‘You’re still satisfied about having taken the car back?’ asked the senior member of the mission.
‘I’ve assured you I am,’ said number two.
‘I think now that you should have abandoned it, not presented yourself again.’
‘I must point out you gave no instructions to that effect, comrade.’
‘I agree, but it was something that might have reasonably occurred to you.’
‘When?’
‘At any time between the moment when you failed and when you returned the car.’
‘I thought it was agreed that the hire and return of the car was to be a completely straight-forward operation.’
‘Yes, it was. It was also agreed the car might sustain a little damage, but not as much as it did. Further, their escape enabled them to report the incident.’
‘With all respect, comrade,’ said number two, ‘it’s a little late for these second thoughts. But I’ve insured against answers to questions, as I told you.’
‘We must hope there are no questions. Insurance can’t be guaranteed. However, it’s done now. Unfortunately, I doubt if we can catch her in the open again. It will be trickier now. Concerning the dog – it must be dealt with.’
‘Poisoned meat?’
‘Arrange it – after you’ve attended to Tchekov.’
‘That won’t be easy.’
‘I’m confident, comrade, that you’ll make up for yesterday’s failure.’
Katerina received Edward at two thirty in a spirit of overbright gaiety. Dr Kandor was out, she said, attending to a little business in Nice. She was, therefore, entirely under Edward’s protection for the afternoon, or until the doctor returned.
‘Protection?’ said Edward.
‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘You’re to protect me from any tendency I might have to rush excitedly about.’
‘You feel a little recklessness coming on?’ he asked.
‘Not really. I feel only a wish for a peaceful game of croquet with you. So there must be no thumping or whacking. We’ll be friendly to each other and only make little taps. You would like to play?’
There was no question of his being unwilling. Croquet, whatever other people thought about it, was a game of magical enjoyment when played in this garden. Katerina invested it with laughter, anguish, triumph and pleasure.
As they picked up the mallets the Alsatian appeared. It advanced, bristling, head thrust forward and teeth showing. It began to bark at Edward, and to circle around him.
‘Prince!’ Katerina called to the dog. ‘Come here.’ She put out a hand. The Alsatian, still bristling, still keeping its eyes on Edward, approached her. She put her hand on its head. ‘Edward, come and let Prince meet you.’
‘That’s a brute of a dog to say hello to,’ said Edward.
‘Prince, this is my friend Edward. Edward, give him your hand.’
‘To eat?’
‘No, no, silly.’ Katerina laughed. ‘Stroke his nose.’
‘He’ll swallow my arm as well.’ But Edward stroked the long nose, while Katerina held the collar. The dog was stiff and suspicious, and its legs were rigid.
‘A friend, Prince, a friend,’ said Katerina soothingly, and the Alsatian’s head came up and its nose nuzzled Edward’s hand in acceptance.
‘You’re a beauty, old boy, aren’t you?’ said Edward.
‘There, now he knows you, now you’re friends,’ said Katerina.
‘My relief is immeasurable. Where’d you get him?’
‘Dr Kandor bought him for me.’
‘To guard you, Katerina?’
‘To keep me company,’ she said.
‘Well, he’s a wise acquisition,’ said Edward, ‘whatever the reason.’
The Alsatian sat and watched the game, tail thumping. Katerina applied herself with her usual zest, quickly becoming involved in the many quirks and facets of the kind of game she liked to play when competing against Edward. Yet little silences not at all usual began to emanate from her. Edward, striking for a hoop and missing, glanced up with a rueful smile. She was not looking at the play, but at him, and her eyes were like deep grey pools of sadness.
He felt an intense longing to bestow laughter on her.
‘Katerina, it’s your play.’
‘Yes? Yes?’ She did not seem fully aware of what she was about as she advanced. She was not even looking at the ball she was to play. She caught her foot in a hoop. She tumbled. Edward caught her. She turned in his arms and lifted her face, wide eyes strangely clouded. She was so close that her vitality seemed to effect an electric transference from her body to his. It poured into him, and he felt the impossible was happening, that he was vigorous and healthy again. It was the essence of wishful dreams. Her lips were parted, her breathing quick and her body full of tremors. Her sadness was gone, and she was in as much wonder as he was. ‘Edward?’
But the Alsatian was there, pushing its nose between them and rumbling nervously and sensitively, and the sweetness of the contact was broken.
Edward released her. His arms fell away. She did not move, she still looked up at him, wonderingly and giddily, her face deeply flushed.
‘Katerina, are you all right?’ It was the most prosaic of questions after the most dreamlike of moments.
She came to. She turned, bent her head and gazed blindly at her ball.
‘Is it my shot, Edward?’
‘It’s your shot, Katerina.’
She struck. Her ball glanced his.
‘A roquet, Edward.’
‘Agreed.’
She stooped to reach down for the ball, then straightened up without touching it. She put her mallet down.
‘I think – I think a little rest,’ she said. ‘No, a little walk, through the gate and to the cliff top. Will you give me your arm, please.’
‘If you’d prefer to rest – ?’ He was not sure at any time just how much her weak heart troubled her, and whether or not it occasionally put her in pain. He thought she was in some discomfort now, that her blood was struggling to reach her heart, for she was so subdued. But her face showed no greyness, no spasms of pain. He gave her his arm. She took it and they walked to the gate. He opened it and they passed through into the little open space fringed by the pines that stretched almost to the cliff top. There was a bench made of French oak just beyond the front wall, where one could sit to look down over the rocky cliff to the beach on the left and the expanse of sea all round. Just to the left of the seat was a stepped descent for the use of the villa’s residents. It brought one down to the beach, the beach also used by the hotel guests. A handrail gave support, for the steps, cut out of the rock, were steep. Other people could not climb them from the beach, however, for there was a locked gate at the bottom.
As they walked to the bench, Katerina’s arm encircled his warmly, and she said, ‘You’re very sweet to me, Edward.’
‘I’m worried about you,’ he said as they sat down.
‘No, no, I’m quite all right,’ she said. ‘I’d simply like to sit here with you for a little while. Look – people on the beach.’ She smiled. ‘The weather is still so kind.’
He saw three people down below. Two were entering the sea, and the third stood watching them.
‘It must be very kind,’ he said.
‘Are they from your hotel?’ she asked.
‘Probably, but from this distance I’m not sure.’
‘You can use these, if you like.’ Katerina reached under the bench and drew out a case containing binoculars. She smiled again. ‘I use them so that I can feel in contact with people. Is it rather an intrusion on their privacy?’
‘Not if they’re behaving themselves.’
She laughed softly, watching him as he took the binoculars out and trained them on the figures far below. He picked out the swimmers. Rosamund and Franz Brecht. She was Junoesque in her bathing costume and he was strong-chested and brown. On the beach, watching them and calling out to them, was Mademoiselle Dupont, her green dress ligh
tly fluttering.
Edward lowered the glasses and looked around. He turned. The high wall hid the villa and the climbing heights behind it.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said and went back to the open gate. From just inside it he used the binoculars to observe the slopes covered with pines and shrubs. He fanned the glasses. There was no one to be seen. If someone had already had a good look at Katerina, a further study of her was unnecessary.
‘What have you been doing?’ she asked when he returned to her.
‘Taking a look at the view from your garden.’
‘But why?’ she asked.
‘Just as a matter of interest.’
‘You are becoming curious?’
‘Yes, Katerina, I am.’
‘You must not worry about me.’ Katerina gazed at the shimmering sea. ‘Edward, why is it you’ve never married?’
‘Oh, circumstances, I suppose. And I’d make a very unsatisfactory husband, you know, always having to sit down when the situation demanded activity.’
‘You can’t expect me to agree with that,’ she said. ‘I’m sure there are many women who would never consider you unsatisfactory. What does it matter that you can’t run or hurry about? Edward, you can’t really think that if you proposed to a woman who loved you, she would only say yes on your assurance that you could run up a mountain.’
‘But a few little hills have to be climbed in a marriage, don’t they?’
‘Not by yourself,’ said Katerina. ‘The two of you would climb them together. Has there been no one you would like to have married?’
‘During the war there was my fiancée, Emily,’ said Edward reminiscently. ‘I wrote to her from hospital some months after I’d been gassed. We agreed to break the engagement. It was the fairest thing for both.’
‘I refuse to believe that Emily thought that.’
‘She protested quite vigorously, true,’ said Edward, ‘but it would have been asking too much of her to be more of a nurse than a wife.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Katerina. ‘Look at you – you are out, you drive a car, you play croquet, you take little walks – no, no, you weren’t fair at all to her, or yourself.’
‘Emily was a very active young lady, pursuing healthy outdoor interests.’
‘Perhaps, if you had let her decide for herself, she would have surprised you,’ said Katerina.
Edward thought how perfect her English was. It contained not the slightest accent. There were never any faults in either pronunciation or grammar. If there was anything particularly her own about it, it was the absence of colloquialisms or fashionable slang. She did not use words or phrases like spiffing, jolly good, old thing, cheerio, ghastly, darling or flapper, all currently in vogue. Hers was a very correct, even dated, English. She must either have lived among perfect linguists or been carefully taught by – an English governess?
‘Emily is very happily married,’ he said, ‘to a small landowner.’
‘A small landowner?’ said Katerina. ‘A little man, Edward?’
He laughed.
‘No, Katerina, a quite tall man with a modest amount of land.’
‘Oh, a kulak,’ she said.
‘A kulak?’
‘Yes, that’s—’ Katerina bit her lip. ‘Yes,’ she said lightly, ‘in my country an owner of a small amount of land is called a kulak.’
‘In Bulgaria?’
‘Bulgaria does have its own language,’ she said, and Edward made a mental note of the fact that that answer did not necessarily mean yes. ‘Edward, do you have regrets that you let Emily marry someone else?’
‘I think I was a little sorry for myself at the time,’ he said, ‘but no, I can’t say I feel regrets now. I suppose that means we weren’t in-consolable soulmates. I see her now and again, and we’re good friends.’
‘Edward, is it bad sometimes, your chest and your breathing?’ she asked.
‘Sometimes.’ He felt singularly well at the moment, and also peaceful and relaxed. He was aware of the tranquil effect she had on him. In her company, one asked for no more than to look at her and listen to her. Her grey eyes reflected wandering and wondering thoughts now, as if her mind was gently chasing things unknown. ‘That’s why I spend the winters at the Corniche,’ he said. ‘I’m lucky that I’m able to.’
‘And you’re an historian, you’re writing about the war?’ she said.
‘I’m one of the team of British soldiers and civilians engaged in the task.’
‘Isn’t it wonderful, then, that you can do that, that you don’t have to live in a hospital but are able to do something so interesting and satisfying?’
‘Yes, I’m a lot more fortunate than others, Katerina.’
‘Celeste, however, is very concerned that you live alone, that you have no wife,’ said Katerina.
‘I think she’s been looking for someone suitable,’ said Edward. ‘And why do you have no one to care for you, except your doctor?’
She turned her eyes to the sunlit figures down on the beach.
‘Dr Kandor would tell you why,’ she said quietly.
‘He’d talk about your weak heart? You’re to have no husband to give you love and care? Who has decided that for you?’
‘You must not ask such questions,’ she said.
‘Then may I at least ask what happened to the Count of Varna? I presume he exists, or did exist, that you were married—’
‘I am not married. I am a countess in my own right.’ Katerina looked up as the little bell rang on the terrace. ‘There, tea is ready. Please don’t frown, Edward. I have no dearer friend than you. It’s a happiness to me, to have you visit me so often. So come, let’s see what Anna has brought out for our tea.’
Over tea she was very bright again, and the time ran away from them. Dr Kandor did not return until Edward was on his feet, about to say goodbye to Katerina for the time being. He took the opportunity to express his concern at what had happened yesterday, and to offer the opinion that the man in the other car was drunk. He thanked Edward for his clear-headed action that had reduced the seriousness of the incident to merely something unpleasant. It was he who saw Edward out through the green gate, saying a cordial goodbye to him.
Katerina smiled sadly at him when he returned to the terrace.
‘Boris Sergeyovich, you’ve spent the day making arrangements to hasten my separation from my friends?’
‘Nothing has happened during my absence?’ enquired Dr Kandor. ‘Sandro and the dog took good care of you?’
‘Nothing happened,’ said Katerina.
‘I’ve made enquiries,’ said the doctor, ‘and considered certain avenues. America, I feel, would be best.’
‘America? America?’ Despair showed. ‘No. I refuse. I should never see my friends again.’
‘It’s a fact of our present existence that neither of us can have permanent friends,’ he said. ‘I shall try to arrange the acquisition of a property in one of the New England states. There, I’m told, properties can be found which would be very suitable, with spacious grounds to ensure the privacy we need.’
‘Such privacy will mean something very close to solitary confinement,’ said Katerina bitterly.
‘Anna and Sandro will be there. So will I. We shall enjoy our pleasant times, our music and our chess.’
‘Music and chess? That is all I’m to have?’
‘You’ll take the treasures you hold dear, Katerina Pyotrovna,’ he said.
‘A few trinkets, a few letters, some other little things – must it be America? That’s so far away, so very far.’
‘Distance is advisable at the moment. We shall come back one day, one better day.’
‘Oh, Boris Sergeyovich, for us there will never be a better day, there will never be a restoration,’ said Katerina sadly.
‘We shall return,’ he insisted.
‘Yes, when I’m old and grey and withered, when I’ve lived seventy years without knowing a single lover, or even a kiss – yes, even a kiss.
Do you realize that never, not once in all my life, has a man kissed me?’
Dr Kandor regarded her sombrely.
‘Katerina Pyotrovna, you’ve always had a fine sense of what was right,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been able to draw a firm line between the permissible and the indiscreet. I think you’ve enjoyed the permissible.’
‘Oh, flirtations with young officers – those did not lead to the kind of kisses I mean,’ said Katerina. ‘Those were only butterflies in a meadow and raindrops on windows, and as instantly forgettable as giggles.’
‘You are what you are,’ said Dr Kandor, ‘and therefore not a woman to collect lovers.’
‘I don’t want to collect lovers,’ she said emotionally. ‘Women who collect lovers experience excitement, but know little of happiness. One lover, Boris Sergeyovich, that is all I ask.’
‘Not so long ago, it was just one friend. A week ago, it was just one more friend. Now it’s just one lover you want.’
‘Boris Sergeyovich, you know how old I am. Thirty-one. And I am still a virgin. Look at me, and tell me, am I to be denied for ever?’
‘I look at you every day, Katerina Pyotrovna,’ he said, ‘and I see you always as the woman you are. You were not entrusted to me so that I could approve a lover for you.’
‘I won’t go to America,’ she said.
‘You’ll be safer there than anywhere in Europe. With luck, we can arrange a sea passage in seven days.’
‘Seven days?’ Katerina looked stricken.
‘I’ll hire a car that will collect us here at midnight. I’ve already placed the villa in the hands of selling agents.’
‘Seven days?’ she said again. ‘That is all I have?’
‘You also have life,’ said the doctor.
‘I breathe. I walk about. I have no life.’
Chapter Twelve
Edward, returning to his room after breakfast, let his eyes take in the aspect of the garden while he reflected on the fact that it was now three days since he had last seen Katerina. It seemed like three weeks. She had said nothing about a further meeting. Nor had she sent him one of her written invitations. He had thought she would. If their afternoons had come to an end, perhaps that was all to the good. If it was, it did not feel so.
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