*
‘At present time, Max is ski instructor,’ Natasha replies to Gail’s casually pitched inquiry as to the possible parentage of her expected child. ‘But this is temporary. He will be architect and build houses for poor people with no money. Max is very creative, also very sensitive.’
There is no humour in her voice. True love is too serious for that.
‘And his parents, what do they do, I wonder?’ Gail asks.
‘They have hotel. It is for tourists. It is inferior, but Max is completely philosophical regarding material matters.’
‘A hotel in the mountains?’
‘In Kandersteg. This is village in the mountains, very touristic.’
Gail says she has never been to Kandersteg but Perry has taken part in a ski race there.
‘The mother of Max is without culture but she is sympathetic and spiritual like her son. The father is completely negative. An idiot.’
Keep it banal. ‘So does Max belong to the official ski school,’ Gail asks, ‘or is he what they call private?’
‘Max is completely private. He skis only with those he respects. He loves best off-piste, which is aesthetic. Also glacier skiing.’
It was in a remote hut high above Kandersteg, Natasha says, that they astonished themselves with their passion:
‘I was virgin. Also incompetent. Max is completely considerate. It is his nature to be considerate to all people. Even in passion, he is completely considerate.’
Determinedly in pursuit of the commonplace, Gail asks Natasha where she is with her studies, what subjects she is best at, and what
examinations she has fixed her sights on. Since coming to live with Dima and Tamara, Natasha replies, she has been attending Roman Catholic convent school in the Canton of Fribourg as a weekly boarder:
‘Unfortunately, I do not believe in God, but this is irrelevant. In life it is frequently necessary to simulate religious conviction. I like best art. Max also is very artistic. Maybe we shall both study art together at St Petersburg or Cambridge. It will be decided.’
‘Is he Catholic?’
‘In his practices Max is compliant with his family religion. This is because he is dutiful. But in his soul he believes in all gods.’
And in
bed
? Gail wonders, but does not ask: is he still compliant with his family religion?
‘So who else knows about you and Max?’ she asks in the same comfortable, light-hearted tone that she has so far managed to maintain. ‘Apart from his parents, obviously. Or don’t they know either, perhaps?’
‘The situation is complicated. Max has sworn extremely strong oath that he will tell no one of our love. On this I have insisted.’
‘Not even his mother?’
‘The mother of Max is not reliable. She is inhibited by bourgeois instincts, also loquacious. If it is convenient for her, she will tell her husband, also many other bourgeois persons.’
‘Is that so very bad?’
‘If Dima knows that Max is my lover, it is possible Dima will kill him. Dima is not stranger to physicality. It is his nature.’
‘And Tamara?’
‘Tamara is not my mother,’ she snaps, with a flash of her father’s physicality.
‘So what will you do if you discover you really are having the baby?’ Gail asks lightly, as a battery of Roman candles ignites the landscape.
‘At moment of confirmation, we shall immediately escape to distant place, perhaps Finland. Max will arrange this. At present time it is not convenient because he is also summer guide. We shall wait one more month. Maybe it will be possible to study in Helsinki. Maybe we shall kill ourselves. We shall see.’
Gail leaves the worst question till last, perhaps because her bourgeois instincts have warned her of the answer:
‘And your Max is how old, Natasha?’
‘Thirty-one. But in his heart he is child.’
As you are, Natasha. So is this a fairy tale you’re spinning me under the Caribbean stars, a fantasy of the dream lover you will one day meet? Or have you really been to bed with a little shit of a thirty-one-year-old ski bum who doesn’t tell his mother? Because if you have, you’ve come to the right address: me
Gail had been a bit older, not much. The boy in the case wasn’t a ski bum but a penniless mixed-race reject from a local grammar school with divorced parents in South Africa. Her mother had departed the family nest three years ago, leaving no forwarding address. Her alcoholic father, far from being a physical threat, was in hospital with terminal liver failure. With money borrowed from friends, Gail had the baby clumsily aborted, and never told the boy.
And as of tonight, she hasn’t got around to telling Perry either. On present form she wonders whether she ever will.
*
From the handbag she nearly left in Ollie’s cab, Gail fishes out her mobile and checks it for new messages. Finding none, she scrolls back. Natasha’s are in capitals for extra drama. Four of them are spread over a single week:
I HAVE BETRAYED MY FATHER I AM SHAME.
YESTERDAY WE BURY MISHA AND OLGA IN BEAUTIFUL CHURCH MAYBE I JOIN THEM SOON.
PLEASE INFORM WHEN IS NORMAL TO VOMIT IN MORNINGS?
– followed by Gail’s reply, stored in her saved messages:
Roughly first three months, but if you are being sick, see doctor IMMEDIATELY, xxxx GAIL
– to which Natasha duly takes offence:
PLEASE DO NOT SAY I AM SICK. LOVE IS NOT SICKNESS. NATASHA
If she’s pregnant, she needs me.
If she’s
not
pregnant, she needs me.
If she’s a screwed-up teenaged girl fantasizing about killing herself, she needs me.
I’m her lawyer and confidante.
I’m all she’s got.
*
Perry’s line in the sand is drawn.
It is non-negotiable and non-tidal.
Not even tennis works any more. The Indian honeymooners have gone. Singles are too tense. Mark is enemy.
If their lovemaking allows them temporarily to forget its presence, the line is still there waiting to divide them afterwards.
Seated on their balcony after dinner, they gaze at the arc of white security lights hanging over the end of the peninsula. If Gail is hoping for a glimpse of the girls, who is Perry hoping for a glimpse of?
Of Dima, his Jay Gatsby? Of Dima, his personal Kurtz? Or some other flawed hero of his beloved Joseph Conrad?
The sensation that they are being listened to and watched is with them every hour of the day and night. Even if Perry were to break his self-imposed rule of silence, the fear of being overheard would seal his lips.
With two days to go, Perry rises at six and takes an early run. After a lie-in, Gail makes her way to the Captain’s Deck resigned to a solitary breakfast, only to find him conspiring with Ambrose to bring forward their departure date. Ambrose regrets that their tickets aren’t changeable:
‘Now if you was to have said
yesterday
, you could have flown right along with Mr Dima and his family. Except they was all first class and
you’re plain old economy. Looks like you got no choice but to stick this little old island out for one more day.’
They tried to. They walked into town and looked at whatever they were supposed to look at. Perry lectured her on the sins of slavery. They went to a beach on the other side of the island and snorkled, but they were just two more Brits who didn’t know what to do with so much sun.
It wasn’t till dinner at the Captain’s Deck that Gail finally lost it. Ignoring the embargo that Perry has imposed on their conversations in the cabin, he asks her, unbelievably, whether by any chance she knows anybody in ‘the British Intelligence scene’.
‘But I
work
for them,’ she retorts. ‘I thought you’d have guessed by now!’ Her sarcasm goes nowhere.
‘I just thought, maybe somebody in your Chambers has a line to them,’ Perry says in a hangdog voice.
‘Oh. And how would that be?’ Gail snaps, feeling the heat rise to her face.
‘Well’ – over-innocent shrug – ‘it just occurred to me that, with all the stuff going on about extraordinary rendition and torture – public inquiries, lawsuits and all that – the spies must be needing all the legal help they can get.’
It was too much. With a resounding ‘fuck you, Perry’, she ran down the path to the cabin, where she collapsed in tears.
And yes she was terribly sorry. And he was terribly sorry too. Mortified. They both were. It was all my fault. No, mine. Let’s go home to England and get this whole bloody business over. Temporarily reunited, they grab for each other like drowning swimmers and make love with the same desperation.
*
She is back at the long window, scowling into the street. No bloody taxi. Not even the wrong one.
‘
Bastards
,’ she says out loud, mimicking her father. And to herself – or to the bastards – silently:
What the hell are you doing with him?
What the hell do you want from him?
What’s he saying no-but-yes to as you watch him perform his moral duck shuffle?
How would you feel if Dima had chosen me as his confessor instead of Perry? If instead of man-on-man, it had been man-on-woman?
How would Perry be feeling, sitting here like a bloody cast-off, waiting for me to come back with still more secrets that ‘alas, alas, I can’t possibly share with you, it’s for your own good’?
*
‘Is that you, Gail?’
Is it?
Someone has put the phone into her hand and told her to speak to him. But someone hasn’t. She’s alone. It’s Perry in prime time, not flashback, and she’s still standing, one hand for the window frame, staring into the street.
‘Look. I’m sorry it’s late and everything.’
Everything?
‘Hector wants to talk to both of us tomorrow morning at nine.’
‘
Hector
does?’
‘Yes.’
Stay rational. In a mad world, stick to what you know. ‘I can’t. I know it’s Sunday, but I’m working.
Samson v. Samson
never sleeps.’
‘Then call Chambers and say you’re sick. It matters, Gail. More than
Samson v. Samson
. Truly.’
‘According to Hector?’
‘According to both of us, actually.’
6
‘His name will be Hector, by the way,’ said adept little Luke, glancing up from his copy of the buff folder.
‘Is that a warning or a divine ordinance?’ Perry asked from inside his spread hands, long after Luke had given up expecting a reply.
In the age since Gail’s departure, Perry had not moved from the table, neither lifting his head nor stirring from his place beside her empty chair.
‘Where’s Yvonne?’
‘Gone home,’ said Luke, back in his folder.
‘Sent or gone?’
No answer.
‘Is Hector your supreme leader?’
‘Let’s say I’m B-list, he’s A-list’ – pencilling a mark.
‘So Hector’s your boss?’
‘Another way of putting it.’
And another way of not answering the question.
Actually, Perry had to concede, on all the evidence available so far, Luke was someone he could get along with. No high-flyer, maybe. B-list, just as he had said of himself. A bit plummy, perhaps, a bit public school, but a good man on a rope for all that.
‘Has Hector been listening to us?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Watching us?’
‘Sometimes it’s better just to listen. Like a radio play.’ And after a pause: ‘Smashing girl, your Gail. Been together long?’
‘Five years.’
‘Wow.’
‘Why
wow
?’
‘Well, I suppose I feel a bit Dima-like. Marry her quick.’
This was holy ground, and Perry considered telling him so, then forgave him.
‘How long have you been doing this work?’ he asked Luke instead.
‘Twenty years, give or take.’
‘Home or abroad?’
‘Abroad mainly.’
‘Is it distorting?’
‘Come again?’
‘The work. Does it warp your mind? Are you aware of – well –
déformation professionnelle
?’
‘You mean, am I psycho?’
‘Nothing as drastic as that. Just – well, how it affects you over the long term?’
Luke’s head remained down, but his pencil had stopped roaming, and there was challenge in his stillness.
‘In the
long term
?’ he repeated, in studious puzzlement. ‘In the long term we’ll all be dead, I imagine.’
‘I simply meant: how does it grab you, representing a country that can’t pay its bills?’ Perry explained, aware too late that he was slipping out of his depth. ‘Good intelligence being about the only thing that gets us a seat at the international top table these days, I read somewhere,’ he blundered on. ‘It must be rather a strain on the people who have to provide it, that’s all. Punching above one’s weight,’ he added, in an unintentional reference to Luke’s diminutive stature which he immediately regretted.
Their troubled exchange was interrupted by the shuffle of slow, soft footsteps like bedroom slippers along the ceiling before beginning a cautious descent of the basement stairs. As if to order, Luke stood up, strode over to a sideboard, picked up a tray of malt whisky, mineral water and three glasses, and set it on the table.
The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs. The door opened. Perry rose instinctively to his feet. A mutual inspection ensued. The two men were of equal height, which for both was unusual. Without his stoop, Hector might have been the taller. With his classic broad brow and flowing white hair tossed back in two untidy waves, he
resembled to Perry’s eye a Head of College of the old, dotty sort. He was in his mid-fifties, by Perry’s guess, but dressed for eternity in a mangy brown sports coat with leather patches at the elbow and leather edges to the cuffs. The shapeless grey flannels could have been Perry’s own. So could the battered Hush Puppy shoes. The artless, horn-rimmed spectacles could have been rescued from Perry’s father’s attic box.
Finally, but long after time, Hector spoke:
‘Wilfred
bloody
Owen,’ he pronounced, in a voice that contrived to be both vigorous and reverential. ‘Edmund
bloody
Blunden. Siegfried
bloody
Sassoon. Robert
bloody
Graves. Et al.’