“I can’t even begin to tell you. I don’t suppose you’ve got some kind of motorboat handy, have you?”
The thing about Philip, he didn’t ask why, or how. He gathered the necessary details and told Iris he’d be there as quickly as he could. He showed only a single sign of humanity—or maybe this matter-of-factness was itself one giant example of humanity—when Iris, by now on the brink of tears, thanked him for his kindness.
“All you ever have to do is ask me, my dear,” he said.
Iris, Sasha, and Aunt Vivian returned to Honeysuckle Cottage just as the sun cracked pink above the eastern horizon. Aunt Vivian climbed the stairs without a word and found her bedroom. Sasha had already downed most of a bottle of gin from Abingdon’s private stock, and Iris had to support him up each step—not an easy task.
For once, shame had silenced him. Davenport declined to press any charges. He was at the hospital now, having his leg set, while Burgess and Philip Beauchamp dealt with the telephone calls and paperwork, to ensure there was no international diplomatic incident. There was nothing left for Sasha to do but sleep off the champagne and the gin and the shame and then figure out how to salvage what was left of his career.
Iris guided him into the bathroom first and told him to use the toilet, to change his clothes. She left to fetch his pajamas from the dresser and handed them through the crack in the door. As she turned away, she heard him vomit.
Eventually he staggered to the bedroom. She rolled him into bed and threw the blankets over him. Though she was exhausted, she didn’t climb in beside him. What was the point? The children would be up soon, and anyway he stank of vomit and piss and gin and shame. Instead she turned for the door. The sound of her name stopped her.
“What is it? Do you need something else?”
Sasha stared at her with bleary blue eyes. His cheeks were streaked with tears. “I need to tell you something.”
“Tell me tomorrow.”
Sasha shook his head painfully and beckoned her close. “Can’t wait.”
Iris trudged back to the bed. He crooked his finger and she leaned a little closer, though the stench of him turned her stomach.
“Well?”
“I slept with Ruth.”
Iris’s head jerked. She stepped back. “What did you say?”
“The night you were in the hospital, after the accident. The first night. And the one after that. Maybe another time? I can’t remember, sort of blurs together now. Not sure why, it just happened.”
For some reason, Iris didn’t feel anything at all. The night had numbed her—so many shocks—this was just another one. It just happened, he’d said. Maybe it was a dream. She tilted her head and stared at him as if he were a foreign object in her bed, a bug or something.
“It was you I really wanted,” he said. “If that makes any difference.”
Iris lifted her hand and slapped him once on the cheek. His head snapped back and he smiled at her, pleased. She slapped him again and walked away—returned to the bathroom and cleaned up the mess—he’d aimed for the toilet, at least, and mostly succeeded—while she ran a hot bath.
Aunt Vivian slept until eleven, and Sasha stayed in bed until nearly three in the afternoon. The weather had turned drizzly again, and Philip telephoned just after lunch to update Iris on Davenport’s condition.
“He’ll be all right,” Philip reassured her. “Spiral fracture of the left tibia.”
“Whatever that means.”
“It means he’ll be all right. Your husband can thank his stars he attacked a military man who knows his duty. He’s not pressing charges, nor filing a report. I’ve received assurances from Abingdon and the local constabulary.”
“You’re an angel. I can’t even begin to thank you.”
“Believe me, I’m not doing it for Digby’s sake.”
Iris lowered her voice. “I don’t deserve you, Philip.”
“You’ve got me anyway. Let me know how you’re getting on, all right?”
Iris hung up the phone and returned to the study, which had been put to rights without comment by Mrs. Betts. Jack asked whether Daddy was sick, and Kip said, “No, stupid. He’s just drunk.”
“Kip!” Iris exclaimed.
Tiny put a consoling arm around Kip. “My daddy gets drunk, too.”
“Well, I’m never going to get drunk. I’m never going to touch a drop,” Kip said.
Aunt Vivian snorted. “Funny, that’s what they all say.”
At last Iris heard her husband stirring. The water ran in the bathroom—footfalls and thumps and clatters—doors open and shut. She went up to check on his progress and found him standing in front of the dresser, concentrating on his necktie. He looked remarkably well for a man recovering from the bender to end all benders—skin pink, hair brushed back wet, trousers and shirt correctly buttoned.
“Was it true about Ruth?” she asked.
He gives the tie a last tug. “Yes. I’m sorry. I never meant to tell you.”
“You’re going up to London, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Say good-bye to the boys. They’ll miss you.”
Sasha turned from the dresser and looked down at her. He’d always looked down at her from that height, her spindly husband. He lifted his hand to touch her, but she slapped it away. He sighed and walked past her to pick up his briefcase and walk carefully down the stairs. She listened to his voice, talking to the boys, and stared out the window toward the sea.
At last, the house was still. The boys were in bed, and so were the girls. Mrs. Betts had retired to her room—God only knew what she thought of all this, because she didn’t let on—and Aunt Vivian was reading a book in the library.
“I’m going for a walk,” Iris said.
“Good for you. Take as long as you need. All night, if you want.”
Iris studied her aunt’s blue eyes, her blond hair pulled back from her elegant cheekbones, and she thought how much Ruth looked like Aunt Vivian, while Iris resembled their mother.
“Thank you,” she said.
She walked out the kitchen door and into the cool, clear night that smelled of hay. The clouds had moved on, the stars sprang from the black sky. A slender moon lit the path before her. When she reached Highcliffe, she circled around back and rapped on the French door that led from the study, where Philip always sat at his desk in the evening. He looked startled to see her.
Then his face relaxed, as much as a face so ravaged could express tranquility.
Ruth
July 1952
Moscow
The hospital’s like any American hospital, not that I have much experience of hospitals. Actually, it reminds me of the one in Rome, where Iris lay in that bed with her cast and bandages and her mournful expression. Bare white walls, doctors and nurses who don’t speak your language, a sense of panic that nobody really knows what they’re doing.
And lo! There’s Sasha Digby in the waiting room, looking destroyed. He sits hunched on a chair, hands plunged into his hair. “How is she?” I ask him.
“It’s my fault. I’m a beast, aren’t I?”
“It takes two.”
“She wanted another one so much. How could I—but I should have—”
“Don’t beat yourself up. She’ll be all right. She always pulls through.”
Fox is all business again. He finds the nurse for us. Even though he has to pretend he doesn’t know more than a few words of idiot tourist Russian, he’s at least able to communicate who we are and why we’re there, before Kedrov comes rushing down the hallway.
“Mrs. Fox! At last.”
Funny, he seems genuinely concerned. I presume he’s just worried about the blow to Soviet prestige should this American woman die in childbirth in a Communist hospital. I follow him down the white corridor to Iris’s room at the end. Along the way, I catch glimpses of other patients, other rooms, all of them serene and private, and it’s only later that I learn this is a special hospital for party officials and their families.