The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [39]
This astonished Gaddis, not least because membership would have been a pre-requisite of working for the NKVD, the arm of Soviet foreign intelligence in operation in the UK at the time.
‘You look surprised, Doctor.’
Again, a pain appeared to jag across Neame’s back, cutting the end off the question. The old man bent forward slowly, wincing.
‘Are you all right?’ Gaddis was obliged to make sure that Neame was comfortable, yet he was loath to give him an opportunity to bring the interview to an end. It had taken an eternity to reach this point. They might never meet again. He had to try to extract as much information as possible.
‘I am fine,’ Neame reassured him, making a determined gesture with his hand. Gaddis noticed that he was once again squeezing it into a fist, fighting off the arthritis. ‘Look, I tried on many occasions to persuade Eddie to join the Party. Many of us did.’
‘But without success?’
‘Without success.’ Neame’s voiced had softened, almost into regret, but suddenly he was energized again, seized by the urge to defend Crane and to put his argument across more forcefully.
‘I concluded, largely in retrospect, that there was more than one way to skin a cat. One does not have to be a member of the Labour Party in order to vote for a Labour candidate. One can hold right-wing views in England without subscribing to the Daily Mail. Do you follow?’
‘I follow.’
‘Eddie was a subtle animal. He wasn’t much for making an exhibition of himself. He played what you might call a long game. Now, did he do that because he didn’t want anything on his record that might jeopardize any future involvement in public service, or did he do that because he was a rather shy young man and, at that tender age, perhaps lacking in the sort of self-confidence which distinguished his more celebrated colleagues in the cell?’
‘What do you think?’
Neame weighed up his answer, and took his time about it. Almost half a minute passed before he responded.
‘I think a fairly hefty dose of the latter. To my mind, Eddie had no real ambition to join the Foreign Office, no heart set on a career in government. Bear in mind that he was only eighteen and just out of school. He wasn’t like Kim, who made a great song and dance about everything. Heavens, as I recall, Kim signed up for CUSS thirty seconds after landing in Cambridge.’
‘CUSS?’
‘The Cambridge University Socialist Society. He was so over-the-top the Soviets wondered if he might have been a plant.’
‘And Burgess?’
The mention of his name had a strange, almost melancholy effect on Neame, who looked into his lap and brought his hands together, gently knitting the fingers. In the distance, a young girl laughed.
‘Guy is certainly central to all this,’ he said quietly. ‘He had a huge impact on everybody, not just Eddie. In fact, Eddie writes at length about him in the memoirs. I myself have certainly thought back many times to the conversations I enjoyed with Guy.’
The memoirs. How could Gaddis get hold of them? It seemed a cruel twist of fate that Neame should be sitting on a document which would not only validate ATTILA but radically enhance the quality and historical importance of his own book. There was something of the narcissist in Neame; he was eager to play up his own role in the affair but also keen to taunt Gaddis with his proximity to Crane’s autobiography. Increasingly, it appeared that there would be a drip-feed of information, possibly over many weeks, and nothing Gaddis could do to control it.
‘So you were involved in the political scene yourself?’ he asked. ‘You were studying French as well? You were socializing with Eddie?’
Neame halted the flow of questions with a pained sigh and Gaddis realized that he had moved too fast. He had to learn to allow the story to emerge at its own pace. Neame would continue to manipulate him, certainly, but if Gaddis was patient, he would eventually be rewarded with a complete picture of Crane’s time at Cambridge.
‘Eddie and Guy were the two I was closest to, certainly at Trinity,’ he said. ‘I eventually lost touch with Burgess