‘I don’t know how much longer I can, though.’
‘You’ve coped up to now.’ The two women sat in silence for a while, and then Winifred asked what she must surely have been dying to say for some time. ‘Don’t you have any idea what has happened to Edward?’
But it was easy now for Laura to respond. She had answered so often, the words came without hesitation. ‘None at all. I know that he isn’t a traitor, though, whatever they say.’ And then she spoke about what was also pressingly on her mind. ‘The problem is, I don’t know how to go on practically. I don’t have a cent, you know – I’m living off Mother.’
‘Doesn’t the Foreign Office look after you?’
Laura had to explain that the very week after Edward drove off into the night, the Foreign Office suspended him. No pay, nothing. They had not responded to any questions from Laura about what she was meant to do. The mortgage payments for the house in Patsfield, doctor’s bills, Helen’s pay, diapers, food, taxis … ‘I don’t know what Rosa and I will do if—’
‘But surely Toby and Sybil – and Mrs Last—?’
Laura had to confess that she had become unwelcome there, and Winifred shifted in her chair as though the thought made her uncomfortable. ‘God, they would prefer to be living in the last century, wouldn’t they?’
‘You remember telling me I should think of getting a job?’ Laura said.
‘Not the ideal circumstances now in which to look.’
Winifred’s directness was refreshing. But it was true; as the wife of the missing diplomat, and with a small child, how would she work? And if she couldn’t, who would support her? She would have to sit down with Mother and Aunt Dee, she realised, and talk them through the situation and find out exactly what Toby would contribute. It would take a lot of direct, aggressive honesty about money. The thought was exhausting. Instead she asked Winifred about her work, and about Peter, who had got her this job and whom Laura still had not met.
‘You’ll be surprised when you meet him, everyone is. He’s much too young for me, is the truth. People keep saying, he’s not what we expected, he isn’t your usual type, but what they mean is, how did anyone as old and cynical as you snare someone so young and fresh? Not that I have snared him. In fact – he’s been talking about marriage, but I’m not so sure.’
Laura asked why. At first Winifred was vague, and then she talked more about her work, about how she enjoyed the sense of building something for the future at the United Nations. ‘I’m someone there – not someone powerful, but someone … reliable. I’m not quite sure – I know it’s an odd thing to say – that I want to stop that. If I married Peter, you know, he could be posted somewhere else tomorrow.’
Up until just recently Laura would have found Winifred’s view strange, but now she saw how she had built a life that rose directly from her own personality. At work, with Peter, with her family – people took her for what she was. Laura wondered what that would feel like. She could only hold herself together by a great effort of will; she was always aware of the mask she had to wear, but there was Winifred unafraid of the judgement of others. Admiration stirred in her.
And it was Winifred who made the move to Geneva possible. By the time the month in St-Gervais came to an end, Laura and her mother had had the conversation about money, looked through the bank statements and bills, and recognised that the mortgage on Patsfield was unsustainable. Once that had been understood, Mother wanted Laura to come back to the States at once – to live in Boston, near to Ellen. Mother had given up the old house in Stairbridge and now lived in Ellen’s neighbourhood, in a little apartment. Why shouldn’t Laura find something nearby? She could stay with Ellen until she found the right place. Laura knew that would be impossible for her. She had to be in Europe. She had to be where Stefan could reach her. Even if he had been put off so far by the circling reporters, or the fear that MI5 had set a tail – though she had not been aware of one – it would not be much longer. The contact might be made at any time. So she told Mother that the move to the States would have to wait for a while. She said that the Foreign Office would not allow it yet. That was true, after all; that was what Valance had said.
It was Winifred who suggested that at least the press were better in Switzerland than in England, and it would be nice to have Laura near to her. She found an apartment that was being vacated by someone who was leaving the United Nations. The view from the front was endless, filled with circling swifts and the changing clouds, out over the rooftops, the lake and the mountains, even if the back rooms were dark. What’s more, the family who was leaving had a nanny, Aurore (awfully competent, said Winifred), who would be looking for a job. Laura talked by telephone a few times with Valance and his assistant. They agreed that she could stay in Geneva for the time being, but that any further travel would have to be agreed with the British consulate.
She went back to Patsfield just to pack up the house, leaving Mother and Rosa in Geneva. She had asked Helen to meet her there, but as soon as she saw her she felt it was a mistake. Helen asked her questions about Rosa, about Geneva, the new apartment, but Laura could hardly speak to her. Everything here is corroded now, she thought, I can trust nobody. All day they packed personal belongings into boxes, wrote on them the address of the new apartment, with that sense of unease between them. Edward had books about Russian art, Russian music, a couple of volumes of Marx, all of Tolstoy’s novels in a beautiful set. Laura felt Helen’s gaze on them as she put them in a box of things to be given away. At the end of the day Helen rose. ‘Good luck, Mrs Last,’ she said, brushing down her skirt. Laura could not meet her eyes.
But when Helen was gone, the past crowded in instead. All the things that she had planned to do and never done; the piano she had not bought, the sofas she had not re-covered. All the things she had done: the pretty curtains, the tea table that would now belong to the buyer, a local doctor. How neglected the garden looked with summer at an end, the grass yellowing and overgrown, peonies toppling into it. She opened the door to her beloved darkroom. Soon it would be a garden shed again. She gathered up the photographic paper stacked in a corner and carried it through to the bins. It was silly to dwell on what might have been, she said to herself as she pushed it down on the other rubbish.
8
Winter bites hard in Geneva. In the frozen days Laura felt that she was waking up to the new reality of her life. One January morning a man in a grey trilby started following her around the fruit market near to their apartment, and Laura allowed herself to catch his eye, willing him to speak one of the usual passwords or mention Edward or Stefan. When he suggested to her that she should join him for a drink, she realised that her eager manner had made him assume she was an easy pick-up. Irritation pulsed through her as she climbed the long flights of stairs back to the apartment.
She rattled the keys in the door. One of the locks turned one way, one turned the other, and she still muddled them most of the time. The flat itself seemed to resist her, refusing to fit itself to her shape. Yet Aurore had Rosa sitting in a pile of cushions on the floor in the living room, and as Laura came in she heard a gurgling laugh. That was the only thing to hold onto now: since Aurore had started to help her to look after Rosa, Laura had felt some of the overwhelming pressure of motherhood lessen.
Now someone else was doing the work, feeding her baby and bathing her, alongside Laura, she could see how it was possible to survive becoming a mother with one’s personality intact, even to enjoy it. She could also see that Aurore’s physical presence, her scent and voice and face, were becoming imprinted on her daughter; that this slow growth of trust was love, and this was a gain for all of them. She still found motherhood often overwhelming, especially during the long nights and weekends without Aurore, but she could stand away from it enough to say, no, this is too much; yes, this is fine. Before, she had not even been able to become conscious of how she felt, in the deluge of experience.
But while her relationship with Rosa had become easier, tha
t did not make life in the apartment straightforward. As the urgency of Laura’s need for her mother lessened, their relationship became gritty, constantly irritable. Out of duty and the fear of solitude, Laura tried to be a good daughter, tried to bring her little nuggets of news, tried to encourage her relationship with Rosa, tried to find people – middle-aged Americans, mainly – with whom Mother might find common ground. Tonight, Laura wanted her mother to accompany her to a cocktail party in one of the big hotels; she had been invited by an Italian man to whom Winifred had introduced her a few months earlier. But Mother felt unwell. She was lying on the sofa. She motioned to the telephone. ‘There are messages,’ she said. Laura looked at the notepad; someone had called whose name she did not recognise. ‘A reporter,’ her mother said brusquely.
The repose they had hoped they would find in this quiet city seemed to be eluding them. There was no longer a pack of reporters camped outside the door, but still Laura never knew when the camera flashes would suddenly go off again, sparked by some new piece of gossip or simply a quiet news day; she never knew when the telephone or doorbell would ring and some enterprising writer would be there with a reason why it was time for her to tell her story at last, and why he or she was just the person for her to confide in. No doubt this latest message was one of those, and Laura threw it in the bin without looking at it. ‘If you won’t come out, Mother, you don’t mind if I do?’ she said. ‘Aurore can put Rosa to bed before she goes.’
Her mother acquiesced, getting up heavily and saying she might go to bed early. Laura made herself go and get changed. It’s funny, she thought as she put on an old velvet dress and lipsticked her mouth, that even though she no longer had the crippling shyness of youth, there was always that reluctance just before she left the apartment to go out. She had partly wanted Mother to come with her to protect her from the possible expectations of Roberto Peri. He was a smooth-voiced man, an aficionado of Wagner and Mahler, and she had enjoyed going to a couple of concerts with him, where she could lose any self-consciousness in the waves of sound, but she did not want the friendship to go any further. Her strange status – neither widow, divorcée nor single woman – made her an object of interest to too many men.
But tonight, as Roberto steered her around the room, she felt that his interest in her was not really sexual. It was as though she was a little curiosity he had collected as he might have picked up a picture or an ornament; the wife of the missing diplomat, how fascinating. She saw the usual knowledge jump into people’s eyes as he said her name and saw that he was pleased to have brought such an intriguing object to a dull party. So many people seemed to pass through Geneva in those days; she was not really surprised when she saw a familiar face nearby her.
‘Why, Archie!’
‘Winifred said you might be here,’ he said. ‘It’s been so long.’
What was he doing in Geneva? Had the Foreign Office sent him over for some posting?
‘Just this,’ he motioned at the cocktail he was holding, and Laura was puzzled. ‘I don’t mean drinking, but just having fun. I came into a huge inheritance a few months ago – quite a shock – my cousin Rupert died without children and left the whole thing to me – massive estate, house, pictures, the lot, but all up in the Scottish Highlands. I can’t be doing with it, so I’ve sold everything, to the horror of the family. I’ve chucked in the Foreign Office and I’ve been travelling for the last six months – had a whale of a time. Egypt, Italy, and now back here. I think I’ll stay in Europe for a bit. You know I’m no longer with Monica?’
Laura did know, obviously. She exchanged letters with Monica from time to time, although they had not seen one another since before Edward’s disappearance.
‘I knew you’d left England and come over here. Can’t blame you, the papers were beyond belief – I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch. What with the divorce and then Rupe’s death – I’ve been a bit all at sea. I didn’t want to impose on you. You’ve had so much on your plate. But it’s great to see you.’
Laura understood what he was saying; he had had enough to deal with, he could not have confronted her trouble too. But it was good to see him. There was a sort of humour about the way he talked, as though he refused to see things tragically, which she found refreshing after the hushed tones so many adopted when they met her. When he told her that he was meeting Winifred and Peter later for dinner, they decided to leave together. Roberto was not really irritated when she told him she was dining with a friend and she saw that she had fulfilled her role for him for the evening.
As they walked through the lobby of the hotel, Archie excused himself to go to the lavatory. There was an English newspaper lying on the reception desk, and Laura saw Edward’s face in the photograph before she read the headline. What a dreadful picture they kept using: Alistair must have given it to the press. Over-exposed and taken from an unflattering angle, it made him look chinless and smug. But the story was worse. New allegations, new sources, new gossip: in this version, the British secret services had followed Nick and Edward from Patsfield on the momentous night, and then murdered them and dumped their bodies in the English Channel in order to keep them forever silent and minimise the international scandal that would ensue if the extent of their spying activities was revealed to the Americans.
Laura had Edward’s telegram that had been sent a week after he left, and had not lost faith that it was his voice in those misspelt words. But when Archie found her again, the newspaper abandoned on the floor, he could not help noticing that her expression was closed. ‘Don’t ask,’ Laura said, and she was glad when he didn’t.
In the taxi ride to the old town, she found herself trying to ignore all the questions in her mind. It had been nine months already: why no word, why had Stefan not made contact, why had no message been brought to her, not even a line about Rosa’s birth? This silence was corrosive, destructive, she thought, taking a cigarette from her bag. Archie lit it for her. The smoke filled her mouth with a moment of comfort.
‘All right now?’ he said, smiling, and Laura smiled back.
‘It gets to me sometimes,’ she said.
‘Things do,’ he responded, and again she was glad of his wry, accepting expression.
When they got to the restaurant, Peter was there but Winifred had been delayed, he said. Laura had not warmed to Peter. He worked for the British mission to the United Nations, and was one of those men who is always keen to show off his faultless French, his perfect German and his elegant Italian. He came from a diplomatic family himself, and seemed to revel in the rootlessness that a travelling childhood had given him, as though he was more at home in huge marble rooms and at impersonal ambassadorial functions than anywhere else. But in that moment, with the fear nagging away at her again, she was glad of the way that he and Archie could fall so easily into the patter of the group, talking about Archie’s travels, about whether he had visited Freya in Ventimiglia, Edith in Florence, Cecil in Alexandria.
Winifred finally joined them, obviously straight from work. She was working early and late hours that year, as a convention neared its final stages. At first she seemed irritable, clearly bringing with her a frustration from the meeting she had just left, but then she relaxed, telling Peter something Laura could not catch about how in the end the Australian ambassador would come round, it was only a matter of time.
Halfway through dinner, she turned and started speaking to Laura in an undertone. ‘Giles is coming to ski in March. None of my business, I know, but he is awfully hurt that you wouldn’t see him when Edward left. He said he rang and rang but you kept giving him the brush-off.’
‘I just couldn’t bear all the intrusion.’
‘He isn’t like Alistair, you know, he won’t blab all over the place. He’s been … rather changed by Edward’s disappearance. Also, I should warn you, Alistair’s turned those bloody articles into a book, to come out in a few months – the anniversary, you know.’
Laura did know. ‘What sort of book?’
‘I’ll get you an early copy, if you want.’’
‘It does sound a bit rich, him making a book out of it,’ Peter said, the sort of bland remark that was typical of him.
‘More than a bit rich – absolutely beyond the pale,’ said Winifred, ‘but it’s made him a star. He’s got a new novel coming out too, about espionage and sex. He sees himself as something of an expert.’
‘Aren’t we all experts now?’ Archie said, but his voice had a joking, rather brotherly tone that made it protective rather than needling, Laura thought. His relaxed presence took the edge off her anguish that evening, so it was a pity he was moving on the following week – to Italy, he explained, to the south, right down to Puglia.
A few weeks later Laura acquiesced to Winifred’s request, and brought the whole household – Mother and Aurore and Rosa – to St-Gervais for a couple of weeks, so that they could ski with Winifred and Peter and see Giles again. They stayed at the same hotel that they had gone to in the summer, one of those Alpine hotels with vast rooms and bad plumbing and postcard views at every window. Laura had a couple of skiing lessons and then gave up, finding the loss of control in that immensity of space too disorienting, but strangely her mother rather took to it, weaving her way slowly down the slopes with Winifred after a few lessons. One day, when Rosa was happy in the hotel crèche with Aurore, Laura agreed to go for a walk through the town with Giles. They were muffled up, and looked pale and tired and out of place, Laura thought, seeing themselves reflected in a bakery window, in this town where most people seemed to be rosy and laughing with the mountain air and exercise.
Laura knew what Giles wanted to talk to her about, and although for a while she kept the conversation on other subjects, asking him about work and telling him about Rosa, in the end she succumbed, and as they walked, she lived through his sense of loss and envied him the fact that he could be so open.
A Quiet Life Page 40