Another Kind of Country (16 page)

It was Shearing who laid it out for him. ‘We can continue to keep this unfortunate story out of the news, Mr Miller. There will be no court case, although I expect there will have to be out-of-court settlements with at least some of your father’s patients, in exchange for binding, non-disclosure agreements. As regards the professional misconduct charges, the BMA will hold neither an inquiry nor a hearing and your father’s reputation will remain untarnished. In other words, you will not have to fear for your mother’s well-being.’ She paused but Miller said nothing: the quid pro quo was coming. ‘In return, you will go to live in East Berlin.’

For moments he
was speechless.

‘Live in East Berlin? What the fuck for?’

‘Because that, Mr Miller, is our condition for protecting your family.’

‘But why? Why go to live in East Berlin?’

‘Because we could use somebody trustworthy there,’ Redgrave said. ‘And somebody that the East Germans will also trust, somebody just like you, Miller, somebody who’s forever sounding off about the injustice of the capitalist system and the glories of socialism. The pinkos will love you, Miller. And look on the bright side: for you it will seem just like going home.’

‘You’re both out of your minds.’

‘On the contrary, Mr Miller, we are offering you a simple arrangement whereby Sir Roger and Lady Miller will be protected.’

Miller looked at Bernie, pulling a pint for a lunchtime customer. He looked at his notepad on the table, felt the draught of cold wind from the street as a customer left. These were the simple touchstones of his daily life but now they eluded his grasp, pushed away from him by the crazy talk of East Berlin.

‘It’s madness,’ he said, ‘madness.’

‘It’s a simple business arrangement, Miller.’

‘You expect me to be a fucking spy.’ Miller was whispering. ‘A fucking spy!’

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Miller.’ Redgrave, too, had lowered his voice. ‘From time to time we’d ask you to do us some little service, that’s all.’

‘You people – you and your “little services”!’

‘What we are doing for you,’ Shearing said, ‘is no little service – just remember that.’

‘So I just toddle
across the border at Checkpoint Charlie and tell Erich Mielke, “Here I am, Herr Mielke, the boys and girls at the Office of European Cooperation would like me to spy on your country for a while.” Just like that, yes?’

‘Miller,’ Redgrave’s tone was softer, menacing, ‘I’m getting just a little tired of your attitude. Either you take our proposal seriously or you can hear about your father’s antics on the six o’clock news this evening. Do I make myself clear?’

In his
Fighting Fist
days Miller had twice spent a night in the cells and had once been slapped around by a zealous uniform; looking at Redgrave now, hearing his intense words, Miller knew that he was in the presence of a darker, angrier power.

‘I’m a freelance columnist,’ he said. ‘You think the
Guardian
is just going to ship me off to East Berlin as their local correspondent?’

Shearing and Redgrave looked at each other.

‘I’m afraid you’re finished with the
Guardian
,’ Shearing said.

‘You’re going to resign in a great glare of publicity,’ Redgrave went on. ‘“Left-wing journalist despairs of capitalist lifestyle”, that sort of thing. “Seeks just society in East Berlin”.’ Orange eyebrows raised. ‘You know the sort of piffle newspapers like to produce. Our friends in the GDR embassy will have a field day, they’ll roll out the red carpet to welcome you into their workers’ paradise.’

‘And for that,’ Miller said, ‘you expect me to spy on them. You’re a shit, Redgrave.’

‘Sometimes you have to be.’ Redgrave sounded as if he were enjoying himself. ‘England demands.’

Shearing looked at her watch, draped her handbag on her arm. ‘We’ll be in touch, Mr Miller. For now you should say nothing of these arrangements to anybody. And we have your agreement, yes?’

‘I need to check
a couple of things—’

‘That’s not good enough, Miller,’ Redgrave said.

‘No, let him do his checking.’ Shearing adjusted the handbag on her arm. ‘You have until noon the day after tomorrow. We’ll phone you at your flat and I will expect your answer to be yes. If it’s not, you know the consequences.’

He watched them cross the wooden floor of the pub, heard in the squeak of Redgrave’s brogues and the clack-clack of Shearing’s heels the funeral dirge for the life he had made for himself. The life and work he loved.
Unfair
. He should let his abusive father drown in his own disgrace but what then of his mother? She drank too much, smoked too much, hid herself from reality in that mausoleum in Wolverhampton, and yet she had been, with all her weaknesses, the only rock he could cling to in the years after that rainy night at the surgery. She was pitiable and he pitied her and he would protect her as best he could. Lady Miller she had become and, if he had anyting to do with it, Lady Miller she would remain.

Even if it meant going to fucking East Berlin. Redgrave and Shearing had been vague about what they would demand of him but he knew he could expect specifics when the phone call came in forty-eight hours. He’d been once, years before, on a day trip to East Berlin; he could remember only half-filled shop windows and limited menus and once elegant facades with peeling paint. And yet he admired the GDR’s attempt to build a way of life that was different from Thatcher’s adoration of the dollar and the divine rights of property.

Yes, he would call his contacts, do his checking. And yes, he didn’t doubt that he would find the story told across the table in the King’s Arms to be true.

The dregs of his whisky were sour with the taste of abandonment. Sophie had abandoned him, the voice on the phone was proof of that, a new keeper for the key of her flat door. Yet the prospect
of a new beginning, even in a divided city, was not altogether unwelcome; Miller wasn’t sure if he was deluding himself about protecting his mother – maybe he just wanted to put more distance between himself and Sophie and the new keeper of the key. More than once he’d written about the divided city of Berlin. Now the opportunity (or order) to live there –
on the wrong side
– would allow him to see and write from behind the lines. His mother would not understand but she’d open another bottle and forgive him. Dr Sir Roger Miller would neither forgive nor try to understand; best of all, his only son’s highly publicized departure for East Germany would be a source of heartfelt shame for the ennobled gynaecologist. Which alone was cause enough, Miller reasoned, for another drink.

Checking out Redgrave and Shearing’s story didn’t take long.

Mrs Oliphant’s voice on the answering machine at his father’s surgery told him that Dr Miller was away from the office and that the caller should leave a message, etc., etc.

He could call a barrister contact who had defended more than one doctor in malpractice cases and ask him to make discreet inquiries at the British Medical Association.

He could call the crime correspondent at the
Guardian
and ask if he’d heard anything about a doctor in trouble in the West Midlands.

Miller did neither of these things.
Make the calls and you’ll raise hares, the very hares that Redgrave and Shearing say they’ve killed off
.

He could call home but he’d have to listen to his mother. You might go to East Berlin to keep the truth from her but you won’t listen to her smoky voice for an hour:
what kind of love was that?

He called Sophie’s number.

The new male
voice said hello.

Miller swallowed, said nothing.

The new holder of the key said hello again.

Miller was silent.

The male voice said, ‘I think I know who this is. You’re not here any more, so don’t call here again – just fuck off.’

Miller heard the click on the line but he went on holding the receiver, not hearing even the static in his ear.

A squall of winter rain lashing on the window brought him back to the small flat, his books, the disarray where there had been filed neatness.
Fuck it
. He slid a sheet of paper into the typewriter and typed his letter of resignation.

It was Shearing who phoned next day. She didn’t seem surprised when he told her he’d do it. She gave him an address to meet in Finchley, spelled it out for him. What they call a ‘safe house’, Miller thought.

When he climbed up the steps out of Finchley Central next morning, Miller thought that all the houses looked safe, blandly so: this was the constituency of Margaret Thatcher. His brain reminded him that he was a chronicler of sorts, that he should commit these suburban streetscapes to memory. His heart couldn’t listen.

The safe house had had its small front garden concreted over; blinds slatted shut on the windows. Inside, it smelled like a place not often occupied; the heavy old furniture seemed less designed for comfort than to fill up space. He sat with Redgrave and Shearing at an elderly dining table in a back room.

He was surprised that the instructions seemed so few, so banal. They knew – he no longer even wondered how – that he had about a thousand pounds in savings; he should withdraw most of it to take with him, a new account would be opened in his name with an initial deposit of two thousand pounds. He signed the
papers set before him on the mahogany dining table.

After he’d sent in his letter of resignation, he should write a farewell article, setting out his disillusionment with Thatcher’s Britain and his hopes for a better life in the GDR. Miller said the features editor might be pissed off with him, might reject such an article. Redgrave laughed, Shearing smiled: like Miller himself, they knew the features editor would lap it up.

And don’t worry about your stuff, put it in boxes, we’ll take care of it
. Redgrave handed him a card for a storage company near Heathrow. The remaining three months on his flat would be paid up.

Miller knew he was taking it in. He also knew that he didn’t care very much. These were no more than motions to be gone through, like the hounds chasing the fox in the hunting prints on the walls of this anonymous room in Finchley. Unlike the fox in the frame, at this moment Miller didn’t care about the outcome of the chase.

‘Do you understand all this, Miller?’ Redgrave’s voice was sharp.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t look very interested.’

Miller said nothing. He half turned in his chair but the blinds on the window were fully closed.

‘You don’t look very well,’ Shearing said. ‘I think, after your going-away piece is published, you should turn down any chat-show offers. Robin Day and the other TV vultures will be mad to have you but I’m not sure how you’d handle the kind of grilling you’d get.’

Redgrave nodded. ‘Good idea – talk to us if the radio or TV people want you.’

Miller said OK.

Disposing of a life was easier than Miller could have imagined.

Rudiger, the affable press
officer at the East German embassy in Belgrave Square, welcomed him with coffee and open arms, told him he’d loved his piece in the
Guardian
. No promises about work in East Berlin – not even about getting permission to live there – but he winked jovially, said he felt sure there’d be a terrific reception for such a distinguished writer as Patrick Miller!

Even Patrick Miller had to follow procedures. At the East German travel agency, Berolina, in Conduit Street, he applied for a month-long visitor’s visa, signed forms, handed over his sterling.

‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch, Herr Miller?’
The middle-aged woman handling his papers was looking keenly at him.

‘
Ein bisschen
,’ he said. ‘A-levels.’

‘Good, it will make your time among us more enjoyable.’ The woman beamed.

She knows me, she’s read about me or maybe Rudiger told her to expect me.

Miller thanked her, walked back towards Regent Street. On an impulse he turned towards Oxford Circus, hurried east among the crowds, swung left on to Charing Cross Road. In Foyle’s bookshop he sought out the schoolbooks section, found a German grammar and dictionary.
Time to snap out of it, time to start brushing up on his A-level German.

He wasn’t surprised that weeks passed before his visa came: even sympathetic souls knew that paperwork weighed heavily, moved slowly, behind the Iron Curtain. In the meantime he opened his grammar book for an hour every morning, another hour at night. The habit of study returned to him; his improving grasp of the language energized him. Rudiger invited him for
a drink one evening; he tried out his Deutsch, was pleased with himself, with Rudiger’s compliments. He enjoyed Rudiger’s company but he knew also that he was being pumped, observed. He had no doubt that others at the embassy would be digging into his past.

For himself, he wished that the past could be buried some-where very deep. All the same, a few days before his departure he travelled north from Euston, took a taxi from Wolverhampton station to the house in Compton. His father was on the driveway, getting into his car, when Miller arrived. They shook hands, avoided eye contact. His father explained, smoothly, that he had a meeting at the local hospital which he simply
couldn’t
miss, he was sure Patrick would understand. He watched his father drive away and Patrick Miller registered his own surprise that he’d felt no urge at all to strike him.

His mother wept, drank too much wine over lunch in the Swan restaurant, fell asleep in the taxi back to the house. She woke up when the taxi stopped, began to weep again when they were once more inside the dark and polished house. Miller promised to write, that he’d phone if he could. He hoped he could keep his promise. His mother was asleep on the long brown sofa when he left to catch the train back to London.

His last meeting with Redgrave in London was two days before he left. A house in Manor Park this time, in London’s East End. An artisan’s house in an artisan’s street, rubbish bins and bags beside front doors. Redgrave made tea with tea bags in beakers, milk poured from a bottle.
Who’s fooling who, play-acting on a working-class stage?
Redgrave had little to say: they’d make contact in a few days, meantime do some sightseeing, make inquiries at the Ministry for Social Cooperation about work. You’ll be watched all the time, trust nobody in the Hotel Adria – a half-smile – and maybe not the hotel food either.