A Perfect Spy

Had he gone back to prison, as he had promised Lippsie that he would? Had the police found the green filing cabinet? Pym did not know then and Syd, I suspect by choice, does not know now. Army records grant Rick an abrupt discharge six months before the period in question, referring the reader to the Criminal Records Office for an explanation. None is available, perhaps because that Perce had a friend who worked there, a lady who thought the world of him. Whatever the reason Pym floated out alone once more, and had a fair amount of fun. For weekend leave Ollie and Mr. Cudlove received him at their basement flat in Fulham and pampered him in every imaginable way. Mr. Cudlove, fit as ever from his exercises, taught him how to wrestle, and when they all went out for a toot on the river together, Ollie wore ladies’ clothes and did a squeaky voice so well that only Pym and Mr. Cudlove in all the world ever knew there was a man inside them. For his longer holidays, Pym was obliged to trek over Cherry’s vast estates with Sefton Boyd, listening to ever more awful stories about the great public school of which he would soon become a member: how new boys were tied into laundry baskets and flung down flights of stone stairs, how they were harnessed to pony traps with fish-hooks through their ears and made to haul the prefect round school yard.

“My father’s gone to prison and escaped,” Pym told him in return. “He’s got a pet jackdaw that looks after him.” He imagined Rick in a cave on Dartmoor, with Syd and Meg taking him pies wrapped in a handkerchief while the hounds sniffed his trail.

“My father’s in the Secret Service,” Pym told him another time. “He’s been tortured to death by the Gestapo but I’m not allowed to say. His real name is Wentworth.”

Having surprised himself by this pronouncement Pym worked on it. A different name and a gallant death suited Rick excellently. They gave him the class Pym was beginning to suspect he lacked and made things right with Lippsie. So when Rick came bouncing back one day, not tortured or altered in any way, but accompanied by two jockeys, a box of nectarines and a brand-new mother with a feather in her hat, Pym thought seriously of working for the Gestapo and wondered how you joined. And would have done so, too, for sure, had not the peace ungraciously robbed him of the chance.

A last word is also needed here about Pym’s politics during this instructive period. Churchill sulked and was too popular. De Gaulle, with his tilted pineapple head, was too much like Uncle Makepeace, while Roosevelt, with his stick and spectacles and wheelchair, was clearly Aunt Nell in disguise. Hitler was so wretchedly unloved that Pym had more than a fair regard for him, but it was Joseph Stalin whom he appointed to be his proxy father. Stalin neither sulked nor preached. He spent his time chuckling, and playing with dogs, and picking roses in news cinemas while his loyal troops won the war for him in the snows of St. Moritz.

* * *

Putting down his pen, Pym stared at what he had written, first in fear, then gradually in relief. Finally he laughed.

“I didn’t break,” he whispered. “I stayed above the fray.”

And poured himself a Poppy-sized vodka for old times’ sake.

CHAPTER 5

Frau Bauer’s bed was as narrow and lumpy as a servant’s bed in a fairy-tale and Mary lay in it exactly as Brotherhood had dumped her there, roly-polyed in the eiderdown, knees drawn up in self-protection, clutching her shoulders with her hands. He had slid off her, she could no longer smell his sweat and breath. But she could feel his bulk at the foot of the bed and sometimes she had a hard time remembering that they had not made love a few moments earlier, for his habit in those days had been to leave her dozing while he sat as he was sitting now, making his phone calls, checking his expenses or doing whatever else served to restore the order of his all-male life. He had found a tape-recorder somewhere and Georgie had a second in case his didn’t work.

For a hangman Nigel was small but extremely dapper. He wore a waisted pinstripe suit and a silk handkerchief in his sleeve.

“Ask Mary to make a voluntary statement, will you, Jack?” Nigel said, as if he did this every week. “Voluntary but formal is the tone. Could be used, I’m afraid. The decision is not Bo’s alone.”

“Who the hell says voluntary?” said Brotherhood. “She signed the Official Secrets Act when she joined, she signed it again when she left. She signed it again when she married Pym. Everything you know is ours, Mary. Whether you heard it on top of a bus or saw the smoking gun in his hand.”

“And your nice Georgie can witness it,” said Nigel.