A Perfect Spy

“Thank you, Peggy.” Then he asked for a chair for her so that she could sit down like everybody else. It was brought by Major Blenkinsop himself. Peggy sat on it in the aisle, obediently, a child in disgrace, waiting to hear some home truths. So it seemed to Pym, and still does, for I have long believed that everything Rick did this night was prepared in advance. If they had popped a dunce’s cap on her head Pym would not have been surprised. I believe they had seen Peggy haunting them and Rick had laid out his mental defences in advance of her, as he had often done before. Muspole’s people could have snatched her for the evening. Major Blenkinsop could have been advised she was not welcome inside the hall. There were a dozen ways in the court’s book to keep a crazed and penniless little blackmailer like Peggy at bay for a crucial night. Rick used none of them. He wanted the trial, as ever. He wanted to be judged and found spotless.

“Ladies and gentlemen. This lady’s name is Mrs. Peggy Wentworth. She is a widow whom I have known and tried to help for many years, who has been desperately wronged in life, and who blames me for her misfortune. I hope that after this meeting you will all hear whatever Peggy has to tell you, give her every indulgence at your command, show her every patience. And in your wisdom judge for yourselves where the truth may lie. I hope you will show charity to Peggy, and to me, and remember how hard it is for all of us to accept misfortune without pointing the finger of blame.”

He placed his hands behind his back. His feet were close together.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my old friend Peggy Wentworth is quite right.” Not even Pym, who thought he knew all the instruments in Rick’s orchestra, had heard him so straight and simple in his delivery, so bereft of rhetoric. “Many years ago, ladies and gentlemen, when I was a very young man, striving to get on in life — as we all were once, overeager, ready to cut a few corners — I found myself in the position of the office boy who had borrowed a few stamps from the till and been caught before he had a chance to put them back. I was a first offender, it is true. My mother, like Peggy Wentworth here, was a widow. I had a great father to live up to and only sisters in the family. The responsibilities that weighed upon me, I will admit, blew me across the borders of what Justice, in her blind wisdom, deemed right. Justice exacted her penalty. I paid it in full measure. As I shall pay for it all my life.”

Then the jaw went up and the thick hands untied themselves, and one arm struck out towards the Old Nellies in the front while his eyes and voice reached into the darkness at the back.

“My friends — Peggy, my dear, I still count you as one too — my loyal friends of Gulworth North, I see among you here tonight men and women still young enough to be impulsive. I see others with the experience of life upon them, whose children and grandchildren have gone out into the world to follow their impulses, to strive and make mistakes and overcome them. I want to ask you older people this. If one of these young people — children, grandchildren, or if this son of mine who sits behind me here, poised to collect some of the highest prizes the law of this country can offer — if one of them should ever make a mistake, and pay the price that society exacts, and come home and say, ‘Mum, it’s me. Dad, it’s me’—which one of you sitting here among us tonight is going to slam the door in his face?”

They were standing. They were calling his name. “Rickie — good old Rickie — you get our vote, Rickie boy.” On the dais behind him we were standing too, and Pym saw through his own tears that Syd and Morrie were embracing each other. For once Rick did not acknowledge the applause. He was casting round theatrically for Pym and calling “Magnus, where are you, son?” though he knew perfectly well where he was. Affecting to find him he seized his arm, raised it and drew him forward, almost lifting him off the ground even as he offered him as champion to the jubilant crowd, shouting “Here’s one, here’s one!” I suppose he meant a penitent who has paid the price and come home, though I’ll never be certain because of the roar, and perhaps he said, “Here’s my son.” As to Pym, he could no longer contain himself. He had never adored Rick more. He was choking and clapping, he was shaking Rick’s hand for them with both of his, bear-hugging him and patting his great shoulder for them and telling him he was crackerjack. As he did so, he thought he saw Judy’s pale face and big pale eyes behind their serious spectacles, watching him from the centre of the crowd. My father needed me, he wanted to explain to her. I forgot where the bus stop was. I lost your phone number. I did it for my country. The Bentley was waiting at the front steps, Cudlove at the door. Riding away at Rick’s side, Pym imagined he heard Judy calling out his name: “Pym. You bastard. Where are you?”

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