Page 69 of The Last Postcard

I risked a glance at her. She was staring at her hands, at the faint stripe where a wedding ring had once been.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘But you could have told us this. And there are ladies who wear men’s suits, you know – I wear trousers, quite often. If you did nothing wrong, why keep pretending to be someone you’re not?’

I couldn’t keep down a laugh at that. ‘They’re rich aren’t they, your ladies who wear men’s clothes?’

‘Well,’ Hilde said, ‘I suppose they are.’

‘Then they have a choice.’ I met her eyes. ‘Would Monsieur Langham have listened to me, that night of the party, if I had come here as a woman? Would he have given me a job, a room, safety? Would you? Or would you have seen me as trouble, as a foolish girl who had gotten herself into a mess, and turned me away, told me to go and find my work on the streets?’

Her face was red. ‘It is not that simple.’

I shook my head at her. ‘I thought you of all people would understand.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Her voice was sharp again, but unsteady.

I hesitated. I had to win her trust, if I was to stay in the house. I pointed to her ring finger. ‘You’re running from something. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here, in Tangiers, with a man who isn’t your husband. You wouldn’t be smoking as much as you do, and drinking, if you weren’t trying to forget.’

On the floor near by was her tray, with its opium pipe and lamp, its little tweezers and pots. For a moment, her face was pinched and I thought she would be angry. Then, she sagged and reached for the bottle again.

‘Am I that obvious?’ she asked, and there were tears in her voice, like the air before it rains.

Over the next hour she told me about herself, between sips of gin. I drank too, to seem companionable, and as the liquor disappeared she grew warmer with me, as if confiding to a friend. I believe she forgot all about the papers in the drawer, about my revelation. She was caught in the pattern of her own past, in the aching relief of confession.

Her story began with a marriage to a wealthy Italian businessman, followed by an idyllic honeymoon that went sour the moment they arrived back at his family home in Milan.

‘He turned overbearing, controlling, none of the things he had been when we were courting. He wouldn’t let me see my friends. He said they were offensive, though before he had spent nearly every day in their company. And his business –’ she laughed, tears wetting her eyelashes, loosened by the gin ‘– I had never asked much, you see, before the wedding. I knew he owned factories that made parts. I thought the details too dull to bother with.’ She drank. ‘But then the conferences began, the dinners, and I saw the sorts of people who attended, I heard them talk, discussing armaments and weaponry as if they were sweets.’

She looked at me. ‘A British wife with government connections is a useful thing in the arms trade. That’s how he saw me, a tool in his negotiations. I couldn’t stand it. Finally, I told him I was leaving.’ She drained the glass. ‘He disagreed. He tricked me into going to our country house, in the middle of nowhere, and locked me up there until he was sure I was with child.’

She held her hand out for the box of cigarettes on the dresser, and I handed them to her, helped her light one. ‘He thought that would stop me, you see,’ she said. ‘He was wrong. One night he left me alone, and I ran. I caught a train to the nearest town and I fixed the little problem he had given me. You can do that, you know, with enough money, even in places like Italy.’

Her hand was trembling as she took a drag on the cigarette.

‘Then I did exactly the same as you. I got out of the country. I knew he’d never agree to a divorce, and that I wouldn’t be safe, once he discovered what I’d done.’

‘Where did you go?’ I asked it quietly.

‘France,’ she said, ignoring the cigarette ash that fell on to the sheets. ‘Back to the Riviera. I had friends there. I thought about going home to England, but I was scared my family might intervene, send me back to Francesco. So I floated between Antibes and Nice, keeping as quiet as I could. That’s where I met Arthur, a year ago, at the Beau Rivage.’

There was something in the way she said it, softly, quite different from the terrible matter-of-fact way she’d discussed her marriage.

‘Were you and he …?’ I felt my cheeks burn. Had he looked at her, the way he looked at me, in the shadows of the lounge? I shifted on the bed, trying to seem casual. It was no use. She knew.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, we were lovers.’ She smiled and took another drag of her cigarette. ‘For a little while anyway. But the thought of it all growing hateful and burning out, it was too much for me. Arthur felt the same. He has so many other concerns. We soon realized we were much better suited as companions.’

I looked down at the floor, more confused than ever. Beside the bed were the papers, spilled from their file. Had she drunk enough to talk about them?

She followed my gaze, and sighed. ‘Insurance, against my husband,’ she said, stirring the papers with a bare toe. ‘They’re blueprints. Original copies. I stole them when I left, and told Francesco that unless he leaves me alone, they will find their way into the hands of every foreign military attaché I can think of.’ She smiled. ‘It is the only language he understands.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I told her.

‘So am I. But we’re here now, aren’t we?’

Sitting on that rumpled bed, we looked at each other.

‘I won’t tell Arthur,’ she said abruptly, stubbing her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray on the bedside table. ‘But you will have to.’

My stomach tightened with nerves. ‘What will he do?’