Eye of the Needle(78)

She guessed she was not going to be good at deception. It did not come naturally to her. She had no experience at it. She tried to think of another occasion in her life when she had deceived someone close to her, and she could not. It was not that she lived by such lofty principles—the thought of lying did not trouble her so much. It was mostly that she had just never had reason for dishonesty.

David and Jo sat down at the kitchen table and began to eat. David was silent, Jo talked nonstop just for the pleasure of making words. Lucy did not want food.

“Aren’t you eating?” David asked casually.

“I’ve had some.” There—her first lie. It wasn’t so bad.

The storm made the claustrophobia worse. The rain was so heavy that Lucy could hardly see the barn from the kitchen window. One felt even more shut in when to open a door or window was a major operation. The low, steel-grey sky and the wisps of mist created a permanent twilight. In the garden the rain ran in rivers between the rows of potato plants, and the herb patch was a shallow pond. The sparrow’s nest under the disused outhouse roof had been washed away and the birds flitted in and out of the eaves, panicking.

Lucy heard Henry coming down the stairs, and she felt better. For some reason, she was quite sure that he was very good at deception.

“Good morning!” Faber said heartily. David, sitting at the table in his wheelchair, looked up and nodded pleasantly. Lucy busied herself at the stove. There was guilt written all over her face, Faber noted, and he groaned inwardly. But David did not seem to notice his wife’s expression. Faber began to think that David was rather obtuse…at least about his wife….

Lucy said, “Sit down and have some breakfast.”

“Thank you very much.”

David said, “Can’t offer to take you to church, I’m afraid. Hymn-singing on the wireless is the best we can do.”

Faber realized it was Sunday. “Are you church-going people?”

“No,” David said. “You?”

“No.”

“Sunday is much the same as any other day for farmers,” David continued. “I’ll be driving over to the other end of the island to see my shepherd. You could come, if you feel up to it.”

“I’d like to,” Faber told him. It would give him a chance to reconnoiter. He would need to know the way to the cottage where the transmitter was. “Would you like me to drive you?”

David looked at him sharply. “I can manage quite well.” There was a strained moment of silence. “In this weather, the road is just a memory. We’ll be a lot safer with me at the wheel.”

“Of course.” Faber began to eat.

“It makes no difference to me,” David persisted. “I don’t want you to come if you think it would be too much—”

“Really, I’d be glad to.”

“Did you sleep all right? It didn’t occur to me you might still be tired. I hope Lucy didn’t keep you up too late.”

Faber willed himself not to look at Lucy, but out of the corner of his eye he could see that she was suddenly flushed. “I slept all day yesterday,” he said, trying to fix David’s eyes with his own.

It was no use. David was looking at his wife. He knew. She turned her back.

David would be hostile now, and antagonism was part way to suspicion. It was not, as he’d decided before, dangerous, but it might be annoying.

David seemed to recover his composure quickly. He pushed his chair away from the table and wheeled himself to the back door. “I’ll get the jeep out of the barn,” he said, mostly to himself. He took an oilskin off a hook and put it over his head, then opened the door and rolled out.

In a few moments the door was open, the storm blew into the little kitchen, leaving the floor wet. When it shut, Lucy shivered and began to mop the water from the tiles.

Faber reached out and touched her arm.

“Don’t,” she said, nodding her head toward Jo.

“You’re being silly,” Faber told her.

“I think he knows,” she said.

“But, if you reflect for a minute, you don’t really care whether he knows or not, do you?”

“I’m supposed to.”

Faber shrugged. The jeep’s horn sounded impatiently outside. Lucy handed him an oilskin and a pair of Wellington boots.

“Don’t talk about me,” she said.

Faber put on the waterproof clothes and went to the front door. Lucy followed him, closing the kitchen door on Jo.

With his hand on the latch, Faber turned and kissed her, and she did what she wanted, she kissed him back, hard, then turned and went into the kitchen.

Faber ran through the rain, across a sea of mud, and jumped into the jeep beside David, who pulled away immediately.

The vehicle had been specially adapted for the legless man to drive. It had a hand throttle, automatic gearshift and a handle on the rim of the wheel to enable the driver to steer one-handed. The folded-up wheelchair slid into a special compartment behind the driver’s seat. There was a shotgun in a rack above the windscreen.

David drove competently. He had been right about the road; it was no more than a strip of heath worn bare by the jeep’s tires. The rain pooled in the deep ruts. The car slithered about in the mud. David seemed to enjoy it. There was a cigarette between his lips, and he wore an incongruous air of bravado. Perhaps, Faber thought, this was his substitute for flying.