Spy Line (22 page)

It was easy to know when Dicky was having a new love affair. I suppose it is easy for the casual observer to know when any husband is having a new love affair. There was that tiger look in his eye, that stiffened sinew and summoned-up blood that Shakespeare associated with Mars rather than Venus. His detailed evaluation of expensive restaurants had become even more rigorous. The plats du jour of some of the favoured ones were sent to him each morning on the fax. And there were jokes.

‘Ye Gods, Bernard! As far as ethnic food goes – the less authentic the better!’ He looked at the fingernail he’d been biting and gave it another brief nibble.

He’d been striding around his office, pausing sometimes to look out of the window. He was jacketless, with his waistcoat unbuttoned, a dark blue shirt and a white silk bow tie. His shoes were black patent leather of a design that simul ated alligator hide.

Dicky had mentioned his planned weekend in Berlin several times. He said he was ‘mixing business with pleasure’ but then immediately changed the topic of conversation by asking me if it would be a good idea if Pinky came to work here in London. I found the idea appalling but I didn’t say so. Answering that sort of question in London Central was fraught with dangers. Almost everyone here was related to, or at school with, someone else in the building. It could
easily turn out that Pinky was Dicky’s distant cousin or shared nannies with the D-G’s son-in-law, or some such connection. ‘Fiona said she couldn’t spell,’ I told him.

‘Spell!’ said Dicky, and gave one of those little hoots of laughter that indicated how ingenuous I was. ‘Even I can’t spell properly,’ he said, as if that clinched the matter for all time.

I felt like saying, well, you can’t bloody well do anything properly, but I just smiled and inquired whether Pinky was asking for a transfer.

‘Not officially, but she was at school with your sister-in-law.’ A tiny smile. ‘It was Tessa who mentioned it to me, actually.’ When I didn’t react Dicky added, ‘At my dinner party.’

‘It’s a small world,’ I said.

‘It is,’ said Dicky. There was an audible sigh of relief in his voice as if he’d been trying to make me admit to that fact all the morning. ‘And strictly between the two of us, Tessa is also going to be in Berlin next weekend.’

‘Is she?’

‘Yes,’ he ran a fingertip around his mouth as if showing me where it was. ‘As a matter of fact, she…’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look here, can you hang on for a cup of coffee?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ I’d enjoyed many cups of coffee with Dicky in his office but that didn’t mean that the Kaffeeklatsch was part of his everyday routine. Dicky usually cloistered himself away from the hurly-burly to have his coffee. It was, he said, a time for him to wrestle with his thoughts, to struggle with difficult ideas, a time to confront his innermost self. Invitations to join him in his spiritual mêlée were not extended lightly or without thought of recoupment. I can truly say that most of the worst experiences of my life sprang from some notion, order, favour or plan that I first encountered over a cup of Dicky’s wonderful coffee.

With coffee Dicky smoked a cheroot. It was a bad habit, smoking – a poison really – he was trying to cut himself
down to three a day. I suppose that’s why he didn’t offer one to me.

‘The fact is…’ started Dicky, sitting back in his swing-chair, coffee in one hand and cigar in the other, ‘that is to say, an important detail of next week’s trip is that I need your help and cooperation.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. This was an entirely new line for Dicky, who had always denied his need for anyone’s help or cooperation.

‘You know how much I depend upon you, Bernard.’ He swivelled an inch or two from side to side but didn’t spill his coffee. ‘Always could: always can.’

I found myself looking for the fire escape. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t realize that.’

Delicately Dicky placed his cigar in the cut-glass ashtray and used his free hand to tug at one end of his bow tie so that it came unknotted. On the wall behind him there was a framed colour photo of Dicky and the D-G in Calcutta. They were standing at a stall offering a huge array of crude portrait posters. Lithographs of famous people from the Ayatollah and all the Marxes to Jesus Christ and Laurel and Hardy surrounded Dicky and his boss. They were all looking straight ahead: except Dicky. He was looking at the D-G.

‘I don’t want to hurt Daphne,’ said Dicky, as if suddenly deciding upon a new approach. ‘You understand…’

He left it there and looked at me. By now I was beginning to guess what was coming, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. And I wanted time to think. ‘What is it, Dicky?’ I said, sipping my coffee and pretending not to be giving him my whole attention.

‘Man to man, Bernard, old sport. You see what I mean?’

‘You want me to go instead?’

‘For God’s sake, Bernard. You can be dense at times.’ He puffed at his cigar. ‘No, I’m taking Tessa.’ A pause. ‘I’ve promised and I’ll have to go through with it.’ He added this rider woefully as if a call of duty prevailed over his personal
wishes. But then he fixed his eye on me, and, with a quick glance towards the door to be sure he wasn’t overheard, he said, ‘For the weekend!’ He said it fiercely, through almost gritted teeth, as if my failure to understand was about to cause him to run amok.

‘We all go? Gloria too?’

He shot to his feet as if scalded and came round to where I was sitting. ‘No, Bernard; no, Bernard; no, Bernard. No!’

‘What then?’

‘You come along. You stay at Tante Lisl’s but for all practical purposes you are in the hotel suite with Tessa.’

‘For all
practical
purposes? Surely for all
practical
purposes
you
will be there with Tessa.’

‘I’m not in the mood for your bloody comedy,’ he barked. But then, remembering that I was designated to fulfil an indispensable role in his curious scenario, he became calm and friendly again. ‘You check into the hotel. Okay?’ He was standing by the lion’s skin rug and now he gave the head of it an affectionate little kick with the toe of his shiny patent leather shoe. He’d always been an animal lover.

I said, ‘If it’s just the propriety of it, why don’t you check in under an assumed name?’

He became huffy. ‘Because I don’t care to do that,’ he said.

‘Or get Werner to let you have a room at Lisl’s?’

I watched his face with interest. I don’t think even Lisl herself would put the hotel high on a list of Berlin accommodation suitable for a lover’s tryst.

‘Jesus Christ! Are you mad?’ I saw then that he was nervous. He was frightened that the desk clerk at some big hotel would challenge him in some way and he’d be revealed not just as an adulterer but as a bungling adulterer. Certainly Tessa in such a situation would not make it easy for him. She’d revel in it and make the most of it. ‘Lisl’s,’ he said. ‘What a thought.’

He chewed a nail. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised
at this aspect of Dicky, I’d discovered long ago that womanizers like him are often uneasy and incapable when faced with the minor logistics of such adventures: hotel bookings, plane tickets, car rentals. The sort of man who will boast of his doings to all comers at his club will go to absurd lengths in attempts to deceive the concierge, the waiters or the room maid. Perhaps that’s why they do it.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘You won’t…’

He cut me short. He wasn’t going to let me give him a negative reply. Dicky was a grandmaster at squeezing the right sort of replies from people. Now would come the softening up: a barrage of incontrovertible platitudes. ‘Your sister-in-law is one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever met, Bernard. Glorious!’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He poured more coffee for me without asking if I wanted it. Cream too. ‘And your wife of course,’ he added. ‘Two truly extraordinary women: brainy, beautiful and with compelling charm.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Fiona took the wrong road of course. But that can happen to anyone.’ By Dicky’s standards this was an astonishingly indulgent attitude to human frailty. Perhaps he saw that in my face, for he immediately added, ‘Or almost anyone.’

‘Yes, almost anyone.’

‘Daphne is astonishing too,’ said Dicky, delivering this accolade with distinctly less emphasis. ‘Creative, artistic.’

‘And hard-working,’ I said.

He was less sure of that. ‘Well, yes, I suppose she is.’

‘Daphne was in good form the other night,’ I said. ‘Did I thank you for dinner?’

‘Gloria wrote.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘I only wish I could give Daphne the sort of support and encouragement she needs,’ said Dicky. ‘But she lives on a mountain top.’ He looked at me. I nodded. He said, ‘Artists
are all like that: creative people. They live in harmony with nature. But it’s not so easy for those around them.’

‘Oh, really? What form does this take? In Daphne’s case, I mean?’

‘She’s only truly happy when she’s painting. She told me that. She has to have time to herself. She spends hours up in her studio. I encourage her, of course. It’s the least I can do for her.’

‘You won’t find Tessa needs any time to herself,’ I said.

He smiled nervously. ‘No. Tessa is like me: very much a social animal.’

‘May I ask why you are going to Berlin?’

‘Why
we
are going,’ Dicky corrected me. ‘You’ll have to come along, Bernard. No matter what reservations you may nurture about my peccadilloes…No, no.’ He raised a hand as if warding off my interjections but in fact I had not moved. ‘No, I understand your reservations. Far be it from me to persuade any man to do something against his conscience. You know how I feel about that kind of thing.’

‘I didn’t say it was against my conscience.’

‘Ahh!’

‘It’s not against my conscience, it’s against the German legal code. The old German law, that made incest a crime, still applies in the case of a man committing adultery with his sister-in-law.’

‘I’ve never heard of that,’ said Dicky, suspecting, rightly, that I was inventing this historic clause on the spur of the moment. ‘Are you sure?’

I turned slightly towards the phone on his table and said, ‘I can get someone in the legal department to look it up for you.’

‘No,’ said Dicky. ‘Don’t do that for the moment. I might go downstairs and look it up myself.’

I said, ‘You didn’t explain why I had to go.’

‘To Berlin? It has been ordained that you, me and Frank
Harrington have a pow-wow in Big B to go through some damned stuff the Americans want.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Written instructions from the D-G himself. No way to wriggle out of that one, Gunga Din.’

‘And you’re taking Tessa?’

‘Yes. She has these bonus tickets that airlines give to first-class passengers who fly a great deal. She has to use up the free mileage.’

‘So you don’t have to pay Tessa’s fare?’

‘It was too good an opportunity to turn away.’

‘I suppose it was.’

‘I should have married someone like Tessa, I suppose,’ said Dicky.

I noticed it wasn’t Tessa’s unique attractions he wanted but only someone in her category. Whether this left Daphne wanting in brains, wealth, beauty, chic, charm or sexual performance was left unspecified. ‘Tessa is already married,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so priggish, Bernard. Tessa is a grown-up woman. She’s sensible enough to decide these things for herself.’

‘When is this meeting?’

‘Frank is being difficult about precise times. We have to fit it in around his golf and bridge and his jaunts with his army cronies.’

‘You’ve booked the hotel?’

‘They get so full at this time of year,’ said Dicky.

I heard a defensive tone in his voice. On a hunch I said, ‘Have you booked it in my name?’

‘Yes…’ Momentarily he was flustered, but he recovered quickly. ‘I told the hotel that we are not yet sure who will be using the suite. They think we are a company.’

I was damned angry but Dicky had played his cards with customary finesse. I couldn’t see anything specific that I could complain about that Dicky wouldn’t be able to explain away. ‘When do we leave?’

‘Friday. Tessa insists on going to some bloody opera that’s only on that night. Pinky is arranging the tickets. I’m hoping for a preliminary meeting with Frank and his people on Friday afternoon. We should be through by Monday evening. Tuesday evening at the latest.’

There goes my weekend with Gloria and the children. Dicky saw my face and said, ‘You’ll have days off to make up for the loss of the weekend.’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said, although it wasn’t much fun to be monitoring the weeds in the garden, and fixing my own lunch, while the children were at school and Gloria was slaving in the office.

‘You’re getting to be very surly lately,’ Dicky observed while he was pouring the last of the coffee for himself. ‘Don’t fly off the handle: I’m just telling you that for your own good.’

‘You’re very considerate, Dicky.’

‘I can’t understand you,’ Dicky persisted. ‘You’ve got that gorgeous creature doting on you and still you go around with a long face. What’s the problem? Tell me, Bernard, what is the problem?’ Although the words were arranged like questions, Dicky made it quite clear from his tone and delivery that he didn’t want an answer.

I nodded. It was best to nod with Dicky. Like the Japanese he framed his questions in the expectation of affirmative responses.

‘Brooding won’t bring Fiona back. You must pull yourself together, Bernard.’ He gave me a ‘chins up’ smile.

I felt like telling Dicky exactly what I thought about him and his plan to implement me in the cuckolding of George but he wouldn’t have understood the reasons for my anger. I nodded and left.

At the end of the working day I drove homeward with Gloria but we didn’t go directly to number thirteen Balaklava Road. She said she wanted to collect some clothes from her parents’ home. The actual reason for the visit was that she’d
promised to look in and see the house was safe while they were away on holiday. They lived in a smart, burglar-afflicted suburb near Epsom, a few stations beyond us on the Southern Railway’s commuter routes.

The Kents – her parents had changed their name after escaping from Hungary – lived in a four-bedroom double-glazed neo-Tudor house with a gravel ‘in and out’ front drive on which their two cars could be parked and still leave room enough for the tanker that delivered their heating oil.