Stencil ever got. Now and again events would fall into ominous patterns.
Was Fairing too a double agent? If so, then it was actually the woman who'd brought F.O. into this. What twisted Italian casuistry advised revealing any plot-in-mounting to one's enemies?
She arose and left the church, passing Stencil on route. Their eyes met. Demivolt's remark came back to him: 'A tremendous nostalgia about this show.'
Nostalgia and melancholy . . . Hadn't he bridged two worlds? The changes couldn't have been all in him. It must be an alien passion in Malta where all history seemed simultaneously present, where all streets were strait with ghosts, where in a sea whose uneasy floor made and unmade islands every year, this stone fish and Ghaudex and the rocks called Cumin- seed and Peppercorn had remained fixed realities since time out of mind. In London were too many distractions. History there was the record of an evolution. One-way and ongoing. Monuments, buildings, plaques were remembrances only; but in Valletta remembrances seemed almost to live.
Stencil, at home everywhere in Europe, had thus come out of his element. Recognizing it was his first step down. A spy has no element to be out of, and not feeling 'at home' is a sign of weakness.
F.O. continued to be uncommunicative and unhelpful. Stencil raised the question to Demivolt: had they been turned out to pasture here?
'I've been afraid of that. We are old.'
'It was different once,' Stencil asked, 'wasn't it?'
They went out that night and got maudlin-drunk. But nostalgic melancholy is a fine emotion, becoming blunted on alcohol. Stencil regretted the binge. He remembered rollicking down the hill to Strait Street, well past midnight, singing old vaudeville songs. What was happening?
There came, in time's fullness, One of Those Days. After a spring morning made horrible by another night of heavy drinking, Stencil arrived at Fairing's church to learn the priest was being transferred.
'To America. There is nothing I can do.' Again the old, fellow-professional smile.
Could Stencil have sneered 'God's will'; not likely. His case wasn't yet that far advanced. The Church's will, certainly, and Fairing was the type to bow to Authority. Here was after all another Englishman. So they were, in a sense, brothers in exile.
'Hardly,' the priest smiled. 'In the matter of Caesar and God, a Jesuit need not be as flexible as you might think. There's no conflict of interests.'
'As there is between Caesar and Fairing? Or Caesar and Stencil?'
'Something like that.'
'Sahha, then. I suppose your relief . . .'
'Father Avalanche is younger. Don't lead him into bad habits.'
'I see.'
Demivolt was out at Hamrun, conferring with agents among the millers. They were frightened. Had Fairing been too frightened to stay? Stencil had supper in his room. He'd drawn no more than a few times on his pipe when there was a timid knock.
'Oh, come. Come.'
A girl, obviously pregnant, who stood, only watching him.
'Do you speak English, then.'
'I do. I am Carla Maijstral.' She remained erect, shoulderblades and buttocks touching the door.
'He will be killed, or hurt,' she said. 'In wartime a woman must expect to lose her husband. But now there is peace.'
She wanted him sacked. Sack him? Why not. Double agents were dangerous. But now, having lost the priest . . . She couldn't know about La Manganese.
'Could you help, signor. Speak to him.'
'How did you know? He didn't tell you.'
'The workers know there is a spy among them. It has become a favorite topic among all the wives. Which one of us? Of course, it is one of the bachelors, they say. A man with a wife, with children, could not take the chance.' She was dry-eyed, her voice was steady.
'For God's sake,' Stencil said irritably, 'sit down.'
Seated: 'A wife knows things, especially one who will be a mother soon.' She paused to smile down at her belly, which upset Stencil. Dislike for her grew as the moments passed. 'I know only that something is wrong with Maijstral. In England I have heard that ladies are 'confined' months before the child is born. Here a woman works, and goes out in the street, as long as she can move about.'
'And you came out looking for me.'
'The priest told me.'
Fairing. Who was working for whom? Caesar wasn't getting a fair shake. He tried sympathy. 'Was it worrying you that much? That you had to bring it all into the confessional?'
'He used to stay home at night. It will be our first child, and a first child is the most important. It is his child, too. But we hardly speak any more. He comes in late and I pretend to be asleep.'
