Joe looked at her getting into the car, in her fur coat and large black bag, and then turned back to Laura, silhouetted in the doorway in her pale coat and large black bag.
‘Come and have a coffee?’ he said. ‘I’ve got the day off. Everyone was all over the Hiss sentence yesterday, but I missed the boat on that one.’
‘Did you?’ Laura said, as though she simply didn’t remember anything she had ever been told about the case. ‘I can’t really, I’m meeting someone else – I should go.’
‘I’ll walk with you then,’ Joe said. His sudden persistence was not really surprising, it was like Joe to latch onto one quickly, but Laura was uneasy today in his presence. ‘I was thinking about Edward, I’d love to ask him more about how Britain is moving; I was thinking of going over to London for the general election. Extraordinary if Churchill gets back in. What the hell will that mean for foreign policy? I’m wondering about Iran, about Egypt – Churchill wouldn’t let anything go lightly.’
Laura was dismissive, telling him Edward was unlikely to want to say anything, particularly before the election.
‘I don’t want to spill any beans, just get more of a handle on the various players.’
‘You know Edward never talks about work.’
‘He doesn’t, does he? He’s not happy here, is he?’
The question came without warning. ‘He was happier in England,’ Laura agreed and went on walking. They were passing a news-stand. She didn’t want to see the headlines, so she averted her eyes as always. ‘I’m going into the subway here.’
‘It’s good to see you.’ Joe was unexpectedly close to her, and Laura was afraid to look up into his face. ‘Tell you what, it’s been so long, could I come round for a drink tonight? Are you and Edward going to be in? I wouldn’t be disturbing you?’
Later, Laura thought she should have put him off with some light excuse, but at that moment she interpreted his wish to come over as a desire for her presence. Yes, she was lonely. Standing next to him the space between them seemed small. She felt a physical resonance, the memory of his hand on her back, on her wrist. ‘Of course, you are welcome, do come round,’ she said, but she did not catch his response as she went down into the subway.
Edward was in on time that evening, walking through the door like any husband, hat onto the stand, briefcase on the hall floor, into a house all cleaned up with a bunch of freesias on the dining-room table. Laura had not cooked a special meal, but she had made sure that there was enough chicken casserole in the oven and fruit salad in the icebox for three of them, if Joe did turn up. She didn’t mention the possibility to Edward; she started typing up some documents he had brought while he poured them both drinks. ‘Just lemonade tonight,’ he said when he brought them in. ‘What do you think?’
Laura returned the carriage with a bang. The words she had just typed, ‘the plan for atomic war under Trojan lays out 133 atom bombs hitting 70 Soviet cities, giving an expected loss of 2.7 million lives’ danced in her mind. ‘That’s a good idea – do you feel awful after last night?’
‘Pretty awful,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking—’
He was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. Even then, for some reason, Laura affected surprise, saying as she got up that she had forgotten that Joe had mentioned he might drop round. She pulled the typed document out of the typewriter and stuffed it and the originals into the drawer in the front of the desk. Not waiting to see Edward’s expression, she opened the door.
Joe came in full of bonhomie, carrying a bottle of red wine and a bottle of bourbon. ‘I couldn’t decide which we would prefer tonight, maybe one to start and the other to finish,’ he said. Laura didn’t take them, saying that they weren’t drinking that evening.
‘Nonsense, Laura – this is good stuff,’ said Edward, taking the bottles from Joe and putting them down on the table in the living room. ‘So, what brings you over, Joe?’
Edward seemed to have recovered, however briefly, from the horrors that had haunted him the previous night, and for that Laura was grateful. It was hard to keep up with the swinging of his moods these days, but for the first couple of hours of Joe’s company they were in the sweet spot, as they talked generally about the new ambassador, Oliver Franks, about his views on the likely stand that Britain would take in Iran, and how odd it was that the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, Franks’ sparring partner on Iran, had actually been Franks’ own student at Oxford. With this kind of conversation Laura was resigned to being rather at the edge of discussions, but she didn’t mind, as the evening seemed to go easily enough as they ate the casserole with the red wine, and Edward put some brandy on the table as they started on the fruit salad. Then Laura went to put coffee on as they went into the living room, and when she came in with the pot and cups on a tray, she saw that Joe had opened the bourbon he had brought.
‘That’s pretty dangerous brinkmanship, isn’t it?’ Joe was saying, and as Laura tuned into the conversation she realised that they were discussing Russia’s recent testing of nuclear weapons. There was nothing in Edward’s reaction to suggest any connection with what was happening thousands of miles away; he was as controlled, as non-committal, as ever. It was only the strain in her own mind that made her realise how weak his control might be.
‘On whose side?’ Edward said. That was his trick – she remembered first noticing it so long ago – to turn the question into another question, and wait for his interlocutor to elaborate.
As Laura poured the coffee she realised she had left the milk in the kitchen, and she stood up again. When she came back with it, she paused for a moment in the hallway to look at herself in the mirror and check her lipstick. It was a huge, gilt-framed mirror and behind her reflection she could see through the door of the living room, and to Joe sitting there. Something held her there; there is an enticing pull about looking into a scene without the knowledge of those you are watching. He was getting out his cigarettes and offering them to Edward, and Laura heard Edward saying that he couldn’t smoke those American ones, and heard his footsteps as he crossed the room to get his own cigarettes from the mantelpiece. As she watched, she saw Joe pour away his glass of bourbon into the glossy-leaved little palm that stood on the coffee table beside him.
She came back, remembering to smile, into the living room. ‘Sorry to take so long – coffee?’
‘You don’t buy that argument, then?’ Joe was saying in response to something Edward had said.
‘The possession of a weapon implies its use. How can anyone believe that an atomic standoff will make for a safer world?’ said Edward, looking into his glass as he spoke. It was not like him to make such a direct and contentious statement.
‘I guess people here don’t want to see the danger – Truman keeps telling us that it’s the only thing to keep us safe, and people are buying that line.’ In the embassy circle it was quite normal for British people to express anti-American feeling, but it was surprising to Laura that Joe was falling in with that critical tone, and even more surprising that Edward did not seem to think it strange. Was Joe imitating something he had picked up on in Edward, in the hope of getting him to say more?
As Laura drank her coffee, the surreptitious way Joe had poured away his drink replayed itself again and again in her mind. What was it that had brought Joe here tonight? Why was he trying to get Edward so drunk? Was it so that he could take the temperature of his anti-Americanism once and for all? Had he come to suspect him? Was it the crass reference to the revolution that Edward had made drunkenly in a midnight garden? Was it Edward’s desperate struggle with his role as the perfect Cambridge-educated civil servant, now refracted in a different light since Joe had watched the unmasking of Hiss, the perfect Harvard-educated civil servant? Or was it Joe’s desperate hope, finally, to have a real story, a meaningful journey for his own life, that led him to sit here pouring bourbon into Edward’s glass?
Was it, in some way, her own fault? Was it the sudden presence of Mrs Rosto
v beside her with her identical bag in the doorway of the uptown hairdresser? Was it the memory of Florence on the boat, something Joe had never mentioned since the first time they had met again, the memory of what her influence might have meant for Laura? Was it none of these? Was she going crazy? As Laura sat there, her stomach tense and her hands gripping her cup and saucer, Joe caught her eye and she thought she saw the smile that she had first seen, easy and sensual, in the tourist bar on the Normandie in 1939. Was Joe just wanting to get Edward a little drunk in the hope of spending some of the evening with his wife?
Although Laura was only on the periphery of the conversation, she could not leave the room. They went on for so long, drinking and talking. And although she hinted more than once that it might be time for Joe to leave, it seemed almost as though they were locked into some unbreakable dance, as the hours ticked on. Finally, Laura managed to force an acknowledgement of the late hour, and she made Edward offer to find Joe a taxi on the corner of the street. They went out together, and Laura went thankfully upstairs, and fell asleep as soon as she lay down, exhausted, not even waking when Edward came in. So when she woke to the tinny peal of the little alarm clock in the morning, she was horrified when he turned over and said, in a slurred, drink-tainted voice, ‘Sorry, he’s just on the sofa – couldn’t find a taxi for love or money …’
‘He’s here?’ Laura was shocked into the most sudden wakefulness. ‘Here, now?’
She went out into the corridor. The floorboards were cold under her bare feet, and the little nail that stood out of one of them caught her heel as it had done before. She crept downstairs and saw Joe lying on the sofa, covered with a blanket. Knowledge fell through her, and she went into the study, where the Smith Corona typewriter sat openly on the desk. In the drawer below were the documents she had been typing the previous night, and the drawer was unlocked. She pulled it open. Had she placed the documents like that? She had been in a hurry, forgetful for the first time, casual as she had never been before. How incriminating were they? She saw the top security stamp on them, the numbers, the revelations, and she shut the drawer again, locking it this time, too late, and putting the key into the pocket of her bathrobe. She turned back to the living room. She was almost sure, from the rigidity and self-consciousness of Joe’s body, that he was not asleep, but how could she really be sure?
There was no certainty left; the ground was slipping. She went upstairs, turned the shower full on in the bathroom, and stepped under it. When she came out of it, Edward was standing at the sink shaving, but she could not even meet his eyes in the mirror. She put on a plain skirt and blouse and went downstairs and made coffee and toast for Edward.
‘No need to wake Joe,’ she said when Edward came into the kitchen. ‘I’ll get him up in an hour or so. I don’t think they start so early at the newspaper.’ Then she put the radio on loudly, and ran the tap into the sink, and lowered her voice as she put a coffee in front of him. ‘I didn’t copy all the papers, but take them with you, don’t let them stay here another day – take them back. And don’t bring anything today – I had a word from Alex, we need to stop, wait something out, give it forty-eight hours.’
‘All right,’ Edward said. Had he caught the urgency in her voice? As he left, his step was slow.
When Joe woke, Laura was sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigarette, watching him. He sat up and shook his head. ‘I feel lousy.’
‘I’ll make you some coffee.’
‘No need – I’ll get some in a drugstore – I should get to work.’
Laura insisted, and then picked up the tray from the previous night, and the ashtrays, and opened the curtains. She came back a few minutes later with breakfast to find the room empty, and waited for him to return from the bathroom. He came in, showered but obviously unshaven, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. If only she could tune in to the key of his thoughts, if only she could read his responses. Here they were alone in her house, nothing to interrupt them and nowhere to go, but he did not allow their hands to touch as he took the coffee, and by that more than anything Laura felt that he must know. He was moving away, he was distancing himself. Was it to ready himself before he struck the blow?
He drank his coffee in silence, and then brushed an imaginary crumb from his leg.
‘Well, it was good to see you,’ Laura said. ‘Bring Suzanne next time, won’t you?’
‘Sure,’ he said, not looking at her, and getting up. He, Laura thought, had not yet learned to act, had not yet been steeled into falseness. She said goodbye as he went into the hall. He turned, and they put out their hands, their fingers touched, but his were rigid under her touch. As he left, she stood at the door and watched him go down the street.
After he had gone, she ran upstairs. She kept the Minox still in an old purse at the bottom of her closet. She took it out, wrapped in a handkerchief, and then she was back downstairs, picking up yesterday’s newspaper, putting the Minox inside its sheets, pulling the pages she had typed the previous night out of the drawer of the desk, wrapping them too in the newspaper. Her actions were quick despite the confusion in her mind, and then she put on her coat, tied the belt tightly, and went out to a public telephone box. The newspaper with its weight of guilt was thrown decisively into a trash can at the corner of the street. She would have liked to take it further, but there was no time.
She saw Alex approaching the corner of M and 31st Street before he saw her, and she was careful to scan the approaches and not to walk directly to him. She walked past him, slow and measured, and felt him follow her. They went on for a block or two before she dropped back to his shoulder so that he could hear her. Then Laura told him what had happened. She was brief, necessarily, and as she talked she created certainty out of her cloud of uncertainty. She told him that he had to protect them, that the blow could fall any moment; that Joe was on his way to the newspaper. Alex said nothing; Laura did not know whether the silence meant despair or dissent.
‘You can’t abandon us,’ she insisted, still whispering, but spitting her whisper out. ‘Hiss had the statute of limitations, it was all in the past; this is today, and he – you know how hard he’s finding it already, to keep it all together. When he’s drunk he says things – what if people start remembering that?’
‘What kind of things?’
Laura told him about how Edward had talked about the revolution to Joe, how he had openly stated his opposition to the nuclear deterrent. ‘I don’t think he always knows what he is saying, but there it is. You know – he drinks.’
‘And he is still bringing such precious stuff,’ said Alex. ‘Go on then, go home.’
How Laura would have liked to shout at him, to tell him not to dismiss her like that, but she could control her fear for a few more seconds, a few more steps – so she did, and for the next few steps, and so on, and that, as always, was how she got through the day. She imagined nothing concrete, but images came constantly into her head – an instruction would come, perhaps, to go to the airport, or to the Soviet Embassy, once the defection had been arranged, or maybe Alex could be cleverer than that and plant some information on Joe to suggest that Edward was a double agent who was only passing false documents to confuse the Soviets. Anything would do, surely, just to throw him off the scent.
That afternoon Laura had an appointment at a dressmaker that Monica had recommended. It had taken her a long time to lose the weight she had gained years ago during her pregnancy, but now she had slimmed down, and wanted an old evening dress taken in. She stood there in front of the dressmaker’s big mirror, while the waist of the dress was pulled tight to her body. ‘You’re cold,’ noted the dressmaker. ‘No, it’s warm in here,’ said Laura, trying to control the shake in her arms.
When she returned to the house, she asked Kathy, her voice urgent, if anyone at all had telephoned, but there had been nothing, and no post either. All evening Edward didn’t come home, and Laura sat watching television in a stupor of tension. He came in long after she was in bed,
and although he knew she was awake they said nothing to one another.
The next morning, after breakfast, Laura telephoned Ellen. It was routine for them to talk a couple of times a week. But Ellen seemed distracted, her voice a little croaky with a cold. ‘Has Kit got in touch with you?’ she said. ‘He told Tom he wanted to come to Washington, but it all moves so fast with Jewish funerals.’
Laura’s question was immediate, and inarticulate.
‘Kit hasn’t telephoned you? Such an awful accident, Laura, I hope you won’t be too upset. They are still looking for the driver – some kind of hit and run – I can’t understand how it could have happened. Suzanne is absolutely distraught.’
Laura finished the conversation with expressions of horror that were, she thought later, sufficient without being excessive. But then she left the house without thinking, without her coat, only coming to and realising how strange she must look walking like that through the cold streets when she found herself at the banks of the river, the wind whipping at her hair, blurring her vision, her hand pressed over her mouth. Believe me, she found herself muttering into her fingers, believe me. Perhaps she meant, believe me that I am not guilty, that I did not think of this, that I did not ask for this. But who would be listening? And who would ever believe her? And hot on the heels of shock came fear, so that her body was dizzy with the sense of menace she felt from every side: the streets were too loud now, that man walking behind her was a threat, that car passing too slowly was a threat; she felt exposed, panic like glue in her throat and juddering through her chest.
When she came back into the house she went to the drinks cupboard. Straight from the bottle, burning down, meeting her panic like a friend and wrapping its warmth around it – was this how Edward felt about the first gulp of brandy before lunch? Her bowels were churning now and she ran to the lavatory. Once she was finished she washed her hands, over and over again, and then went to the telephone. She called the newspaper and got Suzanne’s telephone number, but found herself, for all her intentions, unable to dial it. She went out again, this time properly dressed in a coat and hat, and found her way, blundering through the grey city, to Monica’s house, and made her telephone Suzanne and give appropriate messages of condolence, and made her telephone Edward and Archie at work to tell them, and got her to get out the brandy bottle and distract Laura with her daughters and her gossip until she had recovered her self-control. Her self-control, which was so much greater than Monica or anyone else would ever have imagined, which she was learning to buckle on again, tightening the armour across her chest and face.
A Quiet Life Page 32