“I believe so,” said William. His mouth was dry, and he found himself thinking, somewhat uncomfortably, of boeuf stroganoff.
Chapter 5: A Nice Boy
While William was engaged in his curious, ultimately rather alarming conversation with Angelica, in the flat directly below his in Corduroy Mansions Caroline was making a series of telephone calls, the last of which was to her friend James.
Caroline and James had now known one another for not much more than a year, but each felt as if the other was an old friend. They had met on the first day of the course on which they were both enrolled at Sotheby's Art Institute - a one-year Master's course in art history designed specifically for those with their sights on a career in the fine art auction rooms or in a gallery. There were twenty-three people on the course that year, every one of them paying, or rather having paid on their behalf, the seventeen thousand pounds in fees that the course commanded. In Caroline's case this cost was borne by her father, a reasonably well-off land agent in Cheltenham. He had grumbled about it, but had eventually come to share his wife's view that the chances of Caroline's meeting what she described, with no trace of irony, as a nice boy were substantially increased by her being involved in the world of expensive auctions. Little did he know.
James met the fees for the course himself, dipping into a legacy left him by an aunt. The legacy was enough to pay the fees and keep him for that year and perhaps a year or two beyond. “And then it's work,” he said. “Reality catches up with one, you know - sooner or later.”
For Caroline, reality had taken the form of a job with Tim Something, the photographer. He had offered to take her on as his assistant at a salary that seemed extremely generous. She had accepted the offer, and had recently completed her first week in her new job. James who had settled for a six-week unpaid internship in one of the auction houses, was now anxiously awaiting the firm's decision on whether he would be allowed to stay on. The Old Master's department had a vacancy, but was reluctant to commit just yet. James suspected that the job was being kept in reserve for somebody else, and was feeling pessimistic.
“They'll never take me,” he had complained to Caroline. “I'm not nearly grand enough.”
Caroline had sought to reassure him. “Nonsense,” she said. “It's not like that any more. Nobody cares about things like that - not these days.”
“But they do,” protested James. “If you look at the people who work there, they're tremendously grand. They really are. They're all called Michael de Whatsit, or the Honourable This or That, and so on. I'd be the only ordinary person.”
“Rubbish,” said Caroline. “You're not ordinary. You're really unusual.”
There was an awkward silence.
“I mean, you're really extraordinary,” Caroline blurted out. “Extraordinary. That's what I mean. You're really extraordinary.”
James looked at her balefully. “Really? Why do you think I'm extraordinary?”
Caroline looked up at the ceiling. This conversation had taken place in a favourite coffee bar of theirs on Long Acre, and she knew the ceiling well, having frequently stared at it when writing - or planning to write - her final essay of the course, on Alessandro Bonvicino and the Brescia school. Now she noticed how the light coming through the window reflected off the surface of the mirror on the opposite wall, throwing hazy liquid shapes on the ceiling.
“You just are, James,” she said. “And you should be pleased. Too many people are plain ordinary. You aren't.”
“But why?” asked James again. “Why am I extraordinary?”
Caroline began to look annoyed. “It's very difficult to explain,” she said. “But since you insist, I suppose it's because you're bright. You're much brighter than most people. And you've got good aesthetic judgement - most people have appalling taste, as you well know. And you're funny. You make me laugh.”
James continued to look reproachful. “But what if I just want to be ordinary? What if I want to be … to be like other blokes?”
Caroline watched him carefully. They were on difficult ground now, and she was determined not to say anything tactless. James was not like other blokes - she knew that - but it was not a subject that she wished to explore. She was convinced that he was interested in women and had merely not fully reconciled himself to it.
"You're sensitive,” she said. “It's a great advantage to be sensitive. Most men are … well, they're just insensitive. But you aren't. You feel things, James.”
James thought about this. “But what if I don't want to feel things?”
Caroline shook her head. “That's not an option,” she said. “You can't decide to be insensitive. You can't unknow things.”
“What do you mean unknow?”
Caroline thought it perfectly obvious. “You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Once you have knowledge - whatever knowledge it may be - you can't go back to a state of innocent ignorance. It's like any attempt to return to childhood - we can't.”
“Pity,” said James.
“Maybe. But the point is this: you are a very sensitive, sympathetic man. That makes you extraordinary. And there's nothing that you can do to change the fact of your sensitivity - it's who you are, James.”
That conversation had left James feeling vaguely dissatisfied. What Caroline had said about him was complimentary, indeed flattering, but he was not sure that he wanted to be a sensitive, sympathetic man. He wanted to be able to identify with the ordinary men he saw every day travelling on the tube or chatting to one another outside the pub - men who seemed to enjoy an easy camaraderie, who appeared not in the least troubled by what other people thought about them. He wanted to stop thinking about other people's feelings. He wanted to stop being so vulnerable to hurt.
But he would not be able to do it without Caroline's help, and he had decided that the only way of securing it was to formalise the relationship between them. He would ask her to be his girlfriend - that was what he would do. He would simply ask her.
When James raised the topic, Caroline was ill-prepared for it, but quickly concealed her surprise.
She reached out and took his hand. “Is that what you really want, James? Are you sure?”
He was sure. Lowering his voice, he said, “Yes, I'm sure. I want us to be lovers.” Lovers - it was such a luscious, dangerous word, and he could hardly believe that he had used it.
Caroline looked at
him. “Have you got a sore throat?” she asked.
James shook his head. “Oh, Caroline,” he said, his voice returning to its normal pitch. “I really do love you, you know. You're everything to me.”
Caroline looked at him in disbelief. She was not everything to him, she knew that. What about art? What about the paintings of Nicolas Poussin? What about a whole lot of other things? And yet it was only a figure of speech, of course, and she knew that too.