◆ SpookStack

od 2 “had confided in of i. ns rien at at } he would boa « iati . ble to settle cop to his great ciation that we raphy of the To rime Minister, | HEY had everythin g in common, oie Ete feb tua 4 in fact, except each other; they On June 7, as the hue and cry: regan in the Press, three telegrams wrived: one from Guy Burgess o his mother in which he said 1® Was embarking on a long \lediterranean holiday; and two rom Maclean, to his mother ond his wife. To Lady Mactean :@ gent a brief message which 1e@ «signed with a childhood iame, to his wife he wrote: “Had orry.. Am quite well now. ion't atop loving me. Donaid.” AU tree sound plausible but somehow inreal, unless they were meant to 2 delivered at least a week before. Having acquired a little more ackground, let us examine some i the theories with which we -egan. It will be noticed even now cow very few facts we have. We uspect that Burgess and Maclean vere Communisis at Cambridge, ~. .- We do not know ; even if they ever met after | Cambridge. Both were neurotic | person alities » with schizo phrenic charac- teristics. In recent posts both had behaved so recklessly _they had to be ‘sent home, both drank too much "om - 5" gnd then became tolent and abusive, both might described as abnormal, both dlegedly made confessions (many ‘ars apart) of being Communist -gents, and both were notorious mong their colleagues for their .nti-British arguments and were sitter against authoritarianism nd imperialism. Both had risen ast under wartime conditions and iad yet maintained an under- -raduate-like informality in their ippearance and habits and jn the seneral bed-sitting room casualness wf their way of life. Both had two snemies, adolescence and alcohol, und when they vanished each was ought by his friends to have Jed che olffer astray... # ; a ayer a that- Were like two similar triangles sud- * denly superimposed. ‘When Donald ‘met this Hberator of irresponsibili- ‘ties, when Don Quixote found his Sancho Panza, there was bound to bem combustion 66 dee “then how was thelr association kept secret? I' think myself that » they ‘must have renewed the Cam-/: Again, he once remarked to & " bridge friendship in the summer of | o leave wnexpectedly, terribly | 1950, during Maclean's: convale-.- start a new life as a docker in the Don't | vorry, darling: I love you. Please acence, and that Burgess was part. of what Maclean called his “ash-- can life,” of which he was ashamed and trying to core himself. Hence the secrecy. Were they Communist agents? Surely the first duty of a secret agent is to escape detection, ‘express conventional views and rise in his career. ‘The more Com- munism they talked the less likely they were to be agents. And Bur. gess talked a great deals. ~ c) : , oe . : cock ory te Per . ’ . mys '-.. Recklessness: or -:. “, Deception? ‘''. e r 4 1 OULD this have been reckless- ness or a subtle double bluff? ; Both are just possible. Maclean, : however, in the fifteen years in , Which I had come across him, > remained always devoted to the nonconformist but essentially non- Political little group of writers and ‘painters whom he had known in : London and Paris.. They were his , home. ‘ LoS 1 se, Paw AE _* g few of them like chess-openings. ’ Let us first take one based on the theory of a voluntary escape. ‘? "1, NON-PoutricaL. The tio dis- » appeared on an alcoholic fugue, t.to wander about like Verlaine and | Rimbaud and to star? g new life t together. tr This fits in with Donald's charac- (ter, He is said to have disappeared once from @ party for w few days in Switzerland and been found liv- | ing quietly: in the next village. ¢friend that he wished he could East End, but that ration books and identity cards now made it impossible, Burgess also had @ reputation for disappearing, but there would be much Jess reason ‘for him to give ‘up the kind of : existence to which he was addicted. Neither could have lasting attrac- : tion for the other, for the force » which united them would also drive them apart, and the wanderers * would certainly have been heard of ‘again, for where they were in com- wath _ . pany incidents would be bound to arise: and the element of anti- ‘social aggression in such a@ flight would have caused them to leave ‘some kind of statement. _ Twitch upon the wo’ "Phread | 6 “9. (a) THEORIES WHICH IMPLY A ‘FORCED MOVE. “A twitch upon the 1 thread.” The argument is that : Burgess and Maclean were both Communist agents, Maclean (or both) was growing indiscreet and that they were , .Nor did Burgess ever appear at unreliabie, and eli calculating. “Guy would help ‘recalled before one (or both) could anybody in distress. He would make give away others who were more & split-second decision and carry’ secret and more important; that it out no matter what the conse- they were immediately imprisoned { quences. He would certainly not do ‘or liquidated and may have got vo ‘ anything to injure his country.” ‘,° ‘farther than an uncertain address +” Like most people who feel they _'In Paris. If they had refused to go. ‘ have been starved of love, Burgess “they would have been exposed to : and Maclean desired to raise the: the British and brought disgrace “emotional © temperature around ‘on their familtes. Even 50, it: is. athem to something higher than doubtful if experienced diplomats _ $n the world outside, and found 1 :aged..38 “and 40 woulg_ Sir _ drink a consolation. If we believe - their own death-warrants With- . that emotional maladjustment Was. 0Ut a murmur and depart without - the key to their personalities, it is «a. farewell. ee hard to see how they could possess: | the control to serve a foreign coun-, coolly and ruthlessly for twenty,, samathing _- , years and yet work all the time in, éxecutive capacities for thelr own... . J think that Burgess was a Marx-; “Ist in his mental processes and an’ . *anti-Marxist . individualist in’, his: . + personality. Maclean, it may be,j ‘had something on his conscience,’ which, however, was B particularly : ctender one; possibly, above all, “had a fear - about, his, mental: “condition, “Shi eat aah" 4 w=Sa.many explanationg.of ther | As pearance have been pit Yor- , ~, ward that it is best to deal with | Se Fy