A Spy by Nature (2001) Read online

  Fortner leans back in his chair. His eyes sweep briefly, suspiciously, around the room, and his mouth stretches out.

  ‘You know Haagen-Dazs is a made-up name?’

  ‘No kidding?’ he says.

  ‘I’m telling you. The guy wanted something that sounded aristocratic, something classy, so he played around with a few Scandinavian-sounding words and came up with that. Then he had his family change their surname by deed poll to Haagen-Dazs and now they have their picture taken for Hello! magazine.’

  ‘Shit,’ says Fortner. ‘I always thought they were descended from the Hapsburgs.’

  ‘No. They’re descended from a thesaurus.’

  Fortner is an intriguing drunk. In the early stages, say after two or three beers or a half-bottle of wine, all the better elements of his personality - the quick, sly humour, the anecdotes, the cynicism - fuse together and he operates with a sharpness which I have seen captivate Katharine. But this doesn’t last. If he keeps knocking back the drink, his questions become more blunt, his answers long-winded and tinged with a regret that can morph into self-pity. Right now, we are in the limbo between these two points: it could go either way.

  Largely as a way of tapping me for industry rumour before his condition gets out of hand, Fortner starts talking shop for the next fifteen minutes. He tells me what he and Katharine have been up to, and about Andromeda’s plans for the short-term future. In return, Fortner expects information, much of which he knows I should not be telling him. What are Abnex planning to do about X? What’s the company line on Y? Is there any truth in the rumours about a merger with Z? My answers are carefully evasive.

  ‘That was damn good,’ he says, tipping his head back and letting the last half-mouthful of his Bloody Mary seep through a mess of ice and lemon. ‘I like ‘em spicy. You like ‘em like that, Milius?’

  ‘Kate did.’

  This just comes out. I hadn’t planned to say it.

  ‘You never talk about her much,’ he says, after a brief silence in which sincerity has suddenly swamped his mood.

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘You feel like talkin’ about her now?’

  And the curious thing is that I do. To talk about Kate to this weathered Yank in a pub swirling with noise and bluster.

  ‘How long has it been now since you broke up?’

  ‘Over a year. More.’

  ‘D’you think you’re over her?’

  ‘There’s always this pilot light of grief.’

  ‘Nice way of putting it,’ Fortner says. He is doing a good job of suppressing any instinct for flippancy.

  ‘You were together what, six or seven years?’

  ‘From school, yes.’

  ‘Long time. You ever see her?’

  ‘Now and again,’ I tell him, just to see what happens. ‘You know how it is with couples who’ve been together a long time. They can’t ever really break up. So we meet once in a while and spend these incredible nights together. But we can never seem to get it going again.’

  I like the idea of Fortner thinking she still can’t get over me.

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Every five or six weeks. I still confide in her. She’s still the best friend I have.’

  ‘Really?’ Fortner looks suitably intrigued, admiring even. ‘She got another boyfriend?’

  ‘Don’t know. She’s never said anything to me.’

  ‘So how come you broke up? What happened?’

  ‘Same thing that happens to a lot of couples after university. Suddenly they find they have to go out and work for a living and things aren’t as much fun any more. Priorities change, you have more responsibilities. You have to grow up so fast, and unless you can find a way of doing that together, the cracks are bound to show.’

  ‘And that’s what happened with you and Kate?’

  ‘That’s what happened with me and Kate. We were living together, but for some reason that made things worse. We were trying to be our parents before our time.’

  This last remark doesn’t appear to have made any sense to Fortner. He says:

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Playing host and hostess to our friends. Dinner parties. Going to the Prado during the Easter holidays and renting villas in Tuscany. All of a sudden we were dressing smarter, choosing furniture, buying fucking cookbooks. And we were barely twenty-one, twenty-two. We took everything so fucking seriously.’

  ‘That’s not like you,’ he says, arching his eyebrows and grinning.

  ‘Funny,’ I reply.

  ‘And Kate was getting a lot of work? She was finding success as an actress and you weren’t?’

  ‘Partly. I was fucked up after college. I didn’t want to commit myself to any one thing in case something better came along. I was afraid of hard work, afraid that my youth was prematurely over. And I was jealous of her success, yes. It was pretty pathetic.’

  ‘And she didn’t help?’

  ‘No, Christ, she was wonderful. She was sympathetic and understanding, but I pushed her away. She got tired of me. Simple as that.’

  ‘You think she was in love with you?’

  I feel as though everyone sitting around us in the pub is listening in to our conversation, waiting for my response to this question. I falter, looking down at the worn brown carpet, then say: ‘I’ll tell you a story.’

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘But first let me buy us a drink.’

  When Fortner returns he is clutching two whiskies, mine a Scotch and dry, his a double on the rocks. The bell sounds for last orders.

  ‘Lucky I got there on time,’ he says. ‘Now, you were gonna tell me somethin’.’

  ‘You asked if Kate was ever in love with me.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘This is what I know. During one of the summer breaks from college I went on holiday with Mum to Costa Rica. Without Kate.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I didn’t invite her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I saw it as a good opportunity to have some time away from her. We lived in each other’s pockets and round about then Kate was very unsettled. And Mum wanted it to be just the two of us. She never really got on with Kate.’

  Fortner just nods, takes a sip of his drink.

  ‘My mother and I had rooms quite far apart in the hotel, so that if I came back late at night I wouldn’t disturb her. One night I went clubbing with some people who were also staying in the hotel. We drank a lot, danced, the usual stuff. There was a girl with us that I liked a lot. A Canadian. Don’t remember her name. She’d been hanging around the pool and we’d talked every now and again. She was beautiful, really sexy, and I fancied my chances, y’know? But I’d been with Kate so long that I’d forgotten how to seduce someone.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Fortner, listening hard. My glass of whisky has a taste of aniseed on its rim. I want to take it back and complain.

  ‘So I bought her a few drinks, tried to make her laugh, tried to act cool, tried to dance without making a fool of myself. But nothing seemed to work. All night she seemed to be getting further and further away from me and I had no idea why. Anyway, after the club closed we found ourselves in the hotel lift together, going back to our rooms, and I tried to kiss her. I lunged in and waited for a response, even though deep down I knew it wasn’t coming. I knew she didn’t like me, and sure enough she veered away. Then the doors of the lift opened on to her floor and she said goodnight - I couldn’t tell if she was giggling or offended - got out of the lift and went off down the corridor to her room.’

  ‘What happened then?’ says Fortner.

  ‘I went back to my room. Shame, guilt, embarrassment, you name it.’

  ‘You only tried kissin’ her, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘You don’t know Kate.’

  Fortner frowns.

  ‘It was five in the morning and I was drunk and melancholy. The time difference with London was four or five hours so I decided to ring Kate, to hear her voice, just to make mysel
f feel better so that I could get some sleep. So I picked up the phone and dialled her number. She answered almost straight away.’

  ‘What’d she say?’

  ‘She was crying.’

  ‘Crying?’

  ‘Yeah. I said “What’s wrong?” and without a second’s hesitation she said “I just miss you. I woke up and you weren’t beside me and I was all alone and I miss you.” That’s how much she loved me.’

  Fortner absorbs the story, but his blank expression indicates that it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before: once you’ve seen one broken heart, you’ve seen them all. He waits for a few seconds, just out of politeness, and then asks:

  ‘Was Kate always emotional? Cryin’ all the time?’

  It irritates me that he’ll think of her now as meek and timid, a little lamb of insecurity unable to sustain herself without me. She wasn’t like that at all.

  ‘No. She’s very strong. She’s one of those people who are old before their time, who know exactly what they want and don’t waste any time getting it. Kate’s very low-bullshit. She has no ego.’

  ‘Bet you’re wrong about that,’ he says, swallowing a mouthful of whisky. ‘Everyone has an ego, Milius. Some are just better at hidin’ it than others.’

  ‘You think Katharine has an ego?’

  ‘Hell, yeah. Why, you don’t think she does?’

  I don’t want to give Fortner the impression that I’ve given too much time to thinking about his wife.

  ‘I dunno. But it’s interesting. Kate seemed so perfect to me that by the end I just worshipped her. That had a lot to do with the fact that she was so kind. It didn’t seem proper, or possible, that someone could be as good and as pure as she was. I was in awe of her beauty. It got to such a point that I felt I could no longer touch her. She actually made me feel unworthy of her. Perverted even. She was too good for me.’

  ‘But you still see her?’ he asks quickly, aware of an emerging contradiction. I’d forgotten that I’d lied about that.

  ‘Yeah. But it’s just sex now. Sex and the occasional chat. Nostalgia.’

  ‘If you could take her back, would you?’ he asks. ‘Go back to having a full relationship, living together and all that?’

  ‘Straight away.’

  ‘Why?’

  It feels so good to be telling him even a semblance of truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly took out a notebook and began taking shorthand.

  ‘This is what I truly believe,’ I tell him, and this will be my last word on the subject. ‘I believe that people spend years looking for the right person to be with. They try on different personalities, different bodies, different neuroses, until they find one that fits. I just happened to find the right girl when I was nineteen years old.’

  ‘That the only time you cheated on her, in Costa Rica?’

  ‘Yes.’

  No one knows about Anna. Only Kate and Saul, and the people at CEBDO.

  ‘Truth?’

  ‘Course it’s the truth. Why? Do you ever contemplate screwing around on Katharine?’

  ‘Do I ever contemplate it?’ he says, examining the word for its various meanings, like a lawyer checking smallprint. Then he says ‘No’ with tremendous firmness.

  ‘But you think about it?’

  ‘Oh, sure, I think about it. Does Rose Kennedy have a black dress? Sure, I think about it. I’d been messin’ around for years before I met Kathy and it’s been hard givin’ all that up. But you know what I finally realized?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘I realized that there’s a lot of attractive women out there, but you can’t fuck ‘em all. It just ain’t possible. The problem with screwing around is you get yourself a taste for it. You fuck one woman, you start developing this lucky feelin’, start thinking you can fuck the next one that comes along, and the next one after that. What you have to learn is how to prefer looking at women but not touching them. You see what I’m saying? It’s like giving up cigarettes. You might love to have a smoke, the smell of the tobacco on the air, but you know it’ll kill you if you do. You can never let that filter touch your lips again. Same with women. You gotta let ‘em go.’

  He takes another slug of Scotch, as if anticipating applause, and lets the alcohol sloosh and sting around his mouth.

  ‘It’s like gettin’ older.’ Fortner’s hand ducks down below the level of the table and he gives his balls a good, ill-disguised scratching. ‘When you’re a young kid, you think you can change the world, right? You see a problem and you can articulate it to your college friends and suddenly the world’s a much better fuckin’ place to live. But then you start gettin’ older, and you get yourself a whole new bunch of experiences. You’re aware of a lot more points of view. So now it’s not so easy sounding convinced about what you’re thinkin’ about, ‘cos you know too many of the angles. You followin’ me?’

  I have been distracted by the gradual exodus of people in the pub, the clatter and wipe of closing. But I know I can drift out of the conversation and still come back in to follow Fortner’s train of thought.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I tell him. ‘That makes a lot of sense.’

  ‘Jeez, I’m hammered,’ he says suddenly, wiping his brow with his forearm. He had noticed that my attention was wandering. ‘We oughta be going, I guess. Hope my jacket’s still here.’

  ‘It should be,’ I tell him.

  Both of us finish our drinks and stand up. I take my packet of cigarettes off the table and check that the lighter is still in my trousers. As we head for the exit, Fortner pulls his jacket off the hook by the bar - it’s the last one there - and flips it over his shoulder. He barks a friendly farewell to the Kiwi, who is busy emptying ashtrays into a blue plastic bucket. He looks up at us and says ‘Night guys, see y’again’ and then goes back to work.

  Out on the street, a few paces up the road, Fortner turns to me.

  ‘Well, young man,’ he says, slapping me on the back. ‘It’s been a pleasure as always. Stay in touch. I’m gonna go home, wake up Kathy, take a fistful of aspirin and try to get some sleep. You gonna be OK gettin’ back to your apartment? You wanna come up for a beer, a coffee or somethin’?’

  ‘No. I’d better be off. Got work tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure. OK, I’ll see ya. Gimme a call in the next few days.’

  ‘Will do.’

  And he ambles up the street, a lost, faintly dishevelled figure gradually moving out of focus. I have this sense that the evening ended oddly, too quickly, but it’s a barely registered concern.

  I head up the hill as far as Holland Park Avenue, but there isn’t a taxi in sight. Passing the underground station, my mobile phone goes off and I take it out of my jacket.

  ‘Alec?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It’s Cohen.

  ‘Harry. Hi. How are you?’

  ‘I’m at the office.’

  I look at my watch.

  ‘But it’s past eleven.’

  ‘Do you think I’m not aware of that?’

  ‘No, I simply -‘

  He interrupts me, his voice bullish and proud.

  ‘Look. When did you speak to Raymond Mackenzie?’

  ‘Off the top of my head I can’t remember. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’

  ‘Given that he’s leaving for Turkmenistan in seven hours, no it can’t.’

  ‘I think I spoke to him yesterday. In the afternoon. I had everything he needs faxed over to him. He’s not going there with his trousers down.’

  The connection falters here, dead noise and then broken words.

  ‘Harry, I can’t hear you.’

  Cohen is raising his voice, but it’s impossible to make out what he is saying.

  ‘I can’t hear you. Harry? My battery’s dead. Listen, I’ll call you from a landline…’

  He is cut off.

  There is a phone booth near by, decorated with a patchwork quilt of whore cards. A man is standing inside, a worn-out husband wearing a raincoat and trainers. I look straight a
t him and our eyes briefly meet, but with no regard for this he just rocks back on his heels and has a good look at what’s on offer. He pans left and right, studying the cards, taking his time. Traffic sweeps by and I feel suddenly cold.

  After a minute or so he makes up his mind, scribbling a number down on a pad which is resting on the thin metal shelf to the right of the phone. Then he drops a ten-pence piece into the slot.

  I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t want to be waiting to make a phone call to Cohen at half past eleven at night. I tap on the glass, fast with the hard edge of my knuckle, but the man just ignores me, turning his back.

  A cab drives past and I flag it down, riding back to Uxbridge Road. But when I try Cohen’s number from home, there is no reply. Just the smug disdain of his voicemail and a low-pitched beep.

  I hang up.

  19

  Seize the Day

  The keypad on my telephone at home has four preprogrammed numbers: 1 is Mum; 2 is Saul; 3 is Katharine and Fortner; 0 is Abnex. The rest are blank.

  I push Memory 3 and listen to the tone-dial symphony of their number ringing out.

  She answers.

  Here we go.

  ‘Hello. Katharine Lanchester.’

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it.’

  ‘Alec. Is that you?’

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it.’

  ‘Alec, what is it?’

  ‘Abnex have told me they’re not satisfied with what I’m doing. With my work. They’re not convinced I’m doing the best I can.’

  ‘Slow down, honey. Slow down.’

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That if I don’t start pulling my weight they won’t give me a contract when my trial period is over.’