The Double Bind of Mr. Rigby (4 page)

As I entered the house, the thought of Roxanne came back to me. What was I doing? Where was she? Why was I not with her? My life was ridiculous. I was lonely most of the time: I hated living on my own. Why did I not do something about it? I thought of her intimacies, her knowledge of how to please, delight me. She did that merely by her presence, but she knew physically how to relax me and make me feel happy. I missed that and particularly at that time. Rationally, I knew that anything to do with her was not a permanent proposition. Our relationship could only exist in the way that it did. I had tried to make Willy understand that. Her husband was too dangerous, too powerful, to allow any different arrangement. The stark facts did not alleviate my suffering and in my own personal privacy I longed for another way of life. Within the enclosure of those town-house walls my mind ran towards what would have been ideal and I grieved deeply because it could not be. I knew that the only way to escape my mood was to find company and talk. Otherwise I would sink into depression. Mark was the obvious companion, but I had said that we might meet tomorrow. This was an emergency. I rang him and he answered.

‘Have you had supper?’ I asked. ‘I’m a bit low. I need someone to talk to. But you’re probably busy or tired. The last thing you’d want is to talk to a miserable fool.’

‘I have eaten but no matter. Let’s meet. I’ll drink and you can drink and eat. Come on, cheer up. Are you missing the magic, calming caress of Roxanne’s tender touch?’

‘Bloody hell, Mark I’m in no mood for your poetic flights. My soul is aching.’

We arranged to meet almost equidistant from our respective houses at a riverside pub. It served reasonable food, but it did not really matter since my appetite had dissipated. The walk in the open air with the noise of traffic and bustle of city nightlife brightened my spirit a little, and by the time I reached the river and entered the bar, I was in a better state of mind. The sight of Mark grinning at me was a tonic in itself. Whatever I said to him was safe. He understood me and I knew would keep my soul secrets. No confidences would be betrayed: he would not laugh at me. I loved him for his loyalty to me.

I ordered some rather superior fish cakes, a tomato and basil salad, and chips. Mark was drinking a glass of Chilean red wine. He had already ordered a bottle and I shared it with him.

‘I’ve got to do something about the way I live,’ I complained. ‘Otherwise I shall just turn into a miserable old sod.’

‘Oh come on, you’re just down for a moment. Look at your pluses. Your house is an advantageous investment: you don’t have to live there forever. The way Roxanne’s husband is going on, he’ll probably have a heart attack. That would leave just you and Roxanne. Or, you’ll suddenly find an assignment that takes you somewhere, Oz, California, who knows, and you’ll find the light of your life.’

I knew he was right. I was in a good position and in reality nothing for me was desperate. I should look forward. Yet it is always necessary in those bleak moods to have someone to remind you to do just that. Dear Mark was my reassuring mentor and for his presence and his services in that respect, I was surely grateful.

Our conversation drifted from my predicament and concerns to other matters. Inevitably we returned to discussing City money and the suspected destabilisation plot. We concluded that there was definitely something pretty big going on. The likelihood was that all national institutions including newspapers would be preoccupied with security over the next few weeks. The editors were worried about what had happened so far, but more important was the concern of their political masters. The politicians wanted the mystery solved. The populace was beginning to be nervous. Fewer people than usual were travelling by air flights anywhere. The number of passengers who used the Eurostar trains through the Channel Tunnel had decreased dramatically: no one could understand why some terrorist organisation had not blown up the Tunnel. What the government wanted was confidence restored. The papers reported a drop in passengers using the underground trains in the metropolis. What all this added up to was that it was bad for business, the nation’s business. The total effect was to eat away at British business interests and therefore the commercial and industrial health of the country. Mark and I wondered if all these factors were not connected since they all went towards weakening morale, making institutions fail, and destroying the financial basis of all successful enterprises.

An hour and a half later, with my spirits restored, we left. We walked about a quarter of a mile along the riverbank before we went our separate ways back home. I walked with Mark completely at ease. There was no need to speak. We each knew what the other felt. After the turmoil my mind had been in, it was a state of spiritual peace. When we parted, he hugged me and kissed my cheek.

‘Take care. Don’t worry. Keep calm. Dream of Roxanne. Let’s meet for the film tomorrow. About five at the Rostoff Bar. I guarantee nothing much will happen tomorrow.’

‘OK. Thanks, Mark. See you then.’

I often wondered why we did not share a house together. In my state I could have done with the companionship. Yet reality demanded our individual investments in the property markets and an intuitive necessity to keep some parts of our private lives to ourselves.

I sometimes wondered if Mark worked secretly for the intelligence service. You have to remember that Greville Wynne’s wife never knew that he was a spy. He kept the knowledge from her. He was a fanatical extremist but, to an extent I suppose, we all have to be a little like him towards those whom we hold most dear.

The following day, in order to set us up for the film, we followed the Raymond Chandler recipe of having a gimlet each at Rostoff’s. Two-thirds gin, one-third Rose’s lime juice were the required proportions, and the barman knew the form. The cocktail brought us to life, raised our blood sugar levels, and, so we believed, sharpened our critical faculties. It also helped to settle me. I had been feeling uneasy all day. The cause was impossible to determine but I simply felt on edge, uncertain. It was as though there were an awful foreboding descending on me. Something was going to happen. There was going to be change. I did not know what it might be or how it could happen. The conviction settled in my mind and was all the time present as a rather unpleasant form of consciousness. Paradoxically, in view of its name, the drink succeeded in pushing the feeling back into the shadows of my mind.

The film proved a potent distraction. It was realistic, moving, gruesome, a black comedy in which easily recognisable types featured. It possessed that necessity for universality, credence in the characters. You might have met them. They might have lived next door. At the same time, they did not live that monotonous suburban life that is so mind-numbingly paralysing for the commuter class who, no doubt, were to make up the bulk of the audience for that film. The direction of the film was brilliant: the camera work, by a famous old practitioner who had been in the business for more than forty years, was outstandingly successful in detail and imaginative sweep.

Afterwards we talked about it for more than an hour. The discussion kept us going while we walked from the Notting Hill cinema down to Queensway where we decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant: it lasted while we ordered and until the dishes were delivered to our table. By the time our conversation about the film was exhausted, the uneasiness I had felt earlier began to return. I told Mark how I felt.

‘Don’t worry. There’s nothing you have to fret about. You’re just a bit down at the moment. Look forward. Don’t forget, short views. Sydney Smith, wasn’t it? Until tea-time, no further.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Of course, he was right. It is a good remedy; but this is beginning to gnaw away at me.’ I paused. ‘Anyway, I’m sure it will pass.’

We parted. It was about eleven. Mark gave me a hug: he knew I needed it. He was right. I wanted all the encouragement, inspiration, reinforcement, reassurance, I could get.

There were still people in the pub next door to my house. As I passed, a West Indian came out speaking into a mobile telephone. He looked me straight in the eye and, to my acute surprise, winked. It was not sinister: it was as though we had met before and it was a familiar gesture. I could not, and did not, place him. Maybe we had met, but there was no etch of him on my memory. I nodded, and as I did so a black Mercedes came to a standstill in front of him. He saluted the driver, opened a rear passenger door and got in. The car accelerated rapidly away. Who was he? Some drug-dealer? A debt-collector? I had no idea. There was something about him and the way in which he was picked up that made me resolve to ask the young Australians about him.

My journalistic work had taught me to register details. I had done so with that man and something – his oddity of manner, his vague familiarity, the way he left the scene – put me on mild alert. I realised that it might be a reflection of the mood of uneasiness I was in, but I felt I should follow the prompting of my gut feeling. Before reaching my own front door, I decided to go into the pub.

One of the Aussies, a pleasant, friendly, fair-haired guy in his mid-twenties who was over in the UK just having finished university in Melbourne, was tidying and wiping part of the bar. I had spoken to him a number of times before and knew his name was Andy. We had talked and joked about the perils of owning a house alongside a pub.

‘Can I ask you something, Andy? The tall West Indian guy who just left, what was he doing? How long was he here?’

‘He was here about an hour, I reckon. I don’t know what he was doing. I suppose he was waiting for someone, but no one came. He bought a couple of rum and cokes.’

‘Has he been in here before? Strange guy: he acted as though he knew me, as though we’d met before. Did he phone anyone?’

‘Not that I noticed. He just started on the phone as he was going out.’

It was curious. That wink had not been disconcerting. It was not the sort of come-hither signal for a pick-up, a sexual invitation, the message flagging an imminent assignation. It was not like that at all. It was casual, knowing, friendly. That was it. It was a knowing wink. It suddenly struck me that there was a recognition of complicity in the gesture. Yet I could not work out that I had ever seen the man before. The chance meeting remained a mystery.

I did not like the uncertainty of it, and again it did nothing for my mood. I was already uneasy on the personal front: now there was a slight cause for concern on the professional front. Perhaps I was being watched, kept a close eye on. Perhaps I was meant to know that I was under scrutiny. It might even have been a warning. Naturally all these thoughts turned over in my mind. Again my reporting work made me aware of all possibilities. I had to consider all aspects of that strange encounter. There was no resolution to the problem. I said goodnight to Andy and left, let myself in next door, and went to bed.

That night I did not sleep well. I woke once or twice. The first time I went to the lavatory in the bathroom for a long pee. I had been dreaming of Roxanne. We had met at the Alfonso. For some reason I was resident there on a long-term basis. In my dream I had set up home on the top floor. When we went up to my hotel room and entered the door, it was as though we entered my house next to the pub behind Olympia. Australian Andy featured as one of the hotel porters. He had escorted us up with a bottle of champagne that he left on a bedside table. He turned the covers of the bed down and asked if there was anything else he could fetch for either of us. Roxanne had asked him if he could find us some condoms. He gave a knowing wink that I recognised originated in reality from the tall West Indian, and said that he could. He produced a packet of five from a fat money wallet stuffed with euro notes and dollar bills. Roxanne thanked him and kissed him full on the mouth, which I thought an unnecessary thing to do. I could not help noticing that he had the beginnings of an erection. As he went out through the door he winked at me again. Roxanne had started to get undressed. She had taken off her shoes and tights, unzipped her dress, stepped out of it, stood like a fashion model in her sheer white bra and pants, and beckoned me to the bed. As I walked towards her, she reached out and undid my belt, unzipped my fly and ran her fingers round the inside of my brief’s waistband. It was at that point I woke up and desperately needed to make my unsteady way to the bathroom. When I returned to bed, no matter how hard I tried, the Alfonso could not be recreated. The vision, the waking dream, had fled. The seductive Roxanne was no longer there in the forefront of my imagination, neither fully dressed nor half naked. I could not even see her features in my mind’s eye. I managed to convince myself that I would never be able to remember what she looked like. I tried all sorts of ways to recall the situation that we had reached in that all too vivid dream. I thought hard of Andy in his role as lewd pimp. Nothing would avail.

So my mind wandered back to the West Indian, and then to Mark. He occupied my consciousness. When I awoke next, I was aware that Mark had been the subject of my dreams. We had been working on some unclear mission. I remembered that we had interviewed Belmont. Belmont had been dressed as usual in his slightly down-at-heel way, shabby, but scented with an expensive aftershave. He limped. He said he had fallen at the railway station and was lucky not to have been crushed by an arriving train. We had told him he was fortunate because a man had been killed recently by falling under a slowing locomotive. Mark dismissed Belmont with the remark that he had told us enough on that occasion: we would call him up later to verify our report that had to be sent back to London. Belmont’s skin changed to resemble translucent parchment. I thought it looked like the skin of a dead man and said so to Mark. Belmont limped away. Mark told me optimistically that we had done well and that I should not be so gloomy. He said goodbye and kissed me on the cheek. I remember wondering if it was a Judas kiss. Did he mean its implied import or was he trying to make me feel secure in order to trick me into a state of disadvantage. He left and on his way out thanked and tipped a pianist who turned and smiled. The pianist was Andy. I remained worrying about Mark.

I then knew that I had to leave the hotel quickly. I looked for my document case and could not find it. I had to leave immediately otherwise whatever it was I was due to do, I should be late for. I searched, thought I saw it under a neighbouring chair at the next table; but when I picked it up it was not mine. I grew more and more agitated, convinced that at any moment someone would tell me that it was too late for whatever it was I had to do. I hurried here and there looking under chairs and tables, behind pillars and potted plants, and as I looked under the grand piano, I was suddenly aware that the tall West Indian had appeared and was saying that it was all too late. I awoke, hot, sweaty, clammy, a complete mental and physical mess, full of anxiety, totally disturbed, thoroughly distressed.

It was twenty past six. I went downstairs and made myself a mug of tea, and then went back to bed, propped myself up against some pillows and, sipping the tea, thought about matters. Roxanne and Seville were haunting me. I knew what I should do. I should finish with her altogether. There was never any prospect of a long-term relationship: she would not leave her husband. Yet no matter how much I knew that to be the truth of the situation, I managed to persuade myself that in life all things are flux, and that one day I might be lucky enough to enjoy her to myself. A fool’s paradise. I recognised it but chose to ignore it. I should have openly declared to myself that Roxanne was good for pure sexual thrill; the experience with her was entirely sensual. Nothing happened on an intellectual plane. I often wondered what she thought about in her reflective moments. I concluded that she did not think. In moments of what seemed to be reflection, she stared at a blank wall: nothing went on in her mind. If I wanted intellectual stimulation then Mark was the person to provide it. There was never a shortage of topics for conversation. His ideas prompted my ideas and vice versa.

I sat in bed and tried to relax totally. It was impossible to sleep any more. At seven I showered, dressed and, as I was eating toast, wondering why my newspaper had not arrived, the telephone rang. It was Willy, unspecific, teasingly mysterious, asking me to call in at his office on my way to the
Journal
. Nothing could be said on the telephone: there was no security. As I was on the move early, I said I would be there just after nine. I heard the newspaper drop through the letter box.

Naturally I did not take the paper I worked for. I subscribed to one more on the political left than my own. It was necessary to be aware of what spectrum of opinion on national and foreign affairs existed. The prime minister had been backing up the chancellor on fiscal policy. The health minister had promised more nurses for hospitals, even if they had to be brought in from other countries. On the foreign pages there was a story about a Budapest-based property corporation buying disused factories in the Baltic states. There was a significant deal being struck to redevelop an old Soviet military base in Estonia, not far from Tallinn. The people involved in the work belonged to the Myrex corporation, part of the empire controlled by Roxanne’s husband. What seemed to me odd, was that I had not heard about this particular enterprise from any source. I thought I would have heard about it on the journalistic front, or from Roxanne since it must have been brewing while I was with her in Seville. More important was that, since the redevelopment concerned old ex-Soviet installations, I expected to have been briefed by my editor. He was bound to be aware of it. It was the sort of thing I knew about and it lay within the compass of my operations. My commercial and industrial connections were extensive throughout the old satellite countries and in the Baltic. Anyway, perhaps Willy’s call was to do with precisely that item of news.

I made my way into the West End and walked down into St James’s Square. So far as Willy’s security work was concerned, he worked out of a suite of rooms and offices in a house close to the square. When I say, ‘worked out of’, that is it. He had no permanent place there himself, no individual office, no desk to call his own. When he needed space he went in and was assigned a desk, or he borrowed one from some civil servant there. That was where his controller lodged. The road ran down from Jermyn Street. It was discreetly convenient because it was close to my club.

The information I received from Willy was what I supposed it might be. Intelligence had known about Myrex’s interest in Estonia. Someone in Tallinn had kept them informed about Soviet-built computer factories and software labs. After the gradual release of that throttling Soviet grip, the workshops, labs, factories had been left by the Russians to decay. Many clever young Estonians became unemployed as a result. Brilliant technical and scientific brains were idle. Then along came a host of foreign entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, seed investors, people who had the vision to realise that there was talent to be put to work and exploited in one way or another. Myrex were not slow to take the advice of one of their merchant banks and look into what could be done there.

Tallinn was increasingly important. It was an essential gateway into Russia. It was a port open all year round: its waters did not freeze over. So far as business went, the hotels were filled with a medley of nationalities – Americans, British, Italians, Germans, Swiss, Japanese. Wherever the prospect of money to be made was, there were the financial jackals. I remembered the newspaper article that I had read: even the British royal family was supporting the commercial effort and doing the PR round of the Baltic states on behalf not only of British culture but also of British business.

The last time I had been in Tallinn was a few months previously. My paper wanted me to report on the way that Estonia was developing its political system and economy, and how close it was to approaching full membership of the European Community. It was a fill-in for me between one story I had finished and another one engaging the editor’s interest.

What I knew about the burgeoning prospects of the Estonian economy managed to persuade Mark to accompany me. He was always on the lookout for new investment schemes that might produce a significant profit. I mentioned our trip to Willy the day before we set off. He was cautious about our visit and not overjoyed by the news. He immediately saw inherent dangers. Any intelligence organisation worth its name would be alerted to something afoot if an investigative journalist and someone like Mark appeared somewhere together; and there was no possibility that those interested would be ignorant of our movements once we were booked to fly.

We took the Estonian Air flight from Gatwick on a Saturday morning. There were a few empty seats. From what we could hear of voices and languages there were mainly Brits, Americans, Estonians, Finns, a couple of Italians aboard, and a security marshal. The latter, dressed in a light grey suit, medium build, fit-looking, with that slight, characteristically telltale bulge under his left armpit, obviously knew the cabin crew, and stood chatting with them as we entered the aircraft. During the flight he sauntered once or twice up and down the plane and sat in a gangway seat just in front of a bulkhead. His presence was slightly chilling but at the same time reassuring. It occurred to me that some of these security guards are called
air marshals
so enabling fairly run-of-the-mill officials to designate themselves as the highest-ranking officer in the British Royal Air Force. In this way bank managers are impressed for house mortgage loans.

On one side of me in the aircraft sat a black rapper, a DJ who was engaged for an evening at a club in the modern part of Tallinn. He spent most of the time sleeping having explained that he had been up most of the night before and would be working most of the night to come. He would fly back the next day. It was noticeable that in Estonia we saw only two coloured people, one was my seat companion, and the other was a twenty-something girl who emerged as part of the congregation from the Russian Orthodox cathedral which crowns the Toompea, the small hill which is part of, and looks down on, the old town. She must have been from one of the southern republics of the old Soviet Union: she spoke fluent Russian but somehow looked out of place in this Baltic state with its pale people, blanched by snow, spectral as ice, purified and cleansed by saunas. Most houses, most flats, and many hotel rooms, had their individual saunas.

I had an American contact in Tallinn, Uri Rovde, who worked for the
Washington Post
, and who I assumed worked for the CIA. I had met him once before in Washington, at dinner in the Cosmos Club with a group of diplomats and international relations experts from the School of Advanced International Studies on Massachusetts Avenue. We were to meet up in the rooms of the English Café on the main square. The interior decor was an Estonian attempt to reproduce what they thought the Piccadilly Ritz looks like. So there were small tables and cane chairs, no ferns or aspidistras, no Palm Court orchestra, but delicately cut sandwiches and selections of cakes. A gourmand’s additions were substantial wedges of gateaux that could be ordered and all were served with thick cream. Different flavours of Lipton’s or Twinings tea were offered. The main room on the first floor was spacious, the tables set well apart, and it overlooked the square. The grand, imposing, steep-roofed, mediaeval town hall, with a giant thermometer mounted at the end of one of its sidewalls, presided over the cobbled square. The temperature shown by the thermometer hovered around freezing point.

As I was about to enter the café, a car drove up and parked at an angle outside the entrance and an elegant, fair-haired woman got out. I recognised her immediately. I had met her many times before in European cities, but mainly in London. Her name was Monica Lightborn. She loathed both her names and insisted that everyone simply called her Mo. She was a writer on Baltic affairs and was a stringer for a British newspaper, not my own, and for a New York journal. I gave her a wave and waited for her. It seemed strange to me that there were no other vehicles parked in the square. Mo did not seem to notice. She greeted me with a wave of her gloved hand while she pocketed the ignition keys with the other. Her slightly stooping figure turned as she half pirouetted towards me. It was a peculiar way she had when meeting people – a device, a mannerism, which disguised a certain awkwardness in her approach. She was wearing, as she usually did, trousers, a long elegant coat bought in Bond Street or somewhere just off Sloane Square, and one of those Nordic hats, knitted from greasy wool with a pointed top and ear-flaps. The hat was not the height of fashion but did its job defending its wearer from temperatures which fluctuated between zero degrees and minus twelve at that time of the year. From a distance, it made her look like a rather tall goblin.