‘Look,’ said Turner, watching her, ‘if you come and tell me in confidence that you’ve left a bundle of files in the bus, I’ll have to give details to Personnel Department. If you tell me you’ve been going out with a boy friend now and then, I’m not going to fall over in a faint. Mainly,’ he said, pushing his sherry glass across the table for her to replenish, ‘Personnel Department don’t want to know we exist.’ His manner was very casual, as if he barely cared. He sat impassively, filling the whole chair.
‘There is the question of protecting other people, third parties who cannot necessarily speak for themselves.’
Turner said, ‘There’s also the question of security. If you didn’t think it was important, you wouldn’t ask to see me in the first place. It’s up to you. I can’t give you any guarantees.’ She lit a cigarette with sharp, angular movements. She was not an ugly girl, but she seemed to dress either too young or too old, so that whatever Turner’s age, she was not his contemporary.
‘I accept that,’ she said and regarded him darkly for a moment, as if assessing how much Turner could take. ‘However, you have misunderstood the reason why I asked you to call here. It is this. Since you are quite certain to be told all manner of rumours about Harting and myself, I thought it best if you heard the truth from me.’
Turner put down his glass and opened his notebook.
‘I arrived here just before Christmas,’ Jenny Pargiter said,” ‘from London. Before that I was in Djakarta. I returned to London intending to be married. You may have read of my engagement?’
‘I think I must have missed it,’ said Turner.
‘The person to whom I was engaged decided at the last minute that we were not suited. It was a very courageous decision. I was then posted to Bonn. We had known one another for many years; we had read the same subject at university and I had always assumed we had much in common. The person decided otherwise. That is what engagements are for. I am perfectly content. There is no reason for anyone to be sorry for me.’
‘You got here at Christmas?’
‘I asked particularly to be here in time for the holiday. In previous years, we had always spent Christmas together. Unless I was in Djakarta of course. The… separation on this occasion was certain to be painful to me. I was most anxious to mitigate the distress with a new atmosphere.’
‘Quite.’
‘As a single woman in an Embassy, one is very often overcome with invitations at Christmas. Almost everyone in Chancery invited me to spend the festive days with them. The Bradfields, the Crabbes, the Jacksons, the Gavestons: they all asked me. I was also invited by the Meadowes. You have met Arthur Meadowes no doubt.’
‘Yes.’
‘Meadowes is a widower and lives with his daughter, Myra. He is in fact a B3, though we no longer use those grades. I found it very touching to be invited by a member of the Junior Staff.’
Her accent was very slight, provincial rather than regional, and for all her attempts at disowning it, it mocked her all the time.
‘In Djakarta we always had that tradition. We mixed more. In a larger Embassy like Bonn, people tend to remain in their groups. I am not suggesting there should be total assimilation: I would even regard that as bad. The A’s, for instance, tend to have different tastes as well as different intellectual interests to the B’s. I am suggesting that in Bonn the distinctions are too rigid, and too many. The A’s remain with the A’s and the B’s with the B’s even inside the different sections: the economists, the attachés, Chancery; they all form cliques. I do not consider that right. Would you care for more sherry?’
‘Thanks.’
‘So I accepted Meadowes’ invitation. The other guest was Harting. We spent a pleasant day, stayed there till evening, then left. Myra Meadowes was going out – she had been very ill, you know; she had a liaison in Warsaw, I understand, with a local undesirable and it very nearly ended in tragedy. Personally I am against anticipated marriages. Myra Meadowes was going to a young people’s party and Meadowes himself was invited to the Corks, so there was no question of our remaining. As we were leaving, Harting suggested we went for a walk. He knew a place not far away; it would be nice to drive up there and get some fresh air after so much food and drink. I am very fond of exercise. We had our walk and then he proposed that I should go back with him for supper. He was very insistent.’