One day, perhaps, they will move to Berlin; the contingency, even in Bonn, is occasionally spoken of. One day, perhaps,the whole grey mountain will slip down the autobahn and silently take its place in the wet car parks of the gutted Reichstag; until that happens, these concrete tents will remain, discreetly temporary in deference to the dream, discreetly permanent in deference to reality; they will remain, multiply, and grow; for in Bonn, movement has replaced progress, and whatever will not grow must die.
Parking the car in his customary place behind the canteen, Meadowes walked slowly round it, as he always did after a journey, testing the handles and checking the coachwork for the marks of an errant pebble. Still deep in thought he crossed the forecourt to the front porch where two British military policemen, a sergeant and a corporal, were examining passes. Cork, still offended, followed at a distance, so that by the time he reached the front door Meadowes was already deep in conversation with the sentries.
‘Who are you then?’ the sergeant was wanting to know.
‘Meadowes of Registry. He works for me.’ Meadowes tried to look over the sergeant’s shoulder, but the sergeant drew back the list against his tunic. ‘He’s been off sick, you see. I wanted to enquire.’
‘Then why’s he under Ground Floor?’
‘He has a room there. He has two functions. Two different jobs. One with me, one on the ground floor.’
‘Zero,’ said the sergeant, looking at the list again. A bunch of typists, their skirts as short as the Ambassadress permitted, came fluttering up the steps behind them.
Meadowes lingered, still unconvinced. ‘You mean he’s not come in?’ he asked with tenderness which longs for contradiction.
‘That’s what I do mean. Zero. He’s not come in. He’s not here. Right?’
They followed the girls into the lobby. Cork took his arm and drew him back into the shadow of the basement grille. ‘What’s going on, Arthur? What’s your problem? It’s not just the missing files, is it? What’s eating you up?’
‘Nothing’s eating me.’
‘Then what’s all that about Leo being ill? He hasn’t had a day’s illness in his life.’
Meadowes did not reply.
‘What’s Leo been up to?’ Cork demanded with deep suspicion.
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why did you ask about him? You can’t have lost him as well! Blimey, they’ve been trying to lose Leo for twenty years.’
Cork felt the decent hesitation in Meadowes, the proximity of revelation and the reluctant drawing back.
‘You can’t be responsible for Leo. Nobody can. You can’t be everyone’s father, Arthur. He’s probably out flogging a few petrol coupons.’
The words were barely spoken before Meadowes rounded on him, very angry indeed.
‘Don’t you talk like that, d’you hear? Don’t you dare! Leo’s not like that; it’s a shocking thing to say of anyone; flogging petrol coupons. Just because he’s – a temporary.’
Cork’s expression, as he followed Meadowes at a safe distance up the open-tread staircase to the first floor, spoke for itself. If that was what age did for you, retirement at sixty didn’t come a day too early. Cork’s own retirement would be from it to a Greek island. Crete, he thought; Spetsai. I could swing it at forty if those ball-bearings come home. Well, forty-five anyway.
A step along the corridor from Registry lay the cypher room and a step beyond that, the small, bright office occupied by Peter de Lisle. Chancery means no more than political section; its young men are the elite. It is here, if anywhere, that the popular dream of the brilliant English diplomat may be realised; and in no one more nearly than Peter de Lisle. He was an elegant, willowy, almost beautiful person, whose youth had persisted obstinately into his early forties, and his manner was languid to the point of lethargy. This lethargy was not affected, but simply deceptive. De Lisle’s family tree had been disastrously pruned by two wars, and further depleted by a succession of small but violent catastrophes. A brother had died in a car accident; an uncle had committed suicide; a second brother was drowned on holiday in Penzance. Thus by degrees de Lisle himself had acquired both the energies and the duties of an improbable survivor. He had much rather not been called at all, his manner implied; but since that was the way of things, he had no alternative but to wear the mantle. As Meadowes and Cork entered their separate estates, de Lisle was on the point of gathering together the sheets of blue draft paper which lay scattered in artistic confusion on his desk. Having shuffled them casually into order, he buttoned his waistcoat, stretched, cast a wistful look at the picture of Lake Windermere, issued by the Ministry of Works with the kind permission of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, and drifted contentedly on to the landing to greet the new day. Lingering at the long window, he peered downward for a moment at the spines of the farmers’ black cars and the small islands of blue where the police lights flashed.