Red Joan (31 page)

Just for anything unusual, Sonya tells her. You have to know what is usual in order to spot if something is unusual.

True, but she has not done this. Today she passes eight cars before reaching the red-bricked mansion block of flats at the end of the street, and she concludes that she does not know if she has seen any of them before. Once again she resolves to begin making a proper record of the number plates. Sonya gave her a small ledger for this purpose when she first moved into her new flat, but she has still not quite got around to starting it. She has lived here for over a year now, having moved out of the rooming house on Sonya's insistence not long after she made her decision. In fact, Sonya had even found this new flat for her, telephoning her at work to announce that it was perfectly located with lovely light rooms, high ceilings and a cosy kitchen, and Joan had allowed her to go ahead and secure it on her behalf. True, Sonya did not mention the damp or the lack of central heating or the fact that there was no hot water in the bathroom, but these things were minor gripes really, and Joan did not like to appear ungrateful by mentioning them.

She props her bike against the front fence of the mansion block, opens the door and quickly scans the console table in the hallway for post. There is a gas bill and a letter from her mother, both of them thrown in amongst a pile of circulars and letters for the other inhabitants of the block. She extracts her own, checks the rest of the post, and then runs up the sixty-four stairs to her flat. There are two locks, a deadlock to be opened by a large bronze key, and then a smaller Chubb lock. She reaches down to the deadlock and takes hold of a single strand of dyed dark hair, one of her own, which she pulls delicately through the lock. It is a trick Sonya taught her, to check that the lock has not been tampered with during her absence. She inserts the key, and the deadlock clicks three times before opening. This is due to a fault in the lock: if it is clicked three times when the door is locked, it also requires three clicks before it will release the catch. It doesn't lock the door any tighter but it is an added precaution to supplement the hair.

The flat is in darkness when she enters, just as she left it. The curtains are drawn in an attempt to put intruders off, although she cannot really imagine anyone climbing a drainpipe up to the fourth floor. Joan takes off her coat and hangs it on the peg. She stands at the wooden dresser in the hallway, leaning her head against the side of the mirror. Her heart is still pounding a little too fast. She reaches out to switch on the light in the hallway, and as it flickers to life she sees a man's arm reflected in the mirror, draped lazily over the side of the sofa behind the living-room door.

Joan's stomach contracts. A scream rises in her throat and sticks, so that the only noise she makes is a silent, terrified exhalation. She turns around slowly, slowly. Her hand reaches for the front door but it is too far. Her feet shuffle silently towards it, and she is torn between an urge to run and a desire to know who on earth is sitting in her darkened front room in such silence. The police? MI5? One of Sonya's people?

In the silence, she hears the sound of someone breathing.

She puts out her hand to steady herself, gripping the coat stand and edging backwards into it. Her hand curls defensively around the wooden pole. The hooks at the top of the pole are gratifyingly sharp. She grasps the door handle, and all of a sudden she realises that whoever this is must have known to look for the hair in her lock, as there is no other way into the flat. Who could Sonya have told about this trick? And why would she tell anyone?

And then a voice: ‘Don't be scared, my little comrade. It's only me.'

J
oan allows him to stay out of courtesy, because by the time they finish talking and have had something to eat it is late and he has missed the last train back to London. A bed of cushions and blankets is made up for him in the living room, and as she climbs onto a chair to retrieve a spare blanket from the top shelf of her wardrobe, she is disconcerted to discover that his presence is actually comforting to her. It has been a relief to be able to talk openly for a whole evening, not constantly having to hide and dissemble her true feelings, not being obliged to explain anything. Of course, she knows he won't have changed. People don't. He has hurt her so much in the past that she cannot believe she could ever countenance such thoughts again, but she also knows that she is stronger now than she once was. She knows how it should feel to be loved.

She takes the blanket down and steps off the chair. She will not think about this now. It has been a tiring day. A frightening day.

Leo keeps the door of the living room closed while she makes up her hot-water bottle and uses the bathroom. Even when she stands in her nightie and knocks on his door to wish him goodnight, remembering to warn him that there is no hot water in the bathroom so to please help himself to the kettle on the stove, she tells herself that she is relieved he hasn't tried anything. Her hand lingers by the door handle as she thinks this, until she comes to her senses and spins away into her room and proceeds to plait her hair with ferocious care. She jumps into bed and turns her back to the door, to him. It is not that she wants something to happen. She is adamant about this. She is only having these thoughts because he is here now, in her flat, behind a thin panel of wood with damp set into its upper reaches, and her heart will not be still.

She sleeps fitfully, her dreams full of policemen and bursting brown envelopes. It is dawn when finally he comes to her room, pushing the door ajar and standing half-dressed in the dark blue light. He does not make a sound, but she senses his presence and stirs. Her eyelids flicker and for a moment they are back, back at the same old impasse, and she knows what she should do. She should tell him to go away, and then turn around and go back to sleep. She opens her mouth to say exactly this, but then she closes it again because she also knows that there is nothing she would like more than to feel the warmth of another body next to her, protecting her. It is such a lonely thing, having a secret like hers. She wants to be held by someone who can reassure her that she is doing the right thing. That she is safe. And who else could she talk to so openly?

Well, maybe Sonya. But at this precise moment, Sonya will not do.

In the darkness, Leo tilts his head.

And, so slowly that the movement seems almost geological, Joan lifts a corner of her blanket and draws it back.

 

She catches him watching her as she gets dressed that morning, buttoning up her soft cotton blouse which makes her breasts seem larger than they are—he tells her this too—and shaking out her towel so that it opens before her like a flower before tying up her wet hair in an elaborate turban. He watches her as she lays out the butter for his toast, wafting her hand under the grill to check it is hot enough before filling the kettle with water and putting it on the hob. She picks up the toast by its hot crust, pinching it and throwing it onto the plate next to her.

‘Ow!' she says without turning around. ‘Do you want jam?'

‘Just butter.'

Of course, she thinks. How could she have forgotten?

‘Go on then,' she says eventually, placing his toast and tea on the table in front of him.

‘Go on what?'

Joan gestures around her. ‘This,' she says. ‘You coming here. What did you really want?'

He pauses. ‘I wanted to see how you were. I was worried about you.'

‘Did Sonya send you?'

He frowns. Small golden leaves flutter past the window. ‘She doesn't know I'm here yet.'

Joan is uncertain whether to believe him. She wants to know where she stands. ‘But she must have told you about my precautions. The hair in the door.'

Leo shrugs. ‘I knew what I was looking for.' He glances at Joan. ‘Who do you think told Sonya about those tricks in the first place?'

Joan squints at him. ‘Could have been Jamie.' She stands up and kisses him on the top of his head while he eats. ‘You don't need to worry. I know what I'm doing.'

‘So did Kierl. I wanted to warn you about him.'

‘Bit late.'

‘I know.'

Joan looks at him. ‘Did you know Kierl then? Did you warn him?'

Leo closes his eyes and rubs his head. He nods. ‘I knew him.'

‘Did you . . . ?' She is going to say ‘recruit' but the word is wrong. It is too formal, in her opinion. It does not describe the process.

‘I met him in Montreal at the university.' He takes a sip of tea. ‘He fell more easily than you did. Pro-Soviet sympathies, ex-Party member, anger at the exclusion of Russia from the project during the war. He was a sure thing. That's how I knew you were coming to Canada.'

‘And where we were having our meeting at the university.' Joan pauses. ‘They're onto you, you know. You're on a list. Max—Professor Davis, that is—told me.'

Leo nods. ‘I know.'

‘And? Aren't you scared?'

He laughs. ‘They don't have unlimited resources to follow everyone they've ever had slight suspicions about. I'll be fine. And besides, I was working for the government during the war. I'm in the establishment now. It would make them look pretty slack if they hadn't spotted me before so they're hardly going to make much effort to investigate me now. I've just got to keep my nose clean.' He grins. ‘Is that the right expression?'

Joan nods but she does not smile.

‘Oh Jo-jo, don't frown like that. I've been doing this a lot longer than you have. I came here because I wanted to warn
you
.' He takes hold of her hands and holds them in both of his. ‘You need to be careful.'

‘I
am
careful,' Joan says with a hint of indignation in her voice, trying to conceal her pleasure at his concern for her.

‘More careful then.' He squeezes her hands. ‘You're the best they've got now. You're more important than you realise. Your safety is their top priority.'

Joan flinches. ‘Don't be silly.' She slips her hands out of his and turns away. She does not like to hear this sort of thing. It does not fit with what she tells herself, that what she is doing is not really that significant. It is how she justifies it, being careful always to make sure that none of the intelligence she passes on is information that she actually seeks out. It is information that is given to her, one way or another; it passes into her knowledge, and then it drops out again. She shares it rather than steals it, which is an important distinction to her. True, her position means that she knows practically everything that goes on at the plant, but once it is
her
knowledge, in
her
head, then it's not technically stealing, is it? She does not want to be considered special or important to any of them. Except, she thinks in a tiny corner of her head, Leo.

‘Okay, okay.
I
want you to be careful,' he says.

‘I'm always careful. You can ask Sonya. We've had fire drills. We take precautions so that we're safe . . . '

‘That's what I mean. Feeling safe is dangerous. Routine is dangerous.' He picks up his mug of tea and takes a sip. ‘I'm only saying it because I worry about you. I know how it feels to have a secret.'

Of course he does. Joan knows this. She has tried to imagine how it must have felt for him when he left Germany, leaving his father and Sonya perhaps for good, knowing that he was unlikely to return. Did he hesitate? Joan wonders. Or did he just walk forwards, knowing that there was nothing to gain from looking back? She knows he would dismiss such thoughts as overly sentimental but there is something so grand about this moment, so pitiful, that she cannot help but be drawn to it. She wonders if, put in the same position, she would have had that same capacity for stoicism, for bravery in the face of exile. She cannot imagine it.

But she also knows that this was the moment which yoked him irrevocably to Sonya, forging the bond of which Sonya is so protective, brought into being by that step across the border. She knows he is proud of the fact that he kept his promise to his father, sending for Sonya three years later once he had found a boarding school for her to attend in Surrey and a sympathetic Quaker family to take her in during the holidays. He has told Joan how he arranged to meet Sonya at the docks in Dover, dutifully appearing at the landing stage and searching the crowd for the sorrowful little girl who had arrived at their apartment eight years previously following the sudden death of her mother; a little girl who could not eat without being coaxed and for whom he gave up his bed and slept on a mattress in the living room so that she could sleep in the room overlooking a streetlamp because she was afraid of the dark. And that he did not realise how long he had been away until he saw Sonya step off the boat.

She would have been sixteen then, but Joan can see how he would have imagined her unchanged. She would have given that slight, half-shy wave—the same movement she gives now when she sees someone she knows in the distance—and that he would have held out his arms to embrace his cousin, but the hug which followed would have been awkward and strange because she was no longer the little girl he remembered but a willowy young woman with dark, moist eyes and bright red lips.

It is almost as if he is thinking the same thing, because quite suddenly he looks at Joan and says: ‘You mustn't tell Sonya you've seen me. I'll mention it to her when the time's right.'

‘Just like the old days, then?'

‘Yes.'

Joan turns away from him, irritated by this. Why does she allow him to do this? To stroll back into her life and take up again as if he had never left, as if they had not spent the last four years—is it really that long?—at loggerheads, albeit from a distance. It is a static sort of attraction, hers and Leo's, like cat's fur against a coarse carpet, irritating and repellent but also sparking and sticking.