‘What is it, then?’ said Manning.
‘Paul, I’m afraid I wasn’t really telling you the truth back there in the park.’
‘Oh, Gordon …’
‘I had a very good reason for keeping the real situation to myself, as you’ll see….’
He stopped, and looked round. A small crowd was beginning to collect about them, staring intently into their faces, perhaps thinking, from the manner in which Manning was edging away, and Proctor-Gould crowding in upon him, that they were about to fight. The more private Proctor-Gould’s disclosures became, thought Manning, the more public were the surroundings in which he chose to make them. He would end up telling the ultimate secrets of his heart from the top of the university skyscraper through a public address system. Manning looked round.
‘There’s a beer house just down the road,’ he said. ‘Let’s go there.’
It was crowded inside the beer house. There were no chairs or stools, and the customers stood at shelves along the wall eating bread and cheese and drinking out of paper cups. In one corner two men were embracing each other with laughter and tears. ‘We haven’t seen each other for twenty years,’ they kept explaining to the other customers, who smiled, and wagged their heads, and winked.
‘Abstemious lot here,’ said Proctor-Gould as they queued at the counter. ‘They’re all buying fruit juice.’
‘You haven’t been inside one of these places before?’ said Manning, surprised.
Proctor-Gould shook his head. He looked vaguely round the room. Under the signs saying: ‘It is forbidden to bring and consume spirits,’ the customers were busy emptying their paper cups of fruit juice into the ash-trays, and refilling them from half-bottles of vodka they carried in their pockets. But Proctor-Gould Was already thinking about something else.
‘Paul,’ he said, in a low voice which made several men in the queue turn round and gaze at them expressionlessly. ‘You didn’t really believe all that stuff I told you about getting involved with British intelligence, did you?’
Manning looked at him carefully.
‘Yes, I did,’ he said.
Proctor-Gould smiled.
‘Rather cloak-and-dagger for your taste, I should have thought,’ he said.
‘It sounded about right to me.’
‘I obviously have a career as a story-teller. Because it wasn’t the truth, Paul. The truth is rather simpler. If I may give you a tip, it usually is.’
They collected two paper cups of beer, and found themselves a space at the shelf.
‘Go on, then,’ said Manning. ‘Let’s have the new version.’
‘It’s soon told, Paul,’ said Proctor-Gould, leaning along the counter towards Manning and talking in the same low voice. ‘As you know, there are a number of what are called “underground” writers in this country. They work in secret, and their manuscripts are smuggled out of the country and published in the West.’
Manning looked up from his beer, met Proctor-Gould’s unblinking gaze, and looked away again, disconcerted.
‘Now,’ said Proctor-Gould, ‘somebody else – I don’t know who – arranges for the manuscripts to be got out. I’m part of a chain which brings the royalties back to the author. That may sound mercenary to you, Paul, like everything else, but these people are no different from any other writers – they have to live. I don’t know the author in question myself – I don’t even know his pen-name in the West. All I know is that I’m given a book with a number of 100 dollar bills made up inside the binding, and that I’m due to hand it over to the next link in the chain tonight. I believe there are some cuttings of reviews with the money, too. I don’t know whether you think this sort of operation is worthwhile, Paul?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘It seems so to me, I must say. I’m glad you agree. I’d be very grateful, Paul, if you’d go to the Kiev Station some time before the dinner this evening and get that case out of the left luggage office for me.’
Manning sipped a little of his beer. It tasted like dilute Syrup of Figs.
‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you, Gordon,’ he said.
‘I think you do, Paul.’
‘Why did you tell me the other version?’
Proctor-Gould sighed.
‘Once I’d admitted that one of the books contained something – which I should never have done – I had to go on and complete the story. At the time it didn’t seem to matter what you thought of me as a result, provided only that (a) you believed the story, and that (b) it wasn’t the truth. I obviously made rather too good a job of it; you not only believed the story – you struck moral attitudes about it. Now that you’ve forced me to tell you the true version I want your solemn oath that you will not divulge it to anyone – not hint at it – not even refer to it obliquely when you are back in England. Will you give it me, please?’
He was leaning close to Manning. It reduced his height, so that he was looking up into Manning’s face, his earnest brown irises underlined by the whites and the pink rim beneath them. On either side of the two Englishmen the line of jawbones champed up and down, the guzzling Adam’s apples wobbled stolidly on.
‘It’s ridiculous to give my word,’ said Manning, ‘if I don’t believe the story.’
‘I want your word whether you believe it or not.’
‘All right, then,’ said Manning reluctantly. It seemed to him that in giving his word he was also implying his acceptance of the story. He would have liked to make it clear to Proctor-Gould that he reserved his opinion, but it seemed a hopelessly complicated point to explain to those straightforward brown eyes.
‘You swear?’ said Proctor-Gould.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘“I swear”?’
‘I swear.’
Proctor-Gould straightened up.
‘Even if you’re not convinced,’ he said, ‘I hope I’ve managed to sow doubts. In any case, Paul, I don’t think you’d really give your pal Konstantin the means of blackmailing me, would you? After all, come wind, come rain, we are fellow-countrymen. In fact we’re fellow-Johnsmen.’
He smiled at Manning ruefully.
‘I’m not coming the old blood-is-thicker-than-water, I assure you,’ he said. ‘All the same, one does have a certain undeniable leaning towards one’s compatriots, doesn’t one? One doesn’t deliberately set out to sell them into the hands of foreigners.’
Manning swallowed the rest of his beer. It made him shudder. Proctor-Gould, he noticed, had not even touched his.
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.
36
The faculty looked curiously unimpressive around the dinner table, thought Manning. Ginsberg, Romm, Rubeshchenskaya, Skorbyatova, even Korolenko himself – they all seemed tamed and domesticated among the starched napery, the ranks of crystal glasses and the podgy wives. The personalities which were so distinctive on the dusty lecture rostrum each day had faded, the repertoire of famous mannerisms laid aside. For one thing, they were all dominated by the architecture of the room. It was in one of the banqueting suites of the university skyscraper. Pillars of veined blood-red soapstone supported complex funereal urns. Fluted gilt columns flowered into clusters of flambeaux. Triple-tiered chandeliers hung down from the dark upper air. Amidst it all, mere lounge-suited flesh and blood looked pallid and unsatisfactory.
Manning felt as pallid as the others looked. He was very tired, brought low by the strains of the last few days. Mrs Skorbyatova was saying something to him. He could not be bothered to take it in. He would have liked to lower his head until his chin was resting discreetly on his chest, and then close his eyes for five or ten minutes. It occurred to him that he was starting to get noticeably drunk. Well, to hell with it.
Romm was on his feet, holding up his glass. Another toast. ‘The London School of Civic Studies.’ How did the London School of Civic Studies come into it, so far away around the bend of the world? Never mind. Pick up the little vodka glass. Lift. Clink against Mrs Skorbyatova’s glass on his left, and Mrs Loyeva’s on his right. Mumble. Tip draught down throat in one blazing, fuming stream. Hold breath. Drink mineral water before the suffocating fumes rose and choked him. Already the waitresses were recharging the glasses for the next toast.