“I will want that,” Joe replied without hesitation.
“Then we’d better sit down and have a proper chat.”
They walked a further three hundred metres until the headache din of the birds had largely died away and they were alone in a small market stall selling noodles, simple Cantonese dishes and cheap Peking duck. There was a half-empty bottle of soy sauce on the table. When Joe moved it to one side the neck left a dry, sticky glue on his hands.
“I’m going to be patronizing,” Waterfield said, ordering a pot of green tea. It was one of the things that Joe liked about him: he had the confidence to be self-effacing. “You’re very young to be thinking about getting married.”
“I realize that.”
“Do you? One of the things that’s most difficult for men of your age to grasp is the enormous span of time left to you on the planet. That may sound grandiose, but so many years lie ahead, do you see? I’m not talking here about careers. I mean in a strictly personal sense. It’s extremely hard for a human being to have any notion of the extraordinary changes that they will undergo in their future lives, particularly between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Changes in approach. Changes in personality.”
Joe didn’t know what to say. He wondered if Waterfield, in a roundabout kind of way, was telling him that he was immature.
“Let me divulge something about getting older.” The tea came and the SIS Head of Station poured it quickly into two white bowls. “Life contracts. Less room for manoeuvre, if you follow me. One acquires responsibilities that are perhaps unimaginable to someone of twenty-six. Responsibilities towards one’s children, of course, but also the added burden of work, of longer hours, of scrambling up the greasy pole. In a very real sense one must put away childish things.” Waterfield saw the look in Joe’s eyes and must have felt obliged to defend himself. “I can see what you’re thinking: ‘The old man is full of regrets, didn’t have enough fun in his youth. Insists the younger generation sow a few wild oats.’ ”
“Isn’t that partly what you’re saying?” Joe asked.
“Well I suppose it is, yes.” Waterfield laughed at himself and plucked a toothpick out of a small plastic canister on the table. Rather than put it in his mouth, he tapped one of the sharp points into the ball of his thumb. “Look, I think you are a very remarkable young man, Joe, and I say that both as a colleague and as a friend.” Joe had to remind himself that he was talking to a spy, but it was difficult not to extract a pulse of satisfaction from the compliment. “What you’ve achieved out here in such a short time is very impressive. But you are still young. You are still at the very beginning of what should be an extremely interesting and eventful life.”
Joe knew that he was expected to speak, but took his time before responding. Two elderly women passed the table carrying plastic bags stuffed with bok choi and washing detergent. Joe took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew the first smoke up into a flapping tarpaulin canopy that functioned as a roof over the stall. The gesture may have looked self-conscious.
“The thing is, David, I can only deal with what’s in front of me. I can only deal with the reality that I’m at this point in my life and that I’m in love with Isabella Aubert.”
Silence.
“What that means is that I want to spend the rest of my life with her. What that means is that I don’t think I’ll ever meet anybody like her ever again, whether I’m twenty-six, thirty-six or a dying man of ninety-one.”
Waterfield produced a rueful smile as Joe thought of God’s instruction to him. Marry this woman. She is the best thing that will ever happen to you. He knew that such thoughts were absurd, yet he could not shake them.
“You see that’s just it, Joe, that’s just it. One feels that way now, but will one feel that way in the future?”
Irritated by a creeping formality in Waterfield’s tone, Joe again paused for thought. It occurred to him-not for the first time-that Isabella was deeply unpopular within the walls of SIS. Why should that be? Whom had she offended? Was it simply that she was beautiful and charming and kind, and therefore coveted by dozens of unhappily married spooks who wished that they could live their lives all over again, preferably in her company? Why else had she not been accepted by them?
Then it became very plain to him, very quickly. Waterfield wanted to prevent the marriage in order to protect the integrity of RUN. He wanted to interfere with Joe’s private life in order to give SIS one less thing to worry about in the run-up to the handover. His advice and good counsel were simply political.
“I think I’m an old soul,” Joe said, trying to find a way round this. Waterfield’s encouraging smile convinced him to keep going. “I’ve always been decisive, I’ve always known what I want. And I want to take care of Isabella. I want us to be husband and wife. Maybe I’m being naive, maybe I’m too young to be thinking like this, maybe I’m just a lovestruck teenager who’ll learn a hard lesson. But I want to stop lying to her. I want my girlfriend to know what I do for a living. I’m sorry, I can see that that is going to present problems for you. I can see that you’ll be concerned about my cover and whether it’ll affect the quality of my work. But I’ve made my decision and I need the Office’s support. I love her.”
“Then you must marry her,” Waterfield said. “It’s as simple as that.”
“But why did you want to marry her?” I asked. “What was the fucking hurry?”
We are back in 2004 again, on the eve of his departure for Shanghai. I was opening my can of Guinness and Joe’s subsequent laughter smothered the hiss of the widget. He produced another one of those looks that appeared to question my innate common sense and shook his head.
“Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “Isn’t it straightforward?”
It was obvious, to a certain extent. They were perfect for each other. Where Joe was often concealed and emotionally withdrawn, Isabella was open and honest. On those rare occasions when she became anxious or depressed, he knew how to listen to her and to soothe her worries. Isabella could be unpredictable, but not in a way that was threatening or unkind, and I think Joe fed off her impulsiveness and volatility. They made each other laugh, they had similar interests, they were both naturally inquisitive and adventurous people. Above all, there was an innate understanding between the two of them which made you jealous that there was not some sort of similar chemistry in your own life.
Nevertheless, in answer to Joe’s question, and in an effort to find out exactly what was going through his mind back in 1997, I said: “No, it’s not obvious. To be honest, it doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”
So Joe tried to explain himself. He had drunk the better part of a bottle of wine by then, which had loosened up his natural reticence.
“I had a drink the other day with a friend from university,” he began. “A guy called Jason. He’d only been married about six weeks and already had the shortest recorded incidence of the seven-year itch. He said to me, ‘Joe, in an ideal world no man would ever have conceived of the institution of marriage. It’s counter-intuitive. Why would we limit our options like that? Marriage is a feminist conspiracy designed to exercise control over men.’ ”
“Your friend’s got a point,” I said.
“My friend is an idiot,” Joe replied. “What would you have done in my place? Isabella and I had been together for more than two years. There were no other circumstances in which the Office would have tolerated me telling her about RUN. Waterfield would have handed me a P45 and told me to swim back to London.”
“So that was the reason?” I seized on this. “You did it just to ease your conscience? You felt so guilty about lying to Isabella that your only way out of it was to propose?”
I have already written about Joe’s temper, about the extent to which he had to be pushed before the lid came off, and for a split second here I wondered whether he was going to launch at me. My words were ill-chosen and his face tightened in anger. In an instant, all of the easygoing, wine-fuelled bonhomie of our conversation evaporated.
“Isn’t that reason enough?” he said. “Do you have any concept of what it’s like to grow up through your twenties living a lie to all but four or five people in the world?”
“Joe, I…”
Just as quickly, his anger abated and his face regained its tranquillity, as if he had subjected himself to a private admonition. “Forget I said that,” he insisted, waving a hand at me. “That’s not what I meant.” It was only the second time that Joe had ever voiced a complaint in my company about working under deep cover. On both occasions he had immediately retracted the grievance. After all, nobody had forced him to work for MI6; it was
