‘I don’t, McCoy. Only of you.’
McCoy got out a handkerchief and began to wipe his hands with it carefully. ‘Don’t be like that. We have to do a job. And you’re here — alive, in one piece.’
‘No thanks to you.’
‘One doesn’t thank anyone in this business. It’s quite thankless.’
‘So you knew everything, all along,’ I said. My leg had begun to throb and ache.
‘We had to, didn’t we? That’s what it’s all about. Sometimes people are used in the process. But that’s just as true of ordinary life. You’ll see — if you get back into it.’
‘If?’
‘Who knows?’ McCoy finished his toilet. ‘If we get these names tonight they may consider your slate clean, Marlow — that you’ve worked your passage. A free pardon, even compensation.’
Compensation. I remembered my tirade against McCoy in Durham jail months before, my anger at four years lost behind those granite walls. What would compensate me for this — these months as a patsy on everyone’s behalf: Helen’s, McCoy’s, the KGB’s?
But no, I didn’t need any compensation for it now, I thought. The hell with it. It hadn’t been funny. But it wasn’t really tragic either. A bad tragi-comedy. I had been forced into a number of roles and now I could drop them. It hadn’t been a good production, it was folding. The audience had only been mildly amused. The backers were withdrawing their money. It was time to wipe the greasepaint off, tip the stage door man, and make my way quietly home. There certainly wasn’t going to be any party.
I said, ‘Well, there’s time yet, isn’t there? Flitlianov may get away. You may never get those names.’
And I hoped that he would get away, that someone would come out of it all clutching something decent, the deeds of a worthwhile future. For I believed Helen at least in that: that these names represented something valuable in Russia: a force against the indifference and brutality of that world. And I believed what she’d said about Flitlianov too, that he had something vital to offer, a balanced commentary on the appalling scene, something sane and passionate to invest in the confused affairs of men.
And what did it matter if Helen had used me to escape back into this hopelessly optimistic adventure? She would pay more than I would in the end for her daring. She would be caught in full flight, while I would be returned to some shallow existence. Those forward parts in her nature, the driving engines of attack and laughter, would lead her to a final disaster. I, who had risen with her a little in the sky, attached to her like a glider, would now float down again into the listless winds of indecision and compromise, where the air had no buoyancy. Yes, she would pay, while I was still fumbling for the small change in my pocket.
I said, ‘Flitlianov may still screw it all up for you, McCoy. And I hope he does.’
McCoy nodded his head several times, as if at last confirming something long suspected. ‘You’re a good fellow, Marlow. You really ought to have got a job with Oxfam or Shelter. Out of harm’s way. We’ve got Flitlianov already — or as near as makes no difference. He’s in the Town Hall at the moment. Just had it from one of our men backstage. Last thing I thought Flitlianov would do. But I see it now. He must have thought he could get away with the dancers and musicians — they wouldn’t know anything about him — in the coach after the show. And even if we’d spotted him he’d know we couldn’t touch him amongst that lot — cause a terrible political rumpus. And the PM wants all this kept completely under wraps for the moment, till we get those names.’
‘So?’
‘So — we’re going to have to separate them, aren’t we? Before they leave the hall and hop on the coach. Not too difficult. We’ve a lot of men in there. The finale could be the moment.’ McCoy got his glasses out and consulted a programme with distaste. ‘The finale, yes. “Gopak Dance” — whatever that might be. The whole company is on stage then. And Flitlianov will be somewhere alone behind the scenes. Just a matter of timing. I’ll tell the men.’ McCoy stood up. ‘Now there’s only your other friends to worry about, Marlow. Your wife and children, I should say. That must have been a lark.’ He smiled at me like a man on a winning streak at the races. ‘And you think we used you. But don’t worry — they’ll come safely home, wagging their tails behind them.’
Ten minutes later they brought Helen, Mrs Grace and the children into the caravan. They sat up at one end, next to the door, a woman police officer tending them. I was up at the other end, on a bunk, by the radio equipment, immobilised — else I should have got out of the place at once. The police doctor was giving me a sedative. And of course, it must have seemed to Helen as if I was very much with the police — the agent provocateur come home to roost.
Helen’s hair was wet, though there had been no rain — dark and glistening, as if she’d just come out of a shower. The policewoman gave her a towel. There were cups of tea. And silence. Helen looked at me briefly with indifference. Not hate — that would have been better. That would have meant something, that I existed for her still, as I didn’t any longer in this empty regard. I thought of saying something. But I knew it would do no good now. Excuses, she would have thought. Lies and excuses. I was the little robber, her look said, a cheat from the beginning, who had wormed my way into her trust and then sold her down the river, or tried to.
I looked at her, and she was still so fine, so clear a person, that I began to doubt that she had ever intentionally betrayed me. I should like to have talked to her about that. But, my God, hadn’t we talked enough? And it had got us nowhere but here — to this huge division, where any words said would be the wrong ones. We had been driven into an implacable enmity towards each other.
We had no reserves in our relationship, which might have saved things. Trust, which needed time, hadn’t had a minute. She and I had travelled across the whole spectrum of an affair in a matter of a few days, hours even — had experienced the happiness and the pain, the beginning and the end, almost simultaneously, without ever having had the chance to live things in between, to save ourselves from a bad end. But could we have done that in reality, I wondered, if there’d been the chance — even in Regent’s Park with Mrs Grace as housekeeper and the children boating on the lake? Could we have saved each other from the familiarity and boredom that eat away the poetry of even the happiest association? An end had overtaken all our surprises. Expectation had been killed, all the mechanics of happiness had been smashed. ‘Shall we do this tomorrow, next week, or next year? Or shall we do that? Will you phone me? Shall we meet?’ The mundane arrangements that are yet so bright, so imperative in love had been struck off the calendar. The future had shut up shop and sane adventure had been locked away for the duration.
She had written to Graham, I remembered, how we think we have experienced the past, because we have lived it, willy nilly. But how there were so many turnings off it which we knew about but had never travelled: the little roads that went somewhere — and how she had wanted to live now, with him, all that was unlived then. And that she felt she had the gifts for this. And she had. She might have done it with me.
And I was angry then — not at her, but at the loss of this. And I looked at her with this anger, which she could not have understood. She could only have taken it as evidence of a mutual disgust. And perhaps that pleased her, thinking my enmity as great as hers, that our disgust balanced out — so to end things neatly, which is the last ambition of two people who have come apart: to leave something neat and tidy between them, even if only hatred.