“She’s also highly skilled, and paid handsomely for her services. Is that enough for you?”
Violet’s ear lies exactly over Lionel’s heart, which beats in the slow and measured thuds of recent climax. She counts them, one by one, waiting expectantly for each blow to strike her eardrum.
Lionel maneuvers his body around hers, until they face each other, breath on breath. “Is it, Violet? Is it enough? Do I have your faith yet?”
She wants to say no. She wants to place a square of gold foil between her heart and his, so she can’t hear it anymore, can’t feel it in her ears and bones, can’t let it beat against her logic. But her body is too subdued by him, her needful flesh too triumphant over his. She is too soldered to Lionel. The line has been crossed; it was crossed days ago, at the precise moment when she leaned into Lionel and accepted his kiss amid the roses. She knows that. It’s already too late. It no longer matters whether he’s true or false. He’s here, that’s all.
“Violet, I need you. I need your faith in me. I can’t live without it.”
“You want me to trust you blindly.”
“That’s what faith is, Violet. Knowing what you can’t prove.”
She laughs sadly. “Lionel, I’m a scientist.”
“I know you are. I’m asking you anyway.”
Violet stares at Lionel’s lips, still warm from her kisses. In the cramped space, she stretches around their damp bodies to pry the gold ring from her left hand. She perches it atop the crooked last finger of his right hand, just above the topmost joint.
? ? ?
VIOLET WAKES sometime later in the same reassuring nook of Lionel’s body, while his heart strikes the same assured cadence against her ear. But his body is tense, his breath watchful in her hair. “What is it?” she whispers.
“The train,” he whispers back. “It’s stopped.”
Vivian
One minute I’m cracking wise in an airless interrogation room at London Airport, the next I’m speeding down the A4 in a police car, lights flashing panic, siren practicing scales. What delight, hmm? This was London, it should have been raining, but it wasn’t: the sky was picnic-perfect, blue space and puffballs. The traffic parted obediently before us.
“Far more convenient than a taxi,” I said to Mr. Peach, who sat next to me in the backseat, looking as if he wanted to spring a set of handcuffs on me. Not in a good way. “I hope you’re not going to bill me for the fare.”
He went on tapping the leather envelope against his knee.
“Not a talkative chappie. I get it. We’re not all at our best in the morning. Fag?” I held out a cigarette. He shook his head. “At least you can hear me. I so dislike it when people ignore me, don’t you?”
No answer from Mr. Peach on that one.
I lit a cigarette and cracked the window without asking. Outside, the dreary suburbs passed by, wretched terraces and unhappy semis, backed by gardens in the last gasp of November dilapidation. I hadn’t been to London in years, not since my parents took me to Europe the last time, the summer before I started Bryn Mawr. It had been late June, and I wore my one woolen sweater all week, before we departed in relief for Calais and tossed our umbrellas overboard into the channel. Besides the rain, I remembered the long rows of identical white pillar–fronted houses, the merry chaos of streets, the fragrant ceremony of tea in the afternoon. One morning we took the train out to Blenheim. The clouds parted magically, and when we walked through the gardens, we found the exact spot where Winston Churchill had proposed to his wife. My father had got down on one knee and took Mums’s hand, and she, all blushy, had put her hand to her bosom and said Oh, Charles. Tiny wanted to take a picture, but by the time she got her Brownie all ready to go, the moment had passed. The clouds were gathering back together in a dull ceiling, and the first drops were smacking against our hats.
No sign of rain today. I finished my cigarette and smashed it into the tiny ashtray in the door, and when I looked up again we were speeding into central London. “Not to put my vulgar American curiosity on full display, but where are you taking me? Please say it’s Scotland Yard. Such an honor.”
“No.” Tap tap tap went the envelope against Mr. Peach’s knee. “It’s not Scotland Yard.”
Another flash of buildings, a sudden cataclysmic stop, and hustle bustle went Vivian out of the car and up some stairs and through a door and more stairs, all of it surrounded by strapping lads who looked as if postwar rationing hadn’t blighted their growing years a bit. “Just inside here, if you will, Miss Schuyler,” said Mr. Peach, and I went into another picturesque interrogation room.
“What about my suitcase,” I began, but as I turned to address Mr. Peach directly, the door closed in front of me with one of those awful metallic clangs that tells you you’re going nowhere in a hurry, Miss Schuyler, and you might as well sit down and have a cigarette and hope that someone in this joint knows how to make a decent cup of coffee.