18

'You said you wouldn't be late.' Gloria was in bed and my coming into the bedroom had wakened her.

'Sorry,' I said. Our relationship had developed – or should I say degenerated? – into that of a married couple. She spent each weekend with me and kept clothes and makeup and jewellery in my house. To say nothing of countless pairs of shoes.

She sat up in bed and switched on the dim bedside light. She was wearing a black chiffon nightdress. Her pale blonde hair was long enough to touch her shoulders. 'Did you go on?'

'No, I didn't "go on", if you mean to a nightclub or fancy-dress party.'

'You don't have to snap at me.' There was enough light for me to see the neat way in which she'd folded her clothes before going to bed. It was a bad sign; such fastidious attention to detail was often a sign of her suppressed bad temper.

'Do you think I like spending the evening with Dicky?' I said.

'Then why stay so late?'

'He'd rented a video. I couldn't leave before it had finished.'

'Did you have dinner there?'

'Supper; a sandwich and a cup of soup.'

'I ate with the children. Doris cooked a meat pie.'

'I wish you'd call her "Nanny",' I said. The nanny was young and I wanted to keep my distance from her. 'She'll start calling me "Bernard" next.'

'You should have told me before. I can't suddenly change now,' said Gloria. 'She'd think she'd upset me or something.' Her hair was falling over her face; she pushed it back with her hand and held her hand to her head as if posing. 'So it wasn't business?'

'Of course it was business. I told you that Dicky insisted that I bring the first draft of my report with me.'

'Who else was there?'

I sat down on the bed. 'Look, darling. If I'd mentioned you, Dicky would have included you in the invitation. We both know that. But didn't we agree that it's better to keep a low profile. We don't want everyone in the office talking.'

'That depends what they're saying,' said Gloria, who felt that we should be together every minute of our free time and especially resented being left alone for any part of the weekends.

I leaned forward and embraced her tightly and kissed her.

'What did you talk about?' she said.

'Bret is in trouble,' I said.

'With the Department?'

'Dicky is the last of the big-time wishful thinkers. But even allowing for Dicky's exaggeration, Bret is facing the music for everything that's gone wrong with the Stinnes debriefing. Now they're going to start saying it's all been done on Moscow 's orders.'

'It's Bret's own fault, darling. He thought it was all so easy. You said that yourself.'

'Yes, he's brought it on himself, but now they're going to heap everything they can think of on him. Whether he's KGB or not, they'll make him the scapegoat.'

'Scapegoat's not the word,' she said. 'Scapegoats were released into the wilderness. You mean Bret will be delivered to MI5 as the person who's been usurping all their powers and functions. Not so much a scapegoat as a hostage. Am I right?'

'Perhaps consolation prize is-the expression we're looking for,' I said bitterly. I'd seen too many severed heads delivered to the Home Office under similar circumstances to be optimistic about Bret's fate. 'Anyway, Bret is probably going to face more serious charges than that,' I said.

She looked at me quizzically and said, 'He's a KGB mole?'

'I don't know.'

'But that will be the charge?'

'It's too early for charges. Maybe there won't be any. No one's told me anything, but there's been some sort of top-level meeting about Bret. Everyone is beginning to think he's working for Moscow. Dicky seems to have told Daphne. She thought I'd already been told, so she gave the game away.'

'What a bombshell when the newspapers get the story,' said Gloria.

I kissed her again, but she didn't respond.

'They should be shot,' she said. 'Traitors. Bastards.' She didn't raise her voice, but her body stiffened in anger and the depth of her feeling surprised me.

'It's all part of the game.'

'No, it's not. People like Rensselaer are murderers. To appease their social conscience they'll turn over men and women to the torture chambers. What swine they are!'

'Perhaps they do what they think is right,' I said. I didn't exactly believe it but that was the only way I could do my job. I couldn't start thinking I was part of a struggle of good against evil or freedom against tyranny. The only way I could work was to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the job and do it as well as I could do it.

'Then why don't they go to Russia? They know it's not the kind of world we want or we'd have voted the Communists into power long ago. Why don't they just go to Russia?'

'Well, why don't they?' I said.

'They want to have their cake and eat it. They're always rich and well educated, aren't they? They want their privileged status in a rich West while they're appeasing their guilt about enjoying it.'

'Are you talking about Bret?' I said. I stood up. 'Or are you talking about my wife?'

'I'm talking about traitors,' she said.

I went over to the wardrobe and opened it. Somewhere there was a tweed suit that I hadn't worn for years. I sorted through the clothes until I found it hung inside a plastic bag – Fiona put all my suits into plastic bags – and then I felt through the pockets. 'I suspected Bret of having an affair with my wife. Did I ever tell you about that?'

'If you're looking for cigarettes, I threw them all out.'

'I suddenly remembered leaving a packet in that tweed suit,' I said. The suit brought back memories. The last time I'd worn it I'd been to a horse show with Fiona and my father-in-law. It was a time when I was working very hard at being nice to him. He'd won a prize for jumping over fences, and he took us all to a fancy restaurant on the river near Marlow. I ran out of cigarettes and my father-in-law wouldn't let me pay cash for some more; he insisted they be added to his dinner bill. The incident stuck in my mind because it was in the restaurant that I first heard that he'd set up trust funds for the children. He hadn't told me, and Fiona hadn't told me either. Worse still, he'd told the children but told them not to tell me.

'Yes, I threw them out. If there are cigarettes in the house, you'll start smoking again, you know that. You don't want to, do you?'

I closed the wardrobe door and abandoned the notion of a cigarette. She was right; I didn't want to start smoking again, but given my present level of stress I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to resist the temptation.

'You have to have someone to look after you,' she said in a conciliatory tone.

'Once, I was certain that Bret was having an affair with Fiona. I hated him. My hatred for him influenced everything I thought, said, and did.' My need for a cigarette had abated. Even if I'd found a carton on my pillow, I wouldn't have bothered to open it. 'It was only with great effort that I could listen to anything that was said about him without reprocessing it and distorting it. Now I've got that feeling under control. I don't even care if they did have an affair. I can look at Bret Rensselaer with a clear mind. When I tell you I don't know whether he's guilty, I mean exactly that.'

'Jealousy, you mean. You were jealous of Bret Rensselaer because he's rich and successful and maybe had an affair with your wife.'

'Yes,' I said.

'That's natural enough, Bernard. Why shouldn't you be angry and prejudiced? Why should you be impartial to any man who treats you badly?'

'Are you going to tell me why?'

'Because you like to play God, Bernard. You killed two men the other night in the launderette. You didn't gloss over it. You told me. You told Dicky. I have no doubt it's in your report, with you taking unequivocal responsibility for their deaths. You're not an insensitive brute, you're not a thug or a killer. The only way you can cope with the guilt you suffer over those deaths is by convincing yourself that you observe the world around you with total objectivity. That's playing God, darling. And it's not the way to assuage your guilt. Admit that you're fallible, accept the fact that you're only human, admit that if Bret goes to the Old Bailey, you'll be delighted to see him get his comeuppance.'