The Spy's Wife, page 11
Trevor joined her, leaving the car door wide open.
“She has a good nose, does she?” asked Molly.
He put his arms around her shoulders.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I don’t know!” she snapped. “I’m not used to making decisions.”
“Come on!” he said. “You seem to have been making them pretty effectively since all this happened. A lot of women would just have folded up.”
“No,” she said. “They haven’t been decisions. Time-killers. One foot in front of the other across the desert away from the wreck. Stopping still’s a decision. Do you know, I don’t think I’ve really decided anything since I decided to get away from Doncaster. That consumed all my decision-making for the next two or three decades!”
“I’m glad that jilting me took a bit of an effort,” said Trevor. “Look, it seems to me that, pared down to the bone, the issue’s pretty simple. Either you follow Sam and start a new life with him, or you stay here and divorce him. How are you for money?”
“Money! There speaks a Yorkshireman. What’s money got to do with anything?”
“Nothing as long as you’ve got enough to take that high moral tone. Listen. There’ll be no more salary. He’s not dead, so there’ll be no insurance. And even if you divorce him, Moscow’s a long way to go to enforce a maintenance order. You could always sell your memoirs, of course. I married a spy. A red in my bed.”
“I must say you’ve surprised me, Trev,” said Molly.
“You’ve taken this very coolly.”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s done me nothing but good,” he answered. “I spent three, no, four, of my formative years in which not a day went by without me dreaming of bedding you. You’ve no idea what it was like—women don’t work like that, or at least so I’ve been led to believe. Lusting all the time, erections in awkward places, nocturnal emissions, masturbatory fantasies. I tried my best, perhaps I should say my hardest, but it got me nowhere. Now after all these years I’m getting everything I dreamt of, and all because your Sam’s gone to Moscow! Of course I’m taking it coolly. The only alternative is to jump for joy!”
“I think on the whole,” said Molly slowly, “that if I set the excess of sexual flattery in that speech against the lack of human sympathy, it’s probably a very pretty speech. And I also think that if there’d been any slight sign that you might turn out like this all those years ago, I might have stayed after all. Or left a lot earlier, I don’t know which.”
They stood in companionable silence and looked out over the hawthorn hedgerow across the dark fields to where in the distance the lights of a huge power station dimmed the surrounding stars.
Suddenly a brighter, closer light bathed them, sending their shadows leaping across the hedge like spider-men, as bumping up the lane came a car. It stopped a few yards behind Trevor’s vehicle, and they heard someone get out, though he remained invisible behind the undimmed headlights. Then a figure moved forward.
“Evening, sir, madam,” he said. “This your car?”
It was a policeman. Molly did not know whether to be relieved or alarmed.
“That’s right, officer, “ said Trevor easily. “Are we in your way?”
“No, sir,” said the constable. He walked slowly round the car peering through the open doors at the still reclining seats.
“Can I see your license, sir?’ he asked when he got back to his starting-point.
Trevor had it ready.
“Thank you, sir.”
He studied it gravely, then returned it.
“Sorry to have troubled you, sir. Had to take a look, car parked in a lonely spot like this. Will you be staying here long?”
“No. Just going, actually,” said Trevor.
“I’ll say good night, then,” said the constable.
“Good night, Mr. Challenger. Mrs. Challenger.”
He returned to his car, the darkness behind the headlights swallowing him like a hole in space.
“Cheeky sod,” said Trevor as the police car reversed to the metalled road. “What do you think? Coincidence?”
“God knows,” said Molly. “There are probably people thick enough to think I need watching still. Carruthers of the KGB.”
“They should have asked me,” said Trevor. “I could have told them you’re not Carruthers.”
He turned her towards him and kissed her long and hard.
“Time to go home,” said Molly.
He dropped her at the end of Rothwell Avenue.
“Trevor,” she said. “Leave me alone. You don’t want to get mixed up in this.”
“I thought I’d had my warning,” he said.
“You’re getting another chance.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve been taking it.”
“There’s nothing in this for either of us,” said Molly. “I’m just marking time.”
“That’s better than the other way round,” said Trevor.
“Oh, God. I’ve got you being smart now!” she said.
“Yes, you have, haven’t you?”
The next morning, Molly managed to get up before Ivor and have his breakfast ready. He ate it in silence, and as he went to get his coat he contrived to nudge the knapsack behind the kitchen door. It moved heavily. He made no comment but returned with his donkey-jacket on a moment later and swung the knapsack over his shoulder.
“I’m off, then,” he said. “Back for tea.”
Molly made herself a mug of coffee and poured marmalade on a hunk of bread. This was her fingerhold on Continental elegance, Sam had mocked. He was like Ivor, a full English breakfast man. Would he get English breakfasts in Russia? She had been washing the dishes that morning when he came back. He hadn’t had much of an appetite, she recalled. And the dishes had been lying in the sink the following morning. That had been a sign. She was a meticulous housekeeper, emphasizing her tidiness to balance Sam’s carelessness. But since that day, she had not been able to bother. In fact she had not been able to be most of the things she had been before. Was it all façade, or was this other woman, sharp, untidy, ready to make love on a hearthrug or in a car, the front, as though by such a rapid change she could avoid the pain which the old Molly must have felt?
She finished her coffee, flicked on the radio to let pop music flood the dark cellars of her mind, and started to wash up. As she was drying, she heard the letter-box flap. A large buff envelope lay on the hall floor. She picked it up and saw that it was addressed to her.
She hefted it in her hand as though by feel and weight she could guess its contents. Then she opened it.
It contained a travel brochure describing the attractions of a seven-day package holiday in Bucharest, documentation indicating that she had booked such a holiday and a plane ticket.
The flight departed from East Midlands Airport at two-thirty p.m. the following day.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The frail old lady had survived the operation and after a night’s rest was adjudged fit enough to be cross-examined by Mrs. Haddington, whose findings were passed on to a group of friends who had arrived for the afternoon visit. The ward sister had weighed up these formidable ladies and wisely decided not to apply the letter of the law, so they all sat around the bed and talked in chorus but with Mrs. Haddington’s voice indisputably carrying the solo line.
Molly rose some ten minutes before the hour was up and kissed her mother’s cheek.
“Off already?” asked one of the visiting party with the ghost of reproach in her voice.
“Yes,” she answered calmly. “Dad likes a Scotch pie for his tea on Thursday and I’d better get down to Marks’ before they get sold out.”
Her mother nodded approval at this flattening formula, and as she left Molly heard her interlocutor attempt to re-ingratiate herself by saying, “She is a good lass.”
“She’s always been close to her dad,” said Mrs. Haddington. “Always, from a little girl.”
Did she believe it? wondered Molly as, irritated by the tardiness of the lift, she walked down the stairs. Perhaps this was the blueprint for the successful life—for the first thirty-five to forty years you carved out the future; after that you just chipped away at the past.
In town she bought her father’s pie—her mother would check the story tonight—and strolled idly round the streets. Here they had chipped away at the past with a vengeance. Doncaster had never been a beauty spot, but at least it had been homely. The planners and developers had worked at it like a committee of plastic surgeons. Every good intention was marked with a scar.
“Molly, how’s your mother?”
It was Jennifer Challenger whom she was passing unnoticed. Her face was slightly flushed and her smile far from beaming. Perhaps she had miscalculated with the make-up, but Molly had a feeling that, had she not by accident ignored Jennifer, then Jennifer would by design have ignored her.
“She’s OK, in the circumstances, I mean, thanks.”
“That’s good,” said Jennifer. There was a hiatus now in which the two women stood on the pavement and looked at each other without speaking, Jennifer with the breathless look of one who is about to speak and Molly (she hoped) with the alert look of one who is eager to listen. Jennifer, she realized, was pretty much a cypher to her, fossilized in her teens and little considered since then. She had had something of a reputation for flightiness, but this was the common lot of any pretty girl not in one’s own intimate set. The news of the engagement between Jennifer and Trevor had come as a surprise, momentarily even a shock, but thereafter she had mentally covered them with leaves and left them to sleep time away like the Babes in the Wood. But it had been babes in the womb instead, and just as Trevor had grown and changed so must this woman who now confronted her on the edge of the busy street.
For it was a confrontation, she realized. Or would be if she permitted it.
“I’m afraid Trevor won’t be able to take you to the hospital tonight,” resumed Jennifer. “We’re having some people round to dinner. But it’s not far to walk, is it?”
“Not far,” agreed Molly. “And I’ve been lucky to have him twice.”
She intended no double entendre or at least not consciously. Was her intonation suggestive? She thought not but could not swear to it.
“I expect Sam will be coming up as soon as he can,” said Jennifer shrilly. Was that last clause over-emphasized?
“I expect so.”
“You must bring him round to see us. If he wouldn’t mind an evening with ordinary people and their noisy kids, that is. I’d really like to meet him.”
“Haven’t you met Sam?” asked Molly, pretending surprise.
“We said hello once. No, you’ve got an advantage over me there. It’s only right we should even the balance, isn’t it?”
She laughed unconvincingly. No, not unconvincingly. Threateningly and with conviction.
Molly was surprised to find herself tempted to push things a few steps further, see how far the other woman would go. But she resisted easily. There wasn’t much point in provoking a fight for something she did not at the moment want to win. So she said an abrupt goodbye and strode quickly away. But as she sat on the homeward bus she realized that she was in fact disappointed that she wouldn’t be seeing Trevor that night. It wasn’t sexual disappointment, she analysed, rather the simple human need for a confidant. What she really wanted (so she reassured herself) was someone with whom she could discuss the mystery of the Rumanian holiday. Sam must be responsible for having the flight booked, of that she was sure. Perhaps he was insisting that he should see her before he appeared in public. Or perhaps one of his masters thought it would be a good idea to have Mrs. Keatley behind the Curtain when the news broke. Whatever the idea, this seemed a simple, anonymous way of doing it—a provincial airport, a package tour—she could be drinking tuica before Monk knew she’d gone.
Monk. She was assuming that, if he wanted to, he could stop her from leaving the country. On what grounds? she asked herself. This was the very mythology of espionage, the belief in secret police and powers beyond the law, whereas probably the reality behind Monk’s weary, wayworn clerk-of-works expression was as commonplace as the man himself.
She corrected herself. Not commonplace. That was a façade too. She was becoming an expert on façades. Perhaps beneath Monk’s there lay the kind of man she really wanted to confide in. Knowledgeable, sympathetic, paternal. Why paternal?—he was no older than Sam. She found herself suddenly eager to feel his comforting arm round her shoulder, to smell the fresh-scrubbed soapy smell of him. He would know what to do.
Then with an equally sudden reversal of feeling, she laughed cynically at the prospect. Monk was like an onion, and just because she’d penetrated the outer skin she was imagining she’d reached the centre.
But she might as well phone him. There was no point in keeping this from him since she didn’t really have to decide whether or not to go. Her mother was being operated on tomorrow and nothing at the end of her journey could justify her absence on such a day.
Yet when she got through, she found herself telling him not about the package through the post, but about Wallace and Sally Ann Hibbert.
“This was yesterday. You’ve taken your time, missus,” he reproached her.
“Yes, I know. It slipped my mind. I’ve been busy. Though doubtless,” she added bitterly, recalling the police car in the country lane, “doubtless you know all about that.”
He did not comment.
“Anything else?” he said.
“Should there be? What about you? Is there anything more about Sam?”
“No, missus. They’re keeping him under wraps, wherever he is. Llewellyn’s getting the treatment though; which is strange. They must be hard up!”
“What treatment?”
“He’s been giving a press conference this afternoon. It’ll be in the papers tonight.”
“Is that significant?”
“You tell me, missus. How’s your mother?”
“As well as can be expected. They’re operating tomorrow.”
“I hope she’ll be all right,” said Monk. “How about you?”
“I hope she’ll be all right too,” said Molly.
“In yourself, I mean. You’ve had a lot to put up with.”
Molly began to cry. Her voice remained unchanged, calm and controlled, but as she replied tears began to run down her cheeks, two steady streams which did not feel as if they had anything to do with her body.
“I’m all right,” she said. “It’s good of you to ask.”
She meant it. She felt that somehow Monk knew she was crying but was too diplomatic to mention it, though why she should credit him with such sensitivity she did not know.
“Thanks for ringing,” said Monk. “Keep eating the Irish Stew. Tata.”
As abruptly as they had started the tears stopped. Molly washed her face, then sat down in the living-room and took the travel documents from the old bureau by her father’s chair. She should have told Monk. She had meant to tell Monk. But she hadn’t been able to. She tried to work out why, with something of the objective interest of a botanist examining a new plant form.
After a while she thought she had it.
They were from Sam, a gesture, an invitation, perhaps the only one she would ever get from the new Sam, certainly the only private one, for the spotlight of publicity burns as it illumines and the blisters are still painful though the darkness returns. Not to go now might mean never to go, a betrayal more brutal and lasting than anything she had done with Trevor in the car last night. But she couldn’t go. Not till it was all over with her mother. She realized suddenly but without shock that she was convinced her mother would die. Not tomorrow perhaps, but soon. She would lie in the hospital bed, strong, and domineering, and refusing to admit the truth, while half a dozen frail old ladies came and were cured, and departed, till finally she too would depart and her daughter and her husband would return to the empty house sharing that sense, both active and passive, of betrayal which grips the bereaved heart like a band of mourning crape.
So, stay she must. There were words to speak which at least might cut her free from Sam for ever. Now they might not be spoken, and perhaps for ever his face would haunt her moments of greatest joy as Trevor claimed her face had haunted his.
But at least she would not have told Monk.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Next time you see me I’ll be on the mend,” said Mrs. Haddington as the end-of-visiting bell sounded.
“Yes, Mum,” said Molly.
“What are you staring at, lass?” her mother asked irritably. “Have I got a dirty face or something?”
“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”
In fact she couldn’t keep her eyes off her mother’s face. Her father on the other hand didn’t seem able to look his wife straight in the eyes. He had wandered round the room, peered out of the window, examined the flowers, and when he was finally commanded to stop fidgeting and get sat down, he contemplated the coverlet on the bed as studiously as if it had been a Gobelin tapestry.
“I don’t know what’s up with you two tonight,” Mrs. Haddington had expostulated at one point. “You’ve not broken something, have you? Molly, you’ve not been using my Queen Anne china?”
After that the two of them had made an effort to naturalize their manner, but they made a despondent pair as they walked away from the hospital.
Almost opposite the entrance to the hospital was a pub, a large roadhouse whose clientele and beer Ivor Haddington affected to despise.
“Come on, I’ll buy you a drink,” said Molly.
“In yon place?” said Ivor.
“It’s my money,” said Molly. “Come on.”
They sat and drank in silence, melancholy on Molly’s part, suspicious on Ivor’s as he supped his pint like a Sultan’s gustator.
“She’ll be all right,” he said finally.
“I’m sure,” said Molly.
“It preys on your mind, even when you’re not thinking of it,” said Ivor. “I dreamt the other night…”
“Yes?”
