Bushell shrugged. She’d been something of a social climber when she was his wife; being married to Sir David had evidently nourished that character trait. He said, “As long as I know I’m doing my job well, I don’t care whether I have a Sir in front of my name.”
“I know you don’t,” she said with a dismissive wave - almost a push - of her hand. “But what about your, ah, friend with the red hair? Pretty little thing, even if she is rather young.”
What about Kathleen? Bushell didn’t know, but he was damned if he was going to tell that to Irene.
“You’ve got no business taking that tone with me,” he growled. He wished he hadn’t been to the bar before he ran into his former wife. He’d moved into a hotel the very day he’d found her and Sir David Clarke together; after that, their conversation had been entirely through solicitors. He had things - years’ worth of things - he’d never told her. With whiskey in him, with her standing in front of him, all the stored-up anger was liable to come spewing out. He hadn’t known how much there was, not till now, not till it heaved against all the restraints he’d built to hold it back, bubbling upward like lava under a volcano that had been - had been - dormant.
“Why not?” Irene said. She kept her voice down, remembering where they were, but she sounded angry, too. That’s pretty funny, he thought: her angry at me . “Why not?” she repeated. “We’re both in the same place at the same time for once, so you can listen to me for a change.”
“And what the devil is that supposed to mean?” Bushell demanded.
“Just what it says,” Irene answered. “You were never there when we were married, that’s for certain. If you weren’t on the road, you were at the office, and if you weren’t at the office, you were sitting in front of a typewriter, pounding out endless stupid reports no one would ever read. You never gave me the notice you’d pay a florin slug fished out of a stamp-selling machine, not unless you were hungry or you wanted to go to bed with me - sometimes not even then.”
“That’s a lie,” Bushell said, though it had an unpleasant ring of truth. “I did work for a living, you know. I still do, as a matter of fact.”
“God help your pretty little friend, then,” Irene said.
“Leave Kathleen out of it. She’s none of your business - you made bloody sure of that, didn’t you?”
Irene tossed her head. Under her makeup, she flushed; that shot had got home. “I had to do something, didn’t I; to remind myself I was alive. Better than waiting for you to notice me, that’s for sure.” She made a small, purring sound, deep in her throat. “A lot better, let me tell you.”
He wanted to slap her face. Remembering they were years divorced and in public came hard, hard. He shuddered with the effort of not taking a step toward her. “What was the point of talking about my work with you, Irene?” he asked wearily. “You never paid any attention when I did, so I thought I might as well not bore you. All you wanted to talk about was - “
“Life?” she suggested. “Whatever you call it, it was more interesting than the dusty things you were always puttering over.”
“It was my life,” Bushell said. “It is my life.”
“That’s what I said: God help - Kathleen, did you say her name was? What a boring, useless life it was. It’s no wonder that I -“ Irene stopped.
“That you what?” Bushell demanded. He still found himself knowing, as if by instinct, when Irene wasn’t saying something that mattered. She might not have thought he was paying attention to her, but he was, even if not in ways she would have wanted.
“Don’t you badger me,” she said. “It’s none of your affair.” She laughed, unpleasantly. “Certainly not that. Boring.” She gave an emphatic nod, as if that proved the truth of her description. Then she threw more fuel on the fire: “What a gray way to pass the days. Do your work, write your reports, go through forty years, and what do you get? A pension. A gold pocket watch. A funeral, because you hadn’t noticed you were already dead. So what? I wanted someone who would stay interesting, someone who was going somewhere, someone who would take me with him. I found someone like that, too.”
“Oh, yes, you found Sir David,” Bushell said. “You welcomed him with open arms, in fact - and open legs, too.” Irene gasped; that one stung, too. Bushell went on, “You just wanted to live out your silly dreams, even though you knew they were silly. RAMs mostly don’t get knighted, no matter what they do, and you know why. The work is like an iceberg: nine tenths of it never comes up above the waterline to be noticed.”
“What about your dear chum, Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg?” Irene said. Bushell didn’t fancy the way she flung the question at him. “There are exceptions to everything,” he answered, trying to take no notice of her tone. His private opinion was that Bragg had got the knighthood by stubbornly going after it till at last it fell into his lap. That was how Sir Horace got everything. A couple of more deserving men might have been up for consideration, but no one would have made the merits he did have more visible to the right people.
“Do you remember the party we had for him when his name went onto the list?” Irene asked. A nasty glow kindled in her eyes.
“Yes, I remember,” Bushell said shortly, as if he were in the witness box, trying to admit as little as possible to a barrister. “So what?”
“So what, is it?” she snapped. Something - unshed tears? - roughened her voice. “After I put up with so much from you, that’s all I get? So what? God damn you to hell, Tom Bushell, I’ll tell you so what.” She took a deep breath. “Do you remember that party? Do you?”
“I already said I did.” Rubbed raw by her tone, he fired back at her: “And I’ll tell you what else I remember: I remember what a shockingly bad hostess you were. You kept disappearing, and I can’t imagine where you got to.” Amazing, he thought, how annoyances from years before could suddenly spring to life again when watered.
He’d thought - he’d hoped - the gibe would anger her even more. To his surprise, she threw back her head and laughed. She was plumper; he took a certain malicious glee in noting the onset of a double chin. But she was still angry, too: she said, “Then you haven’t got much imagination, have you? I’ll tell you just where I was: I was helping Sir Horace celebrate his knighthood with something better than cocktails and canapés.” She twitched her hips to leave him in no possible doubt about her meaning. A reminiscent smile spread over her face. “Quite a lot better, if you must know.”
“I don’t believe you,” Bushell said automatically.
“I don’t care,” Irene answered. “It’s true whether you believe it or not.”
To his horror, Bushell did believe it. Just as he’d always known when Irene was leaving something out of what she was saying, he’d also always known when she was telling nothing but the truth, no matter how crazy it sounded. He heard that ring of truth in her voice now, he felt it in his belly - and how he wished he didn’t.
She sniffed. “I don’t know how you’ve hung on so long in police work, Tom, when you can’t see the nose on your face. All these years, and you haven’t changed a bit. It’s too bad. I’d hoped you might have. It could have been - interesting.”
Dully, he realized he’d borrowed his odd use of that word from her. He also realized she’d been thinking about putting horns on Sir David with him, just as she’d put horns on him with Sir David - and with Sir Horace? The revelation shook him as if the unsteady ground of New Liverpool rocked beneath his feet. Irene twitched her hips again. “Do you want me to tell you all about it?” she asked.