A spy by nature am-1, page 10
part #1 of Alec Milius Series
“I was ringing about the results of Sisby.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Well, say something, then. Tell me. Good or bad.
“I wondered if you knew anything.”
“Yes, we do.”
And there’s a terrible beat now, a gathering of courage before bad news.
“I’m afraid that the board felt you were not up to the very high standards required. I’m sorry, Alec, but we won’t be able to take your application any further.”
My first instinct is that he has mistaken me for somebody else: the Hobbit, perhaps even Ogilvy. But there has been no confusion. Soon every glimpse of promise I have ever shown is ebbing from me like a wound. Liddiard is talking, but I cannot pick up the words. I feel debilitated, bone weak, crushed. In the circumstances I should try to say something dignified, accept defeat graciously, and withdraw. But I am too shocked to react. I stand in the hall holding the phone against my ear, ingesting failure. And because I am not saying anything, Liddiard tries to placate me.
“Would you like me to indicate to you where we felt the weakness was in your application?”
“Okay.”
“It was the group exercise primarily. The board felt you did not display sufficient depth of knowledge about the subjects under discussion.”
“Did anybody else make it through? Sam? Matthew?”
This is all I want to know. Just tell me that I came the closest out of all of them.
“For obvious reasons I can’t reveal that.”
I think I detect contempt in the way he says this, as if my asking such a stupid question has only verified their decision not to hire me.
“No, of course you can’t.”
“But thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the recruitment procedure. We all very much enjoyed meeting you.”
Oh, fuck off.
“It’s nice of you to say so. Thank you.”
“Good-bye.”
9
THIS IS YOUR LIFE
My first instinct, and this shames me, is to ring Mum. No sooner have I put the phone down on Liddiard than I am picking it up again and dialing her number in Somerset. She never goes out in the afternoon. She’ll tell me everything’s all right.
The number rings out shrill and clean. I can tell her everything, I can get it all off my chest. And I can do so in the full assurance that she will actually express relief at my failure. She might even be horrified to learn that I had even considered employment in such a murky organization. That her only child, her son, could have gone into such a thing without telling his mother…
I hang up. She’ll never know. It’s as simple as that.
Receiving bad news is always like this: there’s too much information to process, too much at stake that has been irretrievably lost. Something similar happened when Mum told me that my father had died. My mind went absolutely numb, and there was nothing I could do to put his loss into perspective.
The telephone rings, a volt of shock in my chest. I don’t even think about screening the call on my answering machine. I know it’s Hawkes.
“Alec?”
“Yes. Hello, Michael.”
“I’ve just heard the news. I’m very sorry. I really thought you’d go the whole way.”
“You weren’t the only one.”
“They telephoned me about an hour ago.”
“Why? Why did they call you? I thought you’d retired?”
He stalls here, as if making something up.
“Well, given that it was me who initiated your candidacy, they wanted to keep me informed.”
“But I thought you’d left? I thought you were in the oil business now.”
“You never really leave, Alec. It’s an ongoing thing.”
“So you’re not doing that anymore?”
“Don’t be concerned about me. Let’s talk about your situation.”
“Okay.”
His voice has thinned out, flustered, concealing something.
“They suggested to me that your cognitive tests were fractionally below par. That’s all they said.”
“They told me it was the group exercise, not the cognitive tests.”
Another awkward pause.
“Oh?”
“Yes. Said I wasn’t fully in control of my brief or something. Hadn’t covered all the angles.”
“Well, yes, there was that, too.”
He has obviously squared what to tell me with Liddiard, but one of them has fucked up. It must have been the interview with Stevenson. They know I lied about Kate.
“Did they give you any other reason why I failed?”
“Don’t see it as a failure, Alec.”
“That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Why can’t he just be honest about it? I’ve let him down. He recommended me and I’ve embarrassed him. I was so sure it was going to be all right.
“The vast majority of candidates don’t even make it through to Sisby. To have progressed beyond the initial interviews is an achievement in itself.”
“Well, it’s good of you to say so,” I say, suddenly wanting to be rid of him. “Thanks for recommending me in the first place.”
“Oh, not at all. What will you do now? Go back to your old job?”
“Probably.”
He pauses briefly before saying, “We haven’t exhausted every avenue, of course. There are alternatives.”
For now this is of no interest to me. I simply want the conversation to end.
“You’ve done enough. Don’t worry. Thank you for everything.”
“You’re sure?” He sounds disappointed. “Think about it, Alec. And in the meantime, if there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”
“That’s kind. Thank you.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
A lie. Why would he bother contacting me again? My usefulness to him has passed.
“I’ll look forward to it,” I tell him.
“Don’t be too down, Alec. As I say, there are other options.”
At around six I go over to Saul’s, for company and for some way of shaking off the gloom. It takes about three-quarters of an hour to get there, driving through the rush-hour traffic and then finding somewhere to park. He has put up a notice on the door of his flat: JUST AS MUCH JUNK MAIL AS YOU CAN SPARE, PLEASE. When I see it, I smile for the first time in hours.
He pours two vodkas-mine without ice-and we sit in front of the television in the sitting room. A balding actor on This Is Your Life has just been surprised by the host, Michael Aspel, sporting his big red book. Saul says something about minor celebrities in Britain being “really minor” and retrieves a cigarette he had going from an ashtray.
“Who’s that?” he asks as a middle-aged woman in pink emerges onto the stage, mugging to the camera.
“No idea.”
She starts telling a story. Saul leans back.
“Christ. Is there anything more tedious than listening to people telling anecdotes on This Is Your Life?”
I do not respond. There is a constant, nagging disquiet inside me that I cannot shake off.
“What’ve you been up to?” he asks. “Day off as well?”
“Yeah. I’ve had a lot happening.”
“Right.”
He twists toward me on the sofa.
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah.”
“You look worn out.”
“I am.”
There shouldn’t be any need to, but I try to convey a greater sense of melancholy than may be visible, just in case Saul hasn’t detected it.
“Alec, what is it?”
He switches the television off with the remote control. The image sucks into itself until it forms a tiny white blob, which then snuffs out.
“Bad news.”
“What? Tell me.”
“I’ve done a stupid thing. I handed in my notice to Nik.”
“That isn’t stupid. It’s about time.”
This irritates me. He always thought I was wasting away at CEBDO. Fiddling while Rome burns.
“I did it for the wrong reason. I did it because I was sure I was set at the Foreign Office.”
“That job you were applying for?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t get it?”
“No. I found out today.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t tell anyone else I was applying for it, did you?”
“No. Course not. You told me not to.”
I believe him.
“Thanks.”
“So what happened? Did you fuck up the exams?”
“Yeah. Toughest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You shouldn’t be disappointed. I’ve heard they’re like that. Hardly anyone gets through.”
“It’s more shame than disappointment. It’s as if my worst fears about myself have been confirmed. I thought I was clever enough to make a career out of it. It really seemed to make sense. I spent so long thinking I was good enough to do top-level work, but now it turns out I was just deluding myself.”
I don’t like admitting failure to Saul. It doesn’t feel right. But there’s an opportunity here to talk through a few things, in confidence, which I want to take advantage of.
“Well, I never knew why you wanted to join in the first place,” he says.
I drain the vodka.
“Because I was flattered to be asked.”
“To be asked? You never said anything about being asked. You didn’t say anything about anyone approaching you.”
Careful.
“Didn’t I? No. Well, I met someone at a dinner party at Mum’s. He’d just retired from the Diplomatic Service. Put me onto it. Gave me a phone number.”
“Oh.”
Saul offers me a cigarette, lights one of his own.
“What was his name?”
“George Parker.”
“And why did you want to join?”
“Because it was exciting. Because I wanted to do it for Dad. Because it beat ripping Czechs off for a living. I don’t know. This meant so much to me. I’ll never get a chance like that again. To be on the top table.”
The conversation dies now for a second or two. I don’t think Saul is really in the mood for it: I’ve come around uninvited on his day off.
“Listen,” he says. “I think you’re lucky not to have got in.”
This is exactly the wrong thing to say to me.
“Why? Why am I in any way lucky? This was my big chance to get ahead, to start a career.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think-”
“It’s been every day for four months.”
“I had no idea-”
“You’re not the only one who’s ambitious, you know. I have ambitions.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
He is being defensive now, a little patronizing. My anger has unnerved him.
“I wanted to work abroad, to have some excitement. I wanted to stop pissing away my youth.”
“So what’s stopping you? Go out and get a different job. The Foreign Office isn’t the only organization that offers positions overseas.”
“What’s the point? What’s the point in a corporate job when you can get downsized or sacked whenever the next recession comes along?”
“Don’t exaggerate. Don’t just repeat what you’ve heard on TV.”
“Anyway, it’s too late. I should have done it straight out of LSE. That’s the time to spend two or three years working away from home. Not now. I’m supposed to be establishing myself in a career.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Look around, Saul. Everybody we knew at university did the job fair circuit, did their finals, and then went straight into a sensible career where they’ll be earning thirty or forty grand in a couple of years’ time. These were people who were constantly stoned, who never went to lectures, who could barely string a sentence together. And now they’re driving company cars and paying fifty quid a month into pension plans and ‘health insurance.’ That’s what I should be doing instead of sitting around waiting for things to happen to me. It doesn’t work that way. You have to make your own luck. How did they know what to do with their lives when they were only twenty-one?”
“People grow up.”
“Evidently. I should’ve gone into the City. Read law. Taken a risk. What was the point in spending four years reading Russian and business studies if I wasn’t going to use them?”
“Jesus, Alec. You’re twenty-four, for Christ’s sake. You can still do whatever you like. It just requires a bit of imagination.”
There’s a glimmer here of something hopeful, a zip of optimism, but the stubbornness in me won’t grasp it.
“If you could have just met some of the people I did the entrance exams with. To think that they could have got the job and not me. There was this one Cambridge guy. Sam Ogilvy. Smooth, rich, vacuous. I bet they took him.”
“What does it matter if they did? You jealous or something?”
“No. No, I’m not. He was…he was…” How to describe Ogilvy to Saul? In an uncomfortable way, they reminded me of each other. “What did that man on TV call Tony Blair? ‘A walking Autocue in a sensible suit.’ That’s exactly what this guy was like. In order to get anywhere these days we have to be like Sam Ogilvy. An ideas-free zone. A platitude in patent leather shoes. That’s what employers are looking for. Coachloads of Tony Blairs.”
There is a message from Hawkes on my answering machine when I get home at eight fifteen. Were it not for the fact that I have had four vodkas, I might be more surprised to hear from him.
“Alec. It’s Michael. I’m coming to London tomorrow and I suggest we get together for lunch. Have a chat about things. Give me a ring in the country.”
His voice sounds stern. He leaves a contact number and I say, “Yeah, whatever,” to the machine, but out of inquisitiveness scribble it down on a pad.
For dinner I microwave some pasta and watch television for an hour, unable to concentrate on much beyond the shock of SIS. The rejection begins to act like heartbreak. Just when I think I’ve found some respite, after six hours of soul-searching and self-pity, something triggers the pain again-a memory of Stevenson, of Rouse standing firm in the window. So many ideas and plans, so many secret aspirations that will now remain untested. I was absolutely prepared to live my life as a shadow of who I really am. Surely they saw that? Surely there was something I could have done for them? I cannot understand why I have been discarded with such speed and ruthlessness. It makes no sense. To be left with this shaming feeling, the grim realization that there is nothing that marks me out from the crowd.
At around nine, after finishing a half-empty bottle of wine in the fridge, I go out to the corner shop and buy a four-pack of Stella. By the time I have finished the first can, I have written this in longhand:
Alec Milius
111E Uxbridge Road
London W12 8NL
15 August 1995
Patrick Liddiard
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
No. 46A-Terrace
London SW1
Dear Mr. Liddiard:
Further to our conversation on the telephone this morning, there are one or two points I would like to raise in relation to my failed application to join the Secret Intelligence Service.
It concerns me that your department is in possession of a file that contains detailed information about me, ranging across my background and education, with further confidential material about my professional and personal life.
Could you please confirm by return of post that this file has been destroyed?
Yours sincerely, Alec Milius
I read it back a couple of times and extract “by return of post,” which doesn’t sound right. Then, with the letter stamped, addressed, and in my pocket, I lock up the flat and head for a bar in Goldhawk Road.
10
MEANING
I am woken at nine forty-five by the noise of the telephone, the sound of it moving toward me out of a deep sleep, growing louder, more substantial, incessant. At first I turn over in bed, determined to let it ring out, but the answering machine is switched off and the caller won’t relent. I throw back the duvet and stand up.
It is as if one part of my brain lurches from the right side of my head to the left. I almost fall to the floor with the pain of it. And the phone keeps on ringing. Naked, stumbling across the hall, I reach the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Alec?”
It’s Hawkes. With the sound of his voice I immediately reexperience the stab of my failure at SIS, the numb regret and the shame.
“Michael. Yes.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I was just listening to the radio. Didn’t hear it ring.”
“My apologies.”
“It’s fine.”
“Can you meet me for lunch?”
The thought of gathering myself together sufficiently to spend two or three hours with Hawkes feels impossible with such a hangover. But there is a temptation here, a sense of unfinished business. I spot his telephone number scribbled on the pad beside the phone.
We haven’t exhausted every avenue. There are alternatives.
“Sure. Where would you like to meet?”
He gives me an address in Kensington and hangs up.
There had better be something in this. I don’t want to waste my time listening to Hawkes tell me where I went wrong, saying over and over again how sorry he is. I’d rather he just left me alone.
He cooks lunch for the two of us in the kitchen of a small flat on Kensington Court Place, beef Stroganoff and rice that is still crunchy, with a few tired beans on the side. Never been married, and he still can’t cook. There is an open bottle of Chianti, but I stick to mineral water as the last of my hangover fades.
We barely discuss either SIS or Sisby. His exact words are, “Let’s put that behind us. Think of it as history,” and instead the subjects are wide-ranging and unconnected, with Hawkes doing most of the talking. I have to remind myself continually that this is only the second occasion on which we have met. It is strange once again to encounter the man who has shaped the course of my life these last few months. There is something capricious about his face. I had forgotten how thin it is, drawn out like an addict’s. He is still wearing a frayed shirt and a haphazard cravat, still the same pair of velvet loafers embroidered on the toe with a coat of arms. How odd that a person who has given his life to secrecy and concealment should be so willing to stand out from the crowd.
