A Quiet Life(69)

As she stood there, years disappeared for her, and she had a flash of how she’d felt when she had just arrived in London, freshly in love with the idea of freedom. She scanned the rows of people for a familiar face. Was that the back of Elsa’s head, there, by the banner? The woman Laura was watching began to turn. It was not Elsa, but then for a moment Laura thought she saw Florence’s dark hair a few rows in front of that; no, the woman she was looking at was not tall enough. She saw the banner they used to march with far across the square, but just as her body was about to push forward, going towards the familiar sight, her mind caught up. It was dangerous to stand here, waiting to be recognised. Long ago she had promised to turn her back on all of this. She walked quickly away, skirting the square and taking a long route to Piccadilly. One day soon, she said to herself, secrecy will be at an end.

Once the meetings with Stefan had been regularised again, they gradually began to induce less anxiety in her. In fact, they became routine, and gave a kind of structure to the weeks; they took place on Wednesdays and Saturdays, on her half-days from the bookstore. And gradually Stefan began to change their tone. In the past he had cut short every rendezvous, leaving immediately after the newspapers had been exchanged, his whole body exuding fear of discovery. But now, he sometimes chose spots where they could sit and talk, in the corners of Hampstead Heath or unprepossessing cafés in Balham or Elephant and Castle. He asked her about all sorts of subjects: who was staying in Toby’s house and what they were saying about the Soviet Union; what her friends felt about rationing and what Winifred’s role was in the Ministry of Food.… If she had stopped to think about it, of course Laura would have recognised that she was simply being pumped to provide useful information, but his attention felt flattering to her, as if he was interested in everything about her. Sometimes she found herself wondering about him, and what his life was like, and how his cover worked, but she knew it would not do to ask him anything. And in fact the one-way nature of their conversations was oddly seductive: Laura felt released from the feminine necessity of encouraging her male interlocutor to open up; she luxuriated in being the one who was listened to. All week she found herself saving up observations and nuggets of information for him.

One cold autumn afternoon they met on Hampstead Heath. Laura passed the film as usual under a newspaper on the bench between them. ‘If only everyone was as reliable as you, Pigeon,’ he said. Theoretically, she knew it was a breach of protocol for him to use her codename, or Edward’s, but they seemed to have become terms of endearment for him.

‘But Edward is—’

‘Yes, Virgil is impeccable,’ Stefan said. ‘How does he get his hands on all this stuff? Sometimes my bosses don’t believe you both are for real. Fools.’

Laura found it shocking, that suddenly bitter note of criticism. But he didn’t seem to notice that he had said anything out of the ordinary. She asked if he was having problems with other agents. She did not expect any kind of direct answer – if she had been honest with herself, she would have realised that she was just fishing for compliments. But he surprised her again, by answering with detailed irritation, opening up to her for the first time, telling her that one of his other sources had just come under suspicion.

‘For years he has brought us information not just from his country, but also from Germany. Now some of it has been checked from another source, and it is false – he is tricking us. I have to know who he is really working for now. After all, if Blanchard …’

Blanchard – Laura remembered the name, and the man, sitting there at the edge of the dance floor in his office clothes, and she repeated the name as if to remind herself.

‘You know him?’

She shook her head. She couldn’t say she knew him, but if it was the same – a tall, middle-aged man …

‘With a limp.’ Laura had to admit that she hadn’t seen that, but after all he had been sitting down. Stefan was irritated with her for not being more certain. He was clearly eager, even desperate for Laura to be acquainted with him. ‘I need to keep an eye on him,’ he said. Laura was trying to backtrack, explaining that even if it was the same man, she didn’t know him, in fact was only acquainted with his girlfriend, and even then hardly at all. But Stefan had already moved on, explaining that it was essential that she build on this acquaintance. ‘We used to have a good supporter in the hotel itself, one of the waiters, who would do little things for us, but he has now been called up. I need to know what Blanchard is doing and who he is talking to. He is the press attaché at the Swiss embassy, so he has many, many contacts. We can see what he does when he is not in the hotel or the embassy and we can look at his letters, but what is he doing in there, and who does he see?’

Again Laura tried to explain that she had only seen him in passing, and Stefan started to get impatient with her.

‘You must make an effort.’

Laura felt rebuked. She had been Stefan’s good girl all these months, and now he seemed ready to be angry with her. As she left the meeting place, she felt curiously shaky. She wanted his approval, she realised; she wanted to be told how well she was doing. Over supper that evening she asked Edward if they could go to the Dorchester again soon. She was hardly surprised by his reluctance, but pressed him, and perhaps it was because it was so unlike her to do so, he agreed.

When she and Edward walked through the doors of the ballroom, she realised that the atmosphere reminded her of nothing so much as the first-class quarters of the ship in which she had crossed the Atlantic, oppressive in its ostentation and gaudiness. But now, in this shattered city, it could not seem more out of place. There was a tackiness about it; even the glass in which she was given her cocktail was sticky, and there was no ice in it. But there was energy here too: London’s nightlife had received an injection of new blood, and there were a number of American uniforms among the dancers. In fact, it was so full that there were no tables free immediately, so they sat at the mirrored bar drinking their sweet cocktails. It wasn’t long before Edward saw someone he knew.