Reckless (29 page)

*

While the
Indigirka
was at sea, a CIA agent in Cuba reported suspicious activity in the area round San Cristobal. Soviet soldiers were guarding a fifty-mile stretch of the main road from Havana to Pinar del Rio. Local people told stories of large trailer trucks carrying tarpaulin-covered cargoes that were knocking down telegraph poles as they negotiated tight corners in village streets. At the same time, Senator Keating had renewed his attacks on President Kennedy for allowing the Soviet arming of Cuba.

In the light of the latest information, the Executive Committee
agreed that they had no choice but to resume high-level reconnaissance flights. There was a real risk that a U2 pilot would be shot down over Cuba, but it had become vital to gain accurate information about developments on the ground. The president authorised the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance to resume U2 flights, with special attention to the San Cristobal area.

A successful mission required clear visibility from the ground all the way up to the U2’s flying ceiling of seventy thousand feet. It was now hurricane season in the Caribbean. For the next few days the skies were overcast.

Dr Edward Sugden’s waiting room in Half Moon Street, Mayfair, was strange and a little frightening. The walls were lined with glass cases containing snakes and lizards. At first Pamela thought they were stuffed. Then one of the lizards opened a yellow eye and stared at her, giving her a small silent shock. She told herself that the lizard could not have any opinion of her, but she felt the cold chill of its indifference.

There was one other woman in the room. She was expensively dressed, in her thirties, inattentively reading a copy of
Vogue
. She was called before Pamela, by a male voice through a half-open door. Within five minutes she was out again.

‘Miss Avenell?’

The man at the consulting-room door was older than she had expected, and balding, with wavy curls of white hair on the back of his head. His face was puffy and lined.

‘Come in, come in. Tell me what I can do for you. Tell me how you heard of me.’

He indicated that Pamela should sit down on an upright wooden chair, while he took his place behind a wide desk, and opened up a new file. She told him that Christine Keeler had recommended him, and that she needed to be ‘fixed up’.

‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t do for young girls to be having
babies they don’t want. One day the government will wake up, and you’ll be able to do this on the National Health. Lovely girl, Christine. How is she?’

‘She’s fine,’ said Pamela, thinking how odd it was that this old man should know all Christine’s intimate details. And her own, soon enough.

‘So let’s take a look at you.’

Following his instructions, she partially undressed and lay down on the examination couch, a blanket over her lower body.

‘If you’re a friend of Christine’s,’ he said, ‘I don’t expect you’re shy. Flex your thighs, please.’

He eased a pillow beneath her buttocks.

‘I’m going to conduct a simple examination. One finger, that’s all.’

She closed her eyes and tried not to think about what was happening. She felt his probing finger. For what seemed like a long time, his finger moved inside her, but he didn’t speak.

‘Is everything all right?’ she said.

She had no idea what she meant by this question, except that suddenly it seemed important to know.

‘Yes,’ he said. Then, with a faint note of surprise, ‘Not sexually active yet?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘A wise virgin, I see. Not many of those about these days. I wish all girls were as sensible as you.’

His finger continued to probe.

‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘Not much in the way of a hymen.’

‘Is that normal?’

‘Perfectly normal.’

He withdrew his finger.

‘You’d be surprised how many girls ask me that. “Am I normal down there?”’

He laughed as if this were amusing. But Pamela realised this was exactly what she wanted to know.

‘Here’s something that should help you,’ he said. ‘A lot of girls don’t realise how their body’s put together. Give me your hand.’

He took her right hand and guided it beneath the blanket.

‘Vagina is Latin for sheath, you know? Like the sheath for a sword. So which direction do you think it goes inside your body?’

Pamela had never in her life asked herself this question.

‘I expect you think it goes upwards.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Pamela.

‘Well, feel for yourself.’ He guided her finger. ‘Do you feel it? It goes front to back. That’s worth knowing. Not up and down at all, but front to back. Can you feel that?’

‘Yes,’ said Pamela.

‘Have a good rummage around. Get to know the lie of the land.’

He moved away from her. She heard clicking and clattering noises.

‘This is what you’ve come for,’ he said. ‘I’m going to fit you with something called a diaphragm. It’s an awkward little bugger, but you’ll get used to it.’

He returned to her side. Pamela opened her eyes. Teddy Sugden was holding up a large saucer of beige-coloured rubber.

‘You may have heard of it as a Dutch cap. Basically it just sits inside you and puts a stopper on the whole works. Very simple, and very effective. You can put it in up to eight hours before, if you want.’

It seemed to Pamela’s alarmed gaze to be far too big.

‘I’ll show you first,’ he said. ‘Then you have a go.’

He squeezed the saucer in his hand and the sides bent inwards, turning it into a narrow scoop.

‘A little blob to help’ – he added something from a tube – ‘not Vaseline or anything made of petroleum jelly, because it rots the rubber. This is a spermicide, and it does half the work.’

She felt his warm hand between her legs. Then there came a brief cramp of pain. Then it was in.

‘Can you feel it?’

‘Not really.’

‘Good. Now see if you can get it out and put it in again yourself.’

Pamela fumbled with her right hand. It wasn’t at all easy. She got hold of it, but it wouldn’t come out.

‘You have to squeeze it,’ said Teddy Sugden.

She squeezed it, and managed to get it out, but as soon as it was free the sides sprang open, and it jumped out of her hand to the floor.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, retrieving it. ‘You’ll be chasing it all over the bedroom often enough. Just give it a clean.’ He wiped the cap and gave it back to her. ‘Now see if you can get it in.’

It was quite a struggle. She managed in the end, but the effort left her tense and trembling.

‘There has to be a better way,’ she said.

‘There’s condoms. But not all girls trust their boyfriends on that front.’

After several attempts she found she could insert the cap, and remove it, but the whole process dismayed her. It was not at all sexy. Very much the opposite. To add to the burdensome nature of the process, she had to take in details of spermicidal jelly, and what to do if her lover had multiple orgasms, and how many hours to leave the cap in place afterwards, and how to wash her hands every time she touched it, and how to clean it every time it jumped onto the floor.

Then he asked her for ten guineas, and she burst into tears.

It wasn’t just the money. It was the passing of the dream.
She knew very little about lovemaking, but she had imagined it as a more intimate, more thrilling version of kissing, which in turn was the physical expression of mutual desire. Scenes in books and films had led her to expect a mysterious and uncontrollable crescendo of excitement, in which beautiful bodies, lost in a trance of passion, experienced sensations of bliss. There was no bliss, no passion, in this clumsy precalculated jelly-slicked act of self-protection. In her dreams of lovemaking there had been no physical details. What was to happen
down there
was to take place spontaneously, urgently, in obedience to natural instincts. Now, for the first time, she was faced with a very different reality. Sex was dangerous, and embarrassing, and expensive.

Christine didn’t much like sex, Stephen had said. A lot of women don’t, he had said. Mandy did it with Peter with her back to him, as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Why? Why did any woman do it? Because it’s what men wanted, presumably. Sex was the price women paid for love.

‘Here,’ said Teddy Sugden, giving her a tissue. ‘Dry your eyes. Tell me how much you can afford.’

‘I’ve got five pounds,’ whispered Pamela. ‘Christine said that would be enough. I haven’t told my parents.’

‘Yes, yes, I understand. We’ll call it five pounds, then, shall we? Better that than you coming back to me in a few months’ time with a far bigger problem.’

She put her clothes back on and gave him the five pounds she had borrowed from Stephen Ward. He packed up the cap in its box together with a tube of cream, and gave it all to her in a brown paper bundle.

‘You’ll get the hang of it,’ he said. ‘Come back in a couple of months, so we can be sure we’ve got the right fit. Give my love to Christine.’

That same afternoon Rupert was meeting Ivanov by arrangement at Stephen Ward’s flat in Wimpole Mews. Stephen himself joined them, to act, as he said jokingly, as a neutral observer.

‘I hope I’m not wasting your time, Captain,’ said Rupert.

‘Eugene, please. Call me Eugene.’

The walls of the living room were hung with Stephen Ward’s portraits, mostly pencil sketches. Rupert studied them unseeingly as they talked.

‘You do understand, I hope,’ he said to Ivanov, ‘I’m not in a position to pass you any information of any kind.’

‘Mr Blundell,’ said Ivanov. ‘Rupert – may I call you Rupert? Stephen here knows me well. Stephen, tell Rupert what it is I want most in the world. What is it I say to you, many times?’

‘Eugene wants peace,’ said Stephen.

‘You know what Chairman Khrushchev says?’ said Ivanov. ‘He says, “Communism is the best life for everyone. Why should we carry it to other countries on bayonets?”’

‘Do the people of East Germany agree with that?’ said Rupert.

‘Some do, some don’t.’ Ivanov waved the issue aside with one hand. ‘Socialism is young, the socialist countries are poor, capitalism offers many temptations. All we ask for is the chance to make our dream come true. For that we need peace.’

‘No one is against peace,’ said Rupert.

‘Then why does General Curtis LeMay, who commands the United States Air Force, say in public that the Soviet Union should be bombed out of existence?’

Rupert gave a shrug of his shoulders and turned round to offer Ivanov his full attention.

‘LeMay’s a soldier. Soldiers think about winning battles. But I can assure you he takes his orders from his elected leader.’

‘You do understand, Rupert, that we in the Soviet Union have reason to fear attack by the West? We are surrounded by nuclear missiles. In Germany, in Italy, in Turkey, and here in Britain.’

‘Yes, I understand.’

‘There are many regions of great tension. Most of all West Berlin.’

‘Yes.’

‘One day there will be a spark. A flash of fire.’ He reached forward and tapped Rupert on the arm. ‘On that day, how will war be averted? A war that will begin with two tanks, perhaps at Checkpoint Charlie, and will explode within days, within hours, into a global holocaust.’

He sat himself down in one of the armchairs, staring at Rupert, nodding his big handsome head.

‘I can only hope,’ said Rupert, ‘that saner counsels will prevail.’

As if to show his willingness to achieve this end, he too sat down. He was realising that his first instincts had been right: he and the Russian had much in common.

‘You think,’ said Ivanov, ‘there will be no temptation on either side to launch a pre-emptive first strike?’

‘The temptation exists,’ said Rupert. ‘But I don’t believe either our leaders or yours want a global holocaust.’

‘You don’t want it,’ said Ivanov. ‘We don’t want it. But if you
think we might do it, or if we think you might do it, then either of us might choose to do it first.’

‘That’s the problem of intention,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that.’

‘The problem of intention?’

‘We base our assessments of our enemy’s intentions on our worst fears, and so we’re drawn into needless aggression.’

‘That is so true!’ exclaimed Ivanov. ‘Stephen, this is a wise man! Tell him, he speaks like me!’

‘Eugene believes,’ said Stephen, ‘and I agree with him, for what it’s worth, that should a crisis occur the greatest danger is that the opposing leaders mistake each other’s purposes. They don’t speak each other’s language. There’s no direct phone link from Washington or London to Moscow. All communication is through layers of intermediaries. There will be distortions and misunderstandings.’

‘And there will be misinformation,’ said Ivanov. ‘There are many who will seek to control the message. We too have generals like Curtis LeMay. This is what you call the problem of intention.’

‘Exactly,’ said Rupert. ‘I believe the only way out of the present situation, which is essentially a balance of terror, is to transfer the intelligence effort from weapons to intentions. We must become far better informed about the minds of our opponents.’

‘Yes!’ cried Ivanov. ‘Yes, and again yes! I am the man who can make this happen!’

‘You?’

‘I can have a report on Khrushchev’s desk in twenty minutes.’

Rupert raised his eyebrows.

‘That’s quite a claim.’

‘The Soviet system has many failings. One of its failings is a distrust of official channels. They are seen as forms of propaganda. A
secret report from a second naval attaché who has formed his own private relationships in a foreign capital will be given more weight than an official communiqué from that capital’s foreign minister.’

‘I see.’

‘I am not a rogue operator, Rupert. Everything I do is cleared with my superior at the embassy, and by him with his superior in Moscow. I am known to have friends in the British ruling circles. I have been authorised to build a private bridge between our leaders and yours. But bridges, you know, must not be too long, or the river will wash them away. I can offer you two arches. From me to my boss. From him to Khrushchev.’