Samson 01 - Berlin Game, page 6
There was an open bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, and already the level was down as far as the label. ‘Are we celebrating something?’ I asked as I took off my coat and hung it in the hall.
‘Don’t be so bloody bourgeois,’ said Tessa, handing me a champagne flute filled right to the brim. That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries.
‘Dinner at eight-thirty,’ said Fiona, embracing me decorously, her champagne held aloft so that she would spill none of it while giving me a kiss. ‘Mrs Dias has kindly stayed late.’
Mrs Dias, our Portuguese cook, housekeeper and general factotum, was always staying late to cook the dinner. I wondered how much her labour was costing us. The cost, like so many other household expenses, would end up buried somewhere deep in the accounts and paid for out of Fiona’s trust-fund income. She knew I didn’t like it, but I suppose she disliked cooking even more than arguing with me about it. I sat down on the sofa and tasted the champagne. ‘Delicious,’ I said.
‘Tess brought it with her,’ explained Fiona.
‘A gift from an admirer,’ said Tessa archly.
‘Am I permitted to ask his name?’ I said. I saw Fiona glaring at me but I pretended not to be aware of it.
‘All in good time, darling,’ said Tessa. ‘For the moment he remains incognito.’
‘In flagrante delicto, did you say?’
‘You sod!’ she said, and laughed.
‘And how’s George?’ I said.
‘We live our own lives,’ said Tessa.
‘Don’t upset Tessa,’ Fiona told me.
‘He’s not upsetting me,’ Tessa said, tossing her hair back with her bejewelled white hand. ‘I like George and I always will like him. We’re simply not able to live together without quarrelling.’
‘Does that mean you’re getting a divorce?’ I asked, drinking a little more of the champagne.
‘George doesn’t want a divorce,’ she explained. ‘It suits him to use the house like a hotel during the week, and he has the cottage to take his fancy ladies to.’
‘Does George have fancy ladies?’ I said with no more than perfunctory interest.
‘It has been known,’ said Tessa. ‘But he’s making so much money these days, I don’t think he has much time for anything but his business.’
‘Lucky man,’ I said. ‘Everyone else I know is going broke.’
‘Well, that’s where George is so clever,’ Tessa explained. ‘He got the dealerships for smaller, cheaper cars years ago when no one seemed to want them.’ She said it proudly. Even wives who quarrel with their husbands take pride in their achievements.
Fiona reached for the champagne. She wrapped it in a cloth and poured the rest of it into our glasses with the dexterity of a sommelier. She took care not to touch the bottle on the glass, and the cloth was crossed so as to leave the label still visible as she served. Such professional niceties came naturally to someone who’d grown up in a house with domestic servants. As she poured mine, she said, Tess wants me to help her find a flat.’
‘And furnish it and do it up,’ said Tessa. ‘I’m no earthly good at anything like that. Look at the mess I made of the place I’m living in now. George never liked it there. Sometimes I think that was where our marriage began to go all wrong.’
‘But it’s a lovely house,’ said Fiona loyally. ‘It’s just too big for the two of you.’
‘It’s old and dark,’ said Tessa. ‘It’s a bit of a dump, really. I can understand why George hates it. He only agreed to buying it because he wanted to have an address in Hampstead. It was a step up from Islington. But now he says we can afford Mayfair.’
‘And this new place,’ I inquired. ‘Is George going to like that?’
‘Give over!’ said Tessa, employing the jocular cockney accent that she thought particularly apt when talking to me. ‘I haven’t found a place yet - that’s what I want help with. I go and see places but I can never make up my mind on my own. I listen to what these sharp estate agents tell me and I believe it - that’s my trouble.’
Whatever kind of trouble Tessa had suffered in her life, it was not on account of her believing anything any man told her, but I did not contradict her. I nodded and finished my drink. It was almost time for dinner. The ever-cheerful Mrs Dias was an adequate cook but I wasn’t sure I could face another plate of her feijoada.
‘You wouldn’t mind, darling, would you?’ said Fiona.
‘Mind what?’ I said. ‘Oh, you helping Tessa find a flat. No, of course not.’
‘You’re a sweetie,’ Tessa told me, and to Fiona she said, ‘You’re lucky to have got your hands on Bernard before I saw him. I’ve always said he was a wonderful husband.’
I said nothing. Only Tessa could make being a wonderful husband sound like a carrier of pestilence.
Tessa leaned back on the sofa. She was wearing a smoky grey silk button-through dress that was shiny on the curves. One hand held her champagne and the other was toying with a real pearl necklace. Nervously she crossed and recrossed her legs and twisted the pearls tight against her white neck.
‘Tessa wants to tell you something,’ Fiona said.
‘Any more of that champagne, darling?’ I said.
‘Tessa’s Dom Pérignon is all finished,’ said Fiona. ‘You’ll have to have Sainsbury’s from the fridge.’
‘Sainsbury’s from the fridge sounds delicious,’ I said, passing my empty glass to her. ‘What do you want to ask me, Tessa?’
‘Do you know a man named Giles Trent?’ she said.
‘Works for the FO. Tall man, grey wavy hair, low voice, upper-crust accent. Older than me, and not nearly so handsome.’
‘Not exactly for the Foreign Office,’ said Tessa archly. ‘His office is in the FO, but he’s a part of your organization.’
‘Did he tell you that?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Tessa.
‘He shouldn’t have,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Tessa. ‘I was talking to Fiona about him, and she says that Giles Trent was working with your lot in Berlin back in 1978. She says he’s quite important.’
Fiona came in with the champagne and poured a glass for me. I said, ‘Well, if that’s what Fiona says… .’
Fiona said, ‘Tessa is my sister, darling. She’s not going to go blurting out all your secrets to the Russians. Are you, Tess?’
‘Not until the right Russian comes my way. Even then … I mean, did you ever see those photos of Russian ladies?’ She held the pearl necklace in her mouth; it was a babyish gesture; she liked being a baby.
‘What about Giles Trent?’ I said.
Tessa toyed with the necklace again. ‘I got to know him last summer. I met him at a dinner party given by some people who live down the road from us. He had tickets for Covent Garden - Mozart. I forget the name of the opera, but everyone was saying how difficult it was to get tickets, and Giles could get them. Well, it was heavenly. I’m not awfully keen on opera but we had a box and a bottle of champagne in the interval.’
‘And you had an affair with him,’ I finished it for her.
‘He’s a handsome brute, Bernie. And George was away watching the Japanese making motorcars.’
‘Why not go with him?’ I said.
‘If you’d ever been on one of those trips that car manufacturers provide for the dealers, you wouldn’t ask. Wives are superfluous, darling. There are hot and cold running girls in every bedroom.’
Fiona poured champagne for herself and Tessa, and said, ‘Tess wants to tell you about Giles Trent. She doesn’t want your advice on her marriage.’ This admonition, like all such wifely admonitions, was delivered with a smile and a laugh.
‘So tell me about Giles Trent,’ I said.
‘You were joking just now, I know. But Giles is older than you, Bernie, quite a bit older. He’s a bachelor, very set in his ways. I thought he was queer at first. He’s so neat and tidy and fussy about what he wears and what he eats and all that. In the kitchen - he has a divine house off the King’s Road - all his chopping knives and saucepans are placed side by side, smallest on the left and biggest on the right. And it’s so perfect that I was frightened to boil an egg and slice a loaf in case I spilled crumbs on the spotless tiled floor or marked the chopping board.’
Tell me how you first discovered he wasn’t queer,’ I said.
‘I said he wouldn’t listen to me,’ Tessa complained to Fiona. ‘I said he’d just make sarcastic remarks all the time, and I was right.’
‘It’s serious, Bernard,’ said my wife. She only called me Bernard when things were serious.
‘You mean it’s wedding bells for Tessa and Giles?’
‘I mean Giles Trent is passing intelligence material to someone from the Russian Embassy.’
There was a long silence until finally I said, ‘Shit.’
‘Giles Trent has been in the service a long time,’ said Fiona.
‘Longer than I have,’ I said. ‘Giles Trent was lecturing at the training school by the time I got there.’
‘In Berlin he was in Signals at one time,’ said Fiona.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And he compiled that training report for interrogators. I don’t like the sound of that. Giles Trent, eh?’
‘Giles Trent doesn’t seem the type,’ said Fiona. All the ladies had a soft spot for the elegant and gentlemanly Giles Trent. He raised his hat to them and always had a clean shirt.
They never are the type,’ I said.
‘But no contact with field agents,’ said Fiona.
‘Well, let’s be thankful for that at least,’ I said. I looked at Tessa. ‘Have you mentioned all this to anyone?’
‘Only to Daddy,’ said Tessa. ‘He said forget all about it.’
‘Good old Daddy,’ I said. ‘Always there when you need him.’
Mrs Dias came in bearing a large platter of shrimp fried in batter. ‘Don’t eat too many, sir,’ she said in her shrill accent. ‘Make you very fat.’ The Portuguese are a lugubrious breed, and yet Mrs Dias was always smiling. I had the feeling that we were paying her too much.
‘You’re wonderful, Mrs Dias,’ said my wife, smiling, although the smile faded when she recognized the shrimps as those she’d set aside in the kitchen to thaw for next day’s lunch.
‘She’s a treasure,’ said Tessa, taking a sample of the fried shrimp and burning her mouth so that she had to spit pieces of shrimp into her paper napkin. ‘My God, it’s hot,’ she said, pulling a face.
Fiona, who hated anything fried in batter, waved a hand as I offered her the plate. I took one, blew on it, and ate it. It wasn’t bad.
‘We’ll manage now, Mrs Dias,’ said Fiona airily. I twisted round to see Mrs Dias standing at the door watching us with a big smile. She disappeared into the kitchen again. There was a cloud of smoke and a loud crash which we all pretended not to hear.
I said to Tessa, ‘How do you know he’s passing stuff to the Russians?’
‘He told me,’ she said.
‘Just like that?’
‘We’d started off in the middle of the afternoon drinking at some funny little club in Soho while Giles was watching the horses on TV. He won some money on one of the races and we went to the Ritz. We’d met a few friends by then, and Giles wanted to impress everyone by giving them dinner. I suggested Annabel’s - George is a member. We stayed there late and Giles turned out to be a super dancer… .’
‘Is this all leading up to something he told you in bed?’ I said wearily.
‘Well, yes. We went back to this dear little place he has off the King’s Road. And I’d had a few drinks, and to tell you the truth I thought of George with all those Oriental popsies and I thought, what the hell. And I let Giles talk me into staying there.’
‘What exactly did he say, Tessa? Because it’s nearly half past eight and I’m getting hungry.’
‘He woke me up in the middle of the night. It was absolutely ghastly. He sat up in bed and howled. It was positively orgasmic, darling. You’ve no idea. He howled for help or something. It was a nightmare. I mean, I’ve had nightmares and I’ve seen other people having nightmares - at school half the girls in the dorm had nightmares every night, didn’t they, Fi? - but not like this. He was bathed in sweat and trembling like a leaf.’
‘Giles Trent?’ I said.
‘Yes, I know. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? I mean he’s so damned stiff-upper-lip and Grenadier Guards. But there he was shouting and having this nightmare. I had to shake him for ages before he awoke.’
Fiona said, ‘Tell Bernie what he was shouting.’
‘He shouted, “Help me! They made me do it,” and “Please please please.” Then I went and got him a big drink of Perrier water. He said that was what he wanted. He pulled himself together and seemed all right again. And then he suddenly asked me what I’d say if he told me he was a spy for the Russians. I said I’d laugh. And he nodded and said, well, it was true anyway. So I said, for money, do you do it for money? I was joking because I thought he was joking, you see.’
‘So what did he say about money?’ I asked.
‘I knew he wasn’t short of money,’ said Tessa. ‘He was at Eton and he knows anyone who’s anyone. He has the same tailor as Daddy, and he’s not cheap. And Giles is a member of so many clubs and you know how much club subscriptions cost nowadays. George is always on about that, but he has to take business people out, of course. But Giles never complains about money. His father bought him the freehold of this place where he lives and gave him an allowance that is enough to keep body and soul together.’
‘And he has his salary,’ I said.
‘Well, that doesn’t go far, Bernie,’ said Tessa. ‘How do you imagine you and Fiona would manage if all she had was your salary?’
‘Other people manage,’ I said.
‘But not people like us,’ said Tessa in a voice of sweet reasonableness. ‘Poor Fiona has to buy Sainsbury’s champagne because she knows you’ll grumble if she gets the sort of champers Daddy drinks.’
Hurriedly Fiona said, ‘Tell Bernie what Giles said about meeting the Russian.’
‘He told me about meeting this fellow from the Trade Delegation. Giles was in a pub somewhere near the Portobello Road one night. He likes finding new pubs that no one knows about except the locals. It was closing time. He asked the publican for another drink and they wouldn’t serve him. Then a man standing at the counter offered to take him to a chess club in Soho - Kar’s Club in Gerrard Street. There’s a members’ bar there which serves drinks until three in the morning. This Russian was a member and offered to put Giles up for membership and Giles joined. It’s not much of a place, from what I can gather - arty people and writers, and so on. He plays chess rather well, and it began to be a habit that he went there regularly and played the Russian, or just watched someone else playing.’
‘When was the night of this nightmare?’ I said.
‘I don’t remember exactly, but a little while ago.’
‘And he’s told you about the Russians on several occasions. Or just that once in the middle of the night?’
‘I brought it up again,’ said Tessa. ‘I was curious. I wanted to find out if it was a joke or not. Giles Trent remembered your name, and he knows Fiona too, so I guessed that he was on secret work of some kind. Last Friday, we got back to his place very late and he was showing me this electronic chess-playing machine he’d just bought. I said that he wouldn’t have to go to that chess club anymore. He said he liked going there. I asked him if he wasn’t frightened that someone would see him with this Russian and suspect him of spying. Giles collapsed on the bed and muttered something about they might be right if that’s what they suspected. He had been drinking a lot that night - mostly brandy, and I’d noticed before that it affects him in a way other drinks don’t.’
By now Tessa had become very quiet and serious. It was a new sort of Tessa. I’d only known her in her role of uninhibited adventuress. ‘Go on,’ I prompted her.
Tessa said, ‘Well, I still thought he was joking, and I was just making a gag out of it. But he wasn’t joking. “I wish to God I could get out of it,” he said. “But they’ve got me now and I’ll never be free of them. I will end up at the Old Bailey sentenced to thirty years.” I said, couldn’t he escape? Couldn’t he get on a plane and go somewhere?’
‘What did he say?’
‘ “And end up in Moscow? I’d sooner be in an English prison listening to English voices cursing me than spend the rest of my life in Moscow. Can you imagine what it must be like?” he said. And he went on all about the sort of life that Kim Philby and those other two had in Moscow. I realized then that he must have been reading up all about it and worrying himself to death.’
Tessa sipped her champagne.
Fiona said, ‘What will happen now, Bernie?’
‘We can’t leave it like this,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to make it official.’
‘I don’t want Tessa’s name brought into it,’ said Fiona.
Tessa was looking at me. ‘How can I promise that?’ I said.
‘I’d sooner let it drop,’ said Tessa.
‘Let it drop?’ I said. This is not some camper who’s trampled through your dad’s barley field, and you being asked if you want to press charges for trespass. This is espionage. If I don’t report what you’ve told me, I could be in the dock at the Old Bailey with him, and so could you and Fiona.’
‘Is that right?’ said Tessa. It was typical of her that she asked her sister rather than me. There was a simple directness about everything Tessa said and did, and it was difficult to remain angry with her for long. She confirmed all those theories about the second child. Tessa was sincere but shallow; she was loving but mercurial; she was an exhibitionist without enough confidence to be an actor. While Fiona displayed all the characteristics of elder children: stability, confidence, intellect in abundance, and that cold reserve with which to judge all the shortcomings of the world.
‘Yes, Tess. What Bernie says is right.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said. ‘I can’t promise anything. But I’ll tell you this: if I am able to keep your name out of it and you let me down by breathing a word of this conversation to anyone at all, including that father of yours, I’ll make sure you and he and anyone else covering up are charged under the appropriate sections of the Act.’
