The Night of Wenceslas (24 page)

‘Right. Leave it now then. Come down here. I want to talk to you.’

I didn’t answer him. I turned blindly to thump the door, the knockers, the bell, lost now, no hope at all now, the end close in sight, in such a panic I could scarcely see or breathe. A commotion began in the street. A yell. The milkman. Another yell, another voice, shouting. Steps running. The S. N. B. man watching me turned away, exchanged a few sharp words and called, ‘Hi! You! Come here. Come here at once!’ He had taken something out of his pocket. A pistol. There was no cover on the doorstep; nothing at all big the stone pediment, the big immovable doors.

I was so completely terrorized that all processes of thought seemed at that moment to stop. I remember that I bent and took a bottle of milk out of the basket. I don’t know what I intended to do with this bottle – throw it at him, perhaps, defend myself
in some way. I had not stopped pounding on the door, but I had given up in my heart. Now, as the other man turned in to the courtyard, there was a shuffling within the house, the clank of bolts.

I don’t know, looking back, if the S.N.B. men would have dared to shoot me on the steps of the Embassy. Certainly I would not have gone with them otherwise. Perhaps, as they walked slowly up the courtyard in the misty morning, the two buttoned-up men were aware of this, were trying, in their chilled and worried state, to see some way out of the dilemma. In fact, the agony of decision never came.

While they were still several yards from the steps, one of the doors opened. I fell into the shadowy darkness, bumping into and knocking over the aged, black-clad crone who had opened it; not stopping, indeed, till one foot encountered a bucket of warm water and the other a bar of soap and my ill-used backside came to rest, jarred, numb but indubitably secure, twenty-five feet inside British territory. The bottle of milk, quite undamaged, was still in my hand.

‘H
ULLO
. Feeling a bit more rested now?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

‘You’re looking rather more human. I’d like another session with you.’

‘Of course. Sit down.’

He had already sat down. He was a tall, pale man called
Roddinghead with a bulging, child-like forehead and small reptilian eyes. He had taken no pains to hide the fact that I had been causing him much trouble. I felt able to bear this. I was in bed in a small room in the Embassy. I had had two lots of sedative and two lots of sleep. I was feeling slightly mad with joy and relief.

Roddinghead said curtly, ‘It’s that bit of paper. I’ve just had another cable from London telling me to get my finger out. I’ll have to know a lot more about it.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve told you all I know.’

‘It isn’t enough. Try closing your eyes again.’

I closed my eyes.

‘Now then, how big is it?’

‘About the size of a packet of twenty cigarettes. Maybe a bit narrower.’

‘Very thin rice paper, you said.’

‘Yes.’

‘And curling at the edges.’

‘That’s right.’

‘I want you to tell me. See it clearly. What’s on the top?’

‘The thing about Aldermaston. Banshee and Third Stage, I think.’

‘Right. Now the bottom.’

‘I’m sorry. I really didn’t look at it.’

‘Well, have a look at it now.’

I gritted my teeth. It was the fourth time we had examined this lunatic cigarette-packet sized bit of paper. I suppose it was part of some half-forgotten course. I could hear Roddinghead irritably tapping his pencil on his notebook.

‘I’m afraid I can’t remember.’

‘Try running your eye over it quickly. Anything stand out?’

‘This isn’t going to work, you know. I only saw the thing for a couple of seconds.’

He made a savage note in his book. ‘All right. Now this old nanny, Hana Simkova. You say you’re absolutely certain you never mentioned her to the girl?’

‘I’m positive I didn’t.’

‘Couldn’t have dropped a reference when you were under the weather, say?’

‘No. It never cropped up at all.’

‘So you reckon she must have got it from this fellow Cunliffe?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who got it from whoever was watching you?’

‘Well, he must have. I never told him myself.’

‘Right. Who else knew this nanny?’

‘That’s very hard to say. I’ve been thinking about it. There’s her brother, of course – the Mr Nimek I told you about.’

‘Yes, yes. They’ve taken him in for a going-over. … I’m glad you’re amused by all this,’ he said malevolently. ‘I can assure you nobody else is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying hard to control my delight at this marvellous thing that was happening to the Little Swine. ‘I was trying to think who else could know of Baba. Both my mother and Mr Gabriel have quite a large circle of émigré friends in England with whom they correspond frequently. Quite a lot of people could have known about her.’

‘I’d like a list of the names of these friends if you can remember them.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘The point being, of course, that we want to find out who was watching you.’

‘I’d like to find that out myself.’

He gave me another malevolent look with his reptilian eyes. ‘Not that anyone could care terribly about you. The idea is to pick up all the network.’

‘Yes. Right. I’ll try and think what names I’ve heard mentioned.’

‘You say your mother gave you a letter to this Hana Simkova. She evidently didn’t know she was dead.’

‘Evidently not.’

‘How do you account for the fact that Mr Gabriel knew and she didn’t?’

‘He is very devoted to her. He keeps unpleasant news from her.’

‘I wish someone would do the same for me. Now then, this man Pavelka…’ That was the fourth interrogation. There were many more.

I stayed at the British Embassy in Prague for ten weeks. I occupied a small room on the third floor. I was not the most welcome of guests. Apart from Roddinghead, whose exact function I never discovered, and two younger and rather more civil colleagues, I had no contact with the staff. Nobody quite knew what to do with me; the policy appeared to be to pretend that I didn’t exist.

I was confined to my room. I received no letters and could write none. I listened to the wireless for hours on end. I read numerous books. In the evening I was escorted down the back stairs by Roddinghead or one of his colleagues to walk about in a small walled yard.

The summer passed. The days shortened. I had no complaints. It was better than running up and down alleys. And I had plenty of time to think. I thought about Maminka, and hoped that Imre was devising suitable explanations for my absence. The old booby himself, I thought, must be distracted half out of his mind at not hearing from me. I thought of Maura, and wondered sickly what she must be making of my silence.

I thought of the Little Swine, and to what extent he had been involved in this mad and now half-forgotten nightmare of the third stage of the Banshee. And of Mrs Nolan, and how long she would wait before clearing out my things and installing someone else in my room.

But mainly, I thought of my future, such as it was. That it would not be spent with Pavelka was one thing at least that I had gathered from Roddinghead. Pavelka had not paid for my trips. He hadn’t any money. He lived in a single room in Bays-water and, like myself, had been a dupe.

On the question of the Little Swine, Roddinghead was curiously evasive. Mr Nimek was being ‘looked into’. A ‘bit of
research’ was going on. One way or the other it looked as if I was finished there, anyway.

So I thought of Bela and Canada. But after a few weeks I didn’t even think of this. To live in a single room, waited on, one’s immediate needs satisfied, neither prisoner nor free man is a curiously anaesthetizing experience. I slept, woke, ate, listened, read, slept again. Over and over again, day after day. A dream-like time. Dream-like still in the memory.

After the third or fourth week, the interrogation tailed off. I saw Roddinghead less frequently. His manner towards me had ripened slightly. I thought they were no longer bothering him from London. The reptilian eyes ceased to regard me with loathing. They were wry, sardonic, affable even.

He was absent for a week or so towards the end of the summer, and reappeared one day bronzed, the bulging forehead peeling.

He said, ‘Hello. How’s the prisoner of Zenda?’

‘Fine, thanks. Been away?’

‘Yes. To the Tatras. Managed to snatch a few days. Things are a bit slack now.’

‘They’re a bit slack for me, too. Heard anything about me going yet?’

‘No. Still a few ends to be tied up. Getting fed up with us, are you?’

‘I’d like to go home.’

‘So would I, cock.’ He ambled about the room, picking up a book, a magazine.

‘What’s happening exactly?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Do you think they’ve forgotten about me?’

‘I doubt it’

‘Have they managed to pick up all the members of the – of the espionage network?’ Even at this distance it seemed a ludicrous thing to be discussing.

‘I believe so. All they know about, anyway. I shan’t be requiring your further thoughts on the subject.’

‘Was there anybody I didn’t know about?’

‘As to that,’ he said, reptilian eyes smiling, ‘we don’t know quite how much you know, do we?’

‘Do you mean they’re keeping me here because they’re still not sure of me?’

‘Might be. Might not. I don’t know. I don’t care very much, either. You got yourself into this. Maybe you won’t be in such a hurry next time. There’s no future in it, cock, no future at all,’ he said moving to the door.

I said quickly, ‘Just a minute.’ I’d hoped he was in the mood for a chat. He dropped things from time to time. ‘What about Cunliffe? Is he in the bag?’

‘So I believe.’

‘And the person who was watching me?’

‘No information. They don’t keep sending me postcards, you know.’

‘How about Nimek?’

‘Nimek?’

‘The one I told you about who ran the little glass firm I used to work for. The brother of my old nanny.’

‘Oh, him. He’s a funny fellow, Nimek. He still writes to his sister, you know.’

‘Still writes to Baba? But she’s dead.’

‘Yes. So you said. Maybe nobody told him. Come to that,’ he said, opening the door, ‘maybe nobody told her, either. She was looking remarkably lifelike last week. We sent somebody round to see her.’

I stared at the door as it closed behind him, thunderstruck.

The sting-in-the-tail rapidly became his speciality after that. Perhaps the job bored him. Maybe I helped to break the tedium. I can’t remember all the discussions. I remember very clearly one other. I had been wondering in a bemused sort of way why I had been involved in the operation at all. I said to Roddinghead, ‘It was surely a bit of a Heath-Robinsonish way of passing valuable secrets.’

‘Yes, wasn’t it?’

‘Couldn’t they have put it through the diplomatic bag?’

‘I don’t know, old cock. Maybe it had to be a very independent operation. There’s still quite a bit of it going on.’

‘Were they a bunch of amateurs?’

‘That isn’t my information.’

‘You mean Cunliffe was a regular spy?’

‘That’s what I mean. It wasn’t his only name, you won’t be surprised to hear.’

‘Would I have heard of him by any other name?’

‘Oh, yes. You gave me one of them. It was on the list of émigrés.’

‘Which one was it?’

‘Can’t remember off-hand. But he had quite a nice lot of addresses, too, one in Ireland. He’d lived there apparendy for a long time once – had a wife and daughter with him there.’

‘Whereabouts in Ireland?’

‘I’ve forgotten. He separated from his wife some years ago, and the daughter lives in London.’

‘Was she in it – in this plot, too, the daughter?’

‘Oh, yes. Quite a family affair.’

‘I see.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, smiling and reptilian at the door. ‘We’ve nobbled her, too. You’ll really have to take up another profession. You don’t get much of a run these days.’

I didn’t listen to the wireless that afternoon. I didn’t read, either. I sat looking out at the trees and the grey sky. I felt sad and sick. The last piece of the jig-saw had fallen into place. I saw exactly how it must have happened.

The leaves fell in the Embassy gardens. The wind rose. A light but incessant drizzle set in. I had to put the light on several mornings when I got up. One day after breakfast there was a knock at the door and Roddinghead came in. His two colleagues were with him. He had a scroll of paper in his hand.

He said coldly, ‘Mr Whistler, I am directed to read you the
following. ‘He unrolled the paper and read it out, at speed. It was the Official Secrets Act, 1911. When he had finished he handed me the paper.’ Please read it over for yourself.’

‘What is it? What’s happening?’

‘Go ahead and read it.’

I read over the Act in a state of some nervousness. The three of them watched me. I handed it back to Roddinghead.

‘Have you understood what you’ve read?’

‘I think so.’

‘Stamp, please,’ Roddinghead said. One of them gave him a rubber stamp and an inked pad. He impressed it on the paper and produced a fountain pen. ‘Sign it.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m telling you to. Go ahead.’

I signed where he pointed. ‘Look, what the hell’s happening? What’s going on here?’

Roddinghead briskly rolled up the paper, and, his official business evidendy then over, relaxed. ‘You’re going home, cock,’ he said amiably.

‘Home! When?’

‘Today. In about a couple of hours, I should think.’

‘Today? But I – why didn’t you let me know?’

‘Sorry. Only got the wire a few minutes ago.’

I was so stunned I could merely gape at him.

‘They’re sending a plane in from Germany for you. Cunliffe and his daughter are flying off from the other side.’

It seemed that an exchange had been arranged; that Cunliffe’s plane would fly east as mine flew west, both aircraft leaving together.

‘Sorry I couldn’t give you a little more warning that it was coming off. Still, you didn’t bring much luggage, did you? Just the single bottle of milk, as I recall.’

‘You mean I’ll be free?’

‘Within limits. The limits being as defined in the paper you’ve just signed. You’re bloody lucky. You could have got a few years for what you’ve been up to. Evidently nothing is to be said about it. By you or anyone else. No heroic little dining-out
stories. No sensational adventures in the newspapers. And I’m bound to point out that the Act means exactly what it says on that point. You so much as whisper a word to anyone, with or without
mens rea
– i.e. guilty intent – and you’ll find yourself inside. O.K.?’

I said O.K.

I left before lunch. An Embassy car drove me to the airport, Roddinghead sitting beside me in the back. We waited in the car until the plane landed, and then drove out to where it stood on the apron. There were several buttoned-up characters standing around as I walked up the aircraft steps with Roddinghead. He looked straight ahead. He had said practically nothing to me in the car.

In the aircraft he held out his hand. ‘Well, cheerio, then, cock.’

‘Cheerio.’

‘I hope we made your stay a pleasant one.’

I felt too bloodless for wisecracks. I said, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much for everything.’

‘Don’t come back.’

He went.

The plane took off almost immediately. Four hours later I was in London.

When you have imagined a homecoming for so long and in circumstances so diverse and apparently hopeless, the real thing tends to be something of an anti-climax. I got off the Tube at Gloucester Road and walked slowly to Fitzwalter Square in a mood of profound melancholy. It was six o’clock, a chill and darkening afternoon. The wind scurried leaves along the pavements. I felt like one of them myself, blown by any wind that came along.

From the airport a car had taken me to an office in Queen Anne’s Gate. A man whose name I never learned had inquired if I had understood the provisions of the Official Secrets Act I said I had. I had signed an undertaking to repay all moneys that
had been laid out on my account These appeared to have been for ten weeks ‘rent at Mrs Nolan’s, and seven weeks’ lock-up at Ratface’s. As the man said, this had been necessary to forestall inquiries. Everything had been taken care of in my absence; all interested parties had been informed that I was abroad on important business in which the government had a commercial interest, and that I had been asked not to correspond. He had then lent me a pound and wished me a very good afternoon.