A Perfect Spy

“Your horrid black tie, Mr. Canterbury. I won’t have death in the house, I won’t have you bring it. Who is it for?”

Pym was a handsome man, boyish but distinguished. In his early fifties he was in his prime, full of zeal and urgency in a place that knew none. But the best thing about him in Miss Dubber’s view was his lovely smile that gave out so much warmth and truth and made her feel right.

“Just an old Whitehall colleague, Miss D. No one to flap about. No one close.”

“Everyone’s close at my age, Mr. Canterbury. What was his name?”

“I hardly knew the fellow,” said Pym emphatically, untying his tie and slipping it into his pocket. “And I’m certainly not going to tell you his name and have you hunting the obituaries, so there.” His eye as he said this fell on the visitors’ book, which lay open on the hall table beneath the orange nightlight that he had fitted to her ceiling on his last visit. “Any casuals at all, Miss D?” he asked as he scanned the list. “Runaway couples, mystery princesses? What happened to those two lover-boys who came at Easter?”

“They were not lover-boys,” Miss Dubber corrected him severely as she hobbled towards the kitchen. “They took single rooms and in the evenings they watched football on the television. What was that you said, Mr. Canterbury?”

But Pym had not spoken. Sometimes his gushes of communication were like phone calls cut off by some inner censorship before they could be completed. He turned back a page and then another.

“I don’t think I’ll do casuals any more,” Miss Dubber said through the open kitchen doorway as she lit the gas. “Sometimes when the doorbell goes I sit here with Toby and I say: ‘You answer it, Toby.’ He doesn’t of course. A tortoiseshell cat can’t answer a door. So we go on sitting here. We sit and we wait and we hear the footsteps go away again.” She cast a sly glance at him. “You don’t think our Mr. Canterbury is smitten, do you, Toby?” she enquired archly of her cat. “We’re very bright this morning. Very shiny. Ten years younger, by the look of our coat, Mr. Canterbury is.” Receiving no helpful response from the cat, she addressed herself to the canary. “Not that he’d ever tell us, would he, Dickie? We’d be the last to know. Tzuktzuk? Tzuktzuk?”

“John and Sylvia Illegible of Wimbledon,” said Pym, still at the visitors’ book.

“John makes computers, Sylvia programs them, and they’re leaving tomorrow,” she told him sulkily. For Miss Dubber hated to admit there was anyone in her world but beloved Mr. Canterbury. “Now what have you done to me this time?” she exclaimed angrily. “I won’t have it. Take it back.”

But Miss Dubber was not angry; she would have it, and Pym would not take it back: a thickly knitted cashmere shawl of white and gold, still in its Harrods box and swathed in its original Harrods tissue paper which she seemed to treasure almost above their contents. For having taken out the shawl she first smoothed the paper and folded it along its creases before replacing it in the box, then put the box on the cupboard shelf where she kept her greatest treasures. Only then did she let him wrap the shawl round her shoulders and hug her in it, while she scolded him for his extravagance.

Pym drank tea with Miss Dubber, Pym appeased her, Pym ate a piece of her shortbread and praised it to the skies although she told him it was burned. Pym promised to mend the sink plug for her and unblock the waste-pipe and take a look at the cistern on the first floor while he was about it. Pym was swift and over-attentive and the brightness she had shrewdly remarked on did not leave him. He lifted Toby on to his lap and stroked him, a thing he had never done before, and which gave Toby no discernible pleasure. He received the latest news of Miss Dubber’s ancient Aunt Al, when normally the mention of Aunt Al was enough to hurry him off to bed. He questioned her, as he always did, about the local goings-on since his last visit, and listened approvingly to the catalogue of Miss Dubber’s complaints. And quite often, as he nodded her through her answers, he either smiled to himself for no clear reason or became drowsy and yawned behind his hand. Till suddenly he put down his teacup and stood up as if he had another train to catch.

“I’ll be staying a decent length of time if it’s all right with you, Miss D. I’ve a bit of heavy writing to do.”

“That’s what you always say. You were going to live here for ever last time. Then it’s up first thing and back to Whitehall without your egg.”

“Maybe as much as two weeks. I’ve taken some leave of absence so that I can work in peace.”

Miss Dubber pretended to be appalled. “But whatever will happen to the country? How shall Toby and I stay safe, with no Mr. Canterbury at the helm to steer us?”

“So what are Miss D’s plans?” he asked winningly, reaching for his briefcase, which by the effort he needed to lift it looked as heavy as a chunk of lead.