"Spy Sinker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

6

London. August 1978.

Fiona Samson, a thirty-one-year-old careerist, was a woman of many secrets and always had been. At first that had made her relish her demanding job in London Central – the most secret of all the government's secret departments – but as her role as a double agent developed and became more complex she found there were times when it all became too much for her. It had always been said that double agents eventually lose then: own sense of direction and fail to distinguish which side they really work for, but for Fiona it was different. Fiona could not envisage ever becoming a supporter of communist regimes: her patriotism was a deeply rooted aspect of her upper middle-class upbringing. Fiona's torment came not from political doubts: she worried that she would not be able to cope with the overwhelming task that she'd been given. Bernard would have been perfect for such a double agent role; like most men he could compartmentalize his brain and keep his family concerns quite separate from his work. Fiona could not. She knew that her task would become so demanding that she would have to neglect her husband and children more and more and finally – with no possible warning – leave them to fend for themselves. She would be branded a traitor and they would be spattered with the dirt. The thought of that distressed her.

Had she been able to discuss it with Bernard it might have been different, but authority had decreed that her husband should not know the plan. In any case she was not good at talking with Bernard. No less spirited than her extrovert sister Tessa, Fiona's fires were damped down and seldom showed a flicker. Sometimes, or even often, Fiona would have enjoyed being like Tessa. She would have got great and immediate relief and satisfaction from the sort of public performance – displays of anger or exhilarated madness – for which her sister was famous, but there was no choice for her.

Fiona was beautiful in a way that had sometimes separated her from other women. Fiona's beauty was a cold perfect radiance of the sort that is to be seen in the unapproachable models posing with such assurance in glossy magazines. Her brain was cold and perfect too; her mind had been bent by pedantic university teachers to think in terms of male priorities and had sacrificed many of the unbridled joys of femininity in order to become a successful surrogate male. Fiona's miseries, her tensions and her times of great happiness were shared only reluctantly – grudgingly sometimes – with those around her. Emotion of any sort was always to be hidden, her father had taught her that. Her father was an insensitive and opinionated man who had wanted sons, something he explained to his two children – both daughters – at every opportunity, and told them that boys didn't cry.

Fiona's marriage to Bernard Samson had changed her life forever. It was love at first sight. She'd never met anyone like Bernard before. A big bear-like man, Bernard was the most masculine person she'd ever met. At least he had the qualities that she thought of as being masculine. Bernard was practical. He could fix any sort of machine and deal with any sort of people. He was of course a male chauvinist: categorical and opinionated. He never thought of helping in the house and couldn't even boil an egg successfully. On the other hand he was constantly cheerful, almost never moody and quite without malevolence. Inclined to be untidy he gave no thought to his clothes or his appearance, never put on airs or graces and while enjoying art and music he was in no way 'intellectual' or 'artistic' in the way that so many of her male acquaintances were determined to be.

Fiona's husband was the only person she'd ever met who completely disregarded other people's evaluation of him. Bernard was a devoted father, more devoted to the children than Fiona was if the truth was faced. And yet he was not the unmotivated drifter that her father had warned her about. Bernard was driven by some force or thought or belief in the way that great artists are said to be, and woe betide anyone who got in his way. Bernard was not an easy man to live with. He'd been brought up in post-war Berlin – his father a senior intelligence officer – in an atmosphere of violence and betrayal. He was by nature tough and undemonstrative. Bernard had killed men in the course of duty and done it without qualms. He was well adjusted and enjoyed a self-confidence that Fiona could only wonder at and envy.

The burden of their marriage came from the fact that Bernard was far too much like Fiona: neither of them found it easy to say the things that wives and husbands have to say to keep a marriage going. Even 'I love you' did not come easily from Bernard's lips. Bernard really needed as a wife some noisy extrovert like Fiona's sister Tessa. She might have found a way of getting him out of his shell. If only Bernard could be foolish and trivial now and again. If only he could express doubts or fears and come to her for comfort. Fiona didn't need a strong silent man: she was strong and silent herself. It was difficult for a man like Bernard to be really sympathetic to a woman's point of view and Bernard would never understand the way that women would cry for 'nothing'.

Lately, there had been many occasions when the complex tangle of Fiona's working life became too much for her. She was using tranquillizers and sleeping tablets with a regularity that she'd never needed before. Bernard had found her crying several times when he'd come into the house unexpectedly. She had told him she was under treatment from her gynaecologist; embarrassed dear old Bernard had not pursued it further.

When she found herself weighed down by her thoughts, and the worries would not go away, Fiona found an excuse to leave the office and walked to the Waterloo mainline railway station. She'd come to like it. Its size suggested permanence while its austere design and girder construction gave it anonymity: a vast waiting room made from a construction kit. Coming through the dirty glass of its roof the daylight was grey, dusty and mysterious. Today – despite the rain – she had benefited from the walk from the office. Now she sat on a bench near number one platform and quietly cried her heart out. No one seemed to notice these emotional outbursts, except once when a lady from the Salvation Army offered her a chance for prayer at an address in Lambeth. Sobbing was not so unusual on Waterloo Station. Separations were common here and nowadays it was a place where the homeless and hungry were apt to congregate. London Airport was probably just as good a place to go for the purpose of weeping, but that provided too great a chance of seeing someone she knew. Or, more exactly, of someone she knew seeing her. And Waterloo Station was near the office, and there were tea and newspapers, taxi-cabs and metered parking available. So she went to number one platform and cried.

It was the prospect of leaving Bernard and the children, of course. They would end up hating her. Even if she did everything that was expected of her, and returned a heroine, they would hate her for leaving them. Her father would hate her too. And her sister Tessa. And what would happen to the children? She had asked Bret that, but he had dismissed her fears. The children would be cared for in the manner that her sacrifice and heroism deserved, he'd said in that theatrical style that Bret could get away with because he was so damn certain. But how sincere was he? That worried her sometimes. Sincere or not she couldn't help thinking that her children would be forgotten once she was working in the East. Billy would survive boarding school – and perhaps even flourish there – but Sally would find such an environment unendurable. Fiona had resolved not to put her children through the sort of childhood that she had hated so much.

Bret told her that the only thing that frightened her more than the prospect of finding that her husband and children wouldn't be able to manage without her, was the prospect of finding that they could. Bastard! But perhaps there was a glimmer of truth there. Perhaps that was the permanent crippling dilemma that motherhood brought.

She had never been a very good mother and that knowledge plagued her. She'd never wanted motherhood in the way that her sister Tessa so desperately did. Fiona had never liked babies: her friends' babies had appalled her with their endless demands and the way that they completely upset the households. Babies cried very loudly; babies vomited very frequently and dirtied their nappies very stenchfully. Even when hugging her own babies she had always been uneasy in case her dress was soiled. The children's nurse had seen that right from the start, and Fiona still remembered the accusing look in her eyes. That look said, I am their real mother: you are not fit to look after them.

Fiona was useless with children but she didn't want to be barren either. She wanted to tick motherhood off the list. She worried about them always, and wanted them to be clever at school, and most of all she looked forward to sharing their lives with them when they grew up. But it was now that they needed her so much. Perhaps it was not too late. Perhaps she should walk out of London Central and apply herself to the children as she had applied herself to her studies and her work.

Never a day went past but she told herself that she should go to Bret and tell him she had changed her mind. But each time she spoke to him – long before she could bring the conversation to the point she wanted – he persuaded her that her first duty was to her country and the Department. Even the Director-General had spoken with unusual gravity about this scheme to get her into position as a field agent, a field agent of prime importance. It would, of course, show that women could bring off an intelligence coup as well as any man. That, more than anything else, had helped her keep going when her spirits were low.

Since the beginning of the year her tiffs and differences with Bernard had multiplied. It wasn't all Bernard's fault, things had been difficult for him too. Operation 'Reisezug' had been something of a disaster: three of their own people killed, or so the rumour said. Max Busby was carrying a lot of the material in his memory and Max never came back.

Bernard didn't talk about it but anyone who knew him could see how shaken he was.

Bernard was now officially 'rested' from field work and, in what might have been an effort to comfort her, Bret Rensselaer had let slip the fact that the Department had decided that Bernard should spend the rest of his life behind a desk. Not the German Desk. Dicky Cruyer-a vain and shallow man – had got the German Desk. Bernard was in line for it and would have done it with more skill and intelligence, but Dicky had the administrative experience as well as the personality and background that the Department favoured for top jobs. Bernard said that all Dicky had was the right old school tie, but Bernard could be a bit touchy about such things. She'd wondered if Bret decided against Bernard's promotion because of her assignment, but Bret insisted that it was a decision made at the top.

She was sure that her painful domestic life could be transformed if Bret would let her confide in her husband. As it was she couldn't always account for her movements. It had been bad enough when she'd only had to have the odd meeting with Martin Euan Pryce-Hughes. Now there were countless covert briefings by Bret and a lot of studying to do. And the studying was of material that she mustn't let Bernard catch sight of. Bernard was smart and quick. She wouldn't have to make many mistakes for him to guess what was happening, and the D-G had taken it upon himself to tell her that if Bernard discovered what was planned the whole thing was off.

Poor Bernard; poor Billy; poor Sally. She sat on the bench at Waterloo and thought about them all. She felt drained and ill. Crying released the tension within her but it did nothing to alleviate the pain. She cried some more in the constrained, unobtrusive and dignified way she'd learned to cry at boarding school, and stared across the concourse where people were hurrying for their commuter trains or saying their farewells. She told herself that their troubles might be worse than hers but that did nothing to help: in fact it made her feel even more dejected.

The weather did nothing to cheer her. It was one of those miserably cold and rainy days that so often punctuate an English summer. Everyone was bundled into coats and scarves and the cold damp air contributed to Fiona's chilly gloom. Trains arrived; trains departed. A young woman wanted to know the time, and an elderly couple walked past arguing vociferously. Pigeons and sparrows came gliding down from the girders of the roof, encouraged by a bearded man on a bench nearby who threw crumbs to them. She sat there watching the birds for what seemed a long time.

'Pardon me, madam.' Fiona looked up to see two men: a uniformed railway policeman and a man in civilian clothes. 'You were talking to a young woman a few minutes back?' It was the policeman who spoke.

At first she thought they were going to tell her to move on, or arrest her for soliciting, or make some other sort of fuss, but then she realized that the man in civilian clothes was not a policeman. 'Yes?'

'In a dark blue coat, with a red silk scarf? Dark hair. Pretty girl.' It was the man in the camel-hair coat speaking. He'd taken his hat off in a courteous gesture that surprised her, and she noticed the way he gripped it in his suntanned hand. He seemed nervous.

'She just asked me the time. She caught the train for Southampton,' said Fiona. A train announcement, resonant and unintelligible, interrupted her and she waited for it to finish. 'At least, that's what she said she was going to do.'

'She had a big green plastic bag with a shoulder strap,' said the man.

It was, she decided, a question. 'She had a bag,' said Fiona. 'I didn't notice anything about it.'

'Are you all right, madam?' said the policeman. He'd noticed her reddened, tear-filled eyes.

'I'm quite all right,' she said firmly. She looked at her watch and got to her feet to show that she was about to leave.

The policeman nodded. He wanted to believe her; he wasn't looking for more trouble. 'It's the gentleman's daughter,' explained the policeman.

'My name's Lindner. Adam Lindner. Yeah, she's only sixteen,' said the man. 'She ran away from home. She looks older.' He had a soft transatlantic accent that she couldn't place.

'We'll phone Southampton,' said the policeman briskly. 'They'll pick her up when the train gets there.'

'Was there anyone with her?' asked the father authoritatively.

Fiona looked at him. He was tall and athletic; in his late thirties perhaps. His moustache was full but carefully trimmed. He had doleful eyebrows and a somewhat squashed nose in a weather-beaten face. He was handsome in a seemingly uncontrived way, like the tough-guy film-stars whose photos she'd pinned above her bed at school. His clothes were expensive and too perfect, the style that foreigners selected when they wanted to look English: a magnificent camel-hair overcoat, a paisley-patterned tie, its knot supported by a gold pin through the shirt collar, and the shiny Oxford shoes. 'Yes,' she said, 'there was a man with her.'

'A black man?'

'Perhaps. I didn't notice. Yes, I believe so.'

'It makes it easier from our point of view,' said the policeman.

A gust of wind lifted discarded newspapers and other litter so that it moved enough to scare the birds. Conversation faltered as English conversations do when minds turn to the delicate and devious rituals of leave-taking.

'We have your phone number, Mr Lindner,' said the policeman. 'As soon as we hear from Southampton the desk sergeant will phone.' It ended there. The policeman had other work to do.

'If that's all?' said Fiona, moving away. 'I have to get a taxi.'

I'm going to Maida Vale,' the man said to Fiona. 'Can I drop you off anywhere?' She still couldn't recognize the accent. She decided he was a merchant seaman, or oil worker, paid off after a long contract and enjoying a spending spree.

'It's all right,' she said.

'No, please. It's pouring with rain again and I would appreciate company.'

Both men were looking at her quizzically. She resented the way that men expected women to explain themselves, as if they were second-class citizens. But she invented an explanation. 'I was seeing someone off. I live in Marylebone. I'll get a cab.'

'Marylebone: I go right through it.' And then, 'Thank you, constable, you've been most helpful.'

'Children do funny things,' said the policeman as he took his leave. 'It will be all right. You'll see.'

'It was bad luck,' said the man. 'Another fifteen minutes and we would have stopped her.' Fiona walked towards the cab rank and he fell into step alongside her. 'Will you look at that rain! You'd better ride with me.' There were about fifty people standing in line for taxis and no taxis in sight.

'Very well. Thank you.'

They walked to his car, talking about the treacherous English weather. His manner now was ultra-considerate and his voice was different in some way she could not define. She smiled at him. He opened the door for her and helped her into the seat. It was a Jaguar XJS convertible: grey, shiny and very new. 'I suppose Mrs Lindner is worried,' said Fiona. As the engine started with a throaty roar the stereo played a bar or two of a Strauss waltz before he switched it off, twisted his neck and carefully backed out of the parking place.

'There is no Mrs Lindner,' he said while craning to see behind the car. 'I was divorced five years back. And anyway this girl is not my daughter: she's my niece.'

'I see.'

Down the ramp and through the cars and buses he went with no hesitation: he didn't drive like a man unaccustomed to London traffic. 'Yeah, well I didn't want to say it was my niece; the cops would immediately think it was some bimbo I was shacked up with.'

'Would they?'

'Sure they would. Cops think like that. And anyway I am a Canadian and I'm here without a work permit.' He bit his lip. 'I can't get tangled up with cops.'

'Did you give them a false name?'

He looked round at her and grinned admiringly. 'Yeah. As a matter of fact I did.'

She nodded.

'Oh boy! Now you are going to turn out to be a cop from the Immigration Department. That would be just my sort of lousy luck.'

'Would it?'

'Yeah. It would.' A pause. 'You're not a cop. I mean, you're not going to turn me in, are you?'

'Are you serious?'

'You're damn right, I'm serious. I was working in Sydney, Australia, and the hall porter turned me in. Two heavies from Immigration were waiting in my suite when I got back that night. They'd gone through my mail and even cut the lining out of my suits. Those Aussies are rough. Mind you, in Uruguay in the old days it was worse. They'd shake you down for everything you had.'

'It sounds as if you make a study of illegal immigration.' She smiled.

'Hey that's better! I thought maybe you'd given up smiling for Lent. Immigration? Yeah well my cousin buys and sells airplanes. Now and again I take time off to deliver one of them. Then maybe I get tempted to take on a few local charters to make a little extra dough.'

'Is that what you are doing in London?'

'Airplanes? No, that's just my playtime. I learned to fly in the air force, and kept it up. In real life I'm a psychiatrist.'

'This niece of yours… was she another invention?' asked Fiona.

'Now, I'm not completely off my trolley. She is the daughter of my cousin Greg and I was supposed to be looking after her in London. I guess I will have to phone Winnipeg and tell Greg she's jumped ship.'

'Will he be angry?'

'Sure he'll be angry but he won't be surprised. He knows she can be a pretty wild little girl.'

'How come you…?'

'Greg was in the air force with me and he owns a big slice of the airplane brokerage outfit.'

'I see.'

'Because I'm a psychiatrist, he thinks that I can straighten her out. Her local quack's treatment was just to keep doping her with amitriptyline and junk like that.'

'But you can't straighten her out either?'

'Girls who…'The flippant answer he was about to give died on his lips. 'You really want to know? It could be she has a schizophrenic reaction to puberty, but it will need someone with a whole lot more specialized experience to diagnose that one.'

'Does her father know you think that?'

'I don't know what made me tell you… No, it's too early to tell Greg. It's a heavy one to lay on parents. I want to talk to someone about her. I was trying to arrange for a specialist to look at her without letting her catch on to it.' He stole another glance at Fiona. 'Now it's my turn to guess about you. I'll bet you are a student of philosophy. Am I right, Miss…?' he said with a big grin.

'Mrs Samson. I am married and I have two children.'

'No fooling? That can't be true! Two children: they must be very young. My real name is Harry Kennedy. Good to know you, Mrs Samson. Yeah, the girl will maybe come out okay. I've seen cases like this before. No call to worry her folks. It's not drugs. At least I hope to God it's not drugs. She doesn't get along very well at school. She is not the academic sort of kid. She likes parties and music and dancing: she's always been like that from the time when she was tiny. She doesn't like reading. Me, I couldn't live without books.'

'Me too.'

'You weren't seeing anyone off, were you?' he said suddenly without looking away from the road.

'No.'

'Why were you at the station then?'

'Does it matter?'

'I am being very nosy. But it was my good fortune that Patsy spoke with you. I couldn't help wondering about you.'

'I wanted to think.'

'Sad thoughts?'

'Everything is relative. I have a good life: no complaints.'

'You need a drink.'

She laughed. 'Perhaps I do,' she said.

He drove right through Marylebone. The traffic was light. She should have said something, made him take her directly home, but she said nothing. She watched the traffic and the rain, the grim-faced drivers and the endless crowds of drenched people. He pulled into the parking lot behind a well-kept block of flats in Maida Vale. 'Come up and have a drink,' he said.

'I don't think so,' she said and didn't move.

'There is no need to be afraid. Like I told you, my name is Harry Kennedy. I have an allergic reaction to work permits but other than that I am quite harmless. I work in the psychiatric department of the St Basil Clinic in Fulham. Eventually they will get me a work permit and I will live happily ever after.'

'Or perhaps move on to pastures new?'

'Could be.'

'And you really are a psychiatrist?'

'It's not something I'd invent, is it?'

'Why not?'

'It's the ultimate deterrent to all social relationships. Look at the effect it's already having on you.'

'One drink.'

'And then home to husband and children,' he promised.

'Yes,' she said, although the children were being looked after by a competent nanny and Bernard was in Berlin for a job that would take three days.

Kennedy's flat was on the second floor. She followed him up the stairs. This block had been built in the nineteen thirties and, apart from a few chunks of granite chiselled from the facade by bomb fragments, it had survived the war intact.

'I'm renting this place from a rich E.N.T. man at the clinic. He's in New York at Bellevue until next April. If they renew his contract he'll want to sell it.' The apartment was big; in the Thirties architects knew the difference between a bedroom and a cupboard. He took her damp raincoat and hung it on a bentwood rack in the hall. Then he removed his own coat and tossed his hat on to a pile of unopened mail that had been placed alongside a bowl of artificial flowers on the hallstand. 'I keep meaning to forward all that mail to him but it's mostly opportunities to purchase vacations and encyclopedias from the credit card companies.'

His three-piece suit – a chalk stripe, dark grey worsted – was cut in a boxy American style that made him look slimmer than he really was. On his waistcoat there was a gold watch-chain with some tiny gold ornament suspended from it.

He ushered her into the drawing room. It was spacious enough to take a baby grand piano, a couple of sofas and a coffee table without seeming cramped. 'Come right in. Welcome to Disneyland. Take a seat. Gin, whisky, vodka, vermouth… a Martini? Name it.' She looked around at the furnishings. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep everything in sympathy with the art deco that had been in style when the block was built.

'A Martini. Do you play the piano?'

He went into the kitchen and she heard him open the refrigerator. He returned with two frosted Martini glasses, chilled gin and chilled vermouth. Under his arm there was a box of snacks. He poured two drinks carefully. 'I'm fresh out of olives,' he said as he carried the drinks across to her. 'The help eats them as fast as I buy them. She's Spanish. Yeah, I play a little.'

'A quick drink and then I must go.'

'Have no fear. I will drive you home.'

'It's an attractive room.' She took the glass by its stem and held it against her face, enjoying the feel of its icy coldness.

'You like this art deco junk?' He drank some of his Martini and then put the glass down, carefully placing it on a coaster. 'The E.N.T. man inherited it. His parents were refugees from Vienna. Doctors. They got out early and brought their furniture with them. I had to take an oath about not leaving Coca-Cola glasses on the polished tables, and not smoking. He's going to ship it to New York if he stavs there.'

'It's lovely.'

'He's a sentimental land of guy. It's okay I guess but I prefer something I can relate to. Have one of these.' He indicated the snacks; tiny cheesy mouthfuls in a freshly opened red box bearing a picture of an antique steamship on the Rhine.

'I'm not hungry.'

'Would it help to talk about it?'

'No, I don't think so.'

'You're a beautiful woman, Mrs Samson. Your husband is a lucky man.' He said it artlessly and was not selfconscious: no Englishman she'd met could deliver such compliments without bluster and embarrassment.

'I am lucky too,' she said quietly. She wished he wouldn't look at her: her hair was a mess and her eyes were red.

I'm sure you are. Is your drink all right? Too much gin?'

'No, it's just the way I like it.' She drank some to show him that it was true. She was uneasy. After a few minutes of small-talk – Kennedy had been discovering the pleasures of the opera – she said, 'Perhaps you could ring for a taxi? They sometimes take ages to come at this time.'

'I'll drive you.'

'You must wait for the phone call from the police.'

'You are right. But must you go so soon?'

'Yes, I must.'

'Could I see you again?'

'That would be less wise.'

'I'm delivering a Cessna to Nice next week – Friday, maybe Saturday – and collecting a Learjet. It's a sweet job: not many like that come along. There's a really good restaurant twenty minutes along the highway from Nice airport. I'll have you back in central London by six p.m. Now don't say no, right away. Maybe you'd like to bring your husband or your children. It's a four-seater.'

'I don't think so.'

'Think it over. It could make just the sort of break that would do you good.'

'Is that a medical opinion?'

'It sure is.'

'It's better not.'

'Let me give you my phone number,' said Kennedy. Without waiting to hear what she decided he gave her a printed card. 'This lousy weather keeps up and maybe you'll feel like a spot of Riviera sunshine.' She looked at the card: Dr H. R. Kennedy and the Maida Vale address and phone number. 'I had them done last month at one of these fast print shops. I was going to see patients here but I decided not to.'

'I see.'

'It was against the terms of the lease and I could see there would be arguments if my patients started using the car park spaces.' He went to the phone and asked for a taxi. 'They are usually very prompt,' he said. 'I have an account with them.' Then he added thoughtfully, 'And seeing patients here might have set the immigration guys on my tail.'

'I hope your niece returns soon.'

'She will be okay.'

'Do you know the man she's with?'

Kennedy paused. 'He is a patient. At the clinic. He met her when she was waiting for me one afternoon.'

'Oh.'

'He can be violent. That's why the police were so good about it.'

'I see.'

'You helped me, Mrs Samson. And I appreciate your keeping me company, I really do.' The phone rang to say the cab was waiting outside. He helped her on with her coat, carefully making sure that her long hair was not trapped under the collar. 'I would like to help you,' he said. In bidding her a decorous goodbye his hand held hers.

'I don't need help.'

'You go to railway stations in order to hide your unhappiness. Don't you think that a marriage in which a wife is frightened to be unhappy in the presence of her husband might leave something to be desired?'

Fiona found his apparent simplicity and honesty disarming. She had no great faith in psychiatry and in general distrusted its practitioners, but she felt attracted to this amusing and unusual man. He was obviously attracted to her, but that had not made him fawn. And she appreciated the way that Kennedy so readily confided his fears of the Immigration Department and the trust he'd shown in her. It made her feel like a partner in his lawless activities. 'Is that the sort of dilemma patients like me bring along to you?'

'Believe me, I have no patients who in any way resemble you, Mrs Samson, and I never have had.'

She gently pulled her hand away from his and went through the door. He didn't follow her but when she glanced up, before getting into the taxi, she could see his face at the window.

She looked at her watch. It was late. Bernard tried to phone about this time each evening.

'Hello, sweetheart.' To her astonishment she arrived home to find Bernard, Nanny and the two children sitting round the little kitchen table. The scene was printed upon her memory for ever after. They were all laughing and talking and eating. The table displayed the chaos she had seen at Bernard's mother's house: tea in cups without saucers, teapot standing on a chipped plate, tin-foil frozen food containers on the tablecloth, sugar in its packet, a slab of cake sitting on the bag in which it was sold. The laughter stopped when she came in.

'We wondered where you'd got to,' said Bernard. He was wearing corduroy trousers and an old blue roll-neck sweater that she had twice thrown away.

'Mr Samson said the children could eat down here,' said the nanny nervously.

'It's all right, Nanny,' said Fiona and went and kissed the children. They were newly bathed and smelled of talcum powder.

'You've got a cold nose,' said Billy accusingly and then chuckled. He looked so like Bernard.

'You're rude,' his little sister told him. She had been raised to the level of the table by sitting upon a blue silk cushion from the drawing room sofa. Fiona noticed that a dollop of tomato sauce had fallen upon it but kept smiling as she gave her daughter a kiss and a hug. She had a special love for little Sally, who sometimes seemed to need Fiona in a way that no one else had ever done.

Fiona embraced Bernard. 'What a wonderful surprise. I didn't expect you until the weekend.'

'I slipped away.' Bernard put an arm round her, but there was a reluctance to his embrace. For some other wives such a hesitation might have been a danger signal. Fiona knew that it was a sign that something had gone wrong in Berlin. A shooting? A killing? She looked at him to make sure he was not injured. She wouldn't ask him what had happened, they didn't talk about departmental matters unless they concerned the both of them, but she knew it would take a little time before Bernard would be capable of physical contact with her.

'You're all right?'

'Of course I'm all right.' A smile did not hide the hint of irritation. He did not like her to show her concern.

'Will you have to go back?' The children were watching them both with great interest.

'We'll see.' He contrived a cheerfulness. 'Nothing will happen for a few days. They think I'm chasing around Bavaria.'

She gave him another decorous kiss. She wished Bernard would not be so intractable. Deliberately disobeying instructions in order to come home early was flattering but it was the sort of behaviour that the Department found inexcusable. This was not the time to say that. 'It's a lovely surprise,' she said.

'Eat some dinner, Mummy,' said Sally. 'There's plenty.'

'Mummy doesn't eat frozen meals, do you Mummy?' said her brother.

Nanny, who had no doubt purchased the 'delicious ready-to-eat country farmhouse dinner', looked embarrassed. Fiona said, 'It depends.'

'It's not meaty,' said Billy, as if that was a recommendation. 'It's all sauce and pasta.' He pushed a spoon into the remains to show her.

'It's very salty,' said Sally. 'I don't like it.'

The nanny took the spoon away from Billy and then went to get a cup and saucer for Fiona to have tea with them.

Fiona took off her coat and hat. Then she grabbed a piece of kitchen paper in order to see what could be done to remove the sauce from the silk cushion. She knew that in doing so she would be spoiling the gemütlich atmosphere into which she had intruded but she simply could not sit down and laugh and talk and forget it. She couldn't. Perhaps that was what was wrong with her and with her marriage.

Before she could get started, Nanny poured tea for her and then began clearing the table. Bernard leaned over and said to the children. 'Now who's my first passenger on the slow train to Dreamland?'

'Me, Daddy, me!' They both yelled together.

Soon Fiona was left alone, dabbing at the stain on the cushion. From somewhere above she could hear the excited calls of the children as Bernard carried them up to bed. 'Choo-choo! Choo-choo!'

Darling, darling, Bernard. How she wished he could be a wonderful father without making her feel like an inadequate mother.