The Company of Strangers (48 page)

‘I see…so you planted the Cleopatra file on my desk and then
let
me get into the Hot Room?’

‘You pilfered Speke’s card.’

‘How did you know I was working for Gromov?’

‘Because we’ve been watching Louis Greig for the last five years.’

She nodded, remembering Rose’s interest at the funeral party.

‘You still haven’t let me tell you what Gromov said.’

‘After you gave him Stiller’s name?’

‘He said that the information would have to be checked. I was annoyed after the sweat I’d been through and asked him what he meant. He said: “Checked by somebody with Grade 10 Red status.’”

‘Pure mischief,’ said Wallis.

‘Is it? Why?’

Wallis tapped his lips with his forefinger, something not quite right. Day spoilt. Bloody shame.

‘You’re not going to turn me on Gromov,’ said Andrea. ‘There’d be no point until you’ve cleaned out your own house.’

‘They’ll stick you away, Andrea.’

‘No, they won’t,’ she said. ‘Because you’ll give me your full support, Jim.’

‘Only so far.’

‘No…all the way,’ she said and handed him the envelope. ‘To the hilt.’

‘What’s this?’

‘A gift from the Snow Leopard. He said that the negative was in East Berlin for safe-keeping. He also said you might not want to look in there. He told me not to and I didn’t.’

‘Not following you again, old girl,’ he said. ‘Bloody mysterious, aren’t you? Always have been.’

‘We’re back to talking about that person, the one we hate, the one who’s with us all the time, the one we can never get away from, the only one we can possibly know if we ever allow it.’

Jim Wallis shook his head. Cuckoo.

‘Did they put something in your water over there, old girl? Flipped your marbles? Bleached your brain?’

He pushed his finger under the flap and drew it along. He eased out the photograph as if he was hoping it was a lucky card and even his thirty years of professional dissembling couldn’t stop him from blanching.

On 3rd May 1971 Walter Ulbricht was delayed from attending the 16th Plenary Session of the Central Committee by two new bodyguards, appointed by the Stasi chief General Mielke. They took him for a long and exasperating walk along the River Spree. By the time he arrived at the session, Erich Honecker had been elected Secretary-General of the Central Committee and Chairman of the National Defense Council.

September 1989, Andrea’s cottage, Langfield, Oxfordshire.

‘It was the only structural change I made, knocking down that wall,’ said Andrea. ‘I didn’t want to spend my time endlessly walking from kitchen to dining room.’

‘Talking of knocking walls down…’ said Cardew.

‘You promised not to mention him,’ said Dorothy.

‘Who?’

‘You know damn well – Gorby.’

‘My only conversational embargo is on property prices,’ said Andrea.

‘Hear, hear,’ said Rose.

Only four of Andrea’s guests for her first dinner party had not been honoured by the queen. Her next-door neighbours, Rubio and Venetia Raitio, were sculptors. He was Finnish. Sir Richard Rose had brought his Thai dancer boyfriend along, who was called Boo and occasionally called himself Lady Boo if Dickie became too pompous. Sir Meredith and Lady Dorothy Cardew and Jim Wallis MBE with his fourth wife, a Frenchwoman called Thérèse, made up the party.

‘Where did you get this table?’ asked Dorothy Cardew, determined to have her say. ‘It’s a Queen Anne refectory, isn’t it?’

‘A copy, Dorothy. A copy.’

‘He says all the right things –
Gorby
,’ said Cardew, scathing. ‘All this
glasnost
and
perestroika…’

Dorothy rolled her eyes.

‘I always thought that was a horse-drawn sleigh,’ said Venetia, trying to keep it light.

‘That’s a
troika,
’ said Rose. ‘
Perestroika
is reconstruction.’

‘How dull,’ said Boo, who’d learned most of his vocabulary from Rose.

‘I rather like the sound of sleigh bells,’ said Dorothy, trying to pinch the conversation back.

‘And
glasnost
is openness,’ added Rose, explaining to the morons.

‘I don’t think you’re right,’ said Venetia, deciding to puncture Rose. ‘I’m sure it’s a Moscow directive that everybody should get out their open-top sleighs, put on their best fur mufflers and jingle about in the snow.’

Rose threw up his hands. Boo slapped him on the leg.

‘Amounts to the same thing,’ said Wallis. ‘If you ask me, Gorby’s a tricky customer. Whatever anybody says, he’s still a red. We only like him because he’s got a cracking wife.’

‘It’s
impossible
to hate someone with such a
tache de vin
on ‘is ‘ead,’ said Thérèse. ‘
Il est très, très sympa.
’

‘What’s she on about?’ asked Cardew.

‘She likes Gorby’s birthmark, dear,’ said Dorothy. ‘That archipelago on his head…it is rather endearing.’

‘He’ll come down with the iron fist eventually,’ said Cardew. ‘You’ll see. The
politburo
will rough him over and he’ll be breaking heads by Christmas.’

‘I think he’ll do it,’ said Andrea.

‘What?’ said Cardew, spoiling for a fight.

‘You said it yourself – “talking of knocking down walls”. I think he’ll open it all up. Get shot of all the satellite states. He can’t afford them any more. He’ll tell them to get on with it on their own.’

‘Not in my lifetime, he won’t,’ said Cardew. ‘Mind you, that might not be so long.’

‘But you’re so
young
,’ insisted Thérèse, flashing her jewelled fingers. ‘And so ‘andsome.’

‘He’s depressed about being eighty in November,’ said Dorothy.

‘No need to go telling everybody,’ said her husband.

Andrea bought a television and a dog at the beginning of October. They were both things she’d thought she’d never buy, but she liked the feeling of someone else in the house. The dog, a long-haired dachshund, seemed superior enough to be called Ashley.

A week later the television rewarded her. Gorbachev went to Berlin and told that dry old stick Honecker, ‘When we delay, life punishes us.’ Andrea punched the air. Ashley was more circumspect.

She sat on the floor of the still empty living room and read the newspapers, watched and listened to every minute of news on the TV and radio. She felt that excitement again, the tug of the silver thread.

The beginning of November was even better, the boldness of the East Germans was building. She started living in her own world now, just as she’d seen other oldies, who’d committed themselves to a golf tournament, a tennis championship, or worst of all World Snooker. She didn’t dare go out in case she missed something. She lived on coffee and cigarettes. Ashley went next door and was fed by Venetia.

On 9th November she’d just poured her first gin and tonic of the evening when she heard the bizarre announcement that free travel would be permitted for East Germans with immediate effect. Andrea didn’t know what this meant. It was too banal. It sounded as if they’d just given up their strongest card – the Wall. Was this how such a régime ended…with a blunder?

Five hours later she was kneeling in the middle of the
living room, a full ashtray and a bottle of champagne on her right and the phone on her left. The scenes on the television were beyond belief. People were standing on the Wall, Wessies were dancing with Ossies in the street, they were all drenched in beer and
sekt
, a lot of them were in their nightgowns and slippers, some were holding babies aloft and a drift of super-strength Kleenex was building up behind Andrea. Ashley lay with his chin on the ground, swivelling his eyes, wanting it all to be over so that they could go back to regular meals and walks.

Jim Wallis had been the first to call.

‘Have you seen it?’ he roared.

‘Have I seen it? I’ve been living it, Jim. This is better than twenty-fifth April ‘74.’

‘Twenty-fifth April?’

‘The Portuguese Revolution. The end of European fascism, Jim.’

‘Completely forgot about that, old girl. End of fascism, of course.’

‘But this is the end, the real end of all that…all that stuff.’

‘Thought you were going to say the “H” word for a minute.’

She woke up at 4.00 a.m. lying on the floor, the television screen blank, the champagne bottle on its side, the ashtray overflowing and her mouth like the inside of an animal-feed sack. Was this any way for a pensioner to behave? She dragged herself up to bed. She slept and woke up feeling dead and empty, as if the whole point of her existence had been removed at a stroke. She drifted from room to room, most of them still empty of furniture because she’d sold every stick from the Clapham house. She decided that this was the day to give up smoking. When depressed, deepen the depression by doing something that’s good for you.

She wanted the phone to ring. She wanted
him
to call, but how would he know where she was? Jim Wallis had dropped operational contact with him years ago. They’d lost track because it was too dangerous to keep track. She thought about flying to Berlin and trying to root him out. Then she started worrying because he was Stasi and there were bound to be reprisals, lynch parties. He’d have to keep his head down and it would do no good to have her poking about in the cadaver of the system, trying to find him.

She put it from her mind. She went to work on the house. She refurbished the attic for no other reason than it seemed right to start at the top, to reorder the head first. She redecorated the bedrooms, put beds in them even though she rarely had visitors who stayed. She made a study downstairs, bought a new computer which sat on her desk and had the same power as the one she’d used at Cambridge years ago which had occupied a whole room. She decided to involve herself more in village life and began to frequent the village shop, buying little and staying long because she liked the divorcée, Kathleen Thomas, who was running it with the proviso that she was always going to shut the next day because of the competition from Waitrose in Witney.

Only five people used the village shop until that Christmas, when a sixth joined this very expensive club. Morgan Trent was forty-five, he was a major who’d just left the army and was renting whilst trying to find somewhere to buy. He wanted to set up a garden centre. Andrea didn’t like him. He fitted her mother’s description of Longmartin, which seemed as good a reason as any for some natural animosity. Also, Kathleen Thomas fancied him, which meant Andrea had to listen to their endless badinage while Morgan bought things that he didn’t need three or four times a day.

Maybe it was because of Trent’s business plans that she decided to start work on the garden in the spring. She didn’t want to have to buy anything from him when his garden centre opened, although those plans didn’t seem to be maturing with the speed that he implied. That summer she hired a skinny little kid from the council houses at the end of the village to come and mow her lawns. He was sixteen and called Gary Brock. She thought he was all right but Kathleen told her he was a glue sniffer and a threat to society. Morgan Trent agreed with her, but he was bedding her by now so he was bound to.

In the late summer Andrea came back from a treacherous shopping trip to Waitrose and found the lawn mower had gone. She mentioned it to Kathleen, who said that she’d seen Gary Brock walking it out of the village earlier that afternoon. Andrea announced she was going down to the council houses to speak to him.

‘Watch those dogs,’ said Kathleen.

‘What dogs?’

‘His father breeds pit bull terriers.’

‘Sells them to drug dealers in Brixton,’ shouted Morgan, from the living room.

‘Shut up, Morgan,’ said Kathleen.

‘He bloody does.’

‘Anyway, you’ve got the idea,’ said Kathleen. ‘Mr Brock senior isn’t what you’d call genteel.’

‘Not the type you fought the war for, Andrea,’ shouted Morgan.

‘How do you know I did anything in the war, Morgan?’

‘Everybody did in your generation.’

On Marvin Brock’s gate was a hand-painted plywood sign that said ‘BE WEAR THE DOGS’. She rang the door bell, which set off savage barking from all over the house. She took two steps back as if that would give her a half-chance
of escape. Through the frosted glass she could make out a large person struggling down the corridor.

‘Come on now, matey,’ said the voice.

Marvin Brock opened the door. Daytime TV blared from a room behind him. His head was shaved and he wore jeans and a Swindon Town football shirt; wrapped around his wrist was a thick leather lead, which was attached to a dog of such alarming power and potential ferocity that it didn’t have a collar but a full leather harness. Andrea flinched at its name written in metal studs on the thick strap across its chest. Can you call a dog that nowadays? Isn’t there a law? The dog was straining against the lead, pushing a twitching black nose in her direction.

‘Come on, Clint,’ said Marvin, ‘back down, back down, there’s a good lad.’

‘Oh, Clint,’ said Andrea, relieved.

‘Yairs, after the actor. Greatest living actor. Clint Eastwood.’

‘You’re Gary’s father, aren’t you?’

‘Yairs,’ he said slowly, used to this opening question.

‘I’m Andrea Aspinall. Your son Gary mows my lawn. He appears to have walked off with my mower.’

‘Walked off?’ said Marvin. ‘Well, he’s prob’ly gone to mow someone else’s lawn.’

‘I didn’t give him permission.’

‘I see.’

‘Can you get him to bring it back please, Mr Brock.’

‘No probs, Andy. No probs. Sorry about the mix-up.’

A week later there was still no mower and Andrea reported its theft to the police. Gary had stolen the mower and sold it, but it was just one in a long line of minor offences ending with a drugs charge. Andrea was called as a witness. She spent a full three minutes in front of the magistrates. Gary Brock was sent down for eighteen months.

In late May of 1991 she was mowing her own lawn and wondering why she’d ever bothered to pay Gary Brock to do it. It was so satisfying, even mathematical, especially that last square in the middle of all the other concentric squares.

As she put the lawn mower away she was aware of a presence leaning against her car in the garage.

‘You remember me, Mrs A, don’t you?’ said a voice, with threat and lots of Oxfordshire threaded into it.

He was thickset, wearing tight jeans and mahogany Doc Martens. His T-shirt was stretched over slabs and ridges of muscle and clasped his biceps, which had a thick worm of a vein over them.

‘Gary Brock, Mrs A.’

‘You’ve been let out early, Gary.’

‘Been on my best behaviour, ‘aven’ I, Mrs A?’

‘You’ve been weight training too, haven’t you, Gary?’

‘Yair, I ‘ave. You know why, Mrs A?’

‘I expect being locked up’s a bit boring, isn’t it?’

‘Not to start with, it isn’t, no.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because everyone wants to fuck a new arse, Mrs A.’

Silence.

‘What are you doing here, Gary?’

‘Just telling you what it’s like inside, Mrs A.’

‘You didn’t got to jail because you stole my lawn mower, Gary.’

‘You were quick to get up in that box against me though, weren’ ya?’

She made for the door. Gary blocked her way. She was scared now. Rubio and Venetia were away and Gary would know that. The garage was hidden from the road at the back of the house. This was what happened, she thought, you survive the worst possible scenarios without a scratch only to be assaulted by a teenage lout in your garage at home on a summer’s afternoon.

‘What do you want, Gary?’ she asked, angry now.

Gary’s head suddenly twitched. Footsteps on the gravel drive. He stepped back to look. A tall male figure stood in the garage door, silhouetted against the bright light outside.

‘Well…what
do
you want?’ the man asked Gary in accented English.

She knew that voice. Gary lumbered over. Andrea moved into the light, made a negative sign with her hand.

‘What
are
you doing here?’ Voss asked, in a voice that had known men a lot worse than Gary. Voss put the terrible side of his face up to him. Gary pulled back from the power of such damage. A man, even in his seventies, who looked like that, who could walk around like that, had his own strength.

‘I came to say hello to Mrs A, that’s all,’ he said, edging around Voss. ‘Been away, I ‘ave.’

Gary moved off, trying to look light and unselfconscious. Voss put an arm around her shoulders, gripped her tight.