"Can we pa.s.s on to your Iron Curtains, please, Cyril?"
I asked in my weariest voice. "HQ are devils for Iron Curtains. I wondered whether you"d any fresh names to add to the list of those you"ve already given us these past years. The last one "-I flipped to the back of the notebook-" my goodness, that was aeons ago. A gentleman from East Germany, a member of a local choral society you joined. Is there no one you can think of since at all? They"re a bit after you now, Cyril, I"ll admit, now that they"ve caught you not reporting the language course."
His disillusionment in me was again sliding into anger. Once again he began punching the unlikely words. But this time it was as if he were punching me.
"You will find all my Iron Curtain contacts, past and present, such as they are, duly listed and submitted to my superiors, according to regulations. If you had troubled yourself to obtain this data from Foreign Office Personnel Department prior to this interview and I mean why they send me a hack like you-"
I decided to cut him short. I did not think it useful that he should be allowed to reduce me to nothing. To insignificance, yes. But not to nothing, for I was the servant of a higher authority. I pulled a sheet of paper from the back of my notebook. "Look, now, here you are, I"ve got them. All your Iron Curtains on one page. There"s only been five ever, in your whole twenty years. HQ - cleared, I see, the lot. Well, so they would be, as long as you report them."
I put the sheet back in my notebook. "Anyone to add, then? Who"s to add? Think now, Cyril. Don"t be hasty. They know an awful lot, my people. They shock me sometimes. Take your time."
He took his time. And more time. And more. Finally he took the line of self-pity.
"I"m not a diplomat, Ned," he complained in a small voice. "I"m not out doing the gay hurrah every night, Belgravia, Kensington, St. John"s Wood, medals and white tie, rubbing shoulders with the great, am I? I"m a clerk. I"m not that man at all."
"What man"s that, Cyril?"
"I like a treat, that"s different. I like a friend best."
"I know you do, Cyril. HQ knows too."
A fresh resort to anger to mask his rising panic. Deafening body language as he clenches his great fists and lifts his elbows. "There is not a single name on that list that has crossed my path. since I reported the persons concerned. The names in that list related entirely to the most completely casual encounters, which had no follow-up whatsoever."
"But what about new people since?" I pleaded patiently. "You"ll not get past them, Cyril. I don"t, so why should you?"
"If there was anyone to add, any contact at all, even a Christmas card from someone, you may rest a.s.sured I would have been the first to add him. Finish. Done. Over. Next question, thank you."
Diplomat, I noted. Him, I noted. Christmas. Salzburg. I became if anything more laborious.
"That"s not quite the answer they want, Cyril," I said as I wrote in my notebook. "That sounds a bit too much like flannel, frankly. They want a "yes" or a "no," or an "if yes, who?"
They want a straight answer and they"re not settling for flannel. "He didn"t own up to his language, so why should we think he"s owning up to his Iron Curtains?"
That"s what they"re thinking, Cyril. That"s what they"re going to say to me too. It"ll all come back on me in the end," I warned him, still writing.
Once again I could feel that my ponderousness was a torture to him. He was pacing, snapping his fingers at his sides. He was muttering, working his jaw menacingly, growling again about get ting names. But I was far too busy writing in my notebook to notice any of this. I was old Ned, Burr"s Mr. Plod, doing his duty by HQ.
"How"s about this then, Cyril?" I said at last. And, holding up my notebook, I read aloud to him what I had written: "I, Cyril Frewin, solemnly declare that I have not made the acquaintance, however briefly, of any Soviet or Eastern Bloc citizen, other than those already listed by me, in the last twelve months. Dated and signed Cyril."
I relit my pipe and studied the bowl in order to make quite sure it was drawing. I put the burned-out match in the matchbox, and the matchbox in my pocket. My voice, already slowed to a walking pace, now became a crawl.
"Alternatively, Cyril, and I say this advisedly, if there is anyone like that in your life, now"s your chance to tell me. And them. I"ll treat everything you say in confidence; so will they, depending what I tell them of it, which isn"t always everything, not by any means. n.o.body"s a saint, after all. And HQ probably wouldn"t clear them if they were."
Intentionally or otherwise, I had touched the fuse in him. "He had been waiting for an excuse and now I had delivered it.
"Saint? Who"s talking saint? Don"t you call me b.l.o.o.d.y saint, I won"t have it! Saint Cyril, they call me, did you know that? Of course you did, you"re taunting me!"
Taut-faced and rude. Battering me with words. Frewin against the ropes, slugging anything that came at him. "If there were such a person-which there is not-I would not have told you or your snooping PV lot-I would have reported the matter in writing, according to regulations, to personnel department at the-" y For the second time, I allowed myself to cut him short. I didn"t like him conducting the rhythm of our exchanges.
"But there really isn"t anyone, is that right?" I said, as pressingly as my pa.s.sive role allowed. "There"s no one? You haven"t been to any functions parties, get-togethers, meetings-official, unofficial-in London, outside London, abroad even-at which a citizen of an Iron Curtain country was remotely present?"
"Do I have to continue saying no?"
"Not if the answer"s yes," I replied, with a smile he didn"t like. "The answer is no. No, no, no. Repeat no. Got it?"
"Thank you. So I can put none, can I? That means no one, not even a Russian. And you can sign it. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Meaning no?"
I suggested, making another weak joke. "I"m sorry, Cyril, but we do have to be crystal clear, otherwise HQ will fall on us from a great height. Look, I"ve written it down for you. Sign it."
I handed him my pencil and he signed. I wanted to instil the habit in him. He handed back my notebook, smiling tragically at me. He had lied to me and he needed my comfort in his wretchedness. So I granted it to him - if only, I am afraid, because I wanted to take it away again very soon. I stowed the notebook in my inside pocket, stood up, and gave a big stretch as if announcing a break in our discussions, seeing that a tricky point was behind us. I rubbed my back a bit, an old man"s ache.
"What"s all that digging you"ve been doing out there, Cyril?"
I said. "Building your own deep shelter, are you? Hardly necessary these days, I"d have thought."
Looking past him, my eye had fallen on a pile of new bricks stacked in a corner of the mud patch, with a tarpaulin tied over the top of them. An unfinished trench, about two feet deep, cut across the lawn towards them.
"I am building a pond, " Frewin retorted, seizing gratefully on my facetious diversion. "I bappen to be very fond of water. "
"A goldfish pond, Cyril?"
"An ornamental pond."
His good humour came sailing back. He relaxed, he smiled, and his smile was so warm and unaffected that I found myself smiling in return. "What I intend to do, Ned," he explained, drawing near to me in friendship, "is construct three separate levels of water, beginning four feet above the existing ground, descending over eighteen-inch intervals to that trench. I shall then illuminate each pool from beneath with the aid of a concealed lamp. I shall then pump the water with an electric pump. And at night, instead of drawing the curtains, I shall be able to look out on to my own private display of illuminated pools and waterfalls!"
"And play your music!"
I cried, responding in full measure to his enthusiasm. "I think that"s splendid, Cyril. Genius. I"m most impressed, I really am. I"d like my wife to see that. How was Salzburg, by the way?"
He actually reels, I thought, watching his head swing away from me. I hit him and he reels, and I wait till he recovers consciousness before I hit him again.
"You go to Salzburg for the music, they tell me. Quite a Mecca for you musicians, they tell me, Salzburg. Do they do opera at Christmas, or is it all carols and anthems you go for?"
They must have closed off the street, I thought, listening to the enormous silence. I wondered whether Frewin was thinking the same as he went on staring into the garden.
"Why should you care?" he answered. "You"re a musical ignoramus. You said so. As well as being a very considerable snooper."
"Verdi? I"ve heard of Verdi. Mozart? He was Austrian, wasn"t he? I saw the film. I"ll bet they do you Mozart for Christmas. They"d have to. Which ones do they do?"
Silence again. I sat down and once again prepared myself to write to his dictation.
"Do you go alone?" I asked.
"Of course I do."
"Do you always?"
"Of course I do."
"Last time too?"
."Yes!"
"Do you stay alone?" I asked.
He laughed loudly. "Me? Not for one minute. Not me. There"s dancing girls waiting for me in my room when I arrive. They"re changed every day."
"But music night after night after night, the way you like it?"
"Who says what I like?"
"Fourteen nights of it. Twelve, I suppose, if you count the travel."
"Could be twelve. Could be fourteen. Could be thirteen. What does it matter?"
He was still concussed. He was talking from a long way off.
"Which is what you go for. To Salzburg. And what you pay for. Yes? Yes, Cyril? Give me a signal, please, Cyril. I keep thinking I"m losing you. And it was what you went for this Christmas too?"
He nodded.
"Concerts, night after night? Opera? Carols?"
"Yes."
"Only the trouble is, you see, HQ says you only stayed the one night. You arrived on the first day as booked, they say, and you were off again next morning. You paid the full whack for your room, all two weeks, but the hotel never saw hide nor hair of you from your second day till you came back at the end of your holiday. So quite reasonably, really, HO are asking where the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l you went."
I took my boldest leap so far. "And who with. They"re asking whether you"ve got someone on the side. Like Boris and Olga, but real."
I turned a couple more pages of my notebook, and in the deep silence the rustle was like falling bricks. His terror was infecting me. It was like a shared evil. The truth lay a membrane from us, yet the dread of it seemed to be as terrible to the man who was trying to keep it outside the door as to myself, who was trying to let it in.
"All we need to do is get it down on paper, Cyril," I said. "Then we can forget it. Nothing like writing something down for getting it out of the way, I say. It"s no crime to have a friend. Even a foreign one isn"t a crime, as long as he"s written down. He is foreign, I take it? Only, I notice a certain hesitation in you here. He must be quite some friend, I will say, if you gave up all that music for him."
"He"s nowhere. He doesn"t exist. He"s gone. I was in his way."
"Well, he hadn"t gone at Christmas time, had he? Not if you were together with him. Was he Austrian, Cyril?" Frewin was lifeless. He was dead with his eyes open. I had hit him once too often.
"All right, then, he"s French," I suggested more loudly, trying to jerk him from his introspection. "Was he a Frenchie, Cyril, your chum? . . . They wouldn"t mind about a Frenchie, even if they don"t like them. Come on, Cyril, how about a Yank then? They can"t object to a Yank!"
No answer. "Not Irish, was he? I hope not, for your sake!"
I did the laughing for him, but nothing stirred him from his melancholy. Still at the window, he had crooked his thumb and was boring the knuckle joint into his forehead, as if trying to make a bullet hole. Had he whispered something? "I didn"t catch you, Cyril!"
"He"s above all that."
"Above nationality?"
"He"s above it."
"You mean he"s a diplomat?"
"He didn"t come to Salzburg, can"t you b.l.o.o.d.y listen?"
He swung round at me and began screaming. "You"re b.l.o.o.d.y spastic, you know that? Never mind the answers, you can"t even ask right! No wonder the country"s in a mess! Where"s your savvy gone? Where"s your human understanding, for a change?"
I stood up again. Slowly. Keep him watching me. Give my back another rub. I wandered down the room. I shook my head as if to say this simply would not do.
"I"m trying to help you, Cyril. If you went to Salzburg and stayed there, that"s one scenario. If you went on somewhere else - well, that"s quite another. If your chum is Italian, say. And if you pretended to go to Salzburg but went - oh, I don"t know - to Rome, say, or Milan, even Venice - well, that"s another. I can"t do it all for you. It"s not fair and they wouldn"t thank me if I did."
He was wide-eyed. He was transferring his madness to me, appointing himself the sane one. I refilled my pipe, giving it my entire attention while I went on talking.
"You"re a hard man to please, Cyril" - tamping the tobacco with my forefinger-"you"re a tease, if you want to know. "Don"t touch me here, take your hand away from there, you can do this but only once." I mean, what am I allowed to talk about?"
I struck a match and held it to the bowl, and as I did so I saw that he had transferred his knuckles to his eyes in order not to be in the room. But I pretended not to notice. "All right, we"ll forget Salzburg. If Salzburg is hurtful, put Salzburg aside and let"s go back to your Iron Curtains. Yes? Agreed?"
His hands slipped slowly from his face. No answer, but no outright rejection either. I went on talking. He wanted me to. I could sense his reliance on my words as a bridge between the real world and the inner h.e.l.l where he was living. He wanted me to do the talking for both of us. I felt I had to make his confession for him, which was why I decided to play my most perilous card.
"So suppose, for argument"s sake, Cyril, we were to add the name of Sergei Modrian to this list and call it a day," I suggested carelessly, almost covering over my words in my efforts to sound unthreatening. "Just to be on the safe side," I added cheerfully. "What do you say?"
His head was still hanging downward, his face cut off from me. Chatting cheerfully, I expanded on my latest helpful proposal for HQ.
""All right," we say to them, "so take your wretched Mr. Modrian. Don"t play around with us any more, we"ll come clean. Have him and go home. Ned and Cyril have got work to do."
He was dangling, smiling like a hanged man. In the profound silence that had settled over the neighbourhood, I had the sensation of hearing my words resounding from the rooftops. But Frewin seemed barely to have heard them.
"Modrian"s the one they want you to own up to, Cyril," I continued reasonably. "They told me. If you say yes to Modrian and if I write him down, which I"m doing, and you allow me to, and I notice you"re not stopping me, are you? n.o.body can accuse either one of us of being less than frank with them. "Yes, I am a chum of Sergei Modrian and screw the lot of you" - how"s that? "And I went with him to wherever we went, and we did this, we did that, we agreed to do certain other things, and we had a lovely time, or we didn"t. And anyway, what"s all the glasnost for, if I"m still being forbidden to a.s.sociate with an extremely civilised Russian?" . . . How"s that? Never mind the gaps for the moment, we can fill all those in later. Then, the way I see it, they can pack up the file for another year and we can all get on with our weekend."
"Why?"
I affected not to understand.
"Why can they pack up the file then?" he demanded, as suspicions crowded in on him. "When they"ve been who they are? They"re not going to turn round and say "What"s the point?"
n.o.body does. Not when they"ve been one thing. They stay who they are. They don"t become other people. They can"t."
"Come off it, Cyril!"
He had sunk into his own thoughts and was becoming hard to reach. "Cyril!"
"What then? What"s up? Don"t shout."
"So what"s wrong with being Russian these days? HQ would be far more worried if Sergei was a Frenchie! I only suggested Frenchie as a trap. I regret that now, I apologise. But a Russian these days - for heaven"s sake, we"re not just talking friendly nations, we"re talking partners! You know HQ. They"re always behind the times. So"s Gorst. Our job"s to set the trend. Are you hearing me, Cyril?"
And that was where, for a moment, I thought I had lost the whole game - lost his complicity, lost his dependence, lost the willing suspension of his disbelief. He wandered past me like a sleepwalker. He stood himself at his bay window again, where he remained contemplating his half-dug pool and all the other half-built dreams of his life, which he must have known by now would never be completed.