Vicary swallowed the last of his wine and refilled their glasses. He said, "No--not really."
"My God, Alfred Vicary, but you are a terrible liar. How do you manage in your new line of work?"
"All right, yes. I do think about it." He thought: when was the last time? The morning in Kent, after composing a Double Cross message for his false agent code-named Partridge. "I catch myself thinking about it at the damnedest times."
"I lied to David, you know. I always told him he was the first. But I'm glad it was you." She fingered the base of her wineglass and looked out the window. "It was so fast--just a moment or two. But when I remember it now it lasts for hours."
"Yes. I know what you mean."
She looked back at him. "Do you still have your house in Chelsea?"
"I'm told it's still there. I haven't been there since 1940," Vicary added, jokingly.
She turned from the window and looked Vicary directly in the eyes. She leaned forward and whispered, "I wish you would take me there now and make love to me in your bed."
"I'd like that too, Helen. But you'd only break my heart again. And at my age, I don't think I could get over you a second time."
Helen's face lost all expression and her voice, when it finally came, was flat and toneless. "My God, Alfred, when did you become such a coldhearted bastard?"
Her words sounded familiar to him. Then he remembered that Boothby, taking him by the arm after the interrogation of Peter Jordan, had asked him the same thing.
A shadow fell between them. It passed over her face, darkened it, then moved on. She sat very quiet and very still. Her eyes dampened. She blinked away the tears and regained her composure. Vicary felt like an idiot. The whole thing had gone too far--spun out of control. He was a fool to see her. Nothing good could come of it. The silence was like grinding metal now. He absently beat his breast pockets for his half-moon glasses and tried to think of some excuse to get away. Helen sensed his uneasiness. Still facing the window, she said, "I've kept you too long. I know you should be getting back."
"Yes. I really should. I'm sorry."
Helen was still talking to the window. "Don't be seduced by them. When the war is over, get rid of those awful gray suits and go home to your books. I liked you better then." Vicary said nothing, just looked at her. He leaned down to kiss her cheek but she lifted her face to him and, holding his neck with her fingers, kissed him lightly on the mouth. She smiled and said, "I hope you change your mind--and soon."
"I may, actually."
"Good."
"Good-bye, Helen."
"Good-bye, Alfred."
She took his hand. "I have one more thing to say to you. Whatever you do, don't trust Basil Boothby, darling. He's poison. Never, ever, turn your back on him."
And then he remembered what she had said about her one adulterous lover: He was David in different clothes.
No, Helen, he thought. He was Boothby.
He walked. If he could have run he would have. He walked without direction, without destination. He walked until the scar tissue in his knee burned like a brand. He walked until his smoker's cough sounded like consumption. The leafless trees of Green Park twisted with the wind. The rushing air sounded like white water. The wind lifted his unbuttoned mackintosh and nearly tore it from his body. He clutched it at the throat, and it flew from his shoulders like a cape. The blackout descended like a veil. In the darkness he bumped into a brassy American. Hey, watch it, Mac! Vicary muttered an apology--"So sorry, forgive me"--then regretted it. Still our bloody country.
He felt as though he were being conveyed--as though his movements were no longer his own. He suddenly remembered the hospital in Sussex where he recovered from his wounds. The boy who'd been shot in the spine and could no longer move his arms and legs. The way he described to Vicary the floating numbness he felt when the doctors moved his dead limbs for him. God, Helen! How could you? Boothby! God, Helen! Vile images of their lovemaking shot through his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to squeeze them away. Bloody hell! Bloody hell! Anyone but Basil Boothby! He marveled at the absurd way in which one part of his life had folded over and touched another. Helen and Boothby--absurd. Too absurd to contemplate. But it was true, he knew it.