Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

"There was a growing need for marriage lines. "

He looked puzzled.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. The girl was in the club, knocked up, a bun in the oven – 'ow's yer father?"

George stiffened into the Compleat Civil Servant. "If you intend me to infer that she was pregnant, then for the life of me I can see no reason why you don't actually say so. I don't find all two-syllable words either incomprehensible or, when comprehended, necessarily shocking."

"She was pregnant," Agnes said, staring at the low coffee-table, not at George. "And marriage itself might have been a useful bit of insurance for Gustav: herrelatives or guardians would have been less likely to inform on her husband than on some passing stranger who could get his trousers open in Olympic time."

"Is there something," George asked icily, "about the atmosphere of this place that causes you to come up with suchexpressions? If so, we can easily adjourn to Fred's Caff in Brixton where you might react by trying to speak the Queen's English."

Agnes looked up. From over George's shoulder stared the portrait of a general whose handling of an attack in the South African war had caused so many casualties to his own brigade that he had immediately been promoted away to see if he could do the same thing with divisions and corps. In 1915 and '16 he had proved he hadn't lost his old touch, and so died in bed at a great age, garnished with colourful honours, many of them from grateful countries whose soldiers he hadn't got killed even on purpose. He was looking at Agnes with exactly the expression he would have chosen had he lived to see a woman in his club.

"It must be something about the place, " she agreed meekly. "Must try harder. Where were we?"

"Gustav wasjust getting married."

"Yes. That happened in May 1944. The boy, Manfred, was born in the October. "

George did mental arithmetic on his fingers. "That means around January… Gustavdidn't waste much time about…"

Agnes didn't say a word. She looked very much like somebody not saying a word.

"And the wife, Brigitte: when did she die, or was supposed to have died?"

"April 1945, just before the end of the war.Mina said Gustavsaid she'd been killed by Allied planes. She hadn't been around herself at the time and said Gustavdidn't like talking about it much. Fair enough, I suppose."

"Where did this happen?"

"She didn't say."

"Isn't that odd?"

"She wasn't hiding anything. If our people had asked her, she'd have had to answer. It was her applying for asylum, not us inviting her. But they can't have asked: why should they? They weren't interested in her war story, they'd heard a million war stories. They just wanted to know what was going on in East Germany there and then. She only mentionedone place after they'd gone underground and that was where Gustavgot married: Sangerhausen. In East Germany, now."

"So we can't get at the marriage certificate," George brooded. There was a burst of male laughter from the bar, which had suddenly filled up with men wearing MCC ties; the day's play at Lord's would have ended just about twenty minutes ago. The servant fought his way clear and delivered their drinks; George grunted, Agnes smiled and shifted carefully on the sofa. There was no way to be comfortable on it, and even movement was risky because the old leather was cracking like dry parchment.

"Mind you, " George said abruptly, "that certificate must be sheer balls because he'd have to use his roadname on it. Not Eismark at all."

Agnes sipped and shrugged. "They did the best they could in the circumstances. It showed willing."

"It also showed the baby was started before the marriage. Is there any leverage in that?"

"No, not even in the GDR. It wasn't adultery, he Did The Right Thing by a girl who had only months to live, Hitler's hounds baying at their heels… They weep over muck like that on their side, too. "

George nodded. "The baby was only five months, still in arms.-Why didn't he get killed, too?"

"A good question, and one widely asked in East Germany, I imagine. Manfred's a big boy now and a full colonel in the SSD. Old Gustavmay still have some old-time socialist ideals about the rights of man, but the general feeling is that Manfred would have done well on the faculty at Belsen. "

"So I'd heard. But anyway, that's all she had to say?"

"That's only onepage of what she said. There's at least another thirty about life in the GDR in the fifties, how they treat musicians, how she brought up baby Manfred while Gustav wasoff in Moscow learning to run a shipyard and getting booster shots of dialectical materialism. It read as if having to play auntie instead of Schumann first gave her the idea of coming over – Here's our hunter home from the hill. "

The junior hall porter was guiding Maxim through the crowd by the bar. George waved and Maxim was released tomake the last few yards by himself. He sat down beside Agnes, who said: "Don't wriggle or you'll collapse a hundred years of military history."

"How is he?" George demanded.

"Better than I expected. He's tough."

"And talkative, I trust?"

"I think I've got everything, at last. "

"What is it?"

"I didn't say I'd got anything, but -"

"Harry…"

"Let him say his piece," Agnes said.

"We know Blagg picked up the money and the car keys. Now he says he also took a batch of papers and a bit of film, negative film. He thought the papers were all death certificates or copies; he remembers a word like Sterbeurkunde-"

"Thatis death certificate," Agnes said.

"It was when I learned German, too. "

"Children, children," George said warningly. "Go on, Harry."

"About thirty or forty of them, all from April 1945. Seems a bit odd, but… All this was mixed up with the newspapers and the money. Something thatwasn't there was a magazine she'd asked him to get: a back copy of a thing called Focus on Germany. It's a sort of goodwill thing that Bonn puts out for the Allied forces; it doesn't outsell Playboy. He just pinched it from the Services Liaison Officer's files in Soltau. I've got the date."

"Fine, fine," George said. "But you've got all the rest?"

"No, it's--"

"For God's sake -"

"He left it with a woman in Germany."

After a time, Agnes said thoughtfully: "That boy's no fool, keeping a nice big ace in the hole in case Six won't play ball. No fool at all."

His mother abandoned him before he could crawl, " Maxim said. "He didn't quite grow up with a happy trusting nature like you and George."

'Quite," George said. "But is he prepared to trust you now?"

"I've got her name and address. "

"Good. Well, we give her to Six. It's all we can do, and perhaps we'll really finally be out of it."

"Hold on, " Agnes warned; she had been watching Maxim's expression. "Something tells me it isn't going to be that easy. "

Maxim flashed his quick defensive smile. "Blagg told her not to hand them over to anybody but himself or somebody with a letter from him. I've got the letter. It names me as the messenger boy."

There was a moment of silence, then George erupted. "Youarranged that. We had our chance to get Number 10clear of this whole… wholecatastrophe, but not you, no, you want a front seat for the opening night of Armageddon, you do…"

"I didn't arrange it, but I didn't dodge it," Maxim said doggedly. "Blagg just doesn't trust Six any more. They screwed him at least once and he knows it. And so do you. "

A member, passing with both hands full of glasses, stopped suddenly. "George! We hardly ever see you. Do tell, how's the Prime Ministerreally?"

"Dead, if he's got any sense," George snapped.

The member stiffened, then edged away in a fading mumble: "Well, I suppose things must be rather trying for you, what with…"