A Little White Death (22 page)

‘In the winter of ’43 I spent a few weeks training in Egypt – on a base not far from Alexandria – and I saw for myself the work of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs.
Now, I knew our blokes had guts. This might have been the first time I knew they had brains. I’d seen them fight and perhaps I finally learnt what they were fighting for. It wasn’t
enough to invoke simple patriotism. The British working man was fighting for a better Britain. And this time he wasn’t going to be conned the way my generation had been with piffle about
homes fit for heroes. The Bureau held a mock election. Every other party but Labour was annihilated. I knew then what would happen in ’45 – or whenever the war ended. I’d always
been a Liberal myself. But I voted Labour that day, and I have voted Labour in every election since. And I’ve done so because I believe in the right of the individual to have his share in the
nation’s wealth. The wealth he has created. And to share in it without going through what I went through. What they went through. We shouldn’t have to prove our courage in battle, we
prove it every day. Every day we get up and go to work and try to put food in our children’s mouths and a roof over their heads. That’s heroism enough. Chicken farming was heroism
enough. Half my generation died on the battlefields of Flanders, and the rest seemed to go under in the crises of the twenties and thirties. That was heroism enough. I suppose young Alfie would
find that hard to grasp.’

There was silence while Catesby found a way to round off his tale, fought his way back along the ribbon of his narrative.

‘I was promoted again in ’48. Major-general. Retired with that rank in ’57. People call me general. Only natural after fifteen years I should answer to it. I am
“general”. Hugely symbolic to Alfie, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll answer to general. I’ll be blowed if I’ll answer to fogey.’

He got up. Put down his newspaper on the chair. He seemed to Troy to be succumbing to memory, to the emotionalism of the sentimental man, much as he had been at the moment they had met. He had
set his memory in motion like clockwork and for all Troy knew was reliving things he would rather not relive.

‘Excuse me a moment, won’t you.’

He shuffled off. Troy had taken to the old man. But he’d never in a thousand years understand such emotions.

He found he could not bear television. The inmates, he could think of them no other way, clustered round a ten-inch television watching Britain unravel with every passing news
bulletin, crowded the common room, where the one-eyed beast sat, on Saturdays to watch late-night satire in the form of
That Was The Week That Was
– which Troy had watched in
unblinking silence. The man with the silly haircut and the Uriah Heepvoice seemed to be the funniest man alive. As far as Troy was concerned he might just as well have been talking Martian.

It was the nature of the complaint. The nature of consumption to consume, to waste mind as well as muscle. And in part it was the nature of the man, as child is father to the man, as the boy
Troy had succumbed to one damned illness after another in the teens and twenties of the century, each had taken him this way. Each had lost him to the world. Each world had had to be slowly
rediscovered.

He stuck with newspapers, began reading for himself, followed Alex’s trail through what was now firmly dubbed the ‘Tereshkov Affair’ – Woodbridge had been lucky again, it
could so easily have been the ‘Woodbridge Affair’ – and stuck with the wireless, tuning into the Home Service and the Third, and making occasional forays to the Light Programme.
And on occasion the bubble would burst and he could see clearly, only to form again its milky sheen. So often he felt apathetic. More often just pathetic. Anger focused him wonderfully, but then it
always had. Anger pulled him back from the brink. He could have gone so quietly into goodnight had it not been for the high tide of his own anger, and few things roused more anger than his
visitors. Few visitors roused more anger than Rod. Rod turned up just in time to let Troy graspat the lifeline. Another day, one more morning down the well, one more afternoon in the bubble and he
might have been lost for ever.

Complacent in victory, pulling at the ragged sleeve of government, Rod crowed.

‘So Woodbridge lied,’ Troy said. ‘Big deal.’

‘One does not lie to the House of Commons, Freddie. It is a matter of principle. I cannot tell you how strongly that principle is regarded in the House.’

‘Don’t be so bloody preposterous. Woodbridge lied to the Commons in ’57 when he cleared Charlie. Most of the voting public might have believed him. But the House didn’t.
Did you?’

‘That’s . . . that’s different.’

‘How so? Because no one called him a liar? Because he lied by common – or do I mean Commons – consent? Or is it all OK as long as he didn’t get caught?’

‘It’s different. Believe me it’s different.’

‘What is this? “Trust me, I’m a politician”? Rod, you gave Charlie a job on
American Week
knowing damn well he was a spy.’

‘He had been cleared by a government minister.’

‘That’s your excuse? Your “get out of jail free card”? A government minister says something you know to be untrue, and that sanctions you to endorse the untruth publicly?
Woodbridge lied, blatantly, and no one gave a damn because it suited them not to give a damn. I do not see how a profession that lies for a living can be so concerned about one more lie.’

‘It is perhaps a lie too far.’

‘And they should have better things to do than debate the sex lives of their own people! Who fucks who is none of their damn business.’

‘It’s not the sex. Well not just the sex. There’s the security issue.’

‘Look me in the eye and tell me you really believe Tim Woodbridge whispered state secrets to the Ffitch girls, one of whom was probably gagging on his cock, the other probably sitting on
his face. Into what organ did he whisper? Then tell me the Ffitches rogered Anton Tereshkov, and in between blowing him, fucking him, and I know not what, found the time to mutter the same secret
somethings to him!’

‘My God, Freddie, you can be crude when you want to.’

‘Rod. Look me in the eye and tell me you really believe there was a security risk!’

Troy leant in and fixed him, an eye wide. Rod squared off, big brother to little brother. Bickering adolescents once more. And he could not say it. The posture was ridiculous. Troy began to
corpse. He could feel himself cracking up with an uncontrollable fit of giggling.

At last Rod spoke, and Troy knew from the tone that he’d won.

‘Tell me,’ he began, tacking away from the storm. ‘Have you heard the latest one about Harold Wilson that’s doing the rounds?’

Troy shook his head. There was a playful, wicked flicker around Rod’s lips.

‘How can you tell when he’s lying?’

‘Dunno,’ said Troy.

‘His lips move.’

Rod grinned. Troy cracked. Rod laughed till he cried.

His visitors now came if not in droves then in serial caravan as though The Glebe stood like some Arabian oasis between the wadis. Troy could scarcely believe the effort and
the frequency with which denizens of the metropolis sought him out. He decided that he was probably the basis of a good day out. Motor down to Suffolk, spot of lunch on the way, look in on poor old
Freddie.

Two days after Rod he could scarce believe the visitor at all. A mirage at the oasis. Catesby leant into the conservatory and yelled with his customary bonhomie, ‘Another one for you, old
chap,’ and Troy turned from his copy of the
Herald
to see Woodbridge standing awkardly in the old window between the house and the conservatory, clutching a couple of books and a
pineapple. It was one of the miracles of the modern age, mass communication – television, the rise of easy-to-read tabloid newspapers full of pictures, all but devoid of text – and yet,
it seemed, Catesby and the nurse who had ushered Woodbridge in still failed to recognise the man.

He waited till they’d gone, then said, ‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping in?’

‘Not at all,’ said Troy. ‘Bored out of my brain. But let’s ditch the pretence. One doesn’t just drop in to this neck of the woods, one seeks it out.’

Woodbridge turned around a wicker armchair to face Troy, and sat in it. Set the pineapple to sit between them on the low table, uneasily, like an unexploded, oversized hand grenade.

‘It’s bloody murder. You know I would never have imagined it could be so bad. A lifetime in politics and I thought I was ready for the worst. I suppose some naive node in my brain
actually thought the gentlemen of the press needed sleep occasionally. Couldn’t be more wrong. They’ve camped on my doorstep, and I do mean literally – thermos flasks, sleeping
bags, like the queue for the first day of Harrods’ sale – camped there day and night for weeks now. Only the police will move them, and since I stepped down I might as well be a
fugitive Nazi as far as the local coppers are concerned.

This morning seemed to double their numbers, but then every new twist in the tale does. I suppose you’ve seen the papers?’

Troy held up the
Herald
. ‘F
ITZPATRICK ARRESTED AND CHARGED
. I
MMORAL EARNINGS AND PROCUREMENT
’ screamed a banner headline.

‘God knows what they expect me to say. But they were out in force when it emerged that Fitz had finally been charged. I really needed a break from it all. I felt I’d go mad if I had
to say “no comment” one more time. I drove like a lunatic across London, and found myself on the North Circular road, looked in the rear-view mirror and I couldn’t believe it.
I’d lost them. There I was heading towards Whipps Cross and not a Fleet Street hack in sight. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. I was elated I’d lost them. I’d actually
shaken the buggers off. No idea where I was going, then I saw a signpost saying A12, and I thought “A12? Doesn’t that lead out towards Suffolk?” And then I thought of you. I do
hope you don’t mind. If you think about it, it’s the last place the bastards’ll ever look for me.’

‘I’ve already said I don’t. All the same, how did you know I was here?’

‘Anna,’ Woodbridge said simply, and it was quite enough for Troy.

‘I stopped off at a bookshop in Chelmsford. Wasn’t a lot of choice. But there’s a new Marge Allingham and a Graham Greene I didn’t know was in paperback. I don’t
know whether you like Greene?’

‘None better,’ said Troy. He’d read
Our Man in Havana
, but he’d enjoy reading it again. He’d not read the Allingham, but then he never read detective stories
– not since he was young, before he became a copper – but Rod read them, as he put it, as a “parliamentary relaxation”, and Rod rated Allingham. It was thoughtful of
Woodbridge and Troy hoped he wasn’t about to pay their price in an afternoon bearing witness to his self-pity.

Woodbridge picked up the
Herald
. Looked at the headline. Tossed the paper back on the coffee table.

‘I don’t even know what “procurement” means. I’d never heard of it.’

‘It means introducing a woman under the age of twenty-one to a man over the age of twenty-one for the purposes of sexual intercourse.’

‘Parliament must have been mad to pass a law like that!’

‘Most of the time you are.’

‘I mean – how is a chap to know when he introduces Miss X to Mister Y that they’re going to do it? Half the chaps I know would be in jail if that were illegal.’

‘What do you mean “if ”? It is illegal.’

‘But the twins are twenty-four or five!’

‘They’re not twins. So, they’re lying about the age of one them regardless. And how old is Clover?’

‘I didn’t have sex with Clover.’

‘Really?’

‘Believe me, Troy. Not only did I not fuck young Clover, Fitz did not introduce me to the Ffitch girls. I met them at his house, true, but the mood he was in he offered no introduction. I
chatted to Tara and asked her if she’d have dinner with me some time. She said, “We do everything together.” I said, “Everything?” “Yes,” she said,
“so if you think that’ll cramp your style I wouldn’t ask any further.” She short-circuited all the chat-up lines I knew. We all three of us had dinner in the West End a
couple of times and then we all three of us went to bed together. Fitz had no part of it. I shouldn’t think he knew till we started going down to Uphill on a regular basis.’

‘And now, according to the
Sunday Post
, Major Ffitch is threatening to horsewhip you.’

‘Worse. Young Clover’s grandfather has threatened to thrash me in public if he finds out I had his granddaughter.’

‘I didn’t see that.’

‘No. It’s not in the papers, it’s just gossip, but these days what few friends I have left seem to think it essential to tell me every whisper that reaches their
ears.’

‘Who is this old fool?’

‘Dunno. Sir Somebody Something. Nobody seemed to have a name. Just some old bugger with a knighthood.’

‘Good Lord – did Clover strike you as a recent descendant of anyone with a title?’

‘I give up on accents these days – I thought she was a cockney sparrow, but it could have been an affectation. The number of people you meet nowadays affecting Scouse, I’m
surprised she didn’t sound like John Lennon.’

‘Classlessness ain’t what it used to be.’

Woodbridge laughed at this. It diverted them both, but as the laughter died Woodbridge reached a new level – a frankness Troy could not see as wholly devoid of self-pity and the
self-centredness which seemed an inescapable part of the man’s charm.

‘You know, I did nothing wrong.’

‘Try telling my brother that.’

‘I’m a widower. I’m not a married man. I’m not an adulterer. I took the view that who I slept with was no concern of my colleagues in the House, nor of anyone else. If
people think three in a bed is kinky, I can’t help that. I did not do it in the street. I did not frighten the horses. It’s not illegal. I didn’t choose it, but between you and me
I’d recommend it to any man past his prime as a way of taking ten years off the clock.’