“For which I thank you,” Bushell said, even if he wasn’t altogether sure she’d meant it as a compliment.
“And as long as I’m in Prince Rupert or Doshoweh or Charleroi or even here in Boston, I’m the man who’s in charge of getting The Two Georges back for Crown and Country, too.”
He wondered if she would understand what he was driving at. She did: a point for her. “I see,” she breathed, nodding slowly and thoughtfully. “When we get to Victoria, you won’t be able to handle the case your way anymore. You’ll be under orders from your - commandant, is that the right title?”
“That’s the right title,” Bushell agreed. “Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg and I are old friends, but that makes things worse, not better. When Sir Horace gets orders from the governor-general, he has to hit me with them twice as hard as he would otherwise, just to let people know his friend isn’t getting any special treatment. I understand why he does it, but that doesn’t make life easy for me.”
“A man of antique virtue,” Kathleen said. Was she being ironic? He couldn’t tell. She drank from the tumbler again. “That’s not bad,” she murmured, her voice judicious. “Different from Scotch. But what sort of orders that you won’t like is the governor-general likely to give Sir Horace to pass to you?”
“Arrangements for paying ransom for The Two Georges comes to mind,” Bushell answered bleakly. He wondered how she’d take that; given her position, she was liable to want the painting back at any price. What she said, though, was, “Sir Martin Luther King strikes me as having more spine than that.”
“If we were speaking only of Sir Martin, I’d say you were right,” Bushell answered. “But his chief of staff is Sir David Clarke, and Sir David has all the spine of your average - actually of your rather sub-par- blancmange.”
Kathleen’s eyes glinted; maybe it was the Irish in her reacting to the prospect of a feud. “You don’t sound as if you like Sir David Clarke,” she observed, drawing out like to exaggerate the innuendo in her words.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Bushell said. He regretted those two drinks; without them, he wouldn’t have spoken so much of his mind. Now, unless he got lucky, he was going to have to say a lot more. He didn’t get lucky. “And why is that?” Kathleen asked. Sure enough, she did scent a feud, and she wouldn’t be happy - more to the point, she wouldn’t shut up - till she found out what was going on, and why.
Bushell got up from the bed and poured himself another tumbler of Jameson. In spite of Kathleen’s disapproving look, he drank it down in a couple of swallows. Two drinks weren’t enough to ready him for what he had to tell her. By the time he was through with the sordid story of Irene and Sir David, he’d had more than three, also.
He smiled crookedly at Kathleen. “Now you know how I come by the uneven tenor of my ways.”
“So I do,” she said, and then went on in a meditative voice, “When I found out Kyril had another fiancée, at least I didn’t do it by finding him in bed with that other fiancée. I hadn’t thought my situation had much to recommend it, but I see I had something to be thankful for after all.”
“That’s true.” Bushell’s words came out clear enough, but slightly lower than they should have, as if emerging from a wind-up phonogram whose spring was starting to wear out. Ever so casually, he scratched at the tip of his nose. He couldn’t feel it. Yes, he’d had considerably more than three drinks. He waited for Kathleen to say something sympathetic, or possibly - and even better - something unkind about Sir David Clarke. But the way she cocked her head to one side and studied him made him remember how much less she’d drunk than he. She asked, “Why do you suppose your wife - your ex-wife, I should say - chose to be unfaithful to you!”
That was a question he’d avoided asking himself for years; what had happened was far easier to understand than why. He didn’t like facing it now. Slowly, he answered, “I took her for granted, I expect. You don’t think that can possibly happen, not when you first meet, but it does - unless you know enough to watch out for it. And I won’t deny being married to what I do, either.” He turned and patted the side of the whiskey bottle; a lot of the whiskey was out of it and inside him. The crooked smile came back. “In Jameson veritas.”
“Maybe,” Kathleen said. “And maybe your Irene wasn’t altogether blameless, either - in fact, she couldn’t have been, or she wouldn’t have been doing what you caught her doing.”
Absurdly, that angered Bushell for a moment. He’d concentrated all his fury on Sir David Clarke. In clinging to his memories of happier times with Irene, he’d forgotten - he’d made himself forget - he hadn’t walked in during the middle of a rape. Women had been deceiving their husbands for as long as men had been straying from their wives. But he hadn’t strayed, he hadn’t wanted to stray, and he hadn’t let himself think Irene would have.
“I certainly don’t think well of Sir David for taking advantage of your situation, whatever the reasons for it,” Kathleen said. Bushell nodded, glad for the chance not to think about Irene. Kathleen went on, “How could he be Sir Martin’s chief of staff with that on his record?”
“Three reasons.” With drunken precision, Bushell ticked them of on his fingers: “First, he did marry her. Second, chief of staff is not an elective post, of course. And third,” he finished reluctantly, “he’s good at what he does.” One side of his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Irene certainly thought so.”
“Good you can joke about it,” Kathleen said.
Bushell stared owlishly at her, then went back and listened to what he’d just said. “I did, didn’t I?” he said in some surprise. “It’s the first time I ever have, I’ll tell you that. That calls for another drink.” He picked up the bottle of Jameson, looked at it, and set it down. “As a matter of fact, maybe that calls for not having another drink.”
“Yes, maybe it does,” Kathleen said, with so much enthusiasm that Bushell knew she thought he’d already had one - or several - too many. Perhaps ill-advisedly, she asked, “And what is Sir David so good at?”
“Besides adultery, do you mean?” Bushell said. Snide comments about Sir David Clarke didn’t count as jokes to him - nor, evidently, to Kathleen, either. She sat quietly, waiting for his answer. After a bit of thought, he said, “What he’s good at, what he’s good for - however you like - is keeping his boss out of trouble, making sure Sir Martin doesn’t do anything to offend any large number of his constituents. In small doses, that’s all well and good. But Sir David thinks - or I think Sir David thinks - that if a small dose is good, a large one will be better. If Sir Martin listened to him all the time, he’d be so bland he couldn’t possibly lead us anywhere. He’d follow whichever way the people blow, and the people, given half a chance, blow every which way.”
“He’s more interested in having Sir Martin look good than in having him be good, you’re saying,” Kathleen remarked.
Bushell looked at her in an admiration that had nothing to do with the physical charms she still displayed so invitingly. “That’s just what I’m saying. It’s just what I would have said, as a matter of fact, if I had my wits about me.” He smiled that lopsided smile again. “Must be love.”
“If you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t talk foolishness.” Kathleen was brisk almost to coldness. He remembered life had bruised her, too. She went on, “Tell me that when you’re sober and I’ll - I’ll think about believing it.”
Thinking about being sober made him think about the morning, and about black coffee and paracetamol. By the way he felt now, he knew how he’d feel then, and how little the pain relievers would help. Well, he’d been through that before, too, more times than he cared to recall. “I think I’d better get back to my room and get what sleep I can,” he said.