Spy Story

'Have you been drinking, darling?' She smiled. She'd never seen me drunk but she was always suspecting I might be.

'No.'

'You're shivering.'

I wanted to tell her about the flat and the photographs of the man who wasn't me, but I knew she'd be sceptical. She was a doctor: they're all like that. 'Did the car give you trouble?' she asked finally. She wanted only to be quite certain I wasn't going to confess to another woman.

'The plugs. Same as last time.'

'Perhaps you should get the new one now, instead of waiting.'

'Sure. And a sixty-foot ocean racer. Did you see Jack while I was away?'

'He took me to lunch.'

'Good old Jack.'

'At the Savoy Grill.'

I nodded. Her estranged husband was a fashionable young paediatrician. The Savoy Grill was his works canteen. 'Did you talk about the divorce?'

'I told him I wanted no money.'

'That pleased him, I'll bet.'

'Jack's not like that.'

'What is he like, Marjorie?'

She didn't answer. We'd got as close as this to fighting about him before, but she was; sensible enough to recognize male insecurity for what it was. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. 'You're tired,' she said.

'I missed you, Marj.'

'Did you really, darling?'

I nodded. On the table alongside her there was a pile of books: Pregnancy and Anaemia, Puerperal Anaemia, Bennett, Achresthic Anaemia, Wilkinson, A Clinical Study, by Schmidt and History of a Case of Anaemia, by Combe. Tucked under the books there was a bundle of loose-leaf pages, crammed with Marjorie's tiny writing. I broke the chocolate bar lying next to the books and put a piece of it into Marjorie's mouth.

'The Los Angeles people came back to me. Now there's a car and a house and a sabbatical fifth year.'

'I wasn't…'

'Now don't be tempted into lying. I know how your mind works.'

'I'm pretty tired, Marj.'

'Well, we'll have to tails about things some time.' It was the doctor speaking.

'Yes.'

'Lunch Thursday?'

'Great,' I said.

'Sounds like it.'

'Sensational, wonderful, I can't wait.'

'Sometimes I wonder how we got this far.'

I didn't answer. I wondered too. She wanted me to admit that I couldn't live without her. And I had the nasty feeling that bat as soon as I did that, she'd up and leave me. So we continued as we were: in love but determined not to admit it. Or worse: declaring our love in such a way that the other could not be sure.

'Strangers on a train,' said Marjorie.

'What?'

'We are — strangers on a train.'

I pulled a face, as if I didn't understand what she was getting at. She pushed her hair back but it fell forward again. She pulled a clip from it and fastened it. It was a nervous movement, designed more to occupy her than to change her hair.

'I'm sorry, love.' I leaned forward and kissed her gcndy. 'I'm really sorry. We'll talk about it.'

'On Thursday…' she smiled, knowing that I'd promise anything to avoid the sort of discussion that she had in mind. 'Your coat is wet. You'd better hang it up, it will wrinkle and need cleaning.'

'Now, if you like. We'll talk now, if that's what you want.'

She shook her head. 'We're on our way to different destinations. That's what I mean. When you get to where you're going, you'll get out. I know you. I know you too well.'

'It's you who gets offers… fantastic salaries from Los Angeles research institutes, reads up anaemia, and sends polite refusals that ensure an even better offer eventually comes.'

'I know,' she admitted, and kissed me in a distant and preoccupied way. 'But I love you, darling. I mean really…' She gave an attractive little laugh. 'You make me feel someone, The way you just take it for granted that I could go to America and do that damned job…' She shrugged. 'Sometimes I wish you weren't so damned encouraging. I wish you were bossy, even. There are times when I wish you'd insist I stayed at home and did the washing-up.'

Well, you can't make women happy, that's a kind of fundamental law of the universe. You try and make them happy and they'll never forgive you for revealing to them that they can't be.

'So do the washing-up,' I said. I put my arm round her. The wool dress was thin. I could feel that her skin was hot beneath it. Perhaps she was running a fever, or perhaps it was passion. Or perhaps I was just the icy cold bastard that she so often accused me of being.

'Are you sure you wouldn't like a bacon sandwich?'

I shook my head. 'Marjorie,' I said, 'do you remember the caretaker at number eighteen?' I walked across to the TV and switched it off.

'No. Should I?'

'Be serious for a moment… Charlie the caretaker. Charlie Short… moustache, cockney accent — always making jokes about the landlords.'

'No.'

Think for a moment.'

'No need to shout.'

'Can't you remember the dinner party… he climbed in the window to let you in when you'd lost your key?'

'That must have been one of your other girls,' said Marjorie archly.

I smiled but said nothing.

'You don't look very well,' said Marjorie. 'Did anything happen on the trip?'

'No.'

'I worry about you. You look pretty done in.'

'Is that a professional opinion, Doctor?'

She screwed her face up, like a little girl playing doctors and nurses. 'Yes, it is, honestly, darling.'

'The diagnosis?'

'Well it's not anaemia.' She laughed. She was very beautiful. Even more beautiful when she laughed.

'And what do you usually prescribe for men in my condition, Doc?'

'Bed,' she said. 'Definitely bed.' She laughed and undid my tie.

'You're shaking.' She said it with some alarm. I was shaking. The trip, the journey home, the weather, that: damned number eighteen where I was now in mass production, had all got to me suddenly, but how do you explain that? I mean, how do you explain it to a doctor?

Chapter Four

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