Gaddis had briefly given up smoking in the early part of the year, but was at it again, twenty a day since her death. Life, as Charlotte had proved, was indisputably too short. He smiled as he thought of that, lighting a Camel at the bottom of the garden and realizing that he was alone for the first time in almost twelve hours. A couple of caterers — a teenage boy and girl, both dressed in black — were clearing glasses from window sills at the front of the house. Polly was watching them, stretched out on the grass, scratching behind her ear with a bent, arthritic paw.
In the fading light of the early evening Gaddis opened the door of Charlotte’s office and stood in the room where his friend had been working on the morning of her death. The shed was as she had left it. Her laptop was on the desk, some documents had spooled out of the printer, a copy of The Mitrokhin Archive was open on the floor. Sam sat at the desk. He was snooping, no question, pretending to himself and to anyone who might walk in that he was convening with Charlotte’s spirit. But the reality was tawdry. He was looking for Edward Crane.
He picked up the document from the printer. It was an article about John Updike from the New York Review of Books. He looked down at the floor. What was he hoping for? Photographs? CD-ROMs? He flicked through an address book on the desk, even thought about switching on her mobile phone. His breathing was sharper and he was looking out of the window of the shed, checking to make sure that he would not be disturbed as he opened the first few pages of her diary. He looked at the days leading up to her death, saw only ‘Dinner: S’ scrawled on the night that he had come for supper. The last night that he had seen her alive.
‘What are you doing?’
Paul was at the door, staring at him in disbelief.
Gaddis snapped the diary shut and placed it on the desk.
‘Just trying to get close to her,’ he muttered. ‘Just trying to make sense of everything.’
‘In her diary?’
Sam stood up. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ He guessed that Paul knew. ‘I just ended up in here. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’
‘I don’t either.’
They looked at one another. Paul was so tired, so strung out, that he simply shook his head and stepped ahead of Sam, trying to reclaim his wife’s office as his own by rearranging the items on her desk. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’
When they got there, it was as if the incident had been forgotten, but it sat heavily with Sam, who felt the shame of an otherwise decent man who has inexplicably let himself down. Why had he allowed himself to behave in such a way? It was Paul, oddly, who broke the impasse between them, phoning Sam two days later and inviting him to dinner at the house. No sooner was he inside the door than Sam was apologizing for what had happened. Paul waved away the incident and invited him into the kitchen, where a homemade lasagne — prepared by a worried neighbour — was baking in the oven. He poured two glasses of red wine and sat at the table.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about your eulogy,’ he said. ‘One particular section.’
This made Gaddis uneasy. He had been honest about Charlotte’s shortcomings in his speech, her ruthlessness in the early years of her career, her habit of abandoning friends who did not live up to expectations. Paul had asked for a printed copy and might easily have taken offence.
‘Which section?’ he asked.
Gaddis saw that Paul was holding the eulogy in his hand. He began to read aloud:
‘ In our lives, if we are lucky, we occasionally meet exceptional people. Sometimes, if we are even luckier, those people become our friends. ’ Paul stopped and cleared his throat before continuing. ‘ Charlotte was not just one of the most exceptional people that I have ever met, she was also my most treasured friend. I envied her and I admired her. I thought that she was reckless but I also thought that she was brave. Dostoyevsky wrote: “If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.” I cannot think of another person to whom this applies more than Charlotte Berg. And so death continues to take the best people first. ’
Gaddis put his hand on Paul’s shoulder.
‘You were absolutely right about that. I just wanted to tell you that what you said has been a great support to me.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘And I thought about what you were doing in her office. I tried to imagine what Charlotte would have made of it.’ Gaddis began to respond but Paul interrupted him. ‘I think she would have done the same thing. Or, at least, I think she would have understood why you were there. You wanted to go into her office to see where she had been that morning, to get close to her, as you said at the time. You found yourself reminded of Edward Crane, you became distracted by the possibility of looking at her research. It was a long day. You were tired.’
‘I was snooping,’ Gaddis replied bluntly. He was touched that Paul had tried to find a way of forgiving him, but didn’t want to be let off the hook. ‘I was saying goodbye to the Cambridge book. I knew it was over and I was feeling sorry for myself.’
‘What do you mean you knew it was over? Why?’
The reply to the question seemed so obvious that Gaddis did not bother making it. Paul went to the oven and checked the lasagne. He seemed more at ease than he had been two days earlier; his privacy had been restored. He had the luxury of being alone with his grief. Turning, he said: ‘Why don’t you keep going? Why don’t you take a look at Charlotte’s research and try to work it up into a book?’
Gaddis could think of nothing to say. Paul saw his confused reaction and tried to convince him.
‘I don’t want her efforts to go to waste. She’d agreed to write a book with you. She would have wanted you to continue.’
‘Paul, I’m not an investigative journalist, I’m an archives man.’
‘What’s the difference? You interview people, don’t you? You can follow a trail from A to B. You know how to use a telephone, the Internet, a public library? How hard can it be?’
Gaddis was taking a packet of cigarettes from his jacket but it was just a reflex and he quickly replaced them, fearful of seeming tactless.
‘Go ahead and smoke.’
‘I’m fine. I’m going to quit.’
‘Listen’ — Paul switched off the oven, took out the food — ‘I won’t take “no” for an answer. Next time you have a free afternoon, come up to the house. Have a look through Charlotte’s research and see what you make of it. If you think she was on to something, if you think you can track down this Cambridge spy, write the book and put Charlotte’s name alongside yours.’ He made an uncharacteristically extravagant gesture with his hand. ‘You have my blessing, Doctor. Go forth.’
Chapter 7
As it turned out, Gaddis didn’t need much persuading. A letter had arrived from his accountant flagging up the outstanding tax bill. At the weekend, he had sat through a telephone conversation with Natasha, who was worried that Min would have to drop out of school altogether if the fees weren’t paid by Christmas. Needing to secure an advance as quickly as possible, he had no choice but to set to work on the Cambridge book and to put together a proposal for Paterson.
Paul had left a set of keys at a newsagent in Hampstead. Gaddis let himself into the house late on Monday morning. He made a cup of coffee in the kitchen, found Charlotte’s laptop, and walked out to the garden. He went to the shed and closed the door behind him. There was a cobweb in the apex of the roof and he felt that he could still catch the faint smell of Charlotte’s perfume, a thing which unsettled him. A biro mark was scrawled down one wall, torn newspaper cuttings and postcards pinned to a mottled corkboard which looked as if it had succumbed to a bout of woodworm.
Sitting down, his arms braced on the desk in front of him, he experienced an acute sense of trespass, and wondered if he should just stand up and walk away from the whole thing. Was he honouring Charlotte’s memory or just making a fast buck?
A bit of both, he admitted to himself. A bit of both.
