The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [119]
“Don’t you think Tom looks wonderful?” Sybille asked. “We borrowed his outfit from the headwaiter—well, rented it with an enormous tip—and I stitched and tucked Tom into it. He wanted to carry a napkin over his arm but I said no. Do you think I was right to interfere?”
During the elaborate supper, Webster ordered bottle after bottle of champagne. He kissed Molly at midnight and danced with her, spinning her with her arm above her head so that her hair flew out of its pins and her long skirt swirled around her legs.
“God,” Sybille said to Christopher. “She’s a beautiful girl. Are you going to marry her and spoil her figure with babies?”
“I don’t think so.”
Sybille watched Webster and Molly, gasping with laughter, on their way back to the table.
“I’ll tell you something, Paul. She prefers fear to the alternative. You won’t be able to make her go away.”
“Has Tom been talking to you?”
“Tom tells me everything, and so does Molly. You bloody fool.”
“Do you think I’ve made a mistake, Sybille?”
“A mistake? You’ve thrown your life away for nothing. Tom says you did it for your country and the honor of the outfit. Those two things, added together, equal nothing. What good is what you’ve done? Look at Molly before you answer.”
Sybille, as if she could not bear the taste of anything bought with her husband’s work or Christopher’s, threw her champagne on the tablecloth.
They were the last to leave the dining room. Webster, still wearing his party hat, draped strings of confetti around the shoulders of the women. Outside, between the high snowbanks, they walked hand in hand, four abreast. The low winter moon, as white as the glacier, lay on the brow of the Matterhorn.
“My God, I’ve loved this place,” Molly said.
“Everyone does,” Sybille said. “It’s the funny train ride to the top and coming into the sunshine. And gazing upwards at the Matterhorn and being so glad one isn’t Swiss. God does squander his landscapes.”
Christopher stood behind them. Their faces were lifted toward the mountain and they were breathing deeply in the sharpened air. Molly, without shifting her gaze from the moonlit field of snow, put a hand behind her back, beckoning Christopher to her side. But he was looking up and down the shadowed street.
Molly turned and smiled. She lifted her hands and fluttered her fingers as though to wake him from a daydream. She still wore all his rings: the emerald from Burma, the jade from Macao, the scarab from Egypt, a topaz, and an opal. There was a cathedral on Majorca where Christopher had gone with Cathy to look at a wooden virgin whose chipped enameled fingers were laden with jeweled rings. “There must be a lot of people around here who are afraid to die,” Cathy said. “You don’t give offerings like that to be forgiven your sins—only to be allowed to live a little longer.”
4
The Websters left the next day after lunch. Christopher and Molly skied all afternoon. Molly, perfect in every use of her body, plunged down the mountain ahead of Christopher, stinging his face with the plume of snow that flew from the heels of her skis. She was full of laughter during dinner, but she was reluctant to go upstairs. They sat by the fireplace until midnight, drinking brandy and listening to a guitarist.
Finally they went to bed. After a time, Molly turned on the lamp and pushed Christopher’s hair off his forehead. “I forgot the candles,” she said.
Molly saw that he meant to speak; she put a finger on his lips.
“I know what you have in mind,” she said. “Don’t say it, Paul. I won’t go.”
“It would be better, Molly. I can’t take you back to Rome. You’re only in danger so long as they believe I care for you.”
“Yes. You’ve explained. When you told me about Cathy’s affairs, you said her body was her own—that she could do as