The Parrot Cage, page 37
‘So it really wasn’t Peter’s fault then?’
‘No. I can’t blame him for showing me things – life, myself, misery, great happiness, what it means really to care about people – all sorts of things of which I was as ignorant as Andrew. No, it wasn’t his fault.’ She sat down, but, restless, picked the completed stocking out of Evelyn’s knitting basket and unfolded it as though to examine it for quality. Then she refolded it, stood up, sat down again and at last said: ‘But I do hate the way he uses people.’
Evelyn stopped knitting. ‘So do I, Gerry,’ she said. ‘The only consolation I’ve found for myself – and I pass it on to you for whatever it may be worth – is that he doesn’t do it without knowing what he’s doing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ said Evelyn carefully. ‘He was here one weekend last autumn in a dreadful state about something. He was closeted most of the time with Bob, but he did come for a walk with me. We were standing on the hill looking down at your mother’s house when he said: “Eve, did you ever do something you hated because you knew you had to?”’
‘And what did you say?’ Gerry asked. Hearing a note of genuine interest in the voice that had been dull and heavy with pain all day, Evelyn decided to tell the truth.
‘That I had never faced anything like what he was obviously facing then, but that long ago I had had to do something the possible consequences of which might have been dreadful.’
‘But they weren’t?’
‘That’s just what he said, in just that tone. No, as it turned out, it was the right thing to have done, but I didn’t know that then,’ said Evelyn.
‘Evelyn, I don’t want to pry, but would you tell me about it?’
Gerry said, watching Evelyn’s long fingers so expertly manipulating the dull-looking wool around the needles.
‘It’s quite simple – but for your ears only. Bob and I brought Peter out from Russia during the civil war after the revolution, although he was in fact a prisoner of the British army. He was very ill and about to be abandoned to the White Russians in Archangel when your troops left. He would probably have been shot or sent to one of their murderous work camps on the islands in the bay up there; I think they reckoned to get about two years’ work out of their prisoners before they died. We took him away and smuggled him back here.’
‘I’d heard in the office that he had been a Communist, but no one seems to know that story. When did he stop being one?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Something happened to Peter in Moscow when he was alone – after the rest of the family had fled up north – and his “conversion” may have happened as early as that. Certainly he started to work for the government here very soon after he recovered his health, and presumably that is an indication of his political allegiance.’
‘Have you never asked him?’ Gerry said, astonished.
‘No. We don’t talk about any of it. Almost the only time he has spoken to me seriously about Russia is when he came to tell me that an uncle of his had been shot there.’ Evelyn’s voice faltered as she spoke, and Gerry hesitated to ask anything else. But after a while Evelyn picked up the thread of her story again.
‘I don’t know how he had heard about it, but he knew how much I cared for his uncle and so he told me. Nikolai Alexandrovitch Suvarov, shot for anti-Soviet activity, which turned out to have been trying to organise some kind of food distribution among the peasants who were starving in the villages around his home.’
‘When?’
‘What? Oh, about five years before the war. A long time ago now. And he would have been quite an old man then.’
‘Tell me about him,’ said Gerry warmly, trying to help Evelyn as she had always helped everyone who came to her.
‘I haven’t spoken about him for years, but there aren’t many days when he isn’t somewhere in my thoughts. He was a wonderful man, Gerry, with all Peter’s sensitivity to other people and that tremendous power of attraction, but with more solidity of character and … well, I suppose the only way of putting it is to say that he was much more careful of people than Peter is. No; that’s not really it. You could just say that he was kind, much kinder than Peter.’
‘Sometimes he can be very kind,’ said Gerry in a far gentler voice than she had used before. ‘He was wonderful to Ming at the beginning.’
‘I know,’ said Evelyn, smiling at her, ‘and sometimes he looks and sounds so like Nikki that it almost breaks my heart. But there is something hard and twisted in Peter that would have been quite foreign to Nikki.’
‘Twisted?’ repeated Gerry, looking puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve never been able to discover,’ said Evelyn sadly. ‘Bob, who really knew him better than anyone else in the old days, thinks that Peter may have suffered some terrible disillusion – betrayal even – in 1918. He was so young then – and frightfully idealistic about the revolution. Something made him leave the relative safety of Moscow for the actual fighting in the civil war. Bob even thinks it’s possible that Peter wanted to be killed, perhaps because he couldn’t bear what was being done to Russia by the Bolsheviks. I don’t know.’
‘Could it have had something to do with his brother? They were twins, weren’t they?’ At Gerry’s questions, Evelyn flinched.
‘I have sometimes wondered,’ she said. ‘His brother was a “White”, you see; it is just possible that he was caught and perhaps shot. Perhaps Peter even had to order it.’ Evelyn covered her eyes for a moment. Then she took her hand away from her face and straightened her shoulders. ‘But, as I say, we’ve never spoken about what happened to him after we all left for Archangel and he stayed behind. Whatever it was, it seems to have damaged something in him, some fundamental kindness, and made him do these awful things to people.’
‘What … what kind of things?’ asked Gerry, wanting to know and yet afraid of what she might hear.
‘Oh, what I was trying to warn you about at the beginning. He makes people love him and then when they have broken open their shells for him, trusted him, let him see and know and touch all their loneliness, he forgets about them, and they are left on their own in the cold with all their protection smashed. It’s not pretty – or defensible.’
‘But why does he do it? He said once to Ming that having lost a twin she would be lonely all her life and I took that to mean that that was what had happened to him. He was so kind to her. Why should he hurt people like that if he knows what it feels like?’
‘I don’t know, Gerry, but it may be that he is so frightened of what people could do to him if he trusted them that when he starts to get close to anyone he drops them before they can hurt him. He was trying to stop it, I could see, before the war. Now I see so little of him and he is so hedged about by secrets that it’s difficult to tell. The one saving grace is that he has always loved Diana and does not desert her.’
‘But he is protected from closeness to her by her illness,’ said Gerry, suddenly becoming aware of a thought that must have been simmering for some time.
‘They’re right about you, Gerry.’
‘Who?’
‘Bob and Peter. They say that you have great insight.’ They sat in silence until Gerry eventually said that she was so tired she wanted to go to bed. Then Evelyn kissed her and they parted.
Gerry left Evelyn’s beautiful, peace-drenched house when her fortnight’s leave was up, and returned to the office, calmer than when she had left, but so sad that Mike nearly despaired for her. Flixe watched them together, noticing how much Mike cared for Gerry and unhappy for him that Gerry seemed not to have noticed. One afternoon Flixe tried to broach the subject with Mike, who made her promise never to say anything to Gerry.
‘All right,’ said Flixe, pacifically. ‘But it would make her so much happier to know. Won’t you tell her?’
‘As soon as I can. But there hasn’t been the right moment yet,’ said Mike, with an expression of such longing in his grey-blue eyes that Flixe could hardly bear it. Envy made her voice sharper than it ought to have been.
‘Don’t worry about her so much,’ Flixe said, patting his arm. ‘She’s really quite tough underneath it all.’
‘I do worry,’ he said simply and walked out of the room, leaving Flixe staring after him.
When Gerry came back to the office, she hardly seemed to notice the constraint that Flixe felt, just as she did not appear to understand, let alone share, the extravagant delight that the others felt when General de Gaulle took control of Paris on 25 August 1944. The threat of Communist revolution that had seemed so menacing disappeared overnight. As Jean-Pierre had once told Flixe, there had been Communists in every branch of the Resistance, in positions of potential power throughout France, and many of them and their watchers had assumed that victory over the Germans in France would be the signal for them to seize power.
But it did not happen; the threat ceased to exist; and de Gaulle set about re-establishing peace in France. For the first two months something like anarchy reigned. Communications and transport facilities had been devastated by a combination of the German occupation, sabotage, the Allied invasion and the vital efforts of the Resistance in support of that invasion. There was terrible scarcity of food and fuel. But above all there was a legacy of four years’ frustrated hate that had been forcing its way to the surface in unofficial trials of collaborators, informers and torturers even before the liberation of France. Uncounted tribunals ended in humiliation, punishment, torture, or execution, and it became horribly clear that not all the victims of such executions were guilty of any crime. In the anarchic state of virtual civil war there were private scores being settled.
One morning in early September, Flixe arrived at the office before any of the other analysts. It had become the usual practice for the first analyst to arrive to pick up anything that had been left overnight in the work tray and do whatever was necessary, passing it on to one of the others only if some special knowledge were needed.
Flixe took off her coat and hat and then went to collect the first bunch of papers in the tray. It consisted of several sheets of flimsy paper covered in close typing, which needed translating from the French. Pinned to one corner was a note from someone in one of the other secret departments saying:
‘Wasn’t she one of yours?’
Puzzled, Flixe began her translation. It was not until she reached the fourth paragraph that she realised that the subject of the paper was the Annette of whom Ming had told her in such glowing detail at Etchingham. With growing horror, Flixe read that a group of men in Laville had seized on the excuse of the liberation and the hunt for collaborators with the Germans to settle their old scores with Annette. She had been accused of collaboration, black-marketeering, sleeping with Germans and a long string of other offences. After a ludicrously sham trial, held without any kind of pretence of legality, she had been convicted. As Flixe began to translate the account of the various things that had been done to Annette, from rape to having her head shaved, she was tempted to give up and make one of the men take over. Then it seemed to her that in some way she owed it to Ming and Annette to do it herself.
Thirty-five minutes later Sandy arrived and said something to Flixe. Although the sense of his remark did not penetrate her consciousness, she was aware that someone had spoken and she looked up, saying:
‘What? Did you want me?’
Sandy took in the whiteness of her cheeks and the way her eyes seemed to have swollen and darkened and shook his head.
‘I only said good morning. Are you all right, Felicity?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. Did you know what they were doing in France? To women they accuse of collaboration, I mean.’
‘Ah. Yes, I’ve some idea. What have you got there?’
‘A report for the chief about one of these unofficial trials.’
‘Would you rather I dealt with it?’ Sandy asked, not entirely sure what was upsetting her most.
‘No. I’d better get on with it. Thanks though.’ She bent her head again and re-read the last paragraph she had written to make certain that she had not mistranslated it.
Desperately trying to understand, to be fair, to the men who could have done such unspeakable things to a woman who was in fact innocent of any crime, Flixe wondered what would have happened if England had been occupied, if she had lived in the kind of terror the French Resisters had had to survive for four years, if she had seen her friends carted off to some Gestapo torture chamber. At last, realising that those were not questions that could possibly be answered, she gave up even thinking and turned herself into a kind of translating machine. Then when she had finished she took her translation and the original report over to Sandy.
‘Could you do the evaluations, Sandy? It’s too much for me. I’m fairly certain the translation’s right, but I’m not up to sorting out how likely it is to be accurate – or even weigh up the significance if it is.’
‘Fine. Don’t you worry, Felicity. There’s plenty more in the tray. You can do my next one instead.’ He handed her another bunch of flimsies in exchange for her own and made no comment on the material she had given him, for which she was enormously grateful.
But, however hard she tried to concentrate on other work throughout the next few days, the thought of Annette kept returning to her. Even if she had been guilty of consorting with Germans, would that have justified what had been done to her? She might have been coerced into it through fear of physical brutality to herself or – worse – her family. What if she had done it to protect someone else, save someone from death or deportation? And then came the worst thought of all, which became less and less easy to escape, had the things of which Annette had been accused been so very different from what Flixe herself had done? True, she had only slept with Jean-Pierre at Suvarov’s request. But it had not been any good. Gerry’s reaction, she was certain, would have been an unpleasant experience, and it had brought in its train black-market food, nylon stockings, orchids, unjustifiable luxury.
At times she knew that she was being irrational and longed to be able to talk to someone about it. She even thought of trying to explain herself to Gerry, but that wouldn’t have been any good. Gerry’s reaction, she was certain, would have been an immediate and generous protest that there could be no connection between what her sister had done and what had happened in France. And it would not have been fair to burden Gerry with anything else while she was battling with her feelings about Andrew.
Then there came an idea, which made Flixe feel cold. Annette, whom she felt that she almost knew, must have been precisely the age of Anna Kingsley’s daughter, who had been given for adoption in France. With the memory of Ming’s description of Annette’s tall thin figure and dark hair, with the similarity of Christian names, with Annette’s apparent predilection for the English and alienation from the people of Laville, Flixe became more and more convinced. She had already been tempted to tell Ming about Annette’s ordeal, but stopped herself because there was nothing Ming could do to take it away and the knowledge of it could only make her miserable. Now she was still more tempted to talk to Anna Kingsley. But obviously she could not do that either. The more she thought about it all, the more worried and unhappy she became.
In the end Mike Endlesham took a hand and told Peter Suvarov that there was something seriously wrong with Felicity Alderbrook.
‘She looks like a ghost. Anyone would think it was she who had been widowed. She’s never shown any kind of feeling like it. I think she needs help.’ Suvarov looked at his young subordinate, vaguely wondering what had happened to change him from the neurotic, ill-looking fanatic of the early days of RE(1)R into someone who could worry so much about the condition of one of his colleagues.
‘Ah, Mike, thanks for alerting me,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’d better see her this evening in case it’s anything to do with her work. Look, I’ll send Gerry home at five-thirty sharp. Will you tell Flixe I want to see her at quarter to six?’
‘OK, Peter,’ said Mike, turning to go. ‘But look, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I take Gerry out somewhere? She’ll only get suspicious if you make her leave early and I don’t think she should have anything extra to worry about just now.’
Suvarov looked thoughtfully at Mike for a moment, his long dark eyes narrowing slightly. Mike began to blush.
‘All right, Mike. Off you go now. But be a little careful of her, won’t you? I don’t imagine that she’s ready…’ He broke off. To his surprise, Mike grinned.
‘Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing – for once.’
Chapter Thirty
As they had agreed, Mike climbed the stairs to the third floor at precisely twenty-five minutes past five. He put his tousled head round the door and said:
‘I say, Gerry, I’ve finished that blessed report at last. Will you come and celebrate?’
She looked round, first at Mike and then, more doubtfully, at Suvarov, before saying:
‘Oh, Mike, I’d love to, but it’s a bit early. I can’t really go quite yet. Could you bear to wait for your celebration, for an hour or so?’
Suvarov, who had clasped both hands behind his neck and was performing some complicated-looking manoeuvre to ease his back and neck muscles, said:
‘Gerry, why not go? There’s nothing on your desk that couldn’t actually wait until tomorrow morning, and if your conscience won’t let you skive for an hour or so, you could always come in early then.’
‘Well, all right. Thanks, Peter. Mike, I’ll be with you in a minute.’
‘Good girl. I’ll take your hat and coat and wait for you down in the hall.’
He gave her no time to protest, but seized her outdoor clothes from the curly rack to the left of the door and almost pranced out of the room. His cheerfulness made her feel a bit tired and she wondered whether it would not be more peaceful to stay at her desk. But she could not disappoint Mike; he had been angelic to her when she had been having such trouble being kind to Andrew and, during the last few months since Andrew’s death, Mike had always been there when she needed to talk to someone. If he wanted a celebration now, it was the least she could do to let him have one. She said good night to Suvarov and followed Mike down the staircase, missing her sister by a bare ten minutes.
