He arrived at Westminster and turned into Whitehall. It was a raw, chilly afternoon. The few people about walked along in their drab clothes, huddled into themselves. David had watched, for over ten years, people growing slowly shabbier, looking more alone. A poster from last year’s Festival of Empire at Greenwich hung, soot-smeared, on a hoarding; a young couple helping a child feed a calf against a background of hills. ‘A Prosperous New Life in Africa.’
The Dominions Office was on the corner of Downing Street. David could see the policeman standing outside Number 10. Nearby the pile of wreaths at the foot of the Cenotaph was looking sad and tatty now. He walked up the office steps. There was a frieze above the doors showing a panorama of Empire: Africans with spears, turbaned Indians and Victorian statesmen all jumbled together, black with London grime. Inside, the wide vestibule was empty. Sykes, the porter, nodded to him. He was elderly, but sharp-eyed.
‘Afternoon, Mr Fitzgerald. Working Sunday again, sir?’
‘Yes. Duty calls, I’m afraid. Anyone else in?’
‘The Permanent Secretary, up on the top floor. Nobody else. People sometimes come in to work on Saturday, but seldom on Sundays.’ He smiled at David. ‘I remember, sir, when I started here. Assistant Secretaries often didn’t come in till eleven. Nobody here at weekends except the Resident clerks.’ He shook his head.
‘The trials of Empire,’ David said, returning the smile. He signed the day book. Sykes reached back to the row of numbered keys on the board behind him, and handed David the one to his office, on its metal tag. David walked to the lift. It was ancient and sometimes marooned people between floors. He wondered if one day the hundred-year-old cables might break, sending everyone inside to perdition. Creaking, it rose slowly to the second floor. He pulled aside the heavy gates and got out. In front of him was the Registry, where during the week clerks endlessly checked files in and out from behind a long counter, the clacking of typewriters audible beyond the door of the typing pool. At the far end of the counter Carol’s desk stood empty, in front of a door with its smoked glass panels marked Authorized Personnel Only. David looked at it for a second, then turned and walked down the long narrow passage. It was strange how footsteps echoed in here when you were alone.
His office was half of a big Victorian room, an elegant cornice cut off by a partition. He saw, in the centre of his desk, the fat High Commissioners’ Meetings file, the draft agenda he had prepared for Hubbold pinned to the front with a note in his superior’s tiny scrawl. We spoke. Let us discuss further, on Monday.
David took off his coat, then retrieved the tiny silver camera from his pocket. It was, ironically, German, a Leica; not much bigger than a Swan Vestas matchbox, you could photograph dozens of documents just by the light of a lamp. The camera had seemed an extraordinary thing when he was first given it, like something out of a science-fiction story, but he was used to it now. He lit a cigarette to steady himself.
After that first meeting on Hampstead Heath, the next time David saw Geoff at the tennis club he had asked, ‘That man Jackson, he’s in the Civil Service, isn’t he?’
A spasm had crossed Geoff’s face, annoyance and guilt mixed together. ‘I can’t answer that, old boy; you have to realize, I can’t.’
‘Jackson knew a lot about me. Is he interested in me for some particular reason?’
‘I can’t tell you. You have to decide first whether you’re willing to support us.’
‘I do support you. You mean, am I willing to do things for you?’
‘With us. Things are hotting up, now we’re illegal.’ Geoff gave his quick sardonic smile. ‘You may have noticed.’
David had heard the radio broadcasts saying the British Resistance was a treasonous organization, the public under a duty to report its activities. He had seen the new posters, a picture of Churchill when he was a minister during the 1939–40 war, dressed in a dark suit and Homburg and holding a machine gun, the caption underneath, ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’. He moved closer to Geoff and asked quietly, ‘The news reports about illegal strikers carrying guns, about that armoured police car being blown up in Glasgow, are they true?’
‘They rigged the election,’ Geoff said heavily. ‘And they declared war on us. You know what war is.’
‘I’ve never been a pacifist like Sarah.’ David shook his head. ‘But if I worked with you I’d be putting everything on the line. My whole life. My wife’s life.’
‘Not if she didn’t know.’ There was a long silence. ‘It’s all right, David,’ Geoff said. ‘You’ve got responsibilities, I know.’
‘I hate it all,’ he said quietly.
Geoff looked at him. ‘Would you like to see Jackson again?’
David took a long, long breath. ‘Yes,’ he said finally.
It was several meetings later, towards the end of 1950, that Jackson told David he wanted him to be the Resistance spy in the Dominions Office. The two of them were in a private room in an exclusive Westminster club.
‘We need information, intelligence on what the government’s thinking and doing. Not just in home policy, but foreign and Imperial policy, too. After all, the core agreement of the 1940 Treaty was that Hitler took Europe and we kept the Empire. And developed it, too, to an extent we hadn’t bothered about before, to make up for the loss of markets in Europe.’ He smiled sadly. ‘The retreat into Empire. The old dream of the political right, Beaverbrook’s dream.’
‘But we’ve made the Empire hate us.’
‘Yes, we have, haven’t we?’ That sad smile again. Then Jackson gave David one of his long, slow looks. ‘The Resistance have people in the India Office and the Colonial Office. There have been three famines in Bengal since 1942, for example, that we’ve never been told about. We need someone who can tell us how it’s going with the Dominions. The White Empire. We know Canada and Australia and New Zealand aren’t happy with political developments here, though the South Africans don’t mind. We want to know how the big African settlement programmes are going, the plans for the new East African and Rhodesian Dominions. You could supply us with that information, papers too. You’d meet periodically with me, our man from the India Office, and our Colonial Office fellow.’
‘Geoff’s the Colonial Office man, isn’t he?’ David said. And you’re from the Foreign Office, he thought. Jackson didn’t answer.
‘I’m too junior to be allowed to take papers from the office.’
Jackson nodded his big grey head and smiled in that way he had, half confidential, half condescending. ‘There are ways.’
‘What ways?’ David asked. Looking back, he realized that was the moment when he had made the final, irrevocable commitment.
Jackson said, ‘So you’re joining us?’
David hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes.’
Jackson smiled, a smile of real warmth. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He shook David’s hand firmly.