‘Did he ever mention politics?’
‘No.’
‘What did he say about Karfeld?’
‘He was concerned. Naturally. That’s why he was so glad to be helping out.’
‘Oh sure.’
‘It was trust,’ Meadowes said defiantly. ‘You wouldn’t understand that. And that was true, what he said: it was the old stuff we were trying to get rid of; it was his childhood; it was the old stuff that meant the most to him.’
‘All right.’
‘Listen: I’m not holding any brief for him. He’s ruined my career for all I know, what there was left after you finished with it. But I’m telling you: you’ve got to see the good in him too.’
‘I’m not arguing with you.’
‘It did bother him, his memory. I remember once with the music: he got me listening to gramophone records. Mainly so that he could sell them to me, I suppose; he’d worked some deal he was very proud of, with one of the shops in town. “Look,” I said. “It’s no good, Leo; you’re wasting your time. I get to know one record so I learn another. By that time I’ve forgotten the first one.” He comes right back at me, very fast: “Then you ought to be a politician, Arthur,” he says. “That’s what they do.” He meant it, believe me.’
Turner grinned suddenly. ‘That’s quite funny.’
‘It would have been,’ said Meadowes, ‘if he hadn’t looked so darned fierce with it. Then another time we’re talking about Berlin, something to do with the crisis, and I said, “Well, never mind, no one thinks of Berlin any more,” which is true really. Files I mean; no one draws the files or bothers with the contingencies; not like they used to, anyway. I mean politically it’s a dead duck. “No,” he says. “We’ve got the big memory and the small memory. The small memory’s to remember the small things and the big memory’s to forget the big ones.” That’s what he said; it touched me, that did. I mean there’s a lot of us think that way, you can’t help it these days.’
‘He came home with you, did he, sometimes? You’d make an evening of it?’
‘Now and then. When Myra was out. Sometimes I’d slip over there.’
‘Why when Myra was out?’ Turner pounced quite hard on that: ‘You still didn’t trust him, did you?’
‘There’s rumours,’ Meadowes said evenly. ‘There was talk about him. I didn’t want her connected.’
‘Him and who?’
‘Just girls. Girls in general. He was a bachelor and he liked his fun.’
‘Who?’
Meadowes shook his head. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he said. He was playing with a couple of paper clips, trying to make them interlock.
‘Did he ever talk about England in the war? About an uncle in Hampstead?’
‘He told me once he arrived at Dover with a label round his neck. That wasn’t usual either.’
‘What wasn’t-‘
‘Him talking about himself. Johnny Slingo said he’d known him four years before he came to Registry and he’d never got a word out of him. He was all opened up, that’s what Johnny said, it must be old age setting in.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, that was all he had, a label: Harting Leo. They shaved his head and deloused him and sent him to a Farm School. He was allowed to choose apparently: domestic science or agriculture. He chose agriculture because he wanted to own land. It seemed daft to me, Leo wanting to be a farmer, but there it is.’
‘Nothing about Communists? A left-wing group of kids in Hampstead? Nothing like that at all?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Would you tell me if there was something?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Did he ever mention a man called Praschko? In the Bundestag.’
Meadowes hesitated. ‘He said one night that Praschko had walked out on him.’
‘How? Walked out how?’
‘He wouldn’t say. He said they’d emigrated to England together, and returned here together after the war; Praschko had chosen one path and Leo had chosen another.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t press him. Why should I? After that night he never mentioned him again.’
‘All that talk about his memory: what do you think he had in mind?’
‘Something historical, I suppose. He thought a lot about history, Leo did. Mind you, that’s a couple of months back now.’