And then she slipped out into the darkness of the upstairs landing and the door closed behind her.
II
4
Sam leaves the bed, crosses over to the window and draws back the curtains.
How does one end up here, he wonders, in this wooden-beamed room with its painted ceiling and arched windows and, beneath the floorboards, the soft tick of some beetle that will ultimately destroy everything? Of course he can provide a literal answer to all that – languages in the sixth form at school and then that Russian course at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his National Service, which gave a callow youth a taste for things Russian that he could never shake off. University followed as a matter of course, with an upper second in Slavonic languages and the foreign service examination in which his academic weaknesses were easily outshone by his sharp, clipped mind and ability to synthesise an argument from a plenitude of facts. And his knack for thinking on his feet. And the fact that he could actually speak Russian pretty well, where all the others could conjugate and decline and analyse and parse but they couldn’t actually feel it in the way he did. But none of that is quite what he means as he stands there looking out on the squat fifteenth-century towers, the grey bridge decked out with statues, the river that everyone knows from Smetana’s musical homage, Vltava.
Vltava; Moldau.
As always, a German name stands like a gothic shadow behind the Czech – Praha, Prag; Malá Strana, Die Kleinseite; Vltava, Moldau – just as German history looms behind Czech history, occasionally reaching forward to tap it on the shoulder and remind the Czechs that they only occupy a narrow Slavic salient thrust into the heart of the Teutonic world.
‘What’s the time?’
He glances at his watch, then back at the bed. ‘Six o’clock.’
Stephanie regards him through a blur of sleep. Her small face has the precise features of fine porcelain. Pretty. ‘I’d better get a move on.’
‘You haven’t got a train to catch.’
‘Still.’ She gets out of bed on the far side, with her back to him so that she preserves her modesty as much as possible. She dislikes being seen naked. Her slender figure flashes white across the room, seeking the sanctuary of the bathroom. When she emerges, three-quarters of an hour later, her public persona is in place – a faint blush of makeup, hair hitched back and gathered in a chignon, her crisp white blouse buttoned to her neck, her navy skirt as perfectly pleated as her mind. They have breakfast, barely speaking. It seems like the awkward silence of a funeral, mourning the loss of something permanent, whereas all they are doing is anticipating a temporary separation.
‘You could have gone by air.’
‘You’ve already said that a dozen times.’
‘It’s just—’
‘I know what it’s just. It’s just that there’s no way I would have left Ringo behind.’
‘Or waited so that I could come with you.’
‘You know I couldn’t do that.’
After breakfast he carries her bags out to the car and they stand together dejectedly, looking at her Volkswagen parked in the small square outside the building. As she has teasingly told him many times, the VW, purchased duty-free when she first came out eighteen months ago, is her real love. The name Ringo is discreetly painted on the bonnet. Ringo is Steffie’s favourite Beatle, although God knows why, because he is, as Sam has remarked, an ugly bugger. ‘I like ugly buggers,’ she replied.
‘So where does that leave me?’
Stephanie turns to face him. She is disturbingly lovely like that, standing there in her navy skirt and sky-blue linen jacket. White boots. A little black beret. The very antithesis of the Slav looks one sees in the girls around the city. They have strong bone structure and wide cheeks, but Steffie’s look is that of a Dresden shepherdess, her precise features composed into what she does best – an ironic little smile. Aren’t I pretty? it seems to ask. And, isn’t it all a bit of a sham? ‘We’ve talked it over a million times, haven’t we?’ she reminds him. ‘We know what we’re doing. Giving it a rest for a bit. Trying to get some kind of perspective on the whole thing.’
‘You know what perspective has? A vanishing point.’
‘But that’s where parallel lines meet up. So who’s to say?’
‘You mustn’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Leave questions hanging.’
She composes her smile into a little pout. ‘Who cares?’ Then glances at her watch. ‘Look at the time. It’ll take me hours to get to Jenny and Jeremy’s. I must go.’
‘Be careful.’
‘You know very well I’m as tough as nails, and so’s Ringo. By this afternoon we’ll be with Jen in her cosy little married quarters in Munching Gladbark or whatever it’s called. Anyway, it’s you who must be careful.’
‘Me?’
‘Of Eric’s wife.’ Eric is Head of Chancery. His wife is French, acquired during a posting to Paris a decade earlier. There was some story about his having prised her away from her first husband who was a fonctionnaire at the Quai d’Orsay. The affair created something of a diplomatic incident, but in general everything worked in Eric’s favour – in the corridors of the Foreign Office it was considered quite a triumph to have one of ours steal a Frenchwoman from her husband while playing away from home. Like winning a test match in Australia.
‘Madeleine? She likes bigger prey. An ambassador here, a minister there, perhaps a film director, perhaps a writer.’
‘She also likes little snacks now and again. She’ll try to get you into bed as soon as my back is turned, you just wait and see. We women can tell these things. You poor men are little more than grazing gazelles when the female hyena is on the prowl.’ It might have been rabbits and vixens, but Steffie always likes to emphasise her African background – Zambia when it was still called Northern Rhodesia, where her father was something to do with copper.
‘You’re mixing your metaphors.’
‘As long as you don’t mix your affections.’
‘You don’t show affection for Madeleine. You might feel lust towards her, or loathing, or perhaps even love, but nothing so dangerous as affection.’
‘Oh, shut up.’ She raises herself up on her toes and puts her hands on his shoulders to kiss him. He catches her scent, the perfume she always wears, the one that he claims ought to be banned for indecency, for its name alone, never mind its smelclass="underline" Youth Dew. Her kiss is hesitant, as though each time were the first and she isn’t quite sure how to do it. He puts his arms round her and feels her narrow fragility. ‘I’ll miss you,’ he tells her.
She laughs. ‘I’ll fly out and see you once things are settled at home. And remember my warning. Beware the hyena.’
Another tentative kiss and she climbs into the car, allowing him a glimpse of stocking-top and narrow, white thigh before she adjusts her skirt and slams the door. The vehicle starts with that familiar clattering that is more like a washing machine than a motor car, and then she is gone, the particular, personal fact of being Stephanie in her Beetle called Ringo translated into an anonymous Volkswagen stuttering out of the square, turning the corner and out of sight.
Once she has gone, Sam goes to his own car and drives across the river. He feels a bit disconsolate but also strangely liberated. On his own again. He wonders whether it is true about Madeleine Whittaker, but more immediately there is the question of whether he will be late for his appointment, and if he is, will the man wait? On balance, probably yes. An opportunity to talk to a First Secretary (Chancery) from the British embassy is not the kind of thing one turns down these days. Everyone is trying to get hold of an audience willing to listen to declarations, manifestos, opinions, promises, threats, hopes, all those things that go to make up the startling political life of the country at the moment. A little while ago the place was the usual depressed Soviet satellite, the kind of post that people at the Foreign Office would rather risk malaria in West Africa to avoid. But now everyone wants a tour of duty basking in the sun of Dubček’s socialism with a human face.