Secret Kingdom (16 page)

Without warning, Martineau had descended on him with the instruction that he was to escort Christine to the ambassador’s birthday dinner. Surely there were others more suitable? He was new to the embassy and very junior compared to those he imagined would be the ambassador’s guests. By the time he was ready to voice his concerns, Martineau had vanished.

‘Bad luck, Hugh,’ Christine Martineau said, taking his arm. ‘You’ve drawn the short straw.’

At dinner he was placed at one end of the long table, with Christine next to him. During the first course she was actively engaged in conversation with her neighbour. He didn’t know the couple sitting opposite him, and they showed little interest. He gave his cold beetroot soup more attention than it deserved and wished he was somewhere else.

Perhaps Christine would say something that might help him understand Martineau. Then he might be able to get closer to him, eliminate the distance he found so irritating, say the things he wanted to say. There was a mystery about him: Carswell had hinted as much when they’d had lunch in London. Martineau had suffered as a result of his involvement with Peter the Great; whether through his own fault or that of others, he wasn’t sure. Unquestionably, his career had been blighted. Perhaps the wound had gone deeper; perhaps his nerve had gone, something broken inside. That could be the reason why he found it hard to trust anyone.

‘I’ve been shamefully neglecting you,’ Christine said, leaning towards him. ‘I hope you will forgive me.’

He noticed she had her own bottle of vodka which had been waiting by her place before they sat down. She had refilled her glass twice before they’d finished their soup. The waiter must have had instructions because he made no attempt to give her wine.

‘Bobby treating you all right?’

‘Yes,’ he answered helplessly, attempting to hide his confusion at her unexpected question. Had Martineau told her about their quarrel outside the Opera House?

‘Well, don’t be taken in. He can be a real bastard when he wants to be.’ She looked suddenly anxious. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about your boss like that, should I? How can you know him, you’ve only been here a few weeks. I’m married to him, that’s the difference, so I should know him better than anyone, shouldn’t I?’

She was interrupted by a call for the ambassador’s health to be drunk. Glasses were raised, Archie’s name intoned and conversation resumed.

‘Where was I?’

‘You were telling me about your husband,’ he replied carefully.

‘You aren’t taking his side already, are you?’ Christine laughed. ‘I may have to ask Archie to sit me next to someone else.’

‘I’m on no one’s side, Mrs Martineau. I’m the new boy.’

‘You must call me Christine. Will you promise to do that?’

‘If that’s what you wish.’

‘Is everything all right, dear?’ Rachel Randall, on a mid-dinner round of inspection, was leaning over his shoulder. ‘We’re not boring you to death, are we, Hugh?’

‘Of course not, Mrs Randall. I’m delighted to be here. Wonderful evening.’

‘Enjoy Christine while you have her. I shall be making all the men change places in a moment.’

‘Does it shock you that I can talk about Bobby like that when I’ve never met you before?’

The trick, he was learning, was to say nothing. She always answered her own questions.

‘That’s what makes it so easy, the fact that I don’t know you. Bobby’s a great charmer. Don’t be deceived. I fell for it once. I
wanted you to know there’s another side to him. He’s not all sweetness and light.’

He was moved after that, placed next to Rachel Randall, who insisted on telling him how impossible it was to get the Hungarian domestics to do things properly in the embassy.

‘I put it all down to this awful communism, dear. It takes away their initiative. They’re quite unable to do anything unless Marx says they can, and it seems that he never got round to saying that cleaning the silver was good for the soul, if communists have souls. Do communists have souls? What do you think? I know they don’t believe in God.’

‘Perhaps the problem is they aren’t used to cleaning silver.’

She talked to him about Budapest, all the time with half an eye on her husband and their guests. Was he enjoying living abroad? Wasn’t Bobby Martineau fun? She’d always had a soft spot for him, he was so amusing, what a shame he wasn’t here this evening. She and Christine went back a long way, had Christine told him that? They’d been at school together, donkey’s years ago, who’d have imagined they’d end up married to men in the diplomatic and stationed in this out-of-the-way place. Wasn’t life strange? You never knew what was around the next corner, did you?

He learned little that was new during the evening. The enigma of Martineau remained, neither exploded nor unravelled. The man was popular, had charm, was married, possibly unhappily (if you believed Christine and the wreck of the vodka bottle, though he wasn’t sure he did) and that was about it. He was no further forward.

It was well after midnight when Christine came up to him, glass in hand, and said: ‘I think it’s time you took me home.’

He was given the keys to one of the embassy cars (‘Bring it back in one piece, old boy, won’t you? It’s impossible to get spares in this hole’) and he drove a silent Christine over the Szecheny Bridge, past Moscow Square and out towards the Buda hills.

‘Won’t you come in?’

‘It’s late. I should be getting back.’

‘Come and have a drink. I promise I won’t tell Bobby you stayed out late.’ More laughter, more mockery. ‘I’m not going to eat you.’

The apartment was on the first floor of a two-storey building. They sat on a veranda overlooking the garden. A few lights twinkled
on the hills in front of them. In the moonlight, he turned towards Christine Martineau and saw that she was crying.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m so sorry. Take no notice. I’ll be fine in a moment.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what makes you unhappy?’ he asked, finding courage from nowhere.

‘Can you stay all night, and tomorrow too?’

‘It can’t be as bad as that,’ he said.

A light wind had sprung up from somewhere, cooling the night air, making it bearable. It was some time before Christine broke the silence.

‘Don’t judge him too harshly by what you see now,’ she said slowly. ‘Something went badly wrong in Moscow. God knows what, he never talks about his work. But Moscow changed him, he lost his belief in himself and he’s never been the same since. We were recalled to London eventually but the damage had been done by then. There was some kind of inquisition. Bobby said his department had become very political and he’d fallen foul of someone more powerful than he was, something to do with jealousy over work he’d done in Moscow. He seemed to give in, to accept that what he’d dreamed of was never going to be within his reach. We were exiled to Rio. It was an unbearable time, a prison sentence. He was miserable, impossible. I don’t think Bobby’s ever truly recovered from what happened in Moscow.’

She was telling him more about herself than her husband. He saw in the darkness the chasm of loneliness into which her life had fallen, the years of postings to distant places, having to live within the narrow limits of embassy society where, surely, everyone had known about Bobby’s difficulties. For the first time he felt sorry for her.

They sat in silence. A solitary car drove by, its headlights illuminating a corner of the garden for a moment. Then darkness once more.

‘It’s time you went home,’ she said, standing up. ‘You’ve had a rotten evening. I’m sorry about that. I’ll try to be jollier next time. But thank you for keeping me company. I’m glad you came.’

The pain strikes the back of his head as he crosses Lower Church Road. It is like a wire snapping. Everything goes black. The world he knows disappears. He is dimly aware of a sensation of weightlessness and loss that later he recalls as drifting through billowing clouds of nothingness. He is cold, disconnected from his body, detached from the world, unnaturally calm.

Images rush past him. At first his vision is blurred and he sees nothing, then the seething in his head subsides and he is aware of a young man standing on Harlow station, full of trepidation, waiting for the train to Cambridge. There is no one else around. No porter, no ticket collector, no other passengers. He looks for his mother and father, but cannot see them. The railway lines are rusty from disuse, thickets of grass have grown between the sleepers. He remembers his childhood fear that the train will never come, that he will spend the rest of his life waiting hopelessly for an escape from the prison of his youth. It was the first time the memory had returned to his consciousness since his arrival at Cambridge so many years before.

What
is
happening
to
him?
Why
has
his
past
returned
to
haunt
him?

One image dissolves rapidly into another. He is sitting in an elegant, well-furnished room that is full of books. A pale afternoon light pours through the leaded window. A fire in the grate struggles to give out heat. He can feel the bone-chilling mist of the Fens creeping up the wooden stairs, sliding in under the oak door and sinking into his soul. He is alone in his supervisor’s room in Peterhouse, reading out an essay. He does not understand what he is saying because he cannot recognize the language he is speaking. Nonsense pours out of his mouth. He experiences again the terror of his first term when everyone he met knew so much more than he did, that he was sure he would not be clever enough to succeed. How close he had come in those difficult early weeks to returning, defeated, to his attic room in Harlow.

A spreading light drives the darkness from his mind, a shadowy present swims back into view and the episode passes as unexpectedly as it appeared. The sun is shining, it is still morning. He is walking down Lower Church Road as he does at this time every day. He sees the railway bridge, the narrow cut that runs beside the railway
line to the station, he hears the rumbling of the silver carriages of the District line as the Underground sets off for Kew.

He doesn’t know how long the episode has lasted. He has the impression he is waking from an endless dream, surfacing from an immersion in a world of painful memories he thought he had lost for ever. Reality now has a watery appearance; if he moves too quickly it loses coherence and breaks up into abstract shapes and colours. The world he has returned to is insubstantial, barely holding together. Its fragility frightens him.

Should he go home and take to his bed? Since he can’t explain to Harrier what has happened (she wouldn’t understand), it is not a difficult decision to continue on his journey. He has the physical strength to do so. His condition reminds him of coming out of a fever – the crisis has passed but the shadow of illness is still upon him. He walks carefully, afraid he might lose his balance.

Even in King Charles Street there is no escape from these sudden and overpowering attacks. He finds concentration on his work difficult. Are these episodes – what a neutral word – signs that something infinitely worse is about to happen? Will he collapse with a stroke? Will he suddenly turn into a demented being? Panic surges through him like a tidal wave. He closes his eyes and leans against the filing cabinet.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Cramp,’ he lies. ‘Pain in my leg. It’ll pass.’

He retreats to his office. There’ve been no warning symptoms. The attack has come out of the blue. He tries to rationalize what is happening to him. Something must have triggered it off. But what? An event he has experienced, or an event in his mind? Or is his mind out of control? Panic boils inside him once more like incipient nausea. He grips the edge of his desk until the moment passes and he can open his eyes again.

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

He hasn’t heard Margaret coming in. This is getting out of hand.

‘Cramp again. I can’t seem to get rid of it.’

‘I’ll get you a glass of water. You aren’t taking enough salt. That’s why you get cramp. You must look after yourself, Gerry.’

Not enough salt. If only the answer to his pain were as simple as that.

The sudden downpour gave her the excuse she was looking for. It had been humid all day, the low clouds about to break but never quite doing so until now. As the rain started, she gathered her skirt and ran quickly across the road, seeking shelter.

It was years since she had been inside a church. Why was she here now? She had no faith (she had never had any faith, despite her parents’ efforts), yet she felt herself driven to come into this place of quiet. She sat down. Candles burned brightly in the gloom beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. She could hear the rain beating on the roof above her. As far as she could see the place was deserted.

What mattered most to her? Her love for Bobby Martineau or her loyalty to Julia’s memory? Every day that she was alive was bought at a terrible price. Had she the right to fall in love, to feel passion for another human being, when Julia, sweet, innocent Julia, was dead in her place and the mystery of her death unresolved? Wasn’t it her duty to devote herself to discovering who had done this terrible thing? How could she do that and keep Martineau?

Searching for the truth about Julia’s death was difficult and dangerous. She had already taken huge risks and so far got away with them, but she was no nearer her goal. There was no reason to suppose her luck would not run out at some point. She had no right to involve Martineau in events that had nothing to do with him. She could not give up her search for Julia’s killer and be in love with Martineau. She owed Julia more than she owed the Englishman. She must choose between them. Her heart turned at the thought of not seeing him again. He was a good man, she couldn’t lie to him. Where would she find the courage to tell him to go? What would she say?

‘May I help you in any way?’

The priest’s voice awoke her from her dreams. How long had she been sitting there?

‘No, thank you.’ The priest smiled and turned to leave. She experienced an unaccountable wave of loneliness. ‘Don’t go.’ He sat down near her.