The worst day of all the weeks of teaching was when Stefan drove her in his own little grey car deep into the Bedfordshire countryside. They parked up on the side of a road and then walked up a track into a wood. ‘Private: No Entry’ it said, but Stefan showed her a place where the wire fence was cut and told her the owner was expecting them on his land that day, so they would not be interrupted. They walked further and further into the beech wood. In other circumstances one would have noticed the beauty: the layers of overlaid green above them and the ground made soft by a carpet of years and years of leaf-fall. Finally they stopped, and Stefan came to the point.
He took a pistol from an inside pocket and told Laura it was time she learnt to protect herself. If she had ever thought she might say no, and put a stop to his strange games, this might have been the moment, but it all seemed so unreal: he in his homburg, she in the yellow summer dress that she had chosen because she was hoping to meet Edward later; the two of them standing there as if they were meeting for a picnic. But there was the dissonant element in the picture: the gun, with the shifting sunlight glancing off it. He showed her how the safety catch was lifted, how the trigger was pulled, handed it to her and asked her to aim for a certain tree.
It was cold, heavier than it looked, and the report was louder than she expected. After she had fired it, she stood with her hands by her side. If she had ever disappointed him, this was the time. Over and over again she tried to hit the target, but failed every time. With each failure the awkwardness grew, and she realised it looked as if she were being deliberately clumsy. Finally he took the pistol away from her and put it back in his pocket. He lit a cigarette and offered her one. They stood there, smoking, listening to the alarm calls of the birds throughout the wood. ‘I hope you never have to shoot your way out of trouble,’ he said.
Was she wrong, or was there a note of humour in his voice? She looked at him. Up to now she had been nervous and formal with him, but she tried a small smile. ‘Stefan,’ she said, ‘I’m never going to be a heroine.’ She meant a heroine in the kind of film where girls aim pistols and make quick getaways.
He gave her a little bow. ‘To the Soviet Union, all who risk their lives for revolution are heroes.’ It was a rhetorical answer, and yet it seemed to put them both at ease. They were both nothing, he seemed to imply, and yet they were both everything, in a bigger picture. They walked back to the car more companionably. ‘I have to drop you at the St Pancras station,’ Stefan said. He often spoke like that – I have to, you must, it is necessary that – without any explanation.
‘Don’t let me forget the film,’ Laura said, taking it out of her bag as the car started up.
‘You have some more? They say your photographs are good, very clear. Make sure you don’t cut off the left margin, sometimes you angle a bit to the right.’
Laura considered that. She had not expected this praise, but she had already found, almost to her own surprise, that she liked using the little camera; of all the jobs and instructions she had been given, it was the only one that made sense to her. After Stefan had dropped her off at St Pancras, she walked down to Tottenham Court Road to a camera shop she had seen. She had decided she wanted to buy a proper camera, for herself. The tiny Minox was fine for the work she had to do, but it was no good for ordinary photography, and she fancied that it would be useful cover for her – if anyone found the Minox on her – if she could present herself as a real amateur photographer. She spent some time talking to the man in the shop. He was patronising towards her, but she didn’t mind, and in the end she spent a lot more than she could really afford on a Leica. He told her it was a beautiful machine, and she could believe it, as she put it back in its glossy leather case and handed over the money for it.
After that, as the dusk began to fall, she walked over to Edward’s apartment. His flatmate had recently moved out, and Edward had made no move to find someone else to share with. He was already there when she arrived, and passed her a packet of papers. As he fixed drinks for them, she pulled down the blackout blinds, moved the 100-watt lamp she had bought previously into position, and started to photograph them, one by one – sometimes taking more than one picture of a document if she wasn’t sure that she was getting everything in, and being careful to leave more of a margin on the left.
As soon as she had finished and started to put the papers back in the packet, she felt Edward’s hands around her waist. With a sense of luxuriant surrender, she turned to him.
Afterwards, as she was washing and dressing, he was standing there going through his post. ‘Look, a postcard from Giles.’ He was smiling. ‘Says they’ve moved his outfit – he can’t say where, but he says it’s not far from my childhood home. Tell you what, I’m owed a few days off, we should go down to Sutton, and I’ll get him to come down too. I think Toby and Sybil will be there as well, as the House will be on recess. But there’s masses of room.’ It felt like a reward he was offering her, an escape from the drudgery and secrecy of London.
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