Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

The call was answered. She thought she had interrupted a meeting in the office on the upper floor of the Palace of Justice and that a subordinate had picked it up. She named the prosecutor. She was told he was unavailable. Who wished to speak to the dottore?

The moment of betrayal came fast, stampeded her. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she straightened her back and jutted her chin. ‘I think he’ll find time to speak with me. Tell him I’m Immacolata Borelli…’

He walked into the classroom. A chorus of voices, in scattered accents, greeted him. For Eddie Deacon it had been a bad day and now it was evening. The chance of improvement was minimal. The language courses often took place after working hours and his foreign students flocked in when their daytime employment, legitimate or not, had finished.

It had been a long-standing promise, made at least a month ago, that he would go in the morning by train from London to Chippenham. His father had collected him at the station, and they’d had a desultory conversation in the car about the state of the railways, the weather, the roads, his father’s pension, and just as they had exhausted all common subject matter, they’d reached the family home.

He’d had to go. He couldn’t have brought himself to call and tell them he had a problem and couldn’t make it. He would have heard undisguised disappointment, in whichever of them he had spoken to, and he’d known that for the last two days his mum would have been planning lunch: she worked, front-desk receptionist, at the offices of a local building contractor and would have told everyone there that she was taking the day off because her lad was coming down from London. They’d be waiting the next morning for a bulletin on how it had gone and how he was progressing, and from the way she told it, most would reckon he was a college lecturer and something of a highflier, not a language teacher who helped a cocktail of youngsters to speak basic English, and wasn’t concerned with chasing ‘prospects’. His father had taken early retirement on his fiftieth birthday, and pottered round the house fixing things that didn’t need fixing. Eddie Deacon had damn near nothing that connected with the lives of Arthur and Betty, his parents. What he couldn’t deny was the love they had for him. A bit humbling, actually. Like having a pillow shoved over his face that half suffocated him. There was love and there was expectation for his future. After lunch, if he was lucky, he’d escape for an hour, put on the old pair of boots that were kept on the shelf in the pristine garage, and walk by the river, maybe see a kingfisher in flight, lean on a field gate and have a herd of heifers nuzzle his sleeve. Then a quick tea, a pointed look at his watch and talk about the train he could catch.

He’d been up early. He had walked across from Dalston into Hackney and had turned up at the college where she was enrolled on the accountancy/book-keeping course. He’d asked for her at the administration office. ‘Something urgent,’ he’d said, ‘and I need to see Miss Immacolata Borelli. She’s a student on the B4 course. It really is important…’ They knew who he was because he was there three or four evenings or lunchtimes a week to meet her. Whenever she finished a class and he didn’t have one, he was there. A shrug… She hadn’t been in. Had she called in sick? She had not, just hadn’t turned up. Another shrug… He couldn’t go soft, begging and pleading, and ask for a sight of her home address. Couldn’t, because it would have shown up the biggest hole in their relationship – no address and no phone number. Then, an escape route – a walk in the fields, where the heifers were grazing, and down to the river.

The former soldier, from a bungalow down the lane, had been on the bank. Eddie Deacon was a good listener and didn’t reckon to wipe his own views over another’s and compete in conversation. He didn’t know the guy – Dean – well, but his mother had told him grisly stories. Not much older than Eddie, but there was a tattoo of a paratroop’s wings, and Dean had been Special Forces. Now he did contract work in Iraq and was gone for four months at a time. Listening seemed important and he noted that by staying quiet and lending an ear, the guy’s hands stopped shaking, the fingers didn’t clasp and unclasp, and the voice lost its breathiness. He didn’t hurry him or glance at his watch, and learned a bit about the airport road, procedures to counter vehicle ambush and command wires, things that had nothing to do with the river, the flight over the water of the kingfisher – twice – or the patrol of a heron. When it was done, the guy had gripped his fist – as if the listening had been important. At home, he apologised to his parents for having been away so long and told them where he’d been and why he’d stayed out. He’d sensed then that the world of a psychologically troubled ex-soldier was a route march away from that of his mum and dad, and his own.

He’d headed for Paddington and the main-line train, a later service than intended.

Not that Eddie Deacon knew too much about the workings of the KGB, old time, or the intelligence services, present time, but he liked to joke that his mum, Betty, would have had an interrogator’s job – no messing – if she ever chose to turn up and offer herself. It was a routine area. ‘Relationships’. The village seemed to him a rabbits’ breeding warren. Everyone they knew had children who were shagging and producing, some in marriage and others not. In everyone else’s house there were framed photographs of babies with red-eye. So, was there a girlfriend? Had he met anyone? Was there anyone important in…? As if he had to shove his thumb in a fractured dike, he’d done what he could to cut off the questioning. Stupid, but it was what he had done. Eddie had opened his wallet and taken out a photograph – Mac smiling, close up. He had seen his father’s jaw drop and his mother had purred in appreciation. Showed, really, what they thought of him… they could hardly comprehend that the layabout, the tosser, their only child, had a photograph of such an attractive, star-quality girl in his wallet.

To get to the river, he’d had to make a promise. Yes, next time he came down he was definitely going to bring her with him. Guaranteed, safe as a supermarket ‘special offer’. He’d told them a bit, not much. She was Italian, she was clever, she was going to be an accountant. Didn’t tell them he’d sat in an Afghan restaurant for three hours the previous evening with an empty place laughing at him across the table, that she’d stood him up. Did tell them that she was friendly, warm and made him laugh. Didn’t tell them that she had skipped classes that morning and hadn’t phoned in with an explanation… Didn’t tell them she hadn’t given him her home address or a contact number. Didn’t tell them he’d never walked her home. Did tell them, with his eyes, his face, and with the way he held the photo, that she was totally important to him. The sight of the girl, Mac, had silenced them, and he’d escaped to his river walk. Said it out loud, ‘Mac, for heaven’s sake, where the hell are you? Mac, where have you gone? What are you doing?’ Behind him, in the kitchen, the dishwasher would be churning, Arthur and Betty would be muttering about a girl coming at last into their boy’s life. All the time, down by the river, listening and offering a shoulder, she wasn’t out of his mind. He’d thanked his mum for lunch, promised again that he would bring Mac next time he came down, thanked his dad for the lift to Chippenham, and come back to London.

Hadn’t known what to do… and had gone to work. She throbbed in his mind.

‘Good evening, everybody.’

It came back at him, surf rolling on shingle. ‘Good evening, Mr Deacon.’