It fell on her like a blow – the staggering gait, the sour breath, the clumsy movements – everything she thought was behind him. She went up to him and pushed him, her hands on his shoulders, not knowing what she was doing.
‘Why? Why can’t you stop?’ she was saying, pointlessly, angrily, but instead of coming in, he put his arms around her there in the hall and drew her out with him, back out into the front garden. It was freezing cold for April, with a damp fog in the air. Laura resisted. It was too cold, she was tired. He was maddening. Was it the Rosenbergs’ death sentence that had tripped him over the edge? Was it the threat of atomic destruction in Korea? She could not bear it. He had to learn to survive in the world as it was. He gripped her arm fiercely and pulled her to the gate, she went draggingly along, and then he put his mouth close to her ear. She still could not understand what was behind the violence of his movements – and then she realised: he was afraid to speak in the house.
‘They know.’
He was drunk, he was whispering, but nothing could hide the force of what he was saying. That they had known since the new year. No, they did not know for sure, but they suspected. She shuddered with the cold, and clung to him as he went on speaking. ‘It was when Archie said something in a meeting that made no sense to me that I realised – I’ve been pushed out of the loop. I’m not getting the blue folders any more. They’ve downgraded my security clearance. I thought I’d get to the bottom of that, brazen it out somehow if they knew about some leak. But this lunchtime, there was a tail on me. Every time I left the office he was there; I zigzagged around Green Park a few times, thought I’d lost him when I went into the Reform after work, but he was still there when I came out. They trailed me to the station. No one at this end – they’d stick out a mile in the village – but maybe they’re listening …’ They turned to look at the house, which loomed up over them in the darkness.
So it comes back, the fear that dazzles your mind, that grips your stomach. Laura was back again in the medium she had lived in for so long in Washington. Terror makes your breath shallow, it makes your jaw clench, the sweat break under your arms. Stupid, she thought to herself, stupid to think you could live a different life, stupid to think you could nurture shoots of revived love all the way to their fruit. Stupid. She leant against Edward.
‘Stefan says we might have to run,’ he said. Laura’s hands were on her belly, and Edward’s hands went round them. It was only just over a month to go. ‘I know we can’t.’
‘You must go, if it comes to it.’
‘I can’t go without you.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ They went back into the house, and she wondered, as they re-entered and Edward began to take off his coat, whether she had put him in danger by withdrawing from the work. If he had been meeting Stefan day in, day out, passing documents, picking them up again, how much more obvious had he become? He was not as drunk as he had seemed at first, and they went through to the kitchen where Laura made cocoa and they drank it like children, with a box of cookies between them, munching and sipping. There was nothing on the radio so late. Laura told Edward about Monica. He already knew from Archie. It was sad, he said. Laura said she was thinking of the children, and Edward nodded. At last they went to bed, and lay the way they did now, with Edward’s front against her back, so that her belly was not in their way.
Laura turned her head, and whispered into his cheek. ‘Tell Stefan that if he needs to see me, I will.’
The next time Laura went into town, just after she gave up her ticket at Victoria station, she heard someone say, with quiet clarity, at her shoulder, ‘Pigeon.’
She went on walking, but her steps found pace with him. ‘You know why I had to stop.’ Stefan said nothing, and for a moment she thought he was about to go. ‘Don’t use him again – use me.’
‘If someone rings you, just rings, three rings and then stops, take the next train to Victoria. That’s where we’ll find you.’
They went on walking for a few paces, and then he spoke again from just behind her. ‘If we have to take Virgil over, we’ll take you too. We won’t forget.’
‘What are our chances?’
There was no reply. Laura went on walking for a bit, and when she turned he was nowhere to be seen.