‘You were saying about that first time you met him.’
‘Was I? Oh well, yes.’ He laughed again. ‘I mean you couldn’t believe anything. My first day: Mickie Crabbe took me down there. We done the rounds by then. “Here,” says Mickie, ‘Just one more port of call,” and takes me downstairs to see Leo. “This is Cork,” he says. ‘Just joined us in Cyphers.” So then Leo moves in.’ Cork sat down on the swivel chair beside the door and leaned back like the rich executive he longed to be. ‘ “Glass of sherry,” he says. We’re supposed to be dry here, but that never bothered Leo; not that he drank himself, mind. “We must celebrate the new arrival. You don’t sing by any chance, do you, Cork?” “Only in the bath,” I says and we all have a nice laugh. Recruiting for the choir, see: that always impressed them. Very pious gentleman, Mr Harting, I thought. Not half. “Have a cigar, Cork?” No thanks. “A fag then?” Don’t mind if I do, Mr Harting. So then we sit there like a lot of dips, sipping our sherry, and I’m thinking, “Well, I must say you’re quite the little king around here.” Furniture, maps, carpet… all the trappings. Fred Anger cleared a lot of it out, mind, before he left. Nicked, half of it was. Liberated, you know. Like in the old Occupation days. “So how are things in London, Cork?” he asks. “Everything much the same I suppose?” Putting me at my ease, cheeky sod. “That old porter at the main door: still saucy with the visiting Ambassadors, is he, Cork?” He really came it. ” And the coal fires: still lighting the coal fires every morning, are they, Cork?” “Well,”
I says, “they’re not doing too bad, but it’s like everything else, it takes its time.” Some crap like that. “Oh, ah, really,” he says, “because I had a letter from Ewan Waldebere only a few months back telling me they were putting in the central heating. And that old bloke who used to pray on the steps of Number Ten, still there is he, Cork, morning and night, saying his prayers? Doesn’t seem to have done us much good, does he?” I tell you: I was practically calling him sir. Ewan Waldebere was Head of Western Department by then, all set to be God. So then he comes on about the choir again and the Dutchman and a few other things besides, anything he can do to help, and when we get outside I look at Mickie Crabbe and Mickie’s pissing himself. Doubled up, Mickie is. “Leo?” he says. “Leo? He’s never been inside the Foreign Office in his life. He hasn’t even been back to England since forty-five.”, Cork broke off, shaking his head. ‘Still,’ he repeated, with an affectionate laugh, ‘you can’t blame him, can you?’ He got up. ‘ And I mean, we all saw through him, but we still fell for it, didn’t we? I mean Arthur and… I mean everybody. It’s like my villa,’ he added simply, ‘I know I’ll never get there, but I believe in it all the same. I mean you have to really… you couldn’t live, not without illusions. Not here.’
Taking his hands out of his mackintosh pockets, Turner stared first at Cork and then at the gunmetal key in his big palm, and he seemed to be torn and undecided.
‘What’s Mickie Crabbe’s number?’
Cork watched with apprehension as he lifted the receiver, dialled and began talking.
‘They don’t expect you to go on looking for him,’ Cork said anxiously. ‘I don’t really think they do.’
‘I’m not bloody well looking for him, I’m having lunch with Crabbe and I’m catching the evening flight and nothing on God’s earth would keep me in this dream box for an hour longer than I need.’ He slammed down the receiver and stalked out of the room.
De Lisle’s door was wide open but his desk was empty. He wrote a note: ‘Called in to say goodbye. Goodbye. Alan Turner,’ and his hand was shaking with anger and humiliation. In the lobby, small groups were sauntering into the sunlight to eat their sandwiches or lunch in the canteen. The Ambassador’s Rolls-Royce stood at the door; the escort of police outriders waited patiently. Gaunt was whispering to Meadowes at the front desk and he fell suddenly quiet as Turner approached.