Laura looked out of the window, past Valance’s face. She made a gesture of submission and denial, a big breath and a sigh, and told him that she had no idea how he could say such things about Peter, he was such a nice man, she hadn’t even met him until she came to Geneva.
‘Do you want us to put real pressure on you? I’ve said we don’t want a trial, especially while your daughter is so young.’ He then said something about the Rosenbergs, who were clinging on, still on death row, but Laura had found some breath at last, and was speaking over him, speaking for all the world as though she was on trial, saying clearly that most of what he had just said to her was a mystery to her, that neither she nor her husband had ever done anything wrong, but that she did understand he wanted her to talk to Peter Gillett. She would do that, and would tell him what he said, although she didn’t think she would find out anything useful because she thought they were all barking up the wrong tree. And one day, when her husband was found, everything would be clear.
‘Failure isn’t really your best option,’ he said. It seemed that the interview was at an end.
The weather was so changeable in Geneva; clouds were coming over and Laura was shivering in the wind as she walked down the streets where the cars were too loud, the people stepped too close to her. She went into a café on the corner, almost empty but for a couple of middle-aged men reading newspapers, but she ordered coffee rather than brandy. The story that Valance had just peddled seemed full of holes. She could not believe Peter had been any kind of messenger in the drama. He was too much out of the loop, here in Geneva: how would he have heard what the cryptographers in Washington were doing or who had been given the task of breaking Edward that week in May? Valance was sending her up a cul de sac by talking about him, but she was aware that even if it was all nonsense, and even if Valance knew it was all nonsense, the demand for some information in return for her safety might indeed be real. The request to go to America had not even been considered; she was expected to stay here and help MI5 – that was clear. Maybe her failure on this first task was a given, so that she would feel she had to do better the next time.
And who would blame her for giving in? Just as Laura had done anything once upon a time to save herself and Edward, so now she would undoubtedly do anything to save herself and Rosa. She could hardly bear to recall the horror of the end of their time in Washington. You knew nothing, she reminded herself. You planned nothing. You only asked for safety. They did everything. But there is irreducible guilt that never goes away, however much one goes on weaving the excuses that enable one to carry on and take the next step and the next through a banal life, one foot in front of the other, slow, unremarkable, through the streets of London or Washington or Geneva. The weight of fear settled on Laura again as she walked: she was just a tiny thing, a fly in a web whose corners she could not see.
As she came into the apartment, Rosa came and clung to her legs. Above her burble Laura heard the telephone ringing, and she picked it up as Aurore came to distract Rosa. Archie’s voice came on the line; it was the first time he had telephoned. Yes, Yugoslavia was so interesting … yes, winter in Morocco … but back here now it was spring … and what was Laura planning to do in the summer …?
‘Well, we aren’t quite sure yet.’ Laura tried to make her voice light; it was not so bad, she wanted to convey, quite fun, living the drifting life that she did now. ‘Mother might go over to Boston. But I’m not sure that I want to go there …’ She was not ready to tell Archie that she was not yet allowed to go so far.
‘I’m taking a house in Italy for the summer,’ Archie said on the crackly line. ‘Cyril’s house, as he’s going off to India on some mad expedition. Why not join me? Down on the Adriatic Coast.’
‘I do come with others, you know …’
‘There’s masses of room – that’s the thing, really: too much room. I’ll see if Winifred and Peter can come too, for some of the time. Do come, with your daughter as well.’
The invitation could hardly have come at a better time, Laura thought. When she told her mother that evening that the consulate would not give immediate permission to travel to America, she was able to move on to the invitation to Pesaro and tell her that she thought she could probably get them to agree to that.
‘I’ll go to Boston for the summer, then, and see Ellen,’ Mother said, clearly relieved. ‘Tell me more about this Archie.’