Papaya 18, Passionfruit 30 [Divide and Rule]
Title: Nothing is Secret These Days
Author: lost_spook
Story: Heroes of the Revolution (Divide & Rule)
Flavor(s): Papaya #18 (method to my madness); Passionfruit #30 (We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse)
Toppings/Extras: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2467
Notes: 1959, following on from Ultimatum. (Thomas Hallam, Edward Iveson, Amyas Harding, Julia Iveson.)
Summary: “What sort of skeleton do you have in your closet, Edward, that you’d do this?”
***
“I don’t need to tell you the news, I trust?” said Edward Iveson, taking a seat across the table from Hallam. He put the newspaper down between them.
Hallam merely looked at him.
“Yes, I know,” said Iveson. “Terrible business, of course. Can’t be discussed here. When would suit you? I believe I could manage Wednesday about two, if that would work?”
Hallam stood, making a show of respect that was nothing of the sort. “I’ll have to check, of course, Foreign Secretary, but I’m sure I’ll be available.”
“Speak to my secretary when you know,” said Iveson, looking past Hallam, and growing suddenly vague. “And now I must go.”
Hallam sat back down and picked up the paper, feeling for a moment cheated of something he couldn’t define. Then he opened up the broadsheet, reading the headlines with their bolded claims of scandal in the government, and the name of Amyas Harding, the now-former Home Secretary, everywhere. Hallam didn’t care about Iveson one way or the other: all he wanted was that Iveson do what he’d asked and the man had. Still, Hallam thought, Iveson had reacted to his initial demands with the kind of reluctance one would expect, but now here he was providing the desired results with this odd sort of meek efficiency. He frowned over it. Was the man that much of a coward? Or had he been hiding a grudge against the Home Secretary anyway, and glad of the excuse to act?
It didn’t matter to Hallam which cabinet ministers fell, as long as they were in opposition to him, and as long as it undermined this current untenable government. Nevertheless, he’d have to remind the Foreign Secretary what their relative positions were again on Wednesday, just in case.
*
“Oh, I’ll see myself in,” said Amyas Harding, at the door of the Ivesons’ London house, on being told that the Foreign Secretary was at home. He handed his hat to Crosbie, and headed for the study.
Iveson turned round when he came in with a guilty start. There was a brief flash of alarm in his eyes, before he masked it. “Harding,” he said, his tone neutral.
“I thought I’d come and tell you that I don’t think I shall be dining with you on Thursday after all,” said Harding, closing the door behind him. “I was going to telephone, but of course, you can’t trust them, not really. So I decided to come. I rather hoped I’d lead a trail of baying reporters to your door, but it seems I’ve finally shaken off the last of the bloodhounds, after all. More’s the pity.”
Iveson looked carefully blank. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, must we have this tiresome pretence?” said Harding, with a sigh. “That was why I didn’t want to come to dinner, you know. It doesn’t do anything for the appetite, all that hypocrisy. It wasn’t hard to find out, Edward. I asked around, and anyway, not too many people know that old story. Or at least, they didn’t until this morning.”
Iveson looked down at his desk. When he looked back up, he said, rather blandly, “Was it not my duty to make such a thing known?”
“To the PM perhaps,” said Harding. “Someone else to whom it might concern - perhaps. A man who is faithless in one thing, you think, may be equally faithless in another, is that it? Quite, quite. But it’s not very friendly of you. Not even a word of warning that you’d sold all the details to the press.”
“Given, not sold,” said Iveson. “As you say - my duty.”
There was an old, hard armchair in the corner, and Harding sat on its arm. “Why did you do it, Ned? And don’t give me any of this nonsense about duty. I heard rumours about Hallam being at the bottom of it. Is that it? He put some kind of pressure on you?”
“You don’t seem to need me to tell you anything, do you?” said Iveson.
Harding got to his feet again. “I feel a good deal more worried about that than anyone ought to be about my murky past. My, my, whatever sort of skeleton do you have in your closet, Edward, that you’d do this? And what will it be next?”
Iveson shook his head, but Harding to his surprise, was sure he caught him hiding a smile for a moment. “I didn’t say Hallam had anything to do with it. I told you. I decided it was my duty.”
“Or is it you?” said Harding, ignoring Iveson’s denials. “Am I to suppose you have some long-hidden desire to be Prime Minister, after all?”
Iveson shook his head. “Oh, no, I’d say that sort of thing is definitely more in our Mr Hallam’s line. Mark my words, Harding. Take that warning, in lieu of the other.”
“Much good that is to me now,” said Harding. He’d been angry enough about it all day, and hurt when he’d worked out the truth. Now, more than anything else, he was puzzled, and stung again by Edward’s refusal to tell him anything. Iveson was his junior and he’d given him a helping hand up a rung or two, and he didn’t deserve this sort of response.
Iveson said, “You’ll always find some way of doing something if you want to. I know that.”
“Well, then,” said Harding, giving up on being civil since it wasn’t getting him anywhere, “take care I don’t find out that skeleton of yours and return the favour! Better that way, I’d say, than letting Hallam pull your strings like this.”
“That would be impossible, I’m afraid,” said Iveson, in that annoyingly blank, polite manner of his.
Harding narrowed his gaze. “Or I could just make it up and get rid of you that way, couldn’t I?”
“You could,” said Iveson, “but it wouldn’t be a good time for a libel case for you, would it? Now if you’d like to leave, I’ll be sure to tell Julia not to expect you on Thursday.”
*
Julia slipped into the study, and across to Iveson, still writing at the desk. She perched on the other side, and said, “Edward, what did Amyas want? When I tried to speak to him, he just said goodbye, and that I had all his sympathy, so I assume you two have been arguing about something.”
“Not exactly,” said Edward, looking up, and putting the pen down. “To be honest, I think we agree in fundamentals.”
“How is he?” she said. “I saw all the papers, of course. Is that what it was about?”
“You could say that.”
Julia frowned. “Edward, as long as it isn’t a state secret, I think you’d better tell me what’s been going on, because I know there is something.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I should. Yes.”
She waited, and when he still didn’t say anything else, she stretched a hand across to touch his arm, and said, “Edward.”
“Mr Hallam knows,” he said, adjusting the way the notepaper lay on the desk rather than look at her. “About us, I mean. Your involvement with United Europe. My complicity. The document.” At that, he did glance up with a small, almost humourless smile, because they both knew it really was ‘the’ document, the only serious leak that he’d been responsible for in these ten years, not that that made any difference to the offence. “He has a copy, and you see -”
Julia drew her hand back. “What?” she said. Then another thought struck her. “Edward. When did he tell you?”
“Last week,” he said, and gave her a worried look.
So he should, she thought. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to keep things from her, and he knew how she felt about that. And also, she was - slow in the face of such news - beginning to realise the implication of his confession. “Then you should have told me,” she said. “You had no right not to tell me! And - did he ask for something from you? Is that what it was about with Mr Harding? You didn’t tell that to the papers, did you? You wouldn’t, surely? Edward?”
“Mr Hallam made it plain that one cabinet minister’s name or another would be in the papers by today,” said Edward. “It was up to me which one. I did the best I could.”
Julia could have shaken him. “How could you? We knew what we were doing - if you’d told me, I could have confessed, said it had nothing to do with you -”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Edward. “If they’d known solely of your involvement, or only of the loss of the document, then one of us could - well, perhaps. Don’t imagine I didn’t think of it. But Mr Hallam wouldn’t let it go at that - and certainly not that way round. He made that very plain. And in any case, he has that document. If such a thing goes missing from my office, it’s my responsibility, whatever the circumstances.”
Julia closed her eyes. They had, for the most part, been careful about everything, but that document - they’d been angry over the bombings in France and reckless in an attempt to prevent more loss of life. And while she couldn’t accept what Edward had done as an alternative, the thought of what would follow, of both of them being arrested, of where that would leave Emily… She shivered inwardly.
“Even so,” she said. “Is it fair to do that to Mr Harding? And what next? Is that the last of Mr Hallam’s demands? I don’t think he’s the sort of man who’ll say thank you nicely and then go away and forget about it. Either there’ll be something else he wants from you, or he’ll make this public anyway, won’t he? You should have told me, and we should have faced it.”
Edward looked down at his notepaper again. “I am doing what I can. I have - I have what you might call an exit strategy.”
“That doesn’t sound very hopeful to me,” she said, trying to keep a lid on her anger until she’d got more of the facts out of him, but it was hard work. “What do you mean? Are we all going to escape in the dead of night?”
“Something like that. You and Emily to Amy in Canada, if you can. Me later to the mainland, if possible. Unless -” He hesitated, and glanced at her sidelong. “Unless you have alternative arrangements?”
Julia nearly laughed, although there really wasn’t anything funny about it. “Oh, I see. You think I might vanish along some underground route, known only to the movement? Would that make things easier? Well, I’m sorry, darling, but there’s no such thing, not as far as I know, and I wouldn’t take it if there were - well, I wouldn’t have done up until today!” She got off the desk. “I can see why you didn’t tell me. Which possibility made you the most afraid? That I was going to disappear, or that I was going to run and confess the whole to someone?”
“No, no,” said Edward, getting to his feet, to intercept her by the study door. “Julia! I always thought I’d accepted the cost, but I’d never really believed in it - or thought - I don’t know, but - what we’ve done, this particular incident may constitute treachery. Bad enough to be in breach of the Official Secrets Act, but you do realise that the death penalty is still on the books for that?”
“But it’s still what we did,” said Julia. “To do what you’re doing is to expect someone else to pay for our actions.” She couldn’t help but feel chilled at the idea of facing the death penalty, though; of either of them hanging for it.
“Yes,” he said, suddenly sounding weary. “Yes. I know. But it was always my fault, not yours, and I can’t - I won’t have them take you for it.”
Julia shook her head. “You can’t say that.”
“But it’s true,” he said, moving a hand as if to reach out to her and then letting it fall back. “And they’d be bound to think it was the other way round, wouldn’t they?”
Julia backed up against the door. “And so instead you’re going to sit here carrying out character assassinations of your fellow ministers whenever Mr Hallam says so? If he doesn’t ask for anything worse! And you expect me to sit by while you do - or run away to Canada, of course. If we can.”
“Is it character assassination if it’s true?” said Edward, distracted by the thought, which didn’t mitigate Julia’s anger. He must have seen something of that in her face, as he moved forward suddenly, catching at her hands. “Julia. I am doing what I can - I said I had a strategy -”
“And getting rid of Mr Harding, who is surely best placed to deal with Hallam, is somehow part of that?”
Edward looked guilty, but then nodded. “In a way. Not ideal of course -”
“Oh, you think not?”
“Yes,” said Edward, letting go of her. “And, God help me, I almost enjoyed it.”
Julia glared at him. “You can’t play chess with people, Ned! Whatever it is you’re planning, it doesn’t make any of this any better.” Then she took a deep breath and one more step back to the door. “We’ll try and talk about this tomorrow, when I just might be able to do it without throwing things at you. In the meantime, if you come anywhere near me again tonight, I swear, I shall go straight to Scotland Yard and tell them everything and to hell with it all - and you!”
She shut the door firmly on the way out, careful not to give into the temptation to slam it, in case it brought Emily down. Oh God, she thought, they had both been so stupid. They could easily have rewritten this story into something harmless, and instead they’d insisted on turning something straight-forward into something complicated and dangerous. There had always been reasons for that, or excuses maybe, but that was what they’d done.
Julia took refuge in the sitting room, tears prickling behind her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. She thought for a moment of carrying out her threat anyway, just to bring an end to it, but she couldn’t, any more than Edward could find it in him to tell Hallam to go away and publish the facts. Neither of them had ever been able to contemplate handing the other over like that. Oh, God, she thought again, the fear biting into her, they had been so very stupid from the start, and it was never going to end well.
***
Author: lost_spook
Story: Heroes of the Revolution (Divide & Rule)
Flavor(s): Papaya #18 (method to my madness); Passionfruit #30 (We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse)
Toppings/Extras: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2467
Notes: 1959, following on from Ultimatum. (Thomas Hallam, Edward Iveson, Amyas Harding, Julia Iveson.)
Summary: “What sort of skeleton do you have in your closet, Edward, that you’d do this?”
***
“I don’t need to tell you the news, I trust?” said Edward Iveson, taking a seat across the table from Hallam. He put the newspaper down between them.
Hallam merely looked at him.
“Yes, I know,” said Iveson. “Terrible business, of course. Can’t be discussed here. When would suit you? I believe I could manage Wednesday about two, if that would work?”
Hallam stood, making a show of respect that was nothing of the sort. “I’ll have to check, of course, Foreign Secretary, but I’m sure I’ll be available.”
“Speak to my secretary when you know,” said Iveson, looking past Hallam, and growing suddenly vague. “And now I must go.”
Hallam sat back down and picked up the paper, feeling for a moment cheated of something he couldn’t define. Then he opened up the broadsheet, reading the headlines with their bolded claims of scandal in the government, and the name of Amyas Harding, the now-former Home Secretary, everywhere. Hallam didn’t care about Iveson one way or the other: all he wanted was that Iveson do what he’d asked and the man had. Still, Hallam thought, Iveson had reacted to his initial demands with the kind of reluctance one would expect, but now here he was providing the desired results with this odd sort of meek efficiency. He frowned over it. Was the man that much of a coward? Or had he been hiding a grudge against the Home Secretary anyway, and glad of the excuse to act?
It didn’t matter to Hallam which cabinet ministers fell, as long as they were in opposition to him, and as long as it undermined this current untenable government. Nevertheless, he’d have to remind the Foreign Secretary what their relative positions were again on Wednesday, just in case.
*
“Oh, I’ll see myself in,” said Amyas Harding, at the door of the Ivesons’ London house, on being told that the Foreign Secretary was at home. He handed his hat to Crosbie, and headed for the study.
Iveson turned round when he came in with a guilty start. There was a brief flash of alarm in his eyes, before he masked it. “Harding,” he said, his tone neutral.
“I thought I’d come and tell you that I don’t think I shall be dining with you on Thursday after all,” said Harding, closing the door behind him. “I was going to telephone, but of course, you can’t trust them, not really. So I decided to come. I rather hoped I’d lead a trail of baying reporters to your door, but it seems I’ve finally shaken off the last of the bloodhounds, after all. More’s the pity.”
Iveson looked carefully blank. “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, must we have this tiresome pretence?” said Harding, with a sigh. “That was why I didn’t want to come to dinner, you know. It doesn’t do anything for the appetite, all that hypocrisy. It wasn’t hard to find out, Edward. I asked around, and anyway, not too many people know that old story. Or at least, they didn’t until this morning.”
Iveson looked down at his desk. When he looked back up, he said, rather blandly, “Was it not my duty to make such a thing known?”
“To the PM perhaps,” said Harding. “Someone else to whom it might concern - perhaps. A man who is faithless in one thing, you think, may be equally faithless in another, is that it? Quite, quite. But it’s not very friendly of you. Not even a word of warning that you’d sold all the details to the press.”
“Given, not sold,” said Iveson. “As you say - my duty.”
There was an old, hard armchair in the corner, and Harding sat on its arm. “Why did you do it, Ned? And don’t give me any of this nonsense about duty. I heard rumours about Hallam being at the bottom of it. Is that it? He put some kind of pressure on you?”
“You don’t seem to need me to tell you anything, do you?” said Iveson.
Harding got to his feet again. “I feel a good deal more worried about that than anyone ought to be about my murky past. My, my, whatever sort of skeleton do you have in your closet, Edward, that you’d do this? And what will it be next?”
Iveson shook his head, but Harding to his surprise, was sure he caught him hiding a smile for a moment. “I didn’t say Hallam had anything to do with it. I told you. I decided it was my duty.”
“Or is it you?” said Harding, ignoring Iveson’s denials. “Am I to suppose you have some long-hidden desire to be Prime Minister, after all?”
Iveson shook his head. “Oh, no, I’d say that sort of thing is definitely more in our Mr Hallam’s line. Mark my words, Harding. Take that warning, in lieu of the other.”
“Much good that is to me now,” said Harding. He’d been angry enough about it all day, and hurt when he’d worked out the truth. Now, more than anything else, he was puzzled, and stung again by Edward’s refusal to tell him anything. Iveson was his junior and he’d given him a helping hand up a rung or two, and he didn’t deserve this sort of response.
Iveson said, “You’ll always find some way of doing something if you want to. I know that.”
“Well, then,” said Harding, giving up on being civil since it wasn’t getting him anywhere, “take care I don’t find out that skeleton of yours and return the favour! Better that way, I’d say, than letting Hallam pull your strings like this.”
“That would be impossible, I’m afraid,” said Iveson, in that annoyingly blank, polite manner of his.
Harding narrowed his gaze. “Or I could just make it up and get rid of you that way, couldn’t I?”
“You could,” said Iveson, “but it wouldn’t be a good time for a libel case for you, would it? Now if you’d like to leave, I’ll be sure to tell Julia not to expect you on Thursday.”
*
Julia slipped into the study, and across to Iveson, still writing at the desk. She perched on the other side, and said, “Edward, what did Amyas want? When I tried to speak to him, he just said goodbye, and that I had all his sympathy, so I assume you two have been arguing about something.”
“Not exactly,” said Edward, looking up, and putting the pen down. “To be honest, I think we agree in fundamentals.”
“How is he?” she said. “I saw all the papers, of course. Is that what it was about?”
“You could say that.”
Julia frowned. “Edward, as long as it isn’t a state secret, I think you’d better tell me what’s been going on, because I know there is something.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I should. Yes.”
She waited, and when he still didn’t say anything else, she stretched a hand across to touch his arm, and said, “Edward.”
“Mr Hallam knows,” he said, adjusting the way the notepaper lay on the desk rather than look at her. “About us, I mean. Your involvement with United Europe. My complicity. The document.” At that, he did glance up with a small, almost humourless smile, because they both knew it really was ‘the’ document, the only serious leak that he’d been responsible for in these ten years, not that that made any difference to the offence. “He has a copy, and you see -”
Julia drew her hand back. “What?” she said. Then another thought struck her. “Edward. When did he tell you?”
“Last week,” he said, and gave her a worried look.
So he should, she thought. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to keep things from her, and he knew how she felt about that. And also, she was - slow in the face of such news - beginning to realise the implication of his confession. “Then you should have told me,” she said. “You had no right not to tell me! And - did he ask for something from you? Is that what it was about with Mr Harding? You didn’t tell that to the papers, did you? You wouldn’t, surely? Edward?”
“Mr Hallam made it plain that one cabinet minister’s name or another would be in the papers by today,” said Edward. “It was up to me which one. I did the best I could.”
Julia could have shaken him. “How could you? We knew what we were doing - if you’d told me, I could have confessed, said it had nothing to do with you -”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Edward. “If they’d known solely of your involvement, or only of the loss of the document, then one of us could - well, perhaps. Don’t imagine I didn’t think of it. But Mr Hallam wouldn’t let it go at that - and certainly not that way round. He made that very plain. And in any case, he has that document. If such a thing goes missing from my office, it’s my responsibility, whatever the circumstances.”
Julia closed her eyes. They had, for the most part, been careful about everything, but that document - they’d been angry over the bombings in France and reckless in an attempt to prevent more loss of life. And while she couldn’t accept what Edward had done as an alternative, the thought of what would follow, of both of them being arrested, of where that would leave Emily… She shivered inwardly.
“Even so,” she said. “Is it fair to do that to Mr Harding? And what next? Is that the last of Mr Hallam’s demands? I don’t think he’s the sort of man who’ll say thank you nicely and then go away and forget about it. Either there’ll be something else he wants from you, or he’ll make this public anyway, won’t he? You should have told me, and we should have faced it.”
Edward looked down at his notepaper again. “I am doing what I can. I have - I have what you might call an exit strategy.”
“That doesn’t sound very hopeful to me,” she said, trying to keep a lid on her anger until she’d got more of the facts out of him, but it was hard work. “What do you mean? Are we all going to escape in the dead of night?”
“Something like that. You and Emily to Amy in Canada, if you can. Me later to the mainland, if possible. Unless -” He hesitated, and glanced at her sidelong. “Unless you have alternative arrangements?”
Julia nearly laughed, although there really wasn’t anything funny about it. “Oh, I see. You think I might vanish along some underground route, known only to the movement? Would that make things easier? Well, I’m sorry, darling, but there’s no such thing, not as far as I know, and I wouldn’t take it if there were - well, I wouldn’t have done up until today!” She got off the desk. “I can see why you didn’t tell me. Which possibility made you the most afraid? That I was going to disappear, or that I was going to run and confess the whole to someone?”
“No, no,” said Edward, getting to his feet, to intercept her by the study door. “Julia! I always thought I’d accepted the cost, but I’d never really believed in it - or thought - I don’t know, but - what we’ve done, this particular incident may constitute treachery. Bad enough to be in breach of the Official Secrets Act, but you do realise that the death penalty is still on the books for that?”
“But it’s still what we did,” said Julia. “To do what you’re doing is to expect someone else to pay for our actions.” She couldn’t help but feel chilled at the idea of facing the death penalty, though; of either of them hanging for it.
“Yes,” he said, suddenly sounding weary. “Yes. I know. But it was always my fault, not yours, and I can’t - I won’t have them take you for it.”
Julia shook her head. “You can’t say that.”
“But it’s true,” he said, moving a hand as if to reach out to her and then letting it fall back. “And they’d be bound to think it was the other way round, wouldn’t they?”
Julia backed up against the door. “And so instead you’re going to sit here carrying out character assassinations of your fellow ministers whenever Mr Hallam says so? If he doesn’t ask for anything worse! And you expect me to sit by while you do - or run away to Canada, of course. If we can.”
“Is it character assassination if it’s true?” said Edward, distracted by the thought, which didn’t mitigate Julia’s anger. He must have seen something of that in her face, as he moved forward suddenly, catching at her hands. “Julia. I am doing what I can - I said I had a strategy -”
“And getting rid of Mr Harding, who is surely best placed to deal with Hallam, is somehow part of that?”
Edward looked guilty, but then nodded. “In a way. Not ideal of course -”
“Oh, you think not?”
“Yes,” said Edward, letting go of her. “And, God help me, I almost enjoyed it.”
Julia glared at him. “You can’t play chess with people, Ned! Whatever it is you’re planning, it doesn’t make any of this any better.” Then she took a deep breath and one more step back to the door. “We’ll try and talk about this tomorrow, when I just might be able to do it without throwing things at you. In the meantime, if you come anywhere near me again tonight, I swear, I shall go straight to Scotland Yard and tell them everything and to hell with it all - and you!”
She shut the door firmly on the way out, careful not to give into the temptation to slam it, in case it brought Emily down. Oh God, she thought, they had both been so stupid. They could easily have rewritten this story into something harmless, and instead they’d insisted on turning something straight-forward into something complicated and dangerous. There had always been reasons for that, or excuses maybe, but that was what they’d done.
Julia took refuge in the sitting room, tears prickling behind her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. She thought for a moment of carrying out her threat anyway, just to bring an end to it, but she couldn’t, any more than Edward could find it in him to tell Hallam to go away and publish the facts. Neither of them had ever been able to contemplate handing the other over like that. Oh, God, she thought again, the fear biting into her, they had been so very stupid from the start, and it was never going to end well.
***