Archangel

man from the Service.

A radio played inside the flat, the bell tinkled under his finger.

She was very pretty.

Straight blonde hair, slender-faced and with a wide mouth of expectancy as if everything that happened that was a surprise was excitement and welcomed. A green sweater that flattered and a knitted skirt that matched. A pretty girl and one that should be with a man, not a girl who should have sat beside a solicitor in a High Street divorce court.

Millet had played the images game on the pavement outside, had anticipated a tousled woman who wore badges of failure.

And the girl was lovely, lovely and fresh and anticipating.

'Yes…?'

'I'm Alan Millet, Foreign and Commonwealth..

'Yes..

'Can I come in, please?'

' 'Course you can, but you'll be sitting on your own all day

– I'm on my way out.'

'Where do you go?'

'Town… off the Strand. Boring old Building Society.'

'I'd like to come with you.'

'Please yourself… bring the milk in, can you?… I'm hell's late and that's usual.'

He picked up from beside his feet two cartons of milk and a plastic box of half a dozen eggs. At the end of the corridor leading from the front door was the kitchen, where he found the fridge. He heard her whistling to the radio beyond the half-closed door of what he presumed was her bedroom, and there was another door that could have led to the living-room. A dwelling unit, nothing more, something that was right for a girl that was alone, right for a girl who lived without a man. She blustered out of the bedroom, and swept up a coat from a chair in the corridor. Millet grinned and stepped out onto the landing and behind him the door slammed cheerfully. He took his cue from her and they half ran and half walked the couple of hundred yards to the station, and she led and he followed. He had no ticket and she had a Season, and while he stood in line at the window they missed one train and she rolled her head and her eyes and seemed to think it a joke and when the train came there was one thought only in Millet's mind. How in God's name did this go wrong?

A commuter train, a stop at each station, all seats taken by the grey-suited men who hid from each other behind their newspapers and the film of cigarette and pipe smoke.

So they stood and their hands clasped at the baggage rack above their heads, and Millet saw the eyes of a fellow traveller flit to the girl's features as if they were staring at those magazines on the high shelf behind the newsagent's counter. How could Michael Holly and this girl have broken?

'I want to talk to you about Michael.'

A frown creased her forehead, it's three years since I've seen him, long before all this business. Did you say Foreign Office?… I've not seen him since the split.' it's confidential really – but we were hoping to get him back. It hasn't worked out.' i didn't know.'

Lunatic. A train swaying between Kingston and Norbiton and New Maiden, and a member of the permanent staff of the Service talking with a stranger about a freelance recruit who had been snaffled. They'd have his balls at Century for it.

'The Soviets have now transferred him to a Labour Camp.'

'They're ghastly?'

'Pretty dreadful.' i don't know how I can help you. I told you, it's been a long time

…'

He felt a pig, a bore. He was ashamed of himself, and he leant towards her, and the scent she had dabbed at her neck in the bedroom played at his nostrils.

'What broke it, Mrs Holly?'

'Foreign Office, you said? That's the business of the Foreign Office?'

For the first time he saw a nervousness from her, the hesitation of the little girl lost. He was playing the bastard because that way the inner door opened.

'I said Foreign Office, Mrs Holly. Why did it break?'

Her laugh showed a stain of fear, and the man whose elbow was lodged in Alan Millet's rib turned to the girl. She smiled and looked bravely into Alan Millet's face.

'I'll talk to you for all the time we're on this train. You don't come to the office, you don't come again to my home…'

'Agreed,' Millet said quietly. 'You have my word, Mrs Holly.'

'I think I love him still, I think I'll love him all my life. I've never fallen out of love with him, not when he went home, not when we were in the courts, not now after three years.

He's a man that a woman wants to love. You feel very proud when you're with him. He's perfect, you see, Mr Millet.

What's the silly bitch saying, that's what you're asking, isn't it? He's punctual, I'm late. He's tidy, I drop everything anywhere. He speaks when he has something to say, I'll talk about anything with anyone. He has a patience and a calmness, I lose my temper and shout and scream. I never had a chance to bitch at him… do you know what that means? Can you imagine what that's l i k e… I can't express it properly. He was like a kind of martyr, it was as if all my failings were stones that were thrown at him and which he never complained of. If he'd yelled at me then I'd have been delirious, then I could have lived with him… He didn't need a wife, can you believe that? He didn't need me, or anyone else. He's an entity on his own… '

'I said it would be pretty dreadful where he is now, how will he cope there?'

She giggled shrilly and swayed against him as the train lurched on the points on the approach to Waterloo.

'I don't have to answer that, do I? I mean, well, it's pretty obvious from what I've said… I told you that I loved him, that's God's truth, I love him and I tell you they might have made such a place just for him.'

The train had stopped. i said you shouldn't come back to me, Mr Millet, and you agreed.'

'I gave my word, Mrs Holly, thank you.'

Millet and the girl were pushed towards the door, dis-gorged from the carriage.

The smile swept her face and she patted his hand, and then she had spun on her heel and the swing was in her hips as she walked away into the hurrying crowds.

Chapter 7

Holly worked on alone at the lathe that fashioned the chairs' legs.

Around him the other machines were silent, closed down.

The saws and planes and chisels and hammers were abandoned. The benches were deserted. Only Holly was at his place. His back was to the window and he did not turn to spare a glance at the crush of the zeks who squirmed against the grime of the windows. There was no expression on his face, just the blank skin facade of hunger and tiredness.

At first the civilian foremen who came to the Factory each morning from Barashevo village had shouted that the men should stay at their work, but their protests had made a battle that he could not win. The trusties of Internal Order had added their voices and they, too, were ignored. The two wings of authority had accepted defeat and then joined the workforce at the windows. Beyond the glass there was a sporadically placed ring of guards and dogs who seemed uncertain as to whether to stare back at the distorted press of faces at the glass panes, or whether to watch instead the spiral column of smoke and the flames that played at its heels. Only the roof of the Commandant's hut was visible over the high wooden fence that was the boundary of the Factory compound, but the fire was high and the smoke higher. There was much for everyone to see. Like children the prisoners revelled in the spectacle, and their enjoyment was spurred by the noise of sirens and shouting and the crackle of old wood in the