Simon Tolkien - Orders from Berlin

‘For what happened with Alec Thorn yesterday. It was inappropriate; it should never have happened.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. Alec attacked you, not the other way round. I can’t imagine why. I’ve never seen him do anything like that before.’

‘He’s changed.’

‘Changed?’

‘Yes, it’s the war. When did you last see him?’

‘A few months ago, maybe more. I’m not sure.’

‘Months are a long time nowadays. They seem like years. We’re under a lot of pressure at work, and Alec feels it more than most — perhaps because he’s a bit older than the rest of us. He’s closer to your father’s generation than to mine.’

‘Us! Who are us?’ she asked, stopping and turning to face her companion. ‘Please tell me, Mr Seaforth. I need to know.’

‘Charles,’ he said, meeting her gaze. ‘You must call me Charles.’

‘Charles, then,’ she said, sounding the name on her tongue, liking it, feeling it fit. There was no place for caution if this stranger could tell her who her father was — as she’d said, she needed to know. ‘Can’t you help me?’ she asked, putting her hand on his arm. ‘No one else will. I feel like I said goodbye to a stranger yesterday, not my father.’

Seaforth said nothing, so she guessed. ‘It’s the Secret Service,’ she said. ‘You’re spies. That’s what you are, aren’t you?’ It was framed as a question, but she didn’t need an answer. As soon as the words had left her mouth, she’d known she was right. It was as though she’d known the truth for years but had never been prepared to admit it to herself until now.

‘We’re patriots,’ Seaforth said quietly. ‘That’s all. Everyone does their part in different ways.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can understand that.’

‘You can’t tell anyone I told you. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’

The first emotion she’d felt was relief. At least there had been a reason for her father’s silence; at least he’d done something worthwhile with his life. But now she felt something else — a surge of spontaneous gratitude towards Seaforth. He hadn’t told her the truth because he couldn’t, but he’d certainly enabled her to find it. He’d taken her seriously. Not like her father and Alec Thorn, shutting her out because she was a woman and couldn’t be trusted.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It helps to know.’

‘You have nothing to thank me for. I came here to apologize. Remember?’

‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘I remember.’ She relaxed for a moment, but then her nervous curiosity about the reasons for Seaforth’s interest in her returned, and with it a sense of unease. ‘Why does Alec hate you?’ she asked, remembering Alec’s unseemly rage outside the church and the effortless way that Seaforth had held Alec’s hand suspended in mid-air for a moment before he let go.

‘He thinks I want his job,’ Seaforth said carefully. It was as if he were measuring his words, working out how much he could say.

‘Do you?’

‘I want what’s best for the country.’ He smiled, noticing the frown on her face. ‘Sorry, that’s not good enough, I know. The fact is this is a young man’s war, and if we’re going to win it, a lot of the old guard will have to be swept away. Some of that happened after the last war, but not enough. It’s what works that matters now. There’s no place for a sense of entitlement when our backs are up against the wall. I think people like Alec Thorn find that hard to understand.’

‘Because he doesn’t want to be swept away?’

Seaforth nodded.

‘Like my father was?’

‘I told you at the funeral that your father was a great man. He could have accomplished great things, but no one would listen to him. He understood what was at stake with Germany when Hitler came to power, but everyone was obsessed with Joe Stalin and the Reds, and then it was too late. He was a voice crying in the wilderness.’

They walked on in silence until they reached the bus shelter, where Ava stopped, turning to look again at her companion. She sensed there was something else he wanted to say — something personal, nothing to do with Hitler and Communism. She could tell from the look of indecision on his face.

‘What is it, Charles?’ she asked. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there? What is it you want with me?’

‘I can’t tell you here,’ he said. ‘Could we meet sometime — somewhere we can talk?’

‘Why?’ she asked, taking a step back. ‘You need to tell me why.’

‘Because there are other things I’ve got to tell you, things you need to know — about your father, about his death. I only need a few minutes. It isn’t much to ask.’

A bus was coming, and she reached out her hand, hailing it to stop. She turned away from him, getting out her purse for the fare. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

The bus came to a halt beside her and she took hold of the grab pole in her hand but didn’t mount the platform. She knew Seaforth was waiting for an answer, but she felt unable to respond — caught between curiosity and suspicion.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘You won’t regret it.’

‘The Lyons Corner House — the big one in the West End, by Piccadilly Circus,’ she said, saying the first place that came into her head. Only later did she realize its unsuitability — it was the same restaurant where Bertram had proposed to her over tea and cake three years before.

‘Come on, dearie, make up your mind. Are you getting on or are you getting off?’ asked the conductress impatiently. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

Ava stepped onto the platform and the conductress rang the bell. The bus moved off, away from the kerb.

‘When?’ asked Seaforth, shouting over the noise of the engine.

‘Tomorrow,’ she shouted back. ‘Twelve o’clock.’

Seaforth raised his hand as if in acknowledgement, but she didn’t know for sure whether he’d heard her. And as she sat down, it occurred to her that she didn’t even know whether she’d wanted him to.

She closed her eyes, and out of nowhere a memory rushed to meet her from the remote past. She was a small child in a snow-suit, standing with her father at the top of a steep hill. The world was white and he was bent over a wooden toboggan that he was holding in position a few inches back from the beginning of the slope. He was telling her to get in — she could hear his voice, and she could remember how his face was red in the cold — but she continued to hesitate, frightened that they would crash and that she would be smashed to pieces against the line of ice-laden birch trees that she could see in the valley below.

‘Are you coming or not?’ her father demanded, impatient just as the bus conductress had been a moment before. But try as she might, she couldn’t remember whether she had got in the toboggan and gone screaming down the hill or given in to her fears and slunk away. It was too long ago.

In the afternoon, Bertram got out the car and drove them over the river to Scotland Yard. The young policeman Trave had rung up in the morning to say that their statements were ready for them to read through and sign.

And then halfway down the Embankment, Bertram announced in a self-important voice that the next day at 12.30 had been fixed for the reading of her father’s will at the solicitor’s office — a champagne moment for him at which he wanted her present. Ava was taken aback. She’d been worrying all day that she had made a mistake agreeing to meet Seaforth in the West End, but it hadn’t occurred to her that the arrangement would cause her a problem with Bertram. He’d been out a lot in recent days, revelling in his new role as her father’s executor, and she’d thought it safe to assume that her absence from the flat for several hours in the middle of the day would go unnoticed.