Swimming to Ithaca (23 page)

‘So what were you about?’

A sly smile, a rogue’s smile, the smile of a man who’s about to sell you something counterfeit, but you mustn’t take it hard. It’s just a game, for God’s sake, just a game. ‘I worked for Six, old chap.’

‘Six?’

‘My, you are an innocent fellow, Tom. Everybody knows about it nowadays. Then, of course, it was the job that dare not speak its name. MI6. SIS, whatever you want to call it. The Firm.’

Thomas laughs. It is a complicated laugh, an awkward mixture of amusement and nervousness and embarrassment. As though he should have known. As though Geoffrey is telling a funny story and he’d been led along thinking it was serious, and he has only just got the joke. ‘The Firm? Did people really call it that? It sounds like a bad thriller.’

‘It
was
a thriller at times, and sometimes it was a bloody bad one. Look at Philby and his crew. Look at the awful Burgess, for Christ’s sake. But we had our moments in my neck of the woods, even though we never got old Grievous himself.’

‘You were hunting Grivas?’

‘Who else, old boy? He was the big fish, wasn’t he? And we damned near got him as well.’

‘My parents never said anything about all this.’

He roars with laughter. ‘I should hope they didn’t. In fact, I don’t imagine your father even knew.’

‘Do you mean my mother did?’

Geoffrey sips gin, purses his lips thoughtfully, as though looking for a way out of this awkward question. ‘Well, she knew something. If she put two and two together.’

Thomas hesitates, watching this small man with the liverish skin and the bright, inquisitive eyes, and thinking of that woman leaning against the side of the car on a hot and dusty Limassol street, the woman who skipped through his memory of the harbour of Kyrenia, taking Geoffrey’s hand and laughing as she never laughed with his father. While Guppy remained drink-sodden in London. ‘You were always around her, weren’t you? Sometimes it was only you, wasn’t it?’ he says. ‘Often my father wasn’t there, I mean.’

‘Eddie? What a good bloke he was. A good, loyal, solid chap. The kind that founded the British Empire, and then, when the time came, bloody well went and did his duty and dissolved it. I was so upset when I heard of his death.’

Thomas isn’t going to be deflected by discussion of his father. He asks, ‘Were you in love with her, Geoffrey?’

And now Geoffrey laughs that uproarious laugh, the one that haunted Thomas’ childhood. ‘I loved her dearly,’ he says eventually, through the laughter. ‘I loved her; but in love? No, I don’t think so.’ He struggles to recover from his amusement, apologizing and wiping his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, old boy. I think perhaps you’ve misunderstood. I mean, by that time …’ He is about to add something, but whatever it is is lost, for the front door to the flat opens and closes and someone comes into the sitting room. ‘We’re out on the terrace, drinking gin,’ Geoffrey calls. ‘Come and meet Tom. You’ll like him.’

A middle-aged man appears at the french windows, smiling and looking faintly embarrassed at seeing the two of them out there. He is Asian – perhaps Thai. His face is smooth and boyish, making him seem younger than his real age; Thomas guesses him to be about fifty. The face might have a certain innocence about it, but his eyes are bright and black and knowing.

‘Gordon is my prop and staff,’ Geoffrey explains. ‘He teaches
piano at the Conservatory, but he looks after me in his spare time. Not that I’m incapable on my own. I just need a hand every now and again, don’t I?’

‘Just a hand,’ Gordon agrees. He goes and stands behind Geoffrey and rests a hand gently on the old man’s shoulder, while Geoffrey raises his own to put it over Gordon’s. And the whole image of Thomas’ past shimmers and distorts, as though Geoffrey has just tossed a bloody big boulder into the placid reflection of memory.

‘Tom and I,’ Geoffrey says, looking up at his companion, ‘were talking about his darling mother, how much I loved her.’

‘You loved many women, it seems,’ Gordon observes. ‘Was she like Guppy?’

‘Was she like Guppy! Perish the very thought. Dee was a mammal, warm and furry; Guppy was a scaly fish. But, I have to confess, Guppy was the more beautiful. A beautiful fish. A barracuda, perhaps. Are barracudas beautiful? I think Guppy was the most beautiful woman it has ever been my misfortune to know. Dee, on the other hand, was one of the most
attractive
.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Oh, yes, Tom. I find women attractive all right. I just don’t find them desirable. It’s a very different thing.’

Gordon slips back inside – ‘I will prepare the lunch,’ he says – and leaves the two of them talking on the terrace. Geoffrey does most of the talking. His reminiscences combine apparent openness with subtle evasion, good stories coupled with utmost reserve. It’s like interviewing a senior civil servant about overspending in the public sector. He agrees with everything you say, old boy, except that it was anyone’s fault.

‘We worked on radio and telephone intercepts, tracking EOKA couriers, that kind of thing. Muscled in on the local Special Branch operation, and then spent much of our time stepping on the toes of the Office.’

‘The office?’

‘MI5, old chap. They claimed it was their territory, being a colony. But we had the Greek specialists, while all they had were pinheads from Oxbridge and rough boys from south London. Of course that kind of thing’s all out in the public domain nowadays – that fellow Peter Wright blew the gaff, didn’t he? And now there are dozens of others doing the same thing. Sometimes I wonder whether I shouldn’t publish my own memoirs. They’d probably sell better than poems.’

‘My mother knew about this?’

‘Your father fell for the banker nonsense, but she could put two and two together and see that it didn’t quite add up to four.’

‘And what about Damien Braudel?’ Thomas asks. ‘What about him?’

‘Ah.’ The sound that Geoffrey makes is faintly climactic, as though he has been expecting to hear this name. He reaches out to pick up his glass. ‘How do you know about him?’

‘I found a newspaper cutting. The
Times of Cyprus
. Among my mother’s things.’

Geoffrey nods. ‘Damien Braudel was a most charming young fellow.’

‘What happened?’

Geoffrey sips his drink and looks across the glass at Thomas. ‘They shot him, of course. That’s what EOKA did, shot people. We lost our grip that year. We’d had them within our grasp and the politicians buggered it up and EOKA cut loose in nineteen-fifty-eight. Young hoods, mostly. Nothing admirable about them. Shootings in the back. Civilians as well as military. It was a bloody business at times. And Braudel was one of the victims. In Limassol, from what I remember. Actually I was out of the island at the time. I only heard about it second-hand.’

‘Did they ever get his killer?’

Geoffrey shrugs, sips his gin, glances out over the railings of the terrace. ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t expect so. He’s probably a respected politician now.’

‘And what about his relationship with my mother?’

‘That, my dear boy, is something that only he or she could tell you about.’

‘They’re both dead.’

‘Aren’t we all, sooner or later?’

Thomas takes a photograph out of his jacket and holds it up for Geoffrey to see.
Nick
, it says on the back. ‘What about him?’

Geoffrey laughs. ‘The Teddy boy.’

‘Do you know who he is?’

‘I remember him vaguely. A taxi driver. Nick the Cyprian, that was his name, I think. Kyprianou. He used to drive your mother quite a bit. She sort of adopted him. She used to adopt people less fortunate than herself. She adopted me.’

‘Was he a member of EOKA?’

Geoffrey laughs. ‘ You know what the Mayor of Nicosia said at the time? “We are
all
members of EOKA.”’

‘So he was?’

‘No idea, old son. Even if he was, he wasn’t on my radar.’

‘I found a letter from you among her papers.’

‘Did you now? And did you read it?’

‘What happened, Geoffrey? Between the two of you?’

Geoffrey smiles. There’s a patronizing quality about the expression, as though he’s amused by Thomas’ attempts, and equally amused by the fact that he is not going to give anything away. ‘I think Gordon must have lunch ready by now, don’t you?’ he says, lifting himself carefully to his feet. He gestures to Thomas to go through into the sitting room.

‘What did you quarrel about, Geoffrey?’

The man is going. He has abandoned the attempt to let Thomas pass through the french window first and he is determined
to lead the way. ‘What does anyone quarrel about?’ he says as he makes his way inside. ‘Love and loyalty. Jealousy and envy. Those kinds of things. You know the trouble with spying, Thomas? The usual rules of evidence don’t apply. You can be condemned just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘The same thing applies to history.’

‘I suppose it does. You know, you have a very unhealthy interest in these things – your mother’s past and all that.’

‘Do you think I’m spying on her?’

‘It does begin to look like it, doesn’t it? I loved her, Thomas. Do you know that? I loved her. I wonder whether you did.’

‘How did it go?’ Kale asks.

They are sitting on a bench near the Palace Pier, with the crowds drifting past and a busker playing the guitar and singing that there ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, which is an accurate but unnecessary gloss on the day. Emma is chasing the pigeons. She has been on a couple of fairground rides, and played some games, but it’s much more fun chasing pigeons. They flap and hop and never expend more energy than is absolutely necessary to evade the little girl. It is part of their lives, the price they have to pay for a life of ease.

‘Let them be, Emms,’ Kale calls. ‘They’ve got as much right to be here as you. More. This is their home.’

‘Do they have homes?’

‘Course they do. Nests or something.’

‘Are they cosy?’

‘I expect they’re very cosy.’

‘Like our flat?’

‘Very like our flat, I expect. About the same size.’

Emma goes back to her work. Kale turns to Thomas and repeats her question. ‘So how did it go?’

He shakes his head. ‘It was like playing poker or something, poker against a card-sharp. I got the impression that when he wasn’t lying he was evading the truth.’

‘Is he guilty?’

‘Guilty of what?’

‘Of having stuffed your mother.’

‘I never said—’

‘Oh, come off it! That’s what you thought. I can read you like a textbook, Thomas, like one of those bloody books you’re so surprised we haven’t already read. You thought this – what’s his name? Geoff? – you thought he was the one that did the dirty on your dad.’

Thomas laughs. ‘He’s an old queen.’

‘He’s a what?’

‘A queen. Gay.’

She looks at him with laughter and amazement. ‘He’s a ginger? I don’t believe it.’

‘Ginger?’

Kale explodes with laughter. ‘Ginger beer.’

Emma pauses in her chase of pigeons and looks round. ‘Why’s Mum laughing?’

‘ ’Cos Mum’s just heard a funny joke.’

‘Tell me.’

‘You wouldn’t understand, love.’ She turns back to Thomas. ‘So your little ideas, your accusations against your poor dead mum, are just a load of old rubbish.’

‘They’re not accusations. Anyway, there’s more than that.’

‘More?’

He pauses, momentarily embarrassed by what seems so unlikely now, sitting here on the esplanade at Brighton, surrounded by agitated pigeons, with a suggestion of rain in the air. ‘He claims that he was working for the Secret Service.’

‘He
what
? A spy? You gotta be kidding. James bloody Bond?’

‘More like John le Carré. Sort of elegant seediness. He’s got a boyfriend called Gordon—’

‘Gordon Bennett!’ she says, and laughs. It’s a silly, girl’s laugh and it’s wonderful to see it, the light that comes to her eyes, the flash of teeth and glimpse of tongue, the bright lifting of her features. All too often she seems drawn and tired. He laughs with her, happy to forget Geoffrey Crozier. He has this weekend with Kale and her child, this ephemeral illusion of family life, and he wants to forget the shark-like Crozier, the card-sharp Crozier, the queer with the sleek white hair and self-satisfied superiority. He catches her hand and holds it to his lips. ‘Has anyone told you that you’re beautiful?’

‘You have.’

‘Well you are. And I want to make love to you.’

‘You’ll have to wait. If we do it here we’ll get arrested and Emma will be embarrassed and all sorts of stuff.’

‘What if I can’t wait?’

‘Then you’ll have to go to the public toilets and have a wank, and be careful not to catch anything from the seat.’

‘Why are you laughing?’ Emma asks. ‘You’re always laughing.’

‘It’s Thomas,’ she tells her daughter. ‘He’s so silly.’

The hotel is nothing fancy, but it has a restaurant, which means there is the prospect of putting Emma to bed and dining together on their own. Thomas watches Kale undress her child and give her a bath. Memories of Phil at the same age come flooding back – the same laughter, the same slippery little androgynous body splashing around in the water. Emma screws up her eyes against the soap and seems to find the discomfort funny. ‘Is Thomas going to sleep with us?’ she asks.

‘Of course he is,’ her mother replies.

‘Is he like Steve?’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Emma giggles, half hiding her face. ‘Do you cuddle in bed?’

‘Of course we do. Now stop being silly and let me dry you.’

‘Does he put his willy inside you?’

‘Does he do what? Who gave you that idea?’

‘That’s what ladies and men do, isn’t it? But I don’t want to do it. Billy Eccles tried to do it to me at school, but I told him to go fuck himself.’

‘Emma!’

‘Well
you
say that.’

‘Mum can say what she likes. But little girls like you can’t.’ Kale turns to Thomas as though to high authority. He knows that he mustn’t smile. He remembers the expression of moral rectitude that one has to maintain when the child is watching.

‘Thomas doesn’t find that funny, do you? Emma is going to promise me that she won’t say words like that again, aren’t you, Emms?’