realised, his own.
His father had almost sabotaged his entire year off on the night before he left. Sitting at the kitchen table of their London flat in Pimlico, he told him to let his hair down and live a bit. It could have been the kiss of death from any other father to a teenage son, but they had grown close during his mother’s illness, so his father poured him another Bruichladdich and laughed.
‘Just in case you should ever consider a career in the Service, there are only two things that make the vetters twitchy,’ his father had continued. ‘Heroin and whores.’
‘Perfect qualifications for a journalist.’
‘That’s still the thing, is it?’
‘Someone needs to expose all the Whitehall corruption,’ he grinned.
‘Your mother always wanted a doctor in the family, you know that.’ Marchant watched his father knock back his whisky, a slight tremor in his usually steady hand.
‘Because she thought Sebbie could have been saved?’
‘The doctors were very kind, said there was nothing that could have been done, but she always blamed herself for the accident.’
The years immediately after Sebastian’s death were vague now, but he remembered them as a strange time, a part of his life that floated in limbo, separate from the rest of his past. The overt kindness of so many people, more time spent with his father, his oddly withdrawn mother, who missed Sebastian terribly. His father had once hinted at some kind of mental illness, but it was the one subject he could never talk about with him. His own grieving had played out in reverse; he missed Sebastian more as each year passed.
Marchant thought again about his brother as he read through more of his own legend: the family details (English father, Irish mother), schooling, everything the same as his own life, except for the decision to travel on an Irish passport, which he knew was for operational reasons (it would draw less attention than a British one). It frustrated him that he could no longer be sure which memories were his own and which had been shaped by family albums. He remembered Sebastian playing in the orchard at Tarlton, dropping apples on their father’s sleeping head in the hammock; he could still see him sitting cross-legged with him in their room at the top of the cottage, trying to make as much noise as they could on their Indian
His mother’s death was there, so too was his father’s, as well as a propensity to drink too much (a thoughtful gesture by the cobblers), but the career of David Marlowe’s father had been with the British Council. It was Marlowe’s first few years, though, that made Marchant curse them for not showing more imagination. Marlowe had also lost his brother in a car crash in Delhi, where his father had been posted. The name, Sebastian, was the same; but had Marlowe ever felt his sense of loss, the sharp jabs from the shadows that came at any time of the day or night? Marchant screwed the paper up into a tight ball. If there was one thing he could have erased from his Marlowe’s past, it would have been Sebastian’s death. But at least there would be no pretending.
He took the clothes downstairs in a plastic carrier bag and paid for some tokens and washing powder at reception. The young woman at the desk saw the bag and smiled at his domesticity. She had a flower tucked behind one ear, introduced herself as Monika, and joked that Irish travellers wore the cleanest clothes. Marchant knew conversation with anyone was a risk, but she had initiated the exchange, and it would arouse more suspicion if he kept quiet. Besides, Monika was good-looking, bohemian, early twenties — just Marlowe’s type.
‘Like the flower,’ he said, smiling back at her. His accent was a soft Dublin one, like his mother’s.
‘Thanks.’
‘My room’s covered in them.’
‘Oh, you’re in spring. Do you like it? Dom is a friend of mine. The artist.’
‘Groovy,’ he said, hoping the irony translated.
Monika laughed lightly as he walked off down the corridor towards the launderette.
‘Groo-vy,’ he heard her repeat, saying the word slowly.
Under the heading of sexuality, David Marlowe had been described as a ‘promiscuous heterosexual’. He wondered if that’s what it said on his own vetting file. In the early days at the Fort he had tried hard to prevent his relationship with Leila from becoming serious, deliberately dating other women. Spy school, he had joked, was no place to make an honest woman of her: it was where people learnt to cheat and lie, not to love. Marchant, though, had kept coming back to Leila, who seemed neither surprised nor resentful. At least until recently. In the months leading up to his suspension, just when he was finally ready to accept (and needed) their relationship, she had been hesitant to make the step up, oddly changeable in her emotions: one moment pulling him in, the next pushing him away.
As he emptied his bag of clothes into one of the hostel’s empty washing machines, Marchant knew that it wouldn’t require much effort for David Marlowe to pursue another woman. It would be harder for him, though, even if the hippy-chick charms of Monika held a certain nostalgic appeal. He must tap into his own past, rebuffing any pangs of guilt with the irritation he had felt at Leila’s recent reluctance to commit.
It had been a few years since he had mixed with anyone like Monika, or stayed in a place like the Oki Doki, but he was encouraged by how easily old habits returned, once the mental switch had been flicked. He thought about rolling a joint again, something he hadn’t done since joining the Service, and the joys of stoned sex.
His smile quickly faded, though, as he watched the load of washing turn and tumble. Wafting down the corridor from the hostel kitchen was the smell of Polish cooking:
He bent double over the gutter and vomited. Breathing in deeply, he stood up and walked down the empty street at a brisk pace, keeping to the shadows in the early-evening light. Then, a moment later, he heard a voice behind him. It was Monika’s.
‘Are you OK? You look terrible. Very un-groo-vy.’
The flower was now behind her other ear, but Marchant didn’t say anything: Marlowe wouldn’t have noticed.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, taking in her lissom figure for the first time. ‘Is there a barber around here? Nothing fancy, I just need a crew.’
‘Crew?’
‘All off,’ Marchant said, smiling. ‘Buzz cut…wiffle…GI One.’
Half an hour later he was sitting on a stool in a bedsit flat, around the corner from the hostel, with a whisky in his hand. Monika leant in against him as she shaved the last remnants of sandy hair from his head, her bare studded navel pressed against his back. In one hand she held the razor, in the other a large spliff. Vashti Bunyan was on the CD player. Monika had offered to cut Marchant’s hair herself, and he could think of no good reason to refuse. Her shift at the hostel was over, and he liked the anonymity her bedsit provided.
‘I’m done,’ Monika said, flicking away some loose strands. ‘Can I rub in some moisturiser? Your skin, it’s very dry.’ As she said this she leant forward, her smiling face appearing in the mirror at the side of his own, and placed the spliff in Marchant’s mouth.
‘Sure, whatever,’ Marchant said, assuming the dryness was down to something the Americans had put in the water. Before the weed dulled his senses he ran an eye around the room again, then went back over the last few hours, reassuring himself about her, their encounter. On balance, it was a good thing. The CIA would be looking for a single man, not a couple. Monika was in need of company, having recently split from her boyfriend, and she had already talked about spending the next few days together, looking at the antiques in Kolo Bazaar, drinking in the bars of Stare Miasto, although she knew he was booked on a flight the following morning.
‘I wish you weren’t going to India so soon, Mr Englishman,’ she said, moving around and sitting on his lap, facing him. She took the spliff out of his mouth and placed it back in her own. Marchant curled his arms around her lower back, and pulled her closer to him. For a moment all he could see was Leila, naked in the shower, watching him. He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply and thought hard about David Marlowe.
He stroked her cheek as he tried to calculate the risks and benefits of delaying his flight to stay with her. His brain was easing up. It slowed even more as she leant forward and kissed him, her spliff-free hand slipping inside his Levi’s.
