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  The lady had finished with the tie. She stood up.

  ‘Mirror,’ said Alfred Perlman.

  It had taken a little time for Cotton to see that Alfred Perlman was not tall, perhaps five foot eight, because he was so corpulent. Now that the lady had moved he could see how extraordinarily stout the lawyer’s legs were. He had a belly certainly but then tapered to quite small shoulders. There was then that dewlap, the large head and a slack lower lip.

  ‘That looks fine,’ said the lady.

  ‘If you say so, Miss Marx,’ said Alfred Perlman. ‘Tails.’

  The lady helped him get into his tail coat. This took some time. The room was clubby. There was a large whitish fireplace, a partner’s desk, three walls were dark green, the other dark red and there was some art. An etching, possibly by Rembrandt, of Jews in Holland, a painting of a horse, certainly a potential Stubbs, and a portrait of a lady in the style at least of Gainsborough. There was also an example of modern art but not very brightly coloured – Ben Nicholson perhaps? – and a large number of silver-framed photographs of Alfred and one, sometimes two, of the great and good. Cotton realized they were arranged according to activity. There were a lot of politicians on a rectangular table. On an oval side table were a number of financiers and refugee royalty. But on another, round table there was Alfred Perlman with Chaim Weizmann, then with the contralto Kathleen Ferrier beside a microphone and, right at the front, with Anna Neagle, the actress in a flying outfit when playing Amy Johnson in a film.

  ‘Are we ready?’ said Alfred Perlman.

  Miss Marx stood back and examined.

  ‘Yes, we are, sir.’

  Alfred grunted. ‘I’m late,’ he said again. He nodded. As he moved forward his hand came up again. Cotton had the impression he had passed some test, though also thought he was being told to wait.

  When Alfred had left the room, Miss Marx moved the chair she had knelt on.

  ‘May I get you anything, sir?’

  From the other room Cotton heard ‘The car is waiting for you, sir.’

  ‘I was thinking of leaving,’ he said.

  ‘One moment, sir.’

  Miss Marx left and came back with a card. One side bore Alfred Perlman’s official telephone numbers. On the other, handwritten in pencil, were two more.

  ‘The top one is Mr Perlman’s private telephone number. The lower is my own.’ She paused. ‘Given Mr Perlman’s commitments—’

  ‘It might be better to telephone you first should the need arise?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She fetched a blank index-sized card for Cotton to put down his own telephone numbers.

  ‘O for Office, P for Private and S for Secretary please.’

  Cotton shared a secretary. Her name was Phyllis and it was very easy for her to feel overworked.

  ‘I’m going to leave off the S for now,’ he said.

  Miss Marx beamed. ‘Entirely as you wish, sir.’

  In Jermyn Street Cotton looked around and stepped down.

  ‘I say! Is that you, Peter?’

  Cotton looked up. Coming out of the Turkish baths on the opposite side of the street was someone familiar but not by name any more. Cotton briefly tried to place him.

  ‘Hang on! I’ll be directly over.’

  ‘Hang on’ did it. This was what George Dyce had said when they had been training near Dumbarton about four years before. George was a younger son of a wealthy family and had cheerfully described himself as ‘bone from the neck up’. He had found map-reading difficult. Tall, about six three, he had wavy fair hair, a strong jaw line and very pale blue eyes. He pointed at them.

  ‘I went in this morning with bags under my eyes like a Great Dane’s balls. How do they measure up now, do you think? Labrador? Jack Russell?’

  ‘Pekinese,’ said Cotton.

  ‘Christ!’ said George Dyce. ‘Have my eyes closed up?’

  ‘Would you accept chihuahua?’

  George Dyce laughed. ‘Chihuahua,’ he repeated. ‘That’s good. The man put on some greasy stuff. Professional boxers use it apparently.’ He blinked, then frowned. ‘I have to go out again tonight.’ He paused. ‘Is your club round here? You’re not a Carlton Club chap, are you? White’s?’

  ‘No clubs,’ said Cotton. ‘My office is nearby.’

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘The Colonial Office. Sterling Area.’

  George looked impressed. ‘Would that be brainy stuff?’

  ‘I’d hardly say that, George. How about you?’

  ‘Schmoozing for the family bank,’ he said. He blinked. ‘I’m sacrificing my liver for profit.’

  Cotton smiled. ‘It’s nearly seven,’ he said.

  George frowned. ‘What? I say, you’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Cotton. ‘I was wondering what time you were meeting your clients.’

  George looked at his watch. ‘Oh damn,’ he said. He groaned. ‘I really do have to be off. But look, I’m having a Hogmanay party. Should be lots of fun. Where do you live?’

  ‘Wilbraham Place.’

  ‘Wonderful! I’m nearby, in Cadogan Square! That’s settled then. You really must come.’ George paused. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Am I going to Quaglino’s or to Mme Prunier’s?’

  Cotton nodded. ‘That’s easy, George. Bury Street is just down here. Call in – if you don’t have a reservation at Quaglinos, you’ll know it’s Mme Prunier’s.’

  George frowned. ‘I’m not entirely Bertie Wooster, you know.’

  ‘And I’m not Jeeves,’ said Cotton. ‘I’m going that way. My office is only a few doors down from Prunier’s.’

  Cotton began walking and George followed.

  ‘All right,’ said George. ‘I do have a card, you know.’ He fiddled in his waistcoat pocket and took out a business card.

  Cotton gave George Dyce his own.

  ‘I’ll send you an invitation,’ said George.

  ‘That’s very kind,’ said Cotton.

  ‘No buts,’ said George. ‘None at all. I insist.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Cotton.

  George groaned. ‘I had a snifter, well two, after the steam.’

  ‘Get some water into you.’

  ‘Right,’ said George. ‘Of course, you are.’

  Cotton went back to his office and wrote Ayrtoun a message: ‘I need an excellent Secretary.’

  10

  THE NEXT day around eleven in the morning Cotton received, on House of Commons stationery, an invitation to have luncheon with Major Albert Briggs MP at Fontwell Park on Saturday, 4 January 1947. ‘Noon – sharp please.’

  He wrote back and accepted. He booked Hans Bieber.

  At 2 p.m. he received a reply from Ayrtoun. ‘Agreed. Pick well.’

  He had a meeting in Whitehall about the Sterling Area. As he was coming out he saw a young woman he recognized but could not place.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss?’ he called.

  ‘Yes?’

  Cotton remembered where he had seen her – in his old boss’s office just before he had left for Washington in September 1945.

  ‘How’s D?’ he said.

  She frowned. ‘I don’t rightly know,’ she replied. She grew a little more disapproving. ‘He has retired to private life, you know.’

  Cotton liked that. ‘Yes. I did know that,’ he said. He took one of his cards out of his pocket and gave it to her.

  ‘My name is Peter Cotton. I work at CI ops in St James’s Street but have been seconded to something at home. I’m looking for a secretary who can be tough, discreet and who knows all the ropes. The operation has priority status, and I need someone to start in the New Year. I have no idea how long this will be for. Might I suggest, if you are interested, that you make your enquiries – but please, do let me know as soon as you can. Is that fair?’

  The young lady considered. Cotton remembered now. Her first name was Moira. He did not know her surn
ame. ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said.

  She struck him as solidly built. She gave off an air more of containment than contentment and was in no way ingratiating. Probably about his age, she had a set to her mouth that spoke of brisk no-nonsense, particularly where men were concerned.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said.

  That evening he received her note. Miss Moira Kelly would, in principle, be pleased to accept Colonel Cotton’s offer of a job but wished to clarify some matters before making a formal acceptance.

  He asked her to meet him after work next day and she chose tea at the Ritz. In the event she asked for coffee – ‘it’s some time since I had a proper cup’ – and suggested that they be ‘Miss Kelly’ and ‘Colonel Cotton’.

  ‘I understand,’ said Cotton. ‘The only thing I’d point out, Miss Kelly, is that I’m no longer a Colonel.’

  She looked at him as if he were being whimsical.

  ‘I don’t like being called Moira, sir, not at work. The advantage of keeping to the proprieties is that a degree of respect is also involved.’

  She meant rank as much as proprieties. She had the tone of voice that Cotton knew as ‘cut-glass’.

  ‘Of course.’

  Miss Kelly said she was from Devon, in the southwest of England. She described her father, rather airily, as ‘the third son, the Vicar’, and said she had had two brothers, both ‘fighting men’. One had died of malaria and dysentery in the Burma campaign. The survivor was ‘a submariner’. Her pronunciation sounded almost scornful, but Cotton understood she was proud of him. She herself had been recruited by D during the war from ‘Navy maps’ after ‘a stint in Gibraltar’.

  ‘Did you like that, Miss Kelly?’

  ‘The work yes, Gibraltar no.’

  ‘What have you been doing recently?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ she replied.

  ‘Good,’ said Cotton. ‘Why have you decided to accept this job?’

  Miss Kelly’s manner changed abruptly. ‘It’s a bit more sharp end than my present work, sir! And I hope it gives me a lot more to do.’

  Cotton looked at her. It was not just her accent. Her choice of vocabulary was akin to a slap on a skittish horse’s rump. He supposed that made a kind of sense.

  ‘You are aware that the job may involve some delicate and some possibly unsavoury matters?’

  She looked slightly shocked. ‘I am not a prude, sir. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Why didn’t you like Gibraltar?’

  ‘Too hot, sir. The weather, I mean.’

  He nodded. ‘Good, Miss Kelly. I look forward to working with you.’ He held out his hand and, still with her gloves on, she shook it.

  They agreed she would start on 2 January and that Cotton would see to what she called ‘the transfer of my responsibilities’. Cotton had two main doubts: one, that he was taking advantage of her, giving her the chance to put her job above anything else; the second was that she might be furiously rather than calmly patriotic.

  ‘I’m sorry to bring this up,’ he said. ‘While I don’t know how long this operation will last, I am aware that we have lost valuable people to marriage and other priorities, children and so on.’

  Miss Kelly blinked. ‘I assure you, Colonel, I have no intention of marrying at present.’ She smiled. ‘It would take a very special man to make me think I needed him.’

  Cotton did not so much nod as bow.

  ‘I’ve had an invitation,’ said Cotton. ‘Luncheon at a place called Fontwell Park. This Saturday.’

  Miles Crichton was sitting in his usual chair. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Briggs is giving you the racing man. Cloth caps and thoroughbreds. Of course, he has a local but rather proprietary interest in Fontwell.’

  Cotton sat down. ‘Is he on the board or committee?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Miles, ‘he doesn’t need that. Deference towards an MP is enough. It’s his local racecourse, as it were, when he’s in Bognor. In his constituency he goes to Uttoxeter.’

  ‘Is that in Staffordshire?’

  Miles smiled. ‘So I believe. When he’s here in town, he’s fond of Sandown.’

  Cotton gave up. ‘Sorry. I have no idea where that is.’

  ‘Esher in Surrey. You’re not giving the impression of being a man of the turf.’

  ‘I know horses are measured in hands. That’s about it.’

  ‘How delightful. You’re not a gambler then.’ Miles frowned. ‘But you’re not a Methodist or anything, are you?’

  Cotton smiled. ‘No, no. My mother taught me that small men in coloured jerseys on quadrupeds were not at all interesting. And then I studied economics.’

  Miles Crichton laughed. ‘Sport of Kings. And Major Bertie, of course. I think this deserves some champagne.’ He raised a finger for service. ‘Now how can I help you?’

  ‘I thought you might be able to fill me in. How did Briggs contrive to make the move from retired sergeant-major in the Army Education Corps to an MP with an interest in security matters. What were the steps?’

  Miles nodded happily. This was what he did. ‘I suppose, I certainly hope, that you were far too busy during the war to register the book Sir Richard Acland published with Penguin in 1940. He gave it the title Unser Kampf.’

  Cotton’s eyebrows came up. ‘As opposed to Mein Kampf? Our Struggle rather than My Struggle?’

  ‘Exactly! Some notion of that decent, old collective “we” chaps against that awfully selfish “I” person. It sold 150,000 copies.’

  Cotton shook his head. ‘I missed it,’ he said.

  Miles laughed. ‘Sir Richard, you see, has a talent for conversion. While he was Liberal MP for Barnstaple, he became first a Christian and then a socialist. That means he prefers the term Common Ownership to Socialism, and for moral rather than economic reasons.’ Miles shrugged. ‘He’s basically a patrician getting his tweeds into a very sincere twist in a way I usually associate with older men. He’s only about forty now. Terribly against private property as the root not only of evil but of untoward behaviour. In 1944 he gave away his own country estate at Killerton in Devon. Over six thousand acres and two hundred cottages.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Well,’ said Miles, ‘we don’t really have peasant farmers, do we? So he gave it to the next best thing in this country, the National Trust. The have-nots can visit what the haves used to have. I imagine his family is absolutely livid. There has been a suggestion it was something of a publicity stunt for his new party.’

  A waiter brought two glasses of champagne and a small dish of cashew nuts. Cotton smiled. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  Miles picked up a glass and drained it. ‘Sir Richard also founded a political movement. Forward March – I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? Scouting for those of voting age. All rather serious if knobbly-kneed. He even announced that Hitler had stumbled on some good points – he rather liked the idea of camps for shirkers.’

  Cotton nodded. ‘I’ve heard of Forward March,’ he said. ‘How does that fit in with Briggs?’

  ‘When Sir Richard was trotting around the country scattering his well-meaning disciplinarian fairy dust, some of it settled on Major Bertie. He’d done his eighteen years in the army. He had a little pension and was getting nostalgic for some sort of command and imposed respect. He also liked concepts like professional ethics and an ideal of service to describe his own past. He had nothing against a rousing hymn either. For a man looking for a dignified future and a bit more money, he found himself uplifted and welcomed its grass roots politics.’

  Miles paused and started on the second glass of champagne. ‘You can’t actually make this stuff up, you know.’

  Cotton smiled. ‘No, no. I appreciate that,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Miles. ‘Well, Forward March joined the 1941 Committee to form a political movement called Common Wealth. In 1942, Common Wealth put up a candidate in a by-election at Maldon in Essex. They weren’t actually doing quite the done thing, of course. The idea was that, du
ring the war, by-elections were not contested. But they did and their bugger got in.’ Miles paused. ‘I use the word “bugger” advisedly. You’ve heard of Tom Driberg MP?’

  Cotton nodded. ‘Yes. I have.’

  Driberg had been in the Communist Party until 1941 when an art historian called Blunt had exposed him as an MI5 agent. The reason Blunt knew, one he omitted to mention to his fellow Communists, was that he too was on MI5’s payroll. Miles raised his eyes towards the discoloured eighteenth-century ceiling.

  ‘Blunt is as pernickety as a butler checking a carriage clock for dust,’ he said, ‘and he rather agreed with Winston that Driberg was giving sodomy a bad name. Blunt was, of course, speaking up for all decent, art-loving, Communist sodomites everywhere.’

  Cotton smiled.

  ‘Driberg is absolutely reckless,’ said Miles. In religion it’s all communion and heavenly scented incense, but in matters of the flesh it’s directly downstairs to the public urinals. He has his own version of “a night on the tiles” but he’s certainly not impractical. Comfortably before the ’45 election he had moved to the Labour Party. The only thing Driberg and Acland share is a discomfort with the cantankerousness of the common man when he doesn’t do what he is told and behave nobly. Sir Richard is now angling for a safe Labour seat for himself.’

  Miles was thirsty. ‘More champagne?’ he suggested.

  Cotton nodded. ‘And Major Bertie?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, he had moved on too, of course. You can’t blame him. But most important of all, he had met Manny Shinwell, now the distinguished Minister of Fuel and Energy. Manny also helped him understand how voters might choose an MP who had come through the ranks.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Cotton. ‘You’re saying he’s entirely Manny’s man?’

  ‘Oh yes. At the beginning, of course, Major Bertie couldn’t speak for toffee,’ said Miles. ‘He sounded, I was told, as if he was trying to read a Times leader with the help of an invisible ouija board. Manny helped him with that. But I think it was Alfred Perlman who actually got him listening to Stanley Holloway.’