By now, the rain had stopped. Stretching, he walked from the kitchen towards the long stone veranda and the single hardback bright blue chair given to him by the owner of a cafe in the village. The furnishings in the villa were sparse, and yet splendid. An old sagging double bed in one room, a camp stretcher in the other, and an old chintz lounge suite in the main living room were all that he had ever bought. Upended wooden beer crates served as small tables and an old rosewood door he had found in Thailand rested incongruously on four building blocks as a coffee table in front of the sofa. The rest of the place was filled with books and whatever odd items he had collected over the years. There was an antique gramophone with a brass horn and, on two walls, fine silk Qom carpets had been haphazardly hung, with other Tabriz and Isfahans scattered on the stone floors .
The walls were all white and an old wood bladed fan swished slowly from the high cool ceiling in the main room. The psychiatrists had told him to live with others, become part of a community, so he did exactly the opposite and found the old villa perched on a hillside across from the tiny village on the island of Serifos. From the front he could see the sparkling waters of the Aegean, and sitting at the kitchen table he could watch the path that wound its way down into the narrow gorge and up from the village. Visitors were infrequent but, some evenings, he would walk down and drink harsh red wine with the cafe owner, a sometimes morose, sometimes gregarious, individual called Nico. Then, the evening over, he would walk the dark path up the hillside to the silent house to await sleep, the nightmares and the demons it brought, and would later wake with his heart pounding, a silent scream on his lips sometimes two or three times before the dawn.
Sitting on the blue chair, he thought about the message the boy had bought over from the village that morning and watched as the distant ferry ploughed her way towards the harbour below.
A woman had phoned and was coming to stay. She sounded nice. Would she stay long, the boy’s mother wanted to know, because if she would, she could bring up flowers and clean sheets and some cheese and tomatoes. He slipped the boy some drachmas and said to help her with her case when she arrived in the village, then went back to work on the small gold icon.
It would be Holly Morton. He had first seen her when she was a gangly sixteen year old and he was in his last year at Cambridge. She had since married and they had lost touch until her father’s funeral. Then her husband had been killed in a pile-up on the M25 and, four months later she had phoned, just to say hello. Even then, he could hear the tension in her voice – and his offer of a place to lick her wounds had been accepted.
It was right that he should help. Holly was the daughter of his friend and mentor and the nearest thing he had to family. The Service had once been family. Teddy Morton and MI6. For him the two were inseparable because the Don had recruited him. It wasn’t just the languages ability. It was the silent strength of the loner and buckets of pure nerve that interested the faceless men in London.
It began with a student prank, common enough in Cambridge. A young man and his girlfriend inebriated enough for the dare attempted to climb the outside wall of the Kings College Chapel. Three quarters of the way up the girl looked down and, suddenly sober, froze against the hard cold stone. Her boyfriend couldn’t budge her and she began to cry, her grip weakening by the second. Quayle, returning to his College, pushed through the gaggle of watching students and began to climb the wall below her, talking all the time, encouraging her to hold on.
Pushing the boyfriend aside, he moved his body outside hers and coaxed her into moving downwards, his bulk reassuring against her back. At one point, she lost her grip and, for several seconds, the watching group below held their breath as Quayle took her entire weight on his knees, his hands gripping the gaps in the stones with almost obscene strength, before she scrabbled another hold. From below, a camera flash lit the wall and, a minute later, they dropped the last eight feet to the ground.
By breakfast, the word was out. The Cambridge evening paper had the pictures – and Quayle was certain that, if they published them, then the girl on the wall would be sent down. The College could only ignore so much; pictures in the paper demanded action. That lunch time, Quayle donned a borrowed suit and, armed with a couple of other props, walked into the offices of the newspaper, charmed his way past the receptionist and within minutes was in the photo section. After finding both the print and the negatives, he stuffed both into his briefcase and walked out, handing the receptionist a salesman’s calling card with a flourish. Not once had he been challenged.
The story was told with some relish by those few in the know – and, in the Masters’ rooms, an Australian tutor shook his head, saying, “That boy has more nerve than a bull ant,” and chuckling delightedly.
Edward Morton smiled and agreed. He decided there and then to talk to the people at Century.
He watched her walk up the path, the boy chattering to her, the suitcase balanced on his head. She had lost weight since he had seen her last and her hair was scraped back in a
