Spy Hook

'A friend of mine. They want him to give evidence… some money they've lost.'

'And he stole it?' She was interested now.

'Jim? No. When Jim puts his hand in the till he'll come up with ten million or more.'

'I thought he was a friend of yours,' she said reproachfully.

'Only kidding.'

'So who did steal it?'

'No one stole anything. It's just the accountants getting their paperwork into the usual chaos.'

'Truly?'

'You know how long the cashier's office takes to clear expenses. Did you see all those queries they raised on last month's chit?'

'That's just your expenses, darling. Some people get them signed and paid within a week.' I smiled. I was glad to change the subject. Prettyman's warnings had left a dull feeling of fear in me. It was heavy in my guts, like indigestion.

We arrived at Balaklava Road in record time. It was a street of small Victorian houses with large bay windows. Here and there the fronts were picked out in tasteful pastel colours. It was Saturday: despite the early hour housewives were staggering home under the weight of frantic shopping, and husbands were cleaning their cars: everyone demonstrating that manic energy and determination that the British only devote to their hobbies.

The neighbour who shared our semi-detached house – an insurance salesman and passionate gardener – was planting his Christmas tree in the hard frozen soil of his front garden. He could have saved himself the trouble, they never grow: people say the dealers scald the roots. He waved with the garden trowel as we swept past nun and into the narrow side entrance. It was a squeeze to get out.

Gloria opened the newly painted front door with a proud flourish. The hall had been repapered – large mustard-yellow flowers on curlicue stalks – and new hall carpet too. I admired the result. In the kitchen there were some primroses on the table which was set with our best chinaware. Cut-glass tumblers stood ready for orange juice, and rashers of smoked bacon were arranged by the stove alongside four brown eggs and a new Teflon frying pan.

I walked round the whole house with her and played my appointed role. The new curtains were wonderful; and if the brown leather three-piece was a bit low and so difficult to climb out of, with a remote control for the TV, what did it matter? But by the time we were back in the kitchen, a smell of good coffee in the air, and my breakfast spluttering in the pan, I knew she had something else to tell me. I decided it wasn't anything concerning the house. I decided it was probably nothing important. But I was wrong about that.

'I've given in my notice,' she said over her shoulder while standing at the stove. She'd threatened to leave the Department not once but several hundred times. Always until now she'd made me the sole focus of her anger and frustration. They promised to let me go to Cambridge. They promised!' She was getting angry at the thought of it. She looked up from the frying pan and waved the fork at me before again jabbing at the bacon.

'And now they won't? They said that?'

'I'll pay my own way. I have enough if I go carefully,' she said. 'I'll be twenty-three in June. Already I'll feel like an old lady, sitting with all those eighteen-year-old schoolkids.'

'What did they say?'

'Morgan stopped me in the corridor last week. Asked me how I was getting along. What about my place at Cambridge? I said. He didn't have the guts to tell me in the proper way. He said there was no money. Bastard! There's enough money for Morgan to go to conferences in Australia and that damned symposium in Toronto. Money enough for jaunts!'

I nodded. I can't say that Australia or Toronto were high on my list of places to jaunt in, but perhaps Morgan had his reasons. 'You didn't tell him that?'

'I damned well did. I let him have it. We were outside the Deputy's office. He must have heard every word. I hope he did.'

'You're a harridan,' I told her.

She slammed the plates on the table with a snarl and then, unable to keep up the display of fierce bad temper, she laughed. 'Yes, I am. You haven't seen that side of me yet.'

'What an extraordinary thing to say, my love.'

'You treat me like a backward child, Bernard. I'm not a fool.' I said nothing. The toast flung itself out of the machine with a loud clatter. She rescued both slices before they slid into the sink and put them on a plate alongside my eggs and bacon. Then, as I began to eat, she sat opposite me, her face cupped in her hands, elbows on the table, studying me as if I were an animal in the zoo. I was getting used to it now but it still made me uneasy. She watched me with a curiosity that was disconcerting. Sometimes I would look up from a book or finish talking on the phone to find her studying me with that same expression.

'When did you say the children would be home?' I asked.

'You didn't mind them going to the sale of work?'

'I don't know what a sale of work is,' I said, not without an element of truth.

'It's at the Church Hall in Sebastopol Road. People make cakes and pickles and knit tea cosies and donate unwanted Christmas presents. It's for Oxfam.'

'And why would Billy and Sally want to go?'

'I knew you'd be angry.'

'I'm not angry but why would they want to go?'

'There'll be toys and books and things too. It's a jumble sale really but the Women's Guild prefers to call it their New Year Sale of Work. It sounds better. I knew you wouldn't bring any presents back with you.'

'I tried. I wanted to, I really did.'

'I know, darling. That wasn't why the children wanted to be here when you arrived. I told them to go. It's good for them to be with other children. Changing schools isn't easy at that age. They left a lot of friends in London; they must make new ones round here. It's not easy, Bernie.' It was quite a speech; perhaps she'd had it all prepared.

'I know.' I was still examining the awful prospect of her taking a place at the university next October, or whenever it was the academic year started in such places. What was I going to do with this wretched house, far away from everyone I knew? And what about the children?

She must have seen my face. 'I'll be back every weekend,' she promised.

'You know that's impossible,' I told her. 'You'll be working damned hard. I know you; you'll want to do everything better than anyone's ever done it before.'

'It will be all right, darling,' she said. 'If we want it to be all right, it will be. You'll see.'

Muffin, our battered cat, came and tapped on the window. Muffin seemed to be the only member of the family who'd settled in to Balaklava Road without difficulties. And even Muffin stayed out all night sometimes.

2

There was another thing I didn't like about the suburbs: getting to work. I braved the morning traffic jams in my ageing Volvo but Gloria seldom came with me in the car. She enjoyed going on the train, at least she said she enjoyed it. She said it gave her time to think. But the 7.32 was always packed with people from even more outlying suburbs by the time it arrived. And I hated to stand all the way to Waterloo. Secondly there was the question of my assigned parking place. Already the hyenas were circling. The old man who ran Personnel Records had started hinting about a cash offer for it as soon as I registered my new address. You'll come in on the train now I suppose? No, I said sharply. No I won't. And apart from a couple of days when the old Volvo was having its transmission fixed, I hadn't. I calculated that five consecutive days in a row would be all I'd need to find my hard-won parking space reassigned to someone who'd make better use of it.

So on Monday I went by car and Gloria went by train. She arrived ahead of me, of course. The office is only two or three minutes' walk from Waterloo Station, while I had to drag through the traffic jams in Wimbledon.