The Lost American

Chapter Twenty

The letter from home was as sterile as all the others that had preceded it, about as fascinating as a report of a meeting of the Mothers’ Union, her mother’s appointment as the secretary of which was the highlight of the note. Ann guessed her mother would have written the Mothers’ Union report first; and put more effort into it. Her father sent the usual regards. What would he have sent if he knew what she had done? Maybe he wouldn’t have been surprised. He’d called her a whore, when he learned of her involvement with Blair. Other words, too. Slut was one. She hadn’t felt like a whore or a slut then. She’d felt like someone who’d fallen in love with a married man – despite trying not to – and wanted the understanding she felt she deserved but which they felt unable to provide. Had she proven herself to be a whore and a slut now? Yes, she answered herself honestly. She didn’t feel like either, any more than she had the first time. She felt ashamed and remorseful and she wished it hadn’t happened but it had and so she had to face it. Face what exactly? All right, she’d cheated. She’d built up too much unhappiness – about Moscow and about not being pregnant although she’d tried and about not knowing how Blair really felt about Ruth – and she’d had too much to drink and it had been a beautiful, really wonderful evening and she’d let go emotions she shouldn’t have let go. That didn’t make her a whore. Or a slut. It made her a stupid woman who should have known better – known better about all of it – but who hadn’t. A stupid woman who’d made a mistake. Surely the important thing – the adult thing – was recognising it for that, a mistake? And nothing else. Was it nothing else? Ann tried to analyse it dispassionately – which was ridiculous as passion was what it had all been about – because it was important to get it all into the proper perspective. What had happened with Jeremy hadn’t in any way affected her love for Eddie. The opposite, in fact. It made her realise just how much she did love him. No danger then. No reason for making a bitterly regretted mistake into anything more important than it was. What about Jeremy then? Of course she didn’t love him. How could she? He was charming and made her laugh like Eddie used to make her laugh and was unquestionably more socially able than Eddie and if she were to be brutally frank, in bed… Ann jarred to a stop. Of course she didn’t love him, she thought again. You didn’t fall in love after sleeping with someone once. There had to be other feelings, feelings she had for Eddie and certainly not for Jeremy. Christ, why couldn’t she have stayed inside the fairy tale! Fairy tales had nice endings with everyone living happily ever after. She’d shared the fairy tale with the wrong man, she recognised, coming out of the fantasy.

How would it have been for Eddie, in Washington? It would have drawn he and Ruth together, because things like that always did. But together was what? Adjusted, properly accepting former husband and wife; friends, in fact. Or a couple who realised they had made a mistake. Mistakes, after all, weren’t difficult to make. That wasn’t fair, Ann recognised. She was creating a scenario like those cheap TV soap operas at which she’d sneered in England and imagining situations she had no reason to believe to exist to assuage her own feelings.

She jumped at the sound of the telephone, staring at it as if she were frightened and not answering for several moments.

‘I was just going to ring off; I didn’t think you were in.’

Ann felt a jump of excitement at Brinkman’s voice. Was that what it was? she wondered still searching for definitions. Had she done it for excitement, just for a moment to lift herself from the unexciting awfulness of Moscow? A slut’s attitude, she thought. She said, ‘Hello.’

‘How are you?’

‘OK.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing much. Nothing at all, in fact. Just sitting, thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

‘Sorry,’ said Blair. ‘Stupid question.’

‘What are you doing?’ This wasn’t the right sort of conversation, Ann thought. This was the inconsequential, almost intimate talk, of two people who didn’t recognise they’d made any mistake at all.

‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘Just sitting, thinking.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sorry I phoned you?’

Ann saw the chance. It had happened because they’d allowed things to drift and things that were allowed to drift ended up on the rocks. This was the moment to talk about it – why not, it had happened and they were adults, not children – and label it for what it was and try, as best they could, to forget it ever occurred. She said, ‘No, I’m not sorry you phoned.’

‘Have you eaten?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said. What a hell of a resistance, she thought.

‘If this were Cambridge we could go out for a drink’, he said. ‘Remember the wine bar opposite Kings?’

‘Very much,’ said Ann. A million years and a million happenings ago.

‘I got a new shipment of books today,’ he said. ‘There’s an Anthony Burgess and a couple I haven’t read by Paul Scott. And Updike’s latest.’

‘Maybe I could borrow something, when you’ve finished?’

‘I can’t read them all at once.’

Were they adults? This was kids’ stuff, first-kiss-and-fumble behaviour, she thought. ‘Why not come over?’ she said.

‘You sure?’

No, she thought. She wasn’t sure about anything except perhaps that she was out of her mind. ‘Why not?’ she said.

She realised he must have been waiting for the invitation because he arrived within fifteen minutes, with no indication of any hurried preparation. He’d made an effort at the pretence, bringing a book. Updike, she saw. She would have preferred Burgess. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘That’s all right.’

They stood facing each other in the short corridor leading into the living area. He went to kiss her but abruptly she turned, presenting only her cheek. He hesitated and then finished, his lips briefly touching her. She backed away and turned into the room. ‘I started without you,’ she said, indicating the glass. It was vodka and already her glass was half empty in her sudden need for courage.

‘The same,’ he accepted.

He sat on the couch – a couch much like the one in his apartment where it had begun – and Ann began going positively towards a bordering chair and decided that was ridiculous and so she sat beside him.

‘What were the thoughts?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When I telephoned you said you’d been sitting, thinking.’

‘And you agreed it was a stupid question.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Of course I’m sorry! Aren’t you!’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You haven’t got so much to be sorry about.’

‘I don’t think I would be, even if I had.’

‘That’s stupid, too,’ she said. ‘It’s also the most appalling syntax I’ve ever heard.’

He put his arm along the back of the couch, like he had before, but this time he didn’t let it stay there but played his finger through a coil of her hair.

‘Don’t,’ she said. She only pulled away fractionally. Determinedly she said, ‘It was a mistake.’

‘Was it?’

‘Of course it was,’ she said. ‘Please don’t be so difficult.’

‘I’m not trying to be difficult.’

‘Well you are! It was a mistake and I think we should regard it as such.’

‘OK,’ he said.

‘Just that? OK?’

‘What else do you expect me to say?’

‘That you’re sorry.’

‘I said I didn’t think I was. Maybe it was my bad syntax.’

‘It’s not a joke!’

‘I wasn’t joking.’

‘Do you realise what we’ve done!’

‘Is it a capital offence?’

‘Yes,’ she came back at once. ‘In some countries it is.’

‘Only if you get caught. And this is Russia, not the Middle East.’

‘We should recognise it as the mistake it was.’ Ann set out again, positively. ‘Recognise it and then try to forget about it.’

‘Now you’re being stupid.’

‘Why!’

‘We’re not going to be able to forget about it, are we?’

‘We’re going to have to,’ she insisted.

‘Put our heads in the sand and wait until it goes away!’

‘Stop treating it as if it weren’t important!

He teased her hair again and this time she didn’t pull away. ‘Jokes are forgotten,’ he said. ‘You’re the one making it important.’

‘Wasn’t it, to you?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

It was like wandering in the desert, thought Ann, desperately; they’d lost direction and were coming back upon themselves. ‘What are we going to do?’ she said, pleadingly.

Instead of replying Brinkman put his hand further around her head and drew her to him. There wasn’t the fumbling of the first time. They kissed, a lot, and then Brinkman stood, pulling her up, not wanting the clumsiness of the couch. The thought of making love to somebody else in her own bed halted her momentarily, at the point of entering the bedroom, and then she continued on, recognising the hesitation as hypocrisy. If she was going to do it, did it matter where? The betrayal was just as great. The lovemaking was better than before, because they were more used to each other and Brinkman didn’t feel as inadequate as he had then. Brinkman went on longer than he ever had before and when he finally had to stop, exhausted, he said, ‘You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever known.’

‘Don’t you think I’m a whore?’

‘What!’

‘A whore.’

‘Of course I don’t think you’re a whore.’

‘What then?’

Brinkman thought a long time before replying, wanting to get it right. ‘I think you’re very lonely. I think you’re very unhappy. I think you’re looking for something you haven’t got: maybe can’t have. I think you are very beautiful. And I think you are a fantastic lover.’

The remark about wanting something she couldn’t have didn’t refer to a baby, thought Ann: there was no way he could have known. Unless Eddie had told him and she didn’t think that was likely. ‘What about you?’ she said.

‘I think we should stop trying to follow the principles of Freud and analysing everything,’ he said.

‘So it’s a casual fuck?’

‘No,’ said Brinkman. ‘It isn’t a casual fuck. And it isn’t Romeo and Juliet, either. What’s wrong with you?’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘For being honest, at least.’

‘Wasn’t that what you were insisting upon?’

‘Oh Christ!’ she said hopelessly. ‘I don’t know what I want!’

The telephone sounded from the other room, startling them both. Ann hesitated and then got up, walking naked from the room, conscious of his watching her. She had to raise her voice and so Brinkman knew who it was and because he could hear her side of the conversation he knew, too, what it was about before she came back into the bedroom.

‘It was Eddie,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘He’s coming home.’ Whore, she thought; whore and slut.

The feeling of relief that Orlov had expected finally came, when he initiated the divorce. From the curt, almost dismissive attitude of officials it was obvious that it was not going to be difficult and there was the impression, too, of at last doing something positive, of making the moves he’d come back to Moscow to make. Now the divorce was underway – promised quickly – there were other moves to make. His newly-established status, with so many people in constant attendance, was going to make that more difficult than he’d anticipated. He’d need an embassy reception as a cover for the approach: so maybe the status had a balancing advantage. When, he wondered, was the next function at the American embassy? And how easy would it be for him to attend? It didn’t matter. Whatever the difficulties, he’d overcome them. He wished he were able to let Harriet know.

Sokol wondered if there would be any personal summons from Panov but none came and the deputy guessed that the sick old man had decided to suffer his miscalculation without a meeting between them. Sokol didn’t relax. He maintained a constant monitor upon all the arrival shipments and the rail transportation throughout the country to the stricken areas, actually installing his own officers in some cases to ensure there was no interruption. He’d survived, Sokol decided. And impressed those who mattered. What he needed now was that damned coup.