Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [90]
Abruptly, David swallowed his drink and said, “I must turn in. My back’s playing up.”
Faber got to his feet. “I’m sorry—I’ve been keeping you up.”
David waved him down. “Not at all. You’ve been asleep all day—you won’t want to go back to bed right away. Besides, Lucy would like to chat, I’m sure. It’s just that I mistreat my back—backs were designed to share the load with the legs, you know.”
Lucy said, “You’d better take two pills tonight then.” She took a bottle from the top shelf of the bookcase, shook out two tablets and gave them to her husband.
He swallowed them dry. “I’ll say good night.” He wheeled himself out.
“Good night, David.”
“Good night, Mr. Rose.”
After a moment Faber heard David dragging himself up the stairs, and wondered just how he did it.
Lucy spoke, as if to cover the sound of David. “Where do you live, Mr. Baker?”
“Please call me Henry. I live in London.”
“I haven’t been to London for years. There’s probably not much of it left.”
“It’s changed, but not as much as you might think. When were you last there?”
“Nineteen-forty.” She poured herself another brandy. “Since we came here, I’ve only been off the island once, and that was to have the baby. One can’t travel much these days, can one?”
“What made you come here?”
“Um.” She sat down, sipped her drink, and looked into the fire.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t—”
“It’s all right. We had an accident the day we got married. That’s how David lost his legs. He’d been training as a fighter pilot…we both wanted to run away, I think. I believe it was a mistake, but, as they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It’s a reason for a healthy man to feel resentment.”
She gave him a sharp look. “You’re a perceptive man.”
“It’s obvious.” He spoke very quietly. “So is your unhappiness.”
She blinked nervously. “You see too much.”
“It’s not difficult. Why do you continue, if it’s not working?”
“I don’t know quite what to tell you”—or herself, for talking so openly to him. “Do you want clichés? The way he was before…the vows of marriage…the child…the war…If there’s another answer, I can’t find good words for it.”
“Maybe guilt,” Faber said. “But you’re thinking of leaving him, aren’t you?”
She stared at him, slowly shaking her head. “How do you know so much?”
“You’ve lost the art of dissembling in four years on this island. Besides, these things are so much simpler from the outside.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No. That’s what I mean.”
“Why not?…I think you ought to be.”
It was Faber’s turn to look away, into the fire. Why not, indeed? His stock answer—to himself—was his profession. But of course he could not tell her that, and anyway it was too glib. “I don’t trust myself to love anyone that much.” The words had come out without forethought—he was astonished to note—and he wondered whether they were true. A moment later he wondered how Lucy had got past his guard, when he had thought he was disarming her.
Neither of them spoke for a while. The fire was dying. A few stray raindrops found their way down the chimney and hissed in the cooling coals. The storm showed no sign of letting up. Faber found himself thinking of the last woman he had had. What was her name? Gertrud. It was seven years ago, but he could picture her now in the flickering fire: a round German face, fair hair, green eyes, beautiful breasts, much-too-wide hips, fat legs, bad feet; the conversational style of an express train, a wild, inexhaustible enthusiasm for sex…. She had flattered him, admiring his mind (she said) and adoring his body (she had no need to tell him). She wrote lyrics for popular songs, and read them to him in a poor basement flat in Berlin; it was not a lucrative profession. He visualized her now in that untidy bedroom, lying naked, urging him to do more bizarre and erotic things with her, to hurt her, to touch himself, to lie completely still while she made love to him…. He shook his head slightly to brush away the memories. He had not thought like that in all the years he had been celibate. Such visions were