Back at chancery, Wilderness reacquainted himself with the cypher clerk. One Charles Chaplin, a man with the phrase “no relation” permanently on his lips, who wrote like a schoolboy in an exam—left arm crooked around the paper to prevent cheating.
Long ago, somewhere between the Berlin Airlift and whatever folly followed as night to day, Wilderness had worked out a nonstandard code to use with Burne-Jones when one or other of them felt privacy (secrecy might be more accurate) to be paramount. The only flaw in this was that Burne-Jones wasn’t very good at it and on occasion would reply with “Gorgonzola? What are you on about?” or “What’s got only three legs?” neither of which bore any relation to the message Wilderness had sent.
He placed his new message in front of Chaplin.
“What’s this? I’m supposed to do the encoding. It’s what cypher clerks do.”
“Just send it as is.”
“Mrs. Burton likes to see everything that comes in or out.”
“It’s personal. A quick note to my father-in-law … we have …”
Wilderness improvised.
“We have a family wedding coming up.”
“She won’t like it.”
“Then don’t tell her. It’s nothing worth bothering Mrs. Burton with.”
“OK. On your own head and all that.”
Holderness to Burne-Jones:
—Why did you send me here?
The replies:
—Why do you ask?
—It’s beginning to feel like a punishment posting.
—Well, it’s not. You’re there to keep a watch on the border.
—Nothing ever happens on the fucking border. I went there this week and came back empty-handed. It’s moribund.
—No, it’s dormant. Not the same thing. Think of it as Mt Etna.
—Think of it as a punishment posting.
—Honestly, it’s not. I had to get you out of the limelight. So it made sense to send you somewhere where there was none.
—Eh?
—There’s no point in removing you from the scrutiny of the shiny-trousered buggers in parliament because of one scandal, crisis—call it what you like—if you are then in a position to create another. The beauty of Finland, O son-in-law mine, is precisely that nothing is happening—ergo, you can’t fuck it up. Joe, just play it safe and keep your nose clean. Do NOT go poking around. If there’s bugger all to report then report bugger all. Fig biscuits. Over and bloody well out.
Well, Wilderness thought, I’ve been told. For a second or so he wondered what “Fig biscuits” might have been before Burne-Jones mangled his encoding, but it didn’t matter. He’d been told. He’d been sentenced … to boredom.