The Longest Pleasure (19 page)

Kirsten Moeller sat up. She frowned, took her lower lip into her mouth, removed a layer of lipstick. 'Sometimes, just now and then, I feel that you and I are growing apart, dear one. Now you have a secret. You have another apartment?'

'I can hardly afford this one.'

Kirsten Moeller got up, walked to the bed, stood above Irena. 'You make a poor liar. I would not like you and I to drift apart, dear one. I would hate you to have
a
secret from me.'

'Who am I to have secrets, Kirstie?' But the laughter had gone, and her eyes were closed. Her muscles were tensed, and the wide nostrils quivered.

'Because my teeth are sharper than Charles Manly's. And mine are not false, so I know just how hard to bite. The thought of having to leave this place amused you, for
a
moment, just then. Tell me why?'

'Because I know there is no possibility of it happening.' Still the eyes were closed, the long lashes resting lightly on the thin cheeks. 'Not so long as you love me, Kirstie.'

'Yes.' Kirsten Moeller knelt on the bed, between Irena's legs, drove her long fingers into the thinly covered ribs. Irena gave a faint shriek, her eyes flopped open, her body twisted. But Kirsten was the stronger. Her fingers roamed up and down each rib, sought the shallow valleys between, stroked back and forth, while Irena's cries, mingled with reluctant laughter, grew louder, and her legs kicked, and her body rolled to and fro, and her head flopped, scattering clouds of thin brown hair.

'Yes,' Kirsten Moeller said. 'I love you.
I
love
you,
Irena Szen. You adore being loved, don't you, Irena Szen. That is all you live for, isn't it, for men to love your body, for me to love your soul. But it will be your soul that counts in the end, Irena Szen.' She flung herself away from the dishevelled dressing robe, the flai
ling legs. 'Tell me about Galit
sin.'

Irena Szen lay on the bed, mouth opened, eyes shut, breasts heaving. Slowly her mouth closed, and her eyes opened. She pulled her dressing gown straight, fastened a button, pushed herself into a sitting position. 'Galitsin? Sandor Galitsin?'

'What other Galitsin do you know?'

Irena shook her head. 'I know no Galitsin now.'

'He has never written to you?'

'H
ow could he? He does not even k
now where
I
am. And it would not be safe for him. He is very lucky to be alive.'

'You think
he
made up that story about having gone off his head?'

Irena Szen got off the bed. She picked up her brush, drew it through her hair. 'Who else would have done it?'

'Galitsin? That thick-headed Russian moujik? That boy who lived in a perpetual dream? That idiot who could fall in love with a whore? That pessimist who could only think of committing suicide, back there in Buda? Do you really think he could sustain such a masquerade for month after month after month?'

Irena sat down again, still brushing her hair. 'I don't understand.'

'You don't read the newspapers either, do you?'

'Of course I don't. There is nothing in the newspapers but war and famine and crime.'

'What
do
you do when nobody is jumping up and down on your belly? Or don't you think at all?'

Yes,' Irena said. 'I think. I think about men I have known, and about women, too. I have known so many people. I have so much to think about.'

‘I
)o you ever think about Galitsin?'

'Sometimes. He loved me more than anyone. More than you, even, I think. He risked his life for us. For me, anyway.'

'But you
can
still read?'

Irena put down the brush. 'English? A little. I have trouble with some words.'

'Well, I suggest you send that girl out for an evening paper and put in some practice. There's a story in the paper tonight, a report on the first day of the Hastings Chess Congress. I don't suppose you have ever heard of it.'

'I have hea
rd of Hastings. There was a battl
e fought there once.'

'They play chess there now. It is a famous annual tournament. Players come to it from all over the world. From the Soviet Union as well. Your friend Alexander Petrovich Galitsin is playing there this year. The newspapers say he won his first game.'

'Sandor is in England?'

‘
You didn't know he was coming?'

‘
Of course
‘I
didn't.'

‘
Neither did I. There was some publicity about it, apparently, back in October, but I was away at the time. Are you pleased about it?'

'It would be nice to see him again.'

'Of course. It would be delightful. And for him. That is why he has come to England, you know. To see you again.'

'That cannot be possible.'

'Everything is possible to the K.G.B. Or the Fourth Bureau. Or both, working together. What a horrible thought. All that has proved impossible up to now is for them to lay hands on me. They are looking for Kirsten Moeller or Christina Hipp. They have no idea that Christine Hamble exists. Now they are becoming desperate.'

'You were behind the Iron Curtain this year?'

‘I
spent three weeks in East Berlin. We are going to bleed Ulbricht white. But do you know what is both tragic and amusing? It was my last trip. I have retired from field work
for the organisation. Since
Hungary there has been no
pleasure in it for me. See? I will admit it. I was frightened in Hungary. I did not expect the Russians to react as they did. None of us expected that. None of us thought they would dare. So I have quit. And only now do they come looking for me in England. And
that
also began in Hungary. Now tell me, are you not tempted to go down to Hastings and watch a chess tournament?'

Irena Szen looked happy. 'I should love to go there. Just to see him.'

'Which is what the Sovi
ets supposed you would say, and
feel.'

Irena Szen drove her fingers into her hair, undoing all the good work of the brush. 'I wish I could understand. Sandor would never work for the K.G.B. And, anyway, what can be the object. I am a whore. Only a whore. I have never harmed anyone. I have never intrigued against anyone.' She turned towards Kirsten, all the pent-up anxieties which were consuming her mind flooding into the thin cheeks, the spreading, drooping mouth. 'You do not want me to go to Hastings, Kirstie?'

Kirsten Moeller leaned over the bed, her hands on Irena Szen's shoulders. 'I came h
ere to tell you that, dear one.
Under
no
circumstances are you to go within fifty miles of Hastings. And listen to me very carefully. If Alexander Galitsin, or anyone else from Eastern Europe, attempts to get in touch with you, you are to tell me. Immediately. Do you understand? At any hour of the day or the night.'

'Of course I understand, K
irstie.' Irena Szen poured her
self a glass of port,

II

‘
What do you think of bitter?' Nancy Connaught asked.

Galitsin looked into his mug. 'It is quite pleasant. It is not strong, like vodka.'

‘
You've certainly managed to put away quite a lot with-out obvious effect,' she agreed. 'It's about as
much as your
poor Englishman can afford, nowadays.'

'That is sad, A man should be allowed to drink. If he chooses.'

'I'll drink to that. If you mean a woman as well.' She finished her bourbon and soda. 'One for the road?' 'The road?'

She beckoned the barmaid. 'Just an expression. It means a last drink. It's getting on for nine, and I have to get back up to London tonight Same again, please, miss.'

'That is not good, on slippery roads. Is it a very long way?'

'Eighty, ninety miles. I'll manage. You're staying at the Royal Victoria?'

'The Royal Victoria, yes. A very nice hotel.
⁹

'I'm with you there. My car's in their garage, so we can walk back together.'

‘
Yes,' he agreed, and turned his attention away from the saloon bar. This had interested him, at first, the dark polished mahogany, the brass horses' heads, the halters and stirrups, the fact that it was separated from the other bar. There did not seem to be any rule that certain people
had
to go into the other bar, yet the people in this bar were better dressed. A last relic of the class system which had made his mother so bitter?

And yet he could look along the bar into the other room, and, clothes apart, the people were no different They drank beer or gin, smoked endless cigarettes, conversed with the barmaids, and sat at the tables, no doubt gossiping, but in such low tones it was impossible to understand what they were saying. They seemed to drink a great deal, but as most of it was this watery beer he was not surprised no one got drunk. But yet it was strange, to be in a bar, and see no uniforms other than his own, and hear no music, and no loud voices. He thought if he were asked to sum up the British he would say discipline. Mother had advanced that as the reason why there had never been a revolution in Britain, might never be a revolution, now. 'It goes back a long way,' she had explained. 'Too much discipline.'

And although Mother had been just as disciplined as anyone, yet he thought that might be the reason she had left Scotland. In which case she had no doubt been disappointed; of all the many Russian peoples, the Ukrainians are the most disciplined. Mother should have married a Mongol, or at worst an Armenian.

But Nancy Connaught was an American, although he supposed that with a name like Connaught she was Anglo-American. To the average American, wherever his origin, any sort of discipline not wholly imposed by the will was tyranny.

He studied her, drinking whisky, her cigarette dangling from the fingers of her left hand. She was unlike any woman he had ever met. She was totally unfeminine, and yet she exuded confident sex. There was none of the brash self-assertiveness of Kirsten Moeller here, just as there was none of the dignified womanhood of Helena Isbinska. It occurred to him that Nancy Connaught regarded men neither as enemies to be fought nor as rivals to be mastered. He thought it would be possible to become very relaxed with Nancy Connaught.

'I have enjoyed this evening,' he said. 'Although I find it strange that you have asked me no questions.'

She drank bourbon. 'I told you, I'm an impressionist. Writers can be impressionists just as much as artists, you know. I've spent three hours in your company, taking you into my subconscious. And do you know what? It's been fun for me, too. Mind you . . .' She stubbed out her cigarette. 'I am now just a little bit pissed, and I have absolutely no idea what's going to come out the other side. When
I
settle down to my little old typewriter you may show up as a horrible communist ogre.' 'Oh,1 am, Miss Connaught'

That, darling, assures your salvation. Ogres never have a sense of humour. Absolutely never. And I wish you'd call me Nancy. Shall we?' She dropped two pounds on the table, allowed him to help her into her leopard-skin coat, went to the door. 'Brrr. Is this cold enough for you?'

'It is certainly cold.' There were no stars, and a breeze had sprung-up, whining over the high ground behind the town where Harold the Saxon had arrayed his forces nine hundred years before, howling around the pitted walls and gaunt towers which were all that remained of Hastings Castle, seeping through the putting greens and amusement arcades, sending late wanderers scurrying for the shelter of the nearest public house.

Then you can put your arm round my waist,' Nancy suggested. 'Unless you'd like to call a taxi. The Royal Victoria is all the way out in St. Leonards.'

‘I
would enjoy the walk,' he said. 'But if you would prefer to go by car...'

‘
Brother,' she said.
1 need
the walk, and the wind, even if it is sub-zero.'

He put his arm round her waist, could not feel her body through the thick fur. She rested her head on his shoulder. They walked along the esplanade, heels crunching on a thin layer of ice, watching the tops of the waves whipped into foam by the wind, turning the bay into a mass of flailing white.

'On a night like this, especially in January, I'm glad I'm on shore,' she said. 'Ever do any sailing, Alex?'

This is the nearest I have ever been to the sea. Why
do
you call me Alex?'