Monica had no children, and dear old Aunt Mary would have been totally alone without them all. As he and Monica settled into their seats, he felt relaxed and happy, back with the close-knit family members who were so important. Love, kindness, concern – these were the people dearest to him in his life and yet totally unaware of the dark secrets, the death business behind his apparently quiet service in the Intelligence Corps.
So many times over the years, family friends had congratulated him on his desk job with Intelligence. He had only two medals to show for eighteen years in the Army: the South Atlantic ribbon for the Falklands Campaign and the Campaign Medal for Northern Ireland that all soldiers who’d served there received. It was ironic when you thought of River Street in Derry, the four dead Provos, and the many similar occasions for Unit 16, and yet the two people closest to him, his sister and his wife, didn’t have even the slightest hint of that part of his life. He’d never go away for more than a week at a time and was always supposed to be at Catterick, Salisbury Plain, Sandhurst or Germany, somewhere like that.
He took a deep breath, squeezed Monica’s hand, the music started to play and then the lights dimmed and the curtains parted. It was the old, wonderful excitement, just what he needed, and then his wife entered stage-left looking fantastic, the woman with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love on their first meeting so many years before, and his heart lifted.
The performance was a triumph, earning four curtain calls; young Carlton was more than adequate and Olivia superb. She’d booked a late dinner at a favourite French bistro in Shepherd Market, and the three of them, she and Miller and Monica, thoroughly indulged themselves, sharing a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.
‘Oh, I’m very pleased with myself,’ Olivia announced.
‘And, you’ve got tomorrow to look forward to,’ Monica told her. ‘Saturday night and a full house.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Miller put in. ‘I’ll arrange a car from the Cabinet Office. After the show tomorrow, we’ll go straight down to Stokely, the three of us. Chill out on Sunday, then come back for Monday evening’s performance.’
‘Oh, you two lovebirds don’t want me around,’ Monica told them. ‘I’ll stay the night at Dover Street and go back to Cambridge tomorrow.’
‘Nonsense,’ Olivia said, ‘It’ll be nice to be together for a change, and Aunt Mary will be thrilled.’ She put her hand on Monica’s. ‘Just to be together. It’s so important. And imagine. We’ve actually got him to ourselves for a change. You and I can go shopping tomorrow.’
She kissed her husband on the cheek and Monica said, ‘I bumped into Charley Faversham at a function last week, Harry. He called you the Prime Minister’s Rottweiler and asked after you. I said I understood you were visiting Kosovo. He was there during the war covering it for The Times when the Serbs were killing all those Muslims. He said it was as bad as anything he’d ever seen in all his years as a war correspondent. It’s different now, I suppose?’
‘Completely,’ Miller told her. ‘And Olivia’s right. You must come down to Stokely with us. After all, there is no one in this life I am more indebted to than the sister who argued and begged me all those years ago to take her down to Chichester Festival Theatre to see Chekhov’s A Month in the Country. As you well know, I was never a Chekhov person until the girl from Boston walked in through the French windows.’ He reached for Olivia’s right hand and kissed it. ‘And after that, nothing in my life was ever the same.’
She glowed as she squeezed his hand. ‘I know, darling, same for me.’
Monica laughed. ‘I used to despair of him. Women just didn’t seem to be part of his agenda.’
‘Well, I was hardly exciting enough, not Household Cavalry or Three Para, no red beret and a row of medals. Pretty staid, a Whitehall warrior. No real soldiering, I’ve heard that mentioned enough.’
‘And thank God for it,’ Olivia told him. ‘Let’s have the bill and go home.’
Afterwards at Dover Street after they’d retired, he and Olivia made love very quickly, genuine passion still there. Not much was said, but the joy was there so strongly. Afterwards, she fell asleep very quickly and he lay there listening to her gentle breathing, unable to sleep himself, and finally slipped from the bed, found his dressing gown and went downstairs.
The sitting room was his favourite room in the entire house. He didn’t need to switch on the lights because there was enough drifting in from the street outside. It was raining, the occasional car swishing by, and he went to the drinks cabinet, poured himself a very large Scotch and did something he only did at times of stress. He opened a silver cigarette box and lit a Benson & Hedges. It was Kosovo, of course, and what had happened, and it made him think back four years to what had got him out of the Army.
The lies, the pretence, the deceit of it all, had been giving him a problem. He was two people: the man his wife and sister thought he was, and the dealer in death and secrets. A new dimension had entered his life, a new kind of terror, just when things were looking hopeful in Northern Ireland. It was called Muslim fundamentalism. It had become apparent to him that this was where his future would unfold and the prospect filled him with a kind of despair, because he didn’t want to be involved.
But fate intervened, giving him a solution. His father died of an unexpected heart attack and they buried him on a wet and miserable day at Stokely Parish Church. Afterwards there was a wake at Stokely Hall, and champagne, his father’s favourite drink, was poured, a great deal of it, in honour of a much-loved man.
Miller was standing at an open window, smoking a cigarette and considering his lot when he was approached by his father’s political agent, Harold Bell.
‘What are you thinking about, Harry?’
‘Contemplating my future. If I stay with the Corps, I’ll make lieutenant-colonel, but that’s it. If I leave, what do I have to offer? When I was at Sandhurst, they taught me the seven ways of sorting someone out with my bare hands. I became a weapons expert, acquired reasonable Arabic, Russian and French. But what do I do with all that out of the Army?’
Olivia had heard as she approached and gave him a gin and tonic. ‘Cheer up, darling, someone might offer you a nice job in the City.’
‘That someone is me,’ Bell told them, savouring his drink. ‘But it’s not the City. The Party wants you to come forward as a candidate for your father’s seat. The local committee is completely behind you. Harry Miller, Member of Parliament.’
Miller was shocked and couldn’t think of a thing to say, so his wife did all the talking. ‘Does that mean I get him home nights?’
‘Absolutely,’ Bell assured her.
She’d immediately announced it to the entire room and he was kissed on the cheek and slapped on the back many times. ‘Better than Iraq, or Afghanistan, old man,’ someone said. ‘You’re well out of that.’
He resigned his commission and was duly elected, suddenly free of what had haunted him all those years, but he should have remembered that nothing ever worked out as expected. The Prime Minister was privy to his army record and appointed him to the Northern Ireland Office, and when the Irish situation was finally settled, started sending him from one trouble spot to another.
The Prime Minister’s Rottweiler – that was a good one, and any guarantee he would be home nights had long since gone with the wind, and Olivia didn’t like it at all.
That
