Topaz - Leon Uris [104]
“For God’s sake, André! Darling, I have been patient, I’ve tried to understand. But we’ve been married seven months. Do you realize how few nights you’ve come home for more than a half-dozen hours’ sleep? You’re so tired most of the time I have to undress you.”
“Nicole, we promised we wouldn’t get in any fights about this.”
She turned and waddled into the small room that held their bed and was, in addition, kitchenette and parlor. She stood with her back to him, staring blankly at a needlepoint on the wall she had bought in an Arab bazaar. “I sometimes feel like a stranger. And I think, all during those hours I’m alone, which is most of the time, that you’re not happy I ran away from Spain to come to you.”
“Nicole, you know how I love you. How can you say that?”
“There never seems to be any time for me.”
“We’re in a war.”
“War! Don’t say that word again.”
“Nicole ... Nicole ... I didn’t invite the Germans to invade France.” He came up behind her, dreading to have to say his next words. “I came home early tonight in order to pack. I’m leaving with the General tomorrow for London.”
Nicole turned and faced him slowly, glassy-eyed. “You’d leave me now?”
“I don’t give the orders to General La Croix. He gives them to me.”
“You’d leave me alone!”
“You won’t be alone, darling. We have a hundred friends in Algiers. The doctor and the hospital are excellent.”
Nicole picked up a feather duster and began moving around the room nervously, flicking it at picture frames, tidying up an overly tidy room. André stood in awkward silence.
“You want to leave me,” she said.
“I think not.”
“Then do something about this rotten job of yours. You said we have friends. All right, use them. Get yourself put into some place where we can have a few moments together. It’s no sin in Algiers. Almost everyone hates Pierre La Croix for pushing them into a war against their will.”
“As a matter of fact,” André said in a resigned monotone, “I have already requested a transfer.”
Nicole stopped her dusting. “I didn’t know.”
“I was refused. I asked to be sent to a fighting unit.”
She seized a plate from the table. The lamb on the stove began to burn. She started to hurl the plate but let it slip from her hand and it fell to the floor and broke. “How long will you be gone, André?”
“I don’t know. I’d better pack.”
The de Havilland Dove of General Pierre La Croix slipped from the Maison Blanche Airport bucking headwinds. The coast of North Africa disappeared in the morning mist. General La Croix worked on a card table, thumbing through documents, sketching his forthcoming speech. Captain Robert Proust came down the aisle, stopped by the General’s table, and spoke to him respectfully, giving the flight plan and progress. Pierre La Croix looked up for an instant and nodded without comment.
André went forward and sat in alongside Jacques Granville.
Jacques set his papers aside. “Fight with Nicole?”
“How do you know?”
“For an intelligence man you don’t keep a very straight face. Besides, it figures, knowing you, knowing Nicole. There had to be an argument last night.”
“What the hell, Jacques. She’s pregnant and in a strange place. How can she be blamed?”
“Blamed? She should kiss your feet for the privilege of seeing you a few hours each night. We’re in the middle of a war. How many millions of women have had their men taken away? She’s entirely unreasonable.”
“Somehow,” André answered, “she does not associate herself with the war. When it’s all over and we have some time to spend together, she’ll change.”
Jacques smiled and patted his friend’s shoulder. “You are a perfect La Croix officer. Strange how a man can be so wise in so many areas, then carry with him such a blind spot.”
“What blind spot?”
“The illusion that Nicole will change. And the further illusion that you yourself will change. Now all the hours you spend in your work are justified. It’s war and you’re a soldier.