The Bear's Tears

one car, eating. He strode on, a melodramatic actor in his dotage parodying a blind man's walk.

A woman with a dog spoke to him. He raised his hat without seeing or identifying her. There was the noise of a car behind him, but it did not evoke fear. He merely walked on until he reached the end of the terrace and turned right towards the Marylebone Road.

Lights, traffic. His legs felt weak, almost without energy, paralysed. His body had become very heavy now, glutinously restraining his emotional desire for speed, for flight. He forced his limbs to move. The noise of the traffic loudened. He reached the Marylebone Road.

Taxi, taxi, taxi—

It was cracking, like a mask upon the skin. As his resolve and his will dehydrated, the mask had begun to crack open.

The taxi stopped. 'Where to, guv?'

The enquiry was like a gulp of reviving air. He fumbled with the door handle, murmuring 'Victoria' in a choked voice. He almost fell forward into the taxi's interior, gaining the seat just before his legs gave away and a hot flush invested his entire body. He sighed, loosened his overcoat, lay back.

'Traffic's bad this evening,' he heard someone say, presumably the cab driver, but he had no interest in replying. He merely wanted to rest now, and allow reaction and weakness their moment, then recover from them.

He had done it, he told himself. Blundered out of his captivity like a child or a blind man. He had done it.

* * *

Alison Shelley had become fascinated by the woman who sat opposite her in her lounge, still wearing her tweed coat and holding her hat in her twisting hands. The woman was perhaps ten years older than herself, distraught, pale from her various and contradictory fears, tired. Yet she possessed a calm, a sense of certainty, what could only be called an authority, that Alison envied. Margaret Massinger, by virtue of her upbringing, wealth and social milieu, had never had the slightest interest in, or need for, feminism, equality of opportunity, even the franchise. That much was obvious to her hostess.

She studied, too, her husband as he talked to Margaret Massinger. Peter was afraid and kept throwing sly little guilty looks in her direction, but some covert part of him was intrigued, mystified, prompted to action. Alison knew that he was on the point of throwing in his lot with the Massingers and she knew that she, reluctantly, would do the same with her husband. She would join because she knew his current sleeplessness and irritability all derived from his self-contempt and his inability to quell his loyalty.

'There's no other line, Mrs Massinger…' Peter was saying, spreading his hands helplessly. 'I only wish there were. Your husband has had all the doors slammed in his face. That's the size of it, I'm afraid.' Shelley looked as lugubriously regretful as a bloodhound.

'That's not a lot of help to Mrs Massinger,' Alison observed quietly, studying her sherry glass and then Margaret's face. Margaret Massinger seemed grateful for her intervention, perhaps understanding her motives; granting permission for her husband to involve himself.

Peter Shelley's face was dubious, then his frown cleared. He, too, realised the purpose of her interjection, even though he could not act upon it. He shrugged. 'I know it isn't,' he said. 'But it's also true, darling.'

'Surely there's some way — I—?' Margaret began, lowering her eyes to the crumpled hat in her lap as her voice faltered. She was distraught, and evidently she felt inadequate to counter Shelley's expertise, his insider's experience. After a moment she added, not looking up: 'Paul can't stay cooped up for ever, Mr Shelley.'

'I — don't know what to say,' was Shelley's only reply.

'Why can't we talk to Andrew Babbington—?' she blurted.

Shelley paused, then shook his head as he spoke. 'We don't know,' he said softly. 'We don't know who it is. And whoever it is might get to hear — then…' He hurried on gloomily: 'We don't have any proof, we wouldn't be believed.'

'What about this man Hyde?'

'God alone knows where he is. He arrived in Pakistan — there's been no contact since.'

'God, isn't there anything you can do?' Alison asked in a loud, strained voice. She got up, pacing the room in front of the glowing fire, her sherry glass catching its lights. 'There must be something, Peter — surely to God? Mr Massinger's life's in danger. He's hiding in his flat like a criminal. He needs your help!'

'What can I do?' Shelley pleaded, resenting her interruption. He shifted on his chair almost with the squirm of an accused small boy.

'I can't tell you what to do, Peter…' she continued, now patrolling the borders of the lounge like an inexperienced, nervous guard. Sunday Times — Insight. 'I don't know what to suggest…' The newspaper, remaining untidied from the previous day, lapped over the edges of a pink-upholstered reproduction chair. Sunday Times — Insight. Alison moved on from the exposed front page. Yesterday's news. She had pored over the articles more than once, deliberately and evidently, but after Peter had made his telephone calls he had been reluctant to discuss it. So she had abandoned the matter. But now there was this, the peculiar violence of Peter's secret world, brought to their lounge by—

She realised that Margaret Massinger was watching her expectantly. Alison had invited her attention by protest and movement; now she resented it, realising she had compromised Peter.

'Who else has been betrayed?' Heavy type, lower case letters. She had read that, too. She passed the fire, its warmth sudden against her calves, reminding her upper torso that it was chilly with indecision, helplessness. Peter was staring glumly through his interlaced fingers at the carpet in front of the sofa. Sideboard, standard lamp, door, bookshelves — Peter's English classics and books on sailing, her own biographical tastes — then the newspaper again. She had patrolled the room's border once again. 'Who else has been betrayed?' she read.

'Peter…?' she asked slowly.

'Yes?' he replied eagerly, sensing her tone. He had always admitted her intuition as a legitimate intellectual activity. He needed intuition in his work. Aubrey's was the intuition he really admired.

'1974,' she announced slowly. Each syllable of the date was elongated, charged with a good-humoured, almost excited mystery. 'That business in Bonn.'

'I know,' Shelley said. 'What of it?'

'Is it just newspaper talk?' Her hand reached for the paper, but she merely rearranged it so that she did not have to read the front page upside-down. 1974 — Bonn — Gunther Guillaume, Willy Brandt's senior adviser, the East German spy — rumours of an attempt to warn, even get him away, by a British officer—

'No, it isn't. Hell of a flap at the time. Everyone was talking about it at the office today. Aubrey's the prime suspect now, of course, because he was in Bonn advising the Germans on anti-terrorist security for the World Cup — after that disaster at the Munich Games… it's rubbish, of course. But the mud will no doubt stick,' he ended with a sigh.

Alison was standing in front of him. 'Was there any truth in it?'

'We never admitted there was — MI5 did a job on us, just as we'd done a job on our own people. Nothing. Just a trace of woodsmoke, but definitely no fire.' He smiled thinly, then shook his head. 'Pity we can't ask Guillaume, now he's back with his own people.'

'Isn't there anyone else?' Alison blurted in disappointment, half-afraid at the ease with which she had been drawn unresisting into the secret world. Her relationship with her husband now was as intimate as lovemaking, yet entirely cerebral. Her body was flushed with tension. She found she had placed herself beside the chair in which Margaret Massinger sat.

'To ask?' Shelley pondered. 'I doubt it.'

'If — if, Peter?' Alison pressed her empty glass against her forehead and ran her other hand through her thick hair. 'No, just listen — I think I'm having one of Aubrey's intuitions—' Shelley smiled involuntarily. 'Look, if there was someone in — a British agent working to help this Guillaume… couldn't he be the one who's helping to ruin Aubrey now?' She seemed unconvinced as her words tailed off.

'Yes…?' Shelley asked, evidently disappointed.

'You mean, just as they're blaming Mr Aubrey—' A small, pinched mouth signalled distaste, then Margaret continued: 'If you assume his innocence…' She looked down, divided, then: 'If you do, then, then — the someone who could have acted then, in 1974, could be the same one now. Do you see what we mean, Mr Shelley?'