Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘Where are you going?’ She pulled the sheet a little higher, suddenly conscious of her nakedness beneath it. He was standing with his back to the window.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Come back to bed then.’ She knew he wouldn’t.

‘How do you know, why are you so sure?’

It was impossibly hard to answer, and she thought for a moment of Lindsay stepping over the side of the Culloden into the storm. She curled into a tight anxious ball beneath the sheet.

‘Well?’

‘There are some things I know that you don’t,’ she said at last. ‘Of course there are.’

Lindsay said nothing. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness.

‘I tried to tell you.’

‘Tell me what? You didn’t try very hard,’ he said coldly.

‘I couldn’t tell you, Douglas.’

‘You couldn’t?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind.’

‘Yes. Because I love you and this obsession with our codes is dangerous — it’s damaging you.’

‘I see.’

Seconds slipped by and she watched him stiff and silent against the window as he pressed the last pieces into place. And she was afraid and full of regret and wanted to deflect his thoughts: ‘Come back to bed, please come back to bed.’

‘We’re reading their signals, aren’t we? Aren’t we?’

It tumbled out of her: ‘Yes.’

And for a moment the room itself seemed to be alive and physical like an animal breathing heavily, its heart thumping in the darkness. She spoke quickly and nervously as if to hold it at bay: ‘Our code people at Bletchley Park — Station X — have broken their Enigma ciphers — everything, well almost everything. We can decipher and read their signals, sometimes only hours after they’re sent. Dönitz’s orders, the reports the submarines sent to headquarters — the fuel they need, the ships they’ve attacked, course and position. When the wife of the engineer on U-552 had her baby we were among the first to know. Do you see? If our codes had been broken we would know, believe me.’

And now Lindsay was moving away from her to the door and the room filled with blinding light.

‘That was cruel,’ she said.

‘No more than you deserve.’ He clearly meant it. She heard him drawing the blackout curtains.

‘Have you a dressing gown I can borrow?’

‘No. Yes, there’s another one on the back of the door.’

Then she heard him leave the room. She opened her eyes and glanced at her watch on the bedside table: it was four o’clock. She felt weary and very weak at the prospect of the questions, the conversation to come. Slipping from the bed, she walked quickly to the door and wrapped herself in Lindsay’s dressing gown. It was a burgundy colour like the flock wallpaper in the hall and she wondered if it was a gift from his mother. Lindsay was in the kitchen, she could hear the kettle and the chink of china being loaded on to a tray. He had turned the lights on in the sitting room. ‘That must be where he wants me,’ she thought.

On the couch, feet curled beneath her, Lindsay’s dressing gown pulled comfortingly tight, she waited in tired silence. It was such a long night, a mini melodrama, like one of the baroque mysteries her mother enjoyed, drawing people’s motives and the threads of their lives together. Stories that always seemed to end so neatly.

‘Tea? I haven’t any milk.’

Lindsay put the tray on an occasional table and knelt beside it. As she watched him there, bone china cup in hand, ancient green dressing gown, tousled blond hair, she felt a pang of love and longing, a need to be close to him again. She wanted to lean forward and touch him, but before she could move he turned to offer her the cup. How small and fragile it looked in his hand.

‘Thank you.’

He did not look up but turned to the tray to pour another. She knew what he must be thinking.

‘I’m sorry, Douglas, but I couldn’t tell you about the Enigma ciphers. We’ve been told to say nothing to anyone, to husbands, to lovers, to anyone.’

‘Does Checkland know?’ He sounded tired and low. He had finished pouring a cup of tea for himself but was still kneeling at the table with his back to her.

‘Checkland? I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Probably. Yes he does.’

‘And your brother?’

‘Perhaps.’

Lindsay’s cup and saucer rattled a little as he lifted them from the tray. With what seemed like a great effort he stood up and made his way to one of the armchairs on the other side of the table. Only when he had settled in it did he look up at Mary.

‘What an idiot you must think me, all of you.’

‘Darling, of course not.’

‘No one considered telling me, I suppose. Why? I couldn’t be trusted?’ He felt wounded and was making little effort to disguise it.

‘Douglas, I don’t know how or why Checkland and my brother know — perhaps they guessed…’

‘Samuels,’ said Lindsay breaking in, ‘I think Samuels must have.’

‘But most people in the Division don’t know,’ she said. ‘Rodger Winn told me most of the government don’t know, so, you can’t really…’

Lindsay was shaking his head in disbelief.

‘Aren’t you listening to me?’ she asked exasperatedly.

He raised his head to look at her, and his expression was stiff, almost hostile. ‘I’m still a bloody idiot. God, I was so sure.’

‘Douglas, please.’

‘I suppose I understand why no one else told me. Of course it’s of the first importance, but you, you…’

He did not finish and he did not need to because Mary knew what he was thinking and she flushed hot with embarrassment.

‘I was told to say nothing.’

‘Yes, yes, husbands and lovers, you explained.’

‘But you don’t believe me or you blame me…’

‘…for allowing me to make an idiot of myself? Of course not, I applaud your discretion,’ he said bitterly.

‘You know now and it could cost me my job, who knows, my liberty too.’

Lindsay put down his cup, got to his feet and walked over to the fireplace, cursing quietly under his breath: ‘Such a bloody idiot.’

‘Please, Douglas, come here, please.’ She wanted to end this hateful talk of secrets and codes but his back was resolutely turned towards her. He seemed to have forgotten the love, the intimacy they had shared only hours before, brushed it aside. When she spoke again her voice trembled:

‘Please, Douglas, I’m sorry but I…’

She stopped abruptly in an effort to control her feelings. Her chest felt tight with frustration and disappointment and exhaustion. And Lindsay must have sensed that she was close to tears because he was at her side, his arm about her.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, what else could you do?’ he whispered as he stroked her hair. And he lifted her chin and brushed away a silent tear with his lips.

It must have rained in the night because a fine mist was rising from the roofs, the sun blindingly bright on the wet grey slate. It was after nine o’clock but Sunday quiet. Standing at the sitting-room window, Lindsay could hear the bells of Westminster Abbey calling, an insistent but comforting round from treble to tenor. He had slipped out of bed without waking Mary, gently lifting her arm from his chest, and he had watched as she curled into the warmth they had shared, tracing with love the curve of her breasts and hips beneath the thick cotton sheet. Her face was white with exhaustion, worn down by the emotional battering of the night and long hours at the Citadel. ‘God, I love you,’ he had whispered, ‘I love you so much.’ But now, standing there at the window, gazing out to the world beyond the bedroom, he felt empty and useless, as if someone had kicked the stuffing from him. And yes, he loved Mary very deeply, but no matter the words and kisses of reassurance, he could not quite forgive her. She had been part of a conspiracy to hide the truth from him. He knew it was foolish to think so but he could not help it. Yes, orders, a secret of the first importance, but Mary had watched him throw away his position, behave like an idiot. She had told him about the Enigma ciphers only when the damage had been done.