very frightened, he knew.
In recent months she had shown her concern at his drinking by almost total abstinence, but she accepted the brandy now, gulping at it.
‘It’s been too long,’ he said. ‘They will have abandoned the blanket scrutiny long ago. And there’s nothing wrong with the passports.’
She shook her head, refusing the lie.
‘That’s nonsense and you know it. They’ll never give up. Not until you’re dead.’
‘This is the fifth time we’ve crossed from the Continent without any trouble.’
She shrugged, still not accepting the reassurance.
‘Thank God we won’t have to go through it again.’
‘We’re safe, I tell you.’
With his empty glass, he gestured to the attentive barman, waving away the change.
‘If you’re so safe, why are you drunk every night by ten o’clock?’ she demanded. It was an unfair question, Edith realised. Fear wasn’t the only reason. But she wanted to hurt him, desperate for any reaction that would cause him to stop. She was very worried at the growing carelessness. She should be grateful, she supposed, that he’d finally agreed to abandon England. It had taken enough arguments.
He smiled, a lopsided expression.
‘Nothing else to do,’ he said, answering her question.
Edith shook her head, sadly.
‘You know something, Charlie?’ she said.
He drank awkwardly, spilling some of the liquor down his suit. It was already stained, she saw.
‘What?’
‘I never thought I would feel sorry for you. Amost every other emotion, probably. But never pity. And that’s nearly all there is now, Charlie. Pity.’
Another attempt to hurt, she recognised. Because it wasn’t true.
‘What about love?’
‘You’re making it difficult,’ she persisted. ‘Very difficult.’
He tried to straighten, to conceal the extent of his drunkenness, then discarded the pretence, slumping round-shouldered in the chair.
‘Thank you for agreeing to leave England,’ she said sincerely. The gesture was for her, she accepted.
Charlie shrugged, knowing the words would jam if he tried to speak. She had been right in persuading him, he knew. They were both much happier in Zurich, and having dispensed with Paris there wasn’t much point in retaining the Brighton house either. That was the trouble, he decided, extending the thought; there didn’t seem much point in anything any more.
‘We’ve still got to get nearly ?300,000 out of England,’ he said. ‘Won’t you be frightened?’
‘Yes,’ she said. It would be wrong to suggest he just left it and lived on the money she had, she knew.
‘Won’t you be?’ she asked.
He humped his shoulders, an uncaring gesture.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. He nodded and the refilled glass dutifully appeared.
He probably wouldn’t recall the conversation in the morning, decided Edith. It was already long past remembering time … long past many things.
Charlie was bored, she recognised. Bored and uninterested. For someone who had led a life as unique as Charlie’s, it was like an illness, gradually weakening him. Now he had nothing. Except guilt. There was a lot of that, she knew.
‘Promise me something else,’ she tried, hopefully, as the ferry began to move alongside the Southampton quayside.
His eyes were filmed, she saw, and his face was quite unresponsive.
‘Don’t go to the grave,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s a stupid, sentimental pilgrimage. He wouldn’t have expected you to do it.’
‘Want to,’ said Charlie, stubbornly.
‘It’s ridiculous, Charlie. There’s absolutely no point. And you know it.’
‘We’re coming here for the last time,’ he reminded her. ‘So I’m going, just once. I’ve waited long enough. It’ll be safe now.’
She sighed, accepting defeat.
‘Oh Charlie,’ she said. ‘Why does it all have to be such an awful mess?’
The office of George Wilberforce, Director of British Intelligence, was on the corner of the Whitehall building that gave views over both the Cenotaph and Parliament Square.
It was a darkly warm, reassuring room, in which the oil paintings of bewigged and satined statesmen adorning the panelled walls seemed an unnecessary reminder of an Empire.
The modern innovation of double glazing excluded noise from outside and deep pile carpet succeeded within. The books were in hand-tooled leather and the massive desk at which Wilberforce sat had been salvaged in 1947 aboard the same vessel that brought home the Queen’s throne from an independent India. Wilberforce considered he had the more comfortable piece of furniture.
The Director appeared as tailored for the room as the antique furniture and the unread first editions. He was a fine-featured, elegantly gangling man who affected pastel coloured shirts with matching socks and a languid diffidence that concealed the fervent need for acceptance in a job he had coveted for fifteen years and seen to go to two other men before him.
The only intrusive mannerism was the habit, during acrimonious or difficult discussions, of using a briar pipe, which he was never seen to light, like worry-beads, revolving it between his peculiarly long fingers and constantly exploring the bowl with a set of tiny tools that retreated into a gold container.
‘It’s good to see you again,’ greeted Wilberforce formally. Always before the meetings had been in Washington: he couldn’t recall an American Director of the C.I.A. making a visit like this to his predecessors, he thought.
Onslow Smith responded with one of the open-faced, boyish smiles that Wilberforce recalled from the sports photographs that littered the man’s office.
‘Seemed a good idea to hitch a ride on the same aircraft taking the new vice-President on his tour of Europe,’ said the C.I.A. director.
Wilberforce looked doubtful and the other man’s smile became apologetic.
‘And there was another reason,’ he conceded.
‘What?’
Smith hesitated, arranging the words.
‘The President has a new broom complex,’ he said. ‘Just like your guy.’
He cleared his throat, to make the quote obvious.
‘… “loose ends neatly tied … mistakes vigorously rectified where necessary.”’
Already, recalled Wilberforce, political cartoonists were featuring Austin and Smallwood taking turns at being each other’s ventriloquist’s dummies.
‘So I hear,’ said the Briton, waiting.
‘There’s been an official policy document,’ said Smith.
‘We’ve had something like that here,’ admitted Wilberforce.
‘Which means we have the same old problem,’ said Onslow Smith.
Wilberforce nodded, reaching out for a worry pipe.
‘Charlie Muffin,’ he agreed. ‘The bastard.’
FIVE
It wasn’t until he got into the churchyard and felt the damp, cold wind that always seems to blow in English cemeteries in November that Charlie Muffin sobered sufficiently to realise completely what he had done. And that the stupidity could kill him. Like so many stupidities before it.
