by Joseph Hone
No, there was no sense of shared pity in what we did: it was completely a positive thing, confirmation of a future, not a past. The past, hers and mine, had simply been an argument with the station officials. Now we had gained our tickets, it didn’t matter where. We had been married in that station and had never left it; we had spent all the time arguing and it had hurt; we had denied each other and lied to everyone. We had fought and schemed over everything and the only things we’d held in common were enmity and distrust. But that was all over now: that previous man was dead and so was the illness that had killed him. Guy was gone and my own obsessive curiosities about Helen had somehow died with him. He and I had shared that disease together – and both of us had been thrown from that window for our trouble.
‘Guy had no love for me,’ she said, crouching down now over the last of the flames. ‘Just endless anger and bad temper – possessing me. What did I see in George?’ She considered the question, ‘George cared. But it didn’t fall on me like a rock – the caring.’
‘Of course. But he was outside. That always helps. He kept being new for you, a little rich and strange and rare. Odd weeks, days, moments. Come on, you know that. You never lived with George, achieved what you wanted so much. And people can get tired of success together, as well as failure. You could have come apart with Graham too. There’s dissolution in every new face you meet. That’s all it amounts to. And the vanity of thinking otherwise, of needing to be unique and indispensable. And we’re not. And we don’t care for that truth.’
Helen looked at the fire, sitting on the ground, her knees drawn up resting her arms and head on them, her long thighs rising almost vertically, the rusty cord trousers golden against the dying flames.
‘He wanted to know everything about me, Guy. It was never enough to possess now – when we had each other in the present, willingly. He wanted my whole past as well. I can see that so clearly now. And he was right in a way, of course. There was something essential hidden in me. And I shouldn’t have married him, knowing I couldn’t share that with him. But I loved him in the beginning. And needed him. That was very strong. And I forgot all the manifestoes then in Africa – riding and looking at the animals, peering down craters, that fresh world coining all around you, and all you had to do was look at it and touch it. You didn’t think about it all. I forgot the political involvement in Africa.’
‘Involvement with Alexei Flitlianov?’
She looked up at me and said quickly, ‘Yes. Yes, with Alexei.’ And she kept on looking at me questioningly, as if in her use of his Christian name alone, in giving me this personal clue, I would be able to reach back into her past and immediately recreate all the facts and nuances of her relationship with him. But I couldn’t.
And I didn’t really want to now, having tried to do that for so long. I wanted to let Helen be, as she was, the full person then, at that instant, when she contained everything of any importance. Her past, which had so absorbed us both, was now available to me; she would tell me all about it if I asked her. And so I no longer felt the need for it. Curiosity dies completely in the sense of sure possession. And I must have felt that then with Helen: a pact arrived at wordlessly, a secret exchanged, agreements between us now and in the future, lightly, easily confirmed. We had passed, the two of us, without saying anything, into that area of a relationship where everything that before had been very unlikely, hedged round by mutual indecision, was now perfectly possible and expected.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I was sure Flitlianov must have been involved with you, and with Graham: I told you that evening upstate – that he’d probably recruited you both in Beirut. But apart from that, I don’t know –’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ she interrupted urgently, as if she had at last found the right audience for a speech she had suppressed for years. ‘Yes, it was Alexei, when I was at the University there. And it doesn’t matter now – that you should know.’
‘That you and he were –’
‘Yes. Him. Before anyone.’
‘It wasn’t just political?’
‘No. It was both.’
‘As with Graham. You’ve been lucky.’
‘As lucky as a woman’s story. But it was true. You believe that?’
‘Yes, I do. Fact always stranger than. Why not? But what happened?’
‘I went on working for Alexei.’
‘For the KGB?’
‘For a part of the KGB. None you’ve ever heard about.’
‘The thing you said you couldn’t tell me about – the work you had to complete in America, which had nothing to do with me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, what is it?’
She didn’t reply. And then I remembered the man I’d seen in the dank, overgrown laneway upstate in New York when I’d fallen off my horse – the man in the green anorak with binoculars, staring after us, but not seeing me in the ditch. And it was this image of spying on us that brought the figure so suddenly and clearly back to me – that spying on ordinary life so close to Guy’s identical pursuits which we had just been talking about.
I said: ‘What does Flitlianov look like? Short, fiftyish, hollow-eyed, tufts of white hair over the ears?’
‘Yes.’ She spoke softly. ‘You’ve seen him?’
And then I remembered. ‘Twice. The first time, the day we lunched together in New York. And then that day we were riding. Each time he was following us.’
I told her what had happened when I’d fallen off the horse.
And then she told me the whole of her story – the story of a dissident group within the KGB, which Flitlianov headed, which George Graham had been a deputy in, and whose total complement of names was known only to her. She said, finishing: ‘And Alexei’s being there, upstate, hiding, can only mean they’ve found out about him in Moscow, that he’s on the run and wants those names – wants them before the others get them.’
‘The KGB knows you have them?’
‘How can they? Alexei was the only one who knew I was the post-box. And he can’t have told them, if he’s escaped. George knew the address of the mailbox in Grand Central – but he never knew it was me behind it.’
‘My London section could have got the number out of him when they grilled him, watched the box, and seen you going to it – before I got to New York.’
‘Possibly. But how could the KGB get to know that?’
‘Someone in London, working for them. It’s happened before.’
‘Well, if either the British or the KGB knew I had those names why didn’t they go for me upstate, or the apartment in New York? They’ve had plenty of opportunity and time.’
‘Yes, but would they have found it? Belmont’s a big place and how could they rifle through your apartment?’ And then it struck me. ‘Of course, they were waiting for you to leave America, to come into an empty house over here before they moved on you. They could find those papers easily enough here, take the place apart if you didn’t tell them. And they’d know for certain that you’d have brought them with you. And you have taken them, haven’t you – those names? They’re here, aren’t they?’
She nodded.
‘Well, if that’s so, then Flitlianov must be somewhere around here as well. He’d certainly have followed you over, not having made contact in America. He must be here. As well as the KGB or the British. They’re all after the same thing. And why not? You’re sitting on history – the most explosive sort of information. Nothing like it can ever have got out of Russia before. It could alter the future of the whole country. How many names – hundreds, thousands?’
‘They’re in code. So I don’t know. But there are plenty of them. So hundreds at least, yes.’
‘Of dissident KGB men – and others, no doubt, in the political hierarchy: the Central Committee, the armed forces.’
‘I should think so. It’s certainly a movement quite outside the acknowledged dissidents, the Chronicle of Current Affairs people.’
‘If they know you’ve got th
ose names they’ll do anything to get them from you, you know.’
‘Yes, of course they will.’
‘And exactly the same goes for my section, here in London.’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course, it’s up to you what you do with them. But don’t tell me where they are.’
‘No. All I want to do is give them to Alexei, if he’s here.’
‘You may not get the chance. The KGB are probably expecting just that – for him to make contact with you over here. Then get rid of you both when they’ve got the names. Perhaps you should destroy them. Those people’s lives won’t be worth much if the KGB gets hold of that list.’
‘If I do, no one can ever start the movement up again. It can only be linked together through me.’
‘It’s up to you,’ I said hopelessly.
‘I’ll wait. Alexei might still get through to us. But what about this electronic business here, your taking Guy’s job?’
‘A sideshow, an excuse. Or else two birds with one stone.’
It was getting late. We looked round at the woods again – looking for, and thinking of another person now – an old love returned, perhaps watching us at that moment as he had upstate – hating me, anxious for Helen’s renewed attention. She was in an impossible position.
*
I wanted to make love with Helen that night. But I was too tired, completely finished, so that we just kissed indecisively on the landing, and I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into bed.
And then, for some reason, I woke. It was nearly one o’clock. My bedroom door was open, the landing light on: I could hear a tap running somewhere. I got up, walked along the passageway and found Helen in the bathroom cleaning her teeth.
She turned, wearing a long, blue and white striped cotton night-dress, crisp and collarless. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. I looked in. You were fast asleep.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Yes.’
She finished rinsing her mouth out.
‘Do you want to sleep with me?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
She put the toothbrush back in the rack.
*
And sleep we did when we had made love, with the children’s door open next to her bedroom, listening for cries that never came – though it was no great love-making, more a succession of tired questions and responses, the nervousness or desperation which we might otherwise have felt quite drained from us in our fatigue.
And I felt as we did it that, for her, I was not now in any sense a replacement for her lover or her husband. For she looked at me openly all the while, her face clear in the landing light, with an expression of great novelty, finding something quite new in the experience, something which she had not touched before. Here she was not casting her mind back or forwards as she held me. She was in no trouble with memory or expectation. It was now, and now only once, and that was everything.
A key which she had, she used then, which made her love-making for me a strange act in a sweet place, far from disruption or tragedy – and removed, even, from sexual desire. She seemed pressed by something else. Our bodies locked together didn’t matter. There was some greater pleasure beyond that which she found, and held, and gave – the series of vital messages falling lightly but indecipherably on me as I watched her.
Words were useless to explain it then, when we lay apart and I looked at her, one leg, so long in the bed, lying diagonally across it, the other crooked up like a cyclist’s against the sheet, arms behind her head so that her breasts became long slopes, the flesh at her waist tightening as she twisted, a bone appearing, as she reached for a towel on the bedside table.
Words were no good. I said, ‘I love you.’
I’d been avoiding that. But it had been there quite some while.
And there was no need to say anything else, for she turned back to me, doing nothing with the towel, and looked at me very carefully.
*
They came next morning – Mrs Grace and the man with the gun.
We’d had breakfast, and were happy, eating cornflakes and looking out over the sun-filled valley, the twins worrying us with plans to fill the marvellous day: a walk over the hill, toyshops in the town, a visit to a zoo. And we’d said yes, if possible, perhaps. And then she and I were unhappy, wondering what other overriding duties the day might bring that would deny every happy plan.
The phone was still dead.
The twins saw them first, playing outside on the lawn, and started shouting. When I went out they were half-way down the steps towards them. And they came back together, two shining and two rather sombre faces, the twins dancing round Mrs Grace and pointing out the other man to me: ‘Look!’ they said, ‘Another Daddy.’
Mrs Grace was visibly upset for a moment, though I noticed she took care to hide the fact from the man, looking at Helen for an instant with great feeling, an expression of resignation and sadness, as if she were about to be made prisoner and not us.
He was tall and blue-eyed, fresh-faced, in his mid-thirties, Nordic-looking and extremely polite – his thin fair hair blowing slightly in the hill breeze as he stood by the porch carrying a box of groceries. He looked like a figure in a romantic winter holiday skiing poster. I thought of going for him there and then, while his arms were full. But he looked at me as I thought of this, an easy, understanding expression crossing his face – almost a smile, as if to say: ‘Do you really want a fight in front of the children? And if you did over-power me, which is very unlikely, there are others. So why bother? It would be inadvisable and above all, impolite.’
‘May we go inside?’ he asked. How well he spoke English, formally, deprecatingly, without trace of accent. He was like a very well-brought-up child who hides his real nature in placatory, conventional phrases, his vicious potential perfectly camouflaged.
He talked to us in the drawing-room, while Mrs Grace busied herself in the kitchen with the twins. Helen and I stood by the fireplace while he stayed by the closed door, leaning against it at first, then pacing round the end of the room slowly.
‘You don’t really think you can keep all four of us cooped up here for a week, do you?’ Helen said at once, ‘Like chickens.’
‘No, of course not,’ he said evenly, not at all surprised by her deductions. ‘Your children may go out with Mrs Grace. You may do the same, while your children stay here with Mr Marlow. And Mr Marlow may come out with me, if he chooses.’
‘And you’ll be here all the time?’ I asked.
‘I’ll be around. And there are others.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘Of course nothing!’ Helen suddenly shouted. ‘Of course I’ll do nothing of the sort. We were going out this morning. And I’m going.’
The man turned to her in surprise and his reply was genuinely solicitous. ‘I am very sorry.’ He looked over the town from the big windows. ‘Separately, yes. Together, no.’
Helen moved towards him. ‘We’re not going to run away – with two young children. You can follow us. We won’t telephone.’
She was lying. She was suddenly desperate. And I saw how the idea of our doing something happy – then, at that moment, that morning – was very strong in her, that she had forgotten everything else, looking out on the valley, on all its pressing invitations to life. Her face was intense in its longing, as if, with a sudden change of fortune, she could achieve the whole world in the coming hour. Now that it was about to be denied to her she longed to be released immediately; all the paraphernalia of a free existence rose before her, as it might for a prisoner, unaware of his incarceration until the very last moment when the key is actually turned in the cell door.
The man saw this, as I did, and he said again, with real courtesy: ‘I am not responsible for the orders, Mrs Jackson. You will know that. Let us get on together as well as we can. I know that it is not pleasant. Obviously. But it must be finished.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s finish with this. We’re trapped until I start my job down there. Mrs Grace will feed us. And you’ll stop us from doing anything stupid. You and your friends. We understand, it’s perfectly simple. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘Thank you, Mr Marlow,’ he said, with meaning. ‘I will make everything as easy and pleasant as I can for you.’ And I felt he meant that too.
‘Would it be of use if Mrs Grace took the children out now? A walk, a zoo perhaps? And you both – will you let me know of anything, anything you want at all, which we can get you in the town?’
We said nothing. His pleasant, accommodating tones were too much like those of a warder recommending to the condemned man that he eat a hearty breakfast.
*
Mrs Grace took the children out and the man took a book of military memoirs into the garden and sat in the sun reading it on a seat by the steps. We could see him from the corner of the kitchen window. Helen was making coffee.
‘So,’ I said. ‘A plan of campaign?’
We laughed. The situation was so peaceful, so ludicrous; it was unreal.
‘How many men do you suppose they have here?’ she asked.
‘They must be using outsiders from another country, or deep-cover illegals in England, like Mrs Grace. They’d avoid sending anyone from the Embassy or Trade Missions, who could be followed down here. Though there may be one or two of them organising it: Cheltenham is a big town, a holiday place, lots of hotels, quite a few tourists still. Easy to place strangers here. I should say they have at least a dozen people on it. Probably in three groups, with cars, and some central liaison point – a hotel where they can leave messages. What about the area round here – the lane, where does it lead up to?’
‘A common on top of the hill, with a golf course: the twelfth green.’
‘And the plantation?’
‘It must lead back to the common as well – further up.’
‘And in front?’