The Age of Exodus Page 3

  “I gather you had several meetings with Marshal Stalin himself,” said Alan Norton, the bursar who, Forrester knew, was very much a man of the left.

  “I did an’all,” said Bevin.

  “Do you hope to return to the good relations we had with Russia during the war?” asked Norton. “After all, we defeated Hitler together. It would seem a great shame if we became enemies now.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Bevin. “I’d like us and the Americans and the Russians to work together as the United Nations to keep the peace, and concentrate on getting food into people’s mouths and clothes on their backs and roofs over their ’eads all over the world.”

  “And what’s preventing our working with the Soviet Union to achieve that?” persisted Norton. Forrester noted that Stephenson gave the bursar a warning look, but Bevin seemed to have no objection to being pressed.

  “The fact that the Russians look at things a bit different from the way we do,” he said, “which is not surprising. I’ve seen with me own eyes the mess the Germans made when they marched into Russia. Twenty million people dead and everything the Soviets had achieved in the last twenty-five years smashed to pieces. But that doesn’t excuse what Stalin’s been up to ever since we won.”

  “Up to?” asked Norton.

  “Turning democratic countries into communist ones,” said Bevin. “Trying it on in Iran. Bullying Turkey. Asking for a big chunk of North Africa, of all places. They’re like burglars kicking on doors to see if any of them are unlocked. It’s my job to make sure them doors stay firmly closed.”

  “Yours and the Americans, of course, Foreign Secretary,” said Stephenson, ensuring that Norton could not continue his interrogation.

  “Well, up to a point,” said Bevin. “But not all Americans see things straight yet. They still want to believe the Russians can be bosom buddies. It’ll take Truman a while yet to get the country to see just how dangerous Stalin is.”

  “So you think we’ll have to take on the Russians ourselves, Foreign Secretary?” said Gordon Clark. “And chance on another war?” Always highly strung, it was as if Bevin’s words had wound the senior tutor up to yet another level of intensity – and the Foreign Secretary, sensing this, put a reassuring hand on Clark’s arm.

  “Good God no, Dr. Clark,” he said. “It’s my job to make sure there won’t be another war. If we can keep Stalin in check until President Truman understands what’s going on and backs us up, everything’ll be all right. And I think we can – because the Russians don’t want to start fighting again any more than we do. They’ve ’ad a bellyful of it, same as we ’ave.”

  Forrester could almost feel the tension in the room decrease, and his admiration for this rough-hewn figure, once described as the only British statesman who had begun as a working man and remained one, went up once more. He had first heard about him from his parents, who had told him the story about when there was a judicial enquiry into dock-worker’s wages back in the 1920s, and the employers had said it was perfectly possible for a man to do a full day’s hard physical work and survive, with his family, on such and such an amount of food.

  Ernie Bevin had bought the specified foods, and cooked them, and brought them into court and put the plates on the table as evidence – alongside a single meal that the dock owners had treated themselves to at the Savoy hotel the night before. The contrast was so shaming to the employers that Bevin won the case there and then and had become a national hero for the working classes overnight.

  Which he had then consolidated by building Britain’s largest trade union.

  “He’s wonderful, isn’t he?” said Templar. “I can’t tell you how much scepticism there was in the Foreign Office when he was given the job. At least half the people there were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and those who didn’t go to Eton went to Rugby, and here was this unskilled labourer coming in to replace Sir Anthony Eden. Well, he won us over in about a week. He may not be an intellectual, but by God is he intelligent. He sees through to the heart of the problem in five minutes, comes up with ideas nobody else has ever thought of, and works harder than any man I’ve ever met.”

  “Also, he gives us wonderful entertainment,” said another voice, and Forrester looked up to see a tall, thin man whose languid, diffident manner and floppy fair hair reminded him of the late film star Leslie Howard. “I was there when he asked a waiter at the Guildhall for a nice glass of newts.”

  “Thornham loves to tell this story,” said Templar. “I think he dines out on it.”

  “Certainly I do,” said Thornham, flicking his hair, “because people always ask what on earth he meant, and I take great pleasure in explaining that he had once read a wine label for Nuits-Saint-Georges, and was convinced newts was the correct pronunciation.” Forrester could not help but laugh: there was a self-deprecating twinkle in Thornham’s eyes that belied his aristocratic languor.

  “I can top that,” said a third man, who Forrester knew immediately was Templar’s helpful translator, Crispin Priestley: he did indeed look exactly like Billy Bunter. “One night when we were at a state dinner in Russia, Bevin turned to Molotov and pointed to what was on his toast and said, ‘This jam tastes fishy.’ It was of course the finest Beluga caviar.”

  There was more laughter, but Templar punched the fat man on the arm and said, “I’m sure you made that up, Priestley, it’s too good to be true.”

  “How can you doubt my word,” said Priestley cheerfully, “when the king himself has the best Bevin quote of all? Not a malapropism, but just a perfect summary of the man who, as Templar says, we have come in the last year to love and cherish.”

  “So what was it,” asked Thornham, “that so tickled our monarch?”

  Priestley smiled gleefully. “As he so often does, without being aware he’s doing it, the Foreign Secretary had said something which demonstrated how astonishingly well informed he is, and His Majesty asked him, bearing in mind that he had finished school at thirteen, how he knew so much. And our Ernie replied, ‘I gathered it up, Your Majesty, from the ’edgerows of experience.’”

  “That is poetry,” said Templar, “pure, natural born English poetry.” And as Forrester glanced across the faces of the three officials he saw in each one of them a look of pure affection for their political master. And then Ernest Bevin came towards them with his odd, rolling sailor’s gait, and spoke directly to Forrester.

  “Are you the man who threw the last Master off the roof?” Bevin was peering up at him through the thick lenses of his spectacles, with Andrew Stephenson behind him, grinning at Forrester’s discomfiture.

  “I was there when he fell, Mr. Bevin,” said Forrester. “And I suppose you could say I was responsible for the fact that he did fall.” Bevin glanced over his shoulder at Stephenson.

  “You’d better watch your step then, Andrew, or he’ll have you going off like the man on the flying trapeze, but without the trapeze.” He put his hand on Forrester’s upper arm and guided him away from the rest of the crowd, speaking more softly now.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Dr. Forrester. I gather you’re from ’ull.”

  “I am,” said Forrester. “Hessle Road.”

  “Not many people from ’ull in this place. Even fewer from ’essle Road. And even fewer that’s done me a good turn.”

  “I hadn’t realised I had,” said Forrester.

  “Two good turns, really,” said Bevin. “You got rid of a traitor from this college, and I ’ate traitors worse than poison, and in Greece you stopped a good man from going wrong. You put a spoke in the communists’ wheel and probably saved a fair number of British soldiers’ lives. I appreciate that.”

  “I’m amazed you knew about it,” said Forrester.

  “Well, that’s what diplomatic bags are for,” said Bevin. “Reports get passed on, and I read ’em. Well done, young man. You may be ’earing from me again.” And with a final pat on Forrester’s arm he turned back to the Master and allowed himself to be drawn
once again into the throng.

  As Forrester watched him being swallowed up he felt as much pride as he had when he received his commission.

  * * *

  The formal dinner at High Table in the Great Hall was a success for all concerned, from the students looking up at the great man from the body of the hall, to the Fellows and guests, who all felt they were part of a historic moment. The fact that Ernest Bevin was here, that he was Foreign Secretary, and that Britain had a Labour government, was extraordinary. And Forrester, like all the ordinary men and women who had fought in the war and worked in the factories for victory, knew that it was their efforts in the past five years that had made it possible. The old power structures based on wealth and privilege had failed to resist Hitler and Mussolini and the working classes had had to do the job themselves. Now those same people wanted their reward and the Labour government was determined to make sure they had it – and nobody symbolised that better than Ernie Bevin. Even if they were doing it on short rations and eating whale meat. But there was no whale meat tonight: despite austerity, the college had pulled out all the stops, and its ancient cellar provided delights which even put Nuits-Saint-Georges in the shade.

  Forrester found himself seated next to Crispin Priestley. “Templar has consulted me about these threatening messages he’s been getting,” he said. “I gather you’ve helped with the translations.”

  “Up to a point,” said Priestley. “I knew enough to help me identify the passages, and then I cribbed from one of the published versions.”

  “St. John Townsend’s?”

  “Well spotted,” said Priestley. “What do you think it’s all about?”

  “Someone is clearly trying to frighten the poor chap out of his wits and get him to hand over this seal. But I’ve seen the wretched thing, and it doesn’t seem particularly valuable. What do you think is behind it?”

  “Professional rivalry,” said Priestley. “Templar has been doing very well since he came back from the services and he’s certain to have put any number of backs up.”

  “It seems a very roundabout way of trying to do someone down.”

  “What else would you expect in the Foreign Office?” asked Priestley. He glanced around: Templar was some distance down the table. “And the problem is – he’s the nervous type. I think he was affected by what happened to him at El Alamein.”

  “Is there anyone in particular who might regard him as a threat?”

  “Well, Priestley might, or I myself, for that matter,” said Thornham. Forrester hadn’t realised that the Leslie Howard lookalike was listening. “But hopefully if you know anything about either of us, you’ll count us out. I’m as ambitious as the next man, but I’m sure both Priestley and I are confident enough in our abilities not to need to resort to this kind of thing. So Charles has asked for your help?”

  “He has,” said Forrester.

  “Very shrewd of him,” said Thornham. “How did he know about you?”

  “Through a mutual friend,” said Forrester. “But, present company excepted, who else in King Charles Street might have it in for Templar?”

  There was a brief moment of hesitation, which in view of the present company Forrester felt might duly be called a diplomatic pause. Then Thornham spoke.

  “Did Templar tell you about his wife?”

  “The famous Angela Shearer, I understand.”

  “One of the luminaries of the London stage,” said Thornham.

  “Extraordinarily popular,” said Priestley.

  “Am I to read something into that?” said Forrester.

  “Good God, no,” said Priestley. “It’s just that, well – she’s been the darling of Drury Lane all the time Templar was off serving king and country.”

  “You think she’s been unfaithful to him?”

  “Well,” said Thornham, “there have been rumours.”

  “I’m not quite sure how that would lead to anyone threatening Templar with a Sumerian demon,” said Forrester.

  “I don’t think that’s exactly what Thornham is saying,” said Priestley. “I think he’s pointing out, and I would endorse this, that marital relations between our colleague and his very talented wife are probably fairly complicated.”

  “You’re implying that she may have a lover who feels threatened by Templar now he’s come back from the war?”

  “It’s a possibility, isn’t it?” said Thornham.

  “Although it’s hard to imagine some stage-door Johnny being sophisticated enough to use ancient Sumerian literature to put his rival off his stride,” said Forrester. But Priestley downed the last of his port and shook his head.

  “The problem is,” he said, “the kind of men who are attracted to Angela Shearer aren’t any stage-door Johnnies. Have you read Darkness at Noon?”

  Forrester nodded. He had devoured the book between missions in 1942, and like many others had felt the visceral force of Arthur Koestler’s disillusionment with communism in his story of an old guard Bolshevik caught up in Stalin’s show trials.

  “Are you suggesting Koestler is one of Angela’s lovers?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Priestley.

  “Not that Priestley is accusing Koestler of sending threatening photographs of cuneiform tablets to our esteemed colleague,” said Thornham.

  “Of course not,” said Priestley.

  “It’s just that it’s a possibility you shouldn’t ignore.”

  “Thank you,” said Forrester. “I’ll bear it in mind.” But he made a note of the fact that the two diplomats had immediately shifted the conversation from office rivalries to the state of Templar’s marriage.

  4

  THE LIONS OF ASHURNASIRPAL

  It was three days later, and Forrester had risen early to work on a paper on income distribution and class structure in sixth-century Athens, read a monograph by Donald Moss at Magdalen on social structures at Mycenae, and go through Kretzmer’s latest green-inked missive dismissing all Forrester’s suggestions about the monophones of Linear B, and complaining bitterly about the heat.

  But hovering in the background, as he worked his way through these tasks, was the face of Sophie Arnfeldt-Laurvig, as if she was sitting quietly on the other side of the room, willing him to meet her gaze. Finally, he permitted himself to close his eyes and picture her, and was immediately overwhelmed. He remembered the feel of her head against his as he held her close to him, and the simultaneous solidity and fragility of her body in his arms, and a pulse of pure unrequited longing ran through him, so intense that for a moment he could not breathe.

  He remembered the look she had given him when he told her what he had done to free her long-lost husband from the Gulag. For a moment her eyes had expressed nothing but sheer disbelief, followed swiftly by pity as she recognised what the decision had cost him.

  Because, as Forrester should have known from the beginning, once the poor, broken count had been released from Stalin’s clutches, Sophie would have no option but to take him back and care for him, however long ago her love for him had died. And that meant she would have to give up Forrester. She had come to him when she believed her husband was dead. Now he had returned that would be the end of the affair: she was not a woman who could live a lie.

  She had written to him since they had parted, matter-of-fact letters describing their return to the estate above the fjord, her efforts to restore the family’s fortunes in the wake of the occupation, to revive the district’s farms, and to bring her husband back to life. Between the lines Forrester could read the truth: that Sophie was throwing herself into her duties to keep at bay the same pain that threatened to overwhelm him.

  With these thoughts running through his head it was almost a relief to turn to the little strip of indented clay and project himself mentally once more into the world as it had been on the banks of the Euphrates River five thousand years ago.

  When he had first begun to read about the rise of civilisation between the two rivers, he had thought of early Mesopot
amia as Eden, a time before the bloody catalogue of conquest and enslavement had begun to characterise the human story. A time when man had only just discovered how to irrigate the fields and raise enough crops to pay for a life above the subsistence level, when everything was still possible and a mysterious unexplored world lay around them, full of infinite possibilities.

  But subsequent study of just how civilisation had arisen there had revised his view, and now, as he looked again at the monstrous creature emerging from the river in the image left by the cylinder seal, and the threatening figure of Narak overhead, he knew that no such bright future ever had a chance: the demons were already there inside people’s heads, and oppression and injustice were just about to establish their long rule.

  “To think those poor people had three thousand years to wait before the coming of our Lord,” said a voice close to him, and Forrester realised with a start that the Reverend Robert Glastonbury, the vicar of St. Mary the Virgin, had slipped unnoticed through the open door into his rooms.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Glastonbury. “I shouldn’t have startled you. But the door was open and you were so absorbed in what you were looking at I couldn’t resist finding out what it was. Mesopotamian – am I right?”

  Forrester smiled wryly. For all his gentle, unassuming manner, Robert Glastonbury had a sharp mind and a good eye for detail.

  “Absolutely right,” said Forrester. “Specifically, Sumerian.” Glastonbury picked up the magnifying glass and looked at the image of the gods.

  “You realise that Abraham himself might have made his living by making effigies of those gods,” he said.

  “I did not,” said Forrester. “That’s not in the Bible, surely?”

  “In fact not,” said Glastonbury. “But there is a strong Jewish tradition that Abraham was a maker of idols before his realisation that Yahweh was the one true God. You know the Sumerians kept effigies of the gods inside their homes as well as in the temples, and clothed them and fed them and put them to bed just as if they were living creatures? So someone would have had to make those effigies – and what better profession for Abraham before he ultimately decided that none of them were the real thing?”