The Madness of July (42 page)

‘I think there are more,’ said Abel. ‘And this.’ He flipped open the second folder and they looked at the carbon copy of a typed report. Flemyng began to read. It was a brief memoir, written by his mother, beginning in January 1944. ‘I’m told we can’t take it away,’ Abel said. ‘But it’s here for us any time we want it. Today isn’t the day, but I suggest we both come back sometime. OK?’ Flemyng nodded, looked again at the picture, and closed both the folders.

They thanked the secretary who materialized in the lobby the moment they’d left his office. And promised to return. Flemyng spoke with obvious emotion. ‘Those years made my mother, in all kinds of ways. I think they still teach us a great deal. Thank you.’

‘My pleasure. Good afternoon, Mr Grauber. Mr Flemyng. Until the next time.’

Outside, they walked in silence for several minutes and took the tube to Embankment, where they walked along the river.

*

At times they were still feeling each other out, as if, despite everything, they were at the start of a relationship. Yet warmth welled up and brought them by degrees to a closeness that was all the better for having taken time, and been worked at back and forth. Each felt it deepening, minute by minute, although they didn’t address the feeling directly. Patience, for both of them, was a way of life. They visited a gallery, then walked without a plan, letting instinct be their guide. By late afternoon they were back at the riverside, Abel with a bag of second-hand books swinging by his side. Only then did they begin to talk of the family and their hopes for the future. ‘My energy is coming back,’ said Flemyng. ‘Does it take a crisis?’

‘Probably,’ said Abel. ‘That’s my general rule. When this is over, I hope we’ll both take something away from it.’ Then, changing pace to speak more slowly, he delivered what he had planned to say.

‘And, more to the point, leave something behind.’

He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder as he spoke, and squeezed, forcing Flemyng to stand still.

He was silent for a moment, and didn’t move. Then all the tumblers in the lock rolled over, and he was in at last, all the way, through the last door. A thrill of revelation ran through him. He said nothing. All at once, he knew how it must be.

He started to walk again with Abel slightly behind him, and a few minutes passed before their conversation resumed. For the first time since they’d spoken in Paul’s office, after Ruskin’s departure, they turned to Maria. Her message to Abel had suggested that the last pieces were falling into place, and Flemyng said he’d like to see her again, away from the battlefield.

‘After this, she’s all yours,’ said Abel.

Flemyng was caught in the embrace of his own emotions. He recovered by reverting to practicalities. ‘What happens with Ruskin? His state of mind, what he knows?’

‘If you were Paul you’d have to advise – insist – that they try to keep him in his job, on the condition that he agrees to get straightened out immediately, and is watched right the way through. Keep one more secret in the box and nail the lid down. He’d be a nightmare on the loose.’

They parted as the heat of the day was subsiding, Flemyng leaving Abel at the Lorimer and taking a taxi home, reassured by a feeling of satisfaction greater than he had known for weeks. Two hours with Francesca, then he would come back into town for dinner at his own club, and the end of it all.

*

They dined well, Flemyng having booked the private room where they sat at a perfectly round table, with the lights down low. There were candles on a sideboard and the brothers revelled in the warmth of their soft light. They told old stories, spoke about Altnabuie, and agreed that they would travel north the next day. Flemyng could escape with them for forty-eight hours. Mungo had sent Babble on ahead, and they thought of him preparing happily for the night sleeper and savouring the thought of highland air, hip flask in hand. They spoke of the family investigations that Mungo and Flemyng must begin, and Abel found himself humbled by the relish with which they spoke of the research that lay ahead. ‘I’m a schoolboy,’ Mungo said. ‘Starting again. And do you know,’ he continued, raising a glass to toast the family, ‘all will be well. For you, too, Will.’ At another time, sententious; at that moment, perfect.

Paul arrived on the stroke of nine and greeted Mungo warmly. After a few minutes small talk was suspended. Abel spoke first. ‘Mungo, you’ll have to excuse us for a few minutes.’ He and Paul left the room, closing the door behind them.

‘I can tell you that our end is fixed,’ Abel said as they sat together on a bench in the empty cloakroom corridor. They had their backs against the panelled wall, and a straw hat hung on a member’s peg just above Paul’s head; a dangling pink-and-green ribbon touched his shoulder and gave him a splash of colour.

Abel was going through an invisible contract, clause by clause. ‘I’ve spoken to Maria. She knows what your imprimatur means. Paul, she and I understand how difficult this is for your people. But I can tell you that there will be benefits. You’re giving us something important, so there will be payback in the future. Generous payback. That’s the deal Sassi has done, and your guys know it. He’s determined to acknowledge what you’ve persuaded everyone to do at your end, and he will help. He’s seen the cables – a good selection, let’s put it like that – and knows the thing from both ends. Been through it backwards in the last week.’

Paul said, ‘I know. It’s done.’

Abel continued. ‘To be clear, I’ve told Maria that your asset will be open to us, that it is understood on both sides and everything will be confirmed in a letter, hand-delivered to Washington this week by a trusted emissary known personally to both parties. It will be read at the highest level – the very highest – with only three people present, in an office I need not name. Correct?’

Paul confirmed London’s acceptance. In truth, he said, he knew of only two such occasions in his time, but a private letter – bypassing the Washington embassy – was sometimes the only way. It would be written the next day, when the Paris party returned, and carried to Washington immediately. Afterwards, it would be brought home to London where it would rest in the deepest dungeon.

He said, ‘We both know how important it is to put this behind us. Believe me, it will happen.’

Their to-and-fro pledges piled up. Paul was authorized to say that certain operations in the past using an American official would be disclosed. The books would be opened, and bygones would be bygones. Each of them knew that things were never so simple, but the promise had to be made.

The smoke could clear, and some of the embarrassment with it.

Abel said that the file would be closed at that moment, and added that there were bound to be some matters in London, and other places too, which could be shared in times to come as recompense. Some, by which they both knew they did not mean all, not by a long stretch. He raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘We never know what we don’t know, do we?’ he said.

‘And it will all be over,’ said Paul. ‘Until next time.’

Abel looked at the floor. ‘Yeah
.
’

He said that a notice was going out to all American embassies the following week, routine circulation. It would intimate that after a distinguished career in the foreign service, Mr William K. Bendo II, late political attaché and liaison for the Berlin military mission and the embassy in Bonn, was retiring to take a job in the private sector, based in London, carrying the thanks of his colleagues with him.

Abel said, ‘We’ll be talking to him at some length, as you know, to go all the way back. Starting in a few days. I’m on leave from New York until it’s done.’

He went on, ‘In the end he was relieved. Profoundly, I think. Always the way. Couldn’t talk about it, though. Wouldn’t let the last veil drop, even for me.’

Abel recalled the beginning. ‘I was just the hound who followed the scent.’ It was Maria who first sniffed out the trouble. Poor Bendo.’

‘When?’ said Paul, being one for timetables. Abel shook his head.

No one wanted blood. As the affair came to its end, each was aware that some day the story might come to life again, but for them it was winding down. Abel’s heavy eyes lifted towards Paul’s, carrying a hint of amusement. They smiled together in the shadows, and heard a gust of laughter coming from the dining room as a waiter opened the door.

Each reflected on the truth of his different life, that restoration was their common watchword. Keep it running, make it work. They spoke of Maria, and how it had been managed.

‘My worry was always that it would get out of control after Manson died, without anyone trying to make that happen,’ said Paul. ‘We couldn’t know what he’d said, who he’d met, whether he’d been trying to unpick the whole thing. We knew nothing of his motives, and that terrified us. And it turned out to be sex, as usual. Ruskin and a bloody one night stand.’

Abel said, ‘And we worried that it would foul up everything we were trying to get you guys to do for us in Berlin; that some minister’s personal crap would make you batten down the hatches and call it all off. Because it turns out that Ruskin knows too much about Berlin, doesn’t he? Without that we wouldn’t have had any of this trouble.

‘Strangely enough, we’ve been saved by his collapse. After this morning, that terrible scene, he’ll have to pull back. He can’t face ruin. You’ve got him in a job here where he can be controlled, offered help. You can force him through. He’s scared to death.’ Paul said, ‘I know that now.’

Abel continued. ‘Maria held it together. Kept her nerve. And all the time I worried about Will, because I couldn’t tell him. You realize that. It would break the rules that keep us together. To be brothers, we need some secrets.’

He then surprised Paul. ‘I did find out about that message about Will, you know. From Wherry. Who else?
Friend Flemyng knows,
in Joe’s notebook. I assumed it was a woman. You too?’ Paul said nothing. ‘She knew of Ruskin’s political friends, because she’s watched them down the years – fascinated by the whole gang – and told Joe to try to get to Will, thinking he’d know all about it. Knew nothing of the complicated closeness between Will and Ruskin. Had Will’s number from me – years ago, for emergency use – and I’ve wondered why he didn’t use it first thing he got here. Any ideas?’

Paul shook his head.

Abel said he’d come to the conclusion that it was something else that Flemyng was meant to know, a story from Berlin. ‘I don’t think that message came from Joe’s woman at all – I think he’d picked it up in Germany on his own. And I’ve no doubt it came from Bendo. There wasn’t much he didn’t know about your operations over there, and he was panicking. We know how it is with guys who’re near the end. I’ll soon find out – we’re taking him in to start his debriefing. Might even let your boys know.’ He laughed.

There was nothing more to say. They got up, turned the corner back to the dining room, where the other brothers were deep in conversation and claret. On their return, Flemyng went to the lobby to ring Francesca. She told him to contact Lucy, urgently.

He rang, sounding unsure. ‘What is it?’

She said there was no trouble of an official kind, for once. But did he remember that on Sunday night – there was an awkward pause – she had mentioned that she was writing something personal. Yes. Well, it had come to pass. She’d been offered her next posting, and had made her decision. ‘I was going to say no, but I’ve changed my mind. I wanted you to be the first to know.’ Flemyng was embarrassed to feel relief, but he did. ‘Where?’

‘Washington, in October.’

He found himself laughing. ‘Well, I’ll see you there from time to time, no doubt.’ He congratulated her, and strode back inside feeling an inner glow that he hadn’t known for many days.

It lasted for a few minutes. They shared a glass or two, Abel left to speak to Maria, and Mungo spoke to Paul about Altnabuie, and how the brothers would soon be together on the hill and the loch. He described the world that he’d always known, the place that sustained him. Paul’s expression of envy was genuine. He could almost hear the burn tumbling through the woods, the dogs racing for the hill.

The moments stretched out happily. Abel came back. Then Paul was summoned by a porter’s knock on the door and a quiet word. He was gone for nearly ten minutes. When he returned he stood in the corner of the room, and became an outline in the shadows with a tableau of pictures behind him, standing away from a wall light that cast a soft spotlight beside him, and watched over by an Edwardian actor dressed as a Shakespearean king. Flemyng saw that his shoulders were drooping. He straightened a little, and his head went back. Then he turned, a hand at one cheek.

‘It’s not over. There’s a last act.’

28

During the days that followed, Mungo confessed to his brothers that he wondered when he heard that announcement whether he could hold his emotions in check. As a man whose carefully balanced life had been disturbed by the eruption of family secrets, he was vulnerable to the rising temperature that he felt around him, the flow of events bringing on a fever that he thought of as a proxy for his brother’s distress. At Paul’s words, he said he found it difficult to breathe, then turned light-headed, thinking himself liable at any moment to let his distress show, even to collapse. It was almost too much to feel another turn of the screw. Flemyng saw him stiffen with great effort when Paul spoke. Abel was quite still, arms at his side. Everyone in the room would later conclude that somewhere in the happy confusion and the heat of that climactic gathering they knew what Paul was about to say.

‘Ruskin is dead.’

‘Mungo, please,’ said Flemyng, breaking the quiet that had fallen. ‘If you don’t mind.’ His brother rose and left the room a little unsteadily, closing the door behind him with a benign gesture. They heard his footsteps cross the hall.

‘Overdose,’ said Paul.

‘That was his driver on the phone, patched straight through by the switchboard,’ Paul explained. ‘He was due to pick Jonathan up for the airport. He’d planned it, so it seems. Left the door open so that he would be found. As he has been.’