The Summer of the Bear Read online

  A week after Nicky’s death, Letty was collected by car and taken to the embassy where she was questioned by two men from MI6. The more senior of the two, Porter, did most of the talking. He was a stocky man in his early forties with a metallic sheen to his skin, a damson smudge of tiredness beneath each eye and an expression in them that seemed untroubled by even a flicker of uncertainty about the world. His subordinate, Norrell, was a good deal better looking if you discounted the hint of scurf salting his collar. He stood, back to the door, while Porter conducted his questioning.

  After he had finished, Letty stared at Nicky’s letter on the table in front of her.

  ‘My husband’s stepmother, Gisela, the woman who raised him, was born in East Germany,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Yes, we know,’ Porter agreed.

  ‘On her twenty-fifth birthday, she stepped outside her house and tripped over a phosphorus bomb. Her leg was so badly burned that three months later, when the Russians came, she still found it hard to run.’

  The MI6 men bowed their heads in dutiful respect. Letty noticed Norrell surreptitiously moving the arm of his suit upwards to check his watch, but she didn’t care.

  It had been 1945 and everybody knew the war was over. News was being funnelled over the radio and no one left their living rooms, desperate for some clue to their fate. Rumours had spread like a virus and panic followed. The English, French and Americans were coming. The Russians were coming. It was pure speculation how the Allies would divide up the occupied country, but Gisela’s family lived in the east and they understood only too well the brand of respect Russian visitors held for family and property. Stalin’s army was near starving, hungry for vengeance, and now it was to unleash its barbaric fury at the gates of Berlin. Terrified for the women, Gisela’s grandfather sent them on ahead with barely an hour’s notice. He himself stayed behind to bury the silver and the jewellery, with the exception of a brooch, which he gave to a local farmer in return for his family’s passage in the back of a cart. If the scabby regrowth of melted skin on Gisela’s leg was inflamed by the straw, Gisela’s younger sister, an asthmatic, nearly suffocated under it. The farmer took them as far as the Elbe and instructed them to swim to a train on the other side. Of the forty-two people who tried to swim the Elbe that day, twelve drowned, including Gisela’s mother and sister.

  ‘The Russians slaughtered Gisela’s grandfather. They expropriated the house, stole the farming land and handed it over to a collective,’ Letty finished.

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s all a matter of record,’ the man from MI6 reassured her, almost tenderly.

  ‘And yet on the basis of this – ’ she touched the edge of the letter – ‘you’re suggesting my husband is a traitor.’

  ‘Tomorrow we would like to speak to your eldest daughter.’ Porter checked his notes. ‘Georgiana.’

  ‘No.’ Letty’s jaw felt tight from lack of sleep. ‘Absolutely not.’

  Neither Porter nor Norrell appeared to feel the need to contradict her.

  ‘What can you possibly want to talk to my daughter about?’

  ‘Berlin,’ Porter said, and Letty blinked at him.

  ‘Your husband has recently spent considerable time in East Berlin, has he not?’

  ‘He’s part of an allied delegation there,’ Letty said, unconsciously slipping Nicky back into the present where he belonged. ‘He’s to and fro all the time.’

  ‘Effectively giving himself a channel of both travel and communication within East Germany.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said quickly. ‘No, it’s not like that at all. He’s involved with that industrial accident.’

  ‘Schyndell,’ Porter supplied.

  ‘Schyndell, yes.’ There had been an explosion at a nuclear power plant in East Germany. The initial response of the Soviets had been to play it down, deal with it on a national level, but it had grown too big, too complex. The plant was experimental and in the process of being shut down when the accident occurred, releasing into the air unknown quantities – curies, she seemed to remember Nicky telling her they were called – of radioactive isotopes with few resources in place for clean-up. ‘Of course, it was very bad propaganda for the Soviets to come to us cap in hand and by the time they did, the damage had already been done,’ Nicky had said grimly. ‘Yet another consequence of Cold War isolationism.’

  ‘This was your husband’s second term in Bonn, correct?’ Porter said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Four years as First Secretary.’ Porter consulted his file. ‘A stint in London in the news department at the Foreign Office. Back to Bonn this time as Counsellor.’

  ‘The Ambassador requested him specifically,’ Letty said.

  To return had been the last thing she’d wanted. She had prayed for a different posting, but the personnel department had put pressure on Nicky. I hope you’re not going to be difficult about this was the exact phrase they’d used. You can say no to them once, Nicky had cautioned, but career-wise, I’m not sure it would be the most prudent thing. Perish the thought, we’re banished to Luxembourg or somewhere worse next time. So they’d returned to Bonn and almost immediately Schyndell had happened. A delegation of scientists, safety experts, technicians and diplomats had been assembled by the allies, effectively doubling Nicky’s time away from home.

  ‘A little coincidental,’ Porter said. ‘A little convenient, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t understand’

  ‘Was your husband asked to be part of the delegation or did he perhaps apply?’

  ‘Nicky speaks fluent Russian and German. He knew he could be of help.’

  ‘Quite,’ Porter said. ‘And at Schyndell he would have had access to a considerable amount of information. Sensitive information.’

  ‘On what?’ Letty asked.

  ‘Nuclear technology.’

  ‘As would everyone on the delegation, surely.’ Fear made her voice deepen.

  ‘Which is why the question of trust is so significant.’ Porter said silkily.

  Norrell stepped forwards to the table and pulled out a chair. ‘And then, of course, this most recent trip with your daughter was just after your husband heard about Rome,’ he said.

  Schyndell, East Berlin, Rome. Why were they throwing place names at her like darts? ‘Rome?’ she repeated almost crossly. Porter cleared his throat.

  ‘The position there.’ Norrell clarified. ‘Minister.’ Close up, his features were extraordinarily nondescript.

  She frowned. ‘But that hasn’t been . . . what’s that got to do with anything?’ She’d been aware that Nicky was in the running. It was a posting they’d both been anxiously waiting to hear about, but he’d never said anything about it being announced. Was it possible he hadn’t told her?

  ‘Mrs Fleming, your husband would not be the first official operating at top level found guilty of corruption of some kind.’ Norrell looked at her intently. ‘Men “turn” for all sorts of reasons, ideological, fiscal, sexual. Men are turned by inadequacy, by disillusion or jealousy. They betray their country out of greed, revenge, self-loathing, desire. But sometimes,’ he said gently, ‘all it takes is a little disappointment.’

  23

  Ballanish

  When Letty forbade Alick to touch any of the new white goods she could see from his bemused expression that he was at a loss to understand why. He sat at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee between oil-stained fingers, while Georgie read and Jamie crayoned and Alba stared moodily out of the window.

  ‘Well, Let-ic-ia.’ Alick drew her name out to its full polysyllabic form. ‘And what if they break down?’

  ‘They’re brand new, Alick, and they’re under guarantee. If you take them apart, the guarantee won’t be valid any more.’ Letty was well aware of delivering a crushing blow to his pride but she remembered only too well coming home to find Alick lying on his back on the kitchen floor surrounded by every single component part, down to the last nut and bolt, of the Raeburn, ranked by size and cross-referenced ac
cording to function.

  ‘Alick, why have you dismantled the oven?’ She’d been aghast.

  ‘Ach, just to see if I could,’ had been the reply.

  Alick was a genius of a mechanic. There was nothing he couldn’t fix or build. When Modern Times had come to Bonn’s old theatre a few years earlier, Letty had watched Charlie Chaplin being transported around the wheels and between the cogs of his factory-assembling machine and all she could think of was Alick. Like Chaplin, Alick would have whipped out a spanner and tightened bolts and spools as he went, unable to resist improving the efficiency and speed of anything mechanical. Unlike Chaplin, whose proletarian hero was struggling against the onslaught of the industrial age, Alick would have sold his soul for such technical opportunity and advancement. Had life been fair and designed to reward the brilliant, a man of his capability might have made his career with Ford in Detroit or been snapped up by NASA and found himself party to the colonization of space. But life was not fair and it was particularly inequitable towards a man born in the Outer Hebrides. There was limited scope for his energy and imagination on the islands so he was obliged to content himself with whatever Letty needed doing around the house – mowing the lawn, bringing in the peats, tinkering with the Peugeot or the old Land Rover, one of which managed to break down almost every other day – but there were times when Letty caught him looking wistfully up at an aeroplane, cutting its trail through the sky, as though here was daily proof that his ambitions were too lofty to be within reach.

  ‘A guarrrrantee, eh?’ Alick rolled his tongue suspiciously around the word as if examining it for contractual flaws. He dropped some tobacco into a cigarette paper and began working the thin tube between his thumb and middle finger. ‘Well,’ he declared grandly, ‘I’d like to see this so-called guarantee take a spanner to the pipes when she blows.’

  ‘Don’t be offended, Alick,’ Letty teased him. ‘It’s so good to see you. Tell me how you’ve been.’

  ‘Aye, not bad,’ he grinned, mollified. ‘Not bad at all.’ He struck a match to his roll-up and leant forwards in his chair. ‘What do you think of the beast then?’

  ‘The beast?’

  ‘Aye, the beast in the garden.’

  ‘What beast in the garden?’

  ‘What bloody garden?’ Alba banged her head against the window, startling a wounded starling that crouched miserably on the outer sill. ‘Bet that bird will be dead before lunch.’

  ‘What bird?’ Jamie looked up from his drawing pad.

  Alba jerked her chin towards the bog where a feral cat was on the prowl.

  Jamie dropped his pen. ‘Can’t we bring it in? I don’t want it to get eaten.’

  ‘Too bad,’ Alba said briskly. ‘Nature is cruel.’ She flicked at the starling through the glass. The day had turned uniformly wet. Clouds the colour of graphite were suspended under the sky. Water ran in rivulets down the guttering and clumps of sheep’s wool were caught on the barbs of the wire fence. The perimeter of her world had shrunk to this – this one sodden, depressing view. People loved to say that life was too short. Well, they were bloody well wrong. Life was far, far too long.

  ‘Have you no’ seen the beast then, Let-ic-ia?’

  ‘A beast?’ Jamie stopped drawing again. ‘Does it have horns?’

  ‘It’s a young beast, Jamie, barely two years old.’

  ‘Is it a lion?’

  Alick stowed his ciggy end in his breast pocket. ‘Why, I’ve never heard tell of a lion on the island.’

  ‘Is it a dragon, then?’

  ‘Maybe it’s an ugly hobgoblin like you,’ Alba grumbled.

  ‘Aye, it’s a dragon, right enough.’ Alick jumped to his feet. ‘A dragon with great big teeth. Come in the garden and I’ll show you.’

  The garden was a fancy name for an acre of thistle enclosed by a ruined stone wall. From time to time Letty tried to encourage Alick to grow lettuce and vegetables there but Alick’s heart beat for metals, not soil, and it didn’t matter how much time she took choosing seeds and bulbs, only the potatoes ever survived.

  Jamie pushed past Alick as he opened the gate. A baby dragon would be wonderful. He could feed it and keep it warm until its little pink tongue grew and split to a fork, until its teeth pushed through its jaw and lumps of sharpened bone rose like miniature volcanoes to the surface of its tail. Jamie extended his arm and sent out a single command. A scorching length of fire shot from the beast’s mouth. Behind him, Alba was consumed.

  ‘There she is,’ Alick said. ‘Over in the far corner.’

  Jamie squinted at the tumbledown section of wall. No dragon. Instead, a lone cow was breathing steam from its nostrils and stamping a foot like an impatient racehorse.

  ‘Whatever is it doing in here?’ Letty frowned. ‘Is it trapped?’

  ‘Ach, now you can get your milk here and not walk all the way up to my father’s house.’

  ‘Oh, but I don’t mind the walk.’

  ‘Indeed, but it’s a lot of bother.’

  ‘But it’s good to get out and about.’ The unpleasant possibility that the cow might be some form of present was only now occurring to Letty, and besides, fetching the metal churn from outside Euan’s croft was a morning ritual she enjoyed. ‘Oh Alick, you’re not really expecting me to milk this thing, are you?’

  ‘It’s no’ so hard. I can teach you in a jiffy.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about cows.’

  ‘You’ll get the hang of them soon enough.’ He stuffed another cigarette in the corner of his mouth before approaching the cow with his bucket.

  ‘Be careful, she looks awfully cross.’

  As if to confirm this dim view of its mood, the cow punched out an irritated moo as Alick ducked between its legs.

  ‘Does that creature belong to us?’ Alba said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Is Alick trying to sell it?’

  ‘I should imagine it’s on loan for a bit.’

  ‘I bet he stole it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Alick hasn’t got a dishonest bone in his body.’

  ‘He stole those windscreen wipers.’

  ‘That was completely different,’ Letty said equably. The year they’d driven up to the island in a rented car, they’d barely switched off the ignition before Alick had exchanged the Fiat’s brand new windscreen wipers for the knackered ones of their Land Rover. ‘That’s island economics for you.’

  ‘What about the time he ran over that sheep and had it butchered and in the larder within two hours.’

  ‘That’s island common sense. What else are you going to do with a dead sheep?’

  ‘See, it’s easy, Letitia!’ Alick was now wringing the cow’s teats like church bells. ‘She’s a fine-tempered beast and this milk is as fresh as you’ll ever taste, and all for a few moments’ milking.’

  ‘She doesn’t look fine-tempered at all,’ Letty said warily.

  On cue, the cow twisted its head and aimed a hefty kick at the bucket.

  ‘You bugger!’ Alick roared. He staggered out, his boiler suit covered in milk. The cow bucked. Green saliva dripped from its mouth like watercress soup.

  ‘Go, devil cow!’ Alba roared delightedly.

  ‘Alick, take her away,’ Letty implored. ‘I can’t possibly deal with her.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Alba said suddenly. ‘It’ll be something to relieve the tedium of my life.’

  ‘Good girl.’ Alick was still wiping froth from his trousers. ‘But if she’s to be your beast, then you’d best name her.’

  Alba scrutinized the cow with something approaching respect. Its flanks were heaving like a pair of fire bellows. ‘We’ll call her Gillian,’ she pronounced.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s a very suitable name,’ Letty said faintly.

  ‘Fine.’ Alba turned her evil eye on her mother. ‘In that case, we’ll call her the Ambassadress.’

  24

  London

  Early spring 1972 and the buds on the cherry trees
were just beginning to unfurl. Nicky had been preparing to take up the post of First Secretary in Bonn when one of the more senior wives cornered Letty on the staircase of the FCO.

  ‘Ah, Letitia! Precisely the person I’ve been looking for.’ And with great flourish, she presented Letty with an official-looking hardback book.

  ‘How very kind,’ Letty said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s called The Guidance. It’s a veritable bible of information. It details all modes of expected behaviour and I think you’ll find it invaluable.’

  ‘Behaviour?’ Letty asked warily. Even at sixty, the woman’s shoulders had a formidable erectness. ‘What sort of behaviour?’

  ‘Oh, everything one might conceivably need to know about being a good diplomatic wife. What one should and shouldn’t do. What one can or cannot say. Why, it even gives advice on how to write a good thank-you letter!’

  Letty closed the book with a snap. ‘It’s very thoughtful of you, really, but I’m sure I’ll be all right.’ She tried to hand the tome back but the old gargoyle pressed it upon her regardless.

  ‘I think you’ll find that embassy life in Germany is a little different from in Africa, my dear,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Believe me, you would do well to be prepared.’

  ‘Of all the archaic, absurd . . .’ Letty had leafed through the book later that night. ‘It stipulates here I’m expected to wear hats and gloves on every occasion!’

  ‘Even in bed?’ Nicky quipped.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she laughed. ‘Surely they don’t expect anyone to take this seriously?’

  ‘Even if they do, I’m sure you won’t.’ He’d plucked the book from her and tossed it into an empty packing crate, but before long it became apparent that she’d been naive to dismiss the publication so cavalierly. Arriving in Bonn after a nightmarish journey with the girls, she and Nicky had been dismayed to discover that a diplomatic party was in full swing at the private residence of the Ambassador and that despite Alba’s pneumatic cough and Georgie’s tummy upset, despite their own utter weariness, they were expected to attend.