‘This is better,’ she said. We were in bed. I said nothing. ‘It is better, isn’t it?’ she asked anxiously.
I kissed her. ‘It’s madness and you know it.’
‘Nanny and the children won’t be back for hours.’
‘I mean you and me. When will you realize that I’m twenty years older than you are?’
‘I love you and you love me.’
‘I didn’t say I loved you,’ I said.
She pulled a face. She resented the fact that I wouldn’t say I loved her, but I was adamant; she was so young that I felt I was taking advantage of her. It was absurd, but refusing to tell her that I loved her enabled me to hang onto a last shred of self-respect.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. She pulled the bedclothes over our heads to make a tent. ‘I know you love me, but you don’t want to admit it.’
‘Do your parents suspect that we’re having an affair?’
‘Are you still frightened that my father will come after you?’
‘You’re damned right I am.’
‘I’m a grown woman,’ she said. The more I tried to explain my feelings to her, the more amused she always got. She laughed and snuggled down in the bed, pressing against me.
‘You’re only ten years older than little Sally.’
She grew tired of the tent game and threw the bedclothes back. ‘Your daughter is eight. Apart from the inaccurate mathematics of that allegation, you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that when your lovely daughter is ten years older she will be a grown woman too. Much sooner than that, in fact. You’re an old fogy, Bernard.’
‘I have Dicky telling me that I’m fat and flabby and you telling me that I’m an old fogy. It’s enough to crush a man’s ego.’
‘Not an ego like yours, darling.’
‘Come here,’ I said. I hugged her tight and kissed her.
The truth was that I was falling in love with her. I thought of her too much; soon everyone at the office would guess what was between us. Worse, I was becoming frightened at the prospect of this impossible affair coming to an end. And that, I suppose, is love.
‘I’ve been filing for Dicky all week.’
‘I know, and I’m jealous.’
‘Dicky is such an idiot,’ she said for no apparent reason. ‘I used to think he was so clever, but he’s such a fool.’ She was amused and scornful, but I didn’t miss the element of affection in her voice. Dicky seemed to bring out the maternal instinct in all women, even in his wife.
‘You’re telling me. I work for him.’
‘Did you ever think of getting out of the Department, Bernard?’
‘Over and over again. But what would I do?’
‘You could do almost anything,’ she said with the adoring intensity and the sincere belief that are the marks of those who are very young.
‘I’m forty,’ I said. ‘Companies don’t want promising “young” men of forty. They don’t fit into the pension scheme and they’re too old to be infant prodigies.’
‘I shall get out soon,’ she said. ‘Those bastards will never give me paid leave to go to Cambridge, and if I don’t go up next year I’m not sure when I’ll get another place.’
‘Have they told you they won’t give you paid leave?’
‘They asked me if unpaid leave would suit me just as well. Morgan, actually; that little Welsh shit who does all the dirty work for the D-G’s office.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him to get stuffed.’
‘In those very words?’
‘No point in beating about the bush, is there?’
‘None at all, darling,’ I said.
‘I can’t stand Morgan,’ she said. ‘And he’s no friend of yours either.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I heard him talking to Bret Rensselaer last week. They were talking about you. I heard Morgan say he felt sorry for you really because there was no real future for you in the Department now that your wife’s gone over to the Russians.’
‘What did Bret say?’
‘He’s always very just, very dispassionate, very honourable and sincere; he’s the beautiful American, Bret Rensselaer. He said that the German Section would go to pieces without you. Morgan said the German Section isn’t the only Section in the Department and Bret said, “No, just the most important one”.’
‘How did Morgan take that?’
‘He said that when the Stinnes debriefing is completed Bret might think again.’
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘What’s that bastard talking about?’
‘Don’t get upset, Bernie. It’s just Morgan putting the poison in. You know what he’s like.’
‘Frank Harrington said Morgan is the Martin Bormann of London South West One.’ I laughed.
‘Explain the joke to me.’
‘Martin Bormann was Hitler’s secretary, but by controlling the paperwork of Hitler’s office and by deciding who was permitted to have an audience with Hitler, Bormann became the power behind the throne. He decided everything that happened. People who upset Bormann never got to see Hitler and their influence and importance waned and waned.’
‘And Morgan controls the D-G like that?’
‘The D-G is not well,’ I said.
‘He’s as nutty as a fruitcake,’ said Gloria.
‘He has good days and bad days,’ I said. I was sorry for the D-G; he’d been good in his day – tough when it was necessary, but always scrupulously honest. ‘But by taking on the job of being the D-G’s hatchet man – a job no one else wanted – Morgan has become a formidable power in that building. And he’s done it in a very short time.’
‘How long has he been in the Department?’
‘I don’t know exactly – two years, three at the most. Now he’s talking to old-timers like Bret Rensselaer and Frank Harrington as man to man.’
‘That’s right. I heard him ask Bret about taking charge of the Stinnes debriefing. Bret said he had no time. Morgan said it wouldn’t be time-consuming; it was just a matter of holding the reins so that the Department knew what was happening, from day to day, over at London Debriefing Centre. You’d have thought Morgan was the D-G the way he was saying it.’
‘And how did Bret react to that?’
‘He asked for time to think it over, and it was decided that he’d let Morgan know next week. And then Bret asked if anyone knew when Frank Harrington was retiring, and Morgan said nothing was fixed. Bret said, “Nothing?” in a funny voice and they laughed. I don’t know what that was about.’
‘The D-G has a knighthood to dispose of. Rumour says it will go to Frank Harrington when he retires from the Berlin office. Everyone knows that Bret would give his right arm for a knighthood.’
‘I see. Is that how people get knighthoods?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘There was something else,’ said Gloria. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you this, but Morgan said the D-G had decided it would