A Perfect Spy

“‘He who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.’ He’d illuminated the edges of the page for hours on end. Different inks.”

“And?”

“‘ Wentworth was Rick’s Nemesis. Poppy was mine. We each spent our lives trying to put right what we’d done to them.’”

“And again!”

“‘ Now everyone’s after me. The Firm’s after me, the Americans are after me, you’re after me. Even poor Mary is after me, and she doesn’t know you exist.’”

“You being who? Who’s you in this poem?”

“‘ Poppy. My destiny. Dearest Poppy, best of best friends, get your bloody dogs off my doorstep.’”

“Poppy like the flowers,” Brotherhood suggested, shoving away Georgie’s microphone as he knelt beside her. “Like the flowers in the chimney. But singular. One Poppy.”

“Yes.”

“And Wentworth like the place. Sunny Wentworth, in tasteful Surrey?”

“Yes.”

“Know him — her — anyone of that name?”

“No.”

“Or Poppy?”

“No.”n

“On.”

“There was a Chapter Eight,” she said. “Out of the blue. No Two to Seven, but this Chapter Eight, all in his own handwriting and without a crossing-out. Titled ‘Overdue Bills,’ whereas the Chapter Ones were untitled. Describing a day when Ben revolts against all his promises. Slipping from third to first person and staying there, whereas the Chapter Ones were ‘he’ and ‘Ben.’ ‘The creditors are beating at the door, Wentworth to the fore, but Ben doesn’t give a damn. I lower my head and lift my shoulders, I wade at them, I punch and flail and butt them while they smash my face in. But even with no face left I am doing what I should have done thirty-five years ago, to Jack and Rick and all the mothers and fathers, for stealing my life off my plate while I watched you do it. Poppy, Jack, the rest of you, driving me into a lifetime’s — a lifetime’s — a lifetime’s—’”

She had stopped. Iron clamps had squeezed the breath out of her. The door opened and Fergus gatecrashed, a flouting of discipline for which he would surely be punished. Nigel was staring at him expressionlessly. Georgie was rolling her eyes at him, pointing at the door and mouthing Get out, get out, but Fergus stood his ground.

“A lifetime’s what, for God’s sake?” Brotherhood was shouting in her ear.

She was whispering. She was screaming. She was fighting the word inside her mouth, heaving and pressing at it but nothing came out. Brotherhood shook her, at first gently, then much harder, then very hard indeed.

“Betrayal,” she said. “‘We betray to be loyal. Betrayal is like imagining when the reality isn’t good enough.’ He wrote that. Betrayal as hope and compensation. As the making of a better land. Betrayal as love. As a tribute to our unlived lives. On and on, these ponderous aphorisms about betrayal. Betrayal as escape. As a constructive act. As a statement of ideals. Worship. As an adventure of the soul. Betrayal as travel: how can we discover new places if we never leave home? ‘You were my Promised Land, Poppy. You gave my lies a reason.’”

And that was the very phrase she had got to in her reading, she explained — the one about Poppy and the Promised Land — when she turned round and saw Magnus in his shorts standing in the open doorway to his workroom, holding a big blue envelope in one hand and the telegram in the other, smiling like the head boy of one of his schools.

“There was someone else inside him,” Mary said, shocking herself. “It wasn’t him.”

“What the hell does that mean? You just said it was Magnus, standing in the doorway. What are you getting at?”

She didn’t know either. “It was something that had happened to him when he was young. Someone standing in doorways watching him. He was doing it back somehow. I could see the recognition in his face.”

“What did he say?” Nigel suggested helpfully.

She had a voice for Magnus, or perhaps it was just a facial expression. Empty yet impenetrable. Tirelessly polite: “Hullo, old love. Catching up with the great novel, are we? Not exactly Jane Austen, I’m afraid, but some of it may be usable when I get a proper run at it.”

The tablecloth was spread on the floor, his books and half his papers on it. But his smile flashed victory and relief as he held the telegram towards her. She took it from his hand and walked with it to the window in order to read it. Or to distract his attention from the desk.

“It was from you, Jack,” she said, “using your cover name of Victor. Addressed to Pym care of Pembroke. Return at once, you said. All is forgiven. Committee reassembles Vienna Monday 10 a.m. Victor.”

Taking his time, Brotherhood had turned to Fergus at last.

“What the hell do you want?” he said.

Fergus spoke the way Tom did when he had been holding back too long, waiting for the grown-ups to let him in.

“Crash message from the Station clerk at the Embassy, sir,” he blurted. “He phoned it through in word code. I’ve just unbuttoned it. The Station burnbox is missing from the strongroom.”