She was not into public-service sex. She was not available to the Germans, the Israelis and the Italians, who came to liaise for a few days at Thames House. She was not a convenient bicycle for men far from home. The American was as lonely and as diffident as herself, and hid it behind the gruff all-knowing professionalism, as she did. She had known they would end up there, on her bed, when she had suggested brusquely that she'd cook him supper. It was what she'd thought she needed after the long drive down from Derby, with the girl preying on her mind. In her car, outside the door as she'd fished in her bag for the keys, inside when she'd brought him the big whisky, in her bedroom where she'd led him by the hand, he'd looked like a scared cat in a corner. He was above her, going so slowly as if terrified of failing her, and talking.
You've got to have nerve when you get into this game, and you have to be prepared to take casualties. The young fellow -Markham he doesn't have the nerve, doesn't accept that foot-soldiers get hurt. You've got to go for broke we weren't prepared to at Khe Sanh, nor the French at Dien Bien Phu. We lost, they lost, but the principle was right."
She didn't give a tinker's toss for Khe Sanh and Dien Bien Phu. It was a relief to have the smell of a man with her, his weight on her, and the size of a man in her. She moved as slowly as he did and she dreaded the end of it. She didn't care that he talked.
"You know, Cathy, I think the worm has turned."
She squeezed him. She raked his back with her short nails that she never bothered to paint, as other women did. She laughed out loud.
"Are we off goats?"
"You are a lovely, fine woman, and I regret, I apologize, I'm not doing much good for you. We are on to worms."
"Tell me about worms."
She heaved up against him, against his bones and the wide flab of his stomach. Too long since she had known it, the pleasure seeping through her, and she thrust again, and she heard her own moan, and she was not lasting, and he was quickening and it was to her, lonely each day and each night, a little piece of pleasure that had no future.
"Worms can turn. The defence is in place. The guns are covering the goat. The predator has to come. It is not acceptable to the predator that he goes back to his lair without a kill. He can't bug out, Cathy, can't go back to Tehran with an empty gut and the odds against him are stacked higher, and the marksmen are waiting for him. It's turned, that's the feeling in my water… turned… advantage lost… what I say… Christ, Cathy…"
He gasped and cried out. She held him. She knew that she would never hear from him, nor of him, again. The flight would go. He looked down at her with devotion. She pushed him off.
"I'm hungry. Come on, let's eat."
She went naked, as if the shyness was shed, to the kitchen, and heaved open the fridge. It would be instant bloody curry out of the microwave. She heard him call, tired, with a quaver in his voice, from the bedroom.
"The worm, might have, might just have, turned…"
"Please, I'm saying it again and again. Don't go. I can't walk away. Once was one time too many. I'm nothing if you've gone. Do you think I haven't thought about it, going? Packing and running? I have to stand and face it, for what I did. It's nearly over, nearly finished… Please stay, please."
Perry held her against him. He wondered if the detective or the men in the hut were listening. He clung, in the darkness, to Meryl.
The cups and saucers for the coffee, the biscuit plates and the glasses for the fruit juice had been stacked on trays and carried away into the kitchenette area. The chairs scraped the wooden floor as the audience settled. Gratifyingly, the hail was almost filled, but the Wildlife Group always attracted the village's best response.
Peggy was busy rounding up the last of the lost crockery. Emma Carstairs was fussing with the blinds, el'~ecking they would keep out the nearest glow from the street-lamp. Barry fiddled with the beam from the slide projector and called for Jerry Wroughton to move the screen fractionally. Mary was helping to manoeuvre Mrs.
Wilson's wheelchair into a better position to see the screen. Mrs. Fairbrother sat aloof in the front row, Mr. Hackett behind her, and Dominic and his partner talked softly. There were more than fifty present, a good turnout on a bad night; the numbers of village regulars were augmented by a few who had driven from Dunwich, a carload from Blythburgh, and more from Southwold.
Paul clapped his hands for attention and the chatter died.
"First, well done for coming on a filthy night. Second, apologies that we won't be having minutes from the committee's last meeting and can't hand out the usual list of summer speakers. I reckon most of you know the problem we've had with getting things typed up -any volunteers?" No hands were raised, but there had been a growl of understanding at the mention of the problem.
"Third, my pleasure in welcoming Dr. Julian Marks from the RSPB who is going to talk to us on the subject of migration. Dr. Marks…"
To generous applause, a long-haired man, with a gangling body, his face tanned by weather, stepped forward.
Dr. Marks said loudly, "I'm taking it I can be heard. Everyone hear me at the back yes? Excellent. I want to begin with a thank-you, two, actually. Thank you for inviting me, but more important, an especial thank-you from the RSPB for your last donation, which was an extraordinary amount from a village of this size and reflects a very caring and decent community. Fund-raising on that scale marks this village as a place of warmth, a place of overwhelming generosity. Now, migration… The lights faded.
The beam of the projector caught the screen.
Few in the hall's audience saw Simon and Luisa Blackmore slide soundlessly into empty seats in the back row; none present would have known of her fear of crowded, bright-lit rooms.
"You know, living as you do alongside those wonderful empty marshlands, the most beautiful of the migratory birds, the marsh harrier…"
"You're protected, and Stephen, and me."
"He was at the door, he was only trying to break down the fucking door. With a gun to kill us, in our home-' "It can't happen again, I promise it's what they've told me. You can't move for men here, everywhere, protecting us.
Meryl twisted on the bed to face him. Her arms were around his neck. She had his promise and clung to it.
Gussie, in the summer months, dug gardens in the village when he had finished at the piggery, then went home for his tea, then to the pub. In the darker winter months, when he couldn't use the evenings to turn over the vegetable patches at the Carstairs' and the Wroughtons', and at Perry's house, he went straight home from the pig farm for his tea, then to the pub. After the pub, his mother, his younger brothers and sisters already gone to bed, he sat in the chair, master of the house, and read the magazines he bought in Norwich, stories about combat and survival, and he dreamed. He sent away for mail-order books and reckoned himself expert in counter-terrorism, low-intensity warfare, and the world of the military; he should have been listened to in the pub. His father was gone, living the last four years with some tart in Ipswich, and he was the breadwinner for the family. He had his tea when he wanted it. Home revolved around him, and his earning power. He believed, as the wage-earner, that he was the equal of any man he met in the pub. But he never found, quite, the popularity he thought he deserved. His life, with the other workers in the pig-fields, with the people in the cul-de-sac where he lived, or in the pub where he propped up the bar each evening, was a constant search for that elusive popularity. Stories never heard through to the end, jokes never quite laughed at, his opinion rarely asked… He was big, well muscled, could throw around the straw bales on which the pigs slept with ease, and because of his size he had never known fear.