The Labyrinth Makers

'You want me to tell you that I'd fight for Queen and Country no matter what?'

'Would you?'

'No, I wouldn't. Would you?'

Audley shook his head.

'The same question doesn't apply to me. I'm old-fashioned. But I dummy4

didn't put the question properly. Can I trust you to trust me?'

Faith made a sour face. 'That's a hard one, isn't it! And a dirty one, too.'

'I don't see why it should be. You'd give me answers on much more difficult questions. You'd tell me that the Americans were wrong in Vietnam. You're sure that Porton is as wicked as Aldermaston.

You think moon rockets ought to be beaten into ploughshares. But it doesn't matter, because I'm not putting the question to you–I have to put it to myself.'

He took the cutlery from her and continued the work.

'Who cut my lawn today?'

She shook her head in disbelief. 'What an odd person you are! I cut your lawn for you. When Mrs Clark came with your groceries this morning and found you gone she practically ordered me to do it.

She even showed me how to start the mower. What's that got to do with trusting me?'

'Mrs Clark is a good judge of character. If she trusts you with the mower and the lawn, then perhaps I can trust you in other matters.

Are you willing to find out exactly what your father did, for better or worse?'

'I want to. And I can't see the harm in that.'

'There could be more to it than that. I told you last night that your father took something. There's a Russian who knows what it was.

And he wants it so badly that he's willing to ask us to help him find it. At least, that's what we think he's going to ask us.'

'Is he a good man or a bad man?'

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'He's a very important man.'

Faith shivered. 'If good and bad aren't words that mean anything to you, then you'd better not trust me. Because I'd be an idiot to trust you.'

Audley caught himself on the very brink of accusing her of naivete. Of course she was naive–and so was he to expect anything else. Again, too, that unforgivable crime: if he was to use her he had to persuade her first.

'We just don't know about him, except that he has great power and influence in his own country. And that's why we've got to find out what it is and why it's so important to him. We'd like him for a friend, but we can't trust him. You must see that!'

'It always comes back to trusting people. You never trust them and they never trust you! It's just a game to you!'

'Trust them!' He felt the anger he couldn't stifle tighten his throat.

'Be like Dubcek? Or like Nagy and Maleter? And Jan Masaryk?

Christ, woman, we don't have the right to trust them.'

He could see the pit ahead of him, but he was no longer able to avoid it. He didn't even want to avoid it now, anyway.

'Of course it's a game. And if everyone played it sensibly we'd be a damn sight better off. It's the people who try to turn the pie-faced noble sentiments and the crude doctrinaire slogans into practice who start the shooting. So you'd better pack up your cosy scruples and your moral dilemmas and take them back to school with you, Miss Jones. They'll look better on a blackboard.'

He paused for breath, and despised himself. There was a flush on dummy4

her cheeks, the colour spreading as though he had hit her.

Shopkeepers and schoolteachers were easy game. And tempting game, too, after the Stockers and Joneses, who could always keep him in his place.

'I'm sorry, Miss Jones. None of that was fair. And you could be right,' he said dully. 'But I do care about the game I play–or used to play. In fact, I think I've been landed with your father because I cared too much about it: I hated to see the Middle East turned into a Tom Tiddler's ground–mostly by your friends the Russians, but by us and the Americans too. I've no right to take it out on you, though.'

She turned, and he thought for a moment that she was simply going to leave the room. But instead she reached for a chair and settled astride it, resting her chin on the back.

'What do you want me to do, then?' she said.

He regarded her with surprise. She had not seemed the sort of person to submit to bullying.

'You mean that you're still willing to help me?'

'More than ever now, David. I don't pretend to understand you. Or maybe, it's just that I don't understand what makes someone like you do this sort of thing. But I somehow don't think you'd commit yourself to what was wrong. And I'm sorry I said it was just a game. That was–well, it was far worse than what you said.'