A Quiet Life(125)
There had been. In the end, the long-haired reporter had got tired of waiting and had published a lengthy, entirely fictitious interview with Laura in a Sunday newspaper, detailing her anguish and her belief that her husband would soon be in touch with her. When she had seen it, Laura had felt sickened not just by its content, but by the fact that she had to grovel to Valance, explaining over and over again that she had not been culpable. For once Toby had stepped in to help, and a letter of complaint was published in The Times by a friend of his, imitating his own pompous voice. ‘The repeated invasion of the privacy of the family,’ it had said, ‘an invasion amounting at times to persecution, is surely indefensible.’ Toby had also been behind questions in Parliament about the press. He had sent Laura a copy of the entry in Hansard, in which some politician she had never met had talked about the ‘public misgiving’ that the fictitious interview had caused, and how this showed the need for a Press Council. All Laura knew was that none of this kerfuffle had prompted the newspaper or the reporter to apologise or admit wrongdoing. She found the complaints as tiring, in some ways, as the original publication, but she could not explain that to Winifred.
They were eating heavy Alpine food on the terrace of a restaurant in the picturesque little town and, seeing the great valley falling away below them and spiralling up into the cloudless evening sky, Laura felt as though she were coming out into the open after weeks locked in a dark room. It was only the next morning, however, as they were breakfasting in the hotel, that she realised how elusive her freedom still was.
An English family was having a good look at them from another table, and passing a newspaper from hand to hand. Before Mother and Winifred could notice what they were doing, Laura quickly asked a waiter for a newspaper herself. There it was on the second page: a picture of her holding Rosa on the tarmac of Geneva airport and a story about how the bungling secret services had let her leave England, and how speculation was rife about whether she was likely to make contact with her traitor husband while out of reach of their surveillance.
Laura found herself looking at the photograph of herself as if she were looking at a picture of a stranger. She had not noticed the photographer in the crowd at the airport, and all she remembered from the moment of disembarkation was the weight of Rosa in her arms, how difficult it was to go down the aeroplane stairs with a baby and how the heels of her shoes kept sticking in the corrugations of the steps. But in the photograph she looked as though she was deliberately posing, her head high and her expression knowing. The picture did not show Mother; Laura seemed to be alone, striding into the future with her daughter. If she had seen such a photograph of a stranger, Laura would have said that the woman in the picture was relishing her notoriety.
She did not show the photograph to the others, but went on turning the pages as if she was interested in international news. A few pages further in was a picture of Amy Sandall, in Monte Carlo for the weekend, walking on the esplanade and wearing a rather outré get-up which bared her midriff. Although she was with her husband, you would not have noticed him in the picture, and there was something similar about this and the photograph of Laura. Looking at it, Laura remembered the first time that she had seen Amy tackled by the photographers on the platform of the boat train at Southampton. Laura had thought then that Amy relished her fame, that she felt energised by it as she forged forward. Or did she?
As they crossed the lobby back to their rooms, Laura could see through the big doors that there were photographers waiting outside the hotel, and when they went out to drive over to Megève for lunch, they were followed all the way by two reporters, one on a motorcycle and one in a car. Discouraged, Laura and the others soon returned to the hotel, where they spent the afternoon in the hotel grounds. Mother and Aunt Dee went early to bed, and Winifred and Laura sat on the restaurant balcony, drinking cognac and smoking.
‘I can see it’s absolutely impossible for you,’ said Winifred. ‘But they will get bored soon, don’t you think?’
Laura said she was sure they would, and then she said she hoped they would. It had already been so long.
‘It’s absurd that they think they are going to land some scoop, following you about. What do they think will happen, that some Soviet agent is going to jump out of the bushes and carry you off to Moscow?’ Laura smiled at the very absurdity of the notion. ‘I suppose you’ll just have to sit this out.’
‘I don’t know how much longer I can, though.’
‘You’ve coped up to now.’ The two women sat in silence for a while, and then Winifred asked what she must surely have been dying to say for some time. ‘Don’t you have any idea what has happened to Edward?’
But it was easy now for Laura to respond. She had answered so often, the words came without hesitation. ‘None at all. I know that he isn’t a traitor, though, whatever they say.’ And then she spoke about what was also pressingly on her mind. ‘The problem is, I don’t know how to go on practically. I don’t have a cent, you know – I’m living off Mother.’
‘Doesn’t the Foreign Office look after you?’
Laura had to explain that the very week after Edward drove off into the night, the Foreign Office suspended him. No pay, nothing. They had not responded to any questions from Laura about what she was meant to do. The mortgage payments for the house in Patsfield, doctor’s bills, Helen’s pay, diapers, food, taxis … ‘I don’t know what Rosa and I will do if—’