She opened the door without looking at him. She was wearing a cotton nightdress and a cardigan.
“God, you took your time,” she said, turned and walked uncertainly back to the bedroom. “Something wrong?” she asked over her shoulder. “Someone else been murdered?”
“What’s the matter, Sarah? Aren’t you well?”
Anthony was running about shouting because his father had come home. Sarah climbed back into bed. “I rang the doctor. I don’t know what it is,” she said, as if illness were not her subject.
“Have you a temperature?”
She had put a bowl of cold water and the bathroom flannel beside her. He wrung out the flannel and laid it on her head. “You’ll have to cope,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s not as exciting as spies. Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?”
“When’s the doctor arriving?”
“He has surgery till twelve. He’ll turn up after that, I suppose.”
He went to the kitchen, Anthony following. The breakfast things were still on the table. He telephoned her mother in Reigate and asked her to come straightaway.
It was just before one when the doctor arrived. A fever, he said; some germ that was going the rounds.
He thought she would weep when he told her he was going abroad; she took it in, reflected for a while and then suggested he go and pack.
“Is it important?” she said suddenly.
“Of course. Terribly.”
“Who for?”
“You, me. All of us, I suppose.”
“And for Leclerc?”
“I told you. For all of us.”
He promised Anthony he would bring him something.
“Where are you going?” Anthony asked.
“In an airplane.”
“Where?”
He was going to tell him it was a great secret when he remembered Taylor’s little girl.
He kissed her goodbye, took his suitcase to the hall and put it on the mat. There were two locks on the door for Sarah’s sake and they had to be turned simultaneously. He heard her say:
“Is it dangerous too?”
“I don’t know. I only know it’s very big.”
“You’re really sure of that, are you?”
He called almost in despair, “Look, how far am I supposed to think? It isn’t a question of politics, don’t you see? It’s a question of fact. Can’t you believe? Can’t you tell me for once in my life that I’m doing something good?” He went into the bedroom, reasoning with her. She held a paperback in front of her and was pretending to read. “We all have to, you know, we all have to draw a line round our lives. It’s no good asking me the whole time, ‘Are you sure?’ It’s like asking whether we should have children, whether we should have married. There’s just no point.”
“Poor John,” she observed, putting down the book and analyzing him. “Loyalty without faith. It’s very hard for you.” She said this with total dispassion as if she had identified a social evil. The kiss was like a betrayal of her standards.
Haldane watched the last of them leave the room; he had arrived late, he would leave late, never with the crowd.
Leclerc said, “Why do you do that to me?” He spoke like an actor tired from the play. The maps and photographs were strewn on the table with the empty cups and ashtrays.
Haldane didn’t answer.
“What are you trying to prove, Adrian?”
“What was that you said about putting a man in?”
Leclerc went to the basin and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. “You don’t care for Avery, do you?” he asked.
“He’s young. I’m tired of that cult.”
“I get a sore throat, talking all the time. Have some yourself. Do your cough good.”
“How old is Gorton?” Haldane accepted the glass, drank and handed it back.
“Fifty.”
“He’s more. He’s our age. He was our age in the war.”
“One forgets. Yes, he must be fifty-five or -six.”
“Established?” Haldane persisted.
Leclerc shook his head. “He’s not qualified. Broken service. He went to the Control Commission after the war. When that packed up he wanted to stay in Germany. German wife, I think. He came to us and we gave him a contract. We could never afford to keep him there if he were established.” He took a sip of water, delicately, like a girl. “Ten years ago we’d thirty men in the field. Now we’ve nine. We haven’t even got our own couriers, not clandestine ones. They all knew it this morning; why didn’t they say so?”