We spent a great deal of time in each other’s company until the war started, and afterwards, when I went back to France, he would come and visit almost every vacation. We drove around France and Italy, staying in little hotels, eating in restaurants, enjoying ourselves as the world recovered from its trauma. He taught me about Christmas and birthdays, how to give gifts and pay compliments. I still smile when I think of that period.
He was a great talker as well. We would sit until late at night and I would question him remorselessly about everything — life, family, work, education. About his country, the books he liked, those he didn’t. About music, theatre, poetry and the cinema. About the French and the Germans, the Italians, Americans and the Spanish. About politics and religion. About manners, customs, habits. I absorbed it all and came back for more. He taught me the art of conversation, of being in company for no purpose. The pleasure of wasting time.
It was not that I didn’t know the facts. I knew many of them better than he did. I just didn’t know what they meant, how they fitted together. Henry didn’t provide all the answers, but he was a good start, and his generosity and kindness was the greatest lesson of all. He changed me irrevocably, and certainly for the better. I fear that I was not able to do the same for him. But from that moment, I began to question many things I had previously taken for granted.
It was because of Henry that I came to England and again because of him that I spent much of the next five years doing my bit for British Intelligence, although in a very much more lowly capacity than his. He came to rescue me in France in early 1940, which was terribly chivalrous of him, and whisked me off to safety. I had already decided this was the best option, but Henry’s assistance and then recommendation was useful in getting me employment to pass the time. If this sounds both grand and unlikely, then it was not. The country was desperate for expertise of all sorts and my quite phenomenal ability at languages was useful. My somewhat greater skill at mathematics remained unknown, however; properly tanked up, I could have done all of Bletchley Park’s work for it over a cup of tea, but that would have been hard to explain. Besides, I didn’t really want to do it; I rather thought it would have been pleasant to be a land girl, ploughing the fields and growing vegetables for the war effort. Dawn, fresh air, the nobility of physical labour, all that stuff. The camaraderie of a common purpose, getting drunk in pubs on days off. Lots of sex. I had a particularly romantic notion of working in a factory, joining a union, complaining about the oppression of the capitalist classes.
But no: because of Henry, I worked for intelligence, ploughing through Polish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek and Russian texts with a speed which was considered by my superiors to be extraordinarily impressive. Boring work, for the most part. I wouldn’t have minded being parachuted into France and shooting people as Henry got to do, as it sounded quite fun, except that I was extraneous to history and so there was no guarantee I would survive. The moral considerations were complex, as well; I would hardly be murdering people, as from my point of view they were long dead anyway, but I would be shortening their lives, and I would have had to calculate the potential consequences for each target. Too much work. I still think I would have been quite good at it, though. I did think of offering myself as a sort of Mata Hari, seducing German officers, combining business with pleasure, but Henry’s superior, the saintly Portmore, was rather prudish and thought it a bit unladylike and un-English. Pointing out that I was neither a lady nor English did not persuade him. Later in the war, though, such scruples were abandoned.
It had its moments, although in my case the drama was a little spoiled by knowing the outcome. I didn’t share the frisson of fear at the thought of defeat, nor the remarkable uplift at the realisation of likely survival. I only let my guard slip once, in 1941, with Henry’s friend Sam Wind, a man I never liked much. I had just about figured out relationships between the sexes; male friendship was quite beyond me, at least the very peculiar English variety of it. I was being cheerful — don’t worry, I’m sure it will all be fine — and Wind had snapped back that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Once Germany had defeated the Soviet Union and could turn back to us...
‘No,’ I said with a cheery wave of the hand. We were in a pub and I had been sampling the whisky. ‘After Pearl Harbor and Stalingrad...’
Then, of course, I remembered it was only October. Some time to go before either of those. And the Germans were doing jolly well at that moment.
Sam, who was supercilious and superior at the best of times, gave me one of his finest sniffs of disdain, but as the news of the Japanese surprise attack began to come through in December, I remember him looking at me in a funny sort of way. All I can say is that it was the only time I ever made a mistake like that.
19
The file of papers Wind had given Lytten lay unopened in a drawer until Monday evening. Lytten had, in the past, been both flexible and adaptable, but he had never considered either to be a virtue and now he lived quite strictly to an orderly regime. That included not doing any work on a Sunday. He went to church in the morning at ten thirty, not because he was religious but because he found it a calming experience, and, what was more, the thing one should do on a Sunday morning. He liked the music, the architecture and the rhythm of ceremony. Then he walked home and had lunch. Cold meat, cold boiled potatoes, some bread and cheese. Occasionally he would accept an invitation for dinner. Otherwise, in the afternoon he would read or sometimes write, although never anything to do with his academic duties, and never at the behest of Samuel Wind.
He had known Wind for much of his life; like many male English friendships it was based on faint disdain mixed with longevity. That is, he had disliked the man for such a long time that he no longer minded the way he tended to talk primarily about himself, the way he dismissed any concerns but his own, the drawling contempt that he affected for almost everyone and everything. Life had conspired to throw them together far too often; they had, briefly, attended the same school, then the same university. When Portmore brought Lytten into Intelligence, Wind somehow found a way of joining him. He was able, he was ambitious but... what? Lytten never bothered to figure it out. He was too pleased with himself, and was always there.
Eventually he submitted; he made a sandwich, stacked the fire and drew the curtains, then picked up, at last, the little folder of papers.
It didn’t take long to read it. There were a few East German briefing papers of only mild interest. The rest were gibberish, padding, random bits of paper swept off someone’s desk with no meaning. Only one sheet mattered, and on that there was only one sentence, suitably meaningless.
‘I will see the Storyteller in Paradise.’
Underneath was a date and a time. Here we go, he thought.
He was distracted for the rest of the evening, trying to make notes for his tale but more often staring emptily, a faint smile only occasionally playing over his face as he thought about the Storyteller. The idea had been woven through his life so much it was now embedded in his imagination as well. Was that why it had come to him when he searched for the centrepiece that would hold Anterwold together? He did not want to write about priests or kings, let alone talking lions or wizards, but all societies need authority figures. So he had come up with the Storytellers, on the grounds that they had a chance of being more peaceful than generals and more benevolent than politicians. They had popped into his mind quite on their own, so he had thought, but now he realised they had been there all along, waiting for him.