‘Before what?’
‘The gossip started,’ she said with sudden passion. ‘I’ve never known anywhere for such gossip. You can’t move without them making up some wicked story about you.’
‘What story have they made up about you?’
‘God knows,’ she said uselessly. ‘God knows.’
‘Which Guard did you leave the parcel with?’
‘Walter, the younger one. Macmullen’s son.’
‘Did he tell other people?’
‘I particularly asked him to regard the matter as confidential.’
‘I should think that impressed him,’ Turner said.
She stared at him angrily, her face red with embarrassment.
‘All right. So you gave him the bird. What did he do about it?’
‘That day he appeared at Chancery meeting and wished me good morning as if nothing had happened. I smiled at him and that was that. He was pale but brave… sad but in command. I felt that the worst was over… Fortunately he was about to begin a new job in Chancery Registry and I hoped that this would take his mind off other things. For a couple of weeks I barely spoke to him. I saw him either in the Embassy or at social functions and he seemed quite happy. He made no allusion to Christmas evening or to the hair-dryer. Occasionally at cocktail parties he would come and stand quite close to me and I knew that… he wished for my proximity. Sometimes I would be conscious of his eyes on me. A woman can tell these things; I knew that he had still not completely given up hope. He had a way of catching my eye that was… beyond all doubt. I cannot imagine why I had not noticed it before. However, I continued to give him no encouragement. That was the decision I had taken, and whatever the short-term temptations to alleviate his distress, I knew that in the long term no purpose could be served by… leading him on. I was also confident that anything so sudden and… irrational would quickly pass.’
‘And did it?’
‘We continued in this way for about a fortnight. It was beginning to get on my nerves. I seemed unable to go to a single party, to accept a single invitation without seeing him. He didn’t even address me any more. He just looked. Wherever I went, his eyes followed me… They are very dark eyes. I would call them soulful. Dark brown, as one would expect, and they imparted a remarkable sense of dependence… In the end I was almost frightened to go out. I’m afraid that at that stage, I even had an unworthy thought. I wondered whether he was reading my mail.’
‘Did you now?’
‘We all have our own pigeonholes in Registry. For telegrams and mail. Everyone in Registry takes a hand at sorting the incoming papers. It is of course the custom here as in England that invitations are sent unsealed. It would have been quite possible for him to look inside.’
‘Why was the thought unworthy?’
‘It was untrue, that’s why,’ she retorted. ‘I taxed him with it and he assured me it was quite untrue.’
‘I see.’
Her voice became even more pedagogic; the tones came very crisply, brooking no question whatever.
‘He would never do such a thing. It was not in his nature, it had not crossed his mind. He assured me categorically that he was not… stalking me. That was the expression I used; it was one I instantly regretted. I cannot imagine how I came on such a ridiculous metaphor. To the contrary, he said, he was merely following his usual social pattern; if it bothered me he would change it, or decline all further invitations until I instructed him otherwise. Nothing was further from his mind than to be a burden to me.’
‘So after that you were friends again, were you?’
He watched her search for the wrong words, watched her balance awkwardly at the edge of truth, and awkwardly withdraw.
‘Since the twenty-third of January he has not spoken to me again,’ she blurted. Even in that sad light, Turner saw the tears running down her rough cheeks as her head fell forward and her hand rose quickly to cover them. ‘I can’t go on. I think of him all the time.’