A Quiet Life(115)

Laura turned her head, and whispered into his cheek. ‘Tell Stefan that if he needs to see me, I will.’

The next time Laura went into town, just after she gave up her ticket at Victoria station, she heard someone say, with quiet clarity, at her shoulder, ‘Pigeon.’

She went on walking, but her steps found pace with him. ‘You know why I had to stop.’ Stefan said nothing, and for a moment she thought he was about to go. ‘Don’t use him again – use me.’

‘If someone rings you, just rings, three rings and then stops, take the next train to Victoria. That’s where we’ll find you.’

They went on walking for a few paces, and then he spoke again from just behind her. ‘If we have to take Virgil over, we’ll take you too. We won’t forget.’

‘What are our chances?’

There was no reply. Laura went on walking for a bit, and when she turned he was nowhere to be seen.

As the days went on, everything seemed to slow down. Day after day, Edward came in late, drunk. Laura didn’t have the heart to remonstrate with him, although some nights, when he didn’t come home at all, she lay awake into the grey dawn, wondering if they had finally caught up with him. But as the days moved into weeks, she thought that maybe the danger had passed, and that maybe this low-level sense of uncertainty, this reliance on alcohol to get through each night, was simply their inescapable normality.

One Thursday evening in May Edward was home at a reasonable time, but as he walked heavily into the kitchen, Laura realised he must have been drinking all day. He pulled open the French windows and, without needing to be asked, Laura followed him into the garden, down to the tangle of shrubs at the back, where the rhododendron flowers were browning and dying. As she came up to him, he was snapping the flowers off their stems and throwing them down onto the dark earth.

‘Stefan’s heard from Washington – from another contact – they’ve broken some old codes. Old telegrams. They’ve found something that seems to point to me. They’re still not quite definite. But soon, they’ll get there for sure. They’ve got dozens of cryptographers working around the clock.’

Laura asked him, as if she was asking for the time of a train, how long he thought they had.

‘I don’t know, let’s hold on as long as we can.’

‘Not too long,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm and stilling his fierce plucking at the flowers. Dinner was almost ready, she said, and she made him come back in, eat and listen to the Schubert sonata on the radio.

The next morning they were both awake before the alarm. Laura went downstairs and made coffee, and Edward came down in his dressing gown. They sat drinking it, and talked a little at first about whether they would go to the piano store in Marylebone that weekend. It was only when the letterbox snapped that Laura realised that a silence had fallen, the noise of the post tumbling onto the mat seemed so loud. She had not really forgotten that it was Edward’s birthday today, and there were cards there from his mother, Sybil and Toby, and others. She brought them into the kitchen and he began opening them while she made toast. ‘We’ll celebrate tonight, remember,’ she told him. ‘A special meal, and your present – unless you’d rather have it now?’

‘No, no, tonight is good.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t come up to town to celebrate – I’m just such a lump now.’ It was only two weeks to go before the birth. Edward rose from the table and went upstairs to dress. Another day to get through. A birthday.

Once he had gone out, Laura gathered herself. She went into the study and wrapped his present, which she had been keeping concealed behind the desk: a new tennis racket. He had been complaining about his old one. There was a ring on the doorbell. It was just the girl Laura had found in the village, the niece of the postmistress, whom she had engaged to come in daily to clean. Really, Laura wanted to be alone, but she forced herself to be bright and easy in front of Helen. Laura had taken to her at first because she did not seem to fit easily into the role of servant; she was obviously clever and observant, and when she had first started to work in the house Laura had enjoyed talking to her. But now Laura had to watch herself to keep Helen at a distance; she did not want any intimacy at this time.

After Helen had started making the bed and dusting the rooms upstairs, Laura laid out a recipe book on the table, and started to make a Victoria sponge. She saw it in her head, golden and perfectly risen, with icing spelling out ‘Happy Birthday’. She beat the butter and sugar until her arm ached, but when she added the eggs she saw the mixture separate, flatten and curdle. She remembered when Sybil had shown her how to do it, and the smoothness of the mixture she had created. She stirred the flour disconsolately, not knowing whether to start again or use the mixture as it was. The telephone rang in the hall and she put down the spoon. As she walked towards it, it stopped, after just three rings. It was already after eleven o’clock.

‘Helen!’ Laura called, and when she came out of the living room where she had been dusting, Laura asked her to take the cakes out of the oven when they were done. ‘I’m just going to put them in now. I have to go up to town; I forgot something for tonight.’

‘But Mrs Last, are you well enough to—?’

‘I’m fine, really,’ Laura said, cutting her short, although the last thing she wanted was to get on the London train. She rang for a taxi to the station, and before it came she poured the cake mixture into two buttered tins and put them in the oven. She had just taken off her apron and brushed her hair when the taxi arrived; as it drove up to Oxted she saw one of her neighbours walking along, a tall, untidy-looking woman who had often spoken to Laura when she was out and about in the village. She was about to stop the taxi and ask her if she wanted a lift to the station, but held herself back; now was not the time.