The Other Side of Silence

“When they met, she was Mrs. Wellcome, the wife of a wealthy American pharmaceutical manufacturer. They married in 1914. It was probably Syrie that put him off women for life. They divorced in nineteen twenty-eight. But she never married again so he was obliged by the terms of his settlement to support her financially. She died last year. And not a moment too soon as far as Maugham was concerned. By all accounts he hated her. I think he felt she’d trapped him into marriage. That she’d used him as a way of getting rid of Henry Wellcome.”

Anne showed me another file. It was titled HAXTON, GERALD FREDERICK.

“This name I recognize,” I said. “He was friend and companion number one, I think. Another homosexual Englishman. It’s something to do with the weather they have in England, I expect. They can hide a lot in that fog. Anyway, he sounds like a piece of work.”

“He was. Only he wasn’t English, he was American. From San Francisco. Maugham met him during the first war when Gerald was with the American Red Cross. He visited England only once, for less than a week, in February nineteen nineteen. He went to London, hoping to see Maugham, but was picked up and deported. Never went back.”

“That explains a lot, I guess. I mean, why Maugham has stayed down here for so long.”

“What I want to say to you now, Walter, is this. I really can help. If there’s anything you need to know that you think you can’t ask him, then ask me. The chances are I will know something about it. Like you, I’m an admirer of his. Albeit for different reasons. You just like the man for himself, perhaps. I happen to believe he’s one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I know I haven’t been very honest with you about all this but for what it’s worth now, I give you my word that anything you tell me will be in confidence until after he’s dead. Or at the very least until you give me permission to use it. Is that fair?”

“I suppose so,” I murmured uncertainly. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll pay you for your help, of course.” She paused. “To cover your expenses.”

“All of a sudden there are so many people trying to pump money into me. I feel like a cigarette machine. And all of them English, too. The odd thing-to me at least-is how little I want it. Look, I’m not doing any of this for money, Anne. Not really. The old man is paying me a basic fee to help him out of a tight spot, and that’s it. And between us, well, what I’m saying is that I’d prefer there was no money at all. If I help you-and I haven’t said I will, yet-it will be because I like you and only because I like you. Nothing else. Money complicates everything. Especially between lovers.”

“Of course. I get that.”

“Do you? I wonder.”

“Look, the files are there if you need to use them. All you have to do is ask.”

“There is something I’d like to know about,” I said.

“Name it.”

“His service with SIS in nineteen seventeen. What can you tell me about that?”

“Actually it was through Syrie that the intelligence connection came about. One of her girlfriends was the mistress of a man in the secret service by the name of Major John Wallinger. It was Wallinger who offered Maugham a job and sent him to Switzerland, in nineteen fifteen. By nineteen sixteen, Maugham was an invaluable field agent working for Sir Mansfield Cumming, who was head of the foreign section of the British secret service and for whom Maugham was running a whole network of spies in southern Germany from the Hotel d’Angleterre in Geneva. Not everyone can do something like that. By nineteen seventeen, after the February Revolution in Russia, he was working out of the British embassy in Petrograd, where he met Alexander Kerensky several times. Kerensky was the leader of the Mensheviks. By now Maugham had several hundred secret agents under his sole control. He left Petrograd two days before the October Revolution, which brought the Bolsheviks to power and which ought to tell you something: that Maugham’s intelligence antennae were very good. Not everyone managed to get out safely. Since then it’s anyone’s guess how much work he’s done for the British, but there’s no doubt that being an internationally famous author is always good cover for a lot of spying. China, Central America, even the United States-Maugham has always maintained a strong connection with his old pals in the British secret service. In many ways he was the ideal agent: He’s an extraordinarily perceptive man, not to mention naturally secretive. He even wrote a novel about spying called Ashenden. I’ll lend it to you if you like.”

“Yes, I’d like to read that.”

She went to the shelves and quickly found me a copy.

Feeling the heat, I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of the door to one of the bathrooms. “I’m impressed,” I said. “At how much you know about him.”

“That’s my job. Tell me, these people from the Foreign Office. Did he say who they are?”

“He mentioned two names. Someone called Sir John Sinclair.”

“Never heard of him.”

“And a man named Blunt. Anthony Blunt.”