We went downstairs to the kitchen. In a muslin bag slung between two chairs, the first cooking of crab-apple jelly dripped slowly into a big pan: an hour-glass, an essence of ordinary life, a perfect domestic calendar, counterpointing all our terrible deceits.
Afterwards, when the sun finally went and Mrs Grace drove off into the twilit woods and I’d read the twins another bedtime story, I went into the garden and while Helen tended the bonfire, gathering the remaining weeds and leaves of the afternoon together and poking up the flames, I told her all the other details of my own tale, which she then accepted as completely real — the mask changing quickly as she listened, the tragic entirely replacing the comic.
We came in and out of the drawing-room several times during the evening fetching drinks — a comfortable split-level room with a bookcase full of the owner’s military memoirs dividing it, a brown carpet, russet curtains, a green sofa and a big open hearth, a roughly cut Cotswold stone fireplace with a vase of bracken in it: a slightly cluttered, homely, intimate room, made for winter evenings, for talk and drink and people together high on the hill, hidden in the trees, locked securely away from the world.
But now as we talked, whispering in the house, with barely louder voices outside, the wretched details of my story poisoned the mood: soured everything of the cosy architecture and the yellow rose bushes — strangely luminous now in the half-light. And we drank: drank fast and badly. And it didn’t calm us, simply sharpened our nerves, so that we moved all the more distractedly from the garden to the house and back again. Helen pacing to and fro from the drinks table: Helen thinking of lighting a fire, of phoning someone in America, of cooking supper. But she did none of these things — trying through all these novel happy actions to escape back into ordinary life, away from this increasing horror. But there was no escape that I could see yet, and I told her, the two of us standing over the smoke, watching the odd small eruptions of flame as the fire gathered strength.
‘They’re here somewhere — around us, bugging us, following us, all the time,’ I said. ‘And we’re down a lane, miles from anywhere. They can cut us off completely, watch our comings and goings, every move. There’ll be somebody watching the house — now, this moment.’
And then I suddenly remembered Mrs Grace.
‘The woman, for example — what do you know of her? Where is she from? Her accent …?’
‘Has she? I thought it was an English accent.’
‘No. From Europe somewhere.’
‘She’s a dancing teacher in the town. Ballroom dancing. She has a studio somewhere. But it’s doing rather badly. No one wants to learn the old fashioned steps anymore.’
‘One of them — a KGB appointee?’
‘How? She told me she’s been living here for years, since the war.’
‘They have stringers in a place like this where there are important government departments. A permanent resident. They could have placed her here years ago.’
‘But surely …? No, she’s not the sort, she’s so nice.’
‘Why not? A lot of Communists are nice.’ I looked at Helen. ‘And some are even good at making crab-apple jelly. And the foxtrot.’
‘But I got her from the government people here.’
‘How?’
‘She’d given her name to them as someone willing to do housekeeping and baby-minding during the day. So how could she be with them?’
‘Simply turning down other jobs she was offered — and waiting for you to arrive; then saying she was available for work, and did they have any — knowing you’d need someone. They’re not fools. They’re doing everything on this job very thoroughly.’
‘We have a week to think before you start your job. You’re on leave, remember.’ She drank some more whisky.
‘A holiday! Marvellous.’ I smiled. ‘They’ll follow us anywhere we go. You and I could lose them, maybe. But with the two children it’s not very likely. And you’ve no one here in England you could leave them with. And anyway, go where? And into what future? Family life on the run? Or you could go back to America on your own. But they’d find you there easily enough. They have the ends all tied up. And yet — as I told you — we have to get out. Even if I succeed in getting them this machine they are still going to have to get rid of us afterwards: the information would be no use to them otherwise. So we have to lose them. And I’m no good at guns or fast cars. Are you?’
‘No. Surely we have to tell your people here? That’s a way out. They can help us.’
‘Yes. I’d thought of that. Dump ourselves on them — all four of us. It would have to be that. We can’t phone. That’s surely tapped. I might be able to get down there and tell them,’ I said, looking at the Government Communications HQ beyond the reservoir. ‘But that place has nothing to do with counter-espionage. They’d laugh at me. It would have to be London, my old section there. McCoy, or a fellow called Harper, my immediate control. I could contact them somehow. And maybe have them turn the whole KGB plan round — get their men. Play along with the KGB.’
‘But they’ll have thought of that.’ Helen waved a hand slowly through a curl of smoke and then smelt her fingers. The lights of the town were more visible now, a hazy glow beginning to form in the dusk of the valley beneath us. ‘That’s just what they’ll be expecting. They know we can’t run. So they must assume we’ll try and tell.’
‘How can they stop it? I know we can’t phone from here. But I can surely get to somewhere long enough to make a call without their knowing.’
‘Yes, of course. But that’s just it — it doesn’t make sense.’ She turned to me urgently. ‘Why did they go ahead with the plan, knowing, as they must have done, of that one obvious loophole: that you would tell your people in London, this man Harper or whoever, and that then there would be a good chance of their having their whole scheme played back to them. What makes them so confident, with that huge crack in their plan?’
‘I don’t know. They said they’d kill us — you and me or both if anything went wrong. I suppose they were relying on that: it’s quite an effective lever, don’t you think? That’s why they got me to watch them killing Guy.’
‘Yes, but you only have to make one phone call. And make sure you’re not seen — a shop or hotel in town, or some house over the hill here. That can’t be impossible.’
‘Why not?’ I suddenly thought ‘They may intend keeping all of us in the house locked up, prisoners, from now until I take the job up. Block the road. Someone with a gun. Have Mrs Grace bring the food. Very easy. They’ve probably got some sort of look-out post up there in the plantation. And the telephone wires go along the edge of the trees by the road. They could be monitoring it. Or even simpler, just cut the thing off now that I’ve arrived. Have you tried the phone recently?’
‘Yes. This morning.’
‘Let’s try it now.’
We went inside and she picked up the handset. It was quite dead.
‘I wonder when they’ll show their hand?’ I said.
We went out into the garden again and looked around: the lights bright over the town now in the full night, the dark plantation above us, the shadowy rows of apple trees in the paddock, the end of summer, a hint of fine sharpness in the air, and a lot of stars cluttering the sky.
And as we listened the air was suddenly pierced with a sharp cackle of alarm: the geese below the house had been roused by something: a fox or some human intrusion? Their cries rose, then wavered and died.
We were both frightened now, moving over to the flower-border looking down on the road, a rose bush just in front of us, a strong infinitely sweet smell on still air. Then we moved to the other side of the lawn and peered up through the long lines of dark fir.