The Diplomat's Wife(49)
“Are you sure you’re ready to go to work?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But he needs someone to start right away. It may be a good thing, to be busy, to find some purpose again. Sitting around and thinking about what could have been with Paul much longer is going to kill me.”
“It sounds like you’ve decided,” Delia says, and I know then that I have. She gestures to the phone that hangs on the kitchen wall. “Why don’t you go ahead and call Mr. Gold and tell him you’ll take that job?”
CHAPTER 13
“The embassy in Budapest delivered an official communiqué protesting the handling of certain matters with respect to the repatriation of ethnic minorities…” Ian St. James, the white-haired deputy minister, reads from the notes prepared by his aide, papers held close to his spectacles. He has been speaking for more than an hour about the political situation in Hungary and I am still not sure what he is trying to say. His voice is monotone and nasal, its rhythm unchanging regardless of whether he is talking about war or the weather. I imagine him announcing the Allied invasion of Normandy in much the same manner.
I cross and uncross my legs, flexing my feet back and forth to relieve the cramping sensation I always get from sitting in the stiff wooden chairs for too long. I rub my eyes beneath my glasses, then replace them and scan the long conference room table that occupies much of the room. The men seated around it—middle-aged, dark-suited and pale to a one—are the heads of the European Directorate, or in the case of a few of the larger departments, their deputies. Some head up individual countries or groups. (“I’m Benelux,” I heard one man say at a party, which Simon later explained meant that he was in charge of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.) Others work in topical areas, economic recovery or political-military. A few, including Simon, specialize in intelligence. They listen to the deputy minister (or the “D.M.” as he is often called, though never to his face) with varying degrees of interest, some seeming to hang on to his every word, others shuffling through papers in front of them, reading surreptitiously. One man I do not recognize is sleeping, his eyes shut and mouth slightly agape. The perimeter of the room is ringed with other women, secretaries like me in dark pencil skirts and long-sleeved blouses. If they are bored, they give no indication, but sit erect, heads down, scribbling diligently as the D.M. speaks.
I shift my weight, straightening. My eyes travel down the row of men to Simon, who sits close to the head of the table. He wears a scowl, and for a moment I wonder if he noticed me fidgeting and is displeased. His gaze catches mine. A weary smile, echoing my own feelings of boredom and impatience, flickers across his face so quickly I wonder if I might have imagined it. Then he looks up at the D.M., his expression impassive once more.
Simon. My eyes linger on his face. My husband. Though we have been married for more than two years, it is still sometimes hard to believe. Simon first asked me out a few days after I came to work for him at the Foreign Office. His overture was small and tentative: an invitation to drinks after work. “You should not feel obliged to accept,” he said quickly. “Just because of our professional relationship.”
At first, I declined. Just weeks after Paul’s death, I had no interest in fun. But Simon persisted, asking me to join him for lunch the next day. I remember him standing over my desk, his watery-blue eyes hopeful. “Fine, thank you,” I relented.
After I accepted his first invitation, he quickly grew more forward, inviting me to dinner or the theater several times per week. Once I accompanied him to a party thrown by a diplomat and his wife who had just returned from a tour in Bombay at their stylish Notting Hill home. I sampled spicy curry dishes that made my nose run, sipped an exotic cocktail called a kir.
“I’m proud of you, Marta,” Delia remarked once. “For having moved on so bravely with your life after, well, the American boy…”
“Mmm,” I had replied vaguely. Of course, I had not really moved on. Simon’s company was pleasant enough. He talked passionately about international politics, told fabulous stories of his travels in Eastern Europe as a student that reminded me of my childhood home. Our dates were a welcome distraction, an escape from the long evenings at Delia’s, haunted by my memories of Paul. And I was grateful to Simon, of course, for my job. But sometimes as he squired me to dinners and parties, I felt guilty. Was I misleading him? Simon knew about my engagement to Paul and my recent loss, though, and still seemed eager to court me. I had not thought of it as more, though, and so I was quite stunned when, just four weeks after he first asked me out, Simon proposed marriage.
It was on a day trip to Brighton as we strolled along the promenade by the sea that Simon turned to me and pulled a small velvet box from his pocket. “I know we’ve only been seeing each other for a short time. But I’m very fond of you, Marta, and I think we can have a fine life together.”
I did not answer right away but gazed out across the Channel. Considering his tepid proposal, I could not help but think of Paul, dropping to one knee on the rain-soaked Paris street, eyes burning, as he asked me to marry him. I had not considered marrying anyone else. Simon was not Paul. I could never love him in that way. But Paul was gone. I looked back at Simon, who had taken the ring from the box and was holding it out toward me. He was not unattractive, and I knew from the other secretaries that, as one of the only single men in the department, he was considered quite a good prospect, if something of an enigma. He liked me, and he would not be unkind. “Fine,” I said, realizing too late that mine was not the most gracious of responses. “I mean, I would love to marry you.”