Our Woman in Moscow(80)

“You!” Sasha said. “This was your goddamn idea.”

“Seemed like a jolly sort of lark at the time. How was I to know about tides?”

“You pretend to know everything about everything else.”

Burgess shrugged. “Can I help being such a bloody clever chap?”

“Clever, my ass.”

The champagne was finished, all eight bottles. Burgess produced a bottle of gin. Aunt Vivian and Iris gave up on the weather and trooped into the tiny deckhouse, followed by Sasha, who slumped on a bench and closed his eyes.

“Iris, my dear,” said Aunt Vivian, “I’m beginning to think your husband’s some kind of Communist. You don’t suppose he’s an old friend of Mr. Chambers, do you?”

Iris glanced at Sasha. His eyes were still closed, his hands linked at the junction of his ribs. Her brain was too fogged by champagne and by the incessant cigarettes to think properly. “I doubt it,” she said.

“You’re sure about that?” Aunt Vivian looked at Sasha. “What do you think, cousin? Communist spies in the State Department?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about this Chambers fellow. Ever meet him?”

“Oh, stop. He’s drunk, can’t you see?”

“Frankly I think Mr. Chambers is a very brave man. I imagine the assassination orders are going down from Moscow Centre as we speak. I hope he’s got a decent bodyguard.”

“Fucking rat,” muttered Sasha.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sasha, don’t—”

Sasha struggled upward. The boat made some lurch and sent him spilling onto the deck—he staggered forward and caught himself on the edge of the small table—his eyes blazed. “He’s a snitch. Sell his soul for what? Approval from women like you—rich and idle—bigots—bluebloods—no idea what’s going on among regular people—”

“I imagine I know a lot more about regular people than you do, Sasha Digby. I was a typist when I met Charlie, and your kind never forgave me for it.”

“Not because you were a typist. Because you married him for his money.”

“Stop it!” said Iris. “Both of you, just stop.”

“And your mother married for money, Sasha, and her mother before her. Every woman does—she has to.”

“Because the system’s corrupt.”

“No, because humans are corrupt. We are all of us selfish, ignorant beasts, loyal only to ourselves and our own kind, interested only in getting a leg up on others, whether it’s money or status or moral virtue. That’s why we’ve got religion, to discover our better angels, and in the absence of religion I guess you’ve turned to communism. All right. I mean, you’ve got to believe in something. Some people are just born zealots. But you’re wrong, my dear. Argue all you want, but you’re wrong, and what’s worse is that you’ll never admit it. Like that fellow who combs his last remaining hair over the top of his head and tells himself he’s not bald.”

Sasha turned and hurled the bottle of champagne through the deckhouse window.



The captain dumped them ashore at the nearest possible landing, about a mile from Abingdon’s place by the water. They argued for nearly an hour about which direction to take, until Aunt Vivian settled matters by saying she would follow an army major over a diplomat any day, and anyway Davenport was the most sober.

Sasha was quiet. Iris would almost have said contrite, except her husband was never really contrite, was he? She walked alongside him to make sure he didn’t say anything else, didn’t expose himself any more than he already had. Burgess kept up a merry conversation with Aunt Vivian and Major Davenport as they picked their way along the shingled beach, carrying the picnic basket between them.

“Buck up!” he called back to Sasha and Iris. “Nearly there! Can’t wait to see the look on old Abby’s face when we turn up at last.”

“Oh, he’ll be delighted,” said Aunt Vivian. “Everybody wants a gang of drunken louts to turn up at his home at two o’clock in the morning.”

Sasha said to Iris in a low voice, “I want her out of the house as soon as we get back.”

“Sasha, she’s my aunt. And the girls!”

“She goes or I go.”

“You’re hardly ever there to begin with.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and tore out a packet of cigarettes. He was down to the last two. He jiggled them a moment and took one out and lit it, and when he smoked it was as if he were sucking life into himself.

“She doesn’t mean what she says, you know. She just likes to stir people up.”

“She’s exactly what I’m fighting against. Don’t you see? That kind of ignorance and . . . and willful selfishness . . . that individualism that’s got no regard for the common good—”

“Not now, Sasha. For God’s sake.”

“Chambers is a rat, a goddamn rat. He’s going to get people killed. Innocent men killed, just for believing in something.”

“Please, Sasha—”

Burgess cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted a halloo. “There we are! Thank God. Abby! Abby, old boy!”