The Human Factor (34 page)

‘All the same, I expect, you'd like some news of him?'

So they
had
news. It was as when Carson told her, ‘He's safe in L.M. waiting for you. Now we've only got to get you there.' If he were free, they would soon be together. She realized she was smiling at the telephone – thank God, they hadn't yet invented a visual telephone, but all the same she wiped the smile off her face. She said, ‘I'm afraid I don't much care where he is. Couldn't you write? I have a child to look after.'

‘Well no, Mrs Castle, there are things one can't write. If we could send a car for you tomorrow . . .'

‘Tomorrow's impossible.'

‘Thursday then.'

She hesitated as long as she dared. ‘Well . . .'

‘We could send a car for you at eleven.'

‘But I don't need a car. There's a good train at 11.15.'

‘Well then, if you could meet me at a restaurant, Brummell's – close to Victoria.'

‘What street?'

‘There you have me. Walton – Wilton – never mind, any taxi driver will know Brummell's. It's very quiet there,' he added soothingly as though he were recommending with professional knowledge a good nursing home, and Sarah had a quick mental picture of the speaker – a very self-assured Wimpole Street type, with a dangling eye-glass which he would only use when it came to writing out the prescription, the signal, like royalty rising, that it was time for the patient to depart.

‘Until Thursday,' he said. She didn't even reply. She put down the receiver and went to find Mrs Castle – she was late again for lunch and she didn't care. She was humming a tune of praise the Methodist missionaries had taught her, and Mrs Castle looked at her in astonishment. ‘What's the matter? Is something wrong? Was it that policeman again?'

‘No. It was only a doctor. A friend of Maurice. Nothing's wrong. Would you mind just for once if I went up to town on Thursday? I'll take Sam to school in the morning and he can find his own way back.'

‘I don't
mind
, of course, but I was thinking of having Mr Bottomley for lunch again.'

‘Oh, Sam and Mr Bottomley will get on very well together.'

‘Will you go and see a solicitor when you are in town?'

‘I might.' A half-lie was a small price to pay in return for her new happiness.

‘Where will you have lunch?'

‘Oh, I expect I'll pick up a sandwich somewhere.'

‘It's such a pity you've chosen Thursday. I've ordered a joint. However' – Mrs Castle sought for a silver lining – ‘if you had lunch at Harrods there are one or two things you could bring me back.'

She lay in bed that night unable to sleep. It was as if she had procured a calendar and could now begin to mark off the days of term. The man she had spoken to was an enemy – she was convinced of that – but he wasn't the Security Police, he wasn't BOSS, she wouldn't lose her teeth or the sight of an eye in Brummell's: she had no reason to fear.

3

Nonetheless she felt a little let down when she identified him where he waited for her at the end of a long glassy glittering room at Brummell's. He wasn't, after all, a Wimpole Street specialist: he was more like an old-fashioned family doctor with his silver-rimmed spectacles and a small rounded paunch which seemed to prop itself on the edge of the table when he rose to greet her. He was holding an outsize menu in his hand in place of a prescription. He said, ‘I'm so glad you had the courage to come here.'

‘Why courage?'

‘Well, this is one of the places the Irish like to bomb. They've thrown a small one already, but unlike the blitz their bombs are quite liable to hit the same place twice.' He gave her a menu to read: a whole page was given up she saw to what were called Starters. The whole menu, which bore the title Bill of Fare above a portrait, seemed almost as long as Mrs Castle's local telephone directory. Doctor Percival said helpfully, ‘I'd advise you against the smoked trout – it's always a bit dry here.'

‘I haven't got much appetite.'

‘Let's wake it up, then, while we consider matters. A glass of sherry?'

‘I'd rather have a whisky if you don't mind.' When asked to choose, she said, ‘J. & B.'

‘You order for me,' she implored Doctor Percival. The sooner all these preliminaries were over, the sooner she would have the news she waited for with a hunger she hadn't got for food. While he made his decision she looked around her. There was a dubious and glossy portrait on the wall labelled George Bryan Brummell – it was the same portrait as on the menu – and the furnishing was in impeccable and tiring good taste – you felt no possible expense had been spared and no criticism would be sanctioned: the few customers were all men and they all looked alike as though they had come out of the chorus of an old-fashioned musical comedy: black hair, neither too long nor too short, dark suits and waistcoats. Their tables were set discreetly apart and the two tables nearest to Doctor Percival's were empty – she wondered whether this was by design or chance. She noticed for the first time how all the windows were wired.

‘In a place like this,' Doctor Percival said, ‘It's best to go English and I would suggest the Lancashire hot pot.'

‘Anything you say.' But for a long time he said nothing except some words to the waiter about the wine. At last he turned his attention and his silver-rimmed glasses towards her with a long sigh, ‘Well, the hard work's done. It's up to them now,' and he took a sip of his sherry. ‘You must have been having a very anxious time, Mrs Castle.' He put out a hand and touched her arm as though he really were her family doctor.

‘Anxious?'

‘Not knowing from day to day . . .'

‘If you mean Maurice . . .'

‘We were all very fond of Maurice.'

‘You speak as though he were dead. In the past tense.'

‘I didn't mean to. Of course we are still fond of him – but he's taken a different road and I'm afraid a very dangerous one. We all hope you won't get involved.'

‘How can I? We're separated.'

‘Oh yes, yes. It was the obvious thing to do. It would have been a little conspicuous to have gone away together. I don't think Immigration would have been quite so foolish as all that. You are a very attractive woman and then your colour . . .' He said, ‘Of course we know he hasn't telephoned you at home, but there are so many ways of sending messages – a public telephone box, an intermediary – we couldn't monitor all his friends, even if we knew them all.' He pushed aside his sherry and made room for the hot pot. She began to feel more at ease now that the subject was laid plainly there on the table before them – like the hot pot. She said, ‘You think I'm a traitor too?'

‘Oh, in the firm, you know, we don't use a word like traitor. That's for the newspapers. You are African – I don't say
South
African – and so is your child. Maurice must have been a good deal influenced by that. Let's say – he chose a different loyalty.' He took a taste of the hot pot. ‘Be careful.'

‘Careful?'

‘I mean the carrots are very hot.' If this was really an interrogation it was a very different method to that practised by the Security Police in Johannesburg or Pretoria. ‘My dear,' he said, ‘what do you intend to do – when he
does
communicate?'

She gave up caution. As long as she was cautious she would learn nothing. She said, ‘I shall do what he tells me to do.'

Doctor Percival said, ‘I'm so glad you've said that. It means we can be frank with each other. Of course we know, and I expect you know, that he's arrived safely in Moscow.'

‘Thank God.'

‘Well, I'm not sure about God, but you can certainly thank the KGB. (One mustn't be dogmatic – they may be on the same side, of course.) I imagine that sooner or later he'll ask you to join him there.'

‘And I'll go.'

‘With your child?'

‘Of course.'

Doctor Percival plunged again into his hot pot. He was obviously a man who enjoyed his food. She became more reckless in her relief at knowing that Maurice was safe. She said, ‘You can't stop me going.'

‘Oh, don't be so sure of that. You know, at the office we have quite a file on you. You were very friendly in South Africa with a man called Carson. A Communist agent.'

‘Of course I was. I was helping Maurice – for your service, though I didn't know it then. He told me it was for a book on apartheid he was writing.'

‘And Maurice perhaps was even then helping Carson. And Maurice is now in Moscow. It's not strictly speaking our business, of course, but MI5 might well feel you ought to be investigated – in depth. If you'll let an old man advise you – an old man who was a friend of Maurice . . .'

A memory flashed into her mind of a shambling figure in a teddy-bear coat playing hide-and-seek with Sam among the wintry trees. ‘And of Davis,' she said, ‘you were a friend of Davis too, weren't you?'

A spoonful of gravy was stopped on the way to Doctor Percival's mouth.

‘Yes. Poor Davis. It was a sad death for a man still young.'

‘I don't drink port,' Sarah said.

‘My dear girl, how irrelevant can you be? Let's wait to decide about port until we get to the cheese – they have excellent Wensleydale. All I was going to say was do be reasonable. Stay quietly in the country with your mother-in-law and your child . . .'

‘Maurice's child.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘What do you mean, perhaps?'

‘You've met this man Cornelius Muller, a rather unsympathetic type from BOSS. And what a name! He's under the impression that the real father – my dear, you must forgive a little plain speaking – I don't want you to make the sort of mistake Maurice has made –'

‘You aren't being very plain.'

‘Muller believes that the father was one of your own people.'

‘Oh, I know the one he means – even if it was true he's dead.'

‘He isn't dead.'

‘Of course he's dead. He was killed in a riot.'

‘Did you see his body?'

‘No, but . . .'

‘Muller says he's safely under lock and key. He's a lifer – so Muller says.'

‘I don't believe it.'

‘Muller says this fellow is prepared to claim paternity.'

‘Muller's lying.'

‘Yes, yes. That's quite possible. The man may well be a stooge. I haven't been into the legal aspects yet myself, but I doubt if he could prove anything in our courts. Is the child on your passport?'

‘No.'

‘Has he a passport?'

‘No.'

‘Then you'd have to apply for a passport to take him out of this country. That means a lot of bureaucratic rigmarole. The passport people can sometimes be very, very slow.'

‘What bastards you are. You killed Carson. You killed Davis. And now. . .'

‘Carson died of pneumonia. Poor Davis – that was cirrhosis.'

‘Muller says it was pneumonia. You say it was cirrhosis, and now you are threatening me and Sam.'

‘Not threatening, my dear, advising.'

‘Your advice . . .'

She had to break off. The waiter had come to clear their plates. Doctor Percival's was clean enough, but most of her portion had remained uneaten.

‘What about an old English apple pie with cloves and a bit of cheese?' Doctor Percival asked, leaning seductively forward and speaking in a low voice as though he were naming the price he was prepared to pay for certain favours.

‘No. Nothing. I don't want any more.'

‘Oh dear, the bill then,' Doctor Percival told the waiter with disappointment, and when the waiter had gone he reproached her, ‘Mrs Castle, you mustn't get angry. There's nothing personal in all this. If you get angry you are sure to make the wrong decision. It's just an affair of boxes,' he began to elaborate, and then broke off as though for once he was finding that metaphor inapplicable.

‘Sam is
my
child and I shall take him wherever I want. To Moscow, to Timbuctoo, to . . .'

‘You can't take Sam until he has a passport, and I'm anxious to keep MI5 from taking any preventive action against you. If they learned you were applying for a passport . . . and they would learn . . .'

She walked out, she walked out on everything, leaving Doctor Percival to wait behind for the bill. If she had stayed a moment longer she wasn't sure that she could have trusted herself with the knife which remained by her plate for the cheese. She had once seen a white man just as well fed as Doctor Percival stabbed in a public garden in Johannesburg. It had looked such a very easy thing to do. From the door she looked back at him. The wire grille over the window behind made him appear to be sitting at a desk in a police station. Obviously he had followed her with his eyes, and now he raised an index finger and shook it gently to and fro in her direction. It could be taken for an admonition or a warning. She didn't care which.

CHAPTER II

1

F
ROM
the window on the twelfth floor of the great grey building Castle could see the red star over the University. There was a certain beauty in the view as there is in all cities at night. Only the daylight was drab. They had made it clear to him, particularly Ivan who had met his plane in Prague and accompanied him to a debriefing in some place near Irkutsk with an unpronounceable name, that he was extraordinarily lucky in his apartment. It had belonged, both rooms of it with a kitchen and a private shower, to a comrade recently dead who had nearly succeeded before his death in furnishing it completely. An empty apartment as a rule contained only a radiator – everything else even to the toilet had to be bought. That was not easy and wasted a great deal of time and energy. Castle wondered sometimes if that was why the comrade had died, worn out by his long hunt for the green wicker armchair, the brown sofa hard as a board, without cushions, the table which looked as though it had been stained a nearly even colour by the application of gravy. The television set, the latest black and white model, was a gift of the government. Ivan had carefully explained that when they first visited the apartment. In his manner he hinted his personal doubt whether it had been truly earned. Ivan seemed to Castle no more likeable here than he had been in London. Perhaps he resented his recall and blamed it on Castle.