15
I’d known ‘Uncle’ Silas all my life. He’d been my father’s boss from a time before I was born. I remembered him in Berlin when I was a child. He was young Billy’s godfather and distantly related to my mother-in-law.
He had long since retired from the Department and he now lived at his farm in the Cotswold hills. He was old and becoming more exasperating every time I saw him but I knew there had been times when I’d exasperated him more than he ever had me. To look truth right in the eye I suppose I’d only kept my job this long because my father had made good friends; and Uncle Silas was one of them.
So when I had a phone call from an agitated Mrs Porter, his house-keeper, and was told that Silas Gaunt was seriously ill and asking for me, I went to him. I didn’t ask for permission, or tell Dicky I needed a day off, or even send a message to the office. I went to him.
The day began with unabating heavy rain and the wet roads persuaded me to drive cautiously. It was a long drive and so I had plenty of time to reflect upon this precipitate action during the journey. As I got to the Cotswolds the hills were lost in grey silken skeins of mist, and the trees on the estate were entangled in it. ‘Whitelands’ consisted of about six hundred acres of fine agricultural land and an incongruous clutter of small buildings. There was a magnificent tithe barn, large enough to hold the parson’s tribute of corn, and stabling for six horses. The tan-coloured stone farmhouse itself had suffered a couple of hundred years of depredations by philistine occupiers, so that there was a neo-Gothic tower and an incongruous wing that housed the large billiards room.
I was used to arriving here to find a dozen cars scattered in the front drive and – on sunny days – parked in the shade of the three tall elms that marked the limits of the lawn. On such days the house was noisy with appreciative guests. It was not like that today. The front drive was empty except for a muddy Land-Rover from which three young men in faded denim were unloading equipment including, I noticed, three bright red hard-hats and three sets of earmuffs. The rain had stopped but the water dripped from the drenched trees and the lawn squelched underfoot.
As I stepped on the metal grating in the porch it rattled reminding me to scrape the mud from my shoes. I pushed open the front door and went in to the hallway. The house was silent, and like all such farmhouses, dark. The tiny windows, set in the thick stone walls, allowed only small rectangles of daylight to cut coloured rugs out of the oriental carpet. Suddenly from the drawing room, through several closed doors, Lohengrin began singing ‘In fernem Land’.
Mrs Porter, his ever-cheerful, ever dependable cook, house-keeper and general factotum, came from the kitchen to say hello and take my coat. Still holding it she went past me to look out of the front door. She sniffed the air with relish, as a submarine commander might savour the night after a long spell submerged. Over her shoulder I saw that one of the forestry men had donned a red helmet and ear covers and was climbing one of the trees. He was getting very wet.
She came back to me. ‘Yes, I thought I heard your car,’ she said. ‘I’m so pleased you are here, Mr Samson. I was worried…I still am. He becomes so listless when he is ill.’
‘Really?’ I said. I didn’t find it easy to visualize a listless Uncle Silas.
‘He got up and dressed when he heard that you were coming. I phoned the doctor about it but he said it would be all right as long as he stayed indoors, rested and kept warm.’
‘That sounds like the doctor,’ I said.
She smiled uncertainly. Women like Mrs Porter become alarmed if their faith in medicine comes under attack. ‘The doctor said that Mr Gaunt could be taken from us any time,’ she said in a voice that seemed intended to remind me of the leading role Silas’ physician played in a drama where I was no more than a walk-on. I assumed a suitably sober face and she said, ‘He’s writing his memoirs. Poor soul! He seems to know his time is coming.’
His memoirs! Political careers would be ended; reputations in shreds. It was unthinkable that Silas would ever get permission to write such a book, but I didn’t contradict her.
‘He puts it away when I go in there. I’m supposed not to know about it but I guessed when he smuggled the little typewriter downstairs. Before the last bad turn I would hear him tapping away in the music room every day. That’s where he is now. Go in, I’ll bring you tea.’
The ‘music room’ was the drawing room into which Silas had installed his hi-fi and his record collection. It was where he sat each evening listening to music. He didn’t care much for television. I was reluctant to interrupt his opera but Mrs Porter came up to the door and said, ‘Do go in,’ and added with an almost soundless whisper which her exaggerated lip movement helped me understand, ‘He’s probably asleep, it’s the pills.’
At Mrs Porter’s insistence I barged into the room. I didn’t see him at first, for his back was to me as he faced the log fire. He wore a dark shirt and a plum-coloured velvet smoking jacket, complete with cream silk handkerchief flopping from the top pocket. It was the sort of outfit an Edwardian actor might have chosen to go to the Café Royal. A tartan car rug was beside him on the floor. It had fallen from his knees or perhaps he’d pushed it aside when he heard me arrive. His feet – in bright red carpet slippers – were resting amongst the fire irons. The music was loud and there was a smell of wood smoke. As if in response to a draught from the doorway the fire burned bright so that yellow shapes ran across the low ceiling. ‘Who’s that?’ he growled. He wasn’t asleep.
People who knew Silas Gaunt well, amongst whom my father was certainly numbered, spoke of his exquisite courtesy, old-world manners and compelling charm. My mother had once described him as a boulevardier: it was the first time I’d ever heard the word used. To hear them speak of Gaunt you would have expected to meet one of those English eccentrics in the mould of Henry Fielding’s Squire Allworthy. But the Silas Gaunt I knew was a devious old devil who paradoxically demonstrated the skin of a rhino and the sensitivity of a butterfly, according to his long-term plans.
‘I hope I’m not intruding,’ I said very quietly.
‘I’m listening to Lohengrin, damn it!’ he said. I was somewhat relieved to find, whatever his corporeal condition, that his bellicose spirit was alive and well. Then as he turned his head to see me, and the fire flickered brighter, he said, ‘Oh, it’s you, Bernard. I thought it was Mrs Porter again She keeps pestering me.’
During my childhood Silas had always shown affection for me, but now he was old and he’d withdrawn into his own concerns with ageing, sickness and death. There was less affection in him now. ‘She’s concerned about you, Silas,’ I said.
‘She’s in league with that damned pill-pusher,’ he said. He switched off the record-player in a way that simply lifted the stylus. The record under the transparent lid kept turning.
I found a place to sit. He’d lost a lot of weight. His clothes were loose so that his wrinkled neck craned from his oversized shirt collar. The shadowy room was cluttered with his bric-à-brac, antiquarian curios and mementoes from far places: scarabs, an African carving, a battered toy locomotive, a banderilla, an alpenstock carved with the names of formidable climbs, a tiny ivory Buddha and a broken crucifix. Once Silas had told me that he didn’t want to be buried in the earth. He didn’t want to be in a tomb or consecrated ground. He’d like to be put in a museum surrounded by his possessions, just as so many of Egypt’s kings were now to be found.
‘We’re all concerned about you,’ I said. It was a somewhat feeble response and he just glared at me.
‘That damned doctor wants my grandfather clock,’ said Silas.
‘Does he?’
‘That’s all he comes here for. Never takes his eyes off it when he’s here. The other day I told him to go and put his bloody stethoscope on its movement since he was so interested in asking me if it kept good time.’
‘Perhaps he just wanted to make polite conversation.’
‘That marquetry work is what attracts him but he’s got central
heating. It would dry out and crack in six months in his place.’
‘It’s a lovely clock, Silas.’
‘Eighteenth-century. It was my father’s. The front panel has warped a fraction. Some of the inlay work projects just a shade. It has to be polished very carefully by someone who understands. Mrs Porter doesn’t let anyone else touch it. She winds it too.’
‘You’re fortunate to have her looking after you, Silas.’
‘That damned quack wants to have it before I die. I know what he’s after: a written statement about the clock’s condition and history. That sort of provenance affects the price in auction. He told me that.’
‘I’m pleased to see you looking so well,’ I said.
‘His house is filled with clocks. Skeleton clocks, carriage clocks, balloon clocks, clocks riding on elephants, clocks in eagle’s bellies. I don’t want my lovely clock added to a collection like that. It would be like sending a child to an orphanage, or Mrs Porter to the workhouse. He’s a clock maniac. He should go and see a psychologist, there’s something wrong with a man who wants to live in a house filled with clocks. I couldn’t hear myself speak for all the ding-donging and carry-on.’
There came a light tap at the door. Silas said, ‘Come in!’ in the jovial booming tone he used for Mrs Porter. But it proved to be one of the young men. ‘All ready to go, Mr Gaunt,’ he said, his voice enriched with the local accent.
‘Very well,’ said Silas without turning to see him.
The man looked at him as if expecting some more earnest response. ‘We’ll go ahead then.’
‘I said yes,’ said Silas irritably.
The man looked at the back of Silas’ head, looked at me, rolled his eyes and then withdrew. I waited to see if Silas would account for the interruption but he just said, ‘I’ve rediscovered Wagner in my old age.’
‘That’s gratifying.’
After a long pause he said, ‘I’m losing the elms. They’ve got that damned disease.’
‘All of them?’
‘The ones at the front.’ He bit his lip. ‘They’ve always been here: my father loved them. I suppose I shouldn’t let myself become upset about those stupid trees but…’
‘You can put in others,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m going to put in six oaks.’ He smiled. It was understandable that he identified so closely with the trees that had always framed the house from the drive. There would be more trees, and more people too, but Silas Gaunt would have been felled, fired and forgotten by the time they matured. He brought out a bright red cotton handkerchief, dabbed his eyes and blew his nose. ‘Is it too smoky for you? Open the window if it is.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Fledermaus went well? You saw Fiona?’ Outside there came the sound of the chainsaw being started up. His face stiffened but he pretended not to hear it.
‘I saw her,’ I said.
‘It’s clear to you now?’
It was still far from clear but there was little or nothing to be gained from saying so. ‘So we’re pulling her out?’ I said, wanting him to confirm it.
‘In due time.’
‘It’s a miracle she’s lasted so long.’
‘She’s a damned good girl,’ said Silas. ‘A wonderful woman.’
‘And Erich Stinnes is coming too?’
Silas looked at me blankly. He must have been moment arily diverted by the racket of the chainsaw. The sound of it came in longer and longer bursts as they severed larger and larger branches prior to the felling. A tree is like a network of course, and that’s how the old wartime training manuals always depicted it. And like a tree, a network is destroyed beginning with a twig. Then a small branch, until it’s uprooted and eradicated. ‘Stinnes…’ said Silas. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Does Stinnes matter?’
‘Matter?’ I said. I was as puzzled as he seemed to be.
‘Enrolling Stinnes…getting him to go back there and work for us was brilliant. It was the master touch,’ said Silas. His eyes were bright and alert now. ‘If Stinnes eventually comes back intact the Department will break every rule in the book to get a K for Bret Rensselaer.’
I looked at him carefully. So Stinnes was working for us. But surely what he really meant was if Fiona eventually comes back intact, but he didn’t want to be that candid with me. ‘Was that Bret’s doing?’
‘No. But sending Stinnes back was originally Bret’s idea. Bret pushed and pushed for it.’
‘It was madness,’ I said. ‘Maybe Stinnes pulled it off; maybe they are playing with him. Who can be sure? Either way sending him back was reckless. It endangered Fiona.’
‘Can’t you see it, even now?’ said Silas. He shook his head at my slowness. ‘We didn’t care a jot what happened to Erich Stinnes, and we still don’t. Stinnes was sent back there for one reason, and for one reason only: to reinforce the story that Fiona was a genuine defector.’
‘Not to work alongside Fiona?’
‘No, no, no. That was the beauty of it. No one revealed to Stinnes that Fiona went back to work for us; because virtually no one there knows. Every one of our people believes that Fiona’s defection was the worst blow the Department ever suffered, and whatever suspicions passed through his mind Stinnes went back believing that too.’
I said, ‘Do you mean Stinnes was told to report and defuse what Fiona was supposedly doing to us?’ It was beautiful. It had the symmetry that distinguishes art from nature.
Silas smiled contentedly as he watched me thinking about it. ‘Yes, “Operation Damage Control”, that’s what Bret told Stinnes he was. Stinnes was just a means to an end.’
‘And so was I,’ I said bitterly. ‘I’ve been made a fool of, right from the start.’ The revelation that my wife was a heroine, rather than a traitor, should have made me rejoice. In some ways it did, but on a personal level I felt bitter at the way I’d been used. My anger extended to everyone who knew about Fiona’s long-term commitment, and had kept it from me. Everyone included Fiona. From outside, the sound of the chainsaw was now continuous. They must have been cutting through the trunk.
‘You mustn’t look at it like that,’ said Silas. He sighed. It wasn’t one of the histrionic sighs he’d used in the old days. It was the sigh of a sick old man who finds the effort of living too much for him. ‘You played a vital role in what happened. What sense was there in having you worry about the operational side?’
‘That’s what Fiona said. Was this what you wanted to see me about?’ I asked.
‘That damned quack says I could go any time.’
I nodded. He looked ill. Mrs Porter wasn’t worrying unnecessarily.
‘I suppose Mrs Porter told you that. She tells everyone. I can see from the look in their faces when they come in here to talk to me.’
‘She’s very discreet,’ I said to calm his anger.
‘What will happen when I go, I’ve been asking myself. Bret is sick, and anyway Bret doesn’t know the whole story. The D-G knows but no one will listen to him because they say he’s batty. What do you think about him?’
These were dangerous waters and I navigated away. ‘I haven’t seen him for a long time,’ I said.
‘The rumour is that he has Alzheimer’s, but my quack says the only way they can confirm Alzheimer’s is by means of a post-mortem.’ There was a sudden silence and then a soft thud and a muddle of voices as the felled tree hit the wet lawn. The sound of its death saddened me. Silas gave no sign of having heard it but I knew he had. ‘Do you know what I think?’ He shifted restlessly. A man as big and as powerful as Silas was apt to resent infirmity in a way that other men did not. He eyed me to make sure I was giving him my full attention. Then he said, ‘The old man’s deaf.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Even more deaf than he admits,’ said Silas. ‘They all think he’s crazy because he’s too damned vain to get himself a modern hearing aid. I think the D-G is as smart as you and I.’
‘I’d like to think you are right,’ I said,
and then tried to get back to the point. ‘So you, Bret and the D-G are the only ones who know that Fiona is one of ours?’
‘That’s exactly right. Even the Vienna team who arranged the meeting for you last week think she was acting for Moscow.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it.’
‘If all three of us – me, Bret and the D-G – go at once, and that’s not beyond the bounds of credibility, you and Fiona will be the only ones who know the true story. Even the case officer processing her reports is not really a case officer; he doesn’t know where they come from.’
‘And so I’d have little chance of convincing anyone that she’s one of ours.’
‘And Fiona won’t dare try.’ He gave a little cough to clear his throat. ‘Yes, that’s the position, Bernard. That’s why I sent for you.’
‘What do you propose we do?’ I said.
‘Wait.’ I looked at him. His face was white and bloated but ill or not, it still displayed the fierce determination that he’d always shown. ‘We can’t pull Fiona out until the time is right.’
‘Don’t wait too long, Silas,’ I said. ‘Agents get over confident, we both know that. She’ll have to be ordered out. I wanted her to come back with me.’
‘And undo everything she’s worked for? Bernard your wife is a perfectionist. Surely you must have realized that during your married life with her?’
‘No,’ I said. All I’d discovered during my married life with Fiona was that, although I’d shared with her just about every idea, thought and emotion I had, she’d guarded her own secrets with a discipline that was no less than obsessional. I felt as if I’d been swindled. Not bilked, burned or ripped off for a short-term loss but systematically deceived for years and years by the person who had vowed to love me and care for me. Fiona Kimber-Hutchinson, do you take this bachelor? Yes, I was taken.