Iain danced with Nadia. He was moving her around the dance floor, his eyes glancing at all the profiles around him, wondering if he was being watched. Satisfied that he was surrounded by friendly faces, he unclenched his jaw. ‘‘Great band, don’t you think?’’ he said.
‘‘What?’’
‘‘I said, isn’t it a good band?’’ She wasn’t listening to him, preferring to look all about the room than into his eyes. She was intrigued, delighted even, that Iain had taken such a keen interest in her, yet she wanted to appear cool.
Iain continued to dance and smiled, as though to himself. He noticed that her neck muscles were taut, could see how she was fighting with herself. He didn’t say anything for a while. He was thinking.
He tried to shuffle Nadia away from the band, to where it wasn’t so noisy. The dance floor was filling up. Soon he was surrounded by grey-haired men, black-haired women, men with pitted skin, girls with wide, painted eyes. A man’s face next to his was shouting loud Cantonese words to his partner. Everyone clasped each other tightly.
‘‘What happened to your neck?’’ Nadia asked.
‘‘Razor burn. What I’d call a close shave.’’
There was a long silence.
‘‘How’s business at the shop?’’ he asked eventually.
‘‘Fine, thank you.’’
‘‘And your Mum’s charity?’’
‘‘We raised 300 patacas last month.’’
‘‘Has Senhor Lazar been in lately?
‘‘Lazar?’’
‘‘Yes, has Lazar been into the shop?’’
‘‘No, why should he have?’’
‘‘Doesn’t he do a lot of trade with your uncle?’’
‘‘He doesn’t even smoke.’’
‘‘I head he purchased two thousand catties of raw tobacco from the Tabacaria.’’
‘‘I don’t know where you heard that from.’’
‘‘What about a man called Takashi … ever heard of him?’’
‘‘No.’’
Iain’s eyes scanned the room again. The booby-trapped door in his apartment had sharpened his instincts to a knife. He saw a boyish-looking man staring at them from across the floor. Next to him stood a Chinese woman with a snub nose and shawl draped over her shoulders. The woman’s eyes were piercingly dark, as black as boot buttons. The man took two quick strides forward and put his hand into his jacket pocket. Iain felt a vein on his forehead twitch. Every nerve in his body came alive. Stiffening, the man caught Iain watching him and pulled out a cigarette case, turning to sit at an empty table.
Iain relaxed. His hand met the slim muscles along the small of Nadia’s back. He spread his fingers slowly, pulling her hips against his, very gently. He could feel her though the silk. He sensed her soft flesh pressed against him, the tremor of her breathing, her ribs rising and falling, his own heart hammering, quickening. He thought he felt her shudder against him.
He opened his mouth to ask another question about Lazar, but then closed it. Instead he began to question what he was doing with this girl. He had no destination, no idea where he was taking her. He wondered what he would do once he got all the answers. Would he disappear, wash away the footprints in the sand, leave no trace? That was the nature of his job – it made him feel as if he could be many people, that he could never be himself; as though he was always acting, diluted, disseminated, as if every part of his life was influenced by the circumstances of his job. He was a man whose innards belonged to Whitehall, without roots, with no core.
Yet when Iain was with Nadia, this twenty-eight-year-old girl with large blue eyes and an unpronounceable middle name, he felt genuinely happy. He found his facial muscles were sore from a curious involuntary grin that he’d worn the last ten minutes. What was the matter with his mouth? Why did she have this effect on him? He felt tenderness for Nadia, and the more he held her and danced with her, the more his feelings were at odds with his professional duties. His lips felt dry from all the smiling and from the Gibson he’d drunk earlier. She turned to look at him. He wanted to take her face in his hands.
‘‘Are you all right?’’ she asked.
‘‘Yes. Why?’’
‘‘You’re not dancing.’’
‘‘I didn’t know I’d stopped. Sorry.’’
There was a big spotlight on the singer so that everyone could watch his face as he sang. Iain didn’t know the name of the song but he noticed Nadia mouthing the words.
‘‘Who’s the song by?’’ he asked.
‘‘What?’’
‘‘I said who’s the – ’’
‘‘The Isham Jones Orchestra.’’
The name reminded Iain of his school days.
‘‘I used to share a set of rooms with a boy called Peter Isham-Wood,’’ said Iain. ‘‘He had the annoying habit of carrying a white marble with him wherever he went. He used to keep it in his jacket pocket. During matins he would drop it on the stone floor and say, ‘Oh hell! My glass eye!’ ’’
‘‘You’re full of silly stories, aren’t you, Mr. Sutherland.’’
‘‘Call me Iain’’
‘‘Where was this school of yours, in Scotland?’’
‘‘Sussex, England.’’
‘‘Did you enjoy it?’’
‘‘No. I was an outsider. Isham-Wood was one of the few boys I liked. He didn’t tease me about my accent or background. The others called me a Scottish ‘prole’.’’
‘‘I don’t know the word.’’
‘‘Karl Marx,’’ said Iain. ‘‘Comes from the word ‘proletarian’. The prefects threw mud at me shouting, ‘Shove off back to Scotland, McProle!’ ’’
Iain knew he wasn’t like the other boys. Furthermore, he knew he wasn’t just any Scotsman, he was a Sutherland. The Sutherland clan were pure Gaelic, theier clan crest displayed a Scottish wildcat. They had a bold green-and-blue patterned tartan, and a clan chief known as ‘the Great Chait’. Iain knew he came from a long line of proud, fighting people, but his father was the Helmsdale river bailiff which, in the eyes of his schoolmates, made Iain working-class and unsophisticated. It also made him tough and resourceful.
‘‘So why were you sent to a school in Sussex?’’ Nadia asked.
‘‘I was awarded a bursarship thanks to one of the proprietor’s of the Helmsdale river who had connections with a Mr. Healy of the Foreign Office. One afternoon I met Healy, who was still dressed in his fishing waders, over a cup of tea at the Achantoul Estate, a few miles up the strath. He asked me about my academic interests, about a possible career in the F.O., my loyalty to Scotland, to Britain, and the Crown. A month later I was entering Christ’s Hospital in Sussex in the fourth year, aged fifteen.’’
He deliberately omitted telling her he’d left Helmsdale in disgrace; that he’d arrived off the Inverness train in a drab tweed jacket, slicked-down red hair, carrying a cheap set of suitcases and an inferiority complex the size of Loch Naver; that he’d been prickly, querulous and easily offended. And that over the course of an academic year he’d been ordered to the headmaster’s office three times and punished for fighting, once for breaking an elder boy’s cheekbone.
‘‘And when you finished school, what did you do?’’ Nadia said.
‘‘After Christ’s, I took up my one-year apprenticeship with Mr. Healy at the F.O. But then, in the autumn of 1917, at the age of nineteen, the war took me to Amiens and the Somme with the Royal Scots Dragoons, where, after a year of wading through the narrow trenches along the front lines, I was demobbed following the armistice and transferred back to the Foreign Department.’’
Instinctively, he left out that he was ushered into Group Sections in a building in Kensington, followed by a 10 month stint with M.O.5 (c) – the records, personnel and port control department. Not long after he was sent to Kuangchow, China, as a cadet officer to learn Cantonese, before finally being elevated to the status of Passport Control Officer for South China – the SIS operative’s normal cover when abroad.
Iain had arrived in Hong Kong from Kuangchow hidden underneath a brown umbrella. Within an hour of his arrival, he’d been introduced to the Colonial Secretary and the Chief Justice. He recalled being told to sign the Visitors’ Book at Government House, then being lectured on the perils of cholera, Chinese girlfriends and Hong Kong Foot – an itchy fungus that grows between the toes – by a self-important official called Fielding from the Interservice Liaison Department. ‘If you’re idiotic enough to marry a local girl,’ Fielding warned, dabbing his thick red lips with a handkerchief. ‘You’ll be called upon to resign. Is that clear? If you want a bit of fun there are licensed brothels on Lyndhurst Terrace. I’m told they’re rather civilized places, nothing vulgar or coarse, with a decent mix of French, Italian and Hungarian tarts. You can go and fuck the White Russians too if you want, just don’t go making a show of it. We try not to mix with them socially. Is that clear?’ Iain remembered feeling contempt for the man and his dirty white rag of a handkerchief. It was one of his few clear memories of his first day in Hong Kong – that and seeing the rain on the windowpanes, thinking that it resembled liquefied silver.
The more Iain thought about this, the tighter he held Nadia. She was staring straight before her. He found he was holding her protectively and felt her squirm a little as they danced. In his arms she seemed so frail, so graceful. So bloody beautiful. He moved her hand in his as they danced. First slowly. Then quickly. He saw the question mark in her eyes.
The band started playing I’m Just Wild About Harry. Iain and Nadia began to dance the Charleston. He cleared his throat. ‘‘That’s enough about me. Tell me a little bit more about Lazar. Am I right in thinking that he has no association with your uncle whatsoever?’’
She turned her head a tiny bit to look at him. ‘‘They fell out a few years ago, soon after Auntie Amelia passed on.’’
‘‘Supposing Lazar wanted to buy a load of tobacco, he’d still go to your uncle though, wouldn’t he?’’ The pictures of his old life made Iain suddenly afraid. He was talking much louder now, almost shouting above the music.
‘‘Why are you so interested?’’
‘‘No reason.’’
The singer started singing a song called The Varsity Drag. Iain was looking at Nadia’s face. She was what people back home would have called mickle-mouthed. Her mouth was big and full. He noticed that she never closed it entirely, the lips were always just that little bit parted. It was a pretty mouth, he decided. The petal-bruised lips made him think of the chocolate cream bars he used to love as a child. I wonder, he thought to himself, whether her mouth would taste like that – all mintiness and flaky cream chocolate.
A waiter walked past with a tray of caramel tarts and fudge squares.
‘‘Are you fond of chocolate?’’ Iain asked. Nadia’s chin was by his left shoulder, he could see that her neck remained taut. ‘‘In Helmsdale there used to be a sweet shop on Strathnaver Street, built out of Brora stone. I remember when I was about five years old I’d walk down the Old Caithness Road, with the sun cracking through the deep grey sky, and peer into the shop’s window, ogling at the chocolate violet creams and soor plooms and shiny glass jars full of peppermints. When I close my eyes I still see the old faces, the narrow streets, the tight rows of low lime-washed houses.’’
‘‘Mr. Sutherland …’’
‘‘Iain.’’
‘‘Iain, why do you ask such peculiar questions?’’
‘‘How do you mean?’’
‘‘Last week you asked me if I liked honey, now you want to know about Lazar and whether I’m fond of chocolate.’’
‘‘It was a harmless enough question.’’
Nadia was putting up a front. Behind the mask of detachment was a smile. ‘‘I just find it odd.’’
‘‘Odd?’’
‘‘Yes, odd!’’ She made a face.
‘‘Why are you screaming?’’
‘‘I am not screaming.’’
‘‘Yes, you are.’’
Nadia looked at him with intense, smiling eyes. ‘‘You don’t give up easily, do you? Don’t think that I’m not angry with you, Mr. Sutherland.’’
‘‘It’s Iain, please. And why are you angry?’’
‘‘I told you I didn’t want to go out with you … I thought I had made it quite clear. The next thing I know you have the chivaanstva to show up at my friend’s home – ’’
‘‘Chivaantsva … what’s a chivaanstva?’’
‘‘You show up at my friend’s home to tell her that … that I …’’ She contorted her face. ‘‘That I love you. Love you? Are you completely insane?’’
‘‘I think it’s Russian.’’
There was a long pause.
‘‘You think what’s Russian?’’
‘‘This chivaantsva word you keep using.’’
‘‘Must you be so exasperating?’’
‘‘Who’s being exasperating? I was merely asking about – ‘‘
‘‘I’m going back to the table.’’
‘‘But you never answered my question?’’
She sighed. ‘‘What question?’’
‘‘Whether you liked chocolate?’’
‘‘If you must know, I don’t.’’
They were still dancing, clasped close. He kept his left hand on her back. His fingers started tickling her ribs.
‘‘Please stop doing that. I hate being tickled. And what is that awful cologne you’re wearing? You smell like a fragrance factory.’’
‘‘That’s your father’s fault, that is.’’
‘‘My father? What the praklaateeye does my father have to do with this?’’
‘‘If a father can’t spoil his daughter with a spot of tickling and chocolate then I don’t know who can?’’
She shook her head and said something to herself in Russian.
‘‘You’re an only child, aren’t you?’’ he said. ‘‘Usual problem … father spoils little girl incessantly but grows guilty that he’s neglecting his wife, he backs off, overcompensates, becoming aloof, resulting in resentment on both sides. Is that how it is with your father?’’
Her look of surprise turned to distaste. ‘‘How dare you!’’
‘‘How dare I, what?’’
There were tears welling in her eyes all of a sudden. She tilted back her head in defiance. ‘‘How dare you bring my father into this?’’ She slapped him hard across the face and stormed off the dance floor. He watched, quite stunned, as she headed out of the restaurant, with her friend, Izabel, not far behind. Her black velvet headband with ostrich plumes had fallen to the ground.