"That was only the beginning, mark you," Ham warned darkly, affecting indignation. "A canter round the course before the real thing. After that it was names of directors of all companies owned by Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson of Vancouver, Seattle, Basel plus every city you've heard of from Oshkosh to East Pinner. And "What's the state of play regarding the much-publicized rumors of an imminent collapse of the noble and ancient house of Balls, Birmingham and Bumfluff Limited or whatever they're called, known otherwise as ThreeBees, president for life and master of the universe one Kenneth K. Curtiss, knight?"' Did she have any more questions? you wonder. Yes, she bloody did. I told her to get it off the Internet but she said half the stuff she wanted was X-rated or whatever they do if they don't want Joe Public looking over their shoulders. I said to her — "Tess, old thing, Christ's sake, this is going to take me weeks. Months, old girl." Did she give a tinker's? Did she hell. It was Tess, for Christ's sake. I'd have jumped out of a balloon without the parachute if she'd told me to."
"And the sum of it was?"
Ham was already beaming with innocent pride. "KVH Vancouver and Basel own fifty-one percent of the pissy Isle of Man biotech companies, Lor-hoojamy and Pharmawhatnot. ThreeBees Nairobi have sole import and distribution rights of said molecule plus all derivatives for the whole of the African continent."
"Ham, you're incredible!"
"Lorpharma and Pharmabeer are both owned by the same gang of three. Or were till they sold their fifty-one percent. One chap, two hags. The chap is called Lorbeer. "Lor" plus "beer" plus "pharma" gives you Lorpharma and Pharmabeer. The hags are both doctors. Address care of a Swiss gnome who lives in a letter box in Liechtenstein."
"Names?"
"Lara Somebody. She's in my notes. Lara Emrich. Got it."
"And the other one?"
"Forget. No, I don't. Kovacs. No first name given. It was Lara I fell in love with. My favorite song. Used to be. From Zhivago. Old Tess's too in those days. Fuck." A natural break while Ham blew his nose and Justin waited.
"So what did you do with these nuggets of intelligence when you'd landed them, Ham?" Justin inquired tenderly.
"Read the whole lot to her over the telephone to Nairobi. Chuffed to bits, she was. Called me her hero — " he broke off, alarmed by Justin's expression — "not your telephone, idiot. Some mate of hers up-country. "You're to go to a phone box, Ham, and you're to call me straight back on the following number. Got a pen?"' Bossy little cow, always was. Bloody cagey about telephones, though. Bit paranoid in my view. Still, some paranoids have real enemies, don't they?"
"Tessa did," Justin agreed, and Ham gave him a queer look, which got queerer the longer it lasted.
"You don't think that's what happened, do you?" Ham asked, in a subdued voice.
"In what way?"
"Old Tess fell foul of the pharmaceutical chaps?"
"It's conceivable."
"But I mean, Christ — old sport — you don't think they shut her mouth for her, do you? I mean, I know they're not Boy Scouts."
"I'm sure they're all dedicated philanthropists, Ham. Right down to their last millionaire."
A very long silence followed, broken by Ham.
"Mother. Oh Christ. Well. Tread gently, what?"
"Exactly."
"I dropped her in the shit by making that phone call."
"No, Ham. You broke an arm and a leg for her and she loved you."
"Well. Christ. Anything I can do?"
"Yes. Find me a box. A stout brown cardboard box would do. Got such a thing?"
Glad of an errand Ham charged off and, after much cursing, returned with a plastic draining tray. Crouching to the Gladstone, Justin opened the padlocks, released the leather straps and, masking Ham's view with his back, transferred the contents to the tray.
"And now, if you would, a wad of your dullest files on the Manzini estate. Back numbers. Stuff you keep but never look at. Enough to fill up this bag."
So Ham found him files too: as old and dog-eared as Justin seemed to want. And helped him load them into the empty bag. And watched him buckle the bag up and lock it. Then from his window watched him again, as he strode down the cul-desac, bag in hand, to hail a cab. And as Justin disappeared from view, Ham breathed "Holy Mother!" in an honest invocation to the Virgin.
* * *
"Good morning, Mr. Quayle, sir. Take your bag, sir? I'll have to run it under the X ray, if you don't mind. It's the new regulations. Wasn't like that in our day, was it? Or your father's. Thank you, sir. And here's your ticket, all shipshape and aboveboard as they say." A dropping of the voice. "Very sorry, sir. We're all greatly affected."
"Good morning, sir! Nice to have you back with us." Another dropped voice. "Deepest condolences, sir. From the wife also."
"Our very deepest commiserations, Mr. Quayle" — another voice, breathing beer fumes in his ear — "Miss Landsbury says please to go straight on up, sir. Welcome home."
But the Foreign Office was no longer home. Its preposterous hall, built to strike terror into the hearts of Indian princes, imparted only strutting impotence. The portraits of disdainful buccaneers in periwigs no longer tipped him their familial smile.
"Justin. I'm Alison. We haven't met. What a terrible, terrible way to get to know each other. How are you?" said Alison Landsbury, appearing with posed restraint in the twelve-foot-tall doorway of her office, and pressing his right hand in both of hers before leaving it to swing. "We're all so, so sad, Justin. So utterly horrified. And you're so brave. Coming here so soon. Are you really able to talk sensibly? I don't see how you could."
"I was wondering whether you had any news of Arnold."
"Arnold? — ah, the mysterious Dr. Bluhm. Not a murmur, I'm afraid. We must fear the worst," she said, without revealing what the worst might be. "Still, he's not a British subject, is he?" — cheering up — "we must let the good Belgians look after their own."
Her room was two floors high, with gilded friezes and black wartime radiators and a balcony overlooking very private gardens. There were two armchairs and Alison Landsbury kept a cardigan over the back of hers so that you didn't sit in it by mistake. There was coffee in a thermos so that their tryst need not be interrupted. There was the mysteriously thick atmosphere of other bodies just departed. Four years Minister in Brussels, three years Defense Counselor in Washington, Justin rehearsed, quoting from the form book. Three more back in London on attachment to the Joint Intelligence Committee. Appointed Head of Personnel six months ago. Our only recorded communications: One letter suggesting I trim my wife's wings-ignored. One fax ordering me not to visit my own house — too late. He wondered what Alison's house was like, and awarded her a redbrick mansion flat behind Harrods, handy for her bridge club at weekends. She was wiry and fifty-six and dressed in black for Tessa. She wore a man's signet ring on the middle finger of her left hand. Justin assumed it was her father's. A photograph on the wall showed her driving off at Moor Park. Another — somewhat ill-advisedly, in Justin's view — had her shaking hands with Helmut Kohl. Soon you'll get your women's college and be Dame Alison, he thought.
"I've spent the whole morning thinking of all the things I won't say to you," she began, projecting her voice to the back of the hall for the benefit of latecomers. "And all the things we simply mustn't agree on yet. I'm not going to ask you how you see your future. Or tell you how we see it. We're all far too upset," she ended, with didactic satisfaction. "By the way, I'm a Madeira cake. Don't expect me to be multilayered. I'm the same wherever you slice me."