‘Anything.’
‘Kočka.’ Tomas swallowed. ‘Get word that…’ There was desperate sadness. ‘Get word that he should be taken to the vet. The money for it is in the clock on the wall. He’s too old. He won’t thrive without me. We’ve been through too much together.’
She smothered her own tears. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Listen.’ Tomas was keeping a weather eye on who was in the street. ‘Gmünd … repeat the name.’ She did so. ‘Gmünd is the boundary station on the Austrian border and the most dangerous point. The station after Gmünd is where you should pick me up. Give me a day’s grace just in case.’
She realized then that he was going to be with her.
‘You must be so silent on this. Not a word.’
That was easy. ‘Of course. Never.’
He looked over her shoulder. ‘Things can be got out of you.’
She inhaled a shuddering breath.
‘Don’t listen to what anyone might say about me. Do you understand? Promise me?’
She laid her hand against his cheek, feeling the heat of his skin warm hers. ‘Of course.’
A mother with a baby in her arms was plodding towards them. Her grey cotton skirt had a large wet stain on the lap area. The baby was crying, and she was preoccupied and weary. As she passed, she glanced at them before moving out of sight.
‘I’ll be there, waiting. Waiting for you. For as long as it takes.’ Wincing, she scrabbled in her rucksack. ‘Do you need money? Take this.’ She thrust notes into his hand. ‘Will you have the clothes, the right papers?’
‘Milos knows the right seat to book, the right station, what to say.’
‘I hope your name won’t be Wilhelm.’ She was snatching at a straw. ‘I refuse to love a Wilhelm. It should be Viktor for Victory.’
There was both too much, and too little, to say.
In the distance, a church bell chimed and the sound of additional police sirens.
‘My God. Every single policeman in Prague must be on this one.’ He looked down at Laure. ‘It was knowing you, Laure, that tipped the balance.’
To her shame, she felt a wild surge of joy.
‘It was bad enough not being allowed to study at university, or to travel, or to join a library. But it was deal-able with. I knew the game and I played it. Like all of us. But when you came along, I understood what it was to be unfettered.’ He kissed her. ‘I’m paying you the best compliment when I say that you will not really know what I’m talking about.’
‘Where will you go?’ she asked, desperately staving off the goodbye.
‘There’s a safe house. I’ll be there until the papers are done.’ He sounded very wry. ‘We think it’s run by the British.’
‘How will I know?’
‘You won’t. Whatever you do, don’t say anything to anyone.’
Could the sun spool back on the sundial in the garden? That way miracles happened and the portion of time that contained the Tomas of this moment could be smoothed of its dangers and traps. Believe, she told herself. Believe – like those who built the city’s ridiculously ornate churches believed – and Tomas would be safe.
She glanced over her shoulder. ‘What else did you want?’
He hesitated. Eventually, he slid off his waistcoat, tore at the seam at the back and pulled out a document. ‘It’s a list of names that will be interesting to the West. Profiteers. Businessmen. Party members who could be turned. We’ve collected them over the years, often at some cost.’
She looked at the paper and a dreadful disappointment opened up. ‘So you were using me.’
He grasped her chin and made her look at him. ‘What do you think?’
Hungrily, she searched his face. Was he… did he? What could she believe?
He slid his hand under her T-shirt and cupped a breast. ‘For memory,’ he said. His hand rested on her hot flesh and the sirens shrieked.
He seemed slighter and thinner than ever. More vulnerable. More determined. Her rock god. ‘If only you knew, Laure.’ She lifted her hand to his face. ‘Oh my God, your hand,’ he said. ‘I have to go,’ and bending over he kissed her hard.
Then he was off, leaving Laure dizzy with the pain of goodbye and doubt.
Petr would be notified that a banned meeting had taken place at the marionette theatre and they would give her name to him.
Therefore, she had only a few hours.
Go carefully. Move as if she was someone who had responsibilities and purpose and was being brisk about it. But no faster.
Do not get stopped.
Laure’s recently acquired tics went into overdrive. Check out the shadows. Use the alleyways. Double back if worried.
Her hand throbbed and burned, which was helpful as fighting it diverted her panic about the next move. Eva and the two children were having an early supper with a family friend and Petr had agreed to pick them up in the limousine at 6.30 p.m. and to bring them back.
In and out before they arrived back.
Reaching the Kobes’ apartment without incident, she went straight to the family bathroom. It was in its usual state of untidiness. Eva’s medication was stacked carelessly on a shelf. Petr’s shaving stuff beside it. The towels had not been hung up and the bath needed a clean. She did not give the mess a second thought but raided the first-aid cabinet. Aspirin to help her to think straight and the bandage, which Maria had used for a cut knee and still bore a faint bloodstain, to bind her hand.
It was ten past six, and the phone rang in the hall. She did not answer it.
In her room, she sank onto the bed.
Think.
Working clumsily, she positioned the document along the underside of her wrist and bandaged up her hand, making sure it was hidden, and safety-pinned it tight. The watery red smudge on it gave it verisimilitude.
She was light-headed. Again. Shocked. Again. She had fallen into a trap of false optimism. And all manner of things should be well. This was a city impregnated with spirits and demons and they played a tormenting game with ingenues.
How did one pray?
Pray she must – to those demons and spirits of Prague. Pray, too, that her faith was justified.
She sat on her bed and worked out the best options. First, pack the rucksack with the things she could not bear to abandon. The hand mirror. Milos’s silhouette. To these she added basic clothing and what money she still possessed. Her passport, of course.
She would leave behind the photograph taken of her by Vaclav at a rock concert in Kinsky Gardens (too incriminating if she was hauled in) and, except for what she stood up in, her clothes, including the Parisian dress.
And she would leave behind the old Laure.
Rucksack packed, she was opening the front door when the family clattered in. Dropping the rucksack onto the floor, she kicked it into the corner. ‘I heard you coming,’ she said.
‘I knew you’d be waiting,’ said Jan.
The children twined their limbs around hers, and she hugged them both with her good arm. They smelt of a cheap pop drink, the residue of which stained Maria’s mouth.
Eva had been crying but she said, ‘We had such a good time.’ The distant look was back, and she moved painfully slowly. ‘But I must go to bed now.’
‘How are you?’ said Petr. ‘Head OK?’
She told him she was fine.
‘No, you’re not. What have you done to your hand?’ He lifted it up for inspection and she flinched and cried out. He parted her fingers to examine them. ‘Can you move them? If you can’t they might be broken.’
‘I fell on them when I left the theatre. It’s just bruising.’
He put his head on one side. ‘You fell, you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Must have been a nasty fall. Wait in the sitting room, I’ll bring you something.’
She did as she was told and heard him shooing the children into their bedrooms with instructions to undress. She glanced down at her hand lying in her lap. Two of the exposed fingers
were swollen to twice their size and a purple bruise mottled her thumb.
Petr entered with a glass of brandy. ‘Drink.’
She did as she was told and took a grateful mouthful.
He sat down beside her. ‘You’d better tell me.’
His proximity felt menacing. She closed her eyes and it flashed back.
The finger inside her… somehow so much worse than the penis. The pain of her hand. The terror and the disgust. The humiliation of her half-naked body.
The telephone rang. Petr raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Should I answer it?’
‘Let’s enjoy the brandy.’
It rang for half a minute. From her bedroom, Eva shouted, ‘Stop it!’
‘She doesn’t like the noise,’ said Petr.
The telephone went silent.
‘Next time,’ said Peter, ‘and there will be a next time, I must answer it before it makes Eva feel worse.’
She arranged her hand on her thigh. ‘I am going to leave,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
It alarmed her that he didn’t seem more surprised. ‘Are you going back home? You must let me arrange your ticket back to England.’
Thumps could be heard in the other room. The children were playing tag.
‘Yes. No, that’s very kind but not necessary.’
‘Where then? Have you got a new job?’
‘Actually, I have.’
‘You didn’t think that I could be trusted to protect you?’ That was the first admission that she had had from Petr of his influence behind the scenes. He spoke with authority and she wondered what it had taken to achieve that inner certainty. ‘When a country reaches a certain maturity, it is prepared to tolerate some dissent. Rock concerts being among them. It’s a question of how they are handled.’
She cradled her hand. ‘I want to thank you and Eva. You’ve been very generous…’
How long before the telephone rang? Five minutes? Three?
‘… I hope you feel that I was of use to you and the family.’ She licked her lips which had gone dry. ‘To Eva.’
Petr’s stillness was alarming. ‘I thought better of you,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s no light thing to leave an employer in the lurch. Especially when they have been good to you.’
She knew she was blushing. ‘I thought it would be best. I know I’ve caused you trouble. You made that clear after… you rescued me and I don’t want to do that again.’ Experimentally, she touched a swollen finger. ‘You see, I’m not giving up my right to independent thought.’
‘No,’ he agreed, a shade contemptuously.
Petr Kobes: the weak party apparatchik that Tomas considered he was? The sword and shield of the system? A family man maintaining an impossible balancing act?
How would the tally read in the future?
‘And your arrangements? The documents, etc.?’
‘I imagine there are flights? Or I could take the train which would be easier.’
‘A train. Where to? Paris? Belin? Vienna? And when?’
‘As soon as you and I have agreed,’ she improvised.
He shifted position, and she caught a whiff of superior power, of satisfaction at partial information capture, and thought: why did I say that? ‘I can’t let you go for at least a month. We need to find a replacement.’
Unwisely, she clenched her hand – and the responding intense pain drove everything else out of her mind. ‘That’s not possible. I said I’d be at my new position very soon.’
‘I see.’
Having been sensitized and irradiated by her own recently discovered responses, she heard something deeper and disturbing in his tone.
Jealousy and disappointment.
‘He was using you, Laure.’ He allowed her a moment to digest what he was saying. ‘There’s evidence. I was going to spare you but…’ He got up, went over to the bureau and extracted a folder.
‘I know Tomas.’
He pushed a photograph in front of her. ‘Did you know, then, about the American?’ She glanced down. The image was blurred but it was of Tomas with his arm around a tall blonde standing on the riverbank. ‘A nice girl. Beautiful girl. She had to be sent back home.’ He shrugged. ‘Same tactics.’
She turned her head away.
The paper scratching against her wrist was a reminder of how little she did know – and a lifetime of future doubt began its determined muster at the back of her mind.
Somehow, she must fight herself. ‘Lie to me as much as you wish. It won’t make a difference.’
‘You must know that you would never be together,’ he said. ‘There have been plenty of other women and it’s never happened.’ His words were soft and sincere. ‘He was playing you, Laure.’
She said desperately, ‘We will be together.’
‘Together? He’ll be coming with you?’
‘A slip of the tongue,’ she said.
Petr a kept the photo plumb in front of her. ‘When is the start date for your new job?’
Tomas was looking at the camera but she, the girl, was gazing at him.
Her vision misted. What? How? When?
‘When did you say?’ Petr persisted.
What? How? When? ‘Early next week.’ Petr nodded and her heart thumped in terror. She had given him a piece of valuable information. He gestured that she should stand up and she obeyed.
‘You must tell me where you’re going. Otherwise…’
‘Otherwise?’
‘This.’ He grabbed her wounded hand and brought a karate chop down onto the forearm. Laure writhed with pain. ‘And this,’ he said. Bending over he pressed kisses onto her neck and crushed her against him in a brutal grip.
It was then she truly understood that Petr desired her.
Wrenching herself free, she managed to get out, ‘I knew you were capable of many dishonourable things but never that.’
She couldn’t read his expression. Regret? Tenderness? Breathing hard, he stood back. ‘I’m showing you what will happen if you don’t cooperate. It won’t be me who does those things to you. It will be those other men. They won’t spare you. They will hurt you until you pray to die, and then hurt you more. Believe me.’
She was trembling uncontrollably and Petr drove home his advantage. Grabbing her hand, he twisted it hard. ‘This is what will happen. You will come out brutalized and raped.’
The pain drove the breath out of her. Eyes streaming, she doubled over and threw up the brandy. ‘Sorry,’ she said, the vomit trickling over her chin and onto her T-shirt.
She eyed the door.
Mistake.
Petr placed himself between her and it. ‘Do I give you up, or do you tell me what you know and let me deal with the situation?’ He added, almost as an afterthought, ‘No one polices the guards in those places, Laure. In a few minutes the phone will ring and I must have an answer. Where are you going?’
Laure gathered her wits. ‘It’s none of your business but I’m not staying in this country.’
‘So you must have travel plans.’
He knew – precisely and with calculated strategy – how to draw out inferences from questions and answers.
The nausea returned and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
‘Is he worth it, Laure?’
She looked away.
‘I don’t want to do this. But you force the issue.’ Petr picked up the folder and held up a piece of paper in front of Laure. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘I don’t read Czech.’
‘It’s a certificate of marriage between Michelle Pitt and Tomas Josip, dated a year ago.’
Astonished, Laure stared at Petr. Despite her shock, she managed to say: ‘You’ve been planning this.’
‘I thought I should protect you.’
Strangely enough, Laure believed him. In his way, Petr did wish to protect her.
A succession of images sifted through her mind, as slow and luxurious as if she had all the time in the world. Brympton in the winter sunlight. Her arrival a
t Paris’s Gare du Nord. The bedroom at the chata. Tomas half-naked and bruised, holding Kočka in his arms.
He had been lying.
This time, the pain which overwhelmed her was of a different order and it was one she didn’t think she was capable of bearing. Or the revulsion that came with it.
Her brain shut down. Logic and reason vanished. In their place was jealousy of this unknown woman and a burning, vengeful anger.
Petr was observing her reactions. ‘You’re so young, Laure.’ His voice softened. ‘When I saw you in that room in the Bartolomĕjská, I was agonized that all your sweetness and trust might have been beaten out of you.’
The world as she had perceived it had taken on a new shape. The certainties had gone. All she knew now was that she must flee this city of demons and repression and lies and pretence before she lost the ability to work out what was right or wrong, true or false. ‘I’ve been offered a job in…’ Her lips were too dry to articulate the words and she tried again. ‘They want me to start as soon as…’
‘Early next week,’ intervened Petr, smoothly.
She struggled to make sense. ‘I thought it best, after what happened after the concert. It’s best for you and the family.’
‘So, perhaps you are going to Paris by train?’
Silence.
‘Berlin? I’m told you can look over the Wall in places from the West.’
He was assessing, weighing, measuring. Hints, probabilities, certainties, piecing them together with a mind trained to do so.
Silence.
‘Vienna then?’
She dug a finger into her palm. It was only a tiny gesture but he noted it.
He pushed the paper under her nose.
Tomas is married?
Anguish and jealousy goaded her on into a dark place. ‘Yes,’ she said, after a moment.
Petr got to his feet. ‘I’d better go and talk to my wife,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sit down again and finish the brandy?’ He went out of the room.
Seconds later, he returned. ‘Laure…’ He looked almost grief-stricken. ‘The marriage certificate was forged.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s an old trick. I was taught it a long time ago.’
Mouth dry and tasting of vomit, she looked up at him. ‘What…?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
The Museum of Broken Promises Page 33