‘I heal quickly,’ I said. ‘Look, if things go sour, call me. I plan to be in London for the next few weeks.’
‘Thanks, Bernard. And since Fiona seems to have been taking me literally, about not telling anyone, perhaps you’d wait until she breaks it to you.’
‘Yes, it’s probably better like that.’ I looked at him and worried. ‘And forget what I said about the clicks, George. Maybe you are right.’
‘I’d already forgotten, Bernard. Anyway, on the day after tomorrow I’m getting an electronics expert in to check the line.’ He laughed. Talking about his plans seemed to have a salutary effect upon him. He was very cheerful now, very relaxed and confident, but in his circumstances that was the very worst way to be.
7
Fiona loved to go to bed ridiculously early and then spend hours reading. In the old days I remember countless times when I arrived home late to find her sound asleep: propped up in bed, lights on, head lolling, clasping some heavy tome of tedious official material that her conscience had demanded she read. So when I got back from Zurich, late at night, I was quite prepared to find her tucked up in bed. But I could not have been more wrong; I had never seen her more animated.
Not having a key to our new luxurious home in Mount Street, I had to ring the doorbell. Fiona opened it wearing a white chef’s apron over a bright cobalt-blue acrylic vee-neck and dark blue pleated skirt. On her feet she had pumps, and her hair was clipped back in a severe style that I’d seen her apply when working in East Berlin. But there any resemblance to the woman I’d seen in her communist office ended, for tonight Fiona was radiant and bubbling over with joy.
‘It’s bliss, Bernard,’ she said. ‘Pure bliss. Two floors. I’d forgotten all the rooms upstairs. It’s vast.’
We embraced and kissed. ‘I missed you,’ I said. I knew she’d noticed my bruised face but she didn’t remark on it. She knew I would talk about it when I was ready: we understood each other very well.
‘I so wanted us to sit down and dine together,’ she said. ‘But you probably had dinner on the plane.’
‘What can I smell: not ossobuco?’ I put my coat on a hook and looked around at our new home.
‘You’ll think me an imbecile, Bernard,’ she said, breaking away from me while still holding one of my hands. ‘It’s such a heavenly kitchen that I simply had to cook something. Can you truly eat again?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Fiona never got excited in the frenzied way her sister did, but I could see that being in London and in this flat had had a powerful effect upon her.
‘We must give a party here,’ she said. ‘A house-warming. Look at the dining-room. George replaced the dining-table that he took away with a far superior one.’ She slid back the door to reveal the tiled dining-room where I’d enjoyed more than one spectacular dinner party. There were two places set, as for a formal dinner.
‘He took the old table because it belonged to his parents,’ I said. ‘It holds memories for him.’
‘I couldn’t resist using Tessa’s lovely china. Shall we eat here?’
‘Wonderful idea.’
‘Open a bottle of wine,’ she said. ‘There’s a mysterious wine cupboard with a temperature control. George left six cases of wine and spirits, and masses of lovely linen and lots and lots of china.’
I followed her into the kitchen. She snatched hot bread rolls from the double oven, dropped them into a basket and gave it to me. ‘Take these, and put one of those tiled stands on the table for the hot casserole.’
‘What timing.’
‘I phoned the airport. I knew you’d landed.’
While I opened a bottle of George’s Barolo Riserva Speciale and poured it, she opened the second oven and using kitchen gloves pulled out an orange-coloured iron pot from which came a rich aroma of veal and lemon and anchovy and all the other exotic ingredients of which Fiona’s special recipe was composed.
She put it on the metal pot-stand on the table and sat down. ‘Do serve it, darling,’ she said, and picked up a glass of wine and sipped some. As I began, she used a concealed switch to dim and douse the lights in the adjoining drawing-room, so that the only illumination came from the tiny spotlights over the table. ‘More romantic,’ she explained, and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. I saw us reflected in the big mirror at the far end of the darkened drawing-room; it was like a few frames from a movie that used to be our life.
‘What a surprise,’ I said, looking at her shining eyes. ‘If I’d known how happy it would make you, I would have bought you a luxury Mayfair apartment years ago.’ I used a large silver spoon to serve the veal knuckle slices. One each. ‘Wow! How long since I tasted this?’ I served the rice and cabbage too.
‘How many years have we wasted, darling?’ she asked rhetorically. She tasted a forkful of veal, but seemed more interested in studying me as I ate, as if her enjoyment was gained entirely from my pleasure, as a mother might feed a favourite son returning home after a long absence.
‘I saw George,’ I said. ‘I had to be in Zurich so I dropped in on him.’ I drank some of the beautiful wine. George always served expensive wine. It was going to be a major let-down when we finished the bottles he’d bequeathed us.
‘Dear George,’ she said. ‘He’s such a dedicated Londoner; I can’t imagine him ever settling down in that funny little house in Switzerland.’
‘He has his consolations,’ I said.
‘In what form?’
‘In the shapely form of a twenty-year-old blonde named Ursula.’ In response to Fiona’s raised eyebrows, I said: ‘He swears she’s just there to stir his muesli.’
‘But you don’t believe him?’
‘I think he’s dipping into her fondue,’ I said solemnly.
‘I hate you,’ she said and offered a playful clout at me, but she laughed while doing it. ‘Seriously,’ she said. ‘Is George all right?’
‘No. He says he’s fine, but anyone can see he’s taking it badly. Very badly.’
‘He’s a passionate man,’ she said. ‘But his religion must be a comfort for him.’
‘He didn’t mention religion.’ I was remembering George’s unrestrained vows of vengeance. ‘Did he write to you?’ I asked her.
‘George? Oh, yes.’
‘About Tessa?’
‘Of course.’
‘There was some wild talk about pursuing some kind of vendetta.’
‘Tessa was so young, Bernard. Not in years perhaps, but so very young in her ways. She made everyone feel protective.’
‘George is swearing to track down her killers.’
‘Poor man,’ she said. I looked at her but failed to see into her mind. Did she think that one of the rounds I fired that night killed her sister? Or were some of her memories pushed away beyond recall?
‘He said you are helping him,’ I prompted.
‘Of course I am,’ she said mildly. ‘I would do anything for him. After all he’s my brother-in-law.’
‘Yes, well, he’s my brother-in-law too,’ I said. ‘But I draw the line at encouraging him to declare war on Moscow single-handed.’
‘He’ll be all right.’
I looked at her hardly able to believe my ears. Here was Fiona, one of the most mature people I’d ever met. I’d seldom seen her anything but professional and composed, reticent and cautious. This was the woman who was constantly being spoken of as a possible Director-General, and now she was condoning some wild unlawful caper by a disturbed man who knew nothing of the hazards he faced. ‘Look, Fiona, have you put him in touch with any of those KGB people we both know?’
‘Do stop fussing, Bernard. Your dinner is getting cold.’
‘It’s delicious,’ I said, dabbing my bread into the gravy.
She was giving all her attention to tearing her bread roll to pieces. Soon there were tiny fragments of bread arranged all around the rim of her plate. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ she said suddenly. ‘Tessa was my sister.’
‘Grieve for her, darling. We all
do. But there is no sense encouraging George in his bizarre ideas.’
‘Give him time,’ said Fiona. ‘I hope you didn’t make him more agitated. It’s better to let him think he can get revenge. He’ll simmer down, I know him better than you do.’
‘I hope you do. He scared the life out of me.’ We continued to eat our dinner in silence after that. I was reassured to see the way she ate it all. ‘That was wonderful, darling,’ I said when I finished, and gave her a kiss. ‘Have you been crying?’
She touched her cheek with a finger and smiled bravely: ‘My eyes? It was the onions.’
‘Ossobuco takes hours to cook. How long ago were you chopping onions?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Bernard. I’m not going to sit here and be interrogated.’
‘I worry about you. Perhaps this flat is not the best place for you to be.’
‘Because of Tessa, you mean?’ She took one of the fragments of bread and reaching over began dabbing it into the gravy in the bottom of the iron pot. ‘Yes, before I arrived here, I worried. I thought the idea that everything here was hers – her furniture, her pictures, everything – would perhaps be more than I could bear. But it wasn’t like that. The first night I stayed awake of course, but then I told myself that I had nothing to fear from Tessa’s ghost. She wouldn’t come back and harm me, would she, Bernard?’ Having dabbed the bread into the gravy unnumbered times, she put it in her mouth and chewed it in a distracted manner.
‘Of course not, darling,’ I said and smiled, not sure how much of all this metaphysics was a sign that Fiona was coming apart.
‘Her ghost is here of course. I see her everywhere. She’s watching me. I heard her laugh even …’ Fiona frowned.
‘There is nothing to fear, darling,’ I said.
‘I told her that,’ said Fiona.
‘But she wouldn’t want George going off on a crusade on her behalf, would she?’
‘Why not? You don’t know Tessa as I do. That’s exactly what she would want. Think about it. Do you believe she’d ever rest if her death went unavenged?’
‘Wait a minute, darling,’ I said. ‘Tessa is dead. She’s dead and we can’t do anything to bring her back to life again. We can’t hear her laughing, or know what she wants in the way of vengeance. She can’t hear us, and we can’t hear her. You’ve got to accept that as a fact.’
‘But she can, Bernard.’
‘Being alone in a place like this can play tricks with the imagination,’ I said. ‘It’s quite old, this building. There are always strange noises. Hot water systems cool, the woodwork creaks and so on. It can be very deceptive. Let Tessa rest in peace.’
Fiona got to her feet. ‘But that’s just it, Bernard. Until she’s avenged she cannot rest. That’s exactly what George said to me and I agree with him.’
I said nothing. She went to the kitchen to get a bowl of fresh fruit.
‘Did it all go well for you?’ Fiona asked when she returned with it.
‘It was a shambles,’ I said. ‘The man we were supposed to collect was dead. They’re still picking up the pieces. And I got a kick in the face.’
She looked at me and nodded. ‘You must see a doctor in the morning.’
‘I saw a doctor: I’m fine.’
‘I knew something must have gone amiss,’ said Fiona. ‘Dicky arrived in the office breathing fire and saying that someone had betrayed the operation. He saw you in Berlin but you slipped away, he said. What happened?’
‘When Dicky has to face the consequences of his own incompetence, he always roars around shouting that he’s been betrayed.’
‘He immediately set up a conference. He went bursting into a meeting of the estimates committee in the big conference room, and told them there was an operational emergency and threw them out. They had to hold their meeting in the D-G’s ante-room. That was the only place available. They were spitting mad.’ She related this story without focusing on Dicky. She spoke about him as if he were someone she hardly knew. And yet I was sure she blamed Dicky for taking Tessa to Berlin. If Tessa had stayed at home with George she’d still be alive. Fiona had told me that more than once.
‘When did you first go into the office?’
Fiona turned and looked at me. ‘Bernard, you must speak to her.’ I didn’t have to ask. She meant Gloria Kent, with whom I’d been living until I discovered that Fiona’s defection to the East was all part of a long-term deception plan which had never been confided to me.
‘You know I’m going to do that, sweetheart,’ I promised once again.
‘I thought she was going to university.’
‘The Department let her down. They promised to continue paying her while she was studying and then changed their minds.’
‘There must be all sorts of other scholarships,’ said Fiona wistfully.
‘I’m sure the present situation … with you being there, is just as difficult for her,’ I said.
‘She’s waiting for you to marry her,’ said Fiona with a brave smile that she had trouble holding on to.
‘Of course she isn’t. She knows I’m married to you.’
‘If Daddy hadn’t collected the children from her …’ She stopped and I filled in the spaces. She was thinking of how she might now be asking Gloria if she could visit her own children. She’d probably spent a long time thinking about it.
‘Don’t be ungrateful, darling,’ I said. ‘What would have happened to the children if Gloria hadn’t looked after them?’
‘Daddy wanted them all along.’
I clenched my lips tight. The truth was that David Timothy Kimber-Hutchinson, Fiona’s father, had been his usual autocratic uncooperative self when I’d asked for his help-with the children. In any case, if Fiona would only admit the truth, she would have to say that any choice between having one’s children under the care of Gloria Kent or exposing them to the long-term influence of her mischief-making old fool of a father was no choice at all. ‘He could have done worse than leaving them with Gloria.’
‘He said they were running wild.’
‘I doubt that. She was trying to work in the office and look after the children too,’ I said calmly and mildly. ‘She did the best she could.’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘I haven’t discussed it with her, you know I haven’t. Once I heard that your father had swooped in and grabbed the children there was nothing to discuss.’
‘Swooped in and grabbed them,’ she repeated. ‘We’re indebted to Gloria for looking after them, I notice, but when Daddy rescues them – and gets them a place in a good private school at short notice, pays their fees and does everything – he is said to have swooped in and grabbed them.’
‘Don’t let’s argue about the children,’ I said. My face was aching again, I suppose it was something to do with the bruising and the blood circulation. ‘We both only want what’s best for them.’
‘So does Daddy.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said. Fiona looked at me. She knew I was bursting to add that Gloria also wanted only what was best for them. I counted to ten and then said: ‘But you must admit, it was you who left the children. It wasn’t me or Gloria who created the problem.’
‘How dare you say I abandoned them? You had them in your care. It was you who gave them to a stranger.’
Both of us were crippled with that English inability to discuss anything truly important. Perhaps I should have been more brutal and told her that now she would have to live with the consequences of her heroic escapade, even if it meant being a stranger to her children. I put my arm round her shoulder but she stiffened. ‘We’ll sort it out,’ I said. ‘When we go and see the children at the weekend we’ll sort it out.’
She sipped some wine and then wiped her lips. ‘I’m sorry, Bernard. I spent all day telling myself that when you arrived we mustn’t get into a squabble about Daddy and the children.’ She stood up and began clearing the table, collecting the plates and cutlery.
‘Everyone means well,’
I said. ‘Everyone is trying to help.’
‘I can’t work alongside her,’ said Fiona. ‘And I won’t.’
‘You won’t have to.’
‘Suppose they assign me to the Hungary desk?’
‘Yes, well Hungary is the place where it’s all going to happen,’ I said. ‘If we can get the Hungarians to open their border, the DDR would have to fortify that entire frontier to prevent their people crossing over. That might prove the last straw for the regime.’
‘It’s a big if,’ said Fiona, who was determined not to be cheered up. ‘And meanwhile Miss Kent is running the Hungary desk.’ She put down the plates and cutlery and stood there as if she’d forgotten what she was about to do.
‘Not …?’
‘No, she hasn’t actually got the desk; she’s just working there. But she speaks Hungarian like a native. What chance do I have working in a department with a chief already established, and Gloria a living encyclopedia on Hungary and everything Hungarian?’
‘Tell Dicky you want to work somewhere else,’ I said. ‘He’s Ops supremo for the time being: he could put you anywhere you want.’
‘I asked for Northern Ireland, but Dicky said that was out of the question.’
‘Why? It’s up for grabs I hear.’
‘You know why. It’s the old boy network. It will go to some boozy someone with drinking companions in the army and “Five” and the RUC. Belfast is reserved for political nominees these days.’
‘Maybe it’s just as well. I wouldn’t like to see you embroiled in all that Irish mess and mayhem. Belfast is too dangerous for a woman.’
‘You sound like Dicky.’
‘Dicky has to get it right once in a while, just by the law of averages.’
‘Yes. And I wish you would try harder to see that. You make trouble for yourself by openly displaying your contempt for him. It undermines his authority.’
‘I’ll talk to Gloria tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
‘She’ll be in the Data Centre. They are working hard burying their mistakes inside one of those very very thick reports for the Minister, in the hope that he’ll not have time to winkle out the bits they need to conceal.’