Every Secret Thing (42 page)

Somebody clinked a teacup near us. They were starting to clear tables in the little banquet hall.

‘What did he mean,’ I asked: ‘“The chequerboard”?’

Jim Iveson glanced up, and smiled – an echo, I was thinking, of the smile he’d seen in Istanbul, those many years ago.

‘I looked it up,’ he said. ‘I was never a very good student, at school. Reading poetry wasn’t my thing. But I got curious, myself, and so I looked it up.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
, by Edward Fitzgerald – that’s what he was quoting from. The part he spoke of goes like this:’ And in his slow, deep voice, he said:

The lines were lovely, resonant; made all the more so by his strongly felt delivery. In the silent moment that came afterwards, I thought about their meaning; thought of all the lives that had been played with – thrust together; torn apart.

Jim said, ‘I saw a lot of sad things, in the war; heard a lot of sad stories. But I always thought Andrew’s was one of the saddest. He never complained, mind you. Went on with life, in his own quiet way. But it might have been so different.’ I remembered how I’d thought that, myself, in my grandmother’s kitchen, the night she had told me her story.

I remembered thinking how life might have been for her, with Deacon, and I’d wondered whether she would have been happier if she had chosen him – but now I knew that Deacon hadn’t let her make the choice. He’d stepped aside. He’d met my Grandpa Murray, and he’d liked him, so he’d sacrificed his own wants in one fleeting, noble move – a tiny playing piece discarded from the game board.

I thought of the few lines that Jim had quoted, and how perfectly they fit the private tragedy of Deacon and my grandmother. I thought, too, of the vicar of St Stephens; how he’d told me that there were no random meetings…and I had an inclination to believe he might be right. Perhaps a greater hand
was
moving us, according to its will.

I almost could believe that, after what Jim told me next.

The spring had come to Washington. The cherry-blossom time, when crowds of tourists filled the Capitol to marvel at the monuments and buildings, and enjoy the pleasure, long deferred, of walking out of doors, with winter fading to a small and distant memory.

Jim, having just passed his sixty-fourth birthday, had purposely slowed in his pace at the office, to give himself time to enjoy days like this one, and so, being in no great rush to get to work, he gave himself permission to take one turn round the Tidal Basin. The Basin, on that day, was perfect; smooth, without a ripple, catching clearly the reflection of the Jefferson Memorial, the arched rotunda shining white beyond the fragrant, pink-bloomed cherry trees that ringed the pool of water and made a such a brilliant show against the clear blue morning sky.

Breathing deep, in satisfaction, Jim felt good. So good, he was considering a second circuit round the pool when he heard someone laugh.

A woman. Low, and throaty, and infectious.

Stopping on the path, Jim held himself in check a moment, not quite ready to believe. And then, he turned.

It
was
her. Older, like himself, but definitely her. Her red hair had lightened to something like strawberry blonde, but her figure had held. She was standing not ten feet away from him, holding the bar of an empty child’s stroller and laughing at a little toddling girl with bright red pigtails.

Jim’s voice didn’t come, the first time, but he coughed and tried again. ‘Amelia.’

As she had so long ago, again she turned round, slowly, and Jim thought, this time he understood the reason for the hopefulness he saw within her eyes. But he was not the man she’d been expecting. Not the man she’d wanted.

Still, she recognised him too. And this time, there was no denial. ‘Jim,’ she said, and smiled her wide, familiar smile, as though she were as pleased as he was by their chance encounter.

‘How
are
you?’ she asked. ‘What a wonderful surprise. I’m afraid we’ll have to walk,’ she warned him, as he came across to meet her. ‘This little one won’t sit still in the stroller. She doesn’t like being strapped in.’

‘I don’t blame her.’ Jim crouched to the child’s level, smiling. ‘And what’s your name?’

The little girl just looked at him with interest, and Amelia answered, ‘Katie. She’s my granddaughter.’

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘Well, thank you. I think so, naturally, but then I’m biased.’

‘Gamma,’ said the little girl, and tugged Amelia’s hand, and they began to walk. Jim took charge of the empty stroller, pushing it. He thought of all the ways he could begin their conversation, but he settled on, ‘Just so you know, Andrew told me, a while back, that the two of you weren’t married, so you don’t have to keep up the fiction with me. Makes things easier.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘It does.’

‘I should have been able to figure it out from the last time I saw you, when you pretended not to know me. You were working here, then, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. I am sorry about that. I felt awful afterwards.’

‘No need to. You were just doing your job.’ He didn’t ask her who she’d worked for. He already had a pretty good idea. As a Canadian, she’d likely worked for BSC – one of Sir William Stephenson’s girls. He’d known about them, though he’d never known exactly what they’d gotten up to, in their offices at Rockefeller Plaza. Even now, with everyone grown older and the war reduced to pages in a history book, there still were secrets.

She said brightly, ‘And you? Have you lived here all this time?’

And so they talked, as they had always done, of little things.

‘You never got married?’ she echoed, as though that surprised her.

‘I never had time.’ He smiled down at her. Glanced at the child. ‘You did, though, I see.’

‘Yes. I have one son,’ she said. ‘Katie’s father. His wife died last year, so they’re all on their own now. They live with us.’

‘You must enjoy that,’ said Jim.

‘Yes, I do. Very much.’ She looked down at the little girl, squeezing her hand with affection. ‘I can’t think what I’d do without her.’

‘She looks like you.’

‘Do you think so? There’s the hair, of course…’

‘She has your eyes.’ Jim looked from one face to the other, certain.

‘Well, let’s hope she didn’t get my temper, poor thing.’ She glanced down, to check her wristwatch. ‘We’re supposed to meet my husband.’ Then, on inspiration, she said, ‘Will you come with us?’

Jim hesitated. Shook his head. ‘I really should be getting to the office.’

‘Please, Jim, come with us.’ She held his gaze. ‘I’d like for you to meet him.’

He was powerless, as he had always been against those eyes. He went.

He wasn’t sure what reception he’d get, or how she’d choose to explain him – a man from her past – but he went, all the same.

Their hotel was the Willard, only two blocks from the White House, and not far for them to walk. ‘My son,’ she said, ‘wanted to stay at the Watergate. He thought it would be more exciting. I told him that I’d had enough excitement in my life.’

Jim smiled. ‘So he knows what you did during the war?’

‘Oh, heavens, no, I’ve never told him that. I don’t imagine he’d believe it, if I did. No,’ she said in amusement, ‘he thinks I’m a boring old woman.’

Jim didn’t think much of the son, when he met him. A colourless young man, absorbed in himself; only vaguely aware of his child.

But the husband, Ken Murray, was different. Jim liked him. Liked the firmness of his handshake, and the honest, level squareness of his gaze.

‘So you knew Georgie in New York,’ Ken Murray said. ‘That must have been a time.’

It took Jim a few seconds to realise Amelia and ‘Georgie’ were one and the same. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, it was.’

Ken Murray didn’t ask him what he’d done in wartime. Having been a military man himself, perhaps he understood the barriers of secrecy. He only asked, ‘And what do you do, now?’

He was an easy man to talk to. In the coffee shop of the hotel, they sat and talked while Katie coloured happily beside them with her crayons. The son lost interest after twenty minutes, and went back up to their room. Jim didn’t miss him. But he
did
feel at a loss when Katie tugged Amelia’s hand, insistent, and Amelia rose.

‘We’ll be right back,’ she said. ‘Excuse us.’

Left alone, the two men settled back, as though each were deciding how to carry on the conversation. Jim spoke first. ‘You were in the Air Force, in the war, as I recall.’

‘I was. I wasn’t very good at it. I got myself shot down.’

‘Well, I would guess you had a few adventures.’

‘Nothing much to tell,’ Ken Murray told him lightly. Most men who had gone through hell and back again, Jim knew, weren’t keen to talk about it. ‘The people who helped me out, they were the brave ones. And there were so many of them. I remember this one man, in Lisbon – I never did learn what his name was; I wish that I had. He came with the SIS man, to debrief me. A real quiet guy, but he was so concerned about me having to go back into the air that he sent me a note afterwards, with the name of a British official he knew at the Embassy. Said if I went to this man, he would find me a desk job. Intelligence. I didn’t go for it, of course. My squadron needed me – we pilots were in pretty short supply. But it was nice of him to go to all that trouble, for a guy he didn’t know.’ He looked at Jim, and smiled briefly. ‘That’s what I took with me, from the war – what I remember. All the trouble people took, to help a stranger. Made me think the human race still had some hope.’

Amelia’s voice asked, ‘What did?’

Turning with a warm-eyed look, her husband said, ‘Oh, we were just talking.’

Jim found his voice, and said, ‘War stories’.

‘Really?’ Looking at the two of them with interest, she said, ‘Ken never tells me those’.

‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ he said again. He watched his granddaughter at play, and added, ‘Anyway, it’s ancient history, now. God willing, this little one will never have to live through days like that.’

They changed the subject, then, and talked of other things. It was going on for noon when Jim stood, finally, with reluctance. Said goodbye.

Amelia walked him out. Said the usual things, about keeping in touch. At the doorway she paused for a moment, her gaze on the floor. ‘You said that Deacon told you we weren’t married.’

‘That’s right.’

‘When did he do that?’ Her voice was casual, as if it didn’t matter, but he wasn’t fooled.

It took him half a minute to decide what he should answer. ‘I met him in the Fifties once. In Istanbul. We had a cup of tea, and talked. He told me then.’

‘I see.’ She nodded, and he knew that she was also choosing her words carefully. ‘How was he? Was he well?’

‘He seemed to be.’

Another nod. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. And then she raised her head to look at him, and smiled as if to prove it. ‘It was really good to see you, Jim. I mean that. Take good care.’

He never could find a convincing reason, later, why he hadn’t told her everything – that he and Andrew Deacon saw each other once a year, at least, and wrote each other monthly; that they’d done that ever since they’d met in Istanbul; that Deacon wasn’t married, though he’d never, to Jim’s knowledge, taken off the New York wedding ring.

Jim felt a bit ashamed, in fact, whenever he looked back on his encounter with Amelia. Like he’d stepped between two lovers, who were meant to be together. But the truth was that, like Andrew Deacon, he had liked Ken Murray too. And he himself was only one more player on the chequerboard, who did what Fate decided.

The crowd was growing thinner in the banquet hall. Little groups of people were collecting by the doorway, as they started saying their goodbyes. I wasn’t ready yet.

With clearer eyes, I kept my focus on Jim Iveson – this man who’d met me as a child. Perhaps that was why I’d felt so sure I should know him…though I hadn’t been aware my memories stretched so far into the past.

I said, ‘My grandmother…she’s—’

‘Yes, I heard,’ he cut me off, so that I wouldn’t have to say it. ‘I am sorry.’

It occurred to me that this man, having been a friend of Deacon’s, was a target, too. I thought I ought to warn him, but I didn’t get too far, because the minute that I mentioned the report, he said, ‘You mean his accusations about
Cayton-Wood
. I knew about that, yes. I knew he didn’t have much luck with it.’

‘I might have more.’

‘You’ll have a hard time doing it. Especially,’ he said, ‘after last week.’

I didn’t need to ask him what he meant. There was no way anybody could have missed the story – it had been in all the papers, and on all the nightly broadcasts. A woman like Venetia Radburn couldn’t smash her car into a tree without it making headlines.

And the journalists and broadcasters had played upon the tragedy. A shame, they’d said, her family had been with her – her great-nephew, such a promising young lawyer, and his mother. All three of them killed, in that one accident. Then, tragedy on tragedy, her son-in-law (which was how they’d described the Colonel, notwithstanding he was her own age) had, in what the reporters liked to call ‘a fit of grief’, done the dramatic thing and gassed himself to death in his garage.

It had made for good news, but I wasn’t completely convinced. The first three deaths – Venetia Radburn, Patrick, and his mother – those were real enough. I’d seen the pictures. But the Colonel had already died once in his lifetime, and I didn’t put it past him to attempt the trick again.

Jim’s thoughts were clearly running in the same direction. ‘The British,’ he said, ‘do things very neatly.’

I half smiled. ‘So you don’t believe that he’s dead either.’

‘Men like Cayton-Wood don’t kill themselves. He’s likely on an island, somewhere, soaking up the sun.’