‘I couldn’t help it – where is Stefan?’
She said it before she remembered the prohibition on direct questions. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t respond.
‘I have something to deliver,’ she muttered. ‘What should I do?’
‘Small?’
‘Very small.’
‘Use the drop.’
‘Too precious. I can’t risk it. Can I pass it now?’
‘Not at this meeting, I can’t be sure you weren’t followed. Next time. Come in three days.’
Laura tried to tell him that it was urgent, but he was already getting up. She was left there, with everything unsaid and the film still in her bag, powerless to stop him.
The next time, they passed the film in the way that Stefan had taught her, placing it in the newspaper that she left between them. Laura tried to mutter an explanation. This is it, she said in broken whispers, the drawings, the night-fighting, but who knows what chaos in the east had drawn Stefan away from London, and this man seemed ill at ease, as if Laura might present some danger to him. He stayed silent for a while, and when there was nobody around them he spoke two sentences only. ‘You must go on ice for a while. There have been too many breaches of security, too many missed meetings.’
‘So long as you give that to them.’ The man showed no interest in the film, but it was now in his hands and Laura walked back through the scarred city free from it. As she waited at a traffic light at Marble Arch, she realised gas was seeping from a mains somewhere and she covered her nose and mouth against the smell.
16
As the months of bombardment went on, Laura became more and more conscious of the silences that fell between her and Edward when they were alone. She wanted, so much, to talk to him about the political situation. When would the promised conflict between capitalism and communism become clear, or would this grim struggle between fascism and imperialism, both sliding more and more deeply into darkness, go on interminably? Sometimes she tried to bring their conversations towards the political, in her desire for elucidation, but always a barrier seemed to close between them when she did so.
Still, there was no physical barrier between them, and Laura found Edward’s constant desire for her as sweet as ever. One night he came into the bedroom as she was getting undressed and wordlessly pushed her onto the bed, face-down, so that she could not even see him. She felt her desire rise to meet his, as always, but something in her stood outside them, and she saw how oddly aggressive their coupling must seem. Afterwards, in the melting sensation that followed, they lay holding one another. ‘It’s as Lawrence had it,’ he said, ‘two single equal stars, in balance.’
Laura was silent for a while, thinking of what he had just said. ‘Stars?’
‘This balance – it goes beyond love.’
She asked him why it had to go beyond love, and felt his unease begin, as he struggled away from her a little, reaching for his cigarettes. As so often, she recognised how much he disliked questions, and told herself that she must stop pressing him. Hadn’t she promised herself from the start that she could show him that she could understand him without interrogating him? If he believed that they were two equal stars, that was surely wonderful enough for her. She turned the conversation.
‘Will you take me out again?’ she asked him. ‘It’s my birthday next week – can we go out for dinner?’