On the day of the purge, Elliot had been sent home early because Cuthbertson, who read spy novels, imagined he would find evidence of a traitor if he turned out every desk and safe in the department.
So the second-in-command had arrived in Pulborough three hours earlier than usual for a Tuesday to find his wife in bed with her brother.
Elliot had walked from the room without a word, gone directly to the hide at the bottom of the garden from which he had earned the reputation of one of Britain’s leading amateur ornithologists and blown the top of his head away with an army-issue Webley fired through the mouth. He had been crying and he’d made a muck of it, so it had taken two days for him to die.
The suicide had slotted neatly into Cuthbertson’s ‘who’s to blame’ mentality, despite the wife’s unashamed account to the police, and Elliot had been labelled responsible for the Warsaw and Prague débâcles. It would be nice, reflected Charlie, to prove Cuthbertson wrong about that. Like everything else.
‘Sure they wouldn’t let you retire, prematurely?’ asked Janet, breaking Charlie’s silent reminiscence.
‘Positive,’ asserted Charlie. ‘And I don’t think I’d want to. At least rotting as a clerk would mean a salary of some sort. I wouldn’t live off a reduced pension.’
‘I thought Edith had money.’
‘She’s loaded,’ confirmed Charlie. ‘But my wife is tighter than a seal’s ass-hole.’
She smiled, nodding. It really was the sort of language she expected, Charlie realised.
‘Do you know there are receipted bills at home dating back ten years. And if you asked her the amount, she could remember,’ he added.
‘Why not leave her?’
‘What for?’ challenged Charlie. ‘Would you have me move in here, a worn-out old bugger of forty-one without a bank account of his own who can only afford Spanish plonk.’
She reached across, squeezing his hand.
‘From the performance so far, you’re hardly worn out,’ contradicted Janet. ‘But no, Charlie. I wouldn’t.’
‘So I’ve got to stay, haven’t I? – tethered to a job that doesn’t want me. And at home, to a wife who’s not very interested.’
‘Poor Charlie,’ she said. She didn’t sound sad, he thought.
He gestured round the apartment, then nodded towards her.
‘All this will end, when I’m transferred, won’t it?’
‘I expect so,’ she said, always honest, looking straight at him.
‘Pity.’
‘It’s been fun,’ she said. She made it sound like a skiing lesson or a day out at Ascot when she’d picked a winner.
‘Shall we go to bed?’ he suggested.
‘That’s what you came here for.’
They took a long time with each other, exploring; like children in bicycle sheds at school, thought Charlie, biting at her thigh. Just more comfortable, that’s all.
‘Don’t. That hurts.’
‘So does what you’re doing. I can feel your teeth.’
‘Want me to stop?’
‘No.’
‘Charlie.’
‘What?’
‘Your feet are a funny brown colour.’
‘My shoes leaked. The dye won’t come off.’
‘Poor Charlie.’
Then:
‘I like what you’re doing, Charlie.’
‘Where did you learn to do that?’ he said, with difficulty.
‘At school.’
All that and cooking too, reflected Charlie. He winced, conscious of her teeth again. He should have washed his feet a second time, he told himself. She’d bathed, after all.
Charlie and his wife crossed on the following night’s ferry from Southampton, so they were in Cherbourg by 6.30 in the morning.
Charlie liked driving Edith’s Porsche, enjoying the power of machinery performing fully in the manner for which it was designed. I perform best fully extended, he thought, looking sideways at the woman as they climbed the curling road out of the French port and thinking of the previous night. Had Janet been acting her whore’s role when she’d cried, he wondered.
Edith was a handsome woman, decided Charlie, as she smiled back at him. She had wound the window down, so that her naturally blonde hair tangled in the wind. She was definitely very lovely, he thought, her face almost unlined and no sag to the skin around her throat. He was very lucky to have her as a wife.
They stopped at Caen to look around the war museum and still easily reached Paris by noon. While Edith sipped kir on the pavement outside Fouquet’s, Charlie telephoned their lunch reservation.
They ate at the Tour d’Argent, fond of the view across the Quai de la Tournelle to the Notre Dame. With the filet de sole cardinale, Charlie ordered Corton Charlemagne and then — ‘we’re on holiday, after all’ — a half bottle of Louis Roederer with the soufflé vallesse, which he later agreed was an ostentatious mistake.
‘You enjoy spending money, don’t you, Charlie?’ she said, as they unpacked at the Métropole-Opéra.
‘Do you begrudge it?’ he asked, immediately.
‘You know I don’t,’ she said, quickly, frightened of offending him. ‘But I saw the bill. It was over £50.’
‘But worth it,’ he defended.
He sat watching her change, enjoying her body. She was very well preserved, he thought, admiringly. Her waist was bubbled only slightly over the panty girdle, which he didn’t think she needed anyway, and her legs were firm and unveined. Her full breasts fell forward as she unclipped her bra and she became conscious of his attention, covering herself like a surprised schoolgirl.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Don’t,’ she protested, emptily, pleased at the attention. She loved him very much and it frightened her sometimes.
Janet liked him admiring her body, Charlie compared, even insisting they made love with the light on. Edith always wanted it dark. Women were funny, he thought: his wife had much the better body. She should learn to be proud of it, not shy.
Edith was a comfortable women to be with, he decided, the sort you didn’t have to talk to all the time. With Janet three minutes of silence was construed either as boredom or boring so there was always a frenzy of meaningless chatter, like annoying insects on a summer’s picnic. He definitely preferred Edith, he decided. They were friends, more than lovers, he thought. But very much lovers; Edith had a remarkable appetite for a woman of forty.
She backed towards him, the zip of her dress undone.
‘Do me up.’
‘Why don’t we undo it?’
‘There isn’t time.’
‘For what?’
‘Don’t muck about, Charlie. Tonight.’
He fastened the dress: she didn’t bulge it anywhere, he saw.
He gave every indication of loving her, she thought, patting her hair into place before the dressing table.
‘Promise me something, Charlie,’ she said, crossing the room to him and placing her hands upon his shoulders. She was very serious, he realised. Her eyes were quite wet.
‘What?’
‘You won’t leave me because of this office business, will you?’
‘You know I won’t,’ chided Charlie. ‘I’ve told you not to worry.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Edith, who ten years earlier had occupied the position that Janet now held as secretary to Sir Archibald Willoughby. Charlie had told her in detail of his treatment since Cuthbertson’s arrival.
He stood up, coming level with her.
‘I love you, Edith,’ he insisted, putting his hands round her waist. ‘I promise you that everything will work out. They’re bloody fools.’
‘They can’t be as stupid as you think.’
‘You wouldn’t believe it!’
He kissed her, very softly, and she clung to him, head deep into his shoulder.