Part 24 (1/2)
”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 friends.h.i.+p, ”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?”