Robert Wilson - The Company of Strangers

‘My grandparents were missionaries in the south of India. There were a lot of Portuguese down there from their colony, Goa. She met…’

‘Your mother never took his name…’ said Rawlinson, and steadied himself to pronounce Joaquim Reis Leitão.

‘ Leitão means “suckling pig”,’ she explained.

‘Does it?’ he said. ‘I see why she never took his name. Not something you’d want to have to explain every day of the week…suckling pig.’

He sipped his tea. Andrea chased a piece of dry biscuit around her mouth.

‘You’ve led a cloistered life,’ said Rawlinson.

‘That’s what my mother says.’

‘The Sacred Heart. Then Oxford. Very sheltered.’

‘I spent time here during the Blitz as well,’ said Andrea. ‘That was a sheltered life, too.’

Rawlinson took some moments to find the joke and grunted, reluctant to be amused.

‘So you’ll be all right in Lisbon,’ said Rawlinson, launching himself out of the chair, cracking his leg a stunning blow on the desk.

‘You’ll be working as a secretary for a Shell Oil executive called Meredith Cardew,’ said Rawlinson, speaking to the sky. ‘Rather a fortuitous vacancy. Last girl married a local. The husband doesn’t like her working. She’s pregnant. There’s been some accommodation arranged for you, which I will not attempt to explain but it is the crucial element of your assignment. How’s your physics?’

‘School Certificate standard.’

‘That’ll have to do. You’ll be doing some translating work. German scientific journals into English for the Americans, so you’ll have your work cut out, what with being Cardew’s secretary and all. Sutherland and Rose are running the Lisbon station. They’ll make contact with you via Cardew. A car will pick you up on Saturday morning and take you to RAF Northolt where you’ll be given your documents for travelling to Lisbon. You’ll be met at the airport by an agent called James – Jim – Wallis who works for an import/export company down at the docks. He will take you to Cardew’s house in Carcavelos, just outside Lisbon. Everything you need to know at this stage is in a file which Miss Bridges will give you and which you will read here and remember.’

He turned his back to the sun. His face, backlit by the window, blackened. He held out his hand.

‘Welcome to the Company,’ he said.

‘The Company?’

‘What we call ourselves to each other.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘You’ll do very well,’ he said.

Miss Bridges sat her in a small room off her office with the file. It wasn’t a long file. The changes that had been wrought in her life were small but significant. She would now be known as Anne Ashworth. Her parents lived on Clapham Northside. Her father, Graham Ashworth, was an accountant, and her mother, Margaret Ashworth, was a housewife. Their lives to date had nearly been too boring to read. She digested the material, closed the file and left.

She crossed St James’s Park and The Mall and walked up St James’s Street to Ryder Street where she knew her mother worked in a government office. She stood on the other side of St James’s to the entrance to Ryder Street and waited. At lunchtime the streets began to fill with people looking for something to eat. Men dived into pubs, women into teahouses. Her mother’s white face appeared in the entrance to 7 Ryder Street and walked down to St James’s. Andrea tracked her from across the street, into the park. Before the lake she took a right and chose a bench with a view of Duck Island and Horse Guards Road.

Rawlinson’s distinctive gait was impossible to miss. He came from the other end of the park and joined her mother on the bench. They sat and looked at the ducks. Rawlinson’s hand rested on the duckhead-topped cane. After some minutes he held her hand; Andrea saw the join just below the two slats of wood at the back of the bench. A roaming dog paused to sniff at their feet and moved on. Her mother turned to look at the side of Rawlinson’s face and spoke something into his ear, only inches away. They stayed there for half an hour and then walked together, but unconnected, towards the bridge across the middle of the lake where they parted.

Andrea killed time in a reference library just off Leicester Square until the late afternoon. Rawlinson was punctual about leaving work. Andrea watched him swing his boom down towards Petty France and into St James’s Park tube station. She followed him to a terraced house in Flood Street in Chelsea. A woman met him at the door, kissed him and took his hat. The door closed and through the lead-glass panes Andrea saw the coat coming off his back. The same coat that her mother had smoothed on to his shoulders the previous afternoon. Rawlinson’s blurred outline appeared in the frame of the sittingroom window and collapsed out of sight into a chair. The woman arrived in the window, looked out through the net curtains directly into Andrea’s stunned face and then up and down the street as if she was expecting someone.

Andrea walked back down to Sloane Square and caught a bus to Clapham Common, her feet in an uproar from the hard leather of her mother’s shoes. She was furious at the years spent watching her mother laying the bricks to the austere edifice of her own hypocrisy. She limped home, dragged her tortured feet up the wooden stairs and collapsed face-down on the bed.

The next morning at breakfast her mother appeared in the doorway tightly bound in a burgundy silk dressing gown. Andrea felt her contemplating six or seven lines of attack before putting the kettle on – the English solution to personal confrontation.

‘I got the job,’ said Andrea.

‘I know.’

‘How?’

‘Mr Rawlinson’s secretary called me at the office,’ she said, ‘which was very considerate, I thought.’

Andrea searched her mother’s back for clues. The scapulae shifted under the silk.

‘Do you like Mr Rawlinson?’ asked Andrea.

‘He seems very pleasant.’

‘Do you think you could like him…more?’

‘ More ?’ she said, rounding on her daughter. ‘What do you mean by “more”?’

‘You know,’ she said, shrugging.

‘Goodness me, I’ve only met him once. He’s probably married.’

‘That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?’ said Andrea. ‘Anyway, I’ll be out of here by the weekend.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’ll clear my room out. You could take a lodger.’

‘A lodger ,’ said Mrs Aspinall, aghast.

‘Why not? They pay money. You could use a few pounds extra, couldn’t you?’

Mrs Aspinall sat down opposite her daughter, who had a forearm either side of her plate, hands poised on the table top like spiders.

‘What happened to you yesterday afternoon?’

‘Nothing. After Rawlinson, I went to the library.’

‘You’re going away. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. I’m staying here. I’ll be on my own. Don’t you think I’ll be lonely? Have you thought about that?’

‘That depends if you’re alone.’

Her mother blinked. Andrea decided that the line was her parting shot. She looked back from the bottom of the stairs, her mother was still in the same position, the kettle whistling madly in her ear.

Andrea got straight down to packing her few clothes and books. Her mother thundered up the stairs. Half a minute of antagonistic silence opened up as she hovered outside the bedroom door. She moved off. Water ran in the bathroom.

Fifteen minutes later Mrs Aspinall came into Andrea’s empty room with only the case in the middle of the floor. All vestiges of her daughter already gone.

‘You’ve packed,’ she said. ‘I thought you weren’t leaving until Saturday.’