And that was the rub. If I’d started to talk about my wife, Marcus must have thought, I must one day talk about the other agents and worse, the double agents I’d dealt with. There were other horses from the same stable, later recruits still active, apparently in Moscow’s cause, but in fact serving the west — or what was left of the ‘west’. I knew at least one of their names and even though I’d no intention of ever actually writing about them, I suppose Marcus had decided he couldn’t trust me and my entirely quiet life had to go. Of course, as I see it now, I should never have sent those few chapters of my memoirs to London in the first place. It’s the only time I ever had enough vanity to betray me, for they weren’t very well written anyway, I see that too, now.
Clare was downstairs with us that evening, a Friday, just at the start of our week’s half-term. It was nearly eight o’clock. Had she gone to bed at her usual time she would have been saved some of the pain. But as it was we were all there together, Clare between us, on the big sofa in the drawing-room.
The record-player was on, which was why Clare was late going to bed. She loved music, all sorts, as long as there was a melody, however faint, or a rousing tune to hang on to. It calmed her. Instead of the smell of flowers or lavender stalks, it was the pure sound here which she absorbed in rapt silence, like a fastidious critic, her eyes quite still but alert, as though she was looking backwards into herself, opening channels into the blocked confusion of her mind where the music could flow, miraculously easing the congestion.
She withdrew deeply on these occasions. Indeed the child experts had previously forbidden her music for this reason. What fools they were: she went back into herself, yes, but only to find herself, to make amends, where the line of music could connect the broken circuits, and give her a good vision of herself which was what she most needed. Like all autistic children Clare lacked a sense of self. Oliver! could give this to her, or a good thumping, swirling version of ‘The Blue Danube’.
Our sofa backs onto one of the drawing-room doors, which leads out through a small corridor into the kitchen. Thus we were facing the wrong way. Indeed there would have been no warning at all but for Minty in his basket under the fire canopy, where he slept in summer.
He growled suddenly. I hardly heard him over the saucy duet between Mr Bumble and the Widow Dorney on the Oliver! LP. I was involved myself in any case, correcting an essay by one of my fourth-formers, my mind on the laboured banalities of his ‘Great Experience’, the theme which I had given the boys to write about the previous week. This one had chosen to discuss a rainy, scoreless football match he’d been to during the Easter holidays between Oxford and Banbury United. I remember wondering if his vision wasn’t a bit limited.
Then Minty growled again. I heard him properly now, since the music, at the end of the track, had stopped for a moment, though the others still took no notice. Laura was sewing and Clare was sucking her thumb, looking meek and absorbed, hoping to postpone her bedtime indefinitely. I turned and looked round.
Our drawing-room door has a habit of swinging wide, silently, unexpectedly, if someone opens the back door out of the kitchen and lets the draught through. And it opened now as I watched, as if touched by magic, giving me a clear view down the small corridor into the kitchen.
A thin, tall man was standing there at the end, surprised at his sudden exposure, holding an automatic in a gloved hand. He had a stocking mask pulled over his face, and the collar of an old mud-and-green army anorak rose about his neck. He lifted the gun.
There is always that first moment of total disbelief in a catastrophe — a sense of high farce almost, before one’s stomach drops like a rock and the gut turns over when you know it’s all going to be absolutely real.
But this latter knowledge had barely come to me before the man fired the gun and I could see at once how it had missed me and hit Laura, next to me, in the back, for she hadn’t turned, had never seen the man. She slumped forward, her round sewing-basket spinning like a broken wheel across the floor, just as I stood up, trying to protect her. For I knew, even in those first instants, that it was me the man wanted, not her.
Not her. Not her. My next thought was for Clare. But several seconds must have elapsed, for I don’t remember exactly what happened then. I can just see all the jumbled cotton-reels on the floor — and Laura on all fours like a dog sinking into them. Clare was nowhere. She was no longer on the sofa. She’d disappeared.
I remember it all clearly then — I was over by the drawing-room door, slamming it shut and flattening myself against the brick work. Laura had sunk right forward now on her stomach, lying straight out, her head almost touching the fireplace, and Minty was barking round her, in a panic, as though to wake her. The music was still on — some rousing chorus from the orphans. Then I saw Clare. She’d hidden between the wall and the sofa arm on the far side of the room by the window and was peeking out at us looking at her mother’s fallen body, amazed.
In my arms, I thought Laura must be dying. She couldn’t see me, though her eyes were wide open — eyes fresh as ever, but not seeing now, like a flower that appears to live as beautifully as ever the moment after its stalk is cut. She couldn’t see me and though her mouth was open too, she couldn’t speak; there was blood on her lips, no longer any words.
But I hadn’t the time to watch her die — or die with her, for the door opened and the calm tall man was there again, standing high above us, raising the gun once more.
I rolled out of his aim and kicked the door violently. It caught his arm. I stood up again, rushing the door, throwing all my weight against it, pinning half his body to the jamb. The force I brought to bear on the wood was incredible; the force of murder. The gun fell from his gloved hand as he pulled his body away. I tried to hold him. But I lost.
I could hear him running back through the kitchen. In a moment I had the gun in my hand and was after him out into the back garden with Minty at my heels. It was still twilight, so that I saw him vault the small dry-stone wall to the side of our garden, over into the back of the churchyard. I fired once, as I ran, but the shot went wild.
In the churchyard I could suddenly see much less. The shadow of the building blocked the last of the evening light. The old tombstones cut my shins as I ran. I thought I heard the church door open. But it wasn’t open when I came to it. I went in anyway and switched on all the lights. There was a dry smell of old wood and lime wash. The door leading into the vestry was open. I fired into the black space again as I ran. But I couldn’t find the switch inside and soon I was caught in the dark, surplices and vestments choking round my neck.
I was running then, down the village street — firing the last shots in the revolver wildly about the place, at anything that seemed to move, like a madman.
Laura was dead when the police came. I’d turned her over on the floor but hadn’t the strength to lift her. I was shaking violently, my head jerking about uncontrollably in a state of wild animation.
There was just one young constable, in a police van, who had come first — on his way home, in my direction apparently, when the call had come to him. Together we got the body up onto the sofa and I explained what had happened.
‘Well, go and look for him!’ I shouted at the man then, who did nothing but just look at me warily. ‘After him — in your car. Don’t just stand there!’ I started to clear up all the cotton-reels and buttons and thimbles off the floor, suddenly obsessed that the room should be meticulously clean. But when I came to the blister of congealing blood where Laura had been lying on our green carpet I stopped tidying up and started to shout again.