Sweet Tooth (12 page)

Yes, we’d spent some time talking about that speech, and disagreeing. And that would have been not long before our parting scene in the lay-by. Might he have come here afterwards when his plans for retreat had already taken shape? But why? And whose blood? I had solved nothing, but I felt clever in making progress. And feeling clever, I’ve always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful. I heard Shirley coming and quickly put the pile in order, flushed the lavatory, washed my hands and opened the door.

I said, ‘We should remember to put lavatory rolls on the list.’

She was standing well back along the corridor and I don’t think she heard me. She was looking contrite and I felt suddenly warm towards her.

‘I’m sorry about just now. Serena, I don’t know why I do this. Bloody stupid. I go right over the top for the sake of argument.’ And then she added as a jokey softener, ‘It’s only because I like you!’

I noted that she deliberately sounded the ‘t’ of ‘right’, in itself a muted apology.

I said, ‘It was nothing,’ and meant it. What had passed between us was nothing to what I had just found. I’d already decided not to discuss it. I’d never said much to her about Tony. I’d saved all that for Max. I might have got this the wrong way round, but there was nothing to be gained from confiding in her now. The piece of paper was tucked deep into my pocket. We chatted in our usual friendly way for a while and then we went back to work. It was a long day and we were not completely done, cleaning and shopping, until after six. I came away with the August copy of
The Times
in case I could learn more from it. When we dropped off the van in Mayfair that evening and parted, I thought Shirley and I were once more the best of friends.

7

T
he following morning I received an eleven o’clock invitation to Harry Tapp’s office. I was still expecting to have my wrists slapped for Shirley’s indiscretion at the lecture. At ten to eleven I went to the ladies’ to check on my appearance and as I combed my hair I imagined myself taking the train home after being sacked, and preparing a story for my mother. Would the Bishop even notice I’d been away? I went up two floors to a part of the building that was new to me. It was only slightly less dingy – the corridors were carpeted, the cream and green paint on the walls was not peeling. I tapped timidly on a door. A man came out – he looked even younger than me – and told me in a nervous, pleasant way that I should wait. He indicated one of the bright orange plastic moulded chairs that were then spreading through the offices. A quarter of an hour passed before he appeared again and held the door open for me.

In a sense, this was when the story began, at the point at which I entered the office and had my mission explained. Tapp was sitting behind his desk and nodded expressionlessly at me. There were three others in the room besides the fellow who had shown me in. One, by far the oldest, with sweptback silver hair, was sprawled in a scuffed leather armchair, the others were on hard office chairs. Max was there and
pursed his lips in greeting. I wasn’t surprised to see him and simply smiled. There was a large combination safe in one corner. The air was thick with smoke and moist with breath. They had been in conference a good while. There were no introductions.

I was shown onto one of the hard seats and we sat in a horseshoe facing the desk.

Tapp said, ‘So, Serena. How are you settling in?’

I said I thought I had settled in well and that I was happy with the work. I was aware that Max knew it wasn’t so, but I didn’t care. I added, ‘Am I here because you think I’m not up to scratch, sir?’

Tapp said, ‘It wouldn’t take five of us to tell you that.’

There were low chuckles all round and I took care to join in. ‘Up to scratch’ was a phrase I’d never used before.

There followed a session of small talk. Someone asked me about my lodgings, another about my commute. There was a discussion about the irregularities of the Northern line. Canteen food was gently mocked. The more this went on, the more nervous I became. The man in the armchair said nothing, but he was watching me over the steeple he formed with his fingers, with his thumbs tucked under his chin. I tried not to look in his direction. Guided by Tapp, the conversation shifted to the events of the day. Inevitably, we came to the Prime Minister and the miners. I said that free trade unions were important institutions. But their remit should be the pay and conditions of their members. They should not be politicised and it was not their business to remove democratically elected governments. This was the right answer. I was prompted to speak of Britain’s recent entry to the Common Market. I said I was for it, that it would be good for business, dissolve our insularity, improve our food. I didn’t really know what to think, but decided it was better to sound decisive. This time I knew that I’d parted company with the room. We progressed to the Channel Tunnel. There had been a White Paper, and Heath had just signed a preliminary
agreement with Pompidou. I was all for it – imagine catching the London–Paris express! I surprised myself with a burst of enthusiasm. Again, I was alone. The man in the armchair grimaced and looked away. I guessed that in his youth he had been prepared to give his life to defend the realm against the political passions of Continentals. A tunnel was a security threat.

So we went on. I was being interviewed, but I had no idea to what end. Automatically I strove to please, more so whenever I sensed that I was not succeeding. I assumed that the whole business was being conducted for the benefit of the silver-haired man. Apart from that single look of displeasure, he communicated nothing. His hands remained in their praying position, with the tips of his forefingers just touching his nose. It was a conscious effort not to look at him. I was annoyed with myself for wanting his approval. Whatever he had in mind for me, I wanted it too. I wanted him to want me. I couldn’t look at him, but when my gaze moved across the room to meet the eye of another speaker, I caught just a glimpse, and learned nothing.

We came to a break in the conversation. Tapp indicated a lacquered box on the desk and cigarettes were offered around. I expected to be sent out of the room as before. But some quiet signal must have emanated from the silvery gentleman because Tapp cleared his throat to mark a fresh start and said, ‘Well then, Serena. We understand from Max here that on top of your maths you’re rather well up on modern writing – literature, novels, that sort of thing – bang up to date on, what’s the word?’

‘Contemporary literature,’ Max supplied.

‘Yes, awfully well read and quite in with the scene.’

I hesitated, and said, ‘I like reading in my spare time, sir.’

‘No need for “sir”. And you’re up to date on this contemporary stuff that’s coming out now.’

‘I read novels in second-hand paperbacks mostly, a couple
of years after they’ve appeared in hardback. The hardbacks are a bit beyond my budget.’

This hair-splitting distinction seemed to baffle or irritate Tapp. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for several seconds and waited for the confusion to disperse. He didn’t open them again until he was halfway through his next sentence. ‘So if I said to you the names of Kingsley Amis or David Storey or …’ he glanced down at a sheet of paper, ‘William Golding, you’d know exactly what I was talking about.’

‘I’ve read those writers.’

‘And you know how to talk about them.’

‘I think so.’

‘How would you rank them?’

‘Rank them?’

‘Yes, you know, best to worst.’

‘They’re very different kinds of writer … Amis is a comic novelist, brilliantly observant with something quite merciless about his humour. Storey is a chronicler of working-class life, marvellous in his way and, uh, Golding is harder to define, probably a genius …’

‘So then?’

‘For pure reading pleasure I’d put Amis at the top, then Golding because I’m sure he’s profound, and Storey third.’

Tapp checked his notes, then looked up with a brisk smile. ‘Exactly what I’ve got down here.’

My accuracy evinced a rumble of approval. It didn’t seem much of an achievement to me. There were, after all, only six ways to organise such a list.

‘And do you know personally any of these writers?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know any writers at all, or publishers or anyone else connected with the business?’

‘No.’

‘Have you ever actually met a writer, or been in a room with one?’

‘No, never.’

‘Or written to one, as it were, a fan letter?’

‘No.’

‘Any Cambridge friends determined to be writers?’

I thought carefully. Among the Eng Lit set at Newnham there had been a fair amount of longing in this direction, but as far as I knew my female acquaintance had settled for various combinations of finding respectable jobs, marrying, getting pregnant, disappearing abroad or retreating into the remnants of the counter-culture in a haze of pot smoke.

‘No.’

Tapp looked up expectantly. ‘Peter?’

At last the man in the armchair lowered his hands and spoke. ‘I’m Peter Nutting by the way. Miss Frome, have you ever heard of a magazine called
Encounter
?’

Nutting’s nose was revealed as beakish. His voice was a light tenor – somehow surprising. I thought I had heard of a nudist lonely-hearts small-ads news-sheet of that name, but I wasn’t sure. Before I could speak he continued, ‘It doesn’t matter if you haven’t. It’s a monthly, intellectual stuff, politics, literature, general cultural matters. Pretty good, well respected, or it was, with a fairly wide range of opinion. Let’s say centre left to centre right, and mostly the latter. But here’s the point. Unlike most intellectual periodicals it’s been sceptical or downright hostile when it comes to communism, especially of the Soviet sort. It spoke up for the unfashionable causes – freedom of speech, democracy and so on. Actually, it still does. And it soft-pedals rather on American foreign policy. Ring any bells with you? No? Five or six years ago it came out, in an obscure American magazine and then the
New York Times
I think it was, that
Encounter
was funded by the CIA. There was a stink, a lot of arm-waving and shouting, various writers took flight with their consciences. The name Melvin Lasky means nothing to you? No reason why it should. The CIA has been backing its own highbrow notion of culture since the end of the forties. They’ve generally worked at one remove through various foundations. The idea has been to
try to lure left-of-centre European intellectuals away from the Marxist perspective and make it intellectually respectable to speak up for the Free World. Our friends have sloshed a lot of cash around by way of various fronts. Ever hear of the Congress of Cultural Freedom? Never mind.

‘So that’s been the American way and basically, since the
Encounter
affair, it’s a busted flush. When a Mr X pops up from some giant foundation offering a six-figure sum, everyone runs screaming. But still, this is a culture war, not just a political and military affair, and the effort’s worthwhile. The Soviets know it and they spend on exchange schemes, visits, conferences, the Bolshoi Ballet. That’s on top of the money they channel into the National Union of Mineworkers strike fund by way of …’

‘Peter,’ Tapp murmured, ‘let’s not go down that pit again.’

‘All right. Thank you. Now the dust is settling, we’ve decided to push ahead with our own scheme. Modest budget, no international festivals, no first-class flights, no twenty-pantechnicon orchestral tours, no bean feasts. We can’t afford it and we don’t want to. What we intend is pinpointed, long-term and cheap. And that’s why you’re here. Are there any questions so far?’

‘No.’

‘You might know of the Information Research Department over at the Foreign Office.’

I didn’t, but I nodded.

‘So you’ll know this kind of thing has a long history. IRD have worked with us and MI6 for years, cultivating writers, newspapers, publishers. George Orwell on his deathbed gave IRD a list of thirty-eight communist fellow-travellers. And IRD helped
Animal Farm
into eighteen languages and did a lot of good work for
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. And some marvellous publishing ventures over the years. Ever heard of Background Books? – that was an IRD outfit, paid for with the Secret Vote. Superb stuff. Bertrand Russell, Guy Wint, Vic Feather. But these days …’

He sighed and looked around the room. I sensed a common grievance.

‘IRD has lost its way. Too many silly ideas, too close to Six – in fact, one of their own is in charge. D’you know, Carlton House Terrace is full of nice hard-working girls like you, and when people from Six visit, some fool has to run ahead through the offices shouting, “Faces to the wall, everybody!” Can you imagine such a thing? You can bet those girls peep through their fingers, eh?’

He looked around expectantly. There were obliging chuckles.

‘So we want to start afresh. Our idea is to concentrate on suitable young writers, academics and journalists mostly, people at the start of their careers, when they need financial support. Typically, they’ll have a book they want to write and need to take time off from a demanding job. And we thought it might be interesting to have a novelist on the list …’

Harry Tapp cut in, unusually excited. ‘Makes it a little less heavy, more, you know, a bit of light-hearted fun. Frothy. Someone the newspapers will take an interest in.’

Nutting continued. ‘Since you like that sort of thing, we thought you might want to be involved. We’re not interested in the decline of the West, or down with progress or any other modish pessimism. Do you see what I mean?’

I nodded. I thought I did.

‘Your corner’s going to be a little trickier than the rest. You know as well as I do, it’s not straightforward to deduce an author’s views from his novels. That’s why we’ve been looking for a novelist who also writes journalism. We’re looking out for the sort who might spare a moment for his hard-pressed fellows in the Eastern bloc, travels out there perhaps to lend support or sends books, signs petitions for persecuted writers, engages his mendacious Marxist colleagues here, isn’t afraid to talk publicly about writers in prison in Castro’s Cuba. Generally swims against the orthodox flow. It takes courage, Miss Frome.’