“Tom?” A woman’s voice, familiar but He stiffened. “Irene.” Her name came out altogether flat. Kathleen’s eyebrows flew up. “What do you want?”
“Were some of your men here this afternoon?” she asked. “David told me what they were doing at the residence then, and what - what you suspect him of.” She spoke in low, hurried tones; he got the idea Sir David didn’t know she’d rung him. “Were they here, Tom, checking the same thing? I can’t prove it, but I’d swear I left the study window latched, and some of the papers by the typewriter there look neater than they ought to.”
“Searching a home without a warrant is illegal, Irene,” he said.
Kathleen nodded at him, apparently conceding the point that some unofficial business stayed unofficial for a reason. Then she found a way to be very distracting. Stop that, he mouthed at her. She shook her head and kept on.
“Pooh,” Irene said; in his mind, the part that wasn’t being distracted, Bushell could see the flip of her hand that would accompany the word. She went on, “Don’t forget, I used to be married to you. I know RAMs don’t admit to everything they do.”
“Then you should know I won’t admit to any of this,” Bushell answered. He wasn’t likely to forget they’d been married, either, however much he sometimes wished he could. Irene was doing her best to pretend they hadn’t flayed each other at the Russian embassy, which was more sensible than the way she often acted.
Irene said, “David hasn’t done any of the terrible things you think he has, Tom. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He loves the Empire with everything that’s in him. I know you don’t see eye to eye with him about policy. And I know -“ She sighed. “I know you hate him, and I know why you hate him. I can’t do anything about that, not any more. But if you go after him because you hate him and not because you’ve got evidence against him, you’ll waste effort you ought to use tracking down the real villains.”
She still knew how to put the argument so it would hit him hardest. Absently, he wondered if she had the same knack with Sir David. Picking his own words with care, he said, “We have some evidence that looks as if it may be against him. We’re trying to find out if it really is. We have to do that. I’m not treating him any differently because he is... who he is... from the way I would if . . if you and I were still married to each other.”
“All right,” Irene answered after a moment’s hesitation. No doubt she regretted that fight now. So did Bushell. What she’d flung at him then complicated his life in ways he didn’t have time for. She paused again, then said, “I believe you. I’ve always said - when I’m not angry I’ve always said - that, whatever else you are, you’re a just man.”
“Yes, Sir David told me as much this afternoon.”
“Did he?” Irene said. “He didn’t tell me he’d spoken directly to you. Well, you are, Tom. It wasn’t enough for me, but it is still true.” She paused once more, then used a quick whisper to say, “I’ve got to go now. He’s coming.” Her voice got louder: “Yes, of course I’ll ring you tomorrow, Madge. Good night.” She hung up.
Bushell had to shift to do the same. “Enough,” he said to Kathleen. This time, she listened to him. He laughed. “Of all the doings I’ll never be able to put in the memoirs I’m never going to write, the past few minutes go to the top of the list.”
“That’s nice,” Kathleen said equably. “Time shouldn’t just pass; things should happen.”
“On the whole, I agree with you,” Bushell said. “I could have done without several of the things that have happened over the past few weeks, though.”
“Well - possibly,” Kathleen said. “But would we have ended up together without them, and, if we wouldn’t have, would you have done without them?”
The only way to answer that was by avoiding it, a course Bushell took without hesitation: “If you want to play with might-have-beens, find one of the hacks who churn out those scientific romances the Sons love so well. Me, I have enough trouble figuring out what’s real to waste time worrying about what isn’t.” She took a deep breath. He saw she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. To forestall her, he said, “Now I have a question for you.”
“Do you, now?” she said. She was probably most dangerous when she sounded most Irish. “And what might that be?”
“This: when you left me that note yesterday, you blacked out a word in front of your name. What was it?”
She sat up and drew away from him. That they were naked together on the bed suddenly seemed irrelevant; it was almost as if they’d just met for the first time. “I didn’t expect you to ask me that,” she said quietly. “The word was love.” She thrust out her chin, as if to say, What do you make of that?
“I thought so,” he answered. “Why did you black it out?”
“Because you’ve used it twice, once when you were drunk and once for a joke, and it frightened me both times,” Kathleen said. “Because I’ve seen you still carry scars from . . . your former wife. Because after I wrote it, I was afraid that if you saw it, it would scare you away.”
“It’s safe enough now,” Bushell said. “We’re in my hotel room, so I can’t very well run.”
But sometimes you couldn’t hold up a quip for a shield and expect it to ward you from all human feeling. Bushell wished he had a bottle of Jameson handy. Had he had one, though, he probably would have crawled into it. He’d been shocked and horrified at Buckley Bay. Now he was frightened. He knew what kind of wounds he was risking, how deep they cut, how long they lasted. He looked at Kathleen, who was warily looking back at him. She knew about those wounds, too - oh, maybe not to the full bitter extent he did, but enough. He could wound her, if he chose to. She’d given him the chance, and now she sat waiting to see what he would do with it.
“We made love before we said we were in love,” he said slowly. “Bodies, sometimes, are simpler than brains. They just do things; they don’t have to try to understand what things mean. And when, before, with other people, things didn’t mean what we thought they - “
He ran down in the middle of his sentence, something he rarely did. After a moment, he saw it didn’t matter. He’d agreed they were in love, he hadn’t been joking, and he hadn’t run out of the hotel room though he hoped Kathleen never found out how tempted he’d been.
“Now we see where we go from here,” Kathleen said.
Bushell nodded. This felt different from what he’d been like when he first met Irene: less ferocious, less giddy. But he got the idea it could indeed go places. As for what those places might be - “If we don’t find The Two Georges, we can head into exile together.”
She looked at him. “If we don’t find The Two Georges, will we want to have anything to do with each other . . . afterward?”
“Now there’s a question.” He got up, walked over to his jacket, and took his cigar case from the inside pocket where it rested. He made a ritual of getting the cigar started. Only when surrounded by wreaths of fragrant smoke did he turn back to Kathleen and remark, “You know, I had reasons enough already to want to get the bloody thing back.”
He’d hoped she would laugh. Instead, she answered, “One more never hurts.” He thought that over, then nodded again.
Sir Horace Bragg looked up from the papers that, piled high on his desk, seemed to build a wall between him and the outer world. He smiled his lugubrious smile across that wall and said, “Good morning, Tom. You look ready to whip your weight in tigers today. I wish I could say the same.” “What now, sir?” Bushell asked.