Our Kind of Traitor

‘And then some,’ said Gail. ‘I mean, what an act of faith! What were they doing trusting us like this? What made them think we were the ones suddenly? It was such a – such a bloody imposition!’

‘They didn’t have much choice,’ Perry softly observed, to which Luke added a wise nod that Yvonne discreetly copied, and Gail felt even more isolated than she had felt all evening.

* * *

Perhaps the tension in the under-ventilated basement was getting too much for Perry. Or perhaps – Gail’s thought – he was having an overdue fit of the guilts. He yanked his long body back into his chair, lowered his craggy shoulders to relax them and stabbed a forefinger at the buff folder lying between Luke’s small fists:

‘Anyway, you’ve got her text there in front of you in our document, so you don’t need me to recite it to you,’ he said aggressively. ‘You can read it for yourselves to your heart’s content. You have done so already, presumably.’

‘All the same,’ said Luke. ‘If you don’t mind, Perry. For completeness, as it were.’

Was Luke testing him? Gail believed he was. Even in the academic jungle that Perry was so determined to leave behind him, he was renowned for his ability to quote tracts of English literature on the strength of a single read. His vanity appealed to, Perry began reciting slowly and without expression:

‘Dmitri Vladimirovich Krasnov, the one they call Dima, European Director of Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia, Cyprus, is willing negotiate through intermediary Professor Perry Makepiece and lawyer Madam Gail Perkins mutually profitable arrangement with authority of Great Britain regarding permanent residence all family in exchange for certain informations very important, very urgent, very critical for Great Britain of Her Majesty. Children and household will return in approximately one and a half hour. There is convenient place where Dima and Perry may discuss advantageously without risk to be overheard. Gail will please accompany Tamara to other area of house. Is possible this house has many microphones. We will PLEASE NOT SPEAK until all persons return from crab races for celebration.’

‘Then the phone rang,’ said Gail.

* * *

Perry is sitting upright in his chair as if he has been called to order, hands as before spread flat on the table, back straight but shoulders on the slope as he meditates on the rightness of what he is about to do. His jaw is set in refusal although nobody has asked anything of him that needs to be refused, except for Gail, whose expression as she stares at him is one of dignified entreaty – or so she hopes, but maybe she’s just giving him the hairy eyeball, because she’s not sure any more what facial signals she’s emitting.

Luke’s tone is light-hearted, even debonair, which is presumably how he wishes it to be:

‘I’m trying to picture the two of you standing there together, you see,’ he explains keenly. ‘It’s a truly extraordinary moment, don’t you agree, Yvonne? Standing side by side in the hall? Reading? Perry holding the letter? Gail, you’re looking at it over his shoulder. Both literally struck mute. You’ve had this extraordinary proposition thrown at you to which you’re not allowed to respond in any way. It’s a nightmare. And as far as Dima and Tamara are concerned, simply by not speaking you’re halfway to being co-opted. Neither of you, I take it, is about to storm out of the house. You’re pinned down. Physically and emotionally. Am I right? So from their point of view, so far, so good: you’ve tacitly agreed to agree. That’s the impression you can’t help giving them. Totally inadvertently. Simply by doing nothing, by being there at all, you’re becoming part of their big play.’

‘I thought they were both totally barking,’ Gail says to deflate him. ‘Paranoid, the pair of them, frankly, Luke.’

‘Their paranoia taking what form exactly?’ – Luke undeterred.

‘How should I know? Deciding that somebody’s bugged the place, for openers. And little green men are listening.’

But Luke is more doughty than she expects. He comes back sharply:

‘Was that really so unlikely, Gail, after what you’d both seen and heard? You must have realized by now that you were standing with at least one foot in Russian crime. And you an experienced lawyer, if I may say so.’

* * *

A long pause followed. Gail had not expected to be locking horns with Luke, but if he wanted a fight he was welcome to one any time:

‘The so-called experience you refer to, Luke,’ she began furiously, ‘does not unfortunately cover’ – but Perry had already headed her off.

‘The phone rang,’ he gently reminded her.

‘Yes. Well, all right, the phone rang,’ she conceded. ‘It was a yard away from us. Less. Maybe two feet. It had a bell like a fire alarm going off. We jumped out of our skins. They didn’t, we did. A mossy, black, 1940s stand- up job with a dial and a concertina flex, sitting on a wobbly rattan table. Dima picked it up and bellowed Russian at it and we watched his face stretch into an arse-kissing smile that he didn’t mean. Everything about him was totally against his own free will. Forced smiles, forced laughter, false jollity, and a lot of yes-sir, no-sir, three bags full, and I’d like to strangle you with my bare hands. Eyes fixed all the time on batty Tamara, taking his cues from her. And the finger back in front of his lips, telling us no noises-off, please, all the time he’s talking. Right, Perry?’ – deliberately avoiding Luke.

Right.

‘So these are the people they’re afraid of, I’m thinking. And they want us to be afraid of them too. Tamara conducting him. Nodding, shaking her head, rouged cheeks and all, pulling a Medusa face for moments of mega-disapproval. Fair description, Perry?’

‘Florid, but accurate,’ Perry conceded awkwardly – then, thank the Lord, gave her a real full-beam smile, even if it was his guilty one.

‘And that was the first of many calls that evening, I rather believe?’ nimble Luke suggested, darting from one to the other of them with his quick, strangely lifeless eyes.

‘There must have been half-a-dozen phone calls in the time before the family came back,’ Perry agreed. ‘You heard them too, right?’ – for Gail – ‘And they were just for openers. All the time I was closeted with Dima, we’d hear the phone go and either Tamara would come yelling at Dima to answer it, or Dima would be jumping to his feet and hurrying off to take it himself, cursing in Russian. If there were phone extensions in the house I never saw them. He told me later that night that mobiles didn’t work up there because of the trees and the cliffs, which was why everyone called him on the landline. I didn’t believe him. I thought they were checking on his whereabouts, and calling the house on an old landline was the way to do it.’

‘They?’

‘The people who didn’t trust him. And he didn’t trust in return. The people he’s beholden to. And hates. The people they’re afraid of, so we’ve got to be.’

The people that Perry, Luke and Yvonne can know about and I mustn’t, in other words, thought Gail. The people in our bloody document that isn’t ours.

‘So this is the point where you and Dima retire to your convenient place where you can talk without risk of being overheard,’ Luke prompted.

‘Yes.’

‘And Gail, you went off to bond with Tamara.’

‘Bond my foot.’

‘But you went.’

‘To a tacky drawing room that stank of bat-piss. With a plasma television playing Russian Orthodox High Mass. She was carrying a tin.’

‘A tin?’

‘Didn’t Perry tell you? In our joint document that I haven’t seen? Tamara was carting a black tin handbag around with her. When she put it down it clanked. I don’t know where women carry their guns in normal society, but I had a feeling this was her Uncle-Vanya-equivalent.’

If it’s my swansong, I’ll bloody well make the most of it:

‘The plasma TV took up most of one wall. The other walls were decked out in icons. Travelling ones. Ornately framed for extra sanctity. Male saints, no Virgins. Where Tamara goes, there go the saints, or that was my guess.