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Pamela came out of the sitting room, wearing a green dress. With her fair, smooth hair and perfect skin, it suited her.
“Sorry to be late,” he said.
“No later than usual,” she replied, a sadness in her face that pricked him with guilt.
He sat down in his usual chair, well-worn leather and infinitely comfortable. He dreaded the day when it would have to be replaced. Was there a lot in his life like that? Well worn, familiar, irreplaceable. He didn’t feel like there was, at least on the outside. Inside, his mind, his imagination, even sometimes his emotions, were sharper, more alive, than ever.
Pamela brought him a small glass of sherry, very dry, the way he liked it. She knew all his habits; he never had to ask. The glass was crystal, purposely made for sherry. Waterford. They had six. A wedding present from what seemed like another age. They had been in love then, or thought they were. Was it part of the definition of love that it should last?
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He wanted to add something, but they had long ago run out of conversation. Some forced observation, just for the sake of saying something, would make the silence heavier. She used to ask about his day, his week, or at least if it was going well. He could not claim the victories and found it awkward telling her only half the story, stopping just before the parts that made sense of it. She was an intelligent woman, well educated, albeit in subjects of pleasure rather than practicality, such as European art history. He had found them interesting, when they had had time to talk.
But he felt as if he was always shutting her out of the things that mattered to him. Not speaking of subjects, even to your own family, was a rule never to be broken. And it was a great consideration to their feelings—sharing anxiety over what he could not control was exhausting and purposeless. Sooner or later his tongue would slip, and he would say something that led to something else, and finally she would put it together. His silence was a shield for her, but failure to explain that only made it worse. Now he had shut her out for too long, like an old door that had rusted closed.
Roger Cordell was still on his mind. He sipped his sherry. “Are you still in touch with Winifred Cordell?” he asked suddenly.
Pamela was startled. “What?” She had plainly been off in her own thoughts.
He repeated his question. She looked surprised. It gave a sudden spark of life to the picture perfection of her face. He used to think it beautiful, everything in proportion, her skin flawless, as if the woman behind it were not fallible, could not be hurt just as deeply as he could.
“Why?” she asked. “Has something happened?”
Peter felt self-conscious. He should not have tried to be oblique with her. There were parts of him—large, closed-off, vulnerable parts—she did not know existed, but the ordinary, everyday things she knew far better than he knew her. She thought he was a civil servant, something to do with the Foreign Office, too boring to talk about.
“Peter! Has something happened?” she repeated, a sharp edge of anxiety audible in her voice.
“Sorry. Not that I know of.” He must give a believable reason for asking. If she really was in touch with Winifred Cordell, she might know something of Cordell’s mind. He had to ask, not only to satisfy Pamela, but to answer the nagging worry at the back of his own mind. He realized now just how sharp it was. It was easy to dismiss the murder in Amalfi as unconnected, but he knew better than to make that sort of lazy mistake.
She did not believe him. It was clear in her eyes.
“There’s a problem I think Roger could give me advice about.” He must be careful what he told her. She remembered far too much of what he said.
“Advise you?” she said, looking at him more closely.
“A diplomatic matter.” He had the answer ready now. “He’s been in Berlin quite a long time. Speaks German very well. Catches the cultural references, the
light and shade of a conversation, as well as just the words…”
“I’ve never heard you speak so well of him.”
There was a wealth of feeling behind that observation. In so many things she did not know him at all. But she knew the emotions he gave away in his speech, and his silences. Too late to go back and attempt to start now. He had needed his solitude to deal with all the pain of war, of command and decision, of being safe when he was sending men into occupied territory, possibly to die. The only one who understood that was Lucas. And anyway, he did not want Pamela’s pity. He had seen it before, for other men. It too quickly grew into impatience, resentment for having to bear the secondhand pain of an experience she had been excluded from sharing at the time.
“Berlin’s a tough posting,” he replied.
“It has been for years,” she pointed out.
“It’s getting harder.”
“Since Adolf Hitler came to the top?” she asked. There was interest in her voice.
Suddenly he wanted to share it with her, speak honestly for once. But you cannot start off being plain, open, and then stop. She was far too clever, and it was important to her, so she would be unable to let it go, even if she wanted to.
She was watching him, waiting for his answer.
“I think so. There’s more open violence, and he can’t help knowing it.”
“Isn’t it necessary? After all the disorganization, the hunger, the despair, people need order. You can’t get that without a pretty heavy hand.”
“I think it’s a little worse than that. But I wondered how Roger was. And Winifred. She lost a lot of her family in the war. She must be finding this difficult.”
