“Yes, you do,” Philip said kindly, “which is why I confess I’ve been dithering a bit with you. Wondering whether to bring the subject up.”
“The hearings, you mean?”
“Not the hearings. It’s about your husband, I’m afraid.”
Iris swallowed down the rest of the champagne. “Sasha? Goodness.”
“Do you mind if we sit?” He gestured to the nearby sofa—a deep, worn leather Chesterfield flanked by a pair of mismatched lamp tables. Iris followed the direction of his arm and sat on the edge of the cushion, holding her empty glass. He sat next to her, against the back of the sofa, more relaxed, at a respectful distance but still close enough to be private.
“I hope it’s not something serious,” she said.
“You may kick me if I’m being officious. It’s only because I consider you a friend, Iris, whom I admire very much. I wouldn’t dream of coming between a man and his wife—”
“Goodness,” she said again.
“—but I’ve watched your distress in silence for the past few months, and I feel the time has come for me to butt in, as they say, because it may do some good. I beg your pardon. I’ll come to the point. We are all sinners, and I don’t judge a man for his sins, and we all drink perhaps a little too much in these circles, yours truly among the guilty. But Digby—stop me at once if I distress you—seems to have, shall we say, passed some point of no return, in recent months.” Philip peered into Iris’s face. “Do you hate me?”
“No. I’d be an idiot to tell you it’s not true.”
“I suppose what I’m asking is whether there’s anything I can do to help. Whether you’re aware of how much, and how dangerous—There’s talk of indiscretion, the kind of thing that can ruin a man’s career.”
“I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”
“For God’s sake, it’s not your fault. Frankly, I think the man’s a fool to go out drinking all night with the lads, when he’s got a woman like you waiting for him at home, and the children, too—wonderful boys. And I wouldn’t have said a thing—I didn’t mean to say a thing, not a word, but—well, there’s a story from a reliable source—the other night, at the Gargoyle—I’ll spare the sordid details, but perhaps one might be wise to convince him to spend all of August down in Dorset. Keep him away from chaps like Burgess and that sort. Good fresh air and family life, I think it would do him a world of good.”
Philip stopped and caught his breath, like a man relieved of a burden. He looked at her anxiously, and Iris gathered herself, because she hated to see Philip so uncomfortable.
“Yes, thank you. I think so, too. I’ve been trying to convince him, really I have. Because of course—well, I’m not a fool. You’re very kind, you’ve been so tactful, but I’m not a fool.”
Philip reached into his pocket and gave her a handkerchief.
“You see I’m arguing nobly against my own interest, because I should very much rather have you all to myself,” he said.
“You’re too sweet.”
“I hope I haven’t been a bother.”
“No, no! You’ve meant well, you’ve been so kind. I know how difficult it must have been to say anything at all—such an awkward—a terrible thing to have to say to a-a wife.” Iris kept the sobs under control, just a dab or two at the corners, though what she really wanted was to lock herself in a closet and bawl buckets of humiliation.
“You’re quite in order to throw your drink in my face and call me a bastard.”
“I don’t have any left, and if it had been anyone other than you, Philip, I might have.”
“I shall take that as a very great compliment, my dear. Believe me, if it had been any other woman, I should have kept my mouth shut. But I feel certain that Digby must have many brilliant qualities in order to deserve such a wife, and I wish on nobody the pain of . . . of marital discord.”
“Of course.”
“There. I’ve said my piece. Shall I fetch you another drink?”
Iris rose. “No, thank you. I’m going to find my husband, I think.”
Philip rose and took her hand, and for a moment Iris thought he’d kiss it, like some courtier from a hundred years ago. But he only pressed her fingers between his two palms and said softly, “I think that would be a very good idea.”
She started to pull her hand away and paused. There were still tears in her eyes, and she was afraid to blink in case they might spill out. So she left them there, brimming, because she wanted to make something clear to Philip, though she wasn’t sure why.
“You know, we were very happy once, Sasha and I. In Rome, when we first married, we were very happy.”
“Well, then,” Philip said, with the same sad smile, “maybe you should go back.”
Could she? Could Iris and Sasha ever go back to Rome? It wasn’t the first time Iris had thought about this, but she knew the answer was no. The Rome of their early months no longer existed, because the two of them were no longer the Sasha and Iris who’d met and married there. And it had been wartime. The British embassy was closed, the French embassy was closed, same with the Belgians and the Dutch; the Italians and Germans were distracted by war. Only the Swiss remained in any significant numbers, and the Swiss were so busy taking on all the consular duties of the belligerent nations, they held no parties at all. In those early days, nothing stopped Sasha coming straight home as soon as he had finished working for the day, and he usually finished as early as he could.
They’d found a larger flat together, one with two additional bedrooms. The smaller one they decorated as a nursery. Iris had thought Sasha would be dismayed by her pregnancy, but really you couldn’t have found a more eagerly expectant father. After the fifth month or so, he took to measuring her waist with a tape every evening when he got home, so he could tally the progress of their child, millimeter by millimeter. When he drank, he drank with Iris, and then not very much because the doctor said she should only have a glass or two of red wine or possibly beer, which promoted good lactation.
On weekends he would take her out of Rome, usually to the little villa in Tivoli, so she could breathe plenty of fresh air. He never said anything about marriage, and neither did she. Not until Christmas, when Iris was too huge to do much more than lie on the sofa like some sort of beached humpback, did Harry finally—and somewhat sheepishly—suggest some official recognition of their union. Iris had looked at Sasha and Sasha had looked at Iris. “I’m game if you are,” he told her, gallant as he always was in those days.
After Harry left, Iris told Sasha they didn’t have to get married if he didn’t want to. Wasn’t he against marriage on principle, after all?
“On principle, yes. But as a personal matter, I can’t think of anything I want more.”
Iris couldn’t speak. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
“Besides,” he murmured, “it’s better for the child. Children want their parents properly married.”
So they were married the next week by the ambassador himself, Harry as witness, and held a little champagne reception afterward for a very few friends. The next morning Iris went into labor and Kip was born twenty-six harrowing hours later—almost ten pounds of him—eight minutes before the end of 1940. Iris didn’t learn until later that the doctor had taken Sasha aside at one point and asked him if Iris’s affairs were all in order, and that Sasha was so drunk by the time the baby was born, he registered the birth as female—not by accident, but because he didn’t actually remember.
Iris found her husband in the foyer on the balcony with Burgess and the blonde in the turtleneck, smoking cigarettes and drinking gin. “I’m going to get my coat,” she told him. “Meet you outside in ten minutes?”
She turned and walked away before he could react. Before she could see the expressions on the faces of Burgess and the blonde—those expressions she knew so well. Oh, the old battle-ax. Wives spoil all the fun, don’t they?
Her raincoat hung from some hook in the hallway, identical to the others. She rifled
through them all until she found hers, identifiable by her slim clutch pocketbook stuck into the right armhole, because she hated having to carry a pocketbook around a party. The coat was layered beneath a couple of others, and it took some effort to untangle them all. Somewhere in the middle of the struggle, a friendly American voice asked, “May I be of assistance?”
Iris jumped and turned. A man had appeared out of nowhere—a thick-shouldered, square-jawed, cleft-chinned all-American of a type Iris hadn’t seen in years. He showed her some friendly white teeth and continued in a slow country cadence designed by God to soothe skittish horses. “Say, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“Not at all.”
He reached up and removed her raincoat from the hook. Like a gentleman, he helped her into it, holding her pocketbook for her as she stuck in one arm and then the other. When she turned to thank him, he tipped his hat and wished her a good evening. She was still staring at the door when Sasha ranged up and asked her what was the matter.
Nothing, she said.
By the time she and Sasha arrived home in Holland Park at half past one in the morning, a light, miserable rain dropped from the sky. Sasha stumbled out of the taxi and told the driver to wait, he’d be back in a moment.
“You’re not going back out again, are you?”
“Burgess and a few others. Gargoyle Club. I won’t be long. I’ll walk you upstairs,” he added generously, as he gave her his arm to help her out of the taxi.
“No, you won’t. You’ll come upstairs with me and go to bed, like a decent husband and father. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“In point of fact, it’s already Sunday.”
“Sasha, please. Stay.”
She put her hand on his chest and did her best to capture his gaze, the way she used to do, but his eyes were drunk and blurry and he looked right through her.
“Darling, just for an hour or two. Back before you know it.”
“You know that’s not true. Don’t be an idiot, Sasha.”
The taxi driver tooted the horn.
“Christ, Iris. It’s just a drink.”
“It’s not just a drink. It’s your life, it’s your career! I’ve been hearing rumors—”
He seized her by the arms. “Rumors? What the hell are you talking about? Who’s spreading rumors?”
“Nobody! Just people, they’re talking about how much you drink, all these stupid, crazy escapades—”
He swore and let her go. He swung the taxi door open without another word and she wanted to scream after him, What’s wrong? What’s happening? Why won’t you tell me?
But it was too late. The taxi roared off. Iris stood in the drizzle and watched the headlights spin around the corner onto Abbotsbury Road, off to the Gargoyle Club in Mayfair, a different world from this quiet suburban neighborhood of wife and sons.
They lived on the fourth floor of a block of mansion flats called Oakwood Court, just off the grounds of poor ruined Holland House. Like the Desboroughs’ apartment, where tonight’s party had taken place, theirs was grand and spacious and in dire need of decorative updating. During the winter and spring, it was impossibly cold. Because the block had been built at the turn of the century, it did boast certain mod cons, as the British called them, such as central heating and hot water. But the ceilings were so lofty and the air outside so dank and chill most of the year that Iris never felt really warm until June, no matter how many cardigans and mufflers she wrapped around her shivering body, and she would dream of Rome or Ankara. She would remember the hot sun and pungent blue sky as you might remember a happy childhood, all the unpleasant threads snipped conveniently away.
The porter went home at eight p.m. sharp and would not return until six in the morning. Iris crossed the small, deserted lobby and took the lift to the fourth floor. It was the old-fashioned kind, so Iris had to open and close the door and the grille by herself. Her hands were shaking—her eyes stung with unshed tears. There were two flats on each floor, and the other one was empty. The family had moved out in January, suddenly and without explanation, and nobody had taken their place. Iris fumbled with the latchkey, tiptoed through the door, and shrugged off her raincoat. Mrs. Betts would be asleep in her small room off the kitchen; she’d have tucked in Kip and Jack at seven o’clock, and though they were good sleepers generally, parents could never be too quiet in the middle of the night, could they? Iris perched on the bench and wriggled off one shoe and then the other and sat for a moment—shoe in each hand—eyes closed. She thought of Sasha in his taxi, racing up the Kensington Road—no traffic, not at this hour—toward Mayfair and the Gargoyle Club. Iris had never seen the Gargoyle Club, but she had no trouble picturing it. Burgess and the others would be waiting for him, bottles ready.
Iris opened her eyes and rose from the bench. She stole in her stockings down the dark corridor and stopped by the door to the boys’ room.
Now that Jack was nearly four years old, he slept in a real bed like his brother, all tangled up in sheets and blankets. Iris straightened them around his warm little body. He wore a soft, blue-striped union suit, his favorite. Mrs. Betts must have fished it out of the clothes hamper for him because Mummy and Daddy were away at a party. Iris smoothed his damp hair from his temple and imagined him sipping his warm milk, swinging his legs on the chair at the kitchen table next to Kip, while she and Sasha sat in their taxi and edged through the drizzle and the traffic toward the Desboroughs’ flat in Eaton Square.
Kip, on the other hand. Kip lay like a vampire in a coffin, perfectly straight, nose pointed to the ceiling, blankets tucked around him. Kip was the sweeter one, the sensitive one, who shared Iris’s artistic spirit but liked everything just so—soldiers lined up on the chest of drawers, clothes folded and ready for the next day—that kind of thing. Iris didn’t understand, but she went along with it. Last year he’d decided warm milk before bedtime was for babies, so he drank cocoa instead and instructed Jack on the finer points of the milk mustache.
Sometimes, when the boys lay asleep like this, tranquil as they never were when awake, Iris would stare at them and not quite believe they were hers. Eight years! How could eight years pass so quickly, and yet seem like forever? Iris felt like a different person now. She’d lived an entire lifetime in those eight years. That sense of holy purpose she’d felt in Rome—that determination to belong to Sasha, whatever the cost, and his determination to belong to her—where had it gone?
Jack stirred under Iris’s hand. She stepped back and held her breath, waiting for him to settle. In the shadows, she couldn’t see his shape, let alone the colors of him—his pale hair, his round, rosy cheeks. But she knew they were there. She knew the essence of both boys in her marrow. Her second child, her baby born in Ankara as the Allies marched through Normandy. She had suffered two miscarriages between Kip and Jack, and Jack’s birth had been even more harrowing than Kip’s. Nearly thirty-six hours before they wrestled him out into the world, and all that time Sasha was away on some special mission, she didn’t know where, because she’d gone into labor two weeks early.
No more babies, Sasha had said, when he stood by her bedside a week later—home at last—pale and disheveled—and Iris had agreed.
But that was history. The fear and agony had faded, as they’d faded after Kip, and now Iris stared down at Jack, so small and yet such a little boy now, all traces of babyhood slipped right through her fingers, she felt the familiar stir in her belly—the clutch of longing.
She turned and slipped out the door and down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Sasha. The door was closed—she pushed it open and turned her head away from the empty bed.
The dressing room connected the bedroom to the bathroom. Iris laid her pocketbook on the dresser—wriggled out of her dress—hung it in the wardrobe. She sat on the stool and removed her stockings and slip, found a nightgown to slip over her underthings. Before heading into the bathroom, she emptied out her pocketbook, so she could put away her lipstick and compact.
Bu
t the lipstick and compact wouldn’t fall free. Something else lay on top of them at a particular angle, trapping the objects within. Iris stuck her fingers between the lips to dislodge this thing, which turned out to be a calling card. She pulled it out and held it to the light.
On the face of the card, the name c. sumner fox appeared in raised black letters. Underneath, in smaller type, was an American telephone number with a Washington exchange. On the back, in sharp, masculine handwriting, someone had written In case of need, followed by a telephone number in Mayfair.
Ruth
June 1952
Rome, Italy
I wake the next morning to a noise both obnoxious and distantly familiar. I take in the plaster walls and wooden beams of a small, white room, and for a moment I have no idea where I am, or even who I am. Then I remember I’m in Rome, in the attic of Orlovsky’s old atelier, and that noise is the particular noise of an Italian telephone ringing its head off.
The bedroom is tiny and hot, designed for servants, and the telephone’s on the floor below. I experience a moment of crisis when I stagger into the hall and lose my way to the staircase. The telephone keeps ringing. At last I stumble through the doorway of the studio and find it. “Hello?” I mumble.
“Good morning, bambina. Have I wake you?”
“What time is it?”
“Half past ten o’clock.”
“Half past ten?”
“Never mind,” Orlovsky says soothingly. “Is good to sleep. And I am working on your behalf this morning.”
“Oh? What have you done?”
“First put on your dress and have coffee. You remember café, end of street?”
“Yes, but—”
“Meet me for lunch. I explain everything there.”
“Why can’t you just come here?”
“Because I have loose ends, bambina. Lunch at half past noon, is okay?”
Our Woman in Moscow Page 15