The Diplomat's Wife (44 page)
Read The Diplomat's Wife Online
Authors: Pam Jenoff
I turn back to face the water, and Paul wraps his arm around me, resting his chin on the top of my head. More than a month has passed since the confrontation at the airport with Simon. We buried him in a private graveside ceremony in his family plot at a Jewish cemetery west of London on a rainy Sunday morning, just the rabbi, Rachel and myself, Paul, Delia and Charles standing a respectful distance behind. At first, I had not wanted to go. Simon was a murderer. Every single thing he had said or done since I met him had been a lie. In the end, it was Paul who convinced me to go. I looked at him in amazement. His entire unit had died because of Simon. “For closure,” he explained. “I mean, I hate him, too. But we should go for Rachel. Simon is the only father she has known until now and someday she will want to know things.”
So in the end we went. As his casket was lowered into the ground my rage burned white hot. How could he have done this? He killed so many innocent men. He played with our lives, made us nothing more than pawns in his game. The rabbi passed me a small handful of dirt, and as I threw it into the grave, my anger began to wane. You lost, Simon, I thought, feeling strangely triumphant. Then, staring down into the dark hole, my curiosity burned. There were so many things I wanted to know about what had happened and why he had done it, questions to which I would never get answers. Suddenly I realized that it did not matter.
“Y’isgadal, v’yis’kadash,”
the rabbi began. As I joined him in the Mourner’s Kaddish, I did not pray for Simon. I prayed for my parents and Rose, for Jacob and Alek and all those I carried with me. The years I spent with Simon would forever be part of the tapestry of my life, but I would not let it destroy the good. My voice grew stronger as I thanked God for sustaining me and bringing me to this place. When the prayer ended, Paul stepped forward and took my hand, and he, Rachel and I walked slowly away together.
Dava survived her gunshot wound and agreed to cooperate with the government in exchange for amnesty, a reduced sentence. “It’s actually better this way,” Paul told me a few days earlier as we packed up the house. “There won’t be a public trial.” In fact, somehow the whole incident had been kept out of the media, though I knew that the scandal of Simon’s death and my departure would be whispered about in diplomatic circles for years. “And hopefully we’ll learn the full extent to which the communists had infiltrated the British government,” he added.
Hopefully, I think now, shivering. We learned a great deal more about Simon in the investigation following his death, how he had been targeted by the communists for recruitment while a student at Cambridge, invited to Moscow by a college classmate for spring vacation. It was not hard to imagine Simon, alone and in need of money after his father’s death, being drawn in, warmed by the prospect of being important and needed. There he had taken on the identity Dmitri Borskin, met Dava. Later another diplomat, also secretly working for the Soviets, had helped him secure his place at the Foreign Office.
Hearing this, I pictured the faces of the other men in the department—Ebertson, Fitzwilliam, even the D.M.—how many of them were really communist spies? I worried that someone might come after me and Paul, seek revenge for what we had done. But the investigators assured me that they would all be arrested. Paul said, too, that the Soviets would no longer be interested in me. But I was still glad to be putting an ocean between us.
Dava’s face appears in my mind once more. Her betrayal is the hardest to believe. I remember her as she had been in Salzburg, caring and kind. It had all been a lie. I hate her for what she did to Rose, and I want her to go to prison, to suffer. I will never forgive her, but in a strange way, I can almost understand. She was blinded by her love for Simon. And she did not let him kill me in the end. If it was not for Dava, I wouldn’t be standing here today.
I look up at Paul, wanting to pinch myself to make certain that it is real. We have been so lucky. Though the cut Simon gave him had not touched any major organs, the struggle had caused internal bleeding at the site of his gunshot wound. I clung to his hand as they loaded him into the ambulance that night, fearful that if I let go, he would disappear again. “Come back to the States with me,” he suggested before they closed the ambulance doors and took him away. He repeated the invitation as his first words when he woke up in the hospital following surgery the next day.
I hesitated. Going to America with Paul was a long-forgotten dream, something that had died years ago. But what did I have left here? I could hardly go back to the Foreign Office after all that happened. And our house, Simon’s house, held nothing but painful memories. Delia was here, of course. But even she was talking about moving on, getting married at long last to Charles and retiring to the south of France. “Life’s too short,” she explained. Too short indeed. That night I told Paul I would come with him to America. We stayed in London just long enough to finalize affairs: I arranged for the sale of the house through an agency Delia recommended and Paul secured visas to America for Rachel and me. A few weeks later, we were ready to go.
Before we left, I sent Emma a letter, too, telling her what had happened and giving her Paul’s address in America. I wrote that if she wanted to come to America, I would try to arrange papers for her and the children. I wonder if I will get a response.
“Happy?” Paul asks now, jarring me from my thoughts. Still staring out at the sea, I hesitate. I am still getting used to all that has happened, trying to convince myself that it will not fall apart. I am too scared to be happy. But I nod, anyway. “I have something for you,” Paul says.
I turn around to face him, the wind whipping my hair across my face. “What is it?” Paul reaches into his pocket and pulls out a box, then starts to lower himself to one knee. My breath catches. “You’re asking me to marry you?”
He nods. “Again.” Then he opens the box to reveal a white-gold band with a solitaire diamond on top.
“It’s beautiful.” I lift the dog tags that hang around my neck. “But I kind of like these.”
He smiles. “You should have had a ring then, too. I was such a dumb kid.”
“We were both kids.”
“So is that a yes?”
I laugh. “I feel like we’re already married.”
“Me, too. But I think we should make it official as soon as we get settled. I want everyone to know that I’m your husband and Rachel’s father.”
I do not answer. That is how the whole mess started in the first place. If I had not been worried about appearances, I wouldn’t have married Simon just because I was pregnant with Rachel. Enough, I think. That is all in the past now. Everything that happened, for better or worse, contributed to where we are right now. Happy. Together.
I look down at Paul, who is staring up at me, the ring box still held in his palm. “I’d love to,” I say. “Yes.”
He takes the ring from the box and slips it on my finger. Then he stands up, drawing me into an embrace. Suddenly, I laugh aloud. “What is it?” he demands. “Don’t you like the ring?”
“The ring is perfect,” I reply quickly. “It’s just that this all seems so ordinary. So wonderfully, perfectly ordinary.”
Paul shakes his head. “That,” he replies, brushing my hair back and kissing my forehead, “is the one thing I doubt we’ll ever be.”
“True,” I say, suddenly exhausted. “I think I’ll go upstairs to the cabin for a nap.”
He looks down at me, his expression worried. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, just a bit tired. Want to come with me?”
“I don’t think you’ll get much rest if I do.”
“Agreed. Want to come with me?” He hesitates, looking over at the nursery. “Rachel is fine with the other children,” I add.
“Let’s go.” As he takes my arm and leads me across the deck, it finally seems as though our journey together has just begun.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1612-3
THE DIPLOMAT’S WIFE
Copyright © 2008 by Pam Jenoff.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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