As his secretary, I had access to information far beyond anything I’d possessed in my last life. Documents he didn’t even know existed were continually fed to me from banks, universities, CEOs, charities looking for investment, governments and brokers, and Vincent, in an omission which I can only class as a fatal mistake, didn’t even bother to check on them. He was used to me: I was his pet, utterly reliable, utterly dependent, utterly harmless. I was subservient, grateful that he was paying me so much to do so little, excited by the people I met, and, if asked my job title, would reply proudly that I was not a secretary at all, but rather a corporate executive working for Mr Rankis, a fix-it man travelling across the globe with him, living the high life, following in his voluminous coat tails. He treated me very well, both as an employee and as a friend, once again buying my affection through the usual pattern of free dinners–holidays–golf–and gods how I loathed golf–and the regular trips he paid for us to take to his favourite club in the Caribbean. These were all part of my corruption, and so I went along with it to show willing. I like to tell myself I could have been a good golfer, if only I’d given a damn, but perhaps the simple truth is that there are some skills which experience cannot buy.
We shared stories of the war, friends, acquaintances, drinks; slept in the same compartment on overnight trains; sat side by side on the planes across the Atlantic; swapped seats as we drove from meeting to meeting up and down first the east, then the west coast of America. We stood together above Niagara Falls, one of the few sights on this planet which, no matter how perfectly I recall it, never fails to take my breath away, and when working together on business trips, our hotel rooms were adjoining, a connecting door between so we could share a midnight drink when inspiration struck. Many people assumed we were lovers, and I considered what I would do if Vincent proposed the same. Having been through so much, the prospect of sleeping with him was nothing to me at all, and I would have done it without a second thought. The question that remained over the matter was whether I could justify it based on the persona I was currently wearing of Harry August, nice boy from Leeds, raised in an age when homosexuality wasn’t merely illegal, it was entirely taboo. If the matter came up, I resolved to have a good, public, old-fashioned crisis of religious faith about it, and if the question still remained, I would succumb only after a great deal of guilt and quite possibly an unhappy love affair. There was no point making things too easy for him. Thankfully, the issue never arose, though everyone, including myself, seemed to be waiting for the moment. Vincent’s attitude to love, it appeared, was, as he himself had stated, strictly therapeutic. Destructive passion was foolish; irrational desire was a waste of time, and his mind was always on higher things.
The first whiff of the higher things his mind was on came in 1948 when, as was so often the way, Vincent walked into the small room that served as my London office, slumped down into the chair on the other side of the desk, stuck his feet on the tabletop between my heavy in-tray and my impressive collection of coloured inks, and said, “I’m going to inspect something the boffins are working on tomorrow–want to come?”
I laid down the document I’d been working on and steepled my fingers carefully. Usually, business trips with Vincent ended in a severe hangover, a large cheque and an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, but this time the vagueness and lightness with which he described his intentions intrigued me. “Where is this project?”
“Switzerland.”
“You’re going to Switzerland tomorrow?”
“This afternoon, actually,” he replied. “I’m sure I sent you a memo.”
“You haven’t sent me a memo for two years,” I pointed out mildly. “You just do things and wait for me to catch up.”
“And hasn’t it worked brilliantly?” he demanded. “Isn’t it marvellous?”
“What’s in Switzerland?”
“Oh, something they’re working on with heavy water and particles and that stuff. You know I don’t bother with these kinds of things.”
Absolutely I knew he didn’t bother with these kinds of things–he’d gone to great lengths to make it clear how little he bothered with these kinds of things, but now I was utterly fascinated for, as the person who planned nearly every aspect of Vincent’s life from morning to night, Switzerland presented a tantalising glimpse of that Holy Grail–a secret that had been kept from me. I’d spotted holes in Vincent’s schedules, many weeks set aside as “holiday” or “family business” or “wedding”–and how many weddings there’d been–but as I was never required to make travel arrangements for these events I had never known the full details. Now, I wondered, was it Switzerland, with its heavy water and particles and that stuff? Was this the black hole into which so much of Vincent’s money had been quietly diverted when he thought I wasn’t looking?
“I don’t think I want to go to Switzerland this afternoon.”
I was so good at lying I barely even had to hear the words I spoke out loud. So good at deceiving and being deceived, I knew already what Vincent’s reply would be.
“Come on, Harry. I know you’re not doing anything.”
“I may have plans with a beautiful young lady interested in my tales of high finance and dirty bars.”
“Philosophically speaking, you may. You may have all sorts of options, you may have herpes, but the fact of the matter is, Harry, in simple empirical terms, you don’t, so stop pissing around and get your hat.”
I stopped pissing around and got my hat and hoped he saw how irritated I was at having to do any of these things.