On her return to Moscow from five months in the U.S. seeing her family, Eleanor Philby sensed something was going awry in her marriage. Her husband, the spy Kim Philby, affected to feel as warm as ever towards her and strove to be kind and solicitous. His language was endearing, even syrupy.
But behind all that, she wondered whether the person for whose love she had chosen to go into exile was closing down and shutting her out.
Once again he was taking refuge in heavy drinking. Clearly there was a big problem she was not privy to. The secretive man who for 30 years had betrayed his country before defecting to the Soviet Union was keeping some revelation from her.
All he would tell her was that he had fallen out with his old friend Donald Maclean, his fellow Soviet spy and defector to Moscow, after Maclean claimed that Philby might still be working for the British. Maclean’s wife Melinda was also finding her husband more and more difficult and weepily confided to Eleanor that she was no longer sharing a bedroom with him.
Her husband, the spy Kim Philby, affected to feel as warm as ever towards her and strove to be kind and solicitous. His language was endearing, even syrupy. Pictured: Kim with his wife Eleanor
Eleanor trusted Melinda and asked her outright if she thought Philby still loved her. Melinda replied enigmatically: ‘He did, until a while ago.’
It was not good news. The Macleans had known Philby longer than she had, and Melinda was well placed to confirm she wasn’t imagining the distance there now was between them.
Eleanor hoped a trip to Leningrad to celebrate both Christmas and their wedding anniversary might help, and Philby seemed happy to go along with it, as long as there was plenty to drink.
But while they were away he was distant and impatient, snapping at her for her failure to assimilate the Soviet way of life. ‘His courtesy was gone,’ she noted, as he upbraided her sneeringly for ‘always looking so damned smart’.
These days his kindness seemed directed to others rather than to her. Increasingly, he seemed concerned by Melinda’s difficulties rather than hers.
During a weekend at the Macleans’ dacha outside Moscow, a drunk Philby fell and broke his wrist. Back home in their flat, Eleanor was angry with him for refusing to get it treated but instead dosing himself with even more alcohol. She had had enough, she told him. What was going on?
Eleanor trusted Melinda and asked her outright if she thought Philby still loved her. Melinda replied enigmatically: ‘He did, until a while ago.' Pictured: Kim with Melinda Maclean
Philby could dissemble no longer. He told her Melinda was desperately miserable. Donald was impotent and he felt a need to make her happy. It was the admission of adultery Eleanor had feared.
But there was more. With breathtaking gall, he added: ‘I don’t want you to leave. Of course you can stay on. You know I’m very fond of you, and Melinda understands my very special feeling for you.’
Eleanor asked sarcastically if he wanted her to be ‘the assistant housekeeper’ looking after their pet birds, but otherwise her anger and upset were held in check. She put down what was happening with Melinda as simply an aberration, born only of her having been away in America for so long.
She did, though, wonder if she been a victim of politics. Had the Russians told him to get rid of her? They never trusted her — she was too American and never really fitted in. They had been paranoid when she went to the States.
In the end, she decided simply that kind old Kim had fallen for some age-old womanly wiles. Her fury was directed more at Melinda, who, she convinced herself, had seduced her blameless husband.
But Philby was far from blameless — and deadly serious in proposing that he and the two women should live as a threesome under one roof. A friend of Eleanor’s reveals: ‘Having begged Eleanor to join him in Moscow, he now wanted her to stay with him while he also took up with Melinda.’
All he would tell her was that he had fallen out with his old friend Donald Maclean, his fellow Soviet spy and defector to Moscow, after Maclean claimed that Philby might still be working for the British. Pictured: Donald Maclean with his wife Melinda and his two sons Ronald and Fergus
It was a stunning slap in the face. Remarkably, Eleanor tried it for about a fortnight, but it was never going to work. She couldn’t bear that he had a new favourite, as he made clear. He gave Melinda a book with the inscription: ‘An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away.’
If he felt any squeamishness about cheating not only on his wife but on his friend Donald, it was quickly overcome. Double-dealing had been his way for so long, it was now second nature to him.
He still spoke most romantically to Eleanor, not wanting to hurt her feelings. But he showed no shame, contrition or even acknowledgement of his responsibility for what she had gone through for their love.
She tried to make this new arrangement work. Philby was now very ill with tuberculosis and pneumonia, and Eleanor visited him in hospital. But Melinda was visiting him too, at different times.
Enough was enough, Eleanor decided. Those embers were never going to flame up again. She told him she was leaving. She might, she said, go back to her roots and live in Ireland — which he thought an excellent idea, as there was no extradition between the UK and the Irish Republic at that time and he hoped he could come to visit.
As farewell presents, he gave her his most prized possession, his Westminster School scarf, and a letter, calling her the best friend he would ever have. She read it endlessly.
As she left for the airport on May 18, 1965, she asked one of his colleagues to give him a letter she had written. It said that if he ever reconsidered, she would come back, but he had to understand how manipulative Melinda had been. She could not live in the same city as her.
Back in London, the marriage over in all but name, Eleanor struggled. She stayed with a variety of concerned friends, to whom she poured out her hurt in endless chats. Now pretty much dependent on alcohol herself, she would get drunk as she tried to make sense of the man who had so comprehensively betrayed her.
‘I challenged him,’ she told them. ‘I asked him if it ever came to a really life-or-death choice between me and the children on the one hand and the Communist Party on the other, who would win. He looked at me in disbelief and just said “the Party, of course”.’
Yet Melinda moving in was the real deal-breaker. Eleanor could live with playing second fiddle to the Communist Party — but not to Melinda.
During a weekend at the Macleans’ dacha outside Moscow, a drunk Philby fell and broke his wrist. Back home in their flat, Eleanor was angry with him for refusing to get it treated but instead dosing himself with even more alcohol. She had had enough, she told him
How much had Eleanor really meant to Kim? Was he essentially the ‘copper-bottomed bastard’ that MI6’s John Sackur described, who knew nothing of loyalty and love, least of all to women, and moved on when
