A Quiet Life(108)
Sliding into the passenger seat next to Edward, Laura wished she had had time to change her grey dress, which was already sticky under the arms. ‘There must have been an accident,’ Edward said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as they sat in a long traffic jam in Bressenden Place. But as they left the city behind, Laura wound down her window and felt the breeze. English spring, later, more tentative, more promising, than spring in Washington, had got into its stride while she hadn’t been looking. All through the edges of south London were ribbons of new housing, but eventually a green patchwork of fields and low hills, drenched in sunlight, asserted itself. The silence between them solidified during the drive, until finally Edward slowed down in a village: a wide green, a pond dappled with light, a few rows of well-kept houses, a pub. ‘This is the spot,’ he said, parking.
As she got out, Laura asked how he knew the place. It was odd to think that he had come here before the war, before they had met, and yet had remembered it. An old university friend had lived nearby, he explained. ‘Will you be warm enough here?’ Here was a garden behind the pub, with wooden tables worn grey and grass going to seed around them. That politeness, he relied on it as she did, covering up the hopelessness between them with the careful give and take of civilised conversation. As he went into the pub to get drinks, a rather mangy cat wound itself around Laura’s legs. She pushed it away, thinking it looked as if it had fleas, and it sloped through the grass as if it did not care, over to another table. Edward came out with a lemonade for himself and a gin and tonic for her, and a menu. She never knew what to choose at places like this, so she let him decide. Although the pie with a thick brown gravy looked unappetising, it was hot and savoury. They soon exhausted talk of the pie, the pub and the cat, which had returned and was pushing its head against Edward’s leg.
After they had eaten, they lit cigarettes and looked out over the almost too picturesque scene, and Laura was wondering whether she should start to talk about Lvov when Edward spoke. ‘I know you want to move out of Sybil’s.’ She had raised this already with him, since the retreat back to being guests in that house made her feel as though she was trying to relive something long gone, but she was unprepared when he said that he was thinking that they should move right out of the city, into a village like this. As soon as he said it, she could see why he suggested it. As far as she knew, their handlers had not been in touch. Perhaps they would not be in touch. Perhaps the precious Virgil and Pigeon were both too tainted now. Perhaps this could be the chance for a new start. A quiet life.
She did not know what to say. She stalled, asking if he was serious. ‘We don’t have to decide now,’ he said, getting up, and then suggested that they should go for a walk. They went to the bar to pay, and then Edward took her through the village, onto a footpath he seemed to remember on the other side of the green, which soon ran uphill into a wood. Bluebells lay in electric puddles among the trees, and cow parsley brushed their legs. The richness of the flowers and the birdsong, rising up from all sides, took Laura backwards, to those days she remembered when she had felt drunk with the lavishness of spring, when Edward’s body had gathered up the sunshine and brought it into hers. Now, emerging from the wood and seeing the grassy slopes glistening as if they had been washed, it was like looking at everything through the wrong end of binoculars. She could appreciate it. She could say, what a lovely spring day. She could say, how warm it is in the sunshine. But she knew they were not celebrants with the song of the thrushes. She knew they were just onlookers at the spring glory.
They sat for a while on Edward’s coat, on the side of the path. London was a distant smudge to the north, and in front of them the downs rolled airily. ‘Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,’ Edward quoted.
‘You know so much poetry.’ Laura realised that her tone sounded dismissive, and she looked at him, trying to smile. So he had thoughts for the future, a future that still included her. She did not even know herself whether that was what she wanted, but if he was serious he must know that he would also have to start the therapy that the Foreign Office had insisted upon. She started to tell him about Lvov, about how Giles had gone to him, how he was discreet, a friend of Winifred’s … Edward seemed nonplussed at the thought of her going to talk to a therapist for him, but then he changed and there was something like gratitude in his tone. Talking directly about the situation was like plunging their hands into something dirty, and they withdrew as quickly as they could. But not before Edward had said, in a stilted voice, how sorry he was, he was determined to stop drinking.
‘I know what you’ve had to put up with,’ he said. Laura was not sure that he did know. But now she wanted to change the conversation, so she smiled at him, saying that he didn’t have to give up alcohol and move to the country and go into therapy all at once. That sounded a little overwhelming, she said in a light voice. He matched her lighter tone, but still insisted that it was time for a new start.
‘As long as we can still have a martini before supper,’ Laura said, smiling.
‘A few glasses of wine during …’
‘And a whisky after.’
‘No, seriously, Laura. I do mean it.’
‘But how would we manage living here if they give you back a job?’
‘It’s easy enough from Whitehall. You get the train from Victoria to Oxted. Doesn’t take long at all. You’ll be able to go up and down to town whenever you like.’