A Quiet Life(117)
‘He’s one of us.’
Shock flooded through Laura. ‘Why did you never tell me before?’
‘He got me into the whole thing.’
Laura could not take in this new information, and as Edward went to answer the door, she went into the kitchen and put the bowl of peas and the bag of empty pods down on the table, next to the absurd cake which had now slid completely over to one side. Nick came in and Laura saw in an instant how the exodus was exciting to him, how he was buoyant with nerves and expectation.
‘I can’t believe this is where you’ve made your nest,’ he was saying with sarcastic relish. ‘A return to my childhood neighbourhood – how sweet.’ So he was the university friend with whom Edward must have walked in the woods, many years ago.
‘You should eat before you go,’ Laura said, going to get out bread, ham and a half-open bottle of wine, ignoring the celebratory champagne in the icebox. Nick immediately helped himself, but Edward went out and upstairs, and Laura followed him. When they reached the bedroom, he put his arms around her; it was impossible for her to know whether there was true communion in that kiss – it was so laden with fear and memory, it hardly existed as a present moment. Edward turned and packed a few things into a small case. He put the radio on, as loudly as he could, and she picked up a small framed photograph that sat on the bedside table. It was a picture of the house that she had taken last summer, when the roses were out on the walls. She opened the back of the frame to take it out, tore it in half and handed one half to him. ‘Give that to Stefan or whoever it is when you know you’re through, to get in touch with me.’ He took it, but he hardly seemed to register it.
‘Stefan suggested it,’ Laura said.
He put it in his pocket. ‘Try not to be alone,’ he said.
‘Mother’s coming next week anyway, remember, to help with the birth.’ At the word ‘birth’, they were unable to bear the conversation and they went downstairs, to find Nick standing in the hall.
‘Look at you and your stiff upper lips,’ he said. In front of him, Laura found it necessary not to cry. They were looking for coats, they were going to the lavatory, they were downing a last half-glass of wine. She went with them to the doorstep, heard Nick swear as he tripped over a stone, and saw the lights of the car disappear down the road, into the damp night.
5
Even now, Laura could not allow herself to feel alone. She had to act precisely in character, in every way, for as long as possible. She had put up with Edward’s absences often enough. Indeed, she knew that the fact that she had always put up with them with such apparent insouciance would be an important building block in the story that she would now create, a story that might be the key to their survival.
Although she still felt the physical exhaustion that had troubled her since the morning, she was too restless to lie down. Instead, she sat on the sofa for a while, listening to the radio and sipping automatically at a small glass of whisky. Then she began to go through Edward’s large walnut desk which they had put in a back bedroom. She did so with a methodical bitterness, knowing that if there was anything there that was incriminating in any way, it was essential that she found it before MI5 did. And so she went through every paper, every notebook, and then through every garment in the wardrobe and every coat hanging in the hall, checking pockets, feeling linings. She found letters from Giles and Alistair, which they had sent to him in Washington, and through them she read for the first time the sad story of Giles’s downfall. She found a card from Nick, wishing him luck on his work at the American Department – ‘though I feel the charms of the Newfoundland have palled on you in more ways than one!’ – and she took the card and burned it in the grate, pounding the ashes with the poker until they were a tiny heap of nothing. She found lines of poetry that Edward had scribbled in the back of a notebook over the last few months, featuring trains and gardens, hills and birdsong, and heard his voice in them. At dawn she ate a piece of the pathetic birthday cake, and fell asleep on the sofa, only waking at about noon.
It would have been quite in character for her to have telephoned Sybil or Winifred during the day, but she held herself away from the telephone, in case they asked about Edward, in case someone had heard that Nick had disappeared – in case the chase began. It was raining, a dreary drizzle, but she made herself walk down to the village and pick up some provisions she did not need in the local store. She stood in the shop for a while, talking to the tall untidy woman she knew a little, who said she was thinking of setting up an amateur dramatic society in Patsfield. Would Laura be interested? After the baby, obviously. Laura was not interested, but she was glad to talk, to hear about the plans, to walk slowly by the woman’s side back down the high street. Letting herself into the house, its silence oppressed her. She could not bear to make herself a meal, but stood by the kitchen table, eating handfuls of raw peas, and then two more slices of the cake, the crumbs falling onto her belly. Even though she knew it was a dangerous thing to do, she couldn’t help herself, she needed to speak to someone, and she went to telephone her mother.
‘No, nothing is wrong yet, but I wondered – you know, I just have a feeling that it’s going to happen soon. I know we planned for you to come next week, when the Caesarean is booked, but how would you feel—?’
‘I’ll see if I can change the flight,’ Mother said. Her immediate response threw Laura back in her mind to that time four years ago when her mother had risen to the crisis after the stillbirth. As she replaced the telephone receiver, she found herself kneeling on the floor in the hall, gripping her own wrists painfully in an effort to keep hold of her calm.