“Next phase?”
“Of course. The man I mentioned to you. We can’t leave things as they are. We’re clarifiers, John, not simply collators. I’ve revived Special Section; do you know what that is?”
“Haldane ran it during the war; training—”
Leclerc interrupted quickly for the driver’s sake: “—training the traveling salesmen. And he’s going to run it again now. I’ve decided you’re to work with him. You’re the two best brains I’ve got.” A sideways glance.
Leclerc had altered. There was a new quality to his bearing, something more than optimism or hope. When Avery had seen him last he had seemed to be living against adversity; now he had a freshness about him, a purpose, which was either new or very old.
“And Haldane accepted?”
“I told you. He’s working night and day. You forget, Adrian’s a professional. A real technician. Old heads are the best for a job like this. With one or two young heads among them.”
Avery said, “I want to talk to you about the whole operation … about Finland. I’ll come to your office after I’ve rung Sarah.”
“Come straightaway, then I can put you in the picture.”
“I’ll phone Sarah first.”
Again Avery had the unreasonable feeling that Leclerc was trying to keep him from communicating with Sarah.
“She is all right, isn’t she?”
“So far as I know. Why do you ask?” Leclerc went on, charming him: “Glad to be back, John?”
“Yes, of course.”
He sank back into the cushions of the car. Leclerc, noticing his hostility, abandoned him for a time; Avery turned his attention to the road and the pink, healthy villas drifting past in the light rain.
Leclerc was talking again, his committee voice. “I want you to start straightaway. Tomorrow if you can. We’ve got your room ready. There’s a lot to be done. This man: Haldane has him in play. We should hear something when we get home. From now on you’re Adrian’s creature. I trust that pleases you. Our masters have agreed to provide you with a special Ministry pass. The same kind of thing that they have in the Circus.”
Avery was familiar with Leclerc’s habit of speech; there were times when he resorted entirely to oblique allusion, offering a raw material which the consumer, not the purveyor, must refine.
“I want to talk to you about the whole thing. When I’ve rung Sarah.”
“That’s right,” Leclerc replied nicely, “come and talk to me about it. Why not come now?” He looked at Avery, offering his whole face; a thing without depth, a moon with one side. “You’ve done well,” he said generously. “I hope you’ll keep it up.” They entered London. “We’re getting some help from the Circus,” he added. “They seem to be quite willing. They don’t know the whole picture of course. The Minister was very firm on that point.”
They passed down Lambeth Road, where the God of Battles presides; the Imperial War Museum at one end, schools the other, hospitals in-between; a cemetery wired off like a tennis court. You cannot tell who lives there. The houses are too many for the people, the schools too large for the children. The hospitals may be full, but the blinds are drawn. Dust hangs everywhere, like the dust of war. It hangs over the hollow facades, chokes the grass in the graveyards; it has driven away the people, save those who loiter in the dark places like the ghosts of soldiers, or wait sleepless behind their yellow-lighted windows. It is a road which people seem to have left often. The few who returned brought something of the living world, according to their voyages. One a piece of field, another a broken Regency terrace, a warehouse or dumping yard; or a pub called the Flowers of the Forest.
It is a road filled with faithful institutions. Over one presides our Lady of Consolation, over another, Archbishop Amigo. Whatever is not hospital, school, or pub or seminary is dead, and the dust has got its body. There is a toyshop with a padlocked door. Avery looked into it every day on the way to the office; the toys were rusting on the shelves. The window looked dirtier than ever; the lower part was striped with children’s fingermarks. There is a place that mends your teeth while you wait. He glimpsed them now from the car, counting them off as they drove past, wondering whether he would ever see them again as a member of the Department. There are warehouses with barbed wire across their gates, and factories which produce nothing. In one of them a bell rang but no one heard. There is a broken wall with posters on it. You ARE somebody today in the regular army. They rounded Saint George’s Circus and entered Blackfriars Road for the home run.