"Smashing having you back with us, Titch." "We all missed you." "Here, better turn that off now." "Getting a bit nearer civilisation." "Civilisation!" "They still eat missionaries for tea." "Does Rick really expect to win this by-election?" "Listen, the day your dad announced his intention you could have got 50 to 1." "But now?" "He's 9 to 2 and shrinking." "Be evens by polling day." "They love him, Titch." " Do we have any policies?" " Course we do!" "Home ownership for all, with less red tape." "We'll have mustard on that." "Why, ladies and gentlemen, have you ventured out tonight, on this inhospitable night, to hear the words of one who is a stranger in your midst?" "Why?" "Because you care about your country." "Well, that makes two of us, because I care about it, too." "I care about the way it's run and the way it's not run." "I care because politics are people." "People with hearts, to tell them what they want, for themselves and for one another." "People with minds, to tell them how to achieve it." "People with faith and guts," " to send Hitler back where he came from." " Hear, hear!" "People like ourselves gathered here tonight, the salt of the earth, and make no bones about it." "English people, root and bough, worried about their country and looking for the man to see them right!" "Hear, hear!" "Hear, hear." "Without a certain person's helping hand, and you all know who I mean..." " Hallelujah!" " Yes, you do!" "..I would not be where I am today, offering myself, be it ever so humbly, to the people of Gulworth North!" " He guides me!" " Hallelujah!" "If I know that I am the man for you, it is because he tells me." "I am his man, the people's man." "The man for Gulworth North!" "Hear, hear!" "Um, ladies and gentlemen, this is not in the programme, but I understand our candidate's celebrated son Magnus is among us tonight, with his honours thick upon him from his legal studies in Oxford, so I do believe." "He is here to assist his father in this great campaign." "I'm sure we'd all appreciate a word from you, if you'll favour us, please, a word or two of wit and wisdom." "Erm, it's not every day the mantle of the dreaming spires..." " Or is that Cambridge?" "I can never remember." "I expect that many of you here tonight, even after that fine speech, are asking yourselves what manner of man my father is." "Well, ladies and gentlemen, he is the man you see, the plain man's honest friend." "I should know." "He's been the best friend I've had all my life." "Mattie!" "Mattie, you old ponce!" "You got a bed for us, Mattie?" "It's Ella." "Come on, you old bugger!" "We're freezing!" "Get away from here, Ella!" "Drag him behind a bus shelter!" "What d'you think we are?" "Bloody dosshouse?" "You old bugger!" "My money not good enough for you now, eh?" "You cheeky swine, you!" "Just piss off, Ella!" "Piss off yourself!" "Very bad for the campaign, that sort of thing." "Candidate's committee room an old haunt for some caterwauling whore." "No harm done, Major Blenkinsop." "Nobody saw." "Anyway, if they did, it was only old Ella." "Could ruin the plan of battle." "As your campaign manager, Rick, I can't be held responsible." "You've done a terrific job, Blenkinsop." "Crackerjack." " Don't you think so?" " Yeah." "Absolutely." " You know the terrain." "This is your country." " There's no substitute for local knowledge." "L'info, know-how." "Know who." "That's what counts." "Well, I hope I've served, Rick." "I must say I've tried." "You've done a fine job." "A triumph of organisation." "Don't you think so?" " Yeah." " Absolutely, yeah." "We're nearly home and dry." "One last push." "As long as I get the city hall for the eve-of-poll meeting." "Prime position, the big crowd, all the reporters." "Well, now, that's all in the lap of the gods." "The three candidates draw lots for the city hall." "I can't guarantee..." " Names in a hat?" " Just so." "Who's in charge of this game of chance, Major?" "It's quite a ceremony, done in the mayor's parlour." "They use the actual mayor's hat." "Yeah?" "Who...who passes His Worship's titfer round, then?" " Whose job's that?" " Mayor's clerk." " Know this fellow well, do you?" " Finished for tonight, son?" "Might check a few names, the don't-knows worth a second visit tomorrow." " Good for you." " Night, Titch." "Mayor's clerk." "Known the little blighter donkey's years." "British Legion dinners." "I'd like Syd to meet with this chap, if you would see to it, Blenkinsop." "Of course, of course!" "Hello, Magnus Pym." " Who are you?" " My name is Peggy Wentworth." "Peggy, short for Margaret." "Your father, Mr Richard Theodore Pym, killed my husband Arthur..." "..and if it takes me the rest of my living death, I'll get the bastard for it." "You'll never open it with a chisel." "I tried that years ago." "We had a farm in Cornwall called Tamar Rose." "My husband inherited it from his father." "It was a tough life, but it was a living." "It was ours." "But you can't run a farm if you get both your legs cut off below the knee and lose all the fingers of one hand, and that's what happened to Arthur." "My husband fell into the threshing machine." "But he wasn't just a victim." "He was a fool as well." "He was made for Ricky Pym, sure he was." "There was £9,000 compensation." "Rick came to see Arthur in hospital." " Wasn't he the friend and benefactor!" "Oh, yes, see the flowers and the chocolates and the champagne." "And see the great trust fund that he'll set up with Arthur's 9,000 quid." ""Twelve and a half per cent plus profits, my dear." ""Year in and year out!" ""Enough to see dear old Arthur right for as long as he's spared" ""and enough for yourself when he's gone." ""And enough left over after that, my dear," ""to put some by for that first-rate boy of yours" ""for when he goes to college."" "So Arthur signs all the documents." "Sure he does, Magnus, why not?" "Isn't Rick always there to explain whatever the fool doesn't understand?" "Isn't Rick always patience itself?" "What does Arthur want with 9,000 quid when he can have Ricky Pym for a friend instead?" "Because that was the bloody truth of it all!" "When Arthur died, there was no twelve and a half per cent!" "There was no capital, there was no trust fund, there was nothing!" "There was less than nothing!" "Because on his deathbed Arthur mortgaged his farm!" "And his livestock!" "And bloody nearly his wife and child as well!" "And he made over the proceeds to his dear old pal Rick." "Seeing as he can beckon you up to London first class, send the tickets with a flick of his fingers because he thinks you're going to get the lawyers on him, well, you go." "If you hadn't had a man in two years... ..and more, there's only your own body to look at, withering away in the mirror every day," "well, you go." "I don't want to hear it." "It's not my business, this part." "He robbed you." "The rest doesn't make any difference." "Seeing as the bloody man possesses you anyway!" "Since he's already got his filthy arms around you as sure if as he had you in his fancy bed, with the big frills and the fancy looking glasses all round!" "Please, Peggy, the rest is very private." "Seeing as he's got the power of life and death over you and you're a foolish lonely woman in the world, with a sickly boy to care for and a bankrupt farm to mind, and only the stupid bailiff to say "Nice day" to for a week at a time," "well, you go, don't you?" "I'm sure you had every reason." "Please, Peggy, don't tell me any more." "Oh, my God, you go!" "You scurry up there, bursting to have the fight of your life the moment you set eyes on him, and when you arrive instead of a business conference with Mr Percy Loft," "Mr Muspole and the whole filthy gang of them, a man takes you to Bond Street and he buys you fine clothes and he treats you like a princess with the limousines, the restaurants," "and you can always have your row with him later." "No." "You've got to have it now or never." ""I always fancied you, Peggy." "You know that?" ""Always had my eye on that pretty Irish smile of yours." ""And not just the smile, either."" "So why not?" "If he fancies me." "There's many worse bastards than him in the world." "So why not?" "Except there aren't many worse bastards." ""I've got something to show you," he says, and we stand in front of his stupid green filing cabinet." "In there are all the rights and wrongs he's done." "Oh, he's so proud of it." "He's showing me the rope they ought to hang him with and he's made it himself." "The man's mad, as well as everything else." "When he's judged, he says, everything in this cabinet will be put into the balance." "Then we'll see him for what he was, up alongside of the angels, while us poor sinners down here below starve and bleed for the glory of him." "It's what he's put together to con the Almighty with." "You can imagine that." "Ricky boy is going to con his way to heaven." "I want justice." "I want him shown up for what he is." "If the proof's there, like he says it is, I want it." "I know what you want." "Please, stop now." "Dear Peggy," "I hope the following will be of use to you." "They stopped me in the street, touched my arm and said, "Rick, what is liberalism" ""except a package of ideals?" ""We can't eat ideals, Rick," they say." ""Ideals don't buy us a cup of tea or a nice touch of English lamb chop, Rick, old boy." ""We can't put our ideals in the collection box." "We can't pay for our son's education with ideals." ""So what's the point, Rick," they say to me, "in this modern world of ours," ""of a party of ideals?"" "And I say to them, good people of Gulworth, and I say to you, I say this." "Ideals are like the stars!" "We cannot reach them, but, oh, how we profit from their presence!" "..candidate is a jailbird!" "I wish to know if this candidate is a jailbird!" " What's your name?" " Say it again!" "I wish to know, please, whether it is true, if you would be so kind, sir," "that the Liberal parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Gulworth North has served a prison sentence for swindle and embezzlement." "Thank you very much for your consideration." "It's all right, son." "Don't be frightened." "Ladies and gentlemen, my old friend Peggy Wentworth here," "and, Peggy, I still count you a friend, you know, is quite right." "Many years ago, when I was a very young man," "striving to get on in life, as we all once were, impulsive, ready to cut a few corners," "I found myself in the position of... the office boy who had borrowed a few stamps from the till and been caught before he'd had a chance to put them back." "My mother, like Peggy here, was a widow." "I had a great father to live up to." "The responsibilities that weighed on me blew me across the borders of what Justice in her blind wisdom deemed right," "and Justice exacted her penalty and I paid it in full measure," "as I shall pay for it for all of my life." "I want to ask you older people this." "If one of these children, like this son of mine sitting here behind me, poised to collect some of the highest prizes the law of this country can offer, if one of these children should ever make a mistake," "and pay the price society exacts, and come home and say," ""Mum, it's me!" ""Dad, it's me!"" "which one of you sitting here tonight would slam the door in his face?" "You could've sat me on the stage with a dunce's cap on, Ricky." "I'd have taken it." "You were prepared for me, weren't you?" "Prepared." "You've known I've been dogging your footsteps from the start." "You could've stopped me, got Muspole to have me picked up and dumped somewhere." "Ah, sure you could, easy." "What's some penniless blackmailer like Peggy Wentworth going to do about it, if the great Ricky Pym wants her mouth shut?" "But you wanted the trial, didn't you?" "To be judged and found spotless." "Did you enjoy it, Ricky boy?" "Sure you did." "Oh, sure!" "Don't shrink away from me, old son." "I'm not angry with you." "We're pals, remember?" "We don't need to tiptoe around each other, looking in one another's pockets, poking in drawers, talking to...misguided women in the dead of night." "Come on, dry those old peepers of yours." "Give your old pal a hug." "Never lie, son." "No Pym was ever a liar." "See how I told them the truth tonight?" "God heard me." "He always does." "What do you think's going to happen tomorrow?" "Still think you'll win?" "Oh, I very much doubt it, old son." "In the sober light of morning, you wouldn't vote for an ex-jailbird." " Do you know what a shit is, Pym?" " Yes, sir." "No, you don't." "A shit, Pym, is an officer whose tie is a lighter shade of khaki than his shirt." "Yes, sir." "Compare them, Pym, and ask yourself what kind of young officer you are." "Yes, sir." "You've been posted, Pym." "Number Six Interrogation Unit, Graz." " Are you a lecherous little swine, Pym?" " I don't think so, sir." "Remember that Austria is an occupied country and subalterns do not, repeat, not, fraternise in public with female civilian personnel." " Do you hear?" " Yes, sir." " You seen your tie recently?" " Yes, sir." " You're a shit, Pym." "What are you?" " I'm a shit, sir." "You find you'll spend a lot of your time in the refugee camps." "Pathetic." "One big sob story, that's what this place is." " Don't you say "sir" to officers?" " Yeah, course." "When there's anyone about." " Don't worry, I won't show you up." " Thank you" " Oxford, weren't you?" " Yes." "Cambridge, me." "Economics." " What did you get?" " First." "Do you know much about fish?" " Fish?" " Yeah, fish." "The feeding and breeding and general lifestyle thereof." " Why should I?" " You'll find out." "Here we are." "The loony bin." "Sir!" "Major Membury, sir, Second Lieutenant Pym, reporting for duty, sir." "Oh, my goodness!" "You're Pym!" "Yes, well, so glad you've come." "We do need another pair of hands." "Look here, I'm going to clear away all this reed and drag the whole bed to see exactly what we've got." " What do you think?" " Sounds great, sir." "Trout." "I'm restocking the lake." " It's a big job." "You married, Pym?" " No, sir." "Marvellous!" "You'll be free at weekends." "There's an awful lot to be done." "What's your first name?" "Magnus, sir." "Go and meet my wife." "Hannah!" "Magnus Pym!" "Jolly glad to have you, Magnus!" "We tap telephones, we intercept mail." "8.30 to 4.30, Monday to Friday." "8.30 to 12.30 on Saturday." "There's a night-duty clerk all week, of course." "Telephone traffic tails off at night, does it, sir?" "We get a lot of Russian technicians singing Cossack songs." "Drunk, obviously." "Our line to Graz takes in a bit of the Soviet zone." "Our interpreters have most of the west wing." "All recruited locally." "Splendid women, the lot of them." "In the refugee camps, you know, you'll find Hungarians, Poles, Czechs," "Romanians, Yugoslavs." "Got themselves here by every means imaginable." "Babes in arms, grandmothers, rapists, thieves, and the odd spy here and there, which is why you'll be doing the rounds of the camp, Magnus, to sort out the wheat from the chaff, with one or another of these marvellous women." " What shoes were you wearing?" "What weapons did the troops have?" "Tell me again, which ankle did you sprain?" " What troops did you see on the border?" "Where you learn to play such stupid clever games so good?" "When I was at Oxford, I became friendly with a German student who turned out to be a spy." "We had rather a weird battle of wits." " He was communist?" " As it turned out, yes." "He made friends with you because he was hommsexual?" "No, he had lots of women." "That was to disguise his hommsexuality." "This is normal." " You want I give you Czech lesson on Saturday?" " I'd like that very much." "I think we make love this time." "We shall see." "You have had many woman, Magnus?" "Er, not many." "You are hommsexual, like all English?" "No, I'm really not, Sabina." "Oh, Sabina." "Sabina." "Sabina, Sabina..." "I have something to tell you, something important I have not told to any Englishman." "I love you, Sabina." "In Prague, I have younger brother." "Jan his name." "If you tell this to Membury, he dismiss me immediately." "British do not allow us to have close family in communist country, you understand." "Of course, Sabina." "My brother send me this message for you." "Only for Pym." "No one else." "He trusts you because of me." "I have told him only good things about you." "He has a friend who wishes to come out." "This friend is very gifted, very brilliant." " Top Axis, you understand?" " I love you, Sabina." "This friend will bring you many secrets about the Russians." "Is true, Magnus." "Big secrets." "Make you very famous in Vienna." "But listen." "First, you must invent a story to tell Membury." "To explain how you receive this information." "You are clever." "You can invent many stories." "Now you must invent one for me." "Please do this for me, Magnus." "You will wear civilian clothes." "If you cheat and bring protection, he will not appear." "He will stay in the forest and be angry." "It is very near the border." "There is a stone pillar." "That is where Kaufmann must stand." "If Kaufmann passes the pillar, the man will not appear." "He will stay in the forest." "He wishes only Pym." "This is as far as you go, Kaufmann." "Don't move from here." "Can't I go back to the Jeep?" "I'm a coward, see." "Do as you're told." "Don't move." " I'm a sitting target here!" " Shut up!" "Don't move." "Keep walking towards me, Sir Magnus." "Put your arms up and, for heaven's sake, don't go imagining you're a great cowboy or a war hero." "Neither of us is a member of the shooting classes." "We put our guns away and we have a nice chat." "Axel!" "Axel, my God!" " Axel!" " You look well, Sir Magnus." "You are a fine fellow." "We should buy you a white horse and give you India." "What are you doing here?" " How is Sabina?" " She's fine." "She knows nothing." "You understand?" "Of course." "You wouldn't come empty-handed." "Honestly, Axel, nobody ever went out of my life so abruptly." "There you were, all safely tucked up in your bed in the Ollingers' attic." "The next morning, gone." "Dragged away by the Swiss police." "We held a sort of wake for you." "Buried you." "Frau Ollinger was convinced you'd been informed against." "Who did she think did it?" "Everyone in turn, really." "The neighbours, shopkeepers." "Someone from the university." "One of the girlfriends." "Listen." "I was illegal." "I was a bum." "No money, no papers." "On the run." "So they caught me, they threw me out." "That's what happens to illegals." "Don't frown so much." "It's over." "Who gives a damn who did it?" " To tomorrow!" " Tomorrow." "What happened to you?" "The Swiss handed me over to the West German police in the American zone." "Everybody beat me a little." "It's a ritual." "Then they threw me out and handed me over to the Czechs, who beat me a lot more." "Then one day they stopped beating me and let me out." "For this, it seems I had my dear dead father to thank." "Remember?" "He was a great socialist who fought in Spain in the Civil War." "I had become an aristocrat in the new Czechoslovakia." "I was Sir Axel, suddenly." "The old socialists had loved my father, so they sent me to university." "So, what work have you actually been doing since university?" "Like you, Sir Magnus, I am also a great spy." "It's a boom industry these days." "Haven't you noticed?" "We are clever fellows, you and I. We did well to select it." "But you are still proposing to come over to us, assuming we can offer you the right conditions?" "It's not perfect, but it's my country." "Why are you here if you don't want to defect?" "I heard about you." "The great Lieutenant Pym." "I was so excited to think of you spying on me and me spying on you." "I thought, "I've got to get in touch with this fellow." ""Maybe we can set the world to rights, same as we used to in the old days."" "Great" "I owe you so much, Sir Magnus." "You were so generous." "You held my head when I threw up." "Cooked me tea." ""I owe this man," I thought." ""I owe this man a step or two forward in his career." ""I should make him a gesture that is painful to me." ""If I can help him achieve a position of influence in the world," ""that's rare, that's good." ""So I'll play a little trick and go and see him and shake his hand and say, 'Thank you, Sir Magnus,'" ""and take him a gift to pay my debt to him." ""Because I love this man, do you hear?"" "You have landed a great coup, Sir Magnus." "It took me a lot of spying to get it for you, a lot of risks." "If they ever find out what I have done... ..I can bring you my balls as well." "Tonight you are meeting Fifth Sergeant Pavel." "He'll defect not just once but twenty times, a hundred!" "He'll bring you wonderful intelligence again and again." "But it will be you?" "Listen." "What I am doing for you now I can never undo in my whole life." "Axel gives you Axel." "Do you understand?" "I am putting my future in your hands." "I don't want it, Axel." " I'd rather give it back." " It's too late." "I've stolen the papers." "You have seen them." "You know what they contain." "Your nice Major Membury." "All these clever aristos in Vienna." "None, none of them ever saw such information." "This is the whole Soviet order of battle in Czechoslovakia you've given me." "If it's genuine." "To me, Axel, you must promise loyalty." "Sergeant Pavel, he is different." "Sergeant Pavel you can betray and invent as much as you like." "But I, Axel," "I do not exist." "Not for Membury, not for Sabina." "Not even for yourself." "Even when you are lonely and bored and you need to impress somebody, buy somebody or sell somebody." "I'm not a creature in your game." "If your own people threaten you, if they torture you, you must still deny me." "If they put you on the cross in 50 years from now, will you lie for me?" "Yes, I will." "What will you?" "I will keep you secret." "I'll lock you in my memory...and give you the key." "For always?" "For always." " You like Membury?" " Yes, I think so." "Me too." "Help him with his fish." "That's important work." "It's a lousy world, Sir Magnus." "A few happy fish will make it better." "One of you." "And one of me, Sir Magnus." "There will never be another of either of us." "Listen." "Something very terrible has happened." "They are arresting my friends." "Sir Magnus, I had to tell them about us." "It was the only way." ""Sure," I say to them," ""I go over the border, I am cultivating a British traitor." ""It's my job, remember?"" "They say I have to bring them proof." "Intelligence." "Pinkepinke." "Product." "It doesn't have to be the secrets of the atom bomb, but it has to be good." "As you love my freedom, get me something wonderful." "Steal for me, Sir Magnus." "Promise you will never bring me anything so good again." "If you do, they will make me a general and we shall not be able to meet any more." "Axel, come over." "Please." "Be an ordinary defector." "Forget about Sergeant Pavel." "Don't tell me to betray my friends." "I'm the only one who can save them." "They work in factories, in the universities." "They have no back doors." "When they are tortured, they tell the truth and the truth kills them." "But me, I am a big spy." "I've got a strong position, same as you, Sir Magnus." "If you help me, we can win a great victory." "You know," "Vienna are already asking what happens when I finish my service." "Who takes you over." "Membury?" "I won't see anyone else." "Make sure they understand." "When you go, it must be Membury on his own." "A great victory, Sir Magnus." "I expect you got the wrong night." "Or the wrong barn." "You can be frightful about these things." "No, I didn't, darling." "I got stood up at the altar, that's all." "I'm not surprised." "I always thought he was a bit of a fraud." " You never told Vienna that." " Well, it didn't seem useful." "All the brigadiers beaming away like Father Christmas." "Roars of applause from the War Office." "Young Magnus cock-a-hoop." "I didn't want to spoil his fun." "What was wrong with Pavel?" "His stuff was all so flashy, somehow." "Always looked good on the plate." "But when you came to chew it over, nothing really there." "Same as trying to eat a pike." "All bones." "I hope the Czechs haven't been batting and bowling at the same time." "I think that's why Pavel didn't show up." "He wasn't sure he could hoodwink an older chap." "Thank you, sir." "Private and personal to Lieutenant MR Pym, care of the Demobilisation Officer, the Intelligence Corps, Sussex." "Dear Pym, mutual friends in Austria have passed your name to me as someone who might be interested in employment of the kind to which you have recently been introduced." "If this is so, would you care to lunch with me at the Travellers' Club on Friday 19th at 12.45?" "Sir Alwyn Leith, the Government Overseas Research Group, the Foreign Office."