A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [137]
‘I need some air,’ I tell them. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
Tanya gives a desperate short nod of assent, her eyes still blotched with tears, and I make my way to the lifts.
I can see them close in, the dull glint of a muddied blade, the suddenness of it. They are upon him so quickly. A kick burying into his kidneys, bleeding. The complete lack of any sound. Just the thud of a boot, a punch landing awkwardly across his shoulders, another following instantly, smashing bone. He feels warm suddenly with the blood in his clothes but the pain in his ribs is wrenching. He cannot any longer see. There is a taste of vomit growing in the throat.
The stark truth of cause and effect appears now with a clarity that I have never before allowed myself to acknowledge. There is no longer anything theoretical about what I have been doing: my actions have had a direct and appalling consequence. The guilt is overpowering. I have a lurching need to talk to somebody, to confess and to explain. And there is only Saul.
In a telephone box a block away from the office I dial his number, but it just rings and rings. No one home. I try the mobile, but he has left it on message. He could be out of town on a shoot, or screening his calls. I do not know where Saul is.
‘It’s Alec. Please, if you get this, can you ring me? At home. I’m going home. It’s urgent. I need… I really need someone to talk to about something.’
A woman has appeared outside the booth, waiting to use the phone. I hang up and a coin falls with a clatter behind the small metal flap. I retrieve the ten-pence piece from the slot. The woman comes around to my left, but she does not look directly through the glass. She just wants to let me know that she’s there. Where is Saul?
Then, like a temptation, I feed the coin back into the telephone and dial her number from memory.
She answers after just a half-ring. There’s even a little performance in the cadence of her ‘hello’. A need to be liked.
It takes me a beat to respond.
‘Kate. It’s Alec.’
32
End of the Affair
I travel to her house in a kind of trance, blank of thought and purpose. The taxi ride becomes a stark fact: within twenty minutes I will be in a room with Kate for the first time in over two years. She didn’t sound surprised to hear from me: there was no gulp or awkward silence on the phone, no apparent sense of shock. Just a note of happy surprise, almost as if she had been expecting me to call.
Yes, it’s a good time. Come straight round. I understand. Anything.
I pay the driver and walk the short distance to the front door of her house. It’s still deep blue, the glass mottled, the base flecked with the scratches of a dog’s paw. I glance up at the sitting-room window, looking for a twitch of curtain, some sign of her, but there isn’t even a light on inside. So many times I walked up these steps and just the sight of her face would lift me, an inexplicable joy. Will that still happen? Can I still feel things in that way?
So I ring the bell. I don’t hesitate. I just press it right away.
Odd not to have keys. Odd to have to wait.
A light comes on in the hall and then the tall outline of her, blurred by the glass. Now comes the first true nervousness, a swallowing void in my stomach. This was a sudden decision; I have not thought it through. Her hand is on the latch of the door.
New haircut. Bobbed. It suits her. In the first instant that I see her I know that it will be possible to tell her everything, and to depend upon her silence. Kate says my name very softly with a nice ironic smile which does something to diffuse the forced theatre of reunion. Then we hug - it seems the right thing to do - but that goes wrong. I lean too far in, across the threshold, and our shoulders collide. We do not kiss.
‘I like your hair.’
‘Thanks,’ she says, dismissively. ‘Had it done a while ago.’
I see that her mood is cool, patient but without much warmth. Perhaps that will change. To begin with she will want to show me that she has moved on. Perhaps for this reason there has been no