Our Woman in Moscow

by Beatriz Williams

  Here was a pleasant, light-filled room with French doors opening to a wide stone terrace and the lawn, on which several cricket matches might be played simultaneously, if you didn’t mind hurdling the odd hedge or flowerbed. The friend or two was really five or six, dressed for the country, but Iris’s gaze went straight to the blond woman in the lean, daring trousers and silk blouse, smoking a cigarette, caressing a damp gin and tonic in the other hand. She was the woman at the Desboroughs’ party, the one talking with Philip and Sasha in the library—Iris recognized her at once—recognized also, like a puzzle piece falling into place, she was the woman in the snapshot that Sasha kept in his desk drawer, a perfect match, except her hair was now a different color.

  Philip walked them home around eleven o’clock. The other guests had left after an hour or two, and still there was no sign of Sasha, so Philip had persuaded Vivian and Iris to stay for dinner—roast chicken grown on the home farm—eat all you want, no ration book—plenty of wine to wash it down. Aunt Vivian did most of the talking. She and Philip got on like a mansion on fire. At half past ten Philip had glanced at the clock and suggested that perhaps Sasha had taken a later train and gone straight to the cottage?

  “Oh, the poor man,” said Aunt Vivian. “I’d forgotten all about him.”

  So now they tramped back down the lane, through the fragrant meadow that smelled of hay and wildflowers. Tonight the moon was new and invisible, but the stars were bountiful here in the country and they dusted the tips of the grass with silver. Iris listened to Aunt Vivian chatter with Philip. She was flirting shamelessly—probably planned to sleep with him, if only for revenge on her husband. The starlight glinted on his silver hair. His profile was pristine. He looked noble and wise, like a sage. His footsteps made no sound on the dirt.

  They reached the cottage. Mrs. Betts had been looking after the children. She seemed surprised to see Philip—gave her report with many a nervous glance and then retired to her room. There was no sign of Sasha.

  “I wouldn’t worry.” Aunt Vivian yawned. “I expect he went out with a friend or two.”

  “That’s why I’m worried.” Iris turned to Philip. “Before you leave, I was hoping to have a word with you?”

  “Certainly.”

  Aunt Vivian gave Iris a wise look. “I guess that’s my cue, then. Good night, chums. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Philip laughed and said he imagined that left a wide range of possibilities.

  When Aunt Vivian’s footsteps creaked up the stairs, Iris turned to Philip. “She’s so outrageous. I apologize.”

  “Not at all. I worship your American characters. Shall we step outside? It’s a rare evening out there.”

  He knew the cottage better than she did—guided her through the darkened sunroom to the French doors—knew the trick of opening the sticky middle one. The doors led straight onto the grass and a gentle salt breeze coming off the Channel.

  “Come along. We won’t be overheard,” Philip said.

  Iris glanced down the lane, where Sasha would be arriving if he were going to arrive. Nothing stirred. She walked on next to Philip, across the grass toward the sea cliffs.

  “You’re right, it’s a beautiful evening. It’s a beautiful place—magical—I can’t thank you enough.”

  He made a diffident English noise. Some seagulls squawked out of the darkness.

  “I wanted to ask you about Miss Fischer,” Iris said.

  “Nedda? What about her?”

  “I found her photograph in Sasha’s desk.”

  He stopped and said, Ah.

  “She had brown hair instead of blond, and she was wearing a uniform. But it was definitely her. You can’t mistake her face.”

  “No, you can’t.” Philip resumed walking. “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t even know what to ask. But I thought—since she’s a friend of yours—I don’t know. Maybe you know how they might have known each other.”

  Philip motioned to the left and Iris saw a stone bench, hardly visible in the starlight. She sat and he sat next to her, stretching out his legs with a sigh. “Of course you should ask your husband,” he said.

  “I know. But he’s not around, is he? And I’m asking you instead.”

  “You see, I don’t know how to answer you.”

  “Then allow me to guess, and if I’m right, you can nod or something.”

  “That seems fair.”

  “I think Sasha may have been involved in some sort of intelligence operations during the war, when we were in Zurich, and Miss Fischer was a contact of his.”

  “You’re very clever.”

  “I’d have to be stupid not to figure that out.”

  “Then why do you ask me?”

  “Maybe I’m just wondering if you did the same thing.”

  “And I suppose I’ve just confirmed your suspicions?”

  “No,” she said, “I realized when you told me about the house being used for intelligence. I didn’t think you’d let them take over the family estate unless they gave you a piece of the action.”

  He started to laugh. “How I love you Americans.”

  The air smelled of night blossoms, of jasmine and the nearby sea. The wind sifted through the boxwoods. Iris put her face in her hands.

  “Oh, my dear. I’m sorry.” Philip put a gentle arm around her shoulders. She turned her head into his chest for a moment or two, maybe thirty seconds—bliss. His shirt was unspeakably soft. Everything beneath it perfectly solid.

  Sasha arrived at Honeysuckle Cottage at half past eight o’clock in the morning, in a taxi from the station. He walked into the breakfast room with the kind of exaggerated care that meant he was still drunk, had probably gone straight to Victoria Station from the Gargoyle Club or wherever he was. Though he reeked of cigarettes, his clothes were remarkably neat, and he greeted Aunt Vivian with a civilized handshake.

  “Welcome to Honeysuckle, Aunt Vivian. I’m awfully sorry to turn up like this. Had a work session that went late.”

  “So I see. Vivian will do.” She squinted at his face. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you look as if you wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee.”

  He smiled, and for a moment he was like the old Sasha, hair swinging down onto his forehead, the bluest eyes you ever saw. “I’d be grateful,” he said.

  After he’d drunk two cups of coffee, wolfed down half a dozen eggs on toast, and charmed the children, Sasha headed upstairs to bathe and change. Iris followed him. He spotted her in the mirror above his dresser while he unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Go ahead. Deliver the lecture. I deserve it.”

  “Where were you? That’s all I want to know.”

  “Out. With friends. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I was worried.”

  “Were you?” He tossed the shirt in the hamper and stripped off his undershirt, his drawers. “I figured Beauchamp would be keeping you company.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” He started out the door to the bathroom, where the water was already running into the tub, nice and warm.

  “You can’t go out in the hall like that! The girls!”

  He swore and snatched a dressing gown from the hook. Iris sat on the bed and put her face in her hands. She heard the opening and closing of the bedroom door and lay back across the bed to stare at the simple plaster ceiling. Outside the window, the children played some noisy game on the lawn, and Iris marveled at how easily they’d come together, these cousins who didn’t even know each other—how deep and instinctive is the human need for connection.

  She lay there for some time, even though duty tugged her downstairs. She felt paralyzed, unable to move, let alone rise and do all the mothering things. She couldn’t confront Sasha about Nedda Fischer, because she’d have to tell him how she came to see the photograph in the desk. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to. What was the point?

  The door creaked open. Sasha’s voice, a touch i
ronic—Still here?

  “Tell me about Zurich,” she said.

  He moved to the dresser. “Zurich? Why Zurich?”

  “You weren’t just working for the embassy, were you?”

  “No. I was seconded to the OSS, under diplomatic cover. Liaising with our agents in Germany. Assisting the escape lines, that kind of thing. I assumed you knew.”

  She sat up. “How should I know if you didn’t tell me anything?”

  “Because you couldn’t possibly think I’d spend the war stamping passports, for one thing.” He had a towel wrapped around his middle. His cheeks were pink and smooth; his hair combed back wet from his forehead. He took a cigarette from the pack on the dresser and lit up. “For another thing, I wasn’t exactly home every evening at five o’clock, was I?”

  “You were so happy in Zurich. I always wondered why.”

  “Because I was doing something worthwhile. Fighting the right side.”

  “Is that all?”

  He sucked on the cigarette. “And I had you. And Kip. What more could a man ask for?”

  “It’s funny, because I was miserable in Zurich. I had all those miscarriages, and you were hardly ever home, and the war was going badly.”

  He stared at her a moment and turned to the window, where the children screamed around the lawn. “All’s well that ends well, I guess. We ended up with Jack, didn’t we, and we won the war. And now you’ve got me around all the time, a nice well-trained husband.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a drunken, irritable, unreliable husband who’s probably having an affair.”

  Sasha spun around. “What the devil? Who’s having an affair?”

  “With that blond woman. Fischer. She keeps popping up, doesn’t she?”

  “Damn it, Iris. I told you, it was over long ago with her. I—”

  He bit off the sentence cleanly, like the snip of a pair of scissors. Iris stared back at him. She took in the instant of panic, the flexing around the eyes, replaced almost—but not quite—immediately with a look of bored irritation that was the screen for something else, the search for something to say.

  “You’re talking nonsense,” he said.

  “She’s your contact. Your handler.” Iris spoke slowly, because it was so much to understand—everything—the history of the past eight years—of her marriage, of Sasha—all rewriting itself inside her head.

  Outside the window, a cloud shifted. Sunlight poured through the glass and turned Sasha to gold. His hair, his skin. The angle of the light had some strange effect on his eyes, turning them an extraordinary pale green. He didn’t move, not a flicker. One hand held the towel in place at his waist.

  Iris waited. He had to tell her—he had to say the truth or not. She wouldn’t do him the favor of dragging it out of him.

  “Was,” he said, in a voice so low, Iris strained to hear it. “She was my handler, in the beginning. She recruited me.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “She arranged for the Zurich posting, the diplomatic cover. Because Germany was important, it was important that we had some strategic advantage in Germany, so that we knew what the Americans were up to.”

  “We? You mean the Soviet Union.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “She doesn’t sound Russian,” Iris said.

  “Her mother’s Russian. They used to spend summers there, when she was growing up. At her grandfather’s dacha. So SIS hired her as an intelligence officer, because she was fluent.”

  “But really she’s working for the Soviets.”

  He turned away to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. “Was. It’s all finished.”

  “Finished? Why?”

  “Never mind. I’ve already told you more than I should.”

  “Do you mean you’re not spying anymore? What about the note in the hymnal? All those urgent meetings?”

  “Never mind, I said!”

  “You said once that you wanted to tell me. You used to trust me.”

  “Would you just shut up about it? Christ. The less you know, the better. Don’t you understand?” He whipped around. “What I told you about Nedda, do you understand, you never heard it.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Your pal Beauchamp, all right? Not a word, not a goddamn hint. Do you understand? Do you?”

  “Are you still sleeping with her?”

  He banged the wall with his fist and yelled, “Do you understand?”

  The door sprang open. Kip rushed in. “Mama! Are you all right?”

  “Yes! Yes, darling, I’m fine.” Iris stood just in time to take his small, hard body as he hurled himself into her middle.

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Because Daddy’s a beast,” said Sasha. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get dressed in the bathroom. Seems to have got a little crowded in here.”

  Aunt Vivian lowered herself on the picnic blanket and stretched her long legs out in the sun. “You haven’t asked me about your sister yet.”

  “No, I haven’t. Grapes?”

  “Have you got anything stronger?”

  “Champagne.”

  “Much better.”

  Iris poured a glass for Aunt Vivian and another glass for herself—she was on her third—while Aunt Vivian lit a cigarette and squinted in the direction of the children, who were busy teaching Philip Beauchamp and his dog—a scruffy black Labrador—how to play baseball. Pepper was pitching, Kip was catching, Philip was poised at the plate with a cricket bat and an expression of extreme concentration.

  “Why, she’s very well, since you ask,” said Aunt Vivian. “She’s working as a personal secretary to the president of some company or another, I can’t remember the name. Something to do with fashion models.”

  “How nice.”

  Striiiiike! yelled Tiny, the umpire. (Tiny was always the umpire—she never met a rule she didn’t like—while Pepper and Little Viv were natural anarchists.)

  “What’s that? No, she’s still not interested in marrying anybody. She likes keeping her beaux on their toes, the little minx, and frankly I don’t blame her. They’re a damned nuisance, husbands.”

  “I’ll say.”

  Aunt Vivian leaned closer. “What’s that?”

  “I said, they’re perfect dears, once you get used to them.”

  A loud, splendid crack echoed off the boxwoods and the walls of the house. Philip dashed off toward first base, limping slightly, followed by Raffles the black Labrador. Jack, playing all the bases and the outfield, got up an instant too late to catch him at second base.

  Safe! shouted Tiny. Jack threw down his cap and stomped on it.

  “Tell me something,” said Iris. “What happens when you get back to New York?”

  “I’ll take him back, of course. I won’t put the girls through a divorce.” Aunt Vivian finished her champagne and reached for the bottle. “It’ll burn itself out. That Marshall girl will come to her senses and realize that once I’m out of the picture, there’s no excitement in it. He’ll be begging me to take him back, and you know I don’t come cheap. Diamonds, at least.”

  “But it won’t be the same, will it?”

  “No. But marriage never is, is it? You go through stages, like acts in a play. Act One, you fall in love, and the birds twitter and the bees go buzz, and you’ll never love somebody else as long as you both shall live, amen. Act Two, enter the baby carriage, and all of a sudden he catches sight of a pair of firm young tits and figures life is short. Act Three . . .” Aunt Vivian narrowed her eyes at the ball game, where Little Viv had come up to bat against Pepper, and Philip Beauchamp seemed to know more than an Englishman should about taking a lead off second base.

  “Act Three?”

  “Act Three, you realize there’s no point letting the husbands have all the fun.”

  Pepper released the ball, and Philip took off toward third base. Iris rose on her knees. Little Viv whistled her bat through the air—Striiiike! yelled Tiny—Kip hurl
ed the ball toward poor Jack, who ran with all his might to cover third—caught the ball, a miracle—tagged a sliding Philip Beauchamp at the very instant he touched base—

  Out! called Tiny.

  “She’s not pulling any punches, is she?” said Sasha.

  Iris whirled around. Her husband stood at the edge of the picnic blanket, carrying a smoke and a glass of whiskey in one hand and his briefcase in the other. He wore his suit with a fresh shirt and tie. He set down the briefcase and finished the whiskey.

  “You’re leaving?” Iris said.

  “Something’s come up. Headed back to London. Awfully sorry to miss all the fun, but it looks as if Beauchamp has matters well in hand.”

  Iris scrambled to her feet. “But how will you get to the station?”

  “I’ve called a taxi.”

  “That’s going to be awfully expensive.”

  He leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “We’ll try again next weekend, shall we? Give the boys my love.”

  “Give it to them yourself.”

  “I’m afraid there isn’t time. Vivian? Good to see you.”

  He picked up his briefcase and walked back across the lawn with the exaggerated care of a man who’d already washed down his eggs with a few sides of whiskey. As Iris watched, stunned and empty, a small car, red or possibly orange, pulled up to the drive from the lane and stopped. Iris couldn’t see the driver, but she was pretty sure that car was no taxi.

  Sasha reached the vehicle and opened the front door. He swung his long body inside and the car took off in a spurt of gravel.

  Iris turned back to the game. Her fingers trembled against the sides of her legs, so she folded her arms across her middle. The air smelled of cut grass and sunshine. Little Viv stood at home plate, preparing to swing. Philip Beauchamp stood near the batter’s box, holding a salmon-pink cricket ball in one hand, staring right past Iris at the car that disappeared down the lane.