The Edge Read Online Free PDF Page B

into my eyes.
    ‘No,’ I said matter of factly. ‘I like girls.’
    He wasn’t offended. ‘Haven’t you ever tried the other?’
    ‘It’s just not me, dear,’ I said, ‘as one might say.’
    He laughed and took his arm away. ‘Never mind, then. No harm in trying.’
    We drank the beer and he showed me how to shape and stick on a bold macho moustache, holding out a pair of thick-framed glasses for good measure. I regarded the stranger looking back at me from the glass and said I’d never realised how easy it was to mislead.
    ‘Sure thing. All it takes is a bit of nerve.’
    And he was right about that. I bought a butane curler for myself, but I took it with me for a week in the car before I screwed myself up to stop in a lay-by on the way to Newbury races and actually use it. In the three years since then, I’d done it dozens of times without a thought, brushing and damping out the effects on the way home.
    Sundays I usually spent lazily in my two big bright rooms on the first floor (the barrister directly above, the sisters below) sleeping, reading, pottering about. For about a year some time earlier I’d spent my Sundays with the daughter of one of the Hobbs Sandwich members, but it had been a mutual passing pleasure rather than a grand passion for both of us, and in the end she’d drifted away and married someoneelse. I supposed I too would marry one day: knew I would like to: felt there was no hurry this side of thirty.
    On the Sunday morning after meeting the Brigadier in the club I began to think about what I should pack for Canada. He’d told me to be what I spent so much time not being, a rich young loafer with nothing to do but enjoy myself. ‘All you need to do is talk about horses to the other passengers and keep your eyes open.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘Look the part.’
    ‘Yes, right.’
    ‘I’ve caught sight of you sometimes at the races, you know, looking like a stockbroker one day and a hillbilly the next. Millington says he often can’t see you, even though he knows you’re there.’
    ‘I’ve got better with practice, I suppose, but I never really do much. Change my hair, change my clothes, slouch a bit.’
    ‘It works,’ he said. ‘Be what Filmer would expect.’
    It wasn’t so much what Filmer would expect, I thought, looking at the row of widely assorted jackets in my wardrobe, but what I could sustain over the ten days the party was due to take before it broke up.
    Curls, for instance, were out, as they disappeared in rain. Stuck-on moustaches were out in case they came off. Spectacles were out, as one could forget to put them on. I would have to look basically as nature had ordained and be as nondescript and unnoticeable as possible.
    I sorted out the most expensive and least worn of my clothes, and decided I’d better buy new shirts, new shoes and a cashmere sweater before I went.
    I telephoned Millington on Monday morning as instructed and found him in a usual state of disgruntlement. He had heard about the train. He was not in favour of my going on it. The Security Service (meaning the Brigadier) should have sent a properly trained operative, an ex-policeman preferably. Like himself, for instance. Someone who knew the techniques of investigation and could be trusted not to destroy vital evidence through ignorance and clumsiness. I listened without interruption for so long that, in the end, he said sharply, ‘Are you still there?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘I want to see you, preferably later this morning. I’ll have your air ticket. I suppose you do have an up-to-date passport?’
    We agreed to meet, as often before, in a reasonably good small snack-bar next to Victoria Station, convenient for both Millington who lived a couple of miles south-west across Battersea Bridge, and for me a few stops down the line to the south.
    I arrived ten minutes before the appointed time and found Millington already sitting at a table with a mug of brown liquid and several sausage rolls in