The Long Room (23 page)

‘No thanks.’

‘Right. I’ll be off then. I might see you later at the party; when does it kick off? Okay then, thanks. If I don’t see you, have a happy Christmas.’ And Rollo turned on his heel.

Stephen is drifting unsecured through infinities of dark, a diver cut off from his air-supply; not in this world, falling, falling; he has forgotten how to breathe. He opens his mouth to call for help but no sound comes out and even if it had, no one would hear him. Helen, Helen, oh let my cry come unto thee, after this my exile. The room is rocking round him; he is suffocating in the noise and smoke. What he needs is strong drink to thaw his leaden nerves and warm the chilled marrow of his bones.

Some time later Stephen made his way back to the long room. While in the bar he had arrived at the idea of pleading a recurrence of his toothache, collecting his coat and going home. But he had forgotten the ritual of the Christmas presents. When he walked into the room, he found the listeners waiting for him, sitting in a circle around Louise’s desk. On the desk were a plate of mince pies, a bottle of Asti Spumante and six clear plastic cups. ‘Where have you been?’ Louise asked mildly.

To ensure the anonymity of givers, the presents had been piled together in Louise’s out-tray. Stephen had left his two
parcels, both wrapped by shop assistants, in his cabinet on Tuesday; now, retrieving them, he saw that Christophine was not part of the waiting group. ‘Have you labelled yours?’ Louise asked.

‘Was I supposed to?’

‘Silly sausage! You know the Santas have to be top secret!’

‘Well, this is for Christophine.’

‘Oh, what a pity she’s not here; she’d already booked an extra day; she was sad to miss the party. Give it to me. I’ll make sure she gets it on Tuesday when we’re back. What smart paper! And so beautifully wrapped. Harriet’s not here either; I wonder if she caught that ferry? Who’s the other parcel for?’

‘That’s not actually a Christmas present.’

‘Oh? All right. Now, who’s for a glass of bubbly? Charlotte, would you be a duck and pass round the mince pies? Made to my granny’s recipe!’

One by one the listeners of Group III unwrap their Christmas presents: the bottles of wine, the soaps, the bath salts and the chocolates. Muriel has been adopted by the group for the duration. Stephen’s present is a contraption of suspended metal balls that click rhythmically together when they are set in motion: ‘It’s meant to help when you are anxious,’ Greta says.

The wine is fizzy in the mouth, the filling of the pies is piercingly sugary. Stephen takes another when the plate comes round again; Damian refills his cup. ‘Here’s to us!’ Louise says, toasting her team and laughing.

The smaller parcel is still on Stephen’s lap. ‘So, who
is
it for?’ asks Charlotte. ‘For you, in fact,’ he says. Charlotte, already the recipient of the bath salts, blushes deeply and the others look on, amused. She accepts the parcel and asks Stephen if
she should open it now or later. He says later, but is overruled. Slowly, carefully, Charlotte peels away each scrap of Sellotape, leaving the paper intact; there is a second layer of white tissue within. She unfolds it and lifts out the tiny cardigan, white and as delicate as cobweb; she holds it up.

‘Isn’t that a bit small for you?’ says Solly

‘It’s for the baby that was sick, Charlotte’s baby,’ Stephen says.

Charlotte, not having spoken, looking stunned, now stands up says: ‘Oh, Steve!’ and starts to cry. Once she starts, she cannot stop. She stumbles past Louise, Solly and Damian to Stephen and, bending clumsily, she throws her arms around him, her face pressed to his shoulder, sobbing still. He keeps his own arms stiffly at his sides, at a loss to comfort her, and Louise says: ‘Stevie, that was so dear of you!’ and breaks the spell. Everyone is smiling now and handing the cardigan around, the better to admire the lacy wool, the silky ribbons. ‘Who’d like another pie?’ asks Greta.

Outside, more snow is falling. ‘We must close the blinds,’ Louise says. ‘And now I’m off to the kitchen to make sandwiches – does anybody want to help?’

‘I will,’ Muriel says, and Charlotte goes with them.

Now what? Having eaten mince pies with his colleagues, smiling and nodding all the while, is it too late to say he is in agony and really must go home? Stephen is feeling rather giddy. His head is like a snow globe, if he shook it, it would fill with a thousand flakes of muddled thoughts. This is terrible. He cannot leave and yet he cannot stay. It’s like being stuck in quicksand with no idea how fast the tide is coming in.

He went back to his desk, put his headphones on and
pretended to listen to a tape. In fact, there were none he had not already scanned. Having lost two targets in one day, and with
OBERON
away,
ODIN
putting up his Christmas lights, even
GOODFELLOW
expected at his mum’s – everyone going about their lives in ways that could not be of any interest to even the most obsessive strategist – there was nothing for him to do except sink deeper in the sand.

It was half past four. He wrote his last report on
VULCAN
, listing the times of all the calls the old man did not answer, apart from the ones that Stephen had made himself; noting that he had not been heard since Thursday, exactly a week ago; writing in his flowing hand:
Nothing further to report
. To whom could he report his own sorrow? Who would share with him the horrifying thought of
VULCAN
slowly dying all alone, or the guilt of knowing that there was something he could have done to save him? He slid the report sheet into an envelope and marked it for the final time:
Confidential for RWG/Department Two
. If she – Rhona – asked for checks to be done on the telephone line, she’d find the secret number of the Institute, and what would she do then? With luck, she would not bother to make enquiries but would accept instead the evidence of the last report. For her the case was in the past and easily forgotten.

Damian was the only other person still working at his desk, clacking away at his typewriter keys, his headphones firmly on. The rest of the listeners had already stowed away their papers and machines, and gone. Stephen began to tidy his. He stacked his empty in-tray underneath the out-tray, in which he placed Rhona’s envelope and the finished tapes. Cleared for wiping and re-use. He put his blank report sheets, his pins and paper clips and treasury tags, into the top drawer of his desk. The
borrowed tapes were still in his jacket pocket. As he was about to seal them in an envelope, it occurred to him that he might never have a record of Helen’s voice again and he slipped them back. After a second’s thought he put the tape of Greenwood’s recent telephone calls into his pocket too.

Wearily, stiffly, like a much older man, Stephen got up to move his things from his desk to his safe cabinet. In the cabinet he saw the Fortnum’s bag of biscuits and cheese. Well, it might as well be used. After he’d locked everything else away he would take it down to Louise and Charlotte in what was called the kitchen, although it only contained a fridge, a kettle and a sink.

The kitchen was at the end of the corridor, beyond the rooms of the other two groups and Muriel’s small office. Passing Muriel’s door, he noticed it was open and he had a new idea. He looked inside: she was not there, but files and folders were piled on her desk.

This was strictly against the rules. Security came down heavily upon anyone caught leaving documents and files unguarded. In the long room there had to be at least one listener in attendance if a cabinet was open. Muriel must have popped out for a moment, taking an uncharacteristic risk.

Stephen looked up and down the corridor. Voices and laughter were coming from the kitchen but there was no one in sight. He ducked into Muriel’s room. He had meant to drop the broken tape into one of her trays but, as there were no trays on her desk, he poked it into the narrow space between the back of the nearest cabinet and the wall. If Security should spot it there before she did, Muriel would be in real trouble but Stephen couldn’t help that.

Then he saw that the door of the cabinet in which she kept the safe-box was wide open. He was irresistibly impelled towards it. As if in a dream he withdrew the box and it was unlocked too. If this was a dream, he was desperate not to wake.

PHOENIX
’s file. P. In the second half of the alphabet. He didn’t have time to flick through all the files in search of it; he could at any moment be discovered in the act. Instead he pulled out a handful from the middle of the pile and stuffed them into his carrier bag. As quickly as he had entered, he left the room and went on his way to find Charlotte and Louise.

At the far end of the room a table, pitchers full of something green, bottles of beer and wine. The room is filling with people: Ivan, Vladimir, Magda, Adam, Edouard, Imran, Rafiq, Aoife, Mohammed, Thaddeus, Natalia, Ana, Martin, Muriel, the listeners of Group III and their selected guests; more of them keep pouring through the door. Invitations to the listeners’ Christmas party are sought after: it’s an unmissable event. The Sub-director of Technical Services and Support is there; the Director himself is rumoured to be putting in a brief appearance; strategists, analysts and operatives have descended from the top floors for the evening. Thaddeus has connected his tape-recorder to a pair of large loudspeakers and in place of whispering voices music is crashing out.

Stephen does not recognise the music, which is already at a volume that discourages conversation and will get louder still. That’s good. He doesn’t want to talk, he wants to drink this emerald liquid which tastes of mint and lime; it’s cool, it’s cleansing, it’s clear streams through mountain meadows, icy waterfalls. He takes a pitcher from the table; he will walk
around the room filling people’s glasses – in that way he will look like a belonger, like a host, and he can fill his own. ‘Hello,’ Rhona says, smiling at him and holding out her glass, ‘What’s in this? Is it absinthe?’

‘It might be, I don’t know.’

‘Well, absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, so they say.’

‘Chasing the green fairy,’ Adam, standing next to Rhona, says, and Charlotte, coming up to join them, laughs with pleasure. ‘That’s what Edouard calls this concoction –
la fée verte
.’

‘Is absinthe the same as wormwood?’ Rhona is asking but Stephen turns away before Adam can answer; he doesn’t need to know. Wormwood, bitter gall. Drink it down, this Lethean cocktail, it slides like green ice down the throat and numbs your tight-stretched nerves. First chill, then stupor, then the letting go, have another and pour what’s left into the nearest glass, the bass notes of the music thud.

Solly is circulating with a plate of sausage rolls, Louise is tendering sandwiches: ham, cheese, tuna and salami; there’s more cheese on the table, the Stilton Stephen bought. Cheese and pineapple on sticks. Don’t fuss about food, it sticks in the throat, you could easily choke to death on a cocktail sausage; besides, it soaks up the drink and turns it into moss. Or swamp-grass. Marsh-grass, samphire, sapphires and garlic in the mud, no that’s not it, marram, the grimpen mire where the monsters live. Grendel in the snake-infested depths, oh lend me your sword and shield, why is this pitcher empty?

The music is different now, as Ivan has changed the tape. It’s the music of the steppes, of bareback riders on wild horses, of the tundra, of the frozen wastes, it’s Leningrad sorrowing for Petersburg, it’s homesickness for places never visited and
it brings the sting of tears to Stephen’s eyes. But it is making Ivan happy, and Thaddeus and Rafiq; they have linked arms, are kicking out their legs and dancing and others are joining in. No one seems sad at all. Martin has the highest kick, the onlookers clap and cheer.

‘Stevie, do you feel like passing the quiches around?’

‘I’m quite happy doing drinks; has Edouard gone to mix another jug?’

Indeed Edouard conjures up more nectar and Mohammed calls out that it is time to hear some real music. A babel of melody, stridor, stramash, how is it that it plucks your heartstrings, makes them quiver, my monkish life is quiet but for the ringing in my ears. Tintinnabulation, hark now I hear them ding dong bell, ‘Don’t forget the avocado dip,’ Greta is instructing Solly.

Now there is another tape, reversion, and he does know this: it’s Giles; it’s Giles’s number-one hit and it is strange to hear that high voice in this room,
mon semblable, mon frère
, when we were boys together we did not know the men we would become. If I had known what I know now, I would have lived my life another way.

Charlotte is swaying through the crowd, holding out her hands. ‘It’s your best friend!’ she says, ‘Come on, Steve, you’ve got to dance!’ He resists, he ardently protests, he stands his ground, his legs stiff and his feet firmly rooted to the carpet but she will not be daunted. She grabs the jug that he is clutching to him, thrusts it at Damian who is spurring her on, seizes Stephen by the hand and drags him to the cleared space at the other end of the room where there are couples dancing. Giles’s taunting voice, his heart-breaking voice, and the drum beat throbbing and Charlotte with his hand in hers, flourishing
her free arm and waggling her hips. The music slows and she draws him to her, throws her arms around him, she is as tall as he is, he can feel her breasts against his chest, he links his arms around her waist, her mouth an inch from his, scent of smoke and wine. Stephen’s head is spinning, the entire world is spinning, the drum beats are his heartbeats, she is hot against him, human in his arms and solid, and he is leaning a fraction closer, her mouth a moth-wing’s width away, when horrifyingly he sees over her shoulder Rollo Buckingham and
PHOENIX
, twin cocks of the walk, the dark and the fair, both swaggering toward them through the knot of dancers. Charlotte, intent on him, is oblivious to them until Greenwood claps both hands across her eyes and holds them there as blindfold. ‘Guess who?’ he says, and his voice is not his own. Charlotte, letting go of Stephen, tugs at the hands to break their clasp, twists round and greets the man: ‘Oh Marlow McPherson, you wicked thing!’ she says and she is laughing. ‘What do you think you’re doing – you gave me quite a fright!’