A Quiet Life(116)

As soon as she got to the station, she saw Stefan on a bench on the platform. She walked straight past him, knowing it would be too dangerous to speak in the open where any waiting passenger might see them. As they got into the train, they both hesitated in the corridor. ‘Do you have a light?’ she said, getting out a cigarette, and he fumbled in his pocket.

‘It’s over,’ he muttered as flame met cigarette. ‘He must go tonight. They’re planning to interrogate him on Monday. Valance, the man who broke Fuchs, will do it.’

Laura drew on the cigarette, and then as other passengers got on she went to look for a seat, holding back her thoughts. None of the compartments was empty. They could not talk any more. Soon, outside the window, the suburban muddle of London began. Buddleia and cow parsley along the railway tracks. A magpie flying too close to the window. She got up and back into the corridor. Stefan was still standing there, smoking, and she went up to him. She had to risk it. Under the rattle of the train he spoke to her.

‘They broke an old telegram that pointed to him. One of our men heard about it in Washington; he broke out two days ago, arrived here last night.’

‘How can he get away, if they know?’

‘They aren’t setting a tail in Patsfield. They don’t know he knows, they don’t want to alert him, they are only watching him in town. He can go tonight, from the house, by car.’

Laura flicked ash out of the window, and asked what she should do.

‘Make him go tonight. Hang on until Monday before you tell anyone. We won’t be able to talk to you for a long time after he goes, probably, but we’ll hold on for you. Give him something – give him something for a signal that another agent can show to you. I might have to go over with him.’ The train was pulling into a station, and Laura went back into a compartment. Being seen here, talking to a stranger, it was too dangerous.

At Victoria, they walked in opposite directions. For her cover, Laura made her way to a little shop she knew in Jermyn Street and bought Edward’s favourite shaving cream and a new badger shaving brush. She thought of lunching in Fortnum’s, but she had no appetite; London was a great roar of indifferent noise and too many people, any one of whom might be dangerous to her. She was glad to get back, but when she got out of the taxi at Patsfield and put the key back into the door, she felt her hips aching. She was exhausted. Helen had finished cleaning, and the house smelt of the baked cakes and jasmine; Laura had put a few sprigs of the flowers into a small blue vase on the hall table. As she walked past the telephone, it rang again; she let it ring three times, but thankfully it went on ringing, and she picked it up.

‘Darling – just to let you know, Nick’s in town. I’m going to bring him up to dinner tonight.’

‘Tonight! Edward, you can’t. And – Nick …’

The line went dead. Laura longed to ring him back to explain, but she couldn’t think how to speak on the telephone without alerting possible listeners. Above all, it was essential that nobody realised that he knew anything at all. She would have to delay telling him what was going on until after Nick left. But what would those few hours mean for the plan?

Helen had left the cakes on a cooling rack in the kitchen. Once Laura had turned them onto plates, she saw how uneven they were, and when she put them together with cream and jam, the sloping tops meant that the whole thing listed to one side, and the cream, which she had not whipped stiffly enough, began to spill out of the middle. It was surprising how annoying it was, this failure. You can’t do anything right, Laura thought, and again she noticed how her pelvis was aching. A warm bath might relax her.

Lying there in the cooling water, she saw the shape of her belly change as the baby shifted and pushed, as if it too were unable to settle. She hauled herself out and wrapped herself in a towel, and out of the window she saw a car sitting on the road outside the house. Just sitting there. It had to be one of Stefan’s men, keeping an eye on the house. It must be.

Once she had dressed she took the bowl of peas that she was to shell for supper out into the garden. Sitting on the terrace, she podded them, trying to make her mind slow down with the repetitive movements. That was where she was when the light began to fade, and Edward came home. He walked onto the terrace in his dark suit, his homburg in one hand, pulling off his tie. Sir Edward Last in the making, or the NKVD’s precious Virgil, she thought as he came. In the fading light he was still the tall young man she had met at Sybil’s party, the man who had listened to her. He knelt down beside her and took her hands and put his face to her belly. ‘Be good to your mother,’ his muffled voice said.

‘I saw Stefan today,’ Laura said, pulling away from him.

‘I know what you’re going to say. There’s someone out in the road, in a car.’

‘Stefan said there would be somebody, keeping an eye out.’

Edward stood up. He seemed to be considering. ‘Do you want me to go?’

The evening around them was alive with the soft alertness of squirrels rustling in the bushes and a blackbird flickering in and out of the trees. The scream of the doorbell broke the peace.

‘God, is that Nick?’ Laura said. ‘How are we going to get rid of him?’

‘He’s coming out with me – not all the way – but to make it look like a jaunt to start with.’

‘Nick? Nick is—?’