She made the beef tea like her mother used to in a glass with a teaspoon in to stop its cracking, and all the time she glanced toward him as if she were afraid he was dead.
She had to prop him up to make him drink the tea. He had only one pillow and there were no cushions in the room, so taking his overcoat down from the back of the door she made a bundle of it and arranged it behind the pillow. It frightened her to touch him; he was so drenched in sweat that his short gray hair was damp and slippery. Putting the cup beside the bed, she held his head with one hand and fed him the tea with the other. After he had taken a few spoonfuls, she crushed two Aspirin and gave them to him in. the spoon. She talked to him as if he were a child, sitting on the edge of the bed looking at him, sometimes letting her fingers run over his head and face, whispering his name over and over again: “Alec, Alec.”
Gradually his breathing became more regular, his body more relaxed, as he drifted from the taut pain of fever to the calm of sleep; Liz, watching him, sensed that the worst was over. Suddenly she realized it was almost dark.
Then she felt ashamed because she knew she should have cleaned and tidied. Jumping up, she fetched the carpet sweeper and a duster from the kitchen and set to work with feverish energy. She found a clean teacloth and spread it neatly on the bedside table and she washed up the odd cups and saucers which lay around the kitchen. When everything was done she looked at her watch and it was half-past eight. She put the kettle on and went back to the bed. Leamas was looking at her.
“Alec, don’t be cross, please don’t,” she said. “I’ll go, I promise I will, but let me make you a proper meal. You’re ill, you can’t go on like this, you’re–Oh, Alec,” and she broke down and wept, holding both hands over her face, the tears running between her fingers like the tears of a child. He let her cry, watching her with his brown eyes, his hands holding the sheet.
She helped him wash and shave and she found some clean bedclothes. She gave him some calf’s-foot jelly, and some breast of chicken from the jar she’d bought at Mr. Sleaman’s. Sitting on the bed she watched him eat, and she thought she had never been so happy before.
Soon he fell asleep, and she drew the blanket over his shoulders and went to the window. Parting the threadbare curtains, she raised the sash and looked out. The two windows in the courtyard above the warehouse were lit. In one she could see the flickering blue shadow of a television screen, the figures before it held motionless in its spell; in the other a woman, quiteyoung, was arranging curlers in her hair. Liz wanted to weep at the crabbed delusion of their dreams.
She fell asleep in the armchair and did not wake until it was nearly light, feeling stiff and cold. She went to the bed: Leamas stirred as she looked at him and she touched his lips with the tip of her finger. He did not open his eyes but gently took her arm and drew her down onto the bed, and suddenly she wanted him terribly, and nothing mattered, and she kissed him again and again and when she looked at him he seemed to be smiling.
She came every day for six days. He never spoke to her much and once, when she asked him if he loved her, he said he didn’t believe in fairy tales. She would lie on the bed, her head against his chest, and sometimes he would put his thick fingers in her hair, holding it quite tight, and Liz laughed and said it hurt. On Friday evening she found him dressed but not shaved, and she wondered why he hadn’t shaved. For some imperceptible reason she was alarmed. Little things were missing from the room–his clock and the cheap portable radio that had been on the table. She wanted to ask and did not dare. She had bought some eggs and ham and she cooked them for their supper while Leamas sat on the bed and smoked one cigarette after another. When supper was ready he went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of red wine.