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  ‘For instance, we’ve recently brought aboard a one-time colleague of yours, Raymond Bain,’ Fisher said. ‘Now, as you’ll know, in some respects he might not seem suited to the kind of career we’ve been discussing.’

  ‘You mean the wheelchair?’ Ian said.

  ‘He has certain very palpable limitations,’ Fisher said. ‘There’s no getting away from that.’

  ‘Some try,’ Ian said.

  ‘But he has, too, the kind of character and mind and background that we seek,’ Fisher replied. ‘This is someone with a very worthwhile medal, not all that far down from a Victoria Cross. Reports on him showed he has intelligent aggression and considerable inventiveness. Well, you’ll remember the airfield broadcast, I’m sure. This was in some senses outré and maverick, not in the properly play-fair mode favoured by the British officer class – at least until their backs are to the wall. But nuts to that. The ploy had propulsion. It had zing. Possibly it lost him the Sword. You’d know more about that than we do. But nuts to the Sword, too, if I may say so in the presence of one of its holders. We are folk – Lorna-Jane, myself, our workmates – who respect, who crave originality. Bain, in our view, exudes it. His family looks fairly ordinary at first sight but on the father’s side had a distinguished man of letters who became a notable professor of Deccan College in the University of Poona, India, and wrote on Aristotle.’

  ‘This should be a help,’ Ian said.

  ‘Ray Bain is very happy in his present post,’ Underhill said.

  ‘Emily Stanton told you to give him a job, did she?’ Ian said. ‘She has that kind of power? What is she exactly? Where in the heaven and earth scheme of things? She’s always trying to compensate for mistakes she’s made. She thinks she helped get Ray’s legs blown off. Perhaps it should have been mine. But she was compensating to me, as well, in place of my father.’

  ‘This is another aspect of chance,’ Underhill said.

  ‘Look, Emily’s got some big position in one of the secret service outfits, has she?’ Ian said. ‘Is she your boss, then? My dad told her about the diphtheria and so on, did he?’

  ‘People think of our kind of work as gumshoeing enemies, breaking and entering in a search for evidence, occasional rough-house encounters with spies and/or traitors,’ Underhill replied. ‘And, of course, there is some of that kind of thing. But we have a place for planners, too, for desk men and women, for gifted folk who will interpret and set in a context what those officers out in the field produce. We’re convinced Ray will execute that kind of sedentary function very, very well.’

  ‘You could say he’s made for it, or remade,’ Ian said.

  ‘It’s often the case in nature, isn’t it, that where a living being loses part of itself, that loss is made up for by an increase in some other part of the body or faculties,’ Fisher said. ‘We cut back a rose, for example, to make it flower in due course even more strongly than before, because it feels its existence is threatened and it must defend itself by a sort of attack. Ray Bain will be like that, I know.’

  ‘Because his legs were pruned?’ Ian said.

  ‘He will concentrate on the possible, and by that special concentration make up for certain other lacks,’ Underhill said.

  ‘Did Emily have me moved here, to acclimatize myself to secrecy?’ Ian said. ‘And to get the mention on my CV? It doesn’t matter too much, I suppose, that I’m not at Norton long. What counts is the mention. It helps with the profile.’

  ‘The profile is important, for reasons that have been mentioned,’ Fisher said. ‘We prefer a more comprehensive term than “profile” though, such as “portrait” or “life narrative”.’

  ‘The Bain family has its creditable past in the nineteenth century, while you, Ian, are from a family that excelled itself more recently through the gallantry of your dad,’ Underhill said. ‘This sort of thing is an impressive factor. Couldn’t be more so.’

  ‘I understand from Emily that my father was having it off with her for a while,’ Ian replied. ‘My mother might at least suspect. It would thrill Dad to know a paramour could have been dead but for him.’

  ‘We don’t expect you to give us an acceptance of the job offer now,’ Underhill replied, ‘but that’s what this is, an unconditional offer. You have those fifty-plus days to go and then a month’s paid resettlement leave. Charles will let you have a card. It’s as if for an accountancy firm in the City. There’s a number to ring. Ask for the Receivership Department. The Receivership Department. Charles or I will be there, most probably. If not, it’s quite likely you’ll go through to Ray Bain. In that case, you’ll discover for yourself how content he is, and how suited. We’ll let him know he might be talking to you soon. Say within the next couple of weeks?’

  TEN

  Ian Charteris didn’t ring the Receivership Department of the nominated Coldstream, Fay and Partners accountancy firm in the City, but he did take a telephone call at home from Ray Bain. Ray wanted a meeting, urgently.

  This would be getting on for three years later, though. By then, Ian was out of the Air Force, into freelance Fleet Street journalism, living in London, and married to Lucy, with a child due soon. There had been no echoes of that long-ago brush-off letter. The Adjutant, Training, had been half right: women could be changeable, but also not.

  ‘Ian!’ Bain said. ‘Grand to hear your voice. Actually, I was expecting to hear it quite a while ago. Lorna-Jane said you’d be in touch. I gather she and Fisher visited when you were at Norton, back end of ’fifty-three. We were disappointed here in the office. They’d been very much impressed.’

  ‘By …?’

  ‘You. And all that barbed wire. Lorna-Jane gets the hots from bright, unrusted, triple-furl barbed wire.’

  ‘Grand to hear you, too, Ray.’

  ‘I understood they made you one of their propositions.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘They’re not ten a penny, you know.’

  ‘I did think about it.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Not my sort of thing.’

  ‘How could you be sure? They believed it was. They’re personnel experts. They don’t often pick wrong ’uns. Time justifies them.’

  ‘I reckon they’d decided before we ever met. Or they’d been told to decide it – told from above.’

  ‘That’s a possible, I’ll admit.’

  ‘I got the impression they were run by—’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I didn’t like it. I felt I was being dragooned. Lucy did, too. Choices removed.’

  ‘I was dragooned,’ Bain replied. ‘Benign dragooned.’

  ‘But you like the job, don’t you? They told me you were very happy.’

  ‘I had limited choices, didn’t I? Factors that don’t apply in your case. Two of them. The Regiment said goodbye, naturally, and they arranged a bit of a disability pension. Then, I was glad to get welcomed into another career, with the backing of someone at the top. That could have been the same for you.’

  ‘They said not to call it a career. More like a vocation. I was set on the journalism, though, Ray. I wanted something a bit more frivolous. And some fame. I must have got that taste from my father. What you definitely can’t have in your kind of work is fame. A bullet comes with fame.’

  ‘Journalism – so chancy.’

  ‘For a while it was, yes.’

  ‘I see your byline in the papers – a lot of different papers.’

  ‘Best like that. I didn’t plan it this way. It just happened.’

  ‘Spread your talents?’

  He’d done the statutory learning year on a provincial daily then came to London. It had been hard, and occasionally he regretted turning down the Underhill-Fisher-Emily invitation.

  Bain said: ‘Could we meet? I’ve got something to discuss. Not on the phone, though. There’s a Mooney’s pub in Fetter Lane. Serves the true Guinness, plus Gorgonzola with crusty bread.’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’

  ‘I have a driver. I c
an get dropped and picked up there. It’s quiet in the evenings. Near the Mirror building, opposite side of the road, but the staff all go to Barney’s – The White Horse.’

  ‘Yes, they do. You keep informed.’

  ‘What my job is about.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ Ian said. ‘I do some work for the Mirror now and then. When they want a particular kind of reporting.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Celebrity-based, emotional, sympathetic, dramatic.’

  ‘So how did you crack all these papers?’ Bain said.

  ‘I had some luck.’ It had been a little slow arriving, though. At first he’d had to grab casual, holiday-relief, sickness-relief, maternity-relief reporting shifts on most of the Fleet Street papers, broadsheet and tabloid, ‘quality’ and popular. None had asked him to join their permanent pay roll. The work was sporadic and now and then absent altogether. Of course, this worried Ian. There had certainly been times when he almost rang the accountancy number to activate the Underhill-Fisher unconditional offer. Gradually, though, the rather frantic, unpredictable work opportunities became a plus. The sheer range and enormous variety of assignments across the whole national Press output built him a terrific spectrum of contacts.

  ‘Yes, luck, Ray,’ he said. ‘Things started to improve fast during that wonderful, doomed romance of Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend. News and magazine organizations all over the world were avid for stuff about a possible heiress to the British throne and the fighter plane ace – the divorced, and therefore markedly unsuitable suitor, fighter plane ace. And I got some of it for them.’

  That Adjutant, Training, who’d given Ian benign, superfluous advice about prophylactics, had mentioned that he’d served with Townsend and used to speak about him and his flying career occasionally in the Mess, a long time before the romance. The ex-adj had been posted elsewhere now and was himself promoted Group Captain but Ian traced him and got more insights into the Townsend, Distinguished Service Order, Distinguished Flying Cross (twice), he’d once known. Ian plumped out reports on the royal tale with these extra, exclusive bits. ‘The thing was, Ray, I managed to become a specialist on the sex life of Maggie and Pete. Some news editors abroad who discovered I’d been in the Air Force obviously thought I’d known Townsend myself – and possibly Margaret as well. I tried not to mention that my feet had stayed very safely on the ground and that I’d been trained like a soldier, not a daredevil pilot. My reputation as someone who had access to more or less everybody soared. Editors like correspondents with access, especially access to royals.’ By spring 1956 he had established a sound, freelance service to a growing market and couldn’t have afforded to join any paper’s salaried staff.

  ‘Lucy OK?’ Bain said. ‘Getting near her time.’

  ‘You keep informed.’ She did have a regular post as an Economics Correspondent on one of the heavies, and had helped support him for the first few London months. She’d take time off to have the baby, and wasn’t sure she’d go back to her paper afterwards. She thought of working with Ian. He approved. She’d bring gravitas.

  ‘This phone number of yours – a flat in Russell Square still?’ Bain said. ‘Home and office. I don’t blame you for the colour of your front door. It must be the landlord’s taste. But bloody mauve!’

  ‘You keep informed. Ray, this meeting – you and me – is it … is it, well … is it to do with your sort of game? Shades of Lorna-Jane and Charles Fisher?’

  ‘They’re still with us. Mooney’s nine p.m.,’ Bain replied.

  Although he wasn’t sure he liked altogether the idea of a meeting with Bain, he knew he’d go. Oh, of course, he’d be glad to see him as a former mate cadet and rival, and especially if he seemed content; or as content as his state allowed. But Ian wondered what Bain was after, and perhaps what someone above Bain was after. Ian didn’t fancy getting pulled into the kind of official shadows Ray Bain must permanently inhabit these days. Secrets dominated: they were due to discuss something that couldn’t be mentioned on the telephone; and they’d talk about it in a secluded, very off-Broadway pub. Ian still resented the power of gratitude. And he knew gratitude was what made it certain he’d turn up. After all, he had his own legs to walk on. Matters might have been reversed – and fates.

  Just the same, he didn’t care for the way Bain obviously relished showing how much he had on record about Ian and Lucy’s life and location. Some serious work had been done. Why? To intimidate? And, by intimidating, to persuade? Underhill and Fisher had pulled the same kind of ploy. There’d be ruthlessness as a routine in their game. He described the conversation to Lucy. She found it funny and childish, as he’d known she would. She despised anything to do with furtiveness and surveillance. Just the same, though, she agreed he had to go to the meeting. She’d realized why he felt obligated. ‘It’s absurd but inescapable, love,’ she said. ‘They’re having another go for you. She must be really … really obsessed.’ He sensed a moment’s sexual jealousy in her. A long time ago, he’d told her the Emily story from the paddle-steamer rescue on, through the OCTU to her RAF Norton emissaries. Lucy obviously sensed that the Bain call might continue the campaign.

  ‘Did he mention, hint at, recruitment?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Sailed near it. Claimed the people who came to Norton were positive about yours truly. Their orders told them to be positive – that was my impression.’

  ‘Tread carefully, love. These are tricky people.’

  Ray was on tin legs now and using a cane. Seated, he looked pretty much as he had when Ian first met him at the training unit, though it would probably be wrong these days to describe his face as mischievous: more like strong, responsible, purposeful. Devious? Possibly. His red hair was as thick and shiny as ever, worn longer than at the OCTU and with no retreat from his forehead. He’d be around twenty-seven or eight.

  He was already in the pub when Ian arrived. Two pints of Guinness plus the food stood on a table in front of Bain, his stick propped against it. With a bit of an effort he stood to shake hands. Ian saw this was important to him: the ability to get up on cue. ‘Welcome, welcome famous Blitish journablist,’ he chirped. Ian grinned. But was it funny, or did it recall an episode that helped send Ray into battle and then crippledom? Had he ever discovered what happened in the occult tallying of points, and the Sword award, with its safe and guaranteed, non-K, OCTU posting? He and his new colleagues seemed able to find out quite a lot, didn’t they? He had a black briefcase which he lifted in his left hand when he stood. It was on a chain locked to his wrist and would have dangled very obviously otherwise.

  There were two elderly men drinking and talking at a table on the far side of the room; no other customers. A barman appeared, disappeared, appeared again. The Guinness exuded dark charm, compromised a bit by the drink’s sharp tang, but only a bit. The cheese exuded, too – a rich, penetrating, slightly foul pong, the way Gorgonzola should, young or old, and he thought this might be oldish.

  ‘We’re looking for some help, Ian,’ he said.

  ‘Help from me?’

  ‘It’s to do with this Suez invasion muck-up.’

  ‘Which “we” do we mean?’

  ‘There was quite an argument back in the office about whether to try you,’ Ray replied.

  ‘Which office – that accountancy outfit?’

  ‘Coldstream, Fay and Partners? They went into liquidation.’

  ‘An accountancy firm in liquidation? Does this happen often? If they can’t make a go of things, who can?’

  ‘But, of course, others took over their practice and offices.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘Some people there, headed by Lorna-Jane, said that since you had conspicuously ignored the original approach, it would be “unwise, even perverse ” – those were the words – to seek contact with you again, especially when the country’s in a war situation with Egypt over the canal. Lorna-Jane has gone up a peg or two since their visit to Norton, despite the failure to land you. She�
��s management now, only a notch below me. Gets a car and a PA. Her opinions rate for something.’

  ‘But not as much as yours, and those of—’

  ‘Of the famous E. No. As I see it, Ian, Lorna-Jane’s only real knowledge of you is through that Norton encounter and the dossier material they dredged, which is admittedly considerable,’ Bain replied, ‘but one or two of us there can bring something markedly deeper.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘And Charlie Fisher, who accompanied Lorna-Jane at Norton, gave you true support. He lacks her new departmental clout, but his views are not negligible. Not negligible at all.’

  ‘I took him to be the thug side of things.’

  ‘He’s been in therapy and the improvement is startling. The job paid for his treatment, naturally. Quite a few staff need something of that kind. Nobody would have mentioned consistency as one of Fisher’s qualities before but now, yes, he’s more often consistent than not. But even so we’re talking about his own style of consistency, I admit. You’ve got to settle for what you can get, haven’t you, and therapy is expensive. Charlie took up Lorna-Jane’s words – the “unwise” and “even perverse” – and did quite an analysis of them, regardless of her rank, a really aggressive taking apart.’

  ‘He’d be good at that. But I thought they worked harmoniously together.’

  ‘Before the promotion, yes. Charlie’s intervention – very much to your advantage. He said he thought that “unwise” in this context suggested you could not be regarded as discreet, secure, able and willing to maintain confidentiality. He wouldn’t have this. He considered that by declining the offer made at Norton and, instead, going for the journalistic career you’d always wanted, you showed strength and focus. Whether your choice was “conspicuous” or non-conspicuous didn’t matter a toss, in his opinion.