Every Secret Thing (12 page)

As if reading her mind, he said, ‘I had a friend watching the place for me, while I was gone.’ And then, with a glance round, he added, ‘She’s a much better housekeeper than I am, I’m afraid. You probably won’t see it looking this tidy, again.’

A woman friend
, thought Georgie, and it struck her that, for all she’d been so focused on the inconvenience this assignment might be causing
her
, she’d never once stopped to consider what it might be costing Deacon.

Her own boyfriend, if he was even alive, was an ocean away, unaware of the role she was playing, and at any rate she only had to make believe for several days – two weeks, they’d told her, at the most – and then she’d have her life back, whereas Deacon had to move among his friends now as a married man, and, after her departure, as a man who
had
been married. There was no going back, for him. And if he’d had a girlfriend…

‘You can have the bedroom,’ Deacon offered. ‘I’ll clear you some space in the wardrobe.’ He would have gone on but the phone in the living room rang, interrupting. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

Georgie gave him his privacy, sauntering back through the narrow front hall for a look at the paintings that hung there. She didn’t know much about art, only whether she liked it or not. These she liked. They were clean-lined and vibrant, of jazz singers, so full of life that, just standing in front of them, Georgie could conjure the pounding piano, the smoke of the nightclub…

A knock at the door broke the mood.

Georgie turned from the paintings, not sure what to do. She could hear Deacon still in the living room, talking, which meant he either hadn’t heard the door or had assumed that she would answer it. She was supposed to be his wife, and there could be no problem with his wife, she reasoned, opening the door to their apartment.

The problem lay in whom she might be opening the door to.

It might be nobody important, just a telegram delivery boy, or somebody like that. But then again, it might be one of Deacon’s closest friends, the first test of her acting out the part that she’d been given. It might even be the woman who’d been living here, at Deacon’s invitation, come to give him back her key.

Georgie took a steady breath and, shoulders squared, reached out to take a firm hold of the doorknob.

The man was young, a little older than herself, like Deacon; very tall and loosely jointed, with a quick, engaging smile. ‘Hello,’ he said. He was American. ‘You must be Andrew’s wife.’

It came quite naturally, in spite of all her worry, as she offered him her hand. ‘Amelia Deacon, yes.’

‘I’m Jim,’ he introduced himself, and, holding up a paper bag, announced, ‘I’ve brought you both some lunch.’

That was the beginning of a pattern that continued through their whole time in New York – each day, at lunchtime, Jim would arrive with a bag full of sandwiches, fresh from the drugstore on the corner, and Georgie would make coffee, and the three of them would eat together in the little kitchen.

She liked Jim. She never learnt his last name; never knew exactly who he was, or who he worked for. Being an American, he likely wouldn’t be with BSC. The FBI, perhaps, or maybe even OSS. He wasn’t one of Deacon’s crowd – she knew that much, at least, because the first day he had come to the apartment it had been obvious, to her, the two men hadn’t met before.

They talked of small things over lunch; then afterwards, the men retired to the living room while Georgie took a book into her bedroom, at the far end of the hall, and closed the door.

She couldn’t hear what they were saying. Didn’t want to hear. She stayed there for an hour or more, till Deacon came and knocked to let her know the coast was clear, and then the two of them would go out on their own somewhere.

He proved to be good company. She liked to walk beside him on the winter-barren paths of Central Park, or on the Boulevard, and look at all the grand expensive homes, and trade opinions of the ones they’d like to live in. Once they wandered clear across the park and came out somewhere on the Upper East Side, and he walked her past his gallery – an elegantly fronted place with large, old-fashioned windows – but he didn’t take her in. ‘It’s still my workplace,’ Deacon said, ‘and I refuse to go to work when on my honeymoon.’ They went other places – up the Chrysler Building, to enjoy the stunning view across Manhattan, and to the Museum of Modern Art for a new exhibition of works owned by oil tycoon Ivan Reynolds. She found it interesting, at the museum, to see Deacon more in his element – animated, even – as he tried to show her what he thought was wonderful, or not, about the paintings. But still, she liked their walks in Central Park the best.

Evenings they went out for dinner, often to the houses of his friends. He seemed to have no shortage of them, and the ones she’d met appeared quite pleased to have him back in New York City. She was meeting them in ones and twos – a couple here, another couple there, a lone man stopping by their table at a restaurant – and so she found it not too hard to play her role convincingly, as long as she kept most of her attention on the meal and kept her mouth shut unless spoken to. It was Deacon who bore the brunt of these encounters…all the questions, and the agreed-upon explanations, how they’d met, and how long they’d been married, and why no one had heard from him in months.

He must have found it all exhausting, Georgie thought, and yet he never seemed to be as tired as she was at the evening’s end, when they came back to the apartment, said goodnight, and took their places in the bedroom and the living room respectively.

The pattern changed a little, on the ninth day. After lunch she went out shopping by herself. They had a cocktail party to attend that night, and she’d been told to buy a dress – a nice dress, not too plain and not too flashy. Something elegant. She found it in the window of the second shop she went to. It fit her as though she had been the model for the dressmaker. A black dress, with a close-fitting bodice, cut low, its sweetheart neckline squared with metal clips, and on the shoulders, epaulettes of glittering jet beads all hanging down to form a fringe. She bought it on the spot.

As she rustled through the door of the apartment, with the dress bag on her arm, it surprised her to hear Jim’s voice from the living room. She hadn’t thought he’d still be there. ‘It could be any day now,’ he was saying, ‘so you’ll have to be prepared. It all depends on when the Clipper leaves. There may not be much warning – they’ll just send me to come get you.’

‘And what happens to Amelia?’

A pause, as though he hadn’t thought of that; then, ‘I’ll take care of her, don’t worry.’

This was followed by a second pause, and Georgie took advantage of the fact to shut the door behind her, loud enough for them to hear, and call out from the hall to let them know that she was back. She had never liked listening at keyholes. ‘You usually hear things you don’t want to hear,’ so her father had told her a long time ago, and her father, as always, was right.

She didn’t want to think of Deacon leaving, and that troubled her, so much so that she didn’t meet his eyes when, as she passed the open doorway of the living room, he greeted her with, ‘You’re back early’.

‘Yes, well…’ She held up the dress bag. ‘I found what I wanted.’ She looked at Jim, instead. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’

‘Oh, no. I was just going,’ said Jim, with a smile. He didn’t say anything further, but after they had shut the door behind him Deacon glanced at Georgie, and she knew that he was wondering if she had overheard their conversation, and if so, how much she’d heard, and since there was no gentlemanly way for him to ask, she spared him the necessity by speaking first.

‘You were talking,’ she said honestly, ‘when I came in. I heard the last few sentences.’

‘I see.’

Wanting a cup of tea after her shopping, she walked into the kitchen, laid the dress across a chair, and moved to fill the kettle, while he watched her from the doorway. ‘Jim mentioned the Clipper,’ she said. She’d seen the Pan Am Clipper at its moorings, once – the stately seaplane that was now the only aircraft offering commercial flights across the treacherous Atlantic. ‘I take it that means you’ll be flying, wherever you’re going?’

He couldn’t tell her, anyway. She knew he couldn’t tell her; that he wouldn’t be allowed to give her details of his mission, but she had to ask the question.

He was silent for a moment, then he asked her, ‘Would that bother you?’

She turned. It wasn’t what he’d said so much as how he’d said it, almost as if he had known how she felt about airplanes and flying…as if he had known about Ken…

He was still in the doorway, unmoving. Their eyes locked. And then she knew for certain that he
did
know. He’d been told. She looked away.

She said, as lightly as she could, ‘I see they’ve told you all about my private life.’

‘I asked.’ And then, to her questioning glance, he explained, ‘You mentioned his name on the train. You said he was your brothers’ friend. I had a sense he might be rather more than that, so I asked. I wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be a complication.’

‘He won’t.’ Her tone was curt. ‘His plane went down. That doesn’t mean he’s dead. And even if he is, I’m not the sort of girl who has hysterics.’

The kettle, half forgotten on the stove, came shrieking to a boil as if to punctuate her sentence.

Deacon, hands in pockets, said, ‘I’m really very sorry.’

Then he gave a small, tight smile that didn’t know what else to say, and turned to leave.

She instantly regretted how she’d spoken – there hadn’t been any real need to be rude. In his place, she admitted, she’d likely have done the same thing. He had more of a stake in this whole masquerade; more to lose, if she made a false step.

‘Wait…’ She willed him to stop, and he did. ‘Don’t go yet. Stay and have some tea.’

He considered a moment, then stayed. ‘For the record,’ he said, as he fetched her the tea from the cupboard, ‘I never did think you hysterical.’

‘Forget it,’ Georgie said. ‘You had a right to ask. I should have told you myself, probably, only I didn’t think it was relevant.’ She settled the lid on the teapot. ‘Anyway, they knew that Ken had been shot down before they put me on that train to Canada, so if they thought that it would be a problem…’

‘On the contrary,’ said Deacon. ‘I was told that they considered it an asset.’

‘Really? Why is that?’

‘Because your heart and mind would be engaged elsewhere,’ he told her, and the humour flashed so briefly through his blue eyes that she thought she had imagined it. ‘It worried them, your living here, with me; our going out around the town as man and wife. They didn’t want there to be any…well, emotional entanglements. As if that were a danger.’ His smile so clearly mocked himself that Georgie didn’t take offence, but found a smile herself, to share the joke.

But she was glad he hadn’t pressed her for an answer as to whether it would bother her, to know that he was flying…for the truth had been a revelation, even to herself.

Which might have been why, later on, in the beaded black dress, she felt strange as she faced her reflection. She felt, for an instant, as though she were being unfaithful to Ken. She knew that was crazy, and said so out loud to the face in the mirror. ‘It’s business. Just business.’

The strange feeling passed. It was only herself again, there in the mirror. She leant in, adjusting an earring, and liking the way all the beads of the epaulets danced on the dress at her shoulders. She had taken more care with her hair than she usually did, and her make-up, knowing the party tonight would be larger than any event they had been to, and that her appearance would be under scrutiny by those who hadn’t yet met her. She wanted to look like a woman who might hold appeal for a man who loved art.

Deacon was waiting for her in the front hall, with her coat. He turned at the sound of her footsteps, and for a long time he said nothing, only looked at her in silence, in an angle of the hallway where there wasn’t light enough for her to see his eyes and know what he was thinking.

The silence made her nervous, so she asked him, ‘Will I do?’

He answered quietly. ‘You’re lovely.’

After which there wasn’t much that she could do but tell herself again that it was business, only business, as he took his hat down from the peg and offered her his arm.

It wasn’t snowing, so they walked. The cocktail party was a short few blocks away, at the twin-towered San Remo apartments. Georgie had seen them before, from the park, but she’d never been inside, and the sheer luxury left her dazzled.

‘Your friend must have money,’ she said, without thinking, and Deacon smiled.

‘She married it. I’d say she married well, except I don’t believe she did. Her husband drinks.’ They took the elevator up, while he explained, ‘She sometimes needs to get away. That’s why she had the key to my apartment,’ Deacon said, ‘while I was gone.’

‘Oh.’ So the mystery woman, Georgie thought, was someone else’s wife. From what she knew of Deacon, that made it unlikely that the two of them were anything but friends. She reaffirmed this when she saw them greet each other, with a casual and easy kiss on the cheek that held as much emotion as a kiss she might have given her own brother.

Relieved, although she wouldn’t have admitted why, Georgie took stock of her hostess. The woman was beautiful, dark-haired and dark-eyed, and so slender that, in her
silver-toned
metallic dress, she looked as insubstantial as a wraith. The hand she extended to Georgie was long-fingered, graceful, and weighted with expensive-looking rings.

‘My wife, Amelia,’ Deacon introduced her, and then, ‘Darling, this is Sylvia.’

‘A pleasure to meet you,’ said Georgie, and shook the hand gently, not wanting to crush it.

‘The pleasure’s all mine. I’m so happy you married this dear man. He needs taking care of.’ The woman named Sylvia smiled, and then held out her free hand to Deacon. ‘Please, both of you, come join the party.’

Georgie had never seen so many people in one room. She found it all completely overwhelming, and was grateful for the anchoring effect of Deacon’s presence at her elbow. ‘What will you drink?’ he asked.