Later, Laura thought she should have put him off with some light excuse, but at that moment she interpreted his wish to come over as a desire for her presence. Yes, she was lonely. Standing next to him the space between them seemed small. She felt a physical resonance, the memory of his hand on her back, on her wrist. ‘Of course, you are welcome, do come round,’ she said, but she did not catch his response as she went down into the subway.
Edward was in on time that evening, walking through the door like any husband, hat onto the stand, briefcase on the hall floor, into a house all cleaned up with a bunch of freesias on the dining-room table. Laura had not cooked a special meal, but she had made sure that there was enough chicken casserole in the oven and fruit salad in the icebox for three of them, if Joe did turn up. She didn’t mention the possibility to Edward; she started typing up some documents he had brought while he poured them both drinks. ‘Just lemonade tonight,’ he said when he brought them in. ‘What do you think?’
Laura returned the carriage with a bang. The words she had just typed, ‘the plan for atomic war under Trojan lays out 133 atom bombs hitting 70 Soviet cities, giving an expected loss of 2.7 million lives’ danced in her mind. ‘That’s a good idea – do you feel awful after last night?’
‘Pretty awful,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking—’
He was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. Even then, for some reason, Laura affected surprise, saying as she got up that she had forgotten that Joe had mentioned he might drop round. She pulled the typed document out of the typewriter and stuffed it and the originals into the drawer in the front of the desk. Not waiting to see Edward’s expression, she opened the door.
Joe came in full of bonhomie, carrying a bottle of red wine and a bottle of bourbon. ‘I couldn’t decide which we would prefer tonight, maybe one to start and the other to finish,’ he said. Laura didn’t take them, saying that they weren’t drinking that evening.
‘Nonsense, Laura – this is good stuff,’ said Edward, taking the bottles from Joe and putting them down on the table in the living room. ‘So, what brings you over, Joe?’
Edward seemed to have recovered, however briefly, from the horrors that had haunted him the previous night, and for that Laura was grateful. It was hard to keep up with the swinging of his moods these days, but for the first couple of hours of Joe’s company they were in the sweet spot, as they talked generally about the new ambassador, Oliver Franks, about his views on the likely stand that Britain would take in Iran, and how odd it was that the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, Franks’ sparring partner on Iran, had actually been Franks’ own student at Oxford. With this kind of conversation Laura was resigned to being rather at the edge of discussions, but she didn’t mind, as the evening seemed to go easily enough as they ate the casserole with the red wine, and Edward put some brandy on the table as they started on the fruit salad. Then Laura went to put coffee on as they went into the living room, and when she came in with the pot and cups on a tray, she saw that Joe had opened the bourbon he had brought.
‘That’s pretty dangerous brinkmanship, isn’t it?’ Joe was saying, and as Laura tuned into the conversation she realised that they were discussing Russia’s recent testing of nuclear weapons. There was nothing in Edward’s reaction to suggest any connection with what was happening thousands of miles away; he was as controlled, as non-committal, as ever. It was only the strain in her own mind that made her realise how weak his control might be.
‘On whose side?’ Edward said. That was his trick – she remembered first noticing it so long ago – to turn the question into another question, and wait for his interlocutor to elaborate.
As Laura poured the coffee she realised she had left the milk in the kitchen, and she stood up again. When she came back with it, she paused for a moment in the hallway to look at herself in the mirror and check her lipstick. It was a huge, gilt-framed mirror and behind her reflection she could see through the door of the living room, and to Joe sitting there. Something held her there; there is an enticing pull about looking into a scene without the knowledge of those you are watching. He was getting out his cigarettes and offering them to Edward, and Laura heard Edward saying that he couldn’t smoke those American ones, and heard his footsteps as he crossed the room to get his own cigarettes from the mantelpiece. As she watched, she saw Joe pour away his glass of bourbon into the glossy-leaved little palm that stood on the coffee table beside him.
She came back, remembering to smile, into the living room. ‘Sorry to take so long – coffee?’
‘You don’t buy that argument, then?’ Joe was saying in response to something Edward had said.