‘How can they? Alexei was the only one who knew I was the post-box. And he can’t have told them, if he’s escaped. George knew the address of the mailbox in Grand Central — but he never knew it was me behind it.’
‘My London section could have got the number out of him when they grilled him, watched the box, and seen you going to it — before I got to New York.’
‘Possibly. But how could the KGB get to know that?’
‘Someone in London, working for them. It’s happened before.’
‘Well, if either the British or the KGB knew I had those names why didn’t they go for me upstate, or the apartment in New York? They’ve had plenty of opportunity and time.’
‘Yes, but would they have found it? Belmont’s a big place and how could they rifle through your apartment?’ And then it struck me. ‘Of course, they were waiting for you to leave America, to come into an empty house over here before they moved on you. They could find those papers easily enough here, take the place apart if you didn’t tell them. And they’d know for certain that you’d have brought them with you. And you have taken them, haven’t you — those names? They’re here, aren’t they?’
She nodded.
‘Well, if that’s so, then Flitlianov must be somewhere around here as well. He’d certainly have followed you over, not having made contact in America. He must be here. As well as the KGB or the British. They’re all after the same thing. And why not? You’re sitting on history — the most explosive sort of information. Nothing like it can ever have got out of Russia before. It could alter the future of the whole country. How many names — hundreds, thousands?’
‘They’re in code. So I don’t know. But there are plenty of them. So hundreds at least, yes.’
‘Of dissident KGB men — and others, no doubt, in the political hierarchy: the Central Committee, the armed forces.’
‘I should think so. It’s certainly a movement quite outside the acknowledged dissidents, the Chronicle of Current Affairs people.’
‘If they know you’ve got those names they’ll do anything to get them from you, you know.’
‘Yes, of course they will.’
‘And exactly the same goes for my section, here in London.’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course, it’s up to you what you do with them. But don’t tell me where they are.’
‘No. All I want to do is give them to Alexei, if he’s here.’
‘You may not get the chance. The KGB are probably expecting just that — for him to make contact with you over here. Then get rid of you both when they’ve got the names. Perhaps you should destroy them. Those people’s lives won’t be worth much if the KGB gets hold of that list.’
‘If I do, no one can ever start the movement up again. It can only be linked together through me.’
‘It’s up to you,’ I said hopelessly.
‘I’ll wait. Alexei might still get through to us. But what about this electronic business here, your taking Guy’s job?’
‘A sideshow, an excuse. Or else two birds with one stone.’
It was getting late. We looked round at the woods again — looking for, and thinking of another person now — an old love returned, perhaps watching us at that moment as he had upstate — hating me, anxious for Helen’s renewed attention. She was in an impossible position.
I wanted to make love with Helen that night. But I was too tired, completely finished, so that we just kissed indecisively on the landing, and I fell asleep almost as soon as I got into bed.
And then, for some reason, I woke. It was nearly one o’clock. My bedroom door was open, the landing light on: I could hear a tap running somewhere. I got up, walked along the passageway and found Helen in the bathroom cleaning her teeth.
She turned, wearing a long, blue and white striped cotton night-dress, crisp and collarless. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to wake you. I looked in. You were fast asleep.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Yes.’
She finished rinsing her mouth out.
‘Do you want to sleep with me?’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
She put the toothbrush back in the rack.
And sleep we did when we had made love, with the children’s door open next to her bedroom, listening for cries that never came — though it was no great love-making, more a succession of tired questions and responses, the nervousness or desperation which we might otherwise have felt quite drained from us in our fatigue.
And I felt as we did it that, for her, I was not now in any sense a replacement for her lover or her husband. For she looked at me openly all the while, her face clear in the landing light, with an expression of great novelty, finding something quite new in the experience, something which she had not touched before. Here she was not casting her mind back or forwards as she held me. She was in no trouble with memory or expectation. It was now, and now only once, and that was everything.
A key which she had, she used then, which made her love-making for me a strange act in a sweet place, far from disruption or tragedy — and removed, even, from sexual desire. She seemed pressed by something else. Our bodies locked together didn’t matter. There was some greater pleasure beyond that which she found, and held, and gave — the series of vital messages falling lightly but indecipherably on me as I watched her.
Words were useless to explain it then, when we lay apart and I looked at her, one leg, so long in the bed, lying diagonally across it, the other crooked up like a cyclist’s against the sheet, arms behind her head so that her breasts became long slopes, the flesh at her waist tightening as she twisted, a bone appearing, as she reached for a towel on the bedside table.
Words were no good. I said, ‘I love you.’
I’d been avoiding that. But it had been there quite some while.
And there was no need to say anything else, for she turned back to me, doing nothing with the towel, and looked at me very carefully.
They came next morning — Mrs Grace and the man with the gun.
We’d had breakfast, and were happy, eating cornflakes and looking out over the sun-filled valley, the twins worrying us with plans to fill the marvellous day: a walk over the hill, toyshops in the town, a visit to a zoo. And we’d said yes, if possible, perhaps. And then she and I were unhappy, wondering what other overriding duties the day might bring that would deny every happy plan.
The phone was still dead.
The twins saw them first, playing outside on the lawn, and started shouting. When I went out they were half-way down the steps towards them. And they came back together, two shining and two rather sombre faces, the twins dancing round Mrs Grace and pointing out the other man to me: ‘Look!’ they said, ‘Another Daddy.’
Mrs Grace was visibly upset for a moment, though I noticed she took care to hide the fact from the man, looking at Helen for an instant with great feeling, an expression of resignation and sadness, as if she were about to be made prisoner and not us.
He was tall and blue-eyed, fresh-faced, in his mid-thirties, Nordic-looking and extremely polite — his thin fair hair blowing slightly in the hill breeze as he stood by the porch carrying a box of groceries. He looked like a figure in a romantic winter holiday skiing poster. I thought of going for him there and then, while his arms were full. But he looked at me as I thought of this, an easy, understanding expression crossing his face — almost a smile, as if to say: ‘Do you really want a fight in front of the children? And if you did over-power me, which is very unlikely, there are others. So why bother? It would be inadvisable and above all, impolite.’