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“And she’s going to go?” Lucas could scarcely imagine it. He ached inside as if he could feel a physical pain, and he remembered how she had wept when Strother had fled in hideous disgrace. There had been no warning. Lucas had not liked Strother, but he had tried to accept him for Elena’s sake. Now his feelings were mixed, surprised, and still angry.
Peter was talking but Lucas had not heard him.
“…knows him,” Peter was saying. “She has imagination and intelligence. She can warn him that he must get out, and bring with him any information he has about the Austrians. She speaks pretty fluent German and Italian—”
“Italian?” Lucas interrupted sharply.
“He’s in Trieste.”
“Why Trieste?” Lucas asked. “That’s northern Italy.”
“I know where Trieste is!” Peter said a little sharply.
Lucas cut him off: “I can see why Strother would be there, but…”
Peter faced him. “She wants a proper job, Lucas. No more filling in for someone else, and then leaving when it starts to make sense to her. You agreed to our using her after Berlin. She’s brave, resourceful, intelligent, and above all, after her experiences in May, she cares intensely about what is happening in Europe. She’s seen it up close, and she won’t stand by and wring her hands, or believe what we all wish were true, but isn’t.” His eyes were intensely serious now; his voice dropped lower and became almost frantic. “Hitler’s going to war, one step at a time. You know it, I know it, and perhaps Churchill does, but our government’s playing the game of Statues. We played it as children, we all did: turn your back and it moves; look and it freezes, but it’s closer, closer every time. You can’t say you’ll use her, but only for the small jobs that are safe. She doesn’t deserve that, and she’d know, sooner or later. You never did that yourself, to protect Josephine, or anyone else.”
Lucas felt the fury rise up inside him. “That’s different—” he began.
“Why?” Peter interrupted. There was not anger in his face so much as distress. “We send the best person for the job. We always have. What am I going to say to others? Too close to me? Too precious? They might not come back? How can you ask another man to send his child to war, but you won’t send your own?”
Lucas had never forgotten his only grandson. There were times when it hurt as if it had been yesterday. Or Margot’s husband of one week. She had never remarried. But Lucas had, at least temporarily, forgotten Peter’s older brother, James. When he spoke again, it was quietly, but his voice was still tight with pain. “I’m sorry, I had forgotten about James. But it wasn’t the danger I was thinking of, it was the shame, the humiliation of Strother leaving. He seemed to have betrayed us all, but Elena far more than the rest of us. They blamed her, you know that, for having helped him, albeit unknowingly. They believed her, but she still lost her career.” He remembered it so sharply. All the university education, her position in the Foreign Office for which she had worked so hard. He remembered her argument with a pain that was still very real, like a knife inside him, a long, curved blade. “That hurt less than the betrayal of love. Her father doesn’t mention it anymore, but he was so ashamed of her. He’s never really let it go; it humiliated him, too.”
“I’d forgotten about that,” Peter admitted. “I wasn’t here at the time. I was abroad when I heard about it.”
“Why the hell do you think she left?” Lucas asked bitterly. “It was the career she worked so hard for, and she loved the bloody man. That would’ve hurt the most, but I think she’s over that now.” He took a deep breath. “But after Berlin, she needs…” He did not know what she needed, or what more to say. Everyone got hurt, if they were alive at all. The only way not to be wounded was not to care enough about anything, or anybody, for the loss to touch you. But then you might as well be dead. It’s just that when it was Elena, it cut him more deeply. In some ways, she was still the eager child who trusted him so completely.
Peter was struggling to find words. “Even if I had known all that, I still might have sent her,” he said quietly. “What would you have me do? Let Strother be killed and his information lost? Do you think that’s what she would want? I’ll do my job, as long as it isn’t painful? Doesn’t dig up old memories, and open old wounds to bleed again? Let somebody else do it?”
“No, of course not!” Lucas said angrily. “That’s…” He lost the word, or perhaps never had it. “Is that what you came to tell me? That you sent Elena to Trieste to rescue Aiden Strother, of all people?” He was shouting now, and he could hear the anger in his voice, but not control it.
“Yes, would you rather I kept it from you?” There was defiance in Peter’s face.
“I’d rather you bloody well hadn’t done it!” Lucas snapped back. “But you have, and I won’t be able to get in touch with her. You can at least tell me she’s all right.”
“No, I can’t,” Peter replied. “I won’t know. You weren’t listening. Our contact in Trieste has gone silent. I don’t know if he’s alive. I don’t know what’s gone wrong. I sent the best person I have, perhaps the only person. I didn’t know how deep the Strother affair went. All I heard was that it was an affair.”
“And if you had known, would you have sent her anyway?”
Peter met his eyes. “Yes, and so would you.”
“Would I?”
“Yes,” Peter said without hesitation.
Lucas wanted to tell him to go to hell, but instead he turned to walk away, slowly, leaving Toby to realize he had gone and follow him over the rough earth and the cornstalks.
* * *
—
Lucas arrived home, took Toby’s lead off, and let him run into the kitchen, where he was sure Josephine would have a biscuit for him. She always did. Just one, and Toby knew not to ask for another but would still sit there looking soulful and hungry. He was happy enough if she talked to him.
“What’s for dinner?” Lucas asked, when he came into the kitchen to hang up Toby’s lead. He was not interested, but he wanted to talk. He just did not know where to begin.
“I’ve no idea,” Josephine answered with a slight smile.
He was completely wrong-footed. He stood in the middle of the floor, frowning.
