She had set a laptop on the table in front of her, and it could have been Tessa's. As she spoke she prodded at the screen with a gray baton hooked at the end like a crochet needle. "There are some things I must tell you, and I'll do that straightaway." Prod. "Ah. Indefinite sick leave is the first thing. Indefinite because obviously it's subject to medical reports. Sick because you're in trauma, whether you know it or not." So there. Prod. "And we do counseling, and I'm afraid that with experience we're getting rather good at it." Sad smile and another prod. "Dr. Shand. Emily outside will give you Dr. Shand's coordonnees. You've got a provisional appointment tomorrow at eleven, but change it if you need to. Harley Street, where else? Do you mind a woman?"
"Not at all," Justin replied hospitably.
"Where are you staying?"
"At our house. My house. In Chelsea. Will be."
She frowned. "But that isn't the family house?"
"Tessa's family."
"Ah. But your father has a house in Lord North Street. Rather a beautiful one, I remember."
"He sold it before he died."
"Do you intend remaining in Chelsea?"
"At present."
"Then Emily outside should have the coordonnees of that house as well, please."
Back to the screen. Was she reading from it or hiding in it?
"Dr. Shand isn't a one-night stand, she's a course. She counsels individuals, she counsels groups. And she encourages interaction between patients with similar problems. Where security permits, obviously." Prod. "And if it's a priest you'd like, instead of or as well, we have representatives of every denomination who've been cleared for most things so just ask. Our view here is, give anything a chance, provided it's secure. If Dr. Shand doesn't fit, come back and we'll look for someone who does."
Perhaps you also do acupuncture, thought Justin. But elsewhere in his head he was wondering why she was offering him security-cleared confessors when he had no secrets to confess.
"Ah. Now would you like a haven, Justin?" Prod.
"I'm sorry?"
"A quiet house." The emphasis on "quiet," like "green-house." "An away-from-it-all until the hue and cry dies down. Where you can be totally anonymous, recover your balance, take long country walks, pop up to London to see us when we need you or vice versa, pop back again. Because it's on offer. Not wholly free of charge in your case, but heavily subsidized by HMG. Discuss with Dr. Shand before deciding?"
"If you say so."
"I do." Prod. "You've suffered an awful amount of humiliation in public. How has this affected you, to your knowledge?"
"I'm afraid I haven't been in public very much. You had me hidden away, if you remember."
"All the same you suffered it. Nobody likes to be portrayed as a deceived husband, nobody likes to have their sexuality raked over in the press. Anyway, you don't hate us. You don't feel angry or resentful or demeaned. You're not about to take revenge. You're surviving. Of course you are. You're old Office."
Uncertain whether this was a question, a complaint or merely a definition of durability, Justin let it alone, fixing his attention instead on a doomed peach-colored begonia in a pot too close to the wartime radiator.
"I seem to have a memo here from the pay people. Do you want all this now or is it too much?" She gave it to him anyway. "We're keeping you on full pay of course. Married allowances, I'm afraid, discontinued, effective from the day you became single. These are nettles one has to grasp, Justin, and in my experience they're best grasped now and accepted. And the usual return-to-U.k. cushioning allowances pending a decision about your eventual destination, but again obviously at single rates. Now Justin, is that enough?"
"Enough money?"
"Enough information for you to function for the time being."
"Why? Is there more?"
She put down her baton and turned her gaze full on him. Years ago, Justin had had the temerity to complain at a grand store in Piccadilly, and had faced the same frigid managerial stare.
"Not as yet, Justin. Not that we're aware of. We live on tenterhooks. Bluhm's not accounted for, and the whole grisly press story will run and run until the case is cleared up one way or the other. And you're having lunch with the Pellegrin."
"Yes."
"Well, he's awfully good. You've been steadfast, Justin, you've shown grace under pressure and it's been noted. You've suffered appalling strain, I'm sure. Not only after Tessa's death but before it. We should have been firmer and brought you both home while there was time. Erring on the side of tolerance looks in retrospect very like the easy way out, I'm afraid." Prod, and scrutinize screen with growing disapproval. "And you've given no press interviews, have you? Not talked at all, on or off the record?"
"Only to the police."
She let this go. "And you won't. Obviously. Don't even say "no comment." In your state, you're perfectly entitled to put the phone down on them."
"I'm sure that won't be hard."
Prod. Pause. Study screen again. Study Justin. Return eyes to screen. "And you've no papers or materials that belong to us? That are — how shall I say it? — our intellectual property? You've been asked, but I'm to ask you again in case something has come up, or comes up in the future. Has anything come up?"
"Of Tessa's?"
"I'm referring to her extramarital activities." She took her time before defining what these might be. And while she did so, it dawned on Justin, a little late perhaps, that Tessa was some kind of monstrous insult to her, a disgrace to their schools and class and sex and country and the Service she had defiled; and that by extension Justin was the Trojan horse who had smuggled her into the citadel. "I'm thinking of any research papers she may have acquired, legitimately or otherwise, in the course of her investigations or whatever she called them," she added with frank distaste.
"I don't even know what I'm supposed to be looking for," Justin complained.
"Neither do we. And really it's very hard for us here to understand how she ever got into this position in the first place." Suddenly the anger that had been simmering was forcing its way out of her. She hadn't meant it to, he was sure; she had gone to great lengths to contain it. But it had evidently slipped from her control. "It's really quite extraordinary, looking at what's since come to light, that Tessa was ever allowed to become that person. Porter has been an excellent Head of Mission in his way but I can't help feeling he must share a good deal of the blame for this."
"For what exactly?"
Her dead stop took him by surprise. It was as if she had hit the buffers. She came to a halt, her eyes firmly on her screen. She held the crochet needle at the ready, but made no move with it. She laid it softly on the table as if grounding her rifle at a military funeral.
"Yes, well, Porter," she conceded. But he had made no point for her to concede.
"What's happened to him?" Justin asked.
"I think it's absolutely marvelous the way the two of them sacrificed everything for that poor child."
"I do too. But what have they sacrificed now?"
She seemed to share his bewilderment. To need him as an ally, if only while she was denigrating Porter Coleridge. "Terribly, terribly hard, in this job, Justin, to know where to put one's foot down. One wants to treat people as individuals, one longs to be able to fit each person's circumstances into the general picture." But if Justin thought she was tempering her assault on Porter, he was dead wrong. She was simply reloading. "But Porter — we have to face it — was on the spot and we weren't. We can't act if we're kept in the dark. It's no good asking us to pick up the pieces ex post facto if we haven't been informed a priori. Is it?"