Again Charlie hesitated. ‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ he said honestly.
‘I don’t miss Igor,’ Natalia disclosed. ‘I thought about him quite a lot just before I came here but that was because I was comparing him to Eduard. But I haven’t missed him for a very long time: maybe I never did. I guess yours was a different sort of love.’
‘Perhaps,’ conceded Charlie. ‘There’s a lot of regrets.’ He’d never admitted it before but didn’t feel embarrassed to talk about it with Natalia.
‘I don’t understand what you’ve just said.’
‘I didn’t treat her like I should have done,’ conceded Charlie, in further admission. ‘Behaved badly. Took a lot – too much – for granted. I regret that now.’
‘Is that a clumsy way of telling me you had affairs?’
‘Some. Not a lot.’
‘Are you going to have affairs when we’re married?’
‘No.’
‘You’d have hardly confessed it in advance, would you?’ It was a light remark, not accusing.
‘Why’d you ask then?’
‘Just wanted to hear what you’d say.’
‘I won’t,’ said Charlie. ‘Ever.’
‘Did she know what you did?’
Charlie nodded in the darkness, momentarily forgetting she couldn’t see the gesture. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s how we met, in the department.’
‘How do your people feel about department romances?’
Charlie paused yet again. Then he said: ‘I don’t know that there’s a department policy. It happens, but not a lot.’ As far as Charlie was aware it wasn’t a subject upon which Harkness had issued an edict: he supposed the man would get around to it, some time.
‘It’s practically encouraged in the KGB,’ revealed Natalia. ‘Particularly in the First Chief Directorate, if an officer is going to follow the diplomatic route by being assigned to embassies or to consulates. When they’re posted abroad the husband or wife goes as well and it puts two operatives in place rather than one. Cuts down the chances of seduction by a counter-intelligence plant, too.’
‘Very practical indeed,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Did she worry? Did Edith worry?’
‘I suppose so…’ started Charlie, and stopped. ‘No, that’s stupid. Of course she worried. She just didn’t talk about it a lot.’
Natalia noticeably shuddered. ‘It must have been horrible, having someone you love working God knows where and having the access to what was happening to him: not knowing when you arrived in the morning if there’d be a dry, cold message from some embassy station saying that your husband had been arrested. Or killed’
‘Actually she was in a different section, so she didn’t have access,’ said Charlie. ‘And I never got arrested: not on a department assignment, that is.’
‘Do you mind talking about it?’ asked Natalia belatedly.
‘No,’ said Charlie.
‘Can I ask you something very personal?’
‘If you like.’
‘What about children?’
Charlie took several seconds to reply. He said: ‘We decided against it, at first. It was Edith’s decision, really. Because of what I did. She thought…well, that it wasn’t a good idea. Then she changed her mind: she’d left the department by then, wasn’t doing anything. Not working, I mean. She became pregnant about a year after she quit. She lost it, just beyond two months. It didn’t happen again. Her becoming pregnant. There were tests and things and there was no reason why it shouldn’t have done. Medical, I mean. It just didn’t.’
‘Would you have liked a baby?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Charlie, again with complete honesty. ‘It all seemed to be over before I’d become used to the idea of having one in the first place. I don’t ever remember making up my mind.’
‘I’m thirty-eight, Charlie. Nearly thirty-nine.’
‘So?’
‘The chances of our having one aren’t good.’
He laughed. ‘You thinking that far ahead!’
‘I haven’t been, not until now. But why not?’
‘No reason,’ conceded Charlie. ‘I haven’t, that’s all.’
‘Think about it now,’ she demanded.
‘That’s not the way it’s decided!’ protested Charlie.
‘How is it decided?’
‘I don’t know!’ struggled Charlie. ‘People talk about it…discuss it for a while…’
‘You don’t want one, do you?’ challenged Natalia openly.
‘Maybe not,’ said Charlie.
‘Why not?’
‘Frightened, I suppose.’
‘What’s there to be frightened of?’
‘Something happening. Going wrong.’
‘I never imagined you’d feel like that.’
Charlie shifted impatiently. His arm was numb from the length of time Natalia had been lying on it. He said: ‘Isn’t this part of the conversation academic, anyway? There’s a lot of other things to think about first.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like what I’m going to do.’
‘Do?’
‘Job,’ said Charlie.
Now it was Natalia who did not speak for several moments. When she did she moved further away, off his arm, and said: ‘Put a light on.’
‘Why?’
‘Put a light on!’
He did. Natalia sat up, careless of the covering falling, unembarrassed at her nakedness. Her body was very firm, a young girl’s litheness, her breasts with hardly any sag, her stomach hard.
‘So?’ he said. Charlie came up in the bed too, propping himself on his tingling arm, hoping it would restore the circulation. He wondered how she was going to phrase it.
‘So what are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about getting another job, of course.’
‘Where does of course come into it?’
‘Darling!’ said Charlie, pleading for her understanding. ‘You surely don’t imagine I can stay on in the service if you cross over and we stay together…get married! It would be absurd. I’ll have to resign.’
‘No!’ She had to convince him, Natalia thought desperately.
‘There’s no alternative.’
‘No, Charlie,’ she insisted. ‘You’ve got to find a way!’
‘There isn’t one!’ said Charlie, just as insistently.
‘Find one!’ she hissed, wanting to shout at him but unable to risk the noise in the sleeping hotel.
‘Why must I find a way, Natalia?’ asked Charlie solemnly.
‘Because if you don’t it will destroy us.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘It does to me. It makes very good sense. I might not have known much about Edith from our time in Moscow but I learned a lot of other things. Chief of which was what the service and the department mean to you. It’s ingrained into you, Charlie. You think it, live it, exist on it.’
‘It’s a job I’m good at,’ Charlie tried to qualify. ‘There’ll be others.’
Natalia shook her head in refusal. ‘It wouldn’t happen at once,’ she said. ‘Maybe not for quite a few months.
