Write them a filthy letter, Marjory advised.
But to what effect? Quilley wondered miserably. And to what address?
Talk to Brian, she suggested.
All right, Brian was his solicitor, so what the hell was Brian supposed to do?
Wandering back into the house, Quilley poured himself a stiff one and turned on the television, only to get the early-evening news with film of the latest beastly bombing somewhere. Ambulances, foreign policemen carting off the injured. But Quilley was in no mood for such frivolous distractions. They actually ransacked Charlie's file, he kept repeating to himself. A client's, dammit. In my office. And son of old Quilley sits by and sleeps his lunch off while they do it! He hadn't been so put out for years.
eight
If she dreamed, she had no knowledge of it when she woke. Or perhaps, like Adam, she woke and found the dream true, because the first thing she saw was a glass of fresh orange juice by her bed, and the second, Joseph striding purposefully about the room, pulling open cupboards, drawing back the curtains to let in the sunshine. Pretending to be still asleep, Charlie watched him through half-closed eyes, as she had watched him on the beach. The line of his wounded back. The first light frost of age touching the sides of his black hair. The silk shirt again, with its gold furnishings.
"What's the time?" she asked.
"Three o'clock." He gave a tug of the curtain. "In the afternoon. You have slept enough. We must get on our way."
And a gold neck chain, she thought; with the medallion tucked inside the shirt.
"How's the mouth?" she asked.
"Alas, it appears that I shall never sing again." He crossed to an old painted wardrobe and extracted a blue kaftan, which he laid on the chair. She saw no marks on his face, only heavy rings of tiredness beneath his eyes. He stayed up, she thought, recalling his absorption with the papers on his desk; he's been finishing his homework.
"You remember our conversation before you went to bed this morning, Charlie? When you get up, I would like you please to put on this dress, also the new underclothes you will find in the box here. I prefer you best in blue today and your hair brushed long. No knots."
"Plaits."
He ignored the correction. "These clothes are my gift to you and it is my pleasure to advise you what to wear and how to look. Sit up, please. Take a thorough look at the room."
She was naked. Clutching the sheet to her throat, she cautiously sat up. A week ago, on the beach, he could have studied her body to his heart's content. That was a week ago.
"Memorise everything around you. We are secret lovers and this room is where we spent the night. It happened as it happened. We were reunited in Athens, we came to this house and found it empty. No Marty, no Mike, nobody but ourselves."
"So who are you?"
"We parked the car where we parked it. The porch light was burning as we arrived. I unlocked the front door, we ran together hand in hand up the broad staircase."
"What about luggage?"
"Two pieces. My briefcase, your shoulder bag. I carried both."
"Then how did you hold my hand?"
She thought she was outguessing him, but he was pleased by her precision.
"The shoulder bag with its broken strap was under my right arm. My grip was in the right hand. I ran on your right side, my left hand was free. We found the room exactly as it is now, everything prepared. We were scarcely through the door before we embraced each other. We could not contain our desire a second longer."
With two steps he was at the bed, rummaging among the tumbled bedclothes on the floor until he found her blouse, which he held out for her to see. It was ripped at every button-hole and two buttons were missing.
"Frenzy," he explained as flatly as if frenzy were the day of the week. "Is that the word?"
"It's one of them."
"Frenzy then."
He tossed aside the blouse and allowed himself a strict smile. "You want coffee?"
"Coffee would be great."
"Bread? Yoghurt? Olives?"
"Coffee will do fine." He had reached the door as she called after him, in a louder voice: "Sorry I swiped you, Jose. You should have launched one of those Israeli counterstrikes and felled me before I thought of it."
The door closed, she heard him stride away down the passage. She wondered whether he would ever come back. Feeling utterly unreal, she stepped gingerly from the bed. It's pantomime, she thought--Goldilocks in the bears' house. The evidence of their imagined revelry lay all round her: a vodka bottle, two-thirds full, floating in an ice bucket. Two glasses, used. A bowl of fruit, two plates complete with apple peel and grape pips. The red blazer draped over a chair. The smart black leather grip with side pockets, part of every budding executive's virility kit. Hanging from the door, a karate-style kimono, Hermès of Paris--his again, heavy black silk. In the bathroom, her own schoolgirl's sponge-bag cuddled up beside his calf-skin holdall. Two towels were offered; she used the dry one. Her blue kaftan, when she examined it, turned out to be rather pretty, in a heavy cotton with a high, demure neckline and the shop's own tissue paper still inside it: Zelide, Rome and London. The underclothes were high-class tart's stuff, black and her size. On the floor, a brand-new leather shoulder bag and a pair of smart flat-soled sandals. She tried one on. It fitted. She dressed and was brushing out her hair when Joseph marched back into the room bearing a tray with coffee. He could be heavy, and he could be so light you'd think they'd lost the soundtrack. He was somebody with a wide range of stealth.
"You look excellent, I would say," he remarked, placing the tray on the table.
"Excellent!"
"Beautiful. Enchanting. Radiant. You have seen the orchids?"
She hadn't, but she saw them now and her stomach turned over the way it had on the Acropolis: a sprig of gold and russet with a small white envelope propped against the vase. Deliberately, she finished her hair, then picked the little envelope from its perch and took it to the chaise lounge, where she sat down. Joseph remained standing. Lifting the flap, she drew out a plain card with the words "I love you" written in a sloping, un-English hand, and the familiar signature, "M."
"Well? What does it remind you of?"
"You know damn well what it reminds me of," she snapped as, far too late, she made that connection in her memory, as well.
"So tell me."
"Nottingham, the Barrie Theatre. York, the Phoenix. Stratford East, the Cockpit. You, crouching in the front row making cow eyes at me."
"The same handwriting?"
"The same hand, the same message, the same flowers."
"You know me as Michel, ‘M' for Michel." Opening the smart black grip, he began swiftly packing his clothes into it. "I am all you ever desired," he said, without even looking at her. "To do the job, you don't just have to remember it, you have to believe it and feel it and dream it. We are building a new reality, a better one."
She put aside the card and poured herself some coffee, playing deliberately slow against his haste.
"Who says it's a better one?" she said.