A Delicate Truth A Novel

That’s what you’ll be. An outcast who played his cards too early. It’s not what you were put on earth for – I know that, better than anyone. The whole country’s crying out for a new elite. Begging for one. For people like you – real men – the real men of England, unspoiled – all right, dreamers too – but with their feet on the ground. Bell’s the real thing, I told them. Uncluttered mind, and the heart and body to go with it. You don’t even know the meaning of real love. Not love like mine. You’re blind to it. Innocent. You always were. I knew that. I understood. I loved you for it. One day, I thought, he’ll come to me. But I knew you never would.’
    But by then, Giles Oakley was talking to an empty room.
     
    *
     
    Lying on his bed in the darkness, the silver burner at his right hand, Toby listens to the night shouts from the street. Wait till she’s home. The sleeper leaves Paddington at 11.45. I’ve checked and it left on time. She hates taking taxis. She hates doing anything the poor can’t afford. So wait.
    He presses green anyway.
    ‘How was Chatham House?’ she asked drowsily.
    ‘I didn’t go.’
    ‘So what did you do?’
    ‘Called on an old friend. Had a chat.’
    ‘About anything in particular?’
    ‘Just this and that. How was your father?’
    ‘I handed him over to the attendant. Mum will scrape him off the train at the other end.’
    A scuffle, quickly suppressed. A smothered murmur of ‘Get off!’
    ‘That bloody cat,’ she explained. ‘Every night she tries to get on my bed, and I shove her off. Who did you think it was?’
    ‘I didn’t dare wonder.’
    ‘Dad’s convinced you have designs on me. Is he right?’
    ‘Probably.’
    Long silence.
    ‘What’s tomorrow?’ she asked.
    ‘Thursday.’
    ‘You’re meeting your man. Yes?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I have a clinic. It finishes around midday. Then a couple of house calls.’
    ‘Maybe the evening then,’ he said.
    ‘Maybe.’ Long silence. ‘Did something go wrong tonight?’
    ‘Just my friend. He thought I was gay.’
    ‘And you’re not?’
    ‘No. I don’t think so.’
    ‘And you didn’t succumb out of politeness?’
    ‘Not that I recall.’
    ‘Well, that’s all right then, isn’t it?’
    Keep talking , he wanted to tell her. It doesn’t have to be your hopes and dreams. Any old thing will do. Just keep talking till I’ve got Giles out of my head.



7
    He had woken badly, with feelings he needed to disown and others he needed urgently to revive. Despite Emily’s consoling words to him it was Oakley’s anguished face and supplicating voice that stayed with him when he woke.
    I’m a whore.
    I didn’t know.
    I knew, and led him on.
    I didn’t know, and should have done.
    Everybody knew but me.
    And most frequently: after Hamburg, how could I be such a bloody fool – telling myself every man’s entitled to his appetites, and after all nobody got hurt but Giles?
    Concurrently, he had undertaken a damage assessment of the information Oakley had, or had not, revealed about the extent to which his extramural journeyings were compromised. If Charlie Wilkins, or his certain friend in the Met, was Oakley’s source, which he took pretty much for granted, then the trip to Wales and his meeting with Brigid were blown.
    But the photographs weren’t blown. The path to Shorty wasn’t blown. Was his visit to Cornwall blown? Possibly, since the police, or versions of them, had trampled all over Kit’s club and were by now presumably aware that Emily had come to rescue him in the company of a friend of the family.
    In which case, what ?
    In which case, presenting himself to Shorty in the guise of a Welsh journalist and asking him to turn whistle-blower mightnot be the wisest course of action to pursue. It might in fact be an act of suicidal folly.
    So why not abandon the whole thing, and pull the sheets over our heads, follow Oakley’s advice and pretend none of it ever happened?
    Or in plain language, stop flailing yourself with unanswerable questions, and get down to Mill Hill for your date with Shorty, because one eyewitness who is prepared to stay alive and speak is all you’re ever going to need. Either Shorty will say yes, and we’ll do together what Kit and Jeb had planned to do, or Shorty will say no and scuttle off to tell Jay Crispin what a good boy he is, and the roof will fall in.
    But whichever of these things happens, Toby will finally be taking the battle to the