Rising, Turner opened the door of the drinks cupboard and half filled a tumbler with whisky.
‘Here,’ he said gently, ‘this is what you like; drink it up and stop pretending.’
‘It’s overwork.’ She took the glass. ‘Bradfield never relaxes. He doesn’t like women. He hates them. He wants to drive us all into the ground.’
‘Now tell me what happened on the twenty-third of January.’
She was sitting sideways in the chair, her back towards him, and her voice had risen beyond her control.
‘He ignored me. He pretended to lose himself in work. I’d go into Registry to collect my papers and he wouldn’t even look up. Not for me. Not any more. He might for other people, but not for me. Oh no. He had never taken much interest in work – you only had to watch him in Chancery meetings to realise that. He was idle at heart. Glib. But the moment he heard me come along, he couldn’t work hard enough. He saw through me, even if I greeted him. Even if I walked straight into him in the corridor, it was the same. He didn’t notice me. I didn’t exist. I thought I’d go off my head. It wasn’t right: after all, he’s only a B, you know, and a temporary; he’s nothing really. He carries no weight at all, you only have to hear how they talk about him… Cheap, that’s what they say of him. A quick mind but quite unsound.’ For a moment she was far above his grade. ‘I wrote him letters. I rang his number at Königswinter.’
‘They all knew, did they? You made a display of it, did you?’
‘First of all he chases after me… besieges me with declarations of love… like a gigolo really. Of course, I mean there’s part of me that sees through that all right, don’t you worry. Running hot and cold like that: who does he think he is?’
She lay across the chair, her head buried in the crook of her elbow, her shoulders shaking to the rhythm of her sobbing.
‘You’ve got to tell me,’ Turner said. He was standing over her, his hand on her arm. ‘Listen. You’ve got to tell me what happened at the end of January. It was something important, wasn’t it? Something he asked you to do for him. Something political. Something special you’re afraid of. First of all he made up to you. He worked on you, took you by surprise… then he got what he wanted: something very simple he couldn’t get for himself. And when he’d got it he didn’t want you any more.’
The sobbing started.
‘You told him something he needed to know; you did him a favour: a favour to help him along the line. All right, you’re not unique. There’s a good few others have done the same thing one way or the other, believe me. So what is it?’ He knelt down beside her. ‘What was it that was injudicious? What was it that involved third parties? Tell me! It was something that frightened the life out of you! Tell me what it was!’
‘Oh God, I lent him the keys. I lent him the keys,’ she said.
‘Hurry.’
‘The Duty Officer’s. The whole lot. He came to me and begged me… no, not begged. No.’
She was sitting up, white in the face. Turner refilled her glass and put it back in her hand.
‘I was on duty. Night Duty Officer. Thursday January the twenty-third. Leo wasn’t allowed to be Duty Officer. There are things temporaries can’t see: special instructions… contingency plans. I’d stayed in to cope with a rush of telegrams; it must have been half past seven, eight o’clock. I was leaving the cypher room… just going to Registry, and I saw him standing there. As if he’d been waiting. Smiling. “Jenny,” he said, “what a nice surprise.” I was so happy.’
The sobbing broke out again.
‘I was so happy. I’d been longing for him to speak to me again. He’d been waiting for me, I knew he had; he was pretending it was an accident. And I said to him: “Leo.” I’d never called him that before. Leo. We just talked, standing in the corridor. What a lovely surprise, he kept saying. Perhaps he could give me dinner? I reminded him, in case he had forgotten, that I was on duty. That didn’t bother him either. What a pity, how about tomorrow night? Then the weekend? He would ring me on Saturday morning, how would that be? That would be fine, I said, I’d like that. And we could go for a walk first, he said, up on the football field? I was so happy. I still had the telegrams in my arms, a whole bundle, so I said well, I’d better get along, post these into Arthur Meadowes. He wanted to take them for me but I said no, I could manage them, it was all right. I was just turning away… I wanted to be first to go, you see, I didn’t want him walking away from me. I was just going and he said, “Oh Jenny, look here, by the way…” You know the way he talks. “Well, a ridiculous thing has happened, the choir are all hanging around downstairs and no one can unlock the Assembly Room door. Somebody’s locked it and we can’t find the key and we wondered whether you had one.” It seemed a bit odd really; I couldn’t think why anyone should want to lock it in the first place. So I said, yes, I’d come down and open it; I’d just have to check in some telegrams for distribution. I mean he knew I’d got a key; the Duty Officer has a spare key for every room in the Embassy. “Don’t bother to come down,” he says. “just give me the key and I’ll do it for you. It won’t take two minutes.” And he saw me hesitate.’