Gaddis was about to point out that it was Neame, and not he, who had raised the issue of class, but thought better of it. Best just to ignore his little slights and quips; they were evidence of the old man’s frustration at his ailing health, not criticisms to be taken seriously.
‘Could you tell me anything else about Crane’s family?’ he asked. Behind him, towards the main entrance, a party of perhaps twenty tourists were gathered in a loose group, listening intently to a guide. ‘How did you first come to be introduced to him?’
‘Oh, that’s quite straightforward.’ Neame’s tone implied that Gaddis was the only man in Winchester Cathedral who did not know the story. ‘We were both inveterate lovers of crossword puzzles. I came across Eddie and a copy of the London Illustrated News one evening in the junior common room. He was stuck on a rather ingenious clue. I helped him with it. Would you like to hear what it was?’
Gaddis reckoned Neame was going to tell him anyway, so he nodded.
‘“Are set back for a number of years.”’
‘How many letters?’
‘Three.’
Gaddis had a knack for crosswords and solved the clue in the time it took Neame to check the time on his wristwatch.
‘Era.’
‘Very good, Doctor, very good.’ Neame sounded impressed, but a restlessness in his hands betrayed his irritation. It was as if the speed of Gaddis’s mind was a threat to his intellectual superiority. ‘Well, after that introduction, the two of us became firm friends. Eddie’s father had been killed in the war, as had mine. There were rumours, never confirmed, that the senior Mr Crane had taken his own life. You might like to look into that, chat up a military historian or two. See what they make of it.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Gaddis told him.
‘Eddie’s mother, Susan, then remarried, a man whom Eddie detested.’ Neame’s mouth had tightened, but folds of skin hung loose beneath his chin. ‘His name escapes me, for some reason. I never met him. Scoundrel, by all accounts.’
‘Rather like Philby’s father.’
Gaddis hadn’t meant to draw other members of the Cambridge Ring into the conversation so quickly, but was pleased by the impact of his observation. Neame was nodding in agreement.
‘Precisely. Both absolute monsters. Kim’s father was an epic charlatan. Converted to Islam, if you can believe it, even took the name Abdullah and married a Saudi slave girl. Rumour has it he worked as a spy for the Saudi monarchy.’
‘I’ve heard that,’ Gaddis said. ‘Cherchez le père.’
Neame understood the implications of the remark and again nodded his agreement.
‘Indeed. Every member of the Trinity cell, to a greater or lesser extent, had complicated, in some cases non-existent, relationships with their fathers. Guy’s died when he was very young, ditto Anthony’s. Maclean was the same. What would they call Sir Donald nowadays? “An absentee father”?’ Neame gave the phrase the same withering tone of dismissal that he had reserved for the word ‘subconsciously’. ‘Strict Presbyterian, too. More interested in furthering his political career than he was in looking out for the welfare of his own son. In my experience, men are all, to a greater or lesser extent, at war with their fathers. Would you agree, Doctor?’
Gaddis wasn’t one for sharing family confidences, so he proffered a joke instead.
‘You’re a Freudian after all, Tom.’
Neame did not react. It struck Gaddis that he was as covetous of his moods as a small child.
‘Tell me about Cambridge at that time,’ he asked, skidding over the awkwardness. ‘What were your impressions of the place?’
The question appeared to lift the old man’s spirits, because he turned to face him and smiled through his clear blue eyes.
‘Well, of course there has been a good deal of nonsense spoken about that period. If certain “experts” are to be believed, we spent our entire time at Cambridge eating cucumber sandwiches, punting along the Cam and singing “Jerusalem” in chapel. Believe me, times were a lot tougher than that. Of course, there were any number of highly privileged undergraduates from wealthy backgrounds in situ, but it wasn’t all Brideshead Revisited and picnics on the lawn.’
‘Of course.’ Gaddis was wondering why Neame felt the need to set the record straight.
‘But one thing is certainly true. Oxford and Cambridge in the pre-war years were both absolutely riddled with Communists. Any self-respecting young man – or woman, for that matter – with even the vaguest sense of social justice was profoundly sceptical about the direction Western capitalism was taking. This wasn’t too long after the Great Depression, don’t forget. Unemployment was running at three million. Throw into the mix the lovely Adolf and you had a climate of apprehension unmatched by anything since.’
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