Havergal glanced over his shoulder, making sure that Isobel wasn't behind him – presumably her armour required a moment's fitting.
'Roskill,' the Colonel finally acknowledged him, 'I've been talking to Fred Clinton about you.'
In other circumstances Roskill might have whistled: Havergal had certainly gone straight to the top. Indeed, since Sir Frederick was never available for casual queries, this was an old boys' network operating at an exalted level. It was disquieting, that.
'Despite your bull-in-a-chinashop tactics, he vouches for you,'
Havergal continued. 'I took you for a beginner, but it seems you aren't. It seems I must rely on you.'
The soft answer died on Roskill's lips. The only thing that Havergal would ever do with a doormat would be to wipe his feet on it.
'We're rather in the same boat then,' he said casually. 'He said much the same about you. We shall both have to make the best of it — in the national interest.'
'My dear Roskill, that rather depends on how you define the national interest – if there is one in this instance. There was a time when interest and responsibility and honour coincided. Now they don't often seem to do that.' Havergal stared at Roskill unwaveringly. 'In any case, my concern at the moment is with the Foundation — I don't care to involve myself beyond that.'
'And what exactly is it about the Foundation that disturbs you at the moment, Colonel Havergal?'
Havergal shook his head. 'You tell me, Roskill.'
dummy2
Roskill considered the Colonel in silence. This was where the man's full file would have been a godsend – it would have given him some clue as to where leverage might be applied. He hadn't asked Howe enough questions, not expecting this hostility.
To Havergal Roskill had signified something he'd been afraid of for a long time ...
. . . Havergal, who'd retired and been forced to watch his work erased as his country withdrew from the lands it had dominated in his youth. The fact that he liked the Arabs, admiring the uncomplicated simplicity of Islam as so many Englishmen before him had done, only made it worse: the Red Navy ships anchored off Basra and Aden and Alexandria, and the M.I.G.S lined up on the old R.A.F. strips in Egypt, Iraq and now even at Khormaksar, signified that they'd only changed one master for another, and a worse one at that.
But then he'd encountered the Foundation – something; useful and above board that fitted his personal inclination and his specialist knowledge . . . something worth living and fighting for.
Isobel came into the room bearing a coffee tray. Typically, her coffee was not in delicate bone china but in enormous N.A.A.F.I.-
style mugs on which Kitchener's portrait and the legend 'Your Country Needs You' was superimposed on a large Union Jack. – 'I know you'd both rather have Scotch,' she said in her Lady Ryle voice, 'but with the way Wadsworth pours drinks I think you've both had more than sufficient.' She set the tray on a low table and motioned them both into chairs. It was the first rule of the experienced hostess to get her antipathetical guests on soft dummy2
cushions, naturally: stand-up rows were less easy to pursue when sitting down.
'I was about to ask Colonel Havergal about the Ryle Foundation, Isobel,' Roskill said quickly. 'But perhaps you could answer me –
where would you say its special usefulness lies? Compared with other agencies?'
'We're rather unspectacular really, Hugh. We never make headlines.'
'What do you think, Colonel?'
Havergal grunted, sensing danger but unable to locate its direction.
If he knew his Liddell Hart, though, he'd recognise the strategy of the Indirect Approach.
'I'll tell you what I think,' said Roskill with false diffidence. 'I think you're right, Isobel – I think it does a very valuable job because it's never been the least bit political – even in the old days it never had any British strings attached to it. It never produced future statesmen or generals – just nurses and farmers and primary school teachers.'
It was a mash of snatches of half-remembered lunch conversations at Ryle House – mostly John's remarks, not even addressed to him.
It surprised him that they had stuck in his memory, like flotsam left at a freak tidemark. But it served now to rouse Havergal. 'That's true enough – you've done your homework,' he said cautiously.
'We've never been a short-cut for the clever intellectuals. We've never sent anyone to Oxford and Cambridge – or to Harvard. Old Jacob Ryle wasn't one of Cecil Rhodes's admirers. He laid it down dummy2
in black and white – get the good second-class brains and train 'em to do something useful. Work 'em so hard they won't have time to get up to mischief – '
Havergal stopped abruptly, as though he'd followed Roskill's lead one step too far on to dangerous ground.
'But it hasn't worked out like that, has it?'
Havergal remained silent. It was quite clear to Roskill now that he'd come to the flat to get information and not to give it; to get it and use it to purge his beloved Foundation of impurities which now contaminated its down-to- earth aims.
He'd agreed to come because he'd thought – and reasonably enough
– that Roskill was a bungling beginner. But apparently Sir Frederick had told him otherwise, and that had put him on his guard.
But that wouldn't serve the present crisis, to which the health of the Ryle Foundation and an old man's peace of mind were secondary.
