He looked at her again. “Outside forces, systems, events, plots, accidents, duties, obligations, call them what you like. They can be the wreckers. You don’t want to believe that, Sylvia? But think of your cousin, the one who’s in Korea. There he was in California, finishing college, planning his career, probably in love with a girl. The event happened. The North Koreans invaded the South. What about your cousin’s plans?”
“But they may not be changed for ever,” she said. “He may come back, start once again... Jan, what’s wrong? Have you heard bad news about your family?”
“I’ve heard nothing. Nothing at all.”
“But it will take a little time to reach you.”
“I expected it before this.”
“But—” She couldn’t speak. She gripped his hand.
“Oh, I’m a fool,” he said savagely, “to let worry catch me up like this. They will escape. The plans were good. Carefully made. We thought of everything.”
“Others have escaped.”
He nodded. “It’s just this strain—I’m living, thinking on four different levels. Working beside men whose guts I hate, keeping guard over myself every single minute, waiting for the news that will give me my release, worrying about you.”
“Don’t. Not about me.” She raised his hand and kissed it and held it against her cheek. “It’s just the strain,” she agreed. “How is your work going, actually?”
“As badly as I can make it without running into trouble.”
She looked at him, studying his face. There were new lines etched round his mouth, a small permanent furrow between the dark eyebrows. “Jan,” she said softly, “the news may be waiting for you at this very moment. But how will it reach you?”
“We’ve arranged for that. A letter will be sent to—well, to someone who wouldn’t be expected to get a letter like that. A woman.”
“You are allowed to see her?”
“Yes.”
“I’m jealous.” She pretended to smile. “Why didn’t you have the letter sent to me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice free from the sharp touch of annoyance that had frozen her for a moment.
“And have Pleydell open it?”
“He wouldn’t do that, Jan.”
“Then who stopped all my letters from reaching you?”
“I got them,” she said. And even if she had decided not to answer them, even if she had made the resolution to try and forget Jan Brovic, the small number of letters had wounded her.
“I wrote you twice a week after I returned to Czechoslovakia in 1945. I wrote you twice a week for almost a year. Then, when I was coming to visit Washington in 1947, I wrote again. But I never even saw you. You were in San Francisco.”
She shook her head helplessly. “I only got one or two,” she said.
“When the mail was late and Pleydell wasn’t there to stop the letters,” he said bitterly. “Or when his servant wasn’t taking enough care.”
“Not that!” she said quickly. “Oh, surely not...” But as the blood surged into her cheeks, she knew it could have been possible. Pleydell could arrange things without ever giving the real reason away: he could enlist others to work for him with only a careful innuendo as explanation.
“He was fighting in his own way to keep you,” Jan said. “All’s fair... Remember?”
“This other woman—” she began.
He laughed, and she found she had to laugh too.
“—is she reliable?” she ended when she regained her seriousness.
“She hasn’t one idea of what is going on, either in Czechoslovakia or in her own America. No one would ever suspect her of getting anything in her mail except bills and invitations.”
“Was she one of your old friends in Washington?”
“Yes,” he admitted—and smiled as he watched her face.
“I’ve been thinking about your old friends,” she said quickly, to excuse her curiosity, “the ones you were supposed to see.”
“Better not, darling.”
“I still don’t understand how any of us can be useful to the Communists. Or was the idea to try and convert us all to thinking that they are just normal people like ourselves? Was it a sort of velvet glove to soften the iron hand?”
“That was one of the ideas.” His face was expressionless, his voice guarded. But of the other ideas behind the mission, he could say nothing. He had only begun to realise what they might be, in those last three weeks. Three? Almost, four, now... Everything he thought of seemed to lead him back to his family. He said quickly, “I’ve seen some of the people I used to know. Minlow, Hallis...”
“I wondered if you had met them. And what reactions did you get?”
“What’s your guess?” He could speak normally again.
“Well... Minlow would probably be diffident. He’s brooding too much on his own problems since he left his job. He never did have much personal warmth; now, it is all smothered in bitterness. And as for Hallis, that’s easy. I heard his opinions about you. He would tell you that the wave of reaction in America made it impossible for him to see you. Or he might see you quietly if it didn’t cause him any embarrassment.”
“Wrong. You’ll need two new guesses.”
“Both wrong?”
“Minlow was a disappointment. He was delighted to meet me. He made a point of being more friendly than he ever used to be. Even dropped in to see me one evening. I was out at the time, but he waited half an hour, chatting to the two men who live with me.”
“But I never thought they would have admitted him,” she said in surprise.
“That’s what worried me.” He said no more, but tightened his lips. Minlow had been invited back, and he had come.
“Minlow?” She was incredulous.
“There he was, sitting with a smile on his face, thinking he was making a gesture towards peaceful international relations. And all the time, he was being tactfully questioned.”
“But he’s only a free-lance journalist looking for a story. I suppose he thought he was questioning them.”
“I could have knocked his teeth down his throat. With every smile, he was expressing solidarity with them. He was turning a double lock on the gate of the concentration camps and throwing the key away.” With difficulty, he restrained his rising anger. “Sorry, darling... The man’s a fool. He shouldn’t get mixed up with totalitarians like that. They aren’t as naive as he is.”
“It’s his curiosity; or perhaps it’s just his obstinacy.” And then to calm Jan, to ease the savage tension that hardened his face, she said with a smile, “You didn’t want to knock my teeth down my throat, did you—that first evening when I came to meet you so willingly?”
But Jan wouldn’t smile. “Did you think I was a Communist?” he asked, still angry.
“No, of course not.”
“Would you have trusted me if I had been one?”
She looked at him. “No,” she said slowly, honestly, “no, I couldn’t have trusted you.”
“Then don’t compare yourself with Minlow. All his judgment lies in his taste for clothes.”
“Oh, darling!” she protested, half-laughing. “And what about Stewart Hallis?”
“He measured up better than I expected. He was curt, tightlipped. Said I must realise that my kind of politics didn’t belong in Washington. And then he went off. I nearly ran after him to shake his hand and congratulate him on his good sense.”
“Hallis said that?”
“You sound surprised. Isn’t he a friend of yours any more?”
“At the moment, we happen to be carrying on a series of skirmishes. He’s interested in Kate, and he expected me to be an ally. But I’m not. I just can’t bear to see Kate make the same mistake that I did. And yet, whenever I try to explain it all to her, it only makes matters worse.” Her voice was despondent. “He’s proud. I’ve hurt him a lot in these last weeks,” she added a little sadly. She paused, thinking that he could be vindictive too. “Don’t think you can depend on him, Jan.”
“You think I’m the trusting type?” He was smiling, now. His anger was gone.
“Not exactly.” Once, she thought, he had trusted people and all it had brought him was forced labour in a correction camp.
“Hallis doesn’t worry me very much,” he said, reassuringly. “He’s astute enough to keep out of trouble.”
But Minlow wasn’t, she thought. “I wonder—”
“Forget it, Sylvia.” For a moment he hesitated as if he had something more to tell her. “Forget it,” he repeated. “Fears can be exaggerated. Probably all those worries I’ve poured on to you don’t matter at all.” He glanced at his watch. “Almost eight o’clock. And I’ve wasted half an hour on imaginary troubles. You shouldn’t be so sympathetic, darling, then I’d talk less.”
“And worry all the more.”
He took her in his arms.
“Jan, couldn’t we risk dinner together—just once? Some little place, a cafeteria, a coffee shop: no one would recognise us there.”
But he shook his head. It was too incalculable. Someone might see Sylvia who knew her. He kissed her, a long slow kiss, feeling her lips respond, her body straining to his. And for the last precious minutes they didn’t talk at all.
* * *
Jan got out of the car, but he still hesitated, unwilling to leave her.
“Shall we see each other tomorrow night?” she asked. Tomorrow night was Miriam Hugenberg’s party.
He said suddenly, “I’ll drive you back.”
“Now?”
“Why waste another hour we could have together? I may not be able to see you, alone like this, for a few days. My routine has been altered a good deal.”
“Are they suspicious?” she asked anxiously.
“No more than usual. But they didn’t bring me to Washington only to spend my time making love to you.”
“What a pity...”
He bent to kiss her hand as it rested on the opened window.
“What will you do with your car?” she asked.
“I’ll leave it at the first garage we see.” He smiled. “It needs an overhaul.”
“By the time it reaches the garage I’m sure it will. There’s one just outside of Blairton, I hear.”
He nodded. “That’s a good place. There are trees along that road. Wait for me as near the garage as you can manage, but keep back in the shadows of the trees. I’ll look for you there. But keep in the shadows.”
“You’re very careful of me,” she said, half-teasingly.
“Meet you under the trees,” he said, and kissed her smiling lips.
* * *
Sylvia followed Jan’s car slowly, letting him draw well ahead. The road to Blairton ran fairly straight, and soon she saw the floodlights of the garage. Jan had stopped for an oncoming car, and then he made a left turn to cross into the garage. She noticed, suddenly, that the trees were thinning out. She was coming to the last stretch of them, and beyond was only a field facing the garage and the beginning of scattered lights. She braked quickly, drawing the car to the edge of the road. Behind her, a louder screech of tyres and an angry horn gave warning that a following car had swerved to avoid her. She had been so intent on the garage and Jan and then the trees that she hadn’t noticed it coming up behind her. That was stupid, she admitted angrily. That was one sure way of ending all her hopes.
Even as it was, she had stopped almost at the end of the trees. From where she sat the garage was clearly visible. Was she as visible from the garage? She took some comfort from the heavy shadows which fell on this part of the road, all the darker because of the pool of cold brilliance which poured over the garage’s little island of smooth concrete. Under the strong lights, Jan’s car was drawn up to one side of the neat doll’s house, white-painted, green-roofed, which lay behind the three green and yellow pumps, guarding it rigidly like stiff-backed sentinels.
The car, which had almost smashed into her, was slowing down. For a moment, her alarm returned: the driver had decided to come back and tell her what he thought of her stupidity. It was true he had been driving too quickly, coming out of the darkness with little warning, but he probably wasn’t in a frame of mind to remember that at the moment. But the car—a Buick, she could see now—turned into the garage. She relaxed. No unpleasantness. No unexpected trouble.
The garage was a brightly lit stage. And there was Jan, playing his little comedy, talking about car trouble to the young man in white grease-stained overalls. Sylvia leaned over the wheel, trying to see the mechanic’s face clearly, but the distance was too great. He was of medium height, fair-haired, neat and brisk in his movements. He had a sense of humour, too, for he and Jan were laughing together at some remark he had made. Was that Annabel’s friend? If he were, Annabel was getting the better part of the bargain. Or could she change if she were controlled enough by the right man? Perhaps, Sylvia admitted, thinking of Jennifer when she was happily married. Then she settled back in the seat. Her curiosity, she told herself wryly, was satisfied.
The Buick, waiting beside the row of gasoline pumps, sounded its horn briefly, impatiently. Its driver stepped out, took a few paces until he could see Jan and the mechanic, and then turned away quickly.
That’s strange, Sylvia thought... She watched the man walk round to the other side of the Buick, as if he were hiding behind the car. And then he stood, staring along the road towards the trees. Sylvia’s body stiffened. The man looked like Stewart Hallis, he walked like Hallis, and now the car was not just another new Buick, but the car that stood each day before a yellow-painted door in a narrow Georgetown street.
She had frozen with fear. Then her numbed mind thought, he can’t see my car clearly from that distance, he can’t see its licence plate. A sigh of relief escaped her, only to be cut short by her hand tightly clenched at her mouth. Of course he had seen the licence plate as he had driven behind her. Or had he been too intent on avoiding an accident? But he could have recognised her car even as he followed her along that empty road, before she had braked and he had swerved.
And now the shadows of the trees weren’t deep enough, now the parking lights were tell-tale signals. She switched them off in panic, and put the car into reverse. The garage was still a brightly lit stage, but the comedy was over. Half-way back along the rows of trees, she halted. From here, the Buick and the watching man had disappeared from view.
She saw Jan step out of the pool of light, and then enter the road’s shadows. She remembered to switch on her lights to let him see where she was parked. Then she slid across the front seat to let him take over the wheel.
“Parking without lights,” he said, shaking his head in mock concern. “Your luck is in tonight, Sylvia.”
“Turn quickly. Quickly.”
“Here?”
“Quickly.”
The tension in her voice made him act. The road was scarcely broad enough, but he managed a U-turn with only one reverse. “Taking chances, aren’t we?” he asked, as they drove back towards the highway.
“Quicker, Jan,” she urged him. “Quicker, quicker.”
“That’s the third traffic violation in five minutes,” he said as he increased speed. “Any more we can think up?”
“Take the most roundabout road back to Washington from the highway. There’s a branch road, four miles north. We can start there.”
“A left turn? That’s all we need, probably, to get us a couple of years in jail.” Then, seriously now, “Tell me what’s gone wrong, Sylvia. Come on, out with it.”
“Didn’t you see him?”
“Who?”
“Stewart Hallis.”
“The Buick?”
She nodded. She was trembling badly.
“Have a cigarette and light one for me, too,” Jan’s quiet voice said. “I didn’t see anyone in the Buick except a blonde.”
“He walked round to the side of the car where he couldn’t be noticed by you. He stood staring across at the trees where I was.”
“But he couldn
’t have seen the car where you parked it. When I got down to the road, I could see nothing at all at first.”
She could only look at Jan unhappily, wondering how to tell him about her stupidity.
“Darling,” Jan said reassuringly, “He couldn’t read your licence plate from that distance. Impossible.”
“He passed me before he entered the garage. He had to swerve to pass me.”
“How many cars have we passed tonight? How many numbers have we noted? He was too busy making conversation to his blonde friend to notice any other car on the road.”
That could be true. That could be the reason for the near-accident. “I’ve stopped being so afraid,” she said, trying to smile. And now she could light the cigarettes.
“You need some food, a cup of hot coffee. We’ll stop at the next roadside place and I’ll get you something to eat.”
“No. Better not.”
“I’ll get the food and you stay in the car.”
“I’d rather not stop anywhere.” She paused. “You see, I’m not very good in a crisis. I need you to help me out, don’t I?”
“You need some food,” he repeated. He cursed himself under his breath for being so thoughtless. “Didn’t you have tea or something to eat at Whitecraigs?” he asked.
“Not today. They were having one problem after another. And I was trying to get away in time though I didn’t manage it.” If I hadn’t delayed there so long, she thought, Stewart Hallis would never have seen us. If I hadn’t visited Ben—oh, what was the use? Ifs and ifs...the usual excuses.
“What’s their latest problem?” he asked to take her mind away from Hallis. He would admit to himself that he was worried, too, by that accidental meeting. And yet it was possible that Hallis had only hidden behind the Buick to spare himself the embarrassment of ignoring Jan: Hallis always evaded awkward situations; that was the reason he always seemed so much in control of himself.
“Jan, we’ve passed the cut-off to the left.”
“I’m driving you straight back to Washington. No Buick has been following us. So stop worrying, Sylvia. Hallis—if it was Hallis—had his own plans for this evening. Now, what about Whitecraigs?”
I and My True Love Page 16
