Spy hook: a novel (17 page)

Gloria had made it a routine to check their homework after dinner each evening. She was wonderful to them. Sometimes they seemed to learn more from her in their half an hour of cheerful instruction than they learned all day at school. And Gloria had gained the children’s confidence by means of these lessons and that was no less important to all of us. And yet I sometimes wondered if the children didn’t resent the happiness I’d found with Gloria. I suspected that they wanted me to bear my rightful share of their sorrow.

“Hands washed?”

“Yes, Auntie Gloria,” they both chorused with their palms held high. Doris held her hands up too and smiled shyly. Newly slimmed, this quiet - and hitherto overweight - girl from a little village in Devon had been with the children a long time now. Having started as a nanny she now shuttled them back and forth to their respective schools, gave Sally some lunch at home, did some shopping and scorched my shirts. She was of about Gloria’s age and sometimes I wondered what she really thought about Gloria setting up home with me. But there would be little chance of her confiding any such thoughts to me. In my presence Doris was inscrutable, but with the children I could often hear her yelling merrily and joining in their noisy games.

“Billy can plug the trolley into the electricity socket for me;” said Gloria. I sat down. Doris was fidgeting with the cutlery. Abstaining from eating chocolate seemed to have given her chronic withdrawal symptoms.

The trolley with the built-in warmer - to say nothing of the brightly coloured casseroles, and striped pot-holders - was Gloria’s idea. It was going to revolutionize our lives, as well as being wonderful when we gave dinner parties. “Chipolata sausages!” I said. “And Uncle Ben rice! My favourites.”

Gloria didn’t respond. It was the third time in a week we’d had- those damned pork sausages. Perhaps if I’d had a proper lunch I would have had sense enough to keep a civil tongue in my head.

Gloria didn’t look at me, she was serving the children. “The rice is a bit burned.’ she told them. “But if you don’t take it from the bottom it will be all right.” she served two sausages to each of us. She’d had the heat too high and they were black and shrunken. She put the rest of them back on the warmer. Then she gave us all some spinach. It was watery.

Having served the meal she sat down and took an unusually large swig of her wine before starting to eat. “I’m sorry,” I said in the hope of breaking her tight-lipped silence.

In a voice unnaturally high she said, “I’m no good at cooking, Bernard. You knew that. I never pretended otherwise.” The children looked at Doris, and Doris looked down at her plate. “It’s delicious,” I said.

“Don’t bloody well patronize me” she said loudly and angrily. “It’s absolutely awful. Do you think I don’t know it’s all spoiled?”

The children looked at her with that dispassionate interest that children show for events outside their experience. “Don’t cry, Auntie Gloria,” said Sally. “You can have my sausage: it’s almost not burned at all.”

Gloria got to her feet and rushed from the room. The children looked at me to see what I would do.

“Carry on eating your supper, children,” I said. “I must go and see Auntie Gloria.”

“Give her a big kiss, Daddy,” advised Sally. “That’s sure to make everything all right.”

Doris took the mustard away from Billy and said, “Mustard is not good for children.”

Some days with Gloria were idyllic. And not just days. For week after week we lived in such harmony and happiness that I could hardly believe my good fortune. But at other times we clashed. And when one thing went wrong, other discords followed like hammer blows. Lately there had been more and more of these disagreements and I knew that the fault was usually mine.

“Don’t switch on the light,” she said quietly. I went into the bedroom expecting to face a tirade. Instead I found Gloria inappropriately apologetic. The only light came from the bedside clock-radio but it was enough to see that she was crying. “It’s no good, Bernard,” she said. She was sprawled across the bed, the corner of an embroidered handkerchief held tightly in her teeth as if she was trying to summon up enough courage to eat it. “I try and try but it’s no use.” “It’s my fault,” I said and bent over and kissed her.

She lifted her face to me but her expression was unchanging.

“It’s no one’s fault,” she said sadly. “You try. I know you do.” I sat on the bed and touched her bare arm. “Living together is not easy,” I said. “It takes time to adjust.”

For a few moments neither of us spoke. I was tempted to suggest that we sent Doris off to cooking classes. But a man who lives in a house with two women knows better than to sprinkle even a mote of dust upon the delicate balance of power. “It’s your wife,” said Gloria suddenly.

“Fiona? What do you mean? “”

“She was the right one for you.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

“She was beautiful and clever.’ Gloria wiped her nose. “When you were with Fiona everything was always perfect. I know it was.”

For a moment I said nothing. I could take all this admiration of Fiona from everyone except Gloria. I didn’t want Gloria implying that I’d been a lucky fellow; I wanted her to say how fortunate Fiona had been to capture me. “We had more help,” I said.

“She was rich,” said Gloria and the tears came to her eyes again.

“It’s better the way we are.”

She seemed not to hear me. When she spoke her voice came from very far away. “When I first saw you I wanted you so much, Bernard.’ She sniffed. “I thought I’d be able to make you so happy. I so envied your wife.”

“I didn’t know you ever met my wife.”

“Of course I saw her about. Everyone admired her. They said she was one of the cleverest women to ever come and work in the Department. People said she would be the first woman Director General.”

“Well, people were wrong.”

“Yes, I was wrong too,” said Gloria. “Wrong about everything . You’ll never be happy with me, Bernard. You’re too demanding.”

“Demanding? What are you talking about?” Too late I recognized that it had been my cue to say how happy I was with her.

“That’s right; get angry.”

“I’m not getting angry,” I said very quietly.

It’s just as well that I’m going to Cambridge.” She was determined to feel sorry for herself. There was nothing I could say. I gave her a kiss but she didn’t respond. Her grief was not to be assuaged.

“Perhaps Doris could help more,” I said very tentatively. Gloria looked at me and gave a bitter smile. “Doris has given notice,” she said.

“Doris? Not Doris.”

“She says it’s boring here in the suburbs.”

Jesus Christ!’ I said. “Of course it is. Why else does she think we came here?”

“She had her friends in central London. She went to discos there.”

“Doris had friends?”

“Don’t be a pig.,

“She can go up on the train.”

“Once a week. It’s not much fun for her. She’s still young.” “We’re all still young!’ I said. “Do you think I don’t want to go with Doris’s friends to discos?”

Making jokes won’t help you,” said Gloria doggedly. “We’ll be in a terrible mess when she goes. It won’t be easy to get someone who will get on well with the children.” Outside the rain kept coming down, thrashing through the apple tree and banging on the windows, while the wind buffeted against the chimney stack and screamed through the TV antenna. “I’m going to see what the agency can offer, but we might have to pay more around here. The woman in the agency says this is a particularly high-wages area.”

“I bet she did,” I said.

Then the telephone rang on my side of the bed. I went to get it. It was Werner. “I’ve got to see you,” he said. He sounded excited, or as near excited as the phlegmatic Werner ever got. “Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m in London. I’m in a little apartment in Ebury Street, near Victoria Station.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I flew to Gatwick.”

“What’s happened?”

“We must talk.”

“We’ve got a spare room. Have you got wheels?”

“Better you come here, Bernard.”

“To Victoria? It will take half an hour. More perhaps.” The idea of dragging up to central London again appalled me. “It’s serious,” said Werner.

I capped the phone. “It’s Werner,” I explained. “He says he’s got to see me. He wouldn’t say that unless it was really urgent.” Gloria gave a little shrug and closed her eyes.

I didn’t realize what had happened to some of those little hotels in Ebury Street. It used to be a no-man’s-land, where the rucksack-laden hordes from the bus terminal met the smart set of Belgravia. In a curious juxtapositioning that is peculiarly English, Ebury Street provided Belgravia with its expensive little boutiques and chic restaurants and offered budget conscious travellers cheap overnight lodging. But change was inevitable and Werner had found a small but luxuriously appointed suite “all major credit cards accepted” with twenty four-hour service and security, rubber plants in the lobby and Dom Perignon in the refrigerator.

“Have you eaten?” said Werner as soon as he opened the door to me.

“Not really.”

“Good. I’ve booked a table for us. It’s just round the corner. I read a rave review of it in a ffight magazine coming over.” He said it in a distracted way, as if his mind was reaUy on something entirely different.

“Wonderful,” I said.

“No,” said Werner. “I think it might really be good.” He looked at his watch. He was agitated: I knew the signs. “The magazine said the fresh salmon mousse is very good,” he said as if not totally convinced.

“How did you find this hotel, Werner?” He was my best friend, but I never really understood Werner in the way I understood other people I’d known for a long time. He was not just secretive; he masked his real feelings by assuming others. When he was happy, he looked sad. When he made a rib tickling joke, he scowled as if resenting laughter. Winning, he looked like a loser. Was that because he was a Jew? Did he feel he had to conceal his true feelings from a hostile world?

“It’s an apartment, a service apartment, not a hotel,” he corrected me. The rich of course have more words than the rest of us, for they have more goods and services at their disposal. “A fellow I do business with at Kleinwort Benson keeps it as his London base. He said I could use it. Champagne? Whisky or anything?”

“A glass of wine,” I said.

He stepped into the tiny kitchen. It was just a fluorescent-lit box, designed to encourage the use of the “service” rather than a place to do any proper cooking. He took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator, a Meursault; the bottle was full but uncorked as if he’d guessed what I would like to drink, and prepared for my arrival. He poured a good measure into a Waterford wineglass and put the bottle back again. The refrigerator’s machinery began to puff, setting off a soft rattle of vibrating bottles.

“Happy days, Werner,” I said before I drank. He smiled soberly and picked up his wallet from a side-table and made sure his credit cards were all there before putting it in his pocket. Meursault: it was a luxury I particularly enjoyed. I suppose Werner could have guzzled it all day long if he’d had a mind to.

Most people were hurtled through life on a financial switchback, a roller-coaster that decided for them whether they must economize or splurge. Not Werner; Werner always had enough. He decided what he wanted - anything: whether it was a little place round the corner that did a good salmon mousse, or a splendid new car - and put his hand in his pocket and bought it. Mind you, Werner’s needs were modest: he didn’t hanker for yachts or private planes, keep mistresses, gamble or throw lots of extravagant parties. Werner simply had money more than sufficient for his needs. I envied his unbudgeted easygoing lifestyle; he made me feel like a money-grubbing wage-slave because, I suppose, that’s exactly what I am.

I took my wine and sat down in one of the soft leather armchairs and waited for him to tell me what was distressing him so much that he would fly to London and drag me up here to talk with him. I looked around. So it was an apartment. Yes, I could see that now. It was not quite like a hotel suite; it looked lived in. Glenn Gould was playing Bach uncharacteristically softly on the CD player, and there were two big hideous modern paintings on the walls, instead of the tasteful lithographs that architects and interior designers bought wholesale. It was a place used by men who were away from home. You could tell that from the books. As well as year after year of outdated restaurant guides, street maps and museum catalogues, there were the sort of books that help pass the time when all the work is done. Dog-eared detective stories of the sort that can be read over and over again without any feeling of repetition, very thin books by thin lady novelists who win prizes, and very thick ones by thick lady novelists who don’t. And a whole shelf full of biographies from Mother Teresa to Lord Olivier via “Streisand the Woman and the Legend. Long long hours away from home.

Werner had responded to my toast by drinking some mineral water from a cut-glass tumbler. It had a lemon slice in it and ice too. It was as if he wanted to pretend it was a real drink. He sank down into an armchair and sighed. The black beard – now closely trimmed - suited him. He didn’t look like a hippie or an art teacher, it was more formal than that. But formality ended at the neck. His clothes were casual, a black long-sleeve woolen pullover, matching trousers, rainbow-striped silk shirt and shiny patent shoes. His hair was thick and dark, his pose relaxed: only his eyes were worried. “It’s Zena.” He reached across to get a coaster from the shelf and moved my wineglass on to it so it would not mark the polished side-table. Werner was house-trained.