I showed her the plaster round my heel and told her of my visit, under Henry’s name, to Dr. Novak at the Kasr el Aini Hospital.
“You mean you suspected he was going over — London thought he was?”
To cut a long story short I said, “Yes, that was what happened.”
“And what if he were to walk in here — now?” She wanted so much to see me wrong, almost believing about Henry, but not quite, not yet.
“If he were to do this, do that — Bridget, he’s not going to walk in the door. He’s gone out, over. He’s with Moscow. It’s the one thing he’d never have told you; nothing to be upset about.”
“I thought you knew him — as well as I did”
“Yes, and I’m not surprised. Henry was like that, one knew everything about him except the boring things that mattered.”
“What on earth is he going to do in Moscow?” she went on with mystified concern.
“Write books, perhaps. He was good with words. Books and drink; argue with the housekeeper, read the English papers. A medal later on when they’ve squeezed him dry and put him out to grass. There are girls in Moscow too.”
I couldn’t resist the easy cruelty.
“That’s just spite. You might just be inventing the whole thing.”
“You know I’m not. I didn’t come all this way just to do you down, I can tell you.”
“Why did they send you then?” she said in a higher, faster voice, heading for a point where she would break. “You said you only worked in Library.”
“I don’t know why they sent me. Because I know the place, the language — and wasn’t known here now. That was the official reason.”
“You’re just the same sort of vague fellow, aren’t you? Bumbling round the place, letting everyone use you. It used to be teaching, now it’s spying — but never really knowing what you’re doing. Or why.”
“You’re overdoing it. You’re probably the only person who ‘used’ me, as you put it. But that doesn’t matter, as I said. What are you going to do? That’s the question.”
“There are the other arrangements.” She was almost prim now. “Hamdy was making them through a contact in Athens. That’s through central office, not Holborn. I thought for a moment you were that contact. That’s all. We just have to wait till he calls back. Hamdy’s ill anyway.”
“He’s not And there won’t be any call. Hamdy has nothing to do with our section, or with central office. That’s why I wanted him kept out of the way.” I stood up to fill my glass for I honestly thought she might go for me on the bed. And I wanted to stop her too if she decided to make a run for his bedroom. But she did nothing except ease her legs on the stool.
“I suppose you think he’s going over to Moscow as well — for a row with the servants.”
“No, I don’t Somewhere else. As far as I can make out he’s with the Israelis.”
“Ha, ha,” she said in a dry way. “Give me some more too, will you?”
I moved across, poured, added some water.
“You’ve let your imagination get the better of you, you really have.” She looked at me a moment, questioning. Then smiled, suddenly at ease. I was mad. Henry would be back later, a little drunk, but safe, and Hamdy was recovering in the other room. They’d be off together as soon as the call came, as it would come. I had given her hope at last because, of course, I was mad.
After the years of bureaucracy in Holborn, doing nothing but thumb through Al Ahram, this trip into the field — into the world of guns and golden Dunhills and dark glasses — had driven me off my head: I was a gambler speculating wildly, suggesting complex allegiances, where, in reality, everything was as it seemed. For Bridget, the business of espionage was dull — but true, and it was wearisome enough to have to accept that situation. That it and the people involved were dull but untrue, as I had suggested, was beyond her comprehension. It was time to humour me. The man who calls “Wolf” once too often — I was the child now who need never be believed. Relief flooded across her face.
“You really worried me.” She got up, walked over and bent down for a moment, hands on knees. “Why do you do it? After so long — what was the need to try and hurt again? You really didn’t have to. To hurt and possess, always that, never giving up. It’s what went wrong before and you’re still at it.”
She stood up. The grave, widely-spaced eyes were an admonition linking past with present. It was part of the same expression that had brought things to an end ten years ago — and it was intended to serve the same purpose now: a look of kindness, even worry, above all a deeply mystified, discursive inspection, as a drunk might study someone overboard from a yacht.
“I’d better see how he is. But for God’s sake don’t be stupid. I won’t tell him. Let’s just concentrate now on getting out of here without all this drama. All of us. That means you too.”
“That’s good of you, I’m sure.” She moved away towards the door. I swivelled the drink round in the glass and sighed.
She called me a few moments later. The light was on beside the bed, the table next to it piled high with old French novels, even an early Colette. There was a bottle of chalky medicine and an open box of pills. There were cigarettes and matches and the coverlet was nicely turned down — slippers, pyjamas, dressing gown at the ready. Someone was expected.
“Who sleeps here?” I asked. “Henry?”
“No, Hamdy.”
“Where is he? The bathroom? Is he ill again?”
“No.” Bridget closed one of the paperbacks lying on the pillow, tucked the sheet in, pushed the slippers under the bed.
“He’s gone.” Then she turned the light off. “Why the Israelis of all people?”
“I don’t know.”
We went back into the drawing-room.
10
We talked in more normal voices now; it made the apartment all the more silent.
Bridget went into the bedroom, and brought the drinks back in with her five minutes later. She had tidied her hair, powdered herself or something; there was a physical difference I couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t a fall of confidence, much more a careful self-regard. She moved about the drawing-room settling things, rearranging cushions, emptying ash-trays. I had become a visitor who had dropped by at an awkward moment.
“If you work it out — I don’t see who else he could be with. Moscow would have got him out of here long ago — ”
“—No, you don’t have to go on about it It fits. Everything fits.”
I wondered if she would cry, once. But of course not.
“Before you came back this evening — that call did come, when I was up in the ventilator. He mentioned the name of a Greek boat in Alex. You could get — ”
“—Something Tel Aviv must have fixed up for him,” she said brightly.
“Couldn’t you have gone with him?”
“No, I couldn’t. You don’t run risks getting someone like him back home. Nor would Henry. I can see the problem. Now that I can see who they were really working for.”
“You couldn’t have guessed.”
“I should have. I’ve known them long enough. Both of them. Hamdy better than any. You wouldn’t know that; Henry didn’t.” She started to talk quickly now, to herself at first, then to me, turning, pecking her face in quick starts like a hen querying something. “Hamdy knew my parents. I’d known he was working for the British almost from the start. I thought it was the only thing he never told me.”
“I told you once in the Semiramis — there’ve been too many men; still. We’ve all been playing games. You and I, Henry and the Colonel. Point is, though, they’ve kept a last trick up their sleeves. We should have had one too.”