"This misguided attempt to assist someone who cannot be helped."
"The truth doesn't matter?"
"That is the second time you have asked me that. It still sounds just as naïve."
"My God—"
"Aubrey is as guilty as hell!" Babbington snapped. His powerful hands were bunched on his knees as he leant forward in his chair. "When we get to the bottom of it — to the centre of the web — Aubrey will be seen to be as guilty as hell. He's a Soviet agent, dammit, and he has been for nearly forty years. Ever since he betrayed your wife's father, and had him disposed of by the NKVD."
"Why should he have done that?" Massinger disputed hotly, his face burning with anger and with the effect of Babbington's unsheathed determination.
"A proof of his loyalty — or because Robert Castleford was a convenient way to save his own skin — take your choice."
"That's crazy—" Massinger replied, a perceptible quaver in his voice.
Babbington sat back as if weary of the discussion. His eyes, unlike his cheeks and lips, were not angry. They studied Massinger in a cold, detached manner.
"As you will," he said finally. "But he did it — your wife's father. A man whose bootlaces Aubrey wasn't fit to tie."
"Is that blackmail?" Massinger asked quietly. His voice was breathy, nervous.
"Just remember your happiness, and that of Margaret, Paul. Please…" It was no more than the mockery of a plea.
"As I thought — blackmail."
"No, Paul. Sound advice. If, in your Harvard, CIA and King's College priggishness, you wish to see real blackmail — then think of this. You might expect a number of City directorships to come your way. You might expect a decent number of Quango appointments. None of it will happen if you go on with this. I can assure you of that. Belgravia, everything that might have come with the job, so to speak—" He gestured around the room. It was obscene. Massinger choked on his silent anger. " — will come to nothing. I really do assure you of it."
"Great God," Massinger breathed.
"But, above all, you will lose your wife's love. I am certain of that. As you must be." Babbington stood up quickly. "Don't bother to see me out. Say goodbye to Margaret for me. Tell her that Elizabeth will be in touch — a dinner party, perhaps? Good evening, Paul."
And he was gone before Massinger could clear his throat of accumulated bile and fear. He watched the door close, as if half-fearful the man would not leave. He felt his hands twitching on his thighs, but did not look at them. His body felt hot and without energy. Babbington had threatened to take his wife from him.
The doors to the dining-room opened and she posed, the light and bustle behind her like a natural setting. He was terrified, as if she had shown herself to him before being taken away to some place of confinement; or before she voluntarily departed. The butler and housekeeper busied themselves behind her, part of the tableau vivant. Crystal, gleaming napery, silver. Candlesticks and candelabra. Caviar, smoked salmon, canapes, asparagus. Champagne, Burgundy, claret, hock.
She released the door handles and moved out of her setting towards him. Her face began to mirror his as she moved, and she hurried the last few steps then knelt beside his chair, taking his proffered, quivering hand at once.
"Oh, my dear, my dear…" she murmured over and over, her cheek against the back of his hand. Massinger listened to the note of sympathy in her voice, clinging to it, afraid to lose it. And he heard, above the sympathy, like static spoiling broadcast music, something he could only comprehend as necessity. She knew what had been said, and she knew it had been necessary to her happiness. She had allowed Babbington to threaten and blackmail; to frighten him off. Her father existed in some sacrosanct part of her memory, deeper rooted than himself.
Class, too, he thought miserably. Damned English class. She had taken sides, and she expected him to join her. Nothing else would make sense to her. Aubrey had been a verger's son, and a scholarship boy. A choral scholar with, a brilliant First. A verger's son.
He shifted in his chair. "It's — all right, my dear," he muttered. She looked at him, the gleam of her satisfaction slowly becoming absorbed in affection.
"I know, darling. I know." She stood up. "Are you — ready to change?"
"Yes, of course," he replied with studied lightness. His hip stabbed him like a painful conscience as he moved, and his limp was more pronounced. Without looking at her, he said as he reached the door: "There'll be no trouble, my love. No trouble." He heard her sigh with satisfaction.
He crossed the hall to his dressing-room, avoiding the long, gilded eighteenth-century mirror on the wall above the telephone, avoiding the cheval-glass in one corner of the dressing-room. The long modern mirror on the inside of the fitted wardrobe door caught him by surprise, revealing the irresolute, dispirited shame on his features. He turned away from it, slamming the door. He took off his jacket and tie, uncrooked his arm and dropped his overcoat to the carpet. The hard seat of the divanette looked inviting.
The telephone rang, startling him out of his recriminations. He looked at the extension on the wall, then snatched at the receiver.
"Professor Massinger?"
Peter Shelley's voice—?
"Yes. Who is that?"
"Shelley, Professor."
Massinger's head turned so that he could guiltily watch the door. The shadows in the dressing-room enlarged, moving across the carpet like the progress of a conspiracy. He slumped onto the divanette.
"What — what do you want?"
He listened for the second click of an eavesdropper. His hand shook.
"I–I'd like to help," Shelley blurted. "I — think I can get you the file, just for a couple of hours, you can photocopy it and I can get it back…" The plan spilled out. Shelley had gone over and over it, it was obvious, overcoming his reluctance and ambition and fear. "It's a transcript, of course, not a copy of the original photographs in Washington… it's all I can do, I won't be able to do anything more."
Massinger listened. No one else seemed to be listening on another extension.
"I.."
"Professor — you said you wanted it. Do you want it?"
Click? Telephone being picked up? Margaret—? Massinger was enraged, and his anger spilled onto Shelley. Shelley was part of the conspiracy to separate him from Margaret—
"I don't require it now," he said as unemotionally as he could. "I'm sorry, but it's nothing to do with me. Thank you for calling."
Shelley put down his receiver at once. Massinger listened. Above the purring tone, he heard a slight click as one of the extensions in the flat was replaced. He slapped his own receiver onto its cradle as if it burned his hand. Then he waited until Margaret should open the door, a smile of sympathy and congratulation on her lips. Misery occupied his chest and stomach like water that threatened to drown him.
Margaret glowed. There was no doubt of it. Happy, confident, secure once more. She received the sympathies of her guests concerning the news of her father's betrayal and murder almost with equanimity. Order had returned to her universe. Massinger watched her moving amid the guests at her apres-opera gathering with a love that seemed renewed. Refreshed. And as a perpetual stranger to this kind of social intimacy.
Eugene Onegin, with a Russian soprano and conducted by the soprano's more famous husband, had failed to lift him from his mood. Only Margaret's silent glances of approval and satisfaction throughout the evening in their box had stilled the nagging self-criticisms. Yet now, after whisky and good Burgundy and very little to eat, he could begin to accept and live with the choice he had made. His priorities were reasserted. He had slightly adjusted the focusing ring of his moral and emotional lens, and Margaret's image was precise and clear in the eyepiece.