Authors: Alan Judd
Legacy (24 page)
‘Now,’ said Hookey briskly, leaning forward in his armchair. ‘I have something here for you.’ He waited while the waiter delivered a brandy and a white port, then took
from his other inside pocket a bulky plain brown envelope. ‘This is part of a document written by your father many years ago. I shall lend it to you to take away and read. Don’t read it
here. I’m doing it because it may help you to come to terms with what has happened. It comes from a source of very great delicacy which I am not about to reveal to you and I want you to
assure me that if anyone else sees it, if you show it to anyone – as you may feel you want to – you must convince them that you found it among old papers and diaries left in the loft by
your father. It must not, under any circumstances, have come from or have been seen by us. Do I have your word on this? Cross your heart and hope to die, eh?’
Charles nodded.
Hookey sat back. ‘Good. Now, one other thing. If you do make contact as a private individual with Lover Boy – and you’ll have to be quick about it because indications are
he’ll be going back in the next week or two – I beg you to remember Legacy. You may think it odd that I feel it necessary to remind you of it but Lover Boy’s words to you about
not neglecting your professional and patriotic duty strike a deep note for me, a resonant note. Not only do I think these are the words of a man who wants to talk, despite what he says about not
talking, and that it would be worth pursuing him – were we permitted – for those reasons alone. Beyond that, what he says points to a truth about your generation and, if I may say so,
perhaps a danger for yourself.’
He paused, his hands clasped across his chest, his unlit pipe on the coffee table between them and his gaze on the sunshine and traffic of St James’s Street. ‘That is, the romantic
elevation of the individual above all else, the cult of sincerity, the idea that if I really feel it, it really matters, the assumption of happiness and self-fulfilment as not only the natural
state of mankind, but a right. I don’t just mean all the E. M. Forster crap about betraying his country rather than his friend – which means betraying his friend’s friends –
but the insistence on validation by the personal, with the personal always coming first.’ He took up his port. ‘Now, of course, I’m an old buffer and I have to remind myself that
I must seem to you like old buffers of the previous generation seemed to me when I was your age. But with this difference – they had been through the mill, the first war, as we had ours,
whereas your generation has been blest with unbroken peace and unprecedented plenty. Good for you. We – which includes your father, it’s worth remembering – knew ourselves lucky
to be alive, fed, housed and in one piece, give or take a few loose screws. We were less inclined to rate the importance of anything we were involved in in terms of our own feelings for it.
It’s not that we were morally any better – you would have been us and we you if the generations were reversed – but the struggle for survival compelled us to look first to what
your friend might call the objective realities of a situation rather than at the emotional consequences for ourselves, which come somewhat lower down the survival scale. This, essentially, is what
Viktor was getting at when he was berating you for your alleged lack of professional concern. That’s not because he’s a good communist – believe me, there are very few real
communists where he comes from – but because he was brought up in a country that stresses your duties to the state far more than what the state is supposed to do for you. He knows the
importance of things like Legacy, he knows that the Cold War is not phoney. It has casualties even while it’s cold – look at the Cubans and South Africans in Angola or at what’s
happening in South Vietnam now that the Americans have pulled the plug on their allies and left them with an army of occupation which gets all the support it wants from Russia and China. I
won’t go on about that. Makes me too angry. The whole thing was wrongly understood and wrongly handled from the start – and not for want of telling from us, I can tell you. But there we
are.
‘The point is, people like your friend understand all too well how easily the Cold War can get hot. They’re serious about making it hot wherever and whenever they think they can get
away with it. That’s why they’re so serious about penetrating bodies such as the National Union of Mineworkers. They look at the power cuts and three-day week and all the rest of it and
the lesson they draw is that democracies are fragile and weak. Did you know that almost from day one of those mining strikes there was a significant increase in MIG fighter incursions into British
airspace? Testing RAF reaction times. And that almost from day one of the Northern Irish troubles they’ve had signals monitoring ships just outside territorial waters, logging our
forces’ personnel and procedures? So, for them, filling secret dumps with stuff that could be used to knock out Nato radar or worse is not just playing war-games for the sake of it, or
norm-filling. They’re doing it because they hope to use those dumps. Knowing that, your friend is understandably a little shocked at your casual, self-referential approach to it
all.’
He held up his hand as if to forestall a protest that Charles was not, in fact, about to make. He disagreed with nothing of the argument, but was surprised to hear it being applied to him.
‘That said,’ Hookey continued, ‘I understand your reactions, I don’t think you’re likely to drown in self-pity and self-concern and I’m sure you won’t
neglect the broader picture when confronted with it. And I also think that your very obvious lack of pressure on Lover Boy might paradoxically prove your strongest card in recruiting him, whether
you intended it or not.’
‘You want me to recruit him, then, when I’ve left?’
‘Dear boy, how could I possibly say so? We are forbidden contact.’
They parted in St James’s Street, Hookey for Head Office and Charles to view the flat. He was late, so took a taxi.
The driver frowned. ‘Tregunter Road?’
‘Bottom edge of the Boltons.’ He hadn’t looked it up in the A–Z and paid little attention as they headed along the Brompton and Fulham roads. He could feel the envelope
in his pocket but didn’t want to read it until he was alone. How Hookey came to possess something his father had written was a mystery which reading would presumably resolve.
Tregunter Road was a street of tall, mostly stucco-fronted nineteenth-century houses. He mounted the steps to one and was peering at the faded writing for the correct bell when the door was
opened by a bustling woman of late middle age in an old Barbour, festooned with bags and riding tack, carrying car keys in her teeth and wearing a black, lace-fringed eye-patch that looked like a
miniature bra. ‘You’re not Mr Thorough-good?’ she asked, challengingly.
‘Yes, I’m very sorry to be so late, I’m –’
‘Can’t stop, awful rush. Keys in my pocket. This one.’ She turned side-on to him, moving one bag enough to expose a pocket.
‘Let me help you with the bags.’
‘No time. Just fish them out. Delighted to have you as a neighbour. Come for a drink when I’m back. I’m the flat below you. You’ll have to dig deeper than that. Hurry
up.’ She hurried down the steps and crammed her tack and baggage into the red E-Type Jaguar parked outside.
Inside the large hall was a letter table and mirror. The stairs narrowed as they wound upwards, ending in a small landing off which were two doors, one to the woman’s flat and the other to
Charles’s destination. Beyond that was an even smaller landing and a set of even narrower stairs with wobbly banisters. They led up into a final landing, giving onto a sitting room, a tiny
kitchen, a passage, two bedrooms and a bathroom which faced the road. The flat had been an attic, the ceilings sloping with the roof-line. French windows in the sitting room led onto a small
balcony overlooking a large rectangle of private gardens, secluded from the roads on all sides by similarly tall houses. The balcony was level with the tops of the plane trees. Charles opened a
window and stepped out, startling a pigeon from a branch.
He walked again into each room. The flat was lightly furnished and lined floor to ceiling with empty bookshelves. He would buy it, he thought, whatever happened. He was in the mood for
decisions, gestures, change. It made him feel better. Since first going to Oxford and throughout his time in the army he had lived from a single trunk. There was that, his bicycle –
little-used of late – and whatever clothes he could find hanging for. His books were in his bedroom at his mother’s. It would be an easy move; all except the bike would fit in the
Rover. He would need plates, he supposed, tea-spoons, chairs, boring things like that, but they could come later.
It was not a cold day and he returned to the balcony, sitting out in one of two dilapidated wicker chairs. Resignation involved a month’s notice, so in one sense he was still employed by
the office. That would mean he could complete the mortgage application with details of salary, references and so on without telling the lie direct. And then – well, then the rest of life,
whatever that entailed. Until now phases of life had followed on one from another in a seemingly natural progression – school, university, the army, the office – like holes on a golf
course. But now, for the first time, there were no more marker flags, no clear direction. The sense of progression that had been so much part of the natural order was suddenly not there. What was
left was uncertainty, and not feeling part of anything, perhaps normality for the mass of mankind. The prospect was neither appealing nor stimulating.
Postponing further thought, he took Hookey’s envelope from his pocket and began to read.
T
here were several photocopied A4 sheets of lined paper, covered in his father’s precise, sloping handwriting. Staple holes and condition
suggested they had been kept in an envelope or file. There had almost certainly been a covering sheet, or sheets, now removed. ‘Berlin 1945’ was written at the top in pencil, in another
hand.
‘I sensed, really, that it was a set-up,’ it began, with no preliminary,
even as I was letting it happen. No young woman in Berlin had food, money, her own flat, decent clothes and shoes, make-up and nylon stockings unless she had somebody
influential looking after her. Her eyes, too, were different. Most eyes here were hungry and fearful. Hers were watchful, but in an assessing way, vulnerable but determined. It was as if she was
saying, ‘Here I am. You may not want me but this is it, this is what I have to do. So.’
That was in the summer, of course, after the German surrender. For me it came after nearly a year of living in woods and fields, of fighting every hedgerow, ditch, canal or river. True, I had
had seven blissful days back in Gloucestershire with Jean, who I never wanted to leave again. But then it was back to the mud and mines of the Reichswald and bitter continuous fighting. Our
division used more ammunition in that month in the Reichswald than any division in any month of the campaign. Nor was that all. We took the hard route from Normandy up through the Low Countries
and into northern Germany. Not the easy path of flowers and girls and liberation through France, Paris and all the rest of it. Ours was the grim way, the Wehrmacht way. Every field, every copse,
every ditch, every ruin had to be fought for. In those last months of war I never slept beneath any roof, saw any whole building nor any smile on the face of any civilian. They were sullen,
resentful, beaten, scowling. ‘No Frat’ – No Fraternisation – was the order, but there wasn’t much temptation. They hated us. Most of the uniformed Germans we saw
were either POWs or teenage corpses. The latter, I’m afraid, were of no more consequence to us then than lumps of wood to be heaved out of our way.
After the surrender I was plucked from the division and flown here to Berlin to help liaise in reconstruction with the other occupying powers. It meant a bed at last, with blankets (no sheets)
and, once we got it going again, running water and electricity. All around were burned and blackened houses, streets full of rubble, gaping bomb-holes, opened-up sewers, stray dogs, rats and
rampant weed. The people were like rats at first, too, furtive and frightened, emboldened only by hunger. They were terrified of being left with the Russians.
Rightly. To the Russians, reconstruction meant looting. It was systematic, it was their policy. Rape and casual shootings were mere incidentals, harmless diversions permitted to the soldiers
of the proletariat as a reward for relieving the sufferings of the fatherland. I had to work mainly with the Russians, through interpreters, trying to restore services where our zone bordered
theirs. It was pretty thankless, futile and frustrating, but I suppose it’s how they got on to me.
The interpreter I worked most with was Ivan Ivanovitch Rostok, a Red Army lieutenant from the Crimea, or so he said. He was better than the others, not only in his English but in his attitude.
His instinct was to be helpful rather than indifferent or obstructive. He could not overcome the suspicion, rigidity and lethargy of the system within which he lived but he was more companionable
than burdensome. I suppose he had to be, in order to report on me.
Not that there could have been much for him to say. He knew that I had married on my last leave before D-Day but I cannot think of anything which would have led him to report that I wanted to
be unfaithful. Though I suppose we were all affected by the anything-goes, grab-what-you-can climate that came with peace. And after living in ditches and shell-holes for months on end you
can’t help being affected by whatever is clean, soft and feminine. We never discussed sex or women, that I recall, and we never socialised together when the bars and so on got going again.
Perhaps there was something about the way I looked at women, or perhaps they just thought it was worth a try anyway. It must have been the same for him, too, I guess.
I met her – or, rather, she met me – one evening at the Café Berlin that had reopened in our sector. I ate out whenever I could, mainly just to get away from the army for an
hour or two but also to practise my German. There wasn’t much choice of food but the city was beginning to pick itself up quickly. Human life is remarkably resilient. She simply came to my
table and said, in careful English – I was in British Army uniform, of course – ‘Excuse me, may I share your table, please?’ She wore a flowery summer skirt and a spotless
white blouse. With her handbag slung over her shoulder, she could have stepped straight out of pre-war Berlin. She looked like no one else I had seen there.
I stood for her and as she sat she said, ‘I promise I shall not cause you disturbance. It is simply that if I sit at a table alone other soldiers of your army think I am wishing to meet
them. I shall eat and read my book but you have no need to speak to me.’
It came so pat, sounded so rehearsed. Then she smiled and said, ‘We shall look like a married couple.’
Of course we talked. I was pleased, flattered, refreshed by her presence. She told me her name – Ulriche – and said she had been training to be a doctor until quite late in the
war, when training was suspended. Her father was a well-known doctor, very influential, who would build up a good practice again when things got back to normal. Meanwhile he and her mother had
escaped to Bavaria when the Russians came. They were still there. She had a boyfriend in the U-boat service but it was many months since she had heard from him. No one knew what had happened to
his boat. She was lucky she could live in her parents’ flat nearby. It was untouched, so far.
You know how it is when you think you have things under control. In fact, you do have them under control – you actually do – and therein lies the danger. Being aware of what is
going on, you are confident of your power to stop it at any time. So you let it continue. You enjoy steering it. Then one day you realise it has acquired a momentum which means that, although you
can still guide or steer it, stopping has become difficult. It has by then entered your past ineradicably. It has become part of you, part of your present. Now, even if you stop it dead, it will
never leave you. So nothing lost by going on, you think. That’s how you get caught.
I was a pushover, I guess. When we went back to her flat afterwards I still had no intention of doing anything. Because I knew I could say no, I was confident I could continue to enjoy the
idea of it, the ever-present possibility, without the guilt of acquiescence. And I liked talking to her. I wanted her to go on talking. It was a long time since I’d talked to a woman.
It’s curious that I can’t now – I really can’t – recall exactly how it happened. I have vivid memories of parts of it but no recollection of the sequence. It
started on the sofa but how I came to be on it with her, and how – or who – moved from a position of no contact to contact, I simply cannot say. If we lived in times that believed in
witchcraft, I’d have claimed I was bewitched. That might still be true but not wholly fair.
I spent most of that first night in her apartment. It was a high-ceilinged, turn-of-the-century place, with heavy faded curtains and solid dark furniture. My work meant I could come and go
fairly freely, you see, but I had to be back for reveille. In fact, we spent a lot of time talking. Perhaps, during all those months of hard lying, the real deprivation was more of intimate
companionship than sex, which was simply the obvious thing. I can’t remember all we said, but we talked a lot and it all seemed so vital at the time.
I don’t think I ever thought she was a prostitute by profession, but I had assumed that she would want money, despite her clothes and apartment. Every German needed money. She
didn’t mention it and neither did I, until I was buttoning up my battledress. I handled it badly, saying something like, ‘Can I give you some money?’
She was still in bed and just stared at me. ‘If you like.’
I tried to appear light-hearted about it. ‘If you like, surely. Don’t you need it?’
‘Everyone needs money.’
‘How much?’
‘Whatever you like.’
I felt awful. If I put my wallet away it would look as if I was meanly trying to get away without paying. Yet if I paid it demeaned us both. ‘I hate this,’ I said.
‘It is better if you pay.’
‘Better?’
‘For you, Stephen.’
It was the first time she had spoken my name. Tears stood in her eyes. I went to her. Afterwards she said, ‘Leave something. Just anything. It will be easier for you.’
It was some time before I understood what she meant. In the meantime, I went back to her, and back, and back, as you know. Becoming obsessed is like being adrift in the sea. When you’re
in it up to your head you have no knowledge of how far or how fast you’re being taken. Your horizon is too limited. You lack the perspective that the sight of land could give you. If you
could see land you could measure your drift and appreciate what was happening. For a while, early on, I really did lose sight of land, but I had Jean’s letters to remind me and, of course,
my guilt. It wasn’t that I ceased to love Jean. It would have been simpler if I had. It was more that this seemed something set aside from normal time, as if a whistle had been blown and
this didn’t count. Geography alters the moral compass as well as the magnetic, but really I always knew where true north lay.
Also, something about Ulriche was different. The intensity and release of that first night was echoed but never repeated. She remained keen but I sensed an underlying resolution, as if
something took determination to go through with it. Not because she didn’t want to see me. I shall never believe she didn’t want that. Our times together and our talk could not have
been faked. The whole affair was one long passionate dialogue. But she was having to steel herself to something else at the same time. Our only argument was about money. I’d said again that
I hated paying her, hated her feeling she had to sell herself, yet at the same time if she needed financial help I was only too happy to give it. It was turning our love-making into a transaction
that I didn’t like.
‘You must pay me,’ she said, ‘you must.’ When I demurred she turned on me with tears in her eyes. ‘Stephen, it is for you I say this. You must. It will help you
to hate me.’
‘Hate you? Why should I want to hate you?’
She turned away. I could more easily hate myself than her, especially when I thought of Jean. When we parted that time I left her money
on the table, as usual. It was an ornate occasional table in the sitting room beneath an oval nineteenth-century mirror. For a moment the mirror showed me, the money on the polished table, my
hand on the money, and Ulriche, in her red dressing-gown by the fireplace, watching. I don’t know whether she knew that was the last time we were to meet. I don’t think she did, but
she may have sensed it.
The next time I went to her flat the door was opened by a balding, thickset man in a heavy blue suit. Two other men were suddenly behind me. They must have been hiding up the next flight of
stairs. ‘Major Thoroughgood,’ said the man, in heavily accented English. ‘We are expecting you. Very welcome. Please to come in.’
Without anyone actually laying a hand on me, I was shuffled through the door. Sitting in one of the armchairs was another man in an identical blue suit, but he was younger, with dark curly
hair. He was smoking a cigarette and seemed very relaxed. He introduced himself as Igor Smoletsky. ‘I apologise for this rude shock, Major Thoroughgood,’ he said, in good English.
‘Ulriche has been transferred to other duties. We thought we should discuss with you how to handle this delicate situation. Please be seated.’
Well, the rest was predictable: the photographs of Ulriche and I in the café where we met, the mention of others more compromising, the suggestion that the English newspapers might take
an interest in this secret relationship between a British Army officer and a communist prostitute, the tape recordings, the effect on my military career and my future of this unauthorised,
undeclared, out-of-hours, compromising fraternisation, the sadness that would be felt by my pretty young wife when she opened the envelope containing the compromising photographs.
In fact, I’m not convinced they had those compromising photographs, or not usable ones, anyway. If they did, they would have shown me, just as they played an extract from the tapes. I
realised then why Ulriche would always switch out the light when we went to bed, claiming she liked just the ‘romantic’ light from the sitting room through the half-open door. It was
my second reason for gratitude to her. That, and her insistence on payment because it would make it easier to hate her for what she had done, and therefore recover more quickly from the pain of
it, were of course trivial compared with the overwhelming fact of her entrapment and betrayal of me. Yet they were the more touching because of that. It was, I guess, all she could do, and it may
have been why they took her off what I suppose I must call my ‘case’. She never tried to get any sort of information out of me.
Anyway, who was I to complain of betrayal? The shock of what was happening, my anger with Ulriche and with the Russians who were talking to me, my worries about what would happen were bad
enough. But they were as nothing to my anger with myself and the shame and remorse which now accompanied my every thought of Jean. Remorse for what cannot be undone is a corrosive that eats at
your heart and soul. Why cannot this be felt as piercingly at the time as it is afterwards?
During that first talk with Igor, though, it was practicalities I was most worried about. How to get out of my immediate situation came before deciding how to cope with the longer term. All
sorts of things were going on in Berlin at that time and there was credible talk of kidnaps and killings. Were they going to abduct me and, if so, for what? Her flat was a few yards inside the
Russian zone – something I haven’t mentioned so far, which shows how little account I took of it at the time, since my work took me in and out of that zone everyday and I had a pass
for it. I could imagine myself the centre of a show trial as a spy. Admittedly, they did not mention anything like that but the situation was threatening enough and I had no doubt that the heavy
mob was there to stop me making a run for it. Igor’s calm recitation of the possibilities and consequences of disclosure was bureaucratic rather than bullying, like a lawyer wearily
outlining court procedure, but the more truly threatening because of that.