‘I hope you’re right, Dicky,’ I said. ‘Because some people who know what’s what tell me he’s the sort of nasty little bastard who will bite juicy mouthfuls out of anyone who approaches him. I think he will lead us up the garden as far as he can, and then he’ll blow the whistle.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Dicky.
‘He’ll take our money and laugh in our face. And anyone who is unfortunate enough to be on the other side of the Wall when it happens will be shipped back in a box.’
‘It won’t be like that, Bernard.’
‘Not for you it won’t,’ I said. ‘You won’t be there.’ I saw Fiona’s face tighten. She hated rows, and I suppose she felt she was unfairly positioned in the middle of this one.
I thought Dicky was going to face me with a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum. But Dicky doesn’t precipitate showdowns that he might lose. Even ones he might only lose on points. ‘Think it over, Bernard,’ he said in a mild and friendly way. Then, as if the thought had suddenly come to him out of the blue, he added: ‘I think you and Werner Volkmann working together would make a perfect team for this one.’
‘How would that work, exactly?’ I asked.
‘You’d need a new network.’ Dicky was obviously using off-cuts and out-takes from his lecture. ‘But reliable people; people you and Volkmann know from way back.’
Dicky looked at me quizzically. What did he think I was going to do: leap up on to the table, stand to attention and whistle Rule Britannia? The idea of turning over my old contacts to Dicky was too horrifying to think about. I stared back at him without letting any reaction show on my face.
Dicky said: ‘And Volkmann might be grateful for a chance to work for us again. He would be given a completely free hand.’
‘Really, Dicky?’ I said.
‘In so far as anyone has a free hand,’ Dicky corrected himself. ‘And he’d be rehabilitated of course. Quite frankly he’s not in a position to refuse.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said Dicky, ‘good.’
He knew I would agree. Quite frankly I wasn’t in a position to refuse either.
10
Those grey and stormy days were, like my life, punctuated by what the weather men call ‘bright intervals’. We were driving down to visit our children, and I didn’t care that the rain was beating down from an angry sky.
‘I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you driving a car,’ I said.
Fiona glanced at me suspiciously; she was always apt to suspect I was needling her when I said or did anything she wasn’t ready for. ‘Driving a car? Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. It was something to do with the calm way she did it. She drove fast but kept everything under control and was never flustered or uncertain. ‘You drive like you do everything,’ I added, but then became stuck for words. She drove as if she was guiding the Berlin Philharmonic through pianissimo passages of Ravel. I wished I could drive with that sort of restraint: my style was more like von Karajan winding them up for the end of the 1812 Overture.
‘I prefer automatics now,’ she confessed. ‘That’s a sign of getting old, I suppose. I used to say I’d never buy one.’ She switched the wipers to the slower speed.
‘You haven’t bought an automatic,’ I pointed out to her. ‘You’ve borrowed it from your father.’ It was an almost new Jaguar V-12 in metallic red with cream-coloured leather. Some might have thought it flashy, but my father-in-law considered it an example of his unassuming good taste. Now we were on our way to see him: and our two children who were in his care.
‘Yes, but I’ve a good mind to give it back to him,’ she said. ‘I thought having a resident’s parking permit would mean I’d find a place to park near home. Last night I had terrible trouble finding a space, and it gets worse the nearer to Park Lane you go. I wonder how George managed. I wonder how all those other people in the block manage.’
‘Oh, the problems of the rich! They have chauffeurs, darling. Or take cabs.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ A few years back her father had given her a red Porsche for her thirty-fifth birthday, but he was so enraged when he heard that his daughter had defected that he seized the car and sold it. Now Fiona was a heroine and David Kimber-Hutchinson manifested his pride with an unhesitating generosity that was characteristic of him: he’d given her his wife’s Jaguar.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind me driving?’ she asked. I watched a bearded youth in a bread delivery van swerve across three lanes to pursue a mini-bus, drenching us with a spray of dirty rainwater as he went.
‘No. You drive. I hate driving,’ I said. It wasn’t entirely true, but she was an obsessive driver and she hadn’t had a chance to drive decent cars during her time in the DDR. And after that, at the house in California, Bret had become nervous whenever anyone decided to break out of prison for a few hours. Anyway this was Fiona’s mother’s car, and I didn’t relish the prospect of explaining away any scratches the car might suffer while in my care. I was happy to be a passenger with nothing to do but look around. I toyed with a leather box that was between our seats. It contained audio cassettes. ‘Are these yours?’ I asked.
‘Mummy’s.’
‘Wagner?’ It seemed unlikely. Fiona’s mother was a pinched pale-faced woman who seemed to have no role other than providing an awed audience for her husband’s loud-mouthed and shallow-minded lifestyle. ‘Boulez’s complete Das Rheingold with Peter Hofmann’s Siegmund?’
‘You like to put everyone into little boxes, don’t you? Then we have to comply with your classification.’
‘Your mother and Wagner? They’ve been keeping it very dark.’
‘She only plays it in the car, or on her Sony Walkman with earphones. Daddy can’t stand Wagner.’
There must have been two dozen Wagner cassettes in the box, and there was no mistaking the signs that they were well used. ‘I had your mother down for something more like this,’ I said, holding up the one interloper and reading the label aloud: ‘The Best of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Fiona. ‘Daddy’s been looking everywhere for that. In fact I think he’s ordered another one from Harrods.’
I put it back and closed the box. ‘I met an old man – a pastor – over there in Magdeburg. He talked of you as if you were a saint. He said you were a great woman.’
‘And I’m sure you put him right, darling.’
‘Don’t be that way, Fi. No one can be more proud of you, and what you did, than I am.’
‘There’s still so much to do over there.’ We had never talked at length about her work in the East; she always managed to evade questions or make everything into a joke.
‘He knew you. Wrinkly-faced old man with steel-rimmed granny glasses and one of those strong South Saxon accents that make even a sermon sound like a funny story.’
‘I met so many pastors.’ I glanced at her and she looked back at me without expression. Her double life in the East had provided an enigmatic overlay to the cool English serenity.
‘He talked about you in a hushed voice. You taught them how to fight, he said. His flock regularly say prayers for you.’
Fiona shivered. ‘I know.’ Evidently she would have preferred not to know.
‘Fight the government? Outwit the Stasi? Is that what you were preaching to those poor bastards over there?’
‘Mobilizing the churches was the major part of the project.’
‘It won’t work, Fi. They’ll be pulverized.’
‘Do you think I don’t worry about what I did? And about those people?’
‘You won’t bring the Wall down using only the trumpets of the Church. Joshua took an army with him.’
‘You underestimate the Church. Everyone is underestimating it. Bret was the one who first saw the possibilities – that the Church was the most powerful force for change.’
‘Bret? The Church?’
‘They were Lutherans. Bret pointed out
that of the twenty million people living in the DDR, more than ninety per cent of them were still members of the Church.’
‘Even so …’
‘I know what you’re going to say. I heard it from everyone when we were trying to get permission for me to do my defection trick. Everyone here thought the DDR is the same agnostic chaos of materialism that we have in the West. It is not. You know that, Bernard.’
‘Chaoten,’ I said. The radicals, the squatters, drug addicts, serial killers, bomb-wielding terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof persuasion – these were the aspects of Western life that even the most repressed Ossis feared.
‘Churchgoers in the East are a powerful, cohesive force, armed with their deeply held faith.’
‘Deeply held faiths leap out of the window when the Stasi knock on the door.’
‘No, Bernard, no. You have your faith just as they have theirs. You’ve faced nameless horrors bolstered only by your faith in the Tightness of your cause. Give the Germans the benefit of the doubt. To each of those members of the Church, a promise has been made at baptism that they should be brought up in the Christian faith. And for a German, a promise is a solemn commitment.’
‘I don’t see it, Fi. I wish I could believe that the Churchmen could orchestrate a vast ground-swell of popular revolution that would sweep through the land and knock the Wall over. Is that what you truly hope?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Drip by drip, perhaps. A gradual process of liberalization. But that’s not going to knock the Wall down before the end of the century. If ever.’
‘We’ll see,’ she said.
‘There’s no denying that you’ve lit the fuse, Fi. But this new world of freedom is not waiting just round the corner. Anyone who thinks it is will be sticking their necks out.’
‘They won’t be risking anything for themselves that I didn’t risk on their behalf.’
‘Take it easy, Fi. I know Jesus Christ was a woman, but don’t pull rank.’
She gave me a vicious jab in the ribs with her elbow. I gave her a kiss on the cheek in response. She said: ‘Don’t work against me, Bernard. That’s all I ask.’
‘I would be the only one,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed, darling. They roll out the red carpet for you. They hang on your every word. Dicky is courting you. Your secretary brings you fresh-cut flowers. The juniors give themselves hernias carting furniture to give you a lovely office. The Department is yours for the taking.’
‘I wish it were true. But you don’t see the opposition to my ideas that comes from those on high.’
‘This business with Dicky – trying to tap into the Stasi mainframe computer and having Werner set up a network to collect the updates. Is that something you are really and truly pressing for?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘There’s something damned odd going on,’ I said. ‘Dicky went and did his stand-up comic routine in the Cabinet Office without anyone else there.’
‘He’s being groomed for stardom. Didn’t you know that?’
‘No one from the Department was there, except Dicky and the FO Adviser, who is not really one of us. That’s unprecedented. Last year when the D-G was sick, and the Deputy was tied up with his law practice, the Cabinet Office refused to set up a meeting with the Controller Europe in the chair.’
‘Perhaps they are becoming more easygoing.’
‘Ha-bloody-ha.’
‘What then?’
‘Perhaps the D-G and DD-G are determined to keep at arm’s length from it.’
‘From what?’
‘God knows.’
‘Don’t be so cryptic.’
‘I really don’t know,’ I insisted. ‘But judging by the lousy rotten things we know they are prepared to countenance, it must be something damned murky.’
‘And Dicky is a part of this Machiavellian contrivance?’ It was her way of scoffing at my cynicism, but I answered seriously just the same.
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘Because if he’s not a party to it, he must be putting his head on the block.’
‘Is this your devious way of telling me to stay clear of it?’
‘I wouldn’t presume.’
‘Well, thanks anyway, darling. But if the Stasi mainframe computer can shed some light upon Tessa’s end, I shall be standing up and giving three cheers for Dicky.’
Fiona’s parents lived in an old house set in woodlands near Leith Hill in Surrey. The rain gods were packing up their act as we arrived, and a repentant sun scattered gold coins over my father-in-law’s house and surrounding trees. Fiona got out of the car, stamped her feet and hurried inside, blowing on her hands. But I stood there for a moment, tasting the clean country air and looking at the landscape, no less haunting for being almost colourless. Winters were so much more severe here than in London. The ornamental fish pond was covered in ice, and in the shadows where the sun never reached, the grass and plants were spiky with frost. ‘Come along, Bernard. You’ll freeze to death if you stand there gawking at the pond.’
‘Can the fish still be alive under that ice?’
‘Daddy says the ice keeps them warmer.’
My father-in-law sometimes called it ‘the farm’ on account perhaps of the outbuildings: the stables, the kennels, the gardener’s cottage and the lovely old box-framed barn that he had converted into an artist’s studio. He’d torn down its roof to install a large overhead window, complete with electrically operated sun-blind. The walls, lined with polished wood, had been adorned with a few of his best canvases, and there were carpets on the floor except around the easel where they might have suffered drips of paint. Here he painted the pictures that were to be seen hung in unduly prominent positions in the houses of men who did business with him.
He was at the easel when the housemaid showed us in. He wasn’t painting, he was inspecting a plain white canvas, flicking dust and lint from it and checking that its stretcher was precisely at right-angles. ‘Darling!’ he called in the theatrical baritone voice he could summon at will. ‘And Bernard. How splendid.’ He was dressed in a white cashmere turtleneck with a colourful neckerchief tied loosely at his throat. Dark corduroy trousers and monogrammed velvet slippers completed the effect. He seated us, and sat down on the sofa while Fiona itemized and admired the improvements he’d made to his studio. ‘You’ve worked wonders, Daddy.’
He hadn’t put any lights on and it was gloomy, a Rembrandt chiaroscuro from which the burghers had fled. The barn had gradually become David’s ‘den’, complete with sofa and easy chairs and a cupboard always well stocked with wine and spirits. The ruthless modifications he’d wrought upon this old building, like the meticulous attention to detail and the high quality of the workmanship, were a tribute to David’s energy and determination, and a key to his character. So was the way in which he now allowed family and business colleagues into his sanctum with the tacit implication that it was a privilege that brought with it unspoken obligations.
‘It’s a place I come when I have to think,’ said David.
‘Do you spend much time here?’ I asked.
Fiona glared at me but it went right over David’s head. He was concentrating upon pouring the drinks.
‘No,’ said David. ‘Not much time for painting nowadays. Too busy trying to put a few pennies together.’ He handed out the glasses: ginger ale for Fiona and mineral water for me. ‘I wish you’d have a real drink.’
‘He mustn’t have a real drink,’ said Fiona. ‘He’s on the wagon; trying to lose five pounds before he goes away.’
He stood back to look at me. ‘You don’t need to diet, Bernard. I’ve never seen you looking fitter. Have you taken up boxing? I used to be a rather useful fighter myself in my young days. How does he do it, Fiona? Tell me his secret.’
‘Anger,’ joked Fiona, but said it so promptly that an element of sincerity was evident in this judgement.
‘Anger? What kind of anger?’
br /> ‘Fierce and unrestrained anger at the world around him.’ She laughed to make it a joke.
‘Anger? If that was the secret I would be as thin as a rake,’ said David grimly. ‘This damned government have got no idea of what they are doing; they couldn’t run a fish and chip shop. I’m serious when I say that: they couldn’t run a fish and chip shop.’
‘Was that the children arriving?’ said Fiona, looking towards the door.
‘Didn’t the maid tell you? They went to the cinema with your mother.’
I felt like asking him why their outing to the cinema had to coincide with our visit and the first time we’d seen them in months, but I held my tongue. ‘Here’s health,’ I said, holding up my glass.
He held up his gin and tonic, drank some and nodded before saying: ‘I’m a socialist. You know that, Bernard. I always have been. It’s my nature. That’s why I took your children in. Can’t bear to see anyone in trouble.’
In an attempt to head off another diatribe, Fiona said: ‘And you’re both well; that’s wonderful.’
‘I could go to Switzerland,’ said David, still occupied with his own thoughts. ‘And if the government tighten the screws any more, I will go.’
‘Would Mummy like living in Switzerland?’
‘Business has to come first, Fiona. You know that and so does she. Where do you think your trust fund comes from? You’ve noticed that I’ve topped it up, I suppose?’
‘I phoned you,’ she replied.
‘It’s always nice to get a little note. Better than all the talk in the world: a little thank-you in writing.’
‘Yes, I should have written.’ Fiona was totally dominated when she was in his presence; it was hard to believe that this was the same woman who had the Department in thrall.
‘George is in Switzerland,’ said David. ‘Now there’s a husband for you.’ He said it to me as if George’s journey to Switzerland was something I could learn from. ‘He’s determined to get to the bottom of Tessa’s accident. Says he’ll spend every last penny, if that’s what it needs to do it. Count me in, I told him.’