‘Well, thank you,’ I told Tibbot as we stood on the platform. I knew that the moment he turned his back, the tears would flood out and I wanted to be alone with that grief.
‘I didn’t help much in the end.’
‘No, but, well, I would have been much worse on my own.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I’ll have a talk with Hazel about her father. I think I need to prepare her for the idea that he may not be coming home… soon.’ I didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but I didn’t want anyone else to do it either. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ll go home, take a bath, make myself something to eat, fall asleep next to the radio, get up in the morning, go back to work.’ He smeared his hand across his face.
‘I first met Nick in a railway station,’ I said. ‘Oh, he could be charming.’
‘That’s probably why he was able to get away with it. For a while.’
‘Probably.’ The cold was beginning to get to me. ‘Well, thank you. I suppose it’s goodbye.’
‘I hope it goes all right with Hazel.’
‘Thanks.’
He slipped away towards the entrance to the Underground, into the sea of people hurrying in all directions and none. No one took any notice of this ageing man with an air of sadness about him.
‘Hazel,’ I said, knocking on her door, ‘would you like to come down and have supper?’ She opened the door. I could see she had been crying again. ‘May I come in?’
We sat together on the bed. ‘What about Dad?’ she asked.
‘Your dad’s still where he was.’
‘What did he do?’
I hesitated. ‘Your dad is a good, brave man who always tried to help other people. If anyone says anything else, don’t listen to them. He’s a doctor. He helps other people, even when it costs him.’
‘Are they going to let him go?’
‘It might take longer than we thought.’
‘Why?’
‘I think you should eat something. Will you do that for me?’
‘All right,’ she said unhappily.
I took her down to the kitchen. There was much of her mother in her, and yet there was a shyer grace in her movements – Lorelei seemed to attract attention even when she was standing still. I made an omelette with a little cheese, although I could hardly swallow mine. Then I saw her to bed and we talked for a while about Nick and what might happen now. I left her to let the thoughts sink in. Tomorrow we would talk more.
Sitting on my own bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I had lost my own parents. I had been older than Hazel and had had time to come to terms with it – but even then it had been hard enough.
And I made a decision. I resolved to find a way to prevent that happening to her.
But what on earth could I do now? My mind went back to Nick’s contacts. What if the Americans could help get him out? Some sort of deal. They did those from time to time: a man sent each way across the border, overseen by someone from the League of World Nations. But I could hardly walk into the American Embassy and ask. There had to be another way.
The more I tried to work it out, however, the more I realized how exhausted I was; and, in the end, I fell asleep without even undressing.
21
Sources within the RGB say the constant jostling for influence among the senior members of the Communist Party is crippling the country. Economic output is grinding to a halt, as internal bickering means state industries are run by bureaucrats with no experience of managing them. The result has been those companies teetering on the verge of collapse. As winter bites, shortages of food and fuel are already being felt. Scenes of great hardship are now expected in what was once the most fertile part of our island.
I woke just after eight o’clock the next morning, stiff in my clothes. I stretched and rubbed my limbs, but it did little good.
Nick had said that the concussion would take a couple of days to ease, and I lay there trying to recall more of that day when I had found Lorelei. I closed my eyes and pictured her there in the damp room as the light played on her skin. Her hands seemed to lift up to me and I looked deep into her glittering, searching eyes. But all that came back to me was a sense that there had been words on her lips: a cry of warning or distress. And what the words had been, I couldn’t tell. I went to the bathroom and examined my face in the mirror above the sink. I asked myself how fanciful it was, that sense that I had that the division of our nation had in some way seeped into my own body, to divide me from my memories? Or was I just a silly woman wanting to blame her own failings on a political situation that had absolutely nothing to do with them? Well, maybe. But what did Socialism mean if not a connection between the individual and the state, one reflecting the other? At least on some level, even the most basic animal level of all, the injury I had sustained, the one that had beaten my memory from my mind, had been a result of the changes in how we lived – of the suspicions that we were forced to foster. The doubts about my own husband that had drawn me to Lorelei’s house that day. On that level, it was no absurdity. It was a hard, physical fact.
As I washed, I turned to the more practical idea that I had had last night that perhaps there was someone who could help – one of Nick’s contacts in the American CIA, if I could just find them. All I had, though, was that telephone number from her book.
The operator put me through. I knew how long the silence lasted – four seconds – and how many clicks there were – five – before it connected. Then the metallic ringing, like an idiot playing a distant instrument. ‘Hello?’ someone said. It was the female voice I had heard the previous day.
‘Hello. I’m here.’ I mentally begged her not to end the call as she had before.
‘All right.’
‘I called yesterday.’
‘I can’t… I’m hanging up.’
‘No. Please. Just please.’ I clutched desperately for a way to persuade her. She was the only chance, the only number in Lorelei’s book that worked. I tried a wild lie. ‘Are you married?’
There was a long pause. ‘Yes.’
‘I, I found this number in my husband’s diary. I think he’s having an affair, please, please, put my mind at rest.’
‘That’s nothing to do with–’
‘Children?’
‘Yes, please don’t–’ she began.
‘I’ve got three. I just need to know that he’s not going to abandon us. I don’t know what I would do.’ I put such tension in my voice I hoped she would break whatever rule she had been instructed to follow.
Her voice lowered, became more intimate. ‘I don’t know about your husband. This is a government number. I’m just the receptionist.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s for’ – I plucked a name from the air – ‘Comrade Williams?’
‘No,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Honeysette.’
Tim Honeysette. He was Nick’s patient who had tried to introduce Nick to Ian Fellowman that night. The night when I had lost our child. Whatever this was, he was involved.
So maybe he could help.
‘May’ – my voice shook – ‘may I speak to him? It’s very important.’
‘He won’t be in until later.’
‘When?’
She paused again. ‘You said it was about your husband.’
‘It is. It’s urgent that I speak to him. It’s government business.’
‘So it’s not about your husband.’ I heard the suspicion rising.
‘It’s about him, but–’
‘What’s your name?’ she demanded.