Eye of the Needle(97)

Still, she had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what was in her mind but preferred to pretend that everything was all right.

She hung her laundry to dry on a clothes-horse in the kitchen. “I’m sorry about this,” she said, “but I can’t wait forever for the rain to stop.”

He looked uninterestedly at the clothes. “That’s all right,” he said, and went back into the living room.

Scattered among the wet garments was a complete set of clean, dry clothes for Lucy.

For lunch she made a vegetable pie using an austerity recipe. She called Jo and Faber to the table and served up.

David’s gun was propped in a corner of the kitchen. “I don’t like having a loaded gun in the house,” she said.

“I’ll take it outside after lunch. The pie is good.”

“I don’t like it,” Jo said.

Lucy picked up the gun and put it on top of the Welsh dresser. “I suppose it’s all right as long as it’s out of Jo’s reach.”

Jo said, “When I grow up I’m going to shoot Germans.”

“This afternoon I want you to have a sleep,” Lucy told him. She went into the living room and took one of David’s sleeping pills from the bottle in the cupboard. Two of the pills were a heavy dose for a 160-pound man, so one quarter of one pill should be just enough to make a 50-pound boy sleep in the afternoon. She put the pill on her chopping block and halved it, then halved it again. She put a quarter on a spoon, crushed it with the back of another spoon and stirred the powder into a small glass of milk. She gave the glass to Jo. “I want you to drink every last drop.”

Faber watched the whole thing without comment.

After lunch she settled Jo on the sofa with a pile of books. He could not read, of course, but he had heard the stories read aloud so many times that he knew them by heart, and he could turn the pages of the books, looking at the pictures and reciting from memory the words on the page.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked Faber.

“Real coffee?” he said, surprised.

“I’ve got a little hoard.”

“Yes, please!”

He watched her making it. She wondered if he was afraid she might try to give him sleeping pills, too. She could hear Jo’s voice from the next room:



“What I said was, ‘Is anybody at home?’” called out Pooh very loudly.

“No!” said a voice….





—and he laughed heartily, as he always did at that joke. Oh, God, Lucy thought, please don’t let Jo be hurt….

She poured the coffee and sat opposite Faber. He reached across the table and held her hand. For a while they sat in silence, sipping coffee and listening to the rain and Jo’s voice.



“How long does getting thin take?” asked Pooh anxiously.

“About a week, I should think.”

“But I can’t stay here for a week!”





He began to sound sleepy, and then he stopped. Lucy went and covered him with a blanket. She picked up the book that had slipped from his fingers to the floor. It had been hers when she was a child, and she, too, knew the stories by heart. The flyleaf was inscribed in her mother’s copperplate: “To Lucy, aged four, with love from Mother and Father.” She put the book on the sideboard.

She went back into the kitchen. “He’s asleep.”

“And…?” He held out his hand. She forced herself to take it. He stood up, and she went ahead of him upstairs and into the bedroom. She closed the door, then pulled her sweater off over her head.

For a moment he stood still, looking at her breasts. Then he began to undress.

She got into the bed. This was the part she was not sure she could manage—pretending to enjoy his body when all she could feel was fear, revulsion and guilt.

He got into bed and embraced her.

In a short while she found she did not have to pretend after all.





FOR A FEW SECONDS she lay in the crook of his arm, wondering how it was that a man could do what he had done and love a woman as he had just done.

But what she said was, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, I would.” She extricated herself and got up. When he moved, she put her hand on his flat belly and said, “No, you stay there. I’ll bring the tea up. I haven’t finished with you.”

He grinned. “You’re really making up for your four wasted years.”

As soon as she was outside the room the smile dropped from her face like a mask. Her heart pounded in her chest as she went quickly down the stairs. In the kitchen she banged the kettle on the stove and rattled some china, then began to put on the clothes she had left hidden in the wet laundry. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly button the trousers.

She heard the bed creak upstairs, and she stood frozen to the spot, listening, thinking, Stay there! But he was only shifting his position.

She was ready. She went into the living room. Jo was in a deep sleep, grinding his teeth. Dear God, don’t let him wake up. She picked him up. He muttered in his sleep, something about Christopher Robin, and Lucy closed her eyes tightly and willed him to be quiet.

She wrapped the blanket tight around him, went back into the kitchen and reached up to the top of the Welsh dresser for the gun. It slipped from her grasp and fell to the shelf, smashing a plate and two cups. The crash was deafening. She stood fixed to the spot.