It was already building up to rush hour. The tube was busy. Richard held the memory stick in a fist made by his right hand and kept it in his pocket. Whenever he became desensitised to it through familiarity with its shape, he would give a little squeeze to reset his perception of touch. As though, if he didn’t, it might really vanish. The idea the whole thing was, in any case, just a dream, also haunted him. Even the preposterous notion some particularly expert pickpocket would be able to steal it from within his grasp nagged him.
He had to do everything else with just his left hand. He kept his Oyster Card in his left-hand pocket so that it would be easy to get through the tube barrier.
10. Four Seasons
(Glasgow – 1977)
Richard had gone to meet Eddie in the Socialist People’s Party bookshop on the top floor of a tenement building in Queen Street. As usual, there was no one there except whoever had volunteered to man the till. Today it was Linda McPherson, who had doomed herself to sit in the store for hours with little prospect of a paying customer.
There wasn’t a huge demand for the sort of books stocked by the Socialist People’s Party bookshop. They were mainly thin revolutionary pamphlets that preached only to the converted. Or, at the other extreme, academic tomes probably only read by the writer and his publisher.
Once, Richard’s attention had been caught by one of these mighty works, bound in three hefty volumes – A Revolution Betrayed: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1956. He imagined it might be interesting to read this to get an insight, from a non-capitalist viewpoint, of what had gone wrong, and understand what had gone right. But after struggling through two pages of academic sociology-based language, Richard had slotted the book back where it belonged – to gather dust on the top shelf. As usual, Eddie was dressed in the uniform of the party: a black donkey jacket and dark blue jeans. His thinning black hair was combed tight onto his scalp. His eyes blazed angrily through thick-rimmed black glasses. In his own mind, he had earnestly avoided following any of the current fashions. In doing so, he had spectacularly failed to avoid the fashion peculiar to the Socialist People’s Party.
He went to open the back room and found it was locked. “Hey Linda, we need tuh get through ra back.”
Linda, in her guise as a post-feminist punk dominatrix, condescendingly unlocked the door to the back room to allow them through. She was in charge today. She scowled at them through her thick, dark make-up.
“Next time let me know when you want tae use that room,” she said in a voice that could curdle milk.
“Sorry Linda. You know ra both ay us anyway,” said Eddie.
Linda didn’t think this worthy of a reply. She simply resumed her task for today of looking bored, sitting with her legs daintily crossed, on a chair next to the till. She flicked open a paperback novel and directed her bored attention to its pages.
Eddie ushered Richard into the room and locked the door behind them.
They sat down side by side at a table in the centre of the room. Eddie seemed very tense, as though it was he, not Richard, who was about to commit to this.
“Nice posters,” said Richard. There were no windows in this room. On the far wall there was a row of four Soviet posters, depicting winter, spring, summer and autumn. Each poster had the name of the season in Cyrillic at the top and a transliteration in English letters at the bottom. They were evidently printed for tour- ists, though there was hardly such a thing as a Western tourist in the USSR at that time. When visiting the Soviet Union, Western visitors had to go via an official route as civil servants, trade unionists, in school parties, or some other form of official delegation. Individual tourists were a rare species.
“Archie brought thum back. He loves his hoalidays in Russia.”
“He told me all about it. He even told me about the posters. He was dead chuffed with them.”
“Yup. He likes his Russian culture.”
“I guess it’s harmless enough.”
“Yeah.”
The way Eddie said it reminded Richard that Eddie knew there was considerable doubt in his, Richard’s, mind about the USSR and how harmless it was. In itself, that wasn’t a great betrayal. There was doubt about the USSR in the minds of most people in the People’s Party. The old-timers like Archie still hadn’t shaken off their pro-Soviet tendencies, but many of the younger guys looked to China as the main hope of a socialist future. Some of them, like Richard and Stuart, didn’t like any of the current examples of socialism.
“Must be terribly expensive to travel there though.”
“Contacts via ra unions. It’s all organised by his union. It’s dirt cheap, apparently.”
“Probably subsidised.” Richard didn’t hide a slightly sneering tone in the word “subsidised”. What was he, he asked himself. Some sort of “perfect market” apologist? Was it wrong for committed Party members to be subsidised? Especially when they were going on a high-minded cultural exchange to see one of the few working examples of a supposedly socialist country.
Richard felt embarrassed. He wondered if Eddie had noticed his sneering tone. To his dismay he realised he probably had, because Eddie was looking sideways at him; what he was saying amounted to a defence of Archie: “He has to go to a lot ay seminars while he’s there, cuz it’s supposed tae be an official visit, but he loves rat kinda hing anyhow.”
“Not my idea of fun though.” Richard winced to hear himself. Now why had he blurted that out? A lot of the stuff the activists did wasn’t fun. It was to do with attending long, boring meetings; committee work. They didn’t rush around doing exciting stuff. They didn’t try to assassinate anyone or commit terrorist acts, but they were quite convinced that passing resolutions at their meetings would eventually lead to international socialism, to fairness and equality. Richard didn’t mean to criticise this, only he wanted to short circuit it. He wanted something more direct. Something truly revolutionary.
“Anyway, wur here fur a purpose, Richard. You sure about this by ra way?”
Richard was aware that some of the Party members, including Eddie, doubted his sincerity. He was thankful that Stuart had vouched for him and convinced Eddie to take his plan seriously. Their first meeting to discuss things had gone well. This was the final hurdle. All he had to do now was avoid hesitation. Deep down he knew he was more committed and had clearer ideas about his objectives than any of the others, even Eddie.
“Dead sure. I don’t need any more discussion about it.”
“OK. We’ve been told what we need fur codes. We need things that you’ll remember in any context, mibby years frae now. Things that will stick out but no’ too much.”
“OK. I know that already from the last meeting.”
“You’ll write them down, and stick rum in this envelope, but don’t let me see rum. I’m no involved. I’m just goanie pass ruh envelope oan. As we discussed before, ruh first contact might be quite tricky. Someone just turning up out ay ra blue one day…”
“OK. So…” Richard wanted to check again if this was OK. “I need to be quite sure of one thing: that no one will know me personally. They’ll know me only as a set of code words that matches a person who’s going to identify himself and his location once a year (or no more than four times a year if things change quickly). I have to do this via a specific type of advert in a specific newspaper, as we discussed. This means a handler can locate me and then can identify himself to me using the first code word, or code phrase.”
Eddie nodded, “Yes, that’s the deal. Happy with that?” “Everything seems OK to me. I only have your word that you’re not going to look at the codes though.”
“You don’t need tuh worry about me, I canny do anything with the codes.”
Richard was agitated. “But how…”
“Listen, whit mair can ah do? For whit it’s worth, you can have mah word if you want it. You huv the word ae Eddie MacFarlane,