Brian Freemantle: Comrade Charlie

The metaphors were becoming mixed, Charlie decided. He said: ‘I’ve got one or two things in mind.’ He looked desperately around for their waiter. The man was several tables away but looking in their direction. Charlie grabbed the dead bottle and waved it at the man. The waiter twiddled his fingers in an answering wave. One thing he’d never lacked before was bar-presence, reflected Charlie; he seemed to be losing everything these days.

‘Try to do something,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t like to see you being constantly bullied.’

Was that what was happening to him? Charlie supposed it was but he’d never thought of it as being bullied. ‘I’ll live,’ he said flippantly. There’d been quite a few occasions, too many, when he hadn’t believed he would: at least now he was safe from physical harm.

The waiter arrived with another bottle of Montrachet and said: ‘Bet you thought I hadn’t understood!’

‘I had every faith,’ assured Charlie. ‘You’ve got that way of inspiring confidence.’

‘The coffee mousse with coulis is the house speciality and it’s divine,’ recommended the man, collecting up the discarded fish.

‘I’ve got to think of my figure!’ said Laura clumsily.

‘Let me do that,’ parroted Charlie on cue. There! He’d done it! Casanova wouldn’t have been much impressed but it was his best shot so far and Laura seemed to appreciate it. She was a very pretty girl, with good legs and tits where they should have been and innocent-wide eyes and striking red hair that moved when she did, constantly shifting about her shoulders. Altogether too nice to be tricked, like he was tricking her. Or was he? She was a grown-up girl, he tried to reassure himself. He’d done far worse — cheated and tricked and manipulated — in the past and knew damned well, if the need arose, that he’d do it all over again in the future. So why the hell didn’t he stop all this conscience-stirred posturing? It didn’t suit him.

‘What’s it going to be, folks?’ asked the returning waiter.

‘Mousse for the lady,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t want to spoil the experience of the fish.’

‘Unusual, wasn’t it?’ said the unsuspecting waiter.

‘Unique!’ said Charlie. ‘Positively unique!’

‘You are a bastard!’ Laura giggled when the man had gone.

‘Never ever!’ denied Charlie in mock outrage. To avoid the purpose of the evening becoming too obvious he led the conversation on to Laura herself. The account was the role model for department entry at female personal assistant rank: private school education, finished off in Switzerland, Daddy with an army chum who’d moved on into the government, a word here, a word there and wasn’t it super, look where she was now!

‘Super,’ agreed Charlie.

The waiter swooped up in an exaggerated glide, pudding dishes balanced along his arm like a conjuring display, and plopped Laura’s mousse in front of her. It really looked like something that had plopped down from the sky and Charlie was glad he hadn’t ordered it. Time to get back to the business in hand, he decided. He said: ‘Is there much gossip about personnel among you girls?’

‘This and that,’ conceded Laura.

‘What’s this and that?’

She smiled, passingly embarrassed. ‘Comparing people…imagining what some are like, against others…would be like…’ She paused, biting her lower lip, half provocative, half uncertain. ‘That surprise you…shock you?’

‘Not particularly,’ said Charlie. Edith had always said he wouldn’t believe what was written on the walls of ladies’ lavatories. ‘You don’t have to access Records for that, do you?’

‘Harkness tried to call your biog up a couple of weeks ago: that’s how I knew. Raised a fuss because it wasn’t released to him as he was only acting Director General,’ disclosed the girl.

He’d done this sort of thing once before, a long time ago, remembered Charlie. Cultivated a relationship with a personal secretary as well placed as Laura and for the same reason, to find out just where the knives were coming from. He tried to remember the other girl’s name but couldn’t. Better, he thought: how it should be. He was too old to develop a conscience now. Charlie said: ‘What’s happened about it?’

‘There are memos going back and forth about temporary authority and confirmed authority,’ further disclosed the girl. ‘Nothing’s been resolved yet.’

Charlie was resolving a number of things, though. The most important was that for the moment at least Sir Alistair Wilson was expected to return and not be forced into permanent retirement by the heart attack, otherwise the access restrictions would not still be in force. But just how long would the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Prime Minister wait? Equally clearly Harkness’ role could not continue for any length of time on such a temporary basis. Why, with Charlie being relegated to duties a monkey could be trained to perform, had Harkness wanted his personnel history? Charlie had often wished he could get hold of it himself. If Harkness got access and if Charlie romanced Laura then perhaps he could persuade her to… No, stopped Charlie. Tempting though it was he wouldn’t do that. Gossip was gossip, although still sufficient to get her dumped from the department. Photocopying personnel records, even for the man about whom they were compiled, was Official Secrets trials, the dock at the Old Bailey and ten years in those women’s prisons where the girls got up to all sorts of hanky-panky. Bastard he might be but not that much of one, not yet: just close.

The waiter glided back and asked Laura: ‘How was the mousse?’

‘Wonderful,’ she said.

‘Some coffee and brandy?’ suggested Charlie.

‘I thought we might have that back at my place,’ invited Laura.

Why hadn’t he had offers like this from girls like this when he was eighteen and keen? Where would all those cinema usherettes and bus conductresses be now? ‘That would be nice,’ Charlie accepted.

The bill clearly stated that a fifteen per cent service charge had been added but the waiter frowned at the exact money Charlie counted out.

‘Some people like to leave additional gratuities, you know!’ the man sniffed.

‘Life’s a bitch and then you’re dead,’ said Charlie. He’d seen it inscribed on a T-shirt and thought it was rather good: he’d been waiting for an opportunity to use it. Upon reflection he was not sure that this had been the occasion.

The bistro was sufficiently trendy for taxis to queue outside, so they didn’t have to wait. Laura snuggled very close to him in the back and said: ‘That really was lovely.’

Charlie’s stomach moved, as a reminder of what had been inflicted upon it, and his feet were aching but then they usually did this late at night, so he was used to that. He said: ‘A little overrated, I thought.’

‘Disappointing that there was no one famous there,’ said Laura. ‘They all go there, you know? Famous people?’

‘I didn’t know,’ said Charlie. He really didn’t want to go through the bed routine: that really would be tricking her. He said: ‘You could always lie to the girls tomorrow: make somebody up. They wouldn’t know, would they?’

‘I don’t suppose they would,’ seized Laura eagerly.

She lived in the rich part of Chelsea, in a terraced house in a cobbled mews about which housing agents used words like exquisite and sought-after. She’d already gone ahead, leaving the door ajar, by the time Charlie turned around from paying the cab. Stairs inside led up to a first-floor, low-lighted drawing room. When he entered Laura was standing stonefaced but flushed by a telephone answering machine at the far side, beside the drinks tray.