She completed the circular argument by repeating, "But not by us."
His violently hostile eyes were hastily shielded from her, as he lowered his gaze.
The silence went on for a time, and Alice remarked, quite in her good-hostess manner, putting people at their ease, "It seems to me that your Comrade Andrew has goofed things up. Isn't that it? And you are sorting it all out?"
She heard his breathing come too loud. Then slow and regular as he controlled it. His eyes were not available for inspection. Everything about him was tight, clenched, even his hand, where it lay on the table. "Well, don't get so uptight about it. With so many in the KGB - millions of you, aren't there? - yes, I know that is for the whole of Russia, only some of you are out keeping an eye on us - well, there are bound to be some inefficient ones." His glance upwards at her did quite frighten her for a second, and she continued bravely, even kindly, for now she genuinely wanted to set him at his ease, if possible, having won the advantage and made him accept her point of view: "I am sure the same is true of our lot. I mean, what a shitty lot, that is, if even half of what you read in the papers is true...." This last part of the sentence was her mother, straight; and Alice wondered that her mother should be speaking so authoritatively and naturally from Alice's own mouth. Not that Alice minded. Dorothy Mellings's voice sounded quite appropriate, really, in this situation. "Getting caught the way they do all the time. Well, I suppose we wouldn't be likely to hear about yours: you'd just rub them out. I mean, that's one thing about having a free press."
Now he moved his position, apparently trying to relax, though he had a fist set upright on the table in front of him. His look at her was steady, his breathing normal; some turning point had occurred in the conversation, if conversation was the word for it. Some decision had probably been taken. Well, so, that was all right. He'd go off in a moment and that would be that.
But he showed no signs of moving yet.
Well, let him sit on there, then. What she really wanted to think about was not him, or why he was here, but tonight, and the adventure that awaited her with Jocelin, with whom, at this moment, she felt an almost sisterly bond, in contrast to the murky complicated feeling she had about this Russian. This foreigner.
She remarked, "I do think that part of our problem - I mean, now, between you and me - is what is referred to as a culture clash!" Here she laughed, as Dorothy Mellings would have done. "Your traditions are so very different from ours. In this country you really cannot turn up and tell people what to do or think. It's not on. We have a democracy. We have had a democratic tradition now for so long it is in our bones," she concluded, kindly and smiling.
What was happening with him now was that he was thinking - as, after all, happens not so rarely in conversations - But this person is mad! Bonkers! Round the twist! Daft! Demented! Loco! Completely insane, poor thing. How was it I didn't see it before?
At such moments, rapid and total readjustments have to take place. For instance, the whole of a previous conversation must be reviewed in this new, unhappy light, and assessments must be made, such as that this person is really beyond it, or perhaps is showing only a rather stimulating eccentricity, which, however, is not appropriate for this particular situation.
Alice had no suspicion that any such thoughts were in his mind; she was happily afloat, all kinds of reassuring and apt phrases offering themselves to her as though off a tape coiled in her mind that she did not know was there at all. If, however, she could have seen her own face, that might have been a different matter; for the upper part of it, brows and forehead, had a worried and even slightly frantic look, as if wondering at what she was saying, while her mouth smilingly went on producing words.
"And I think that was probably Comrade Andrew's problem." (Here the scene on the bed came into her mind, and she actually gave her head a good sharp shake to get rid of it.) "He seemed to have a good deal of difficulty in understanding Western culture patterns. I hope you don't think too badly of him. I thought very highly of him."
"So you did, did you," he remarked, not enquired, in a quite good-humoured way. Everything about him said he would get up and go.
"Yes. He seemed to me a fine person. A really good human being."
"Well, I am glad to hear that," said Comrade Gordon O'Leary from Michigan or Smolensk or somewhere, who now did in fact get up, but in slow motion. Or perhaps that was how Alice saw it, for there was no doubt she was not feeling herself. Lack of sleep, that was it!
"Someone will come for the materiel tonight," he said.
"It's not here," improvised Alice smoothly. They couldn't have this Russian, this foreigner, creeping all over their house. Not with all those bombs and things upstairs. The next thing, he'd be telling them what to do with them. Giving them orders! Well, he'd never understand; he was a Russian; they had this history of authoritarianism.
"Where is it?" He whipped about on her, standing very close. She had stood up, holding on to the back of her chair. Now he didn't look smooth and clerkly and nothing. All the terror that she might reasonably have felt during the last half hour swooped down into her. She could hardly stand. He seemed enormous and dark and powerful looming over her, and his eyes were like guns.
"It's on the rubbish tip at Barstone. You know, the local rubbish dump, the municipal dump." Her knees seemed to be melting. She was cold, and wanted to shiver. She had understood, but really, that this was indeed a serious situation, and that somewhere she had gone wrong. Without meaning to. It was not her fault! But the way this man was looking at her - nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She had not known that there could be a situation where one felt helpless.
He was so angry. Ought he to be so angry? He was white, not red, a leaden white, with the effort - she supposed - of holding himself in, the effort of not hitting her. Of not killing her. She knew that was it.
She should not have said, in that casual way, "rubbish dump," that the stuff was on the rubbish tip. Yes, that had been foolish. Hasty. Perhaps even now she should say, No, I was joking, the cases are upstairs. But if she did, he would go upstairs and find Jocelin at work, and then...
She felt she might faint, or even begin to weep. She could feel tears filling her, beginning to press and exude everywhere over her body.
He said, "I am by myself. I have a car. I need someone - better, two people - to go out to this place and get the packages."
"Oh," she said, breathlessly, her voice sounding weak and silly. "I shouldn't do that. Not in full daylight. There might be people there. Rubbish vans emptying rubbish, for a start. It would be dangerous."
"It would be dangerous?" he enquired. Again she felt he might easily kill her, do something he could not stop himself from doing. "We can't have that lying around on a rubbish dump," he said.
"Why not? Have you ever seen one? It's full of all kinds of stuff. Acres of it. A couple of ordinary brown packages wouldn't be noticed much." She was beginning to feel better again, she noted.
"Two new, large, unopened packages?" he enquired, his face close to hers, eyes quite dislocated with anger.
"All the same, I'd wait till tonight."
"I'm not waiting till tonight. Get two people down here. Men. There are men in the house, aren't there?"
She said, cold, almost herself again, "I and another girl carried the cases" - she was going to say "upstairs," but caught herself in time - "to the car."
"Then two women. It doesn't matter."
"Yes, it does matter," she informed him. "Don't give us orders. Don't you understand, you can't give us orders, we aren't Russians."
Her eyes were shut, not so much because she did not feel well (in fact, she felt better) as because she could sense his hatred for her enclose her. Well, that was it, she was going to be killed. A movement, the sounds of footsteps; she opened her eyes and saw him going off. But at the door he stopped and turned and said very quietly, with an extraordinary intensity of contempt, of personal dislike, "Don't imagine that this is the end of it, Comrade Mellings. It is not the end, far from it. You can't play little games with us like that, you'll see, Comrade Mellings." And his face convulsed briefly, in that movement of cheeks and tongue which if continued would have ended in the action of spitting. And he stood with eyes narrowed, staring at her, determined to mark her, force her down, with the strength of what he felt.