Free Old Flames by John Lawton Page A

things were going’.
    ‘What did you expect? The new Messiah?’
    ‘No. I just … I just thought he’d be … well … different.’
    ‘Oh, he’s different all right,’ said Charlie.
    And Troy found himself wondering whether he could wait long enough to find out how different.

§10
    By the Monday following, as they piled into black Daimlers once more for dinner with the Labour bigwigs at the Commons, he found an old Hollywood phrase lodged in his mind:
‘Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture?’
    But as they entered the Harcourt Room to be greeted by Hugh Gaitskell, suddenly Troy realised the turn the evening was about to take. The big picture was about to start. All they’d had
till now was Pearl, Dean and Younger and a short from the Three Stooges. Tonight they were showing in Cinemascope.
    Gaitskell held out his hand. The interpreter rattled off his few words of greeting. Then Gaitskell said, ‘Allow me to introduce my Foreign Affairs spokesman, Rodyon Troy.’ And before
the interpreter could get his twopenn’orth in, Rod was shaking hands with Khrushchev and chatting to him in his flawless, old-fashioned, pre-revolutionary, upper-crust, Muscovite-accented
Russian.
    Khrushchev’s eyes flickered between Rod and Troy. The subtle, perfect double-take of a comedian. Jack Benny eyeing Rochester could not have done it better. Rod was taller, stouter, older
than Troy, but the family resemblance was inescapable: the thick mop of black hair, the ebony eyes, the full mouth.
    Rod led Khrushchev off into the room. He shook hands with odds and sods from the Shadow Cabinet, scarcely seeming to listen to the routine Russian rattle of Rod’s Who’s Who in the
Labour Party. As he gripped the hand of Shadow Chancellor Harold Wilson, Khrushchev’s piggy eyes shot Troy a reproachful glance, and he knew that whatever happened, the return to
Claridge’s would not be pleasant. Perhaps there was a God after all? Perhaps his wish had been granted, his cover blown—and in the morning Cobb would kick him off the job?
    A Commons waiter appeared suddenly at his side.
    ‘Mr Troy, sir. We’ve put you at the top table. Next to Mr Brown. Your sergeants at opposite ends of the furthest table. Mr Cobb said you should be spread out across what he called
the field of vision.’
    God, Cobb was an idiot. Full of jargon and fury. Signifying bugger all.
    ‘Good,’ Troy said. ‘When Manny Shinwell pulls out his sawn-off shotgun I want to be certain of catching him in a crossfire.’
    The waiter didn’t seem to get the joke.
    ‘Mr Shinwell will not be attending, sir,’ he said quite seriously.
    Perhaps Troy was catching tastelessness from Khrushchev? He found a place with his name card on it. There was nothing else to do, so he sat down, feeling the nip as his Browning in its ludicrous
holster jabbed him in the ribs. A few minutes later, the table began to fill. Next but one to him was Sergei, next to him one of the interpreters, next to him Wilson, next to him Rod, next to him
another interpreter, next to him Bulganin, then the last interpreter, then Khrushchev and then Gaitskell. He looked at the place name of the vacant seat between himself and Sergei. It said
‘Mr Brown’. But which Mr Brown?
    Way over the other side, he could see Clem Attlee take his seat; down the room Clark and Beynon looked distinctly uncomfortable, disturbed by, rather than appreciative of, the democratic touch
that had led them to be seated at the table and fed, rather than stuck along the walls and ignored for the duration of a five-course dinner. He didn’t envy them—ordinary coppers having
to make small talk with the people’s representatives, whose grasp of the people they represented was based on researchers’ briefings and what the newspapers told them to believe.
He’d no idea what he’d say himself if any of these unworldly beings deigned to engage him in small talk. Down there with Clark and Beynon he caught a glimpse of