Laura was surprised. She had only observed a rather cold, almost needling relationship between Sybil and her brother in the couple of times she had seen them together. She wondered if Sybil was not guilty of putting on the rose-tinted glasses of the bereaved, but she did not judge her for that. And then she wondered what it meant for Sybil’s marriage, if she could not talk to Toby. She simply said, however, how sorry she was.
‘At first I just couldn’t face seeing anyone,’ Sybil said. ‘It was a relief, burying myself in the countryside and helping with the evacuees. But I have to face reality now. Toby says there will be a general election quite soon, and he wants me around.’ People were coming back to London now that the end was in sight, she said, adding that it was such a pity that Laura and Edward would be leaving soon. Laura could not quite tell, in the formality of her tone, whether she was really sorry or not. Surely she would be glad to have her house back to herself, and indeed, over the days before their departure, Sybil seemed to be trying to do what she could to remind herself of its former splendour. She brought some of the rugs out of storage and had them laid through the big drawing room, but against their glossy warmth the dirty walls looked more depressing than ever, Laura thought.
And a couple of weeks after she returned to London, Sybil asked some of their friends round for drinks. It was still not the time to bring people together, Laura felt; the city was too chaotic, the mood too uncertain, with war not yet over, even if the endgame had begun. But there seemed to be a kind of imperative, for Sybil, in pretending that they could recapture the social ease of the past, and Laura tried to match her alacrity, sitting with her and Toby and Edward in the living room, a glass of Scotch and soda in her hand, as though she was looking forward to the evening.
Laura had met Stefan, she assumed for the last time, that afternoon. He had told her to meet him in a cinema – a new and unexpected instruction. It had been full and she had had difficulty finding him in the fourth row as instructed. Under the cover of the blaring newsreel he had told her the passwords that other contacts might use in America, and thanked her for trying with Blanchard, although even in the dark she felt his disappointment that the bug had not been fitted. Then his attention had turned back to the screen. She had never mentioned to Stefan what had happened to her that evening because of his failure to detain Blanchard; her mind was closing over the experience, burying it deep. And as the newsreel rolled in front of them that afternoon, she was reminded how trivial her own little actions would always be. There above them, in irrefutable black and white, the horrors of fascism, so much greater than anything she could ever had imagined, were being uncovered at last. A cold silence fell through the cinema as they watched the walking corpses. The heroism of the Soviet Army could now never be forgotten. Perhaps this was why Stefan had asked her to meet him here, so that together they could be swept back into certainty.
When Alistair came into the room that evening, complimenting Sybil on her dress, complimenting Edward on his new job, all smiles and dapper gestures, the memory of the night in the Dorchester stirred, and Laura felt the fear again in her stomach, but she kept her composure. She noted how Alistair spoke to her, as if they shared some complicity after those nights of drinking. When Toby said something about the election and the serious mood of the public, Alistair responded in an undertone to her that if the Germans couldn’t close the Dorchester, the Labour Party never would. That was the price she had to pay for making him take her about; his assumption that she was the social butterfly she had pretended to be.
But for some reason she still felt at ease with him; he was full of smiling confidence that evening. His novel had finally been published and the reviews had been prominent, even admiring. She had not liked the book; set in a dystopian future, it had shocked her in its obvious belief that the world was set on a path into misery. That seemed a strange view to take now that the world was in fact emerging from the fog of war. While she was reading it she had wondered, did he see everyone like that, like the people in his book – easily controlled, easily cowed? But now he was charming, exuding warmth and teasing her about the life she and Edward would have in Washington, imitating some American officer from the Dorchester and his belief that America was leader of the free world.
Just as she was laughing at what he said, Winifred came in and Laura got up. She wanted to find out what Winifred thought of her imminent departure, and the two of them stepped out onto the balcony that looked out over the huge square. It was not yet time for the blackout. They could stand there, facing away from the room, into the fading light, and Laura could tell Winifred how grateful she was, how she remembered the first time her cousin had brought her here.