Nicholas Searle - The Good Liar

or a cruel criminal?’

‘The myth and the man?’

‘Exactly. That’s the key theme. For instance, a myth persisted at

the time that Graham had made a pact with the Devil and was

immune to lead shot. According to that, he was killed by a silver

button from his own uniform penetrating his heart. That’s just one

of the legends. Whereas perhaps the most important point really is

that, had he survived, the Fifteen might have gone very differently, with his presence and expertise. It could have meant a very different Britain.’

Stephen is surprised how gratifyingly fluent the patter is. Rather

more fluent than his stuttering research has proved. Maybe he can

do this, after all.

‘So why’s this Gerald giving you a hard time? You seem to know

your stuff.’

‘It’s mainly technical. He wants me to speed up the validation of

sources and data and to begin building a structure. It’s fine really.’

‘And what’s in it for you?’

‘With luck, a published paper that’s accepted after peer review

and changes things, however minutely. With even better luck, a new

historical perspective on the period.’

‘I mean, where does it get you?’

‘Oh, nowhere really, apart from being a major part of my PhD.

Any published works will go out under Gerald’s name as my

supervisor.’

‘Sounds dodgy. You want my advice, look after number one. You

don’t want this Gerald stealing your glory.’

‘My world doesn’t work like that. Academics are connected and

work on reputation. If I do a good job it’ll get round and I’ll stand a better chance of securing a good academic position.’

‘You want to watch yourself. Life’s not a rehearsal. You want to

go out there and grab what you want.’

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They have arrived at the garden centre. Stephen fusses about Roy,

rushing around the car and trying solicitously to help him out of

the passenger seat, but Roy is having none of it. Having extricated himself from the vehicle, he looks at Stephen sternly. But their tacit if fragile pact of cordiality holds and he forces a smile.

Stephen pushes the trolley while Roy examines the plants

expertly, pondering the labels carefully, feeling leaves, fingering soil.

They move together from stand to stand, Roy peering while Ste-

phen looks on, waiting for conversation that does not come.

Eventually Roy, maintaining his equable tone, says, ‘Why don’t

you clear off and let me get on with this? I can manage on my own.

I can see you’re bored and you’re as much use to me as a chocolate

teapot.’

Stephen goes inside to contemplate uncomprehendingly twine,

slug pellets, multicoloured reels of hose and garden lights, while

Roy continues with his task, examining plants intently before selecting one in particular, transporting it in a shuffle to the trolley that is filling, and moving to the next stand. Stephen will be summoned

eventually to wheel the teetering mass of greenery to the tills and then to load the car.

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1

‘A holiday,’ exclaims Betty.

‘Oh yes,’ replies Roy with enthusiasm. ‘I could do with a bit of

sun on my back. Spain? Portugal?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says, ‘I need something to stimulate my

brain. I thought a city break. And I’m paying, I insist.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ says Roy, not entirely convincingly. ‘New

York, then. The Big Apple. All those museums. A Broadway show.’

She laughs. ‘I may be a woman of means, Roy, but I don’t think

my budget will stretch that far. Not if we’re to do it in style.’

‘Very well, then. Barcelona.’

‘I was thinking more central Europe. Prague, Budapest, Vienna

perhaps.’

‘All right, then.’

It is not what he would necessarily wish for, but she who pays the

piper . . . And a break will set him up nicely for the summer. There is a chance that there may even be a spot of spring sun. She browses the internet while he sits with his paper and gives his monosyllabic responses to her bright suggestions.

In the end, it is Berlin. He makes a late counter- bid for Rome, or Venice, or even Bruges. But Berlin it is to be. The city of the

thousand- year Reich, of Kristallnacht, Frederick the Great, Check-

point Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate. There’ll be enough history

there to last them a lifetime.

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2

On a blissful spring morning they walk out of their smart, ultra-

modern hotel and into the middle of it all. Unter den Linden rolls

away before them towards the Brandenburg Gate, if they can ignore

the sundry hawkers and beggars jabbering at them desperately in

various forms of German. Roy, despite his years, is still imposing

and a glare is all it takes. He wraps his big arm protectively around Betty’s shoulder and she smiles.

‘It’s all here,’ he says, waving his other arm expansively.

It is Berlin as imagined, constructed on a heroic scale to convey

the new national confidence of the late nineteenth century, broad,

masculine, frightening, in grey stone. The street, however, is gashed along its sternum as the U- Bahn line is brought to this part of what was once East Berlin. Berlin is being rebuilt and the horizon is dominated by cranes. A new paradigm of German confidence is being

constructed here, the technocratic new alongside the imperial old.

They spend three hours in the Deutsches Historisches Museum,

which is not exactly how Roy had envisaged it: Betty peering at each exhibit with exaggerated interest while he tags along with an

ill- disguised bored impatience to which she seems happily oblivi-

ous. Well, she used to an academic, he reflects as he looks at his

watch, and he will shortly be able to sit down to a decent beer.

But no: after a lunch of greasy bratwurst, smeared in garish mus-

tard, bought from a street seller – a surprise, this, for Roy, given Betty’s dainty elegance – they are off again. They take the S- Bahn train and the bus to Charlottenburg to look at the palace and walk

awhile in the Tiergarten district under budding chestnut trees, taking peeks at the large, silent villas protected by sophisticated security systems that line the genteel wide streets.

‘I wonder what it must have been like to live here, in the

nineteenth century,’ she says, ‘or the early twentieth. Or the

1930s. The decadence, the forced fun, the glittering soirées. All that wealth, that confidence. Little did they know what was to become

of them.’

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‘Oh yes,’ he says, bored and sardonic at the same time. He is sur-

prised by her energy and that light in her eyes. He thinks of himself as fit for his age but finds his limbs are weary, and craves the privacy of his hotel room and a quiet nap. He can do without this too, all

this enthusiasm. He has lived a life long and eventful enough to

know exactly how it was and needs no visual cues. He begins to

wish he had never agreed to this trip.

‘Oh dear,’ says Betty, and his attention returns to the present.

‘You look bored. And tired. Have we overdone it?’

‘A little, maybe,’ he replies with a tolerant smile.

‘Let’s get you back to the hotel, then, shall we?’

She locates a cab and he dozes as their voluble driver, against the backdrop of talk radio, rails against the fools on the roads as he