The Bear's Tears (10 page)

"You think he's guilty?"

"Perhaps. It doesn't look good. In fact, it looks very bad, from
whichever angle the light strikes it. Very bad."

"But you
know
he's not a traitor —!"

"I know nothing of the sort, neither do you. You don't believe he
is. Nothing more than belief."

"Nonsense."

"My God - if he is allowed to remain as DG of the intelligence
service, Paul - the
havoc
, the absolute, irreparable
harm
of it!"

"I don't believe it. Any of it. You shouldn't believe it either."

"Aubrey's day is over, Paul, whatever the final outcome. I assure
you his sun has set." Babbington's eyes gleamed with an undisguised
ambition.

"Whatever the truth really is?"

"I'm sorry," Babbington murmured insincerely. "I realise he is a
very close friend…"

"And if it is a KGB set-up, as Aubrey believes?" Massinger asked,
feeling warmth ascend to his cheeks. He felt foolish, hot and angry and
not in control of his situation. And he felt insulted and unnerved by
the threats that had underlain each of Babbington's remarks. "Don't you
wonder why the KGB might want to help you achieve your ambitions - why
they
should want Aubrey ditched like this?"

Babbington was silent for a time, as if genuinely considering
Massinger's theory. Then he studied the cornice, and the central
moulding above the chandelier. Plaster pastoral, shepherds and
shepherdesses against pale blue, like a piece of Wedgwood. Then he
returned his gaze to Massinger.

"You're not going to go on with this, of course?"

"What?"

"This misguided attempt to assist someone who cannot be helped."

"The truth doesn't matter?"

"That is the second time you have asked me that. It still sounds
just as naïve."

"My God —"

"Aubrey is as guilty as hell!" Babbington snapped. His powerful
hands were bunched on his knees as he leant forward in his chair. "When
we get to the bottom of it - to the centre of the web - Aubrey will be
seen to be as guilty as hell. He's a Soviet agent, dammit, and he has
been for nearly forty years. Ever since he betrayed your wife's father,
and had him disposed of by the NKVD."

"Why should he have done that?" Massinger disputed hotly, his face
burning with anger and with the effect of Babbington's unsheathed
determination.

"A proof of his loyalty - or because Robert Castleford was a
convenient way to save his own skin - take your choice."

"That's crazy —" Massinger replied, a perceptible quaver in his
voice.

Babbington sat back as if weary of the discussion. His eyes, unlike
his cheeks and lips, were not angry. They studied Massinger in a cold,
detached manner.

"As you will," he said finally. "But he did it - your wife's father.
A man whose bootlaces Aubrey wasn't fit to tie."

"Is that blackmail?" Massinger asked quietly. His voice was breathy,
nervous.

"Just remember your happiness, and that of Margaret, Paul. Please…"
It was no more than the mockery of a plea.

"As I thought - blackmail."

"No, Paul. Sound advice. If, in your Harvard, CIA and King's College
priggishness, you wish to see real blackmail - then think of this. You
might expect a number of City directorships to come your way. You might
expect a decent number of Quango appointments. None of it will happen
if you go on with this. I can assure you of that. Belgravia, everything
that might have come with the job, so to speak —" He gestured around
the room. It was obscene. Massinger choked on his silent anger. "— will
come to nothing. I really do assure you of it."

"Great God," Massinger breathed.

"But, above all, you will lose your wife's love. I am certain of
that. As you must be." Babbington stood up quickly. "Don't bother to
see me out. Say goodbye to Margaret for me. Tell her that Elizabeth
will be in touch - a dinner party, perhaps? Good evening, Paul."

And he was gone before Massinger could clear his throat of
accumulated bile and fear. He watched the door close, as if
half-fearful the man would not leave. He felt his hands twitching on
his thighs, but did not look at them. His body felt hot and without
energy. Babbington had threatened to take his wife from him.

The doors to the dining-room opened and she posed, the light and
bustle behind her like a natural setting. He was terrified, as if she
had shown herself to him before being taken away to some place of
confinement; or before she voluntarily departed. The butler and
housekeeper busied themselves behind her, part of the
tableau
vivant
. Crystal, gleaming napery, silver. Candlesticks and
candelabra. Caviar, smoked salmon, canapes, asparagus. Champagne,
Burgundy, claret, hock.

She released the door handles and moved out of her setting towards
him. Her face began to mirror his as she moved, and she hurried the
last few steps then knelt beside his chair, taking his proffered,
quivering hand at once.

"Oh, my dear, my dear…" she murmured over and over, her cheek
against the back of his hand. Massinger listened to the note of
sympathy in her voice, clinging to it, afraid to lose it. And he heard,
above the sympathy, like static spoiling broadcast music, something he
could only comprehend as necessity. She knew what had been said, and
she knew it had been necessary to her happiness. She had allowed
Babbington to threaten and blackmail; to frighten him off. Her father
existed in some sacrosanct part of her memory, deeper rooted than
himself.

Class, too, he thought miserably. Damned English class. She had
taken sides, and she expected him to join her. Nothing else would make
sense to her. Aubrey had been a verger's son, and a scholarship boy. A
choral scholar with, a brilliant First. A verger's son.

He shifted in his chair. "It's - all right, my dear," he muttered.
She looked at him, the gleam of her satisfaction slowly becoming
absorbed in affection.

"I know, darling. I know." She stood up. "Are you - ready to change?"

"Yes, of course," he replied with studied lightness. His hip stabbed
him like a painful conscience as he moved, and his limp was more
pronounced. Without looking at her, he said as he reached the door:
"There'll be no trouble, my love. No trouble." He heard her sigh with
satisfaction.

He crossed the hall to his dressing-room, avoiding the long, gilded
eighteenth-century mirror on the wall above the telephone, avoiding the
cheval-glass in one corner of the dressing-room. The long modern mirror
on the inside of the fitted wardrobe door caught him by surprise,
revealing the irresolute, dispirited shame on his features. He turned
away from it, slamming the door. He took off his jacket and tie,
uncrooked his arm and dropped his overcoat to the carpet. The hard seat
of the divanette looked inviting.

The telephone rang, startling him out of his recriminations. He
looked at the extension on the wall, then snatched at the receiver.

"Professor Massinger?"

Peter Shelley's voice —?

"Yes. Who is that?"

"Shelley, Professor."

Massinger's head turned so that he could guiltily watch the door.
The shadows in the dressing-room enlarged, moving across the carpet
like the progress of a conspiracy. He slumped onto the divanette.

"What - what do you want?"

He listened for the second click of an eavesdropper. His hand shook.

"I - I'd like to help," Shelley blurted. "I - think I can get you
the file, just for a couple of hours, you can photocopy it and I can
get it back…" The plan spilled out. Shelley had gone over and over it,
it was obvious, overcoming his reluctance and ambition and fear. "It's
a transcript, of course, not a copy of the original photographs in
Washington… it's all I can do, I won't be able to do anything more."

Massinger listened. No one else seemed to be listening on another
extension.

"I.."

"Professor - you said you wanted it. Do you want it?"

Click? Telephone being picked up?
Margaret
—? Massinger
was enraged, and his anger spilled onto Shelley. Shelley was part of
the conspiracy to separate him from Margaret —

"I don't require it now," he said as unemotionally as he could. "I'm
sorry, but it's nothing to do with me. Thank you for calling."

Shelley put down his receiver at once. Massinger listened. Above the
purring tone, he heard a slight click as one of the extensions in the
flat was replaced. He slapped his own receiver onto its cradle as if it
burned his hand. Then he waited until Margaret should open the door, a
smile of sympathy and congratulation on her lips. Misery occupied his
chest and stomach like water that threatened to drown him.

Margaret glowed. There was no doubt of it. Happy, confident, secure
once more. She received the sympathies of her guests concerning the
news of her father's betrayal and murder almost with equanimity. Order
had returned to her universe. Massinger watched her moving amid the
guests at her apres-opera gathering with a love that seemed renewed.
Refreshed. And as a perpetual stranger to this kind of social intimacy.

Eugene Onegin
, with a Russian soprano and conducted by the
soprano's more famous husband, had failed to lift him from his mood.
Only Margaret's silent glances of approval and satisfaction throughout
the evening in their box had stilled the nagging self-criticisms. Yet
now, after whisky and good Burgundy and very little to eat, he could
begin to accept and live with the choice he had made. His priorities
were reasserted. He had slightly adjusted the focusing ring of his
moral and emotional lens, and Margaret's image was precise and clear in
the eyepiece.

He was standing near the window, and the scent of the roses was
clearer than the cigar and cigarette smoke. Already, two or three
people had spoken warmly to him of directorships; another had murmured
an enquiry concerning an imminent Royal Commission and his willingness
to serve; yet another had dangled the prospect of a lucrative Quango
appointment. All of it had pleased Margaret immensely; all of it
appealed to some hidden instinct in himself to increase his
Anglicisation - to become, now that he was no longer a respected
university teacher and merely an emeritus professor of King's College,
London, a useful, even powerful member of the closed community in which
he moved and lived. He felt a need to strengthen his roots in England,
to give himself a more appropriate
weight
as Margaret's
husband. Now, it was beginning to happen. Anything was possible now.
Were he younger, and a British citizen, he might have sought, and
found, a safe parliamentary seat. He was being courted. Everyone knew,
and everyone was pleased with him. He smiled bitterly into his glass.

The scent of the roses was momentarily nauseous and the room too
hot. Then Sir William Guest, senior Privy Councillor, formerly Head of
the Diplomatic Service and presently security and intelligence
co-ordinator in the Cabinet Office and Chairman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee, was standing beside him.

Caviar speckled the corner of his mouth until the tip of a pink
tongue removed it. Moselle glowed palely in his tall glass. He was
beaming at Massinger with evident satisfaction. Of all people, of
course, Sir William would know he had withdrawn from the contest -
given Aubrey up. Sir William's eyes moved to Margaret, who waved over
heads to him and Massinger. Margaret, waving to her godfather and her
husband.

"You are blessed, my boy," Sir William murmured.

"I know it."

"Your continued - your
uninterrupted
happiness." Sir
William raised his glass and drank off a toast. "My goddaughter's
looking so well, so -
happy
these days." He sighed like a
large dog before a blazing hearth.

"Yes, William."

"Lucky man - lucky to have been able to draw that much from a
woman." Sir William chuckled. His jowls moved slightly out of sequence
with the sound. Then he appraised Massinger. "Can't imagine how you've
done it. It must be something you Americans have." He laughed. The
noise seemed bellicose. "A great shame this business of her father ever
reached the public domain," he continued. "Very upsetting for Margaret."

"I think she's coping," Massinger replied, studying his glass.

"Naturally, as her godfather, I worry about her. Her father was my
closest friend, and he would have been a great man. A future head of
the Diplomatic Service - he might even have kept me out of the job!" He
laughed again, briefly. "A bloody disgrace —"

"If it's true."

"Oh, of course, if it's true." Sir William's heavy eyebrows almost
touched above his nose as he frowned at Massinger. The expression was a
warning-off. "Even so, very upsetting. As for the thought that one of
our people… Still, this is not the occasion. Leave it to time, eh?"

"And Babbington?"

Sir William's eyebrows closed upon each other again. His eyes were
hard as he shook his head slightly. "We'll leave that. It's out of our
hands, mm?" He watched Massinger over his glass. A gold-rimmed Venetian
glass, a little florid for his own taste. Apparently, Castleford had
bought a set in Venice before the war. There were four left. Sir
William might almost have chosen it deliberately to further his
arguments and threats.

The piano sounded in the next room. A soprano began a
Schubert song, slow and delicate and moving.
An der Mond
,
Goethe's song to the moon.

"We must lunch soon," Sir William announced. "My bank requires one
or two new directors - fresh blood, and all that. I want men I can
trust." He smiled and patted Massinger's arm. What remained of the
Aloxe-Corton in Massinger's glass stirred but refused to catch the
light.
An der Mond
continued. One of the Covent Garden chorus
singing, perhaps —? A small, sweet voice. The song became almost
unearthly.