‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’

Gilbey laughed briefly and the two men sat in the dusty silence for a while as the steward poured their whiskies.

‘It’s not on my file then, Tom?’

‘What isn’t, Roly?’

‘That I’m a member here.’

‘It would be the Security Service who’d hold it rather than us. They’ve probably got a file on me too.’

The two men laughed and wished each other good health, and Gilbey asked Pearson what he made of the new prime minister.

‘Too early to say, Tom: he’s hardly had time to unpack his overnight bag. Looks a bit like Trotsky, don’t you think?’

‘I think you may mean Lenin.’

‘You’re quite right: let’s hope that’s the only similarity, eh? He had me out of Downing Street soon enough.’ There was a distinctly resentful tone to Pearson’s voice.

‘Well he would do, wouldn’t he, Roly? You were Winston’s appointment as his personal intelligence coordinator or whatever your title was. You can hardly blame Attlee for that.’

‘Nonetheless, one does feel rather cast out – nearly six years I worked for Winston, hardly a day off, and then just to be sent packing… but hey ho. This is where one rather realises being married would help. They tend to push you, do they not, Tom?’

‘In what sense, Roly?’

‘Well, you’re married, so you’d know better than me, but from what one gathers, wives are rather ambitious for their husbands – they don’t like them to become complacent, eh: not keen on them sitting around and moaning.’

Gilbey nodded and muttered, ‘Maybe.’

‘Winston asked me if I’d like an embassy after the war – he even went so far as offering me Brussels, and I foolishly turned it down. A wife would have made sure I took it.’

‘I remember, Roly: you asked me if I’d be interested.’

‘Flemish rather put me off. It’s like having to speak backwards, like that funny made-up language we used in prep school. By the time the war ended and Winston lost the election, I was exhausted and complacent, which a wife would have soon seen to. Hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do after it. So now I spend my days here at the club drinking malt and getting emotional over books.’

‘Something in the City, maybe?’

Pearson scowled at him.

‘How is Winston these days?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Licking his wounds at Chartwell – they’ve bought a rather nice place in Hyde Park Gate, though. He’s talking about writing a history of the war: I told him he needed a decent agent.’

‘I understand he has one already. So you do see him?’

‘Went down last weekend. Hardly saw Winston, as he was busy painting clouds or something, but I did have lunch with them. He barely said a word; just sat there brooding. I think it was Clemmie who really wanted to see me.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘A cousin of hers – second or third, something rather distant in any case – was killed in Munich in August. She wanted to know if I knew of anyone who might know something about it. Whole thing’s shrouded in mystery and is rather hush-hush, but then she told me he was SOE and I thought, well, yes, of course it’s shrouded in bloody mystery. Didn’t say that to her, of course. Promised I’d ask a few questions. Didn’t realise the SOE was still going.’