'I suppose it is,' she said. She was no longer sure; she was no longer sure about anything.
'Are you mad at me?' he asked. He looked like a West Berliner in his black suit and bow tie. Here was a different Harry Kennedy to the one she'd last seen in London: cautious and diffident. But superimposed upon this diffidence, and almost prevailing over it, there was the pride and pleasure of finding her again,
'No, of course not,' she said.
Her distant manner made him suddenly anxious. 'Is there someone else?'
'Only my husband in London.'
It was as if a load was lifted from his shoulders. 'When I realized that you'd left him, I knew I had to find you. You're the only one I've ever loved, Fiona. You know that.' It wasn't a communication; it was a declaration.
'It's not like London,' she said awkwardly, trying to adjust to the idea of him being here.
'Say you love me.' He'd taken so much trouble; he was expecting more of her.
'Don't. It's not as easy as that, Harry. I work for the government here.'
'Who cares who you work for?'
Why wouldn't he understand? 'I defected, Harry.'
'I don't care what you did. We are together again; that's all that matters to me.'
'Please try and understand what is involved.'
Now, for the first time, he calmed down enough to look at her and say, 'What are you trying to tell me, baby?'
'If you see me on a regular basis, your career will be ruined. You won't be able to go back to London and take up your life at the place you left it.'
'I don't care, as long as I have you.'
'Harry. You haven't got me.'
'I love you… I'll do anything, I'll live anywhere; I'll wait forever. I'm a desperate man.'
She looked at him and smiled but she knew it was an unconvincing smile. She felt one of her bad headaches coming on and she wanted to scream. 'I can't be responsible, Harry. Everything has changed, and I have changed too.'
'You said you loved me,' he said in that reproachful way that only lovers do.
If only he would go away. 'Perhaps I did. Perhaps I still do. I don't know.' She spoke slowly. 'All I'm sure about is that right now I can't take on all the complications of a relationship.'
'Then promise nothing. I ask nothing. I'll wait. But don't ask me to stop telling you that I love you. That would be an unbearable restriction.'
The opera bell started to ring. With German orderliness the crowd immediately began to move back towards the auditorium. 'I can't go back to the performance,' she said. 'My head is whirling. I need to think.'
'So let's go to the Palast and eat dinner.'
'You'll miss the opera.'
'I've seen it nine times,' he said grimly.
She smiled and looked at her watch. 'Will they serve dinner as late as this?' she said. 'Things finish so early on this side of the city.'
'The ever-practical Fiona. Yes, they will serve as late as this. I was there two nights ago. Give me the ticket, and I'll collect your coat.'
It is not far from the State Opera on Unter den Linden to the Palast Hotel, and despite Berlin's everpresent smell of brown coal the walk was good for her. By the time they were seated in the hotel dining room she was restored to something approaching her normal calm. It wasn't like her to be so shattered, even by surprises. But meeting Harry at the opera house had not simply been a surprise: it had shown her what a fragile hold she had upon herself. She had been physically affected by the encounter. Her heart was still beating fast.
She watched him as he read the menu. Was she in love with him? Was that the explanation of the shock? Or was it more fundamental, was she becoming unbalanced?
Any feeling she had for Harry was not like the stable and enduring love she had for her home, her children and her husband. Harry's absence from her life had not caused her the heart-rending agony that separation from her family had brought, an agony from which she never escaped. That old love for Harry was something quite different, separate and not in conflict with it. But she could not help recalling that the love she'd once had for Harry was electrifying. It had been illicit and more physical than anything she'd known with Bernard. Sitting here across the table from Harry made her remember vividly the way that not so long ago even a glance from him could be arousing. 'I beg your pardon?' she said absently as she realized he was expecting an answer from her.
'I had it the other night,' he said. 'It was rather good.'
'I'm sorry. My mind was wandering.'
'The Kabinett is always the driest, at least I've learned that in the time I've been here.'
'Wonderful,' she said vaguely and was relieved when he waved to the waiter and ordered a bottle of some wine he'd discovered and liked. His German was adequate and even his accent was not too grating upon her ear. She looked around the restaurant to be sure there was no one there she recognized. It was crowded with foreigners: the only ones who had access to the sort of foreign money with which the bill had to be paid.
'My money comes in Western currency. I eat here all the time,' he told her.
Could he, by any chance, be an emissary from London Central? No. This was not a man whom Bret or Sir Henry would regard as right for the tricky job of intermediary. And yet a paramour would make the perfect cover for a London contact. If that was his role, he'd reveal it soon: that was how such things were done. She'd wait and see what happened: meanwhile she would be the perfect communist. 'So what do you suggest we eat?' she asked.
He looked up and smiled. He was so happy that his elation affected her. 'Steak, trout or schnitzel is all I ever order.'
'Trout then; nothing to start.' And then another thought struck her like a bombshelclass="underline" could he be Moscow's man? Very very unlikely. At that first encounter in London he'd admitted having no work permit. Had she phoned Immigration they would have pounced on him. Wait a minute, think about it. It was his vulnerability to officialdom that made her decide not to have him officially investigated. That and the fact that Bernard might have started asking questions about him. She lived again through that first encounter on the railway station, step by step, word for word. His 'niece' talked to Fiona and then ran away. It could have been a set-up. There was nothing in that meeting that could not have been previously arranged.
'Fiona,' he said.
'Yes, Harry?'
'I love you desperately.' He did love her: no one could feign adoration in the way that she saw it in his eyes. But, said the neurotic, suspicious and logical side of her, being in love did not mean that he couldn't have been sent by Moscow. 'I know everything about you,' he said suddenly, and she was alarmed again. 'Except why you like Der Freischütz. I know every mini-quaver of it by now. I can take Schoenberg and Hindemith, but can you find me ten minutes of real melody in that whole darn opera?'
'Germans like it because it is about a completely unified Germany.'
'Is that what you want: a unified Germany?' he asked.
Red lights flashed. What was the official line on unification? 'Only on the right terms,' she said guardedly. 'What about you?'
'Who was it who said that he liked Germany so much that he preferred there to be two of them?'
'I'm not sure.'
He leaned forward and confidentially said, 'Forget what I said: I'm just crazy about Der Freischütz; every little demi-semi-quaver.'
16
London. October 1983.
It was two o'clock in the morning. Bret was in his Thameside house, sitting up in bed reading the final few pages of Zola's Nona. Influenced by Sylvester Bernstein, Bret had discovered the joy of reading novels. First Sylvy had lent him Germinal and now Bret – always subject to deep and sudden passions – had decided to read every volume of Zola's twenty-volume cycle. The phone rang. He let it ring for a long time, but when the caller persisted he reached for it. 'Hello?' Bret always said hello; he didn't believe in identifying himself.