She stared ahead of her through the windscreen.
‘What are people worth? Children, husbands, careers. You go under and they call it sacrifice. You survive and they call you a bitch. Chop yourself in bits. For what? I’m not God. I can’t hold them all up on my shoulders. I live for them; they live for someone else. We’re all saints. We’re all fools. Why don’t we live for ourselves and call that service for a change?’
‘Did he know?’
He had seized her arm.
‘Did he!’
The tears trickled sideways over the bridge of her nose. She wiped them away.
‘Rawley’s a diplomat,’ she said at last. ‘The art of the possible, that’s Rawley. The limited aim, the trained mind. “Let’s not get overheated. Let’s not put a name to things. Let’s not negotiate without knowing what we want to achieve.” He can’t… he can’t go mad, it isn’t in him. He can’t live for anything. Except me.’
‘But he knew.’
‘I should think so,’ she said wearily. ‘I never asked him. Yes, he knew.’
‘Because you made him renew that contract, didn’t you. Last December. You worked on him.’
‘Yes. That was awful. That was quite awful. But it had to be done,’ she explained, as if she were referring to a higher cause ofwhich they were both aware. ‘Or he’d have sent Leo away.’
‘And that was what Leo wanted. That’s why he picked you up.’
‘Rawley married me for my money. For what he could get out of me,’ she said. ‘He stayed with me for love. Does that satisfy you?’
Turner did not reply.
‘He never put it into words. I told you. He never said the big things. “One more year is all I need. Just one year, Hazel. One year to love you, one year to get what they owe me. One year from December and then I’ll go. They don’t realise how much they need me.” So I invited him for drinks. When Rawley was there. It was early on, before the gossip started. We were just the three of us; I made Rawley come back early. “Rawley, this is Leo Harting, he works for you and he plays the organ in Chapel.” “Of course. We’ve met,” he said. We talked about nothing. Nuts from the Commissary. Spring leave. What it was like in Königswinter in the summer. “Mr Harting has asked us to dinner,” I said. “Isn’t he kind?” Next week we went to Königswinter. He gave us all the bits and pieces: ratafia biscuits with the sweet, halva with the coffee. That was all.’
‘What was all?’
‘Oh Christ, can’t you see? I’d shown him! I’d shown Rawley what I wanted him to buy me!’
It was quite still now. The rooks had perched like sentinels on slowly rocking branches, and there was no wind any more to stir their feathers.
‘Are they like horses?’ she asked. ‘Do they sleep standing up?’
She turned her head to look at him but he did not reply. ‘He hated silence,’ she said dreamily. ‘It frightened him. That’s why he liked music; that’s why he liked his house… it was full of noise. Not even the dead could have slept there. Let alone Leo.’
She smiled remembering.
‘He didn’t live in it, he manned it. Like a ship. All night he’d be hopping up and down fixing a window or a shutter or something. His whole life was like that. Secret fears, secret memories; things he would never tell but expected you to know about.’ She yawned. ‘He won’t come now,’ she said. ‘He hated the dark too.’
‘Where is he?’ Turner said urgently. ‘What’s he doing?’ She said nothing.
‘Listen: he whispered to you. In the night he boasted, told you how he made the world turn for him. How clever he was, the tricks he played, the people he deceived!’
‘You’ve got him wrong. Utterly wrong.’
‘Then tell me!’
‘There’s nothing to tell. We were pen friends, that’s all. He was reporting from another world.’
‘What world? Bloody Moscow and the fight for peace?’
‘I was right. You are vulgar. You want all the lines joined up and all the colours flat. You haven’t got the guts to face the half tones.’