31

General Miller was tweaking the points of his moustaches. How tiresome the boy could be: dogged and repetitive, with that angry look in his eye.

‘So are you absolutely sure there are no secrets you should be telling me?’

Miller patted the air down under his hands at waist height, as if smoothing down his son’s feelings and massaging them away. That had been all that was needed, once. For a moment, remembering, he felt nostalgia for the great simplicity of that time in the woods, when Jean had still been a skinny dark-haired urchin, soaking up that gesture with his great, burning, trusting eyes, pale as water, wanting nothing more than to believe everything Miller told him.

‘No, don’t do that,’ Jean said now. ‘Just answer me.’

Wondering rather uneasily if there were any way Jean could possibly have got wind of anything about his relationship with poor Constance, or even about the awkward visit yesterday from that girl, Constance’s American relative – but no, that would be quite impossible, surely – Miller twirled his moustaches and smiled his blandest smile.

‘I do wish, dear boy,’ he said, ‘that I could at least offer you a drink.’

Because, if he were to tell the other news, the news his professional mind was concentrating on, which was keeping at bay everything he might otherwise have allowed himself to feel about Constance’s death, they’d want to raise a toast to the future, wouldn’t they? And a proper toast, too, not a damn glass of milk.

‘Father,’ Jean said warningly. ‘I can see in your eyes there’s something. Come on.’

And so, in the end, he broadened his smile and began, ‘Perceptive of you, dear boy, because, as a matter of fact, I do have some rather exciting news …’ and he’d told him the whole story of the letter from Canaris, head of the Abwehr, offering German support to ROVS. The Germans behind us! Skoblin’s hard work repaid! All we have to do is satisfy the two agents who are on their way to Paris, right now, that we’ve thought everything through; there’ll be secret talks in the next few days and then an alliance against the Bolsheviks in time for the coming war – and, soon, Victory! The Future!

He couldn’t say those phrases himself without skipping through the whole necessary-evil phase of war – planning, advances and all the rest of it – and straight on to imagining himself watching a vast, familiar, yearned-for panorama fade into twilight, and the tremendous satisfaction of smelling the moss and melancholy of a summer nightfall, where he belonged. The scent of the pines. A great hurrah.

But he couldn’t say the phrases to Jean without a twinge of nervousness, either, because the boy had his own bookish views, learned from all those night courses he’d been on, no doubt, and those writers he was currently following around, which no doubt he’d grow out of in time – it was all a question of age and maturity, surely. But still, the boy and he didn’t always see eye to eye on the really important questions, and the last thing he wanted, with something as important as this, was some foolish quarrel.

So he was already shaking his head and smiling warningly even before Jean began to speak, while his young eyes were still threatening and his fists clenching and unclenching, before he’d even got out that first ill-considered yelp: ‘What – you don’t really mean you’re going to make a deal with the Nazis?’

Because, really, what could a boy know of high politics?

Jean

So this was the secret. Not a love affair, or not only. This was what Father and Skoblin had been muttering about the other night. I shouldn’t be half this shocked. I should have guessed. They’d been angling for some sort of support from Germany for years. I’d just never thought for a moment that they had a hope in Hell. I should have been paying more attention.

For one appalled moment, I told myself that what Father was saying, with that foolish don’t-oppose-me-dear-boy smile clamped on his face, must surely have been Skoblin’s idea – or anyone’s, anyone’s, except his.

And then, before I could stop it, a mental picture of Evie imitating Father with a Hitler salute and the mocking words ‘Herr Schickelgruber’ flashed into my mind. She’d been right, then. Odious, vile, smug … but right. The thought made me hot with rage and cold with humiliation all at once; and, at the same time, filled me with a new protectiveness towards Father, who shouldn’t be mocked like that; who, though misguided, was a good man, deep down.

With an effort, I put her out of my mind, knowing I could never speak to her again.

Or I tried. Because she was still lingering there, like an unquiet ghost, which meant that for a moment I actually thought of arguing against Father’s plan on principle.

But then the hopelessness of it struck me. It would mean nothing to Father that I found the notion of that German alliance morally repulsive. He simply wouldn’t hear if I started telling him what my friends, just out of Berlin, had been telling me – which, in my mind, I’d coalesced down to two or three images. Triumphant yobs in uniform picking out their victims; a bowed old man going down under their fists here; a window smashing into a thousand pieces there … Or Schickelgruber himself, spitting and howling at a crowd of fools under a giant swastika, turning that gentle land of music and philosophers and students into a brute wilderness where the bully-boy was king.

What was the point of trying? Father would just start going on about boys not understanding high politics, or talking lyrically about the power he saw in those displays of brutality: the number of tanks, the number of feet marching … I couldn’t believe that was the heart of it, for him – not really – because I also knew that his real motivation – the strength of his yearning for that long-ago peacetime home I’d never known – was, genuinely, something I couldn’t understand. I could only imagine how strong it was, because of what he was prepared to do to get it back. For me, as an exile, imagining how Father felt about home was all working backwards – as if by seeing a shadow I could draw a picture of the object that had cast it. But, since I was tied to ROVS out of love for this stubborn old fool, I’d just have to try to understand his point of view, and tailor my counter-arguments accordingly.

So, when I said, ‘Don’t do it,’ I tried to put my horror and anger aside, and keep things simple. I told him all the practical reasons I was frightened. I tried to appeal to his love.

I asked him: didn’t he worry about all the rumours that Skoblin had a hand in the last kidnapping? I asked: what if his number two was a double agent for the Bolsheviks? And I said: what if this was a Red ambush?

But when I saw the coldness in Father’s eyes, I saw that this was hopeless, too, and stopped, because he’d started again. If I can’t persuade my son to work with me, I must have faith in my other friends, he was saying. Skoblin is a good man. Skoblin is much maligned. We are old, old comrades, together since Constantinople and the camps. It’s dishonourable to think he might betray me in the way you suggest. I trust him absolutely.

There was no point in arguing. I knew from past experience that neither of us would change our minds. I let it wash over me. I’d heard it all before.

But it seemed worse today, our obstinate non-agreement – much more claustrophobic and depressing than usual. I didn’t let myself think of Evie – or not exactly, not more than I needed to resolve that I wasn’t going to betray Father like that again or expose him to her ridicule. But I was aware that what seemed so much worse was that, for the past few days, I’d believed there might be something else for me beyond the loneliness of living at one remove from all this. And now that was all closed off again, and there was just this, again, like prison gates clanging shut.

‘I mean,’ I said dispiritedly, ‘don’t do it without telling me, at least. Please.’

For some reason, that seemed to reach him. I could see his eyes smile. Perhaps, for once, he’d heard the unspoken declaration of love that was always in my voice. At any rate, he nodded and touched me briefly on the shoulder with his big hand.

‘Do you know yet when the meeting will be? And where?’ I went on. ‘Can I take you?’

But no, he was already shaking his head, smiling that confident smile. I could see he didn’t want me involved.

‘As for the date, well, it all depends on when our German colleagues arrive, of course,’ he said, and he couldn’t keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘All I know is that, when the time comes, Skoblin and I will slip off to meet them somewhere quiet … Passy … Auteuil … you know.’

The smartest bits of residential Paris, beyond the Trocadéro: retired ministers, countesses walking Pekes, big spreading trees, the rudest taxi clients. Everywhere was somewhere quiet in those secluded streets. ‘Where?’ I said.

‘I don’t know exactly where myself, dear boy,’ Father said, and again I heard an unfamiliar note of weariness in his voice, as well as caginess. ‘I think he might have said rue Jasmin, or rue Raffet, but I’m not really sure. I’m everyone’s prisoner, as you know. That’s all in Skoblin’s hands. But now – I’m in yours. Will you take me home?’

I wanted to say something loving; something that would dispel the fatigue in his voice, and show that, even if I detested the idea of the alliance he wanted to make, I supported him with every fibre of my being. Always had. Always would.

But I didn’t know how, any more than I had words for the helpless, childish rage locked away inside me that he could be so indifferent to what I felt or wanted for him. Even if he was the family I’d chosen, the family I’d always choose, that was just how things were. There was no point in quibbling. So I nodded and picked up his briefcase.

My taxi-driving knowledge told me that there wasn’t even a café on the rue Jasmin or the rue Raffet, which met each other between Passy and Auteuil: just old money and conventional good taste behind the shutters for as far as the eye could see in every direction. But, I was thinking, if I could find out when the planned meeting would take place, perhaps I could at least sit outside, in my cab, and keep watch till Father came out.

It was the last thing I wanted to be doing with my life. But I needed to keep busy. I needed not to think.