Читать книгу A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming - Страница 15

The morning of the second day is taken up with more written papers, beginning at nine o’clock.

The In-Tray Exercise is a short, sharp, sixty-minute test of nerve, a lengthy document assessing both the candidate’s ability to identify practical problems arising within the Civil Service and his capacity for taking rapid and decisive action to resolve them. The focus is on leadership, management skills, and the means to devolve responsibility and ‘prioritize’ decisions. SIS is big on teamwork.

Most of us seem to cope okay: Ogilvy, Elaine, and Ann finish the test within the allocated time. But the Hobbit looks to have messed up. At his desk, his shoulders heave and slump with sighing frustration, and he writes only occasionally, little half-hearted scribbles. He has not responded well to having his mind channelled like this: concision and structure are contrary to his nature. When Keith collects his answer sheet at the end of the exercise, it looks sparse and blotched with ink, the script of a cross-wired mind.

The Letter Writing Exercise, which takes us up to lunch, is more straightforward. A member of the public has sent a four-page letter to a Home Office minister complaining about a particular aspect of the legislation outlined in the In-Tray Exercise. We are asked to write a balanced, tactful reply, conscious of the government’s legal position, but firm in its intent not to cave in to outside pressure. The Hobbit seems to find this significantly easier: sitting there in his blue-black blazer with its cheap gold buttons, he is no longer a sweating, panting blob of panic. The letter allows for a degree of self-expression, for leaps of the imagination, and with these he is more comfortable. There is a general sense that we have all returned here today locked into a surer knowledge of how to proceed.

I have lunch for the second time at the National Gallery and again buy a ham and cheese sandwich, finding something comforting in the routine of this. Then the greater part of the final afternoon is taken up with more cognitive tests: Logical Reasoning, Verbal Organization, two Numerical Facility papers. Again there is not enough time, and again the tests are rigorous and probing. Yet, much of the nervousness and uncertainty of yesterday has disappeared. I know what’s required now. I can pace myself. It’s just a question of applying the mind.

At three thirty, I find Elaine in the common room, alone and drinking coffee. She is sitting on a radiator below one of the windows, her right leg lifted and resting on the arm of the sofa. Her skirt has ridden up to the midsection of her thighs, but she makes no attempt to cover herself, or to lower her leg when I come in.

‘Nearly over,’ she says.

I must look exhausted. I settle into one of the armchairs and sigh heavily.

‘My brain is numb. Numb.’

Elaine nods in agreement. Bare-skinned thighs, no tights.

‘You finished?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘One more.’

Our conversation is slow monosyllables. It feels as if we are talking like old friends.

‘What is it?’

‘Interview with the departmental assessor.’

‘Rouse? He’s a straight-talker. You’ll like him.’

‘What about you? What do you have?’

‘Just the shrink. Four thirty.’

‘Nice way to finish off. Get to talk about yourself for half an hour.’

‘You’ve had her?’

‘Yesterday. Very cozy. Like one of those fireside chats on Songs of Praise.’ Elaine stands up, smoothing down her skirt. ‘We’re all going to the pub later. Sam’s idea.’

‘He’s a leader of men, isn’t he? Takes control.’

Elaine smiles at this. She agrees with me.

‘So meet you back here around five fifteen?’

I don’t feel like drinking with them. I’d rather just go home and be alone. So I ignore the question and say, ‘Sounds all right. Good luck with your interview.’

‘You too,’ she replies.

But in Dr Stevenson’s office I fall into a trap.

There are two soft armchairs in the corner of the hushed warm room. We face each other and it is as if I am looking into the eyes of a kindly grandmother. Stevenson’s face has such grace and warmth that there is nothing I can do but trust it. She calls me Alec–the first time that one of the examiners has referred to me by my first name–and speaks with such refinement that I am immediately lulled into a false sense of security. The lights are dim, the blinds drawn. There is a sensation of absolute privacy. We are in a place where confidences may be shared.

Everything starts out okay. Her early questions are unobtrusive, shallow even, and I give nothing away. We discuss the format of Sisby, what improvements, if any, I would make to it. There is a brief reference to school–an inquiry about my choice of A levels–and an even shorter discussion about CEBDO. That these topics go largely unexplored is not due to any reticence on my part. Stevenson seems happy simply to skirt around the edges of a subject, never probing too deeply, never overstepping the mark. In doing so she brokers a trust that softens me up. And by the time the conversation has moved into a more sensitive area, my guard is down.

‘I would like to talk about Kate Allardyce, if that would be all right?’

My first instinct here should have been defensive. Nobody ever asks Alec about Kate; it’s a taboo subject. And yet I quickly find that I want to talk about her.

‘Could you tell me a little bit about the two of you?’

‘We broke up over six months ago.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she says, and then, with sudden horror, I remember the lie to Liddiard. ‘I was led to believe that she was your girlfriend.’ She looks down at her file, staring at it in plain disbelief. Mistakes of this kind do not happen. She moves awkwardly in her seat and mutters something inaudible.

It was a throwaway deceit. I only did it to make myself appear more solid and dependable, a rounded man in a long-term relationship. He asked for her full name, for a date and place of birth, so that SIS could run a check on her. And now that the vetting process is over they want to square their deep background with mine. They want to know whether Kate will make a decent diplomatic wife, a spy’s accomplice. They want to hear me talk about her.

My left hand is suddenly up around my mouth, squeezing the ridge of skin under my nose. It is almost funny to have been caught out by something so crass, so needless, but this feeling quickly evaporates. The humiliation is soon total.

Out of it, I knit together a shoddy retraction.

‘I’m sorry. No, no, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. We just…we just got back together again, about three months ago. Secretly. We don’t want anybody to know. We prefer things to be private. I’m just so used to telling people that we’re not back together that it’s become like a reflex.’

‘So you are together?’

‘Very much so, yes.’

‘But no one else knows?’

‘That’s correct. Yes. Except for a friend of mine. Saul. Otherwise, nobody.’

‘I see.’

There is disappointment in the tone of this last remark, as if I have let her down. I feel ten again, a scolded child in the head-teacher’s study.

‘Perhaps we should talk about something else,’ she says, turning a page in my file.

I have to rescue this situation or the game is up.

‘No, no. I’m happy to talk about it. I should explain. Sorry. It’s just that after we broke up I never spoke about it to anyone. No one would have understood. They might have tried to, but they would never have understood. They would have put things in boxes and I didn’t want that. It would have trivialized it. And now that we are back together, both of us have made a decision to keep things between ourselves. So we’re used to lying about it. Nobody else knows.’ An uneasy pause. ‘This must sound childish to you.’

‘Not at all.’ I may have got away with it. ‘But can I ask why you broke up in the first place?’

This is expressed in such a way that it would be easy for me not to answer the question. But my embarrassment at having been caught out by Stevenson is substantial, and I do not want to refuse her request.

‘Largely on account of my selfishness. I think Kate grew tired of the fact that I was always withholding things from her. I had this insistence on privacy, a reluctance to let her in. She called it my separate-ness.’

There is suddenly a look of deep satisfaction in the lined wise eyes of Hilary Stevenson. Separateness. Yes. A good word for it.

‘But you don’t have a problem with that anymore?’

‘With privacy? No. Not with Kate at least. I’m still an intensely private person, but I’ve become far more open with her since we got back together.’

This emphasis on privacy could even work in my favour. It is surely in the nature of intelligence work.

‘And why did you want to give the relationship a second chance? Do stop me if you think I’m being unduly intrusive.’

‘No, no. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t know. I wanted to try again because I started thinking about the future. It was that simple. I looked around and thought about where I wanted to be in ten years’ time. The sort of life I wanted to lead. And I realized I’d thrown away the best chance I had of a kind of happiness.’

Stevenson nods encouragingly, as if this makes absolute sense to her. So I continue.

‘It’s one of the clichés of breaking up, but you simply don’t know how much you love something until it’s taken away from you. I’m sure you come across this all the time in your profession.’

‘All the time.’

‘That’s the dangerous thing about being in a serious relationship with someone. In a very worrying sense, love guarantees you.’

‘And then all that was taken away from you?’

‘Yes.’

A first gathering of pain here. Don’t show it to her. Tell her what you know she wants to hear.

‘So I set myself a task. I tried to get it back. And luckily we hadn’t killed too much of it off.’

‘I’m glad,’ Stevenson says, and I believe that she is. Everything I have told her is the truth about me, save for the plain fact that Kate has refused to come back. I had killed off too much of it, and she has now moved on.

Stevenson writes something in my file, at least three lines of notes, and for some time the room is quiet save for the whisper of her pen. I wonder if the others were as open with her as I have been.

‘I was interested by what you said about not knowing how much you love somebody until they are taken away from you. Is that how you felt about your father?’

This comes out of the silence, spoken into her lap, and it takes me by surprise. I don’t recall mentioning my father’s death either to Liddiard or to Lucas. Hawkes must have told them.

‘In a way, yes, though it’s more complicated than that.’

‘Could you say why?’

‘Well, I was only seventeen at the time. There’s a toughness in you then. An unwillingness to feel. What do Americans call it–’denial’?’

A lovely amused laugh. Making out that she is charmed by me.

‘But more recently?’

‘Yes. Recently his death has affected me more.’

‘Could you say why?’

‘On a basic level because I saw the relationships my male friends were having with their fathers in that transitional period from their late teens into early twenties. That was obviously a key period for some of them, and I missed out on that.’

‘So the two of you weren’t particularly close when you were a child? You felt that your father kept you at a distance?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. He was away from home a lot.’

Oddly, to speak about Dad in this way feels more deceptive than what I have told Stevenson about Kate. It is not a true account of him, nor of the way we were together, and I want to explain some of this to her.

‘This is difficult for me,’ I tell her. ‘I am rationalizing complex emotions even as I am talking to you.’

‘I can understand that. These matters are never simple.’

‘I can hear myself say certain things to you about my father and then something else inside me will contradict that. Does that make sense? It’s a very confusing situation. What I’m trying to say is that there are no set answers.’

Stevenson makes to say something, but I speak over her.

‘For example, I would like my father to be around now so that we could talk about Sisby and SIS. Mum says that he was like me in a lot of ways. He didn’t keep a lot of friends, he didn’t need a lot of people in his life. So we shared this need, this instinct for privacy. And maybe because of that we might have become good friends. Who knows? We could have confided in one another. But I don’t actively miss him because he’s not here to fulfil that role. Things are no more difficult because he’s not available to offer me guidance and advice. It’s more a feeling that I’ll never see his face again. Sometimes it’s that simple.’

Stevenson’s tender eyes are sunk in rolls of skin.

‘How do you think he would have felt about you becoming an SIS officer?’

‘I think he would have been very proud. Perhaps even a little envious.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s every young man’s dream, isn’t it, to join MI6, to serve his country. Dad wouldn’t have thought ideas like that were out-of-date, and neither do I. And I think he would have been good at the job. He was smart, concealed, he could keep a secret. In fact, sometimes I feel like I’m doing this for him, in his memory. That’s why it’s so important to me. I want to show him that I can be a success. I want to make him proud of me.’

Stevenson looks perplexed and I feel that I may have gone too far.

‘Yes,’ she says, writing something down. ‘And Kate? How does she feel?’

This may be a test: they will want to know if I have broken the Official Secrets Act.

‘I haven’t told her yet. I didn’t see that there was any point. Until I actually became one.’

Stevenson smiles.

‘Don’t you think you ought to tell her?’

‘I don’t think it’s necessary at this stage. And I was advised against it by Mr Liddiard. If I advance to the next level, then it would become increasingly difficult to keep things from her.’

‘Yes,’ she says, giving nothing away. Stevenson looks at her watch and her eyebrows hop. ‘Good Lord, look at the time.’

‘Are we finished?’

‘I’m afraid so. I hadn’t realized how late it is.’

‘I thought the interview would last longer.’

‘It can do,’ she replies, uncrossing her legs and allowing her right foot to drop gently to the floor. ‘It depends on the candidate.’

Abruptly I am concerned. The implication of this last remark is troubling. I should have been less candid, made her work harder for information. Stevenson looks too satisfied with what I have given her. She closes my file with knuckles that are swollen with arthritis.

‘So you’re happy with what I’ve told you? Everything’s okay?’

That was a dumb thing to ask. I am letting my concern show.

‘Oh, yes,’ she says, very calmly. ‘Do you have anything else you might want to ask?’

‘No,’ I say immediately. ‘Not that I can think of.’

‘Good.’

She moves forward, beginning to stand. Things have shut down too quickly. She sets my file on a small table beside her chair.

‘I should have thought you were keen to be off. You must be tired after all your exertions.’

‘It’s been hard work. But I’ve enjoyed it.’

Stevenson is on her feet, barely taller than the back of the chair. I stand up.

‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you,’ she says, moving towards the door. There is a distance about her now, a sudden coldness. ‘Good luck.’

What does she mean by that? Good luck with what? With SIS? With CEBDO?

She is holding the door open, a pale tweed suit.

What did she mean?

Brightness in the corridor. I look back into the office to check that I have left nothing behind. But there is only low light and Stevenson’s papers in a neat pile beside her chair. I want to go back in and start again. Without shaking her hand, I move out into the corridor.

‘Good-bye, Mr Milius.’

I turn around.

‘Yes. Good-bye.’

I walk back down the corridor feeling light and stunned. Ogilvy, Elaine, the Hobbit, and Ann are waiting for me in the common room. They stand up and approach me as I come in, a surge of kinship and relief, smiling broadly. This is the thrill of finishing, but I feel little of it. We have all done what we came here to do, but I experience no sense of solidarity.

‘What happened to you, Alec?’ Ann asks, touching my arm.

‘I had a tough one with the shrink. Grilled me.’

‘You look exhausted. Did it go badly?’

‘Difficult to say. Sorry to keep you waiting.’

‘You didn’t,’ Ogilvy says warmly. ‘Matt only finished ten minutes ago.’

I look across at the Hobbit, whose nod confirms this.

‘Pub, then?’ Ogilvy asks.

‘You know what? I may just go home,’ I tell them, hoping they’ll just let me leave. ‘I have to have dinner with a friend later on. I’d like to have a shower, get my head together.’

Elaine appears offended.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘Just have a couple of drinks with us.’

‘I’d love to. Really. But I have so much I have to do before–‘

‘What? Like having a shower? Like getting your head together?’

Her mimicry irritates me, and only hardens my resolve.

‘No. You guys go ahead. I’m done for. I’ll see you all in the autumn.’

I smile here, and it works. The joke relaxes them.

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Ogilvy says. He’s probably relieved. Centre stage will be his.

‘I’m sure.’

‘Either way,’ says Ann, and this seals it, ‘we should go now, ’cos I’ve got a flight to Belfast at half past nine.’

So we say our good-byes, and Sisby is over.