And it was at this moment, as Mary remembered it while she was still chatting and still praying for her husband’s luck to change, that she felt his fingertips skip knowingly over her naked shoulders as he returned to his place at the head of the table. She hadn’t even heard the door, though she’d been listening for it.
“Everything all right, darling?” she called to him over the candelabra, playing it openly because the Pyms were so frightfully happily married.
“Her Maj in good shape, Magnus?” she heard Grant enquire in his insinuating drawl. “No rickets? Croup?”
Pym’s smile was radiant and relaxed but that didn’t always mean too much, as Mary knew. “Just one of Whitehall’s little rumbles, Grant,” he replied with magnificent casualness. “I think they must have a spy here who tells them when I’m giving a dinner party. Darling, are we out of claret? Jolly mingy rations, I must say.”
Oh, Magnus, she had thought excitedly: you chancer.
It was time to get the women upstairs for a pee before coffee. The Frau Oberregierungsrat, who held herself to be modern, was inclined to resist. A scowl from her husband dislodged her. But Bee Lederer, who by this time in the evening was disposed to become the great American feminist — Bee left like a lamb, peremptorily handed out by her sexy little husband.
* * *
“Now comes the punch,” says Jack Brotherhood contentedly, in Mary’s imagination.
“There is no punch.”
“Then why are we shaking, dear?” says Brotherhood.
“I’m not shaking. I’m just pouring myself a small drink waiting for you to arrive. You know I always shake.”
“I’ll have mine straight, please, same as you. Just give it me the way it happened. No ice, no fizz, no bullshit.”
* * *
Very well then, damn you, have it.
The night is ending as perfectly as it began. In the hall Mary and Magnus help the guests to their coats and Mary cannot help noticing how Magnus, whose life is service, stiffens his arms and curls his fingers with each successfully negotiated sleeve. Magnus has invited the Lederers to linger but Mary has covertly countermanded this by telling Bee, with a giggle, that Magnus needs an early night. The hall empties. The diplomatic Pyms, ignoring the cold — they are English after all — stand valiantly on their doorstep and wave farewell. Mary has an arm around Pym’s waist and she is secretly poking her thumb inside the waistband of his trousers at the back and down the partition of his buttocks. Magnus does not resist her. Magnus does not resist. Her head rests affectionately on his shoulder as she whispers sweet nothings into the same ear Herr Wenzel employed to summon him to the telephone and she hopes that Bee will notice their lovey-doveyness. Under the porch light — Mary luminously youthful in her long blue dress, Magnus so distinguished in his dinner-jacket — we must have looked the picture of harmonious married life. The Lederers leave last and are the most effusive. “Dammit, Magnus, I don’t remember when I had such a good time,” says Grant, with his quaint, rather faggy indignation. They are followed by their bodyguard in a second car. Side by side the very English Pyms enjoy a moment of shared disdain for the American way.
“Bee and Grant are terrific fun, really,” says Mary. “But would you have a bodyguard if Jack offered you one?” There is more to her question than mere curiosity. She has been wondering recently about the odd people who seem to loiter outside the house with nothing to do.
“Not bloody likely,” Pym retorts with a shudder. “Not unless he’ll promise to protect me from Grant.”
Mary extracts her thumb, they turn and arm in arm go indoors. “Is everything all right?” she asks, thinking of the phone call. Everything is absolutely fine, he replies. “I want you,” Mary whispers boldly and lets her hand brush across his thighs. Smiling, Pym nods and pulls at his tie, loosening it apparently in preparation. In the kitchen the Wenzels are waiting to leave. Mary can smell cigarette smoke but decides to ignore it because they have worked so hard. On her deathbed she will remember that she took the conscious decision to ignore their cigarette smoke: that her life at that moment was so relaxed, Lesbos so far away, her sense of service so complete, that she was able to consider matters of such massive triviality. Pym has the Wenzels’ money ready for them in an envelope plus a handsome tip. Magnus will tip with his last fiver, thinks Mary indulgently. His generosity is something she has learned to love even when her more frugal upper-class approach tells her he overdoes it: Magnus is so seldom vulgar. Even when at times she wonders whether he is overspending and she should offer him some from her private income. The Wenzels leave. Tomorrow night they will do another party at another house. The Pyms in close harmony move to the drawing-room, hands linking and breaking and ranging freely for the ritual foreplay of a nightcap and a gossipy post-mortem. Pym pours a scotch for Mary and a vodka for himself but unusually does not remove his jacket. Mary is fondling him explicitly. Sometimes in these cases they don’t manage to get up the stairs.
“Super venison, Mabs,” says Pym. Which was what he always does first: congratulate her. Magnus congratulates everyone all the time.
“They all thought Frau Wenzel cooked it,” says Mary, feeling for the top of his zip.
“Then sod them,” says Pym gallantly, rejecting the whole fatuous diplomatic world for her with a sweep of his forearm. For a moment Mary fears that Magnus has had one too many. She hopes not for she is not pretending: after the worries and fatuities of the evening she wants him very much. Handing Mary her glass, Magnus raises his own and drinks to her silently: well done, old girl. He is smiling straight down at her, his knees are almost touching hers and steady. Affected by the tension in him Mary wants him urgently here and now and gives him further clear evidence of this with her hands.
“If Grant Lederer is the third,” she asks, thinking again for a moment of that murderous look, “what on earth were the first two like?”
“I’m free,” says Pym.
Mary fails to understand. She thinks he is capping her joke in some way.
“I don’t get it,” she says a little shamefacedly. I’m so slow for him, poor love. A sudden awful thought. “You don’t mean they’ve sacked you?” she says.
Magnus shakes his head. “Rick’s dead,” he explains. “Who?” Which Rick does he mean? Rick from Berlin? Rick from Langley? Which Rick is dead who can be setting Magnus free and, who knows, making space for his promotion?
Magnus begins again. Perfectly reasonably. Clearly the poor girl has not understood. She is tired from her long evening. She’s had a couple too many. “Rick, my father, is dead. He died of a heart attack at six this evening while we were changing. They thought he was okay after the last one but it turns out he wasn’t. Jack Brotherhood phoned from London. Why the hell Personnel gave it to Jack to break to me rather than break it to me themselves is a secret not ours to share, presumably. But they did.”
And Mary even then doesn’t get it right.
“What do you mean — free?” she shouts wildly as all constraint leaves her. “Free of what?” Then very sensibly she bursts out weeping. Loud enough for both of them. Loud enough to drown her own dreadful questions from Lesbos all the way here.
And she has half a mind to weep again now, for Jack Brotherhood, as the front doorbell sounds through the house like a bugle call, three short peals as ever.