So H cooks us an early dinner instead, and afterwards produces a bottle of whisky, which we broach in front of the fire that he lights in his living room. We get on to stories about people H has met who claim to be members of the Regiment. His favourite is the time he gets into conversation with a former soldier who’s just delivered a lecture to a gathering of security experts and claims to have been in the SAS for years. H invites him for a friendly drink, over which the man reveals, confidentially of course, that he’s a former member of the Regiment’s F Squadron. There’s no need, on this occasion, to make a call to the security cell at the Regimental HQ to check on him, because the SAS has never had an F Squadron.
Stories about the more stubborn Walter Mitty types sometimes reach Mars and Minerva, the Regiment’s newsletter. H finds me a copy. It’s mostly titbits of news and reunions. There’s a mention of the sophistication and expense of the security features incorporated in the double fence around the new camp at Credenhill. There are letters from former members and their wives, details of the Regimental Association’s benevolent fund, and obituaries. Members can even buy wine with the Regiment’s insignia on the label. It’s as interesting as a village parish magazine. Nothing could be further from the sensationalism of all the books with flaming daggers on their fronts, which now seem so absurd to me.
‘It’s weird,’ I say.
‘What’s weird?’
‘It’s just that in films when they have to train someone for a special op, they take him off to a huge underground secret base.’
‘You mean one with those doors that swish open like they do in Star Trek?’
‘Exactly. And a thing that X-rays you and scans your eyeball. You don’t see them saving caterpillars or sitting on the floor in somebody’s living room with a dog asleep on a chair.’
H looks affectionately at his terrier Jeffrey, who occupies the largest chair in the room, and tugs on his sleeping chin.
‘Welcome to the real world,’ he says.
On the way home, Gerhardt has difficulty pulling away from a crossroads, and I realise I’ve forgotten to top up the transmission fluid. I stop at a garage and it occurs to me, as I burn my hand on the cylinder head in the attempt to remove the transmission fluid dipstick, that it’s time to call in the favour from Gemayel before I leave.
It’s also time to see the Baroness. I arrange it in the usual way, but she’s not at the club and a note is waiting for me instead, indicating that I come to her home. I’m not expecting to be followed but take time for a careful dry-cleaning before reaching her front door. She buzzes me in. I feel my calf aching where the stitches have yet to heal as I walk up the stairs to the second floor.
The curtains are half-drawn as if she hasn’t had the strength to open them fully. She’s visibly more frail and I can’t help thinking that the end of an era is near. She uses a hand to steady herself against the furniture as she walks across the room, but stubbornly insists on preparing a pot of tea on her own and not letting me help.
I tell her about Khartoum, my illegal escape, and about my feelings for Jameela.
‘It does happen sometimes.’ She smiles. Her teacup tilts imperfectly on the saucer as she returns it. Then her expression grows more grave and I can tell she has something on her mind.
‘I have some news,’ she says. ‘It’s not what you would call good.’
I’m imagining it’s something personal, so it’s a shock when she refers to the operation we’re planning in Afghanistan.
‘It is only a whisper, but it’s been suggested that some parties would prefer the operation to fail.’
‘To fail? Who could want it to fail? Is this Macavity’s idea?’
She shakes her head and frowns.
‘Elsewhere. There’s no reason Macavity should know. The contrary.’ She lets out a wistful sigh. ‘Have you considered the possibility of the missiles being allowed to fall into the wrong hands in order to be turned against us? To permit such a catastrophe may even be desirable to some. Imagine,’ she smiles darkly, ‘a new crusade. It would reach across the world and drag on for a generation.’
‘That sounds dangerously like a conspiracy,’ I tell her.
‘What is coherent at a more organised level may be incomprehensible at a lesser one. If it is true, as I fear it may be, we must hope that the plan is uncovered along the way. The Network has always been a counterweight to the abuse of power, but it cannot change the weaknesses of human nature.’ She sighs again, then looks up at me. ‘You must be especially vigilant. When will you leave?’
‘Soon. In a week or so.’
‘Well,’ she sighs, ‘I have passed on what I could.’
I’m not certain what she’s referring to, but I sense that it’s more than simply the news she’s given me. It’s her habit to assign more than one meaning to the things she says, but now it’s as if a mask is dropping from her, and she’s preparing to relinquish the role she’s steadfastly played all these years. I have the feeling she knows that, before long, loneliness and infirmity will rob her of all the worldly authority and guile her character has accumulated over a lifetime, and that now she must relinquish it voluntarily, shedding herself of its burden to allow her life to at last become simple and unencumbered.
‘You will remember,’ she says quietly, ‘that the great art is always to find an activity which serves a practical visible purpose but which serves your hidden purpose as well.’
‘You have taught me that and much more,’ I say.
‘Context…’ she begins, but then coughs harshly. ‘Context is everything. I’m a little under par,’ she says. ‘Will you forgive me if I don’t see you out?’
‘I’ll see you as soon as I’m back from Afghanistan.’
‘When you’re both back.’ She means Manny, which I’m glad for.
‘Yes, both of us will come and see you.’
‘Of course.’
As I cross the road from her front door I look up to see her standing at a window. She’s waving. But it’s not a modern wave, where the hand flaps from side to side like a metronome. Her arm is upheld but remains still, and her hand rotates with only a slight and stately motion about her wrist. Then her gaze rises towards the sky, and it looks as though she’s holding up an antique ornament towards the light, tilting it back and forth experimentally, as if to glimpse across its surface some tarnished hieroglyph which she alone can decipher.
It’s a Sunday when the call comes.
‘Why not come round for tea?’ asks H in his characteristically gritty voice. It sounds an odd request until I remember it’s the expression we’ve agreed on for our order to move. I make sure the letters I’ve prepared are left neatly on my desk, together with instructions for my sister in case she’s the one who ends up having to deliver them.
Then I go for a short walk, because it’s the last I’ll see of this damp and peaceful world which my countrymen take so blissfully for granted. As I walk, I hear three sounds. One is the whispering of a light wind in the nearby trees, which at moments seems like a conversation between the leaves. The second is a succession of calls between a pair of wood pigeons. The last is a distant cyclical pealing from a church somewhere. The notes descend in an eight-bell octave, but grow confused as the notes begin to sound out of sequence. Soon they become a sonorous tangle, the last note sounding after the first and the others steadily more disordered, until gradually they begin to rearrange themselves. Then, in the manner of a knot that magically unravels itself, the octave regains its proper sequence and the scale is finally resolved and returns to its original harmony. After which there is only silence.