A Perfect Spy

A shocked stillness had descended over Pym and it was the literal stillness of death. He was standing at the window once more, watching the leaves drift across the empty square. An ominous inactivity marked everything he saw. Not a head in a window, not an open doorway. Not a dog or cat or squirrel or a single squawking child. They have taken to the hills. They are waiting for the raiders from the sea. But in his head he is standing in the cellar flat of a run-down office block in Cheapside, watching the two faded Lovelies on their knees as they tear open the last of Rick’s files and lick their crabbed fingertips to speed them in their paperchase. Paper lies in growing mounds around them, it flutters through the air like swirling petals as they rummage and discard what they have vainly plundered: bank statements written in blood, invoices, furious solicitors’ letters, warrants, summonses, love letters dripping with reproach. The dust of them is filling Pym’s nostrils as he watches, the clang of the steel drawers is like the clang of his prison grilles, but the Lovelies heed nothing; they are avid widows ransacking Rick’s record. At the centre of the débris, drawers and cupboard askew, stands Rick’s last Reichskanzlei desk, its serpents twining themselves round its bombé legs like gilded garters. On the wall hangs the last photograph of the great TP in mayoral regalia and on the chimney piece, above a grate stuffed with false coals and the last of Rick’s cigar butts, stands the bronze bust of your Founder and Managing Director himself, beaming out the last of his integrity. On the open door at Pym’s back hangs the memorial tablet to Rick’s last dozen companies, but a sign beside the bell reads “Press here for attention,” because when Rick has not been saving his nation’s faltering economy, he has been working as night porter for the block.

“What time did he die?” says Pym, before remembering that he knows.

“Evening, dearie. The pubs was just opening,” says one of the Lovelies through her cigarette as she heaves another batch of paper on to the rubbish heap.

“He was having a nice drop next door,” says the other, who like the first has not for one moment relaxed her labours.

“What’s next door?” says Pym.

“Bedroom,” says the first Lovely, tossing aside another spent file.

“So who was with him?” Pym asks. “Were you with him? Who was with him, please?”

“We both were, dearie,” says the second. “We was having a little cuddle, if you want to know. Your dad loved a drink and it always made him amorous. We’d had a nice tea early because of his commitments, steak with onion, and he’d had a bit of a barney on the blower with the telephone exchange about a cheque that was in the post to them. He was depressed, wasn’t he, Vi?”

The first Lovely, if reluctantly, suspends her researches. The second does likewise. Suddenly they are decent London women, with kindly faces and puffed, overworked bodies.

“It was over for him, dearie,” she says, pushing away a hank of hair with her chubby wrist.

“What was?”

“He said if he couldn’t have that phone no more, he’d have to go. He said that phone was his lifeline and if he couldn’t have it, it was a judgment on him, how would he do his business without a blower and a clean shirt?”

Mistaking Pym’s silence for rebuke, her companion flares at him. “Don’t look at us like that, darling. He’d had all we’ve got long ago. We done the gas, we done the electric, we cooked his dinners, didn’t we, Vi?”

“We done all we could,” says Vi. “And given him the comfort, too.”

“We pulled tricks for him more than was natural, didn’t we, Vi? Three a day for him, sometimes.”

“More,” says Vi.

“He was very lucky to have you,” says Pym sincerely. “Thank you very much for looking after him.”

This pleases them, and they smile shyly.

“You haven’t got a nice bottle in that big black briefcase of yours, I suppose, dearie?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Vi goes to the bedroom. Through the open doorway Pym sees the great imperial bed from Chester Street, its upholstery ripped and stained with use. Rick’s silk pyjamas lie sprawled across the coverlet. He smells Rick’s body lotion and Rick’s hair oil. Vi returns with a bottle of Drambuie.

“Did he talk about me at all, in the last days?” says Pym while they drink.

“He was proud of you, dear,” says Vi’s friend. “Very proud.” But she seems dissatisfied with her reply. “He was going to catch you up, mind. That was nearly his last words, wasn’t it, Vi?”

“We was holding him,” says Vi, with a sniff. “You could see he was going from the breathing. ‘Tell them I forgive them at the telephone exchange,’ he says. ‘And tell my boy Magnus we’ll both be ambassadors soon.’”

“And after that?” says Pym.

“‘ Give us another touch of the Napoleon, Vi,’” says Vi’s friend, now weeping also. “It wasn’t Napoleon though, it was the Drambuie. Then he says: ‘There’s enough in those files, girls, to see you right till you join me.’”