MI5 and Me Read online

  My father frowned.

  ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, feeling as if I was drowning, ‘I don’t know really.’

  ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time?’

  I was rather touched that my father was obviously trying to be helpful.

  ‘Something like that,’ I agreed. ‘As I say, I don’t know why I did, but I wore two cardigans and a vest.’

  ‘Wore a suit of armour, eh?’

  He tried to keep a straight face, and for a second I saw that side of my father that everyone else seemed to and I rarely did.

  ‘Yes, that kind of thing,’ I agreed. ‘At any rate,’ I continued, speeding up because I could see he was about to be bored, ‘his phone goes all the time, and it’s always women.’

  ‘Same old Van, eh? I think women like men with thick hair, you know.’

  ‘And then when he was out of the room, for a joke, I picked up the telephone and pretended to be a model called Nathalie.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ my father asked, frowning. He was very correct and I could see that picking up someone else’s telephone was a bit of a breach of etiquette, but pretending to be someone called Nathalie might be the last straw. Never mind that he spent his whole life doing things like that. It was in the service of his country, whereas this was just me horsing around.

  ‘I was a bit bored from sitting on the chaise-longue. At any rate, that is not why I want to tell you about all this.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief anyway.’

  ‘No, what’s important was who was on the other end.’ My father was still bored. ‘You see – you see, the caller was Trigata.’

  Suddenly he wasn’t bored at all.

  ‘You’re quite sure?’ he asked, dropping his voice to spy level. ‘I mean absolutely sure?’

  ‘Absolutely quite sure,’ I said. ‘Utterly so, in fact.’ I had answered the phone to them so many times at Mater’s flat that I would know them anywhere. The same thick foreign accent. The same urgency, the same demands about their dreadful fish.

  Once again to my amazement, I saw that my father could move very quickly when the need arose. Before I could say another thing he was in his car and gone.

  ‘He hasn’t had his second pudding,’ Mrs Graham grumbled. ‘That’s not like him at all. He always has two at the weekends – like clockwork he is with his favourite puddings.’

  I knew not to tell anyone or a contact might get blown, so I lived with this Trigata knowledge all week, coming in and out of Dingley Dell and never seeing my father because he was obviously on the track of something. Finally on the Sunday evening of the following week, after his usual sing-song with Melville and a riotous lunch with other guests, or spies, for all I knew, he called me into his study. Going into his study was not something I liked doing, but on the other hand if your father works for MI5 and he wants to speak to you there’s not much you can do about it.

  ‘Jolly good, Lottie,’ he said. ‘You did well.’

  I glowed. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t remember him saying anything like that before and so I felt rather proud of myself.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of a ponder, and since you’re in this far I suppose there’s no harm in letting you in a little more. We have a lead, you see – several leads in and out of a labyrinth of people in high places. And lower down too. I’m afraid my old friend Van might be on the list. But I can’t be sure. So we’re going to have to go back to basics and try and draw these people out, Van included. A poultice is what is needed, to draw out the poison – if there is any.’

  I was impressed. I’d never heard my father use words like poultice before.

  ‘I’ve given this some thought,’ he continued, ‘and I think the first thing to do is throw a party.’

  ‘A party?’ I gasped. ‘What – to celebrate that there’s a leak?’

  ‘No, no – nothing of the kind,’ he replied. ‘Simply to open a door of opportunity.’

  I was still getting over the shock of my father suggesting giving yet another party, because it was so surreal. He invited the whole world into his house, he gave them drinks and food, but parties were simply anathema to him. It was all so out of character.

  ‘We often need access to where certain people dwell, you see,’ he explained, sounding a little Shakespearean. ‘Need a bit of room to roam. So I thought perhaps a party. People never say no to a party, apparently.’

  Except you, I wanted to remind him, but it was about to get even worse.

  ‘I thought a nice fancy dress party, with a title. Not Vicars and Tarts for a change. Something a little different.’

  ‘Such as?’ I wondered, clearing my throat.

  ‘I thought Romans and Greeks perhaps – although, please God, not too many blasted Greeks.’

  I knew that my father had a thing about Romans, and no time for the Greeks whom he considered a bit on the flouncy side, but the idea that he would ask everyone not just to turn up to a party, but to dress up fancy for it, was almost beyond belief.

  ‘We’re going to get cracking at once – this needs to be activated immediately. We’ll invite certain people on the list, including our painter friend, and while they’re all disporting themselves as Greeks and Romans – he will be a Greek, I would have thought – our people will go and take a quiet shufti at his place. If we can find a way to draw the poultice we will save a lot of lives, and that is what our job is all about. Making things safe.’

  ‘That’s what Commander Steerforth says,’ I agreed. ‘That MI5 is all about preventing bad things from happening.’

  ‘Yes,’ my father agreed. ‘And you have just played your part. Now all we have to do is hope for a bit of a lucky break.’

  I spent the rest of the week walking so tall that Arabella grew suspicious.

  ‘Are you and Harry still going out?’

  ‘Sort of. Why?’

  Arabella looked sphinx-like.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He’s working on a film out in deepest Hertfordshire. He’s got another one-liner. It’s: “Quick! We got to get out of here! The cops are at the door!”’

  ‘Sounds like more than one line to me,’ Arabella replied, thoughtfully, typing the words out in the air.

  ‘By the way,’ I asked, to divert attention from Harry, because I never like to admit my feelings about much, and Harry was drifting out of the pals and friendship zone into something more grown-up, ‘are you coming to my parents’ party?’

  ‘Of course I am coming,’ Arabella returned. ‘The whole Section is. Rosalie says she’s going to come as a Grecian urn.’

  I had thought I’d get out of going back to sit to Van, but my father reckoned that might be a bit suspicious. He thought it better for me to return and act innocent.

  If there is anything I am rotten at it is acting innocent. The moment I have to act innocent and guiltless, I become suffused with guilt and feel as if I’m covered in those arrows prisoners used to have all over their uniforms.

  ‘You can always wear three cardigans,’ my father joked.

  Happily the weather had turned cold so that my inner sweat did not turn into outer sweat as I yet again posed on the wretched chaise-longue, and Van smoked his way through a packet of untipped Gauloises and several telephone calls whose content I prefer to forget. I tried not to look at my watch, because I knew that would make him even scratchier than he was already but the three hours seemed to crawl by, and what with the rain pouring down and the telephone calls, it was more of the same but worse somehow.

  Happily, or unhappily, depending on how you look at what happened as a result of all this, he ran out of cigarettes and decided to dash out to the corner shop for more, leaving me in charge.

  I have to tell you I willed the telephone to ring and for it to be Trigata. I looked at the clock. It was just about the same time as last Saturday, so I willed it and willed it, and finally the phone did ring.

  ‘Trigata?’ I asked before t
hey could speak.

  ‘Yes,’ said the thick foreign accent. ‘You take call for recipient of import?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I take call.’ I was not bothering to be Nathalie. ‘And the same order is wanted by the recipient importer but this time to go to—’

  Again one of those moments came over me, moments where I seem to lose all normal control and two horns pop out of the top of my head. ‘Yes, same order, different address.’

  I heard myself giving the address of Dingley Dell; not only that, but I actually had the audacity to ask them for lobster.

  The owner of the thick foreign accent exploded.

  ‘No lobster!’ he screamed in a thick foreign way, which made the sound more like a thirty-second warning. ‘I tell you, no lobster!’

  I put the receiver down and thought for a minute. My first notion was that Arabella might be right and lobsters were some particularly high-security number – some sort of gun, or something – or perhaps a bomb of some kind. My second thought was that Mrs Graham might be able to do something quite nice with the fish, if it ever arrived, because she was good with fish. My last thought was to scarper, which I did, leaving a note for Van to say I would be back next Saturday, that my mother had phoned and I’d had to go to her at once as she was having trouble with her feet.

  Actually she was having trouble with more than her feet. She was having trouble with the Roman and Greek party that my father was insisting upon. She was going as a Greek and my father was going as a Roman, and this was causing something of a rift between them.

  ‘Your father has no respect for the Ancient Greeks. He thinks they should be sent back their marbles, or whatever we filched from them, and be done with it, and he will not countenance the idea that I should be hostess wearing a Grecian gown, but I insist on my own choice of dress. I met Van in the street yesterday and he is going Greek, and Melville is going Greek, and Hal is going Roman, if he can make it, which I don’t think he can.’ She looked mournful. ‘Even Melville is less than happy, coming on after the performance – but you know how it is. Your father won’t believe this but actors hate fancy dress – Melville told me. No, they don’t just hate it, they loathe it, because that is what they do all the time. It’s only what actors call civilians – people like me and you – who like dressing up. And it is expensive. I mean, the yards of material it is taking to make my gown will mean bread and gruel for the next few weeks.’

  My mother going all Dickensian and referring to bread and gruel was not a good sign. It meant she was very cross but not showing it. I knew the signs, because she did not like Charles Dickens and least of all his novels, seeing him as a man who exaggerated the toils and moils of the poor, and portrayed women as nothing more than ineffectual drips. She once told me she thought it was sheer cheek Oliver Twist asking for more. She maintained that he should have thought of the other children before himself and waited his turn.

  I felt guilty when I left her, as indeed I should have done. If I had not become embroiled with Trigata, and then Van, she would not have had to shell out for a Grecian gown, and Mrs Graham would not be threatened with an influx of fish.

  There is something about an event you are dreading with all your heart and soul that makes it hurtle through the normal processes of time, if not the eternal verities. If the said event is going to be a cracker, it takes forever to happen, but if you sense there is going to be trouble and yet could not quite say what shape it might take, if you in other words absolutely dread the day arriving, it seems to come about in seconds, not even minutes.

  ‘I hear there is going to be an orgy between Romans and Greeks,’ Hal boomed down the telephone at me. ‘I shall make it whatever happens, if only to set my peepers on your blessed father dressed, Melville tells me, as a Roman. I shall join him, but then it’s simple for me. I just have to woo the wardrobe mistress and get her to lend me Olivier’s old toga.’

  The Grahams too were going as Romans, which gave my father great pleasure.

  ‘I am lending Mr Graham some of my upper-arm bracelets,’ he told me, in the confidential tone he only ever used with waiters when asking about soup. ‘I haven’t told him that only Senators were allowed to wear them – don’t want to hurt his feelings. He is also going to wear one of those hairbands, which I think will suit him.’ My father breathed out with some satisfaction, before lighting a cigarette. ‘I think if we are going to win this one, Lottie, we will win it by this party. I really think this might be just the ticket.’

  There are certain expressions that offspring learn to note and my mother moaning about bread and gruel was a sure sign of dissatisfaction, whereas if my father mentioned something being just the ticket, I always knew he was feeling benign, at ease with the world, or, in this case, just about to trap his most hated of adversaries – namely a traitor.

  I still had to sit to Van, of course, and I have to admit to feeling bad about it, which was probably why I went as always wearing two cardigans. I had told my father about the fish from Trigata being redirected to Dingley Dell, and found to my surprise that he thought it a good idea.

  ‘I say, Lottie,’ he said, ‘you really are intent on earning your corn.’

  Which made me feel very tall, which I am not.

  As it transpired Van was in a mighty good mood, looking forward to the party that evening and showing me his Grecian costume with great pride.

  I stared at it, arranged in readiness on the bed. Would he be arrested in it? I knew policemen took away things like shoes and belts. I tried not to think of poor Van without his Grecian sandals, and his Grecian robe sagging for lack of its piece of stranded silk, which passed for a belt. I hoped and prayed that he was innocent, and that Trigata was going to turn out to be a mistake. All these feelings must have made me a poor model, because he sent me home early.

  The house was what Arabella, who was staying with us, called in her newly acquired French en fête. White cloths covered the tables in the dining room, and flowered garlands attached to the cloths did give them a Romanesque look. Mrs Graham had been prompted to try out a few Roman dishes, a very rich chicken pie among others, but drew the line at Grecian.

  ‘I told your father I don’t mind doing some of these Roman-type recipes he gave me, but I’ve steered clear of the Greeks. Stuffed vine leaves your mother asked for, and I have done those – but some of the other dishes I will not attempt. Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes! Didn’t they use anything else in Ancient Greece? And as for this salt cod and heaven only knows what else that arrived this morning, I will not touch the stuff.’

  Mr Graham was on the door as usual, taking cloaks and toga covers, but looking less than usual himself. The upper-arm bracelets my father had provided for him were just the job but his circlet made of twists of metal kept slipping so Arabella wound it round with some of her velvet hair ribbon and it clamped down better.

  Actually, far from being a dreaded event, the party began and went on to really swing. Everyone had made an effort, and of course the candlelight and the flowers gave it a properly festive look. It also meant that Arabella and I had a job keeping an eye on Van, who had arrived looking marvellous, his great head of blond hair styled à la Grecque, as Arabella put it – there was no stopping her French now.

  Dinner was being served late to accommodate so many of the actors, who came on from the West End, or in Hal’s case, very, very late indeed, but Melville was not in the last act of his play, so he was able to break the rules and miss his curtain call, which was a theatrical crime, but, as he said, ‘forgivable just the once’. He was playing one of my father’s favourite numbers when there was a crashing knock at the front door.

  ‘Not more fish,’ Mrs Graham sighed as I followed Mr Graham upstairs, all too aware that it was one of those evenings where I was needed everywhere.

  Of course Mrs Graham had ignored me about the delivery earlier, and had unwrapped it and put it in the fridge, and after a cursory look I knew there were no guns or anything anywhere so stopped worryin
g – although something Mrs G said she’d found in the bottom of the box and duly handed to me certainly gave me – as they say – some pause for thought dot-dot-dot.

  I fled upstairs because I knew I had to keep an eye on Van whom Arabella was busy distracting, making sure that he imagined she was available as a future model.

  I had hardly edged into the drawing room to announce that dinner was being served when there was renewed heavy knocking at the front door. I saw Mr Graham going to open it with his now statutory greeting: ‘Citizens of Rome and Greece – welcome!’ – then, on seeing who was on the doorstep, I immediately stepped back into the drawing-room doorway. It was only the police.

  ‘We’re here to see the owner,’ I heard one of them say somewhat grimly. ‘Kindly inform him of our presence.’

  Mr Graham then adjusted his Roman circlet and gave them his best hard stare.

  ‘Sorry, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It’s Romans and Greeks only as per invitation. You can’t come in dressed as policemen. Orders is orders, so I’m afraid if you want to come in, you’ll have to go home and change. And if you do, please note it’s sandals only on account of the rushes on the floors. We do not want them trodden in. Thank you.’

  He closed the door on them and came back into the drawing room where I saw him taking my father aside and obviously informing him of the arrival of gatecrashers. My father gave him one very quick look, then taking hold of the most recently arrived guest, whom I’d never met, hurried the poor chap quickly out of the drawing room and downstairs at top speed – whereupon the knocking resumed at the front door only more so.

  Once again discreetly following Mr Graham back into the hall, I watched as he drew himself to his full height and opened the door to confront the gatecrashers once more.

  ‘You do not seem to have understood what I just said,’ Mr Graham began with studied politesse. ‘No plods, just Romans and Greeks.’

  ‘And you do not understand what I just said,’ the officer replied, showing him his warrant card. ‘We are the genuine article and we are here to speak to the owner. If you do not mind.’