“Yes. Well, I don’t think we can hold you responsible for the sins of your old man, can we?” said the same questioner indulgently. “It’s you we’re interviewing, not your papa.”
How much did they know of Rick, or care? Even today I can only guess, for the question was never raised again and I am sure that in any formal way it went forgotten within days of Pym’s acceptance. English gentlemen, after all, do not discriminate against each other on the grounds of percentage, only of breeding. Occasionally they must have read of one of Rick’s more lurid collapses, and perhaps allowed themselves an amused smile. Here and there, presumably, word trickled down to them by way of their commercial contacts. But my suspicion is that Rick was an asset. A healthy streak of criminality in a young spy’s background never did him any harm, they reasoned. “Grown up in a hard school,” they told one another. “Could be useful.”
The last question of the interview and Pym’s answer echo for ever in my head. A military man in tweeds put it.
“Look here, young Pym,” he demanded, with a thrust of his bucolic head. “You’re by way of being a Czech buff. Speak their language a bit, know their people. What d’you say to these purges and arrests they’re having over there? Worry you?”
“I think the purges are quite appalling, sir. But they are to be expected,” said Pym, fixing his earnest gaze upon a distant, unreachable star.
“Why expected?” demanded the military man, as if nothing ought to be.
“It’s a rotten system. It’s superimposed on tribalism. It can only survive by the exercise of oppression.”
“Yes, yes. Granted. So what would you do about it—do?”
“In what capacity, sir?”
“As one of us, you fool. Officer of this service. Anyone can talk. We do.”
Pym had no need to think. His patent sincerity was out there speaking for him already.
“I’d play their game, sir. I’d divide them against themselves. Spread rumour, false accusation, suspicion. I’d let dog eat dog.”
“You mean you wouldn’t mind getting innocent chaps chucked into prison by their own police, then? Being a bit harsh, aren’t you? Bit immoral?”
“Not if it shortens the life of the system. No, sir, I don’t think I am. And I’m not persuaded about the innocence of these men of yours either, I’m afraid.”
In life, says Proust, we end up doing whatever we do second best. What Pym might have done better, I shall never know. He accepted the Firm’s offer. He opened his Times and read with a similar detachment of his engagement to Belinda. That’s me taken care of, then, he thought. With the Firm getting one half of me and Belinda the other, I’ll never want for anything again.
* * *
Turn your eye to Pym’s first great wedding, Tom. It occurs largely without his participation, in his last months of training, in a break between silent killing and a three-day seminar entitled Know Your Enemy, led by a vibrant young tutor from the London School of Economics. Imagine Pym’s enjoyment of this unlikely preparation for his married state. The fun of it. The free-wheeling unreality! He has chased Buchan’s ghost across the moors of Argyll. He has messed about in rubber boats, made night landings on sandy shores, with hot chocolate awaiting him in the vanquished enemy’s headquarters. He has fallen out of aeroplanes, dipped into secret inks, learned Morse and tapped scatological radio signals into the bracing Scottish air. He has watched a Mosquito aeroplane glide a hundred feet above him through the darkness, dropping a boxful of boulders in place of genuine supplies. He has played secret games of fox-and-geese in the streets of Edinburgh, photographed innocent citizens without their knowledge, fired live bullets at pop-up targets in simulated drawing-rooms, and plunged his dagger into the midriff of a swinging sandbag, all for England and King Harry. In spells of quiet he has been dispatched to genteel Bath to improve his Czech at the feet of an ancient lady called Frau Kohl, who lives in a crescent house of impoverished splendour. Over tea and muffins, Frau Kohl shows him albums of her childhood in Carlsbad, now called Karlovy Vary.
“But you know Karlovy Vary very well, Mr. Sanderstead!” she cries when Pym shows off his knowledge. “You have been there, yes?”
“No,” says Pym. “But I have a friend who has.”
Then back to base camp Somewhere in Scotland to resume the red thread of violence that has been spun into every new thing he is learning. This violence is not only of the body. It is the ravishment that must be done to truth, friendship and, if need be, honour in the interest of Mother England. We are the chaps who do the dirty work so that purer souls can sleep in bed at night. Pym of course has heard these arguments before from the Michaels, but now he must hear them again, from his new employers, who make pilgrimages from London in order to warn the uncut young of the wily foreigners they will one day have to tangle with. Do you remember your own visit, Jack? A gala night it was, close to Christmas: the great Brotherhood is coming! We had streamers hanging from the rafters. You sat at the directing staff’s table in the excellent canteen, while we young ’uns craned our necks to catch a glimpse of one of the great players of the Game. After dinner we gathered round you in a half circle, clutching our subsidised port, and you told us tales of derring-do until we crept off to bed and dreamed of being like you — though alas we could never really have your lovely war, even if that was what we were rehearsing for. Do you remember how in the morning, before you left, you called on Pym while he was shaving, and congratulated him on a damn good showing so far?
“Nice girl you’re marrying, too,” you said.
“Oh, do you know her, sir?” said Pym.
“Just good reports,” you said complacently.
Then off you went, confident you had scattered a pinch more stardust in Pym’s eyes. Which you had, Jack. You had. Except that what goes up with Pym has a way of coming down, and it annoyed him to discover that his impending marriage had received the Firm’s approval while it still awaited his.
“So what exactly are you doing for a living, old boy? Don’t quite understand,” Belinda’s father asked, not for the first time, during a discussion about whom to invite.
“It’s a government-sponsored language lab, sir,” said Pym, in accordance with the Firm’s sketchy guidelines on cover. “We work out exchanges of academics from various countries and arrange courses for them.”
“Sounds more like the Secret Service to me,” said Belinda’s father, with that queer cracked laugh of his that always seemed to know too much.
To his future spouse, on the other hand, Pym told everything he knew about his work, and more. He showed her how he could break her windpipe with a single blow, and put her eyes out with two fingers easily. And how she could smash the small bones in someone’s foot if they were annoying her under the table. He told her everything that made him a secret hero of England, seeing the world right single-handed.
“So how many people have you killed?” Belinda asked him grimly, discounting those that he had merely maimed.
“I’m not allowed to say,” said Pym, and with a crisping of the jaw stared away from her towards the stark wastelands of his duty.
“Well don’t then,” Belinda said. “And don’t tell Daddy anything, or he’ll tell Mummy.”
“Dear Jemima”—Pym wrote on an off chance, a week before his great day—
“It seems so odd we are both getting married within a month of each other. I keep wondering whether we are doing the right thing. I’m sick of the boring work I’m doing, and considering a change. I love you. Magnus.”