Old Flames (25 page)

To enter his thoughts seemed like word magic—as though he could summon her up simply by thinking of her, she opened the door softly and came in. The creature he summoned was dressed
bizarrely. All the clothes were his, rescued from the box he put aside for gardening and pigging. His old grey cotton trousers, rolled up many times at the ankle, and a Tattersall shirt, shot at
the collar and cuffs. She was bored. He was getting used to that. She was so easily bored. She was in all probability drawn by the music, the rippling, sentimental piano of Tatum, the oh-so-mellow
saxophone of Ben Webster, the Chekhovian thud of the string bass. He had no sense of intrusion. Indeed, he wished she would show more initiative and pick up a book and put on a record without
waiting for him to make the decision. He had weaned her off Huck Finn, convinced her that there were other writers besides Mark Twain. But he was rapidly coming to conclude that he could not please
her—in any sense of the word.

‘Y’ OK, baby?’

She sat on the edge of the chair opposite, not relaxing into it. More like his daughter than his wife. Irritable, irritating and curious.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Y’ don’t mind me just … sittin’ here?’

‘Not at all. You’re my wife.’

‘Buys a lot of favours, huh?’

He did not answer.

‘Sorry. That was bitchy. I been hangin’ out with your sisters too much.’

The rain shook the french windows to fill up the silence. It let him put off what he knew he must say
and would rather not, such display being alien to his nature.

‘That’s OK. I didn’t mean I owned you. I meant what’s mine is yours. As corny as that.’

She smiled and unsmiled, all in a split second.

There was no way out. He’d better say it. Knew he had to say it. He put down the book. His own inadequacies rushing in to meet him black as storm clouds.

‘I meant, I loved you.’

‘That so?’

A whisper, not half-hearted, not uncertain, no sense of doubt. But it seemed to him that it did not register with her; so much did not, after all, and this was her only response, and it seemed
the words she used did not mean what they said.

The telephone rang. It was far nearer her than him. She was looking intently at him, smiling shyly, stuck for words. She let it ring, until Troy said: ‘Pick it up. It’s probably for
Rod. Usually is.’

‘Hello,’ she said quietly, and he saw the blood drain from her face, saw her eyes lock onto his with an expression little short of terror.

‘Yeah, yeah [pause]. Yeah, he’s here. Sure.’

Then she put her hand across the mouthpiece and screamed her whisper at Troy.

‘Aaaaaagh!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Aaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhh!!! It’s Ike!’

‘Ike who?’

‘Eisenhower, dummy!!! The goddam President! Jesus Christ. Take the damn thing off me!’

Troy ran around the desk.

‘What does he want?’

‘He just called to ask if I’m happy. Jesus Christ, Troy! What do you think he wants? He wants Rod!’

Troy snatched the phone from her. She hopped around the room screaming quietly, dancing from one foot to the other as though walking on hot coals.

He ran upstairs. Rod took it all very calmly. Yawned, picked up the phone and said, ‘Ike,’ as though he had seen him only yesterday.

Afterwards, he sat in the study and watched Tosca rant and rave, still tearing around the room on fire.

‘Jesus, baby. Suppose he recognised my voice?’

‘It was twelve years ago.’

‘Dammit, Troy. I saw the old guy every day for weeks, months even! I mean, he used to flirt with me!’

‘He didn’t have a clue. You’re dead, remember?’

She returned to her place, perched on the edge of the chair, toes drumming nervously on the floor.

‘You’re right. I’m dead. I find it hard to remember sometimes. I mean, here am I trying to work out who the hell I am, eyeless in Gaza, clueless in Hertfordshire, lost in the
desert of the English home counties, marooned between the Co-op and Dorothy Perkins, caught between the devil and the woman in the deep-blue dress who just popped in from the Women’s
Institute, adrift on a sea of good manners and guilt about masturbation, wondering whether property is really theft or does my fawn handbag really not go with my twin-set, driven crazy by not
knowing which’ll desTroy us first, the H-bomb or the wrong fork at the dinner table, forgetting all the time that I’m dead. Well—fucky wucky woo!!!’

For several minutes all he could hear was rain and the gathering rumble of thunder.

He leaned back, the chair on two legs, and flipped the switch to start the record again. Tatum glided into ‘Gone With the Wind’—the prewar song from which Margaret Mitchell had
taken her book title, which in turn had become a film, which in turn had became another, utterly unrelated tune—and competed with the rain on the window pane. There was scarcely a mood to
recapture, but he loved and hated the fragility of silence under rain. Almost erotic. The temptation to shatter it was too strong. He’d tried once and failed dismally.

He reached for his book. Then she leapt from her chair, knocked the book from his hand, threw her arms around his neck and wept onto his chest.

The record spun on its final groove. One of Mr Sod’s favourite laws was that the autochanger never cut out when you wanted it to. She prised her head off his chest, sniffed noisily,
looked at him nose to nose.

‘Y’ remember what Twain said?’

He shook his head.

‘Rumours of my demise are greatly something or other.’

‘Exaggerated?’

‘That’s the word.’

Then she kissed him, drew up her legs, wedged her stockinged feet between his thighs and buried herself in his neck. She smelt of perfume, nothing he could name, of soap flakes, and of
Tosca.

Rod took the bellows to the last of the fire. A man of no real practical skills, he was devoted to the two or three things he did well. He was excellent at pancakes, though
rarely called on to prove it since his children hit adolescence, mixed a mean Martini, and would always undertake the lighting of fires with repeated cries of, ‘Don’t touch it,
don’t touch it!’ And on cold summer evenings such as this could be found bent over the embers, arse uppards, blowing a spark into flame. The fire once lit, he would be reluctant to
waste so much as a therm of heat and light, and was often to be found crouched over a fire with parliamentary papers, or the novels he rationed to himself, past midnight, past sociability, yawning
and nodding off. In the days when he had been a minister, Troy had saved him from a scorching when a Government white paper slipped from his lap into the grate and set fire to his trousers.

Dinner had dissolved, the family dispersed to their rooms. Troy walked the length of the table snuffing out the candles with his fingers. He had first taken the precaution of closing the door.
He sat by the fire, hoping for a fireside chat—a phrase not much heard since the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Rod achieved ignition, sighed and sat back in the chair opposite.

‘Staying up, are you?’ he said.

Which was by way of a hint. It meant ‘sod off’ in Rodspeak, but Troy was not to be sodded.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me what’s going on?’

‘Meaning?’

‘The President of the United States is usually to be found on the golf course on a Saturday morning, not making clandestine calls to minor British politicians on their home
numbers.’

‘Minor! Clandestine!’

‘I didn’t even know you knew him.’

‘I was in and out of Overlord HQ dozens of times in the run-up to D-Day. I can’t say I was on first-name terms with a five-star general, but I knew him. I saw him again a couple of
times in ’54, and I led the Labour group to Washington this June while you were off gallivanting with your newfound wife.’

‘And you just happened to give him this number?’

Rod put aside the sheaf of papers he had sat clutching. It indicated that Troy had at last won his attention.

‘Off the record. Right?’

‘I’m not a Fleet Street hack, Rod.’

‘It’s part of the job, his and mine, to meet the Opposition leaders, you’ll agree. Nothing odd about that, so don’t pretend. The fact that we knew one another in the war
helps. After all, he didn’t know Gaitskell. He told me in June that he was worried about Egypt—the Baghdad pact and all that—said it would be useful from time to time to know what
Her Majesty’s Opposition felt without the formalities and frills. And no, I didn’t give him this number. He had it already. Asked if I minded him calling me here, but said he knew for a
fact that the line wasn’t bugged. Which is more than can be said for my office. He said we could talk without anyone else knowing—not his people, and not mine. What prompted him to ring
today was that television address to the nation Eden gave the other night. Ike, it seems, had the London embassy stick the phone next to the set so it could be relayed direct to him in the White
House. The upshot is that he thinks Eden is not getting the message. He says Dulles is being as clear as can be that the Americans will not back us over Egypt—“we will not shoot our way
through the canal” and all that guff—bit subtle for Eden, really—and we cannot expect them to. But he thinks Eden is just blind and deaf on the matter.’

‘So what’s new? Ike must have known Eden during the war. I doubt his character has improved.’

‘Quite. That is part of the problem. I doubt whether Ike has ever had a deal of confidence in him. However, there is something new.’

Rod paused, seemed almost to sigh with regret.

‘We’re going to invade.’

Troy thought silence the better part of discretion. Just keep him talking.

‘The Tories have signed a secret pact with France and Israel. Israel strikes at Egypt across Sinai, towards the canal. Then the British and the French steam in as peacemakers, and on the
way nab the canal for themselves. It was all in writing, it seems, but Eden has burnt his copy of the agreement, and sent a Foreign Office chap to France to get the French copy. But he
couldn’t get the Israeli copy. Eden’s lied to the House and if we drag him back for a special session he means to go on lying.’

‘How does Ike know this?’

‘The CIA got a look at Israel’s copy.’

‘Why is he telling you this?’

‘He just wants me to know.’

‘I don’t believe that. Nor do you. I don’t see how you can use this. When did anyone last stand up in the house of clowns and call the Prime Minister of the day a liar? If you
do, every journalist in Britain will ask you for your source. What are you going to tell them? That Ike calls you at home? Because no one will believe you. That you have a hotline to the CIA?
That’ll do you more harm than good. You’ll have your own left wing shooting at you with everything they’ve got.’

Rod leant forward. No one could possibly hear them, but still he lowered his voice.

‘He says that he’ll pull the rug from under the pound if Eden goes through with it. It’ll drop like stone against the dollar. In the autumn we’re due to pay interest on
the post-war loans the Americans gave us. We’ll probably have to default. The Exchequer will be passing the hat round and we’ll be borrowing from anyone with a five-bob postal order to
lend. From imperial power to international beggars in less than ten years. At which point Ike has us by the balls—and one of Ike’s maxims is that when you have a man by the balls his
heart and mind soon follow.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Troy. ‘That’s Machiavellian. But I still don’t see why he’s gone to the trouble of telling you.’

‘Special relationship?’

‘Come off it.’

‘He wants us to be ready.’

‘Ready for what?’

‘Government.’

‘Government? There’s no bloody election due till 1960!’

‘Eden will go. Ike has decided. When he goes there’s a good chance he’ll bring the Tories down around his head like Samson. We’ll be back in government by
January.’

‘So Ike is acting like a bookie’s runner. Giving you a hot tip?’

‘All in the interests of continuity.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘It’s called diplomacy.’

‘Sez you,’ said Troy. ‘I could think of half a dozen other words for it.’

It was Troy’s turn to lean in close over the sputtering fire, to usher in the tones of a
spurious confidentiality. Secrets where there could be none. Home truths where there could only be alien lies.

‘Tell me, don’t you find it in the least bit disturbing to be on the receiving end of CIA operations? Aren’t you just a wee bit apprehensive about an American president
deciding to swap governments in Britain? Because if they can do it to the Conservatives, they can do it to you.’

‘Strange times, Freddie, make strange bedfellows.’

‘If I went to bed with the CIA I’d count my bollocks in the morning.’

The Quiet American
was not where he had left it. With only a couple of chapters to go, he was quite looking forward to finishing it in bed.

He tapped on Tosca’s door and went in. The windows were wide open to let in the night air and the last reluctant drops of rain with it. Her trousers, knickers and socks trailed across the
floor from the door, exactly as she had stepped out of them. The room was turning into a marginally neater version of the pit she had had in Orange Street all those years ago. She was sitting up in
bed. The Tattersall shirt had become a nightdress. She was reading his book. He decided to say nothing. He’d start another.

‘I’m sorry about this afternoon.’

‘That’s all right. You must have been scared.’

‘Shitless would be the word.’

She paused, put her thumb between the pages and clutched the book to her bosom. Drew her knees up to support her chin.

‘It makes me wonder. Y’know. Could be anybody. Anytime. I mean—we’ll never know. We can never be certain, can we?’

She was looking at him. A look he could not fathom. She had wrapped herself around him, slept off the fear of the day in the sleep of a frightened child. She had never done that before. She had
clammed up over dinner, let Rod and the sisters make all the running, occasionally reached under the table cloth and held him by the hand or grabbed him by the balls. She had done that dozens of
times. He did not know what she wanted of him now.