“Is the Foreign Office the big marble one with the murals in Parliament Street?” I said, wanting to sound informed but uninterested.
“Ye-es, I expect so,” he said, attempting a patronising smile that made him look like he was going to sneeze. “But we’re not going there.”
An irritating pause, into which I was expected to contribute.
“So where are we going, Sherlock?”
Looking back, how I wish that I’d just asked the cab to pull over and let me out. It was sunny, I could have walked for a bit.
“We’re going sarf of the river – to sis.”
“We’re going to visit your sister?” I imagined a snake-hipped redhead with an Alice band and freckles. Clapham, probably. I was glad he’d attempted an Ealing-comedy accent. It put him further into my classification.
“No, not quite. I don’t have a sister.” Ah, actually that made more sense. “S-I-S. PO Box 010. Six.” He turned towards me for the first time. “Vauxhall Cross.”
I looked out of the window at the tourists around Big Ben, in what I hoped was a “whatever” kind of way. On Millbank, I expected the cab to turn left over Lambeth Bridge, crossing the Thames at the Palace, where I’d been for the legals not long before, but Toby leaned forward again and called for the cabbie to drop us just the other side of the roundabout, on the north side of the river.
A tenner through the window, some change, a receipt, then another come-on swish across the traffic and through a huge arch, decorated high above with gilt roses, in a great, light-grey granite slab of office block. Doors to be swished through, plastic identity card shown, turnstiles to be thighed through, the odd “she’s with me”, but apparently no need for me to tell anyone who I was, no desk-diaries with an elastic band across today’s date for me to sign. You’d have thought I would have to prove who I was, but being in Toby’s tow was enough.
Then a lift. Down. If I’m honest, this really was a surprise. But perhaps we were going to a bunker. Or a theatre.
The lift gave out on to a white-bleached, concrete corridor with the lighting ducts in piped conduits. Swing doors and a little platform, next to a rail-track of a small gauge. It had more in common with a mine than London’s Underground network.
“Hi-ho,” I murmured.
No response from Tobes.
“How sweet,” I added. “Do you have clock-golf too?”
“It takes us under the river to our office,” said Toby, flashing his card in front of a reader again. “Saves anyone being seen going in and being compromised. There are two trucks, one at either end, with passing points in the middle, so a train is never more than five minutes away. Like a ski-lift.”
“Or a tunnel of love.” I was beginning to enjoy this.
The driverless funicular rattled into our chamber station and we got in. It was blue, surprisingly modern, big windows, sliding doors. It hummed into the illuminated darkness. I decided to try being nice.
“Is this your normal commute, Toby?”
It was still slightly mocking, but I said it with a smile.
“No, I live in Clapham. I take the bus in and use the front door.”
Ahh. I felt slightly sorry that I’d mocked him now. Perhaps he was just a fresh-faced boy who knew no other world. But I was chuffed I’d got Clapham right, even if I had got the sister part of it wrong. He would live in a shared terraced house, close to the common, with a knock-through living area, with friends who knew what he did for a living and were quietly impressed, though they would pull his leg too. So he was used to it, but knew his job was quite cool, even if he’d applied for it, like everything else, on the internet.
The partner train flashed past – I saw no one in it. Then a more modern little station, more space, a flasher lift and into a corridor that felt high. I caught a view of the Thames sliding by, as if in the opposite direction now. Some big swing doors, open-plan behind tinted screens, staff at computers. A meeting room with two tall slit windows, facing only another wing of the same building, with similar slits. A fat-faced, smiley woman at the door.
“Would you like coffee or tea?”
I went for water, Toby held a hand up and said he was “good”.
I wandered away down the length of the table: “Who are we meeting?”
“Middle East desk. I don’t know who. I’m just the bag carrier.” He looked at me and grinned. “No offence.”
The room filled suddenly, led by a pale and skinny man, probably prematurely aged at around fifty, with blotched skin and a closely shaven balding head. He smiled a crinkly eyed grimace that gave his lids the texture of foreskins and shook hands, having dumped some buff folders.
Behind him was a younger woman, tallish and slim, with sens-ibly managed hair, a pale blue suit about a decade out of date with a beetle brooch on her left lapel. She sat and opened a red and black notebook and a small laptop.
The third was another woman, shorter, with an unattended bob, showing grey streaks that weren’t highlights. She wore a ready, broad and rehearsed smile and leaned in to shake my hand warmly as if she knew me. She came too close with her greeting, wanting to convey that she was my friend and colleague in this troupe. When she’d moved from behind the others, she’d have known the first thing I’d notice was her dog collar on a navy clerical shirt, under a charcoal sleeveless cardigan.
This little triumvirate had been together elsewhere, I thought. They had gathered before I arrived for the purpose of this meeting, and I wondered what they’d been saying about me and what was on Miss Buttoned-Up Oxbridge’s laptop, as Toby, suddenly deferential, slid by wall-side and out of the
