Free Inside Enemy by Alan Judd

if it doesn’t work.’
    ‘Who is it?’
    When Matthew named Peter Tew, Charles was conscious that they were studying him carefully. He had an immediate image of Peter’s pale, intelligent features, his grey eyes often on the brink
of laughter, his quick smile and ready perception. Trying to match the new image of Peter as traitor with the old of Peter as friend was like having a tracing that didn’t fit the map. Yet,
somehow, he was not surprised. There was much that was unknown about Peter, an uncharted interior. That was true of many people, of course, but with most there were myriad casual indications that
the interior existed, suggesting what kind of country it was. In Peter’s case, he realised as Matthew talked, there were none. The beach was all you saw, sunlit, entertaining, attractive,
intended perhaps to forestall curiosity about the interior. Content with the superficiality of daily intercourse, Charles had never sought to explore.
    ‘The interview is arranged. He believes it will be a routine personnel interview to discuss his next posting,’ Matthew was saying. ‘Meanwhile, we have discovered he is
homosexual.’
    Quite unexpectedly, that was a tracing that did fit the map. The Office was known for its attractive and talented women and Peter was popular with the girls, charming them, but he had no
girlfriends. Unless you counted the one he used to mention – what was her name – Jane? Jenny? – who died of leukaemia. That was a long-standing relationship which had broken his
heart, he implied, leaving you to conclude that it was difficult or impossible for him to consider another, yet. But no-one had ever met Jane, or Jenny. No-one had ever seen Peter’s
Marylebone flat. Now, as Matthew described how the FBI in New York, where Peter was serving, had come across him visiting clubs in drag and that since his return on leave in the last few days
surveillance had seen him picking up young men in a notorious pub in Vauxhall, the tracing drew itself.
    Charles recalled various minor incidents, remarks, tones, inflexions he never realised he had noticed. Peter’s almost maternal solicitude when Charles went down with flu, the follow-up
telephone calls, Peter’s silences when people mentioned girls or sex, his abrupt and uncharacteristically brutal condemnation of someone who had been dismissed, allegedly on health grounds,
as ‘a flaming poofter’. And that lunch in another Vauxhall pub which they drifted into simply because neither knew it and which turned out to feature a striptease in the bar. A young
black girl cavorted to loud music on a raised dais, thrusting herself into the faces of the men nearest her. The performance was more vigorous than seductive and Charles watched, he told himself,
more through cultural curiosity than interest, let alone arousal, but Peter was disgusted. He backed away, muttering, ‘Revolting. How can they?’
    Afterwards the girl resumed her white bra and knickers and red shoes and walked amongst the crowd in the bar holding out a man’s tweed cap for contributions. Every man put in something,
including Charles, but Peter withdrew as if from contagion.
    As they walked back to the office Charles remarked on the contrast between the girl as symbol and presumed object of desire while on the dais, and the same girl, minutes later and still
provocatively clad, walking unmolested amongst the drinkers who threw their change into her cap and treated her with indifference or familial affection.
    Peter wasn’t interested. ‘I can’t – the proximity. It makes me almost physically sick,’ he said, his eyes on the pavement. ‘So vulgar, very vulgar.’ He
repeated the phrase softly to himself.
    Like many of his generation, Charles had grown up unaware he knew any homosexuals. He never looked for it in anyone nor had any idea what to look for beyond theatrical camp. A couple of
girlfriends had told him about affairs they had had with women but that, though