The Ambassador's Wife

by Jennifer Steil

“Oh, nothing to worry about. I just thought you’d be a good person to talk to as rumor has it you’ve been around for longer than any of us.”

  “Nearly three years. Wait, you’re Leo? The vegetarian defense attaché?”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “I could tell by the glow of your complexion.”

  He laughed. “Oh, that’s just the chemical peel I had last week. Buy you a drink?”

  “Thanks. I’m okay though.”

  “So you’re the mysterious painter.”

  “Not so mysterious.”

  “But no one’s ever seen your work.”

  “Finn has. And no one else has asked. It’s not exactly Mazrooqi-friendly.”

  “I’m not Mazrooqi.”

  “I might let you see it sometime, if you’re really interested.”

  “I am.” He asked her what it was like to live in the Old City, where she had traveled in the country, and whether she had seen any Mazrooqi art. He was relaxed, charming, and genuinely happy to be in Arnabiya. This was not necessarily a common reaction to the capital city.

  They were laughing together at one of her taxi driver stories when the Overseas Security Manager, whose name she’d forgotten though she had met him several times, stopped beside them. Swaying with drink, he glared at Miranda with slightly unfocused eyes. “Watch it with her,” he said to Leo.

  Miranda’s smile froze on her face. Was he joking? She wasn’t sure how to react. But then he leaned in a bit closer, so she could smell the whiskey on his breath.

  “I thought we weren’t your type?” he sneered insinuatingly. “Or does rank trump sex?”

  Even without moving, Miranda could sense ears turning in her direction. Camilla, top-ranking wife in the embassy until Miranda married Finn, was sitting at a table to her right; Miranda could hear her trying to stifle an equine snort of laughter. The conversations around them subsided to an attentive buzz. Was this some kind of a test? Let’s see how the American girl reacts to binge-drinking British men? She didn’t trust herself to speak; she could not risk insulting this man. Paralyzed by uncertainty, she tried to think what she might have done to provoke him.

  “I know what you really are, you lezzie, status-seeking American cunt,” he whispered, poking a finger toward her chest. “You might fool the ambassador, but you don’t fool me. I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all.” His voice grew louder, filling the sudden silence in the bar.

  Leo was on his feet, his expression grim. “Go easy, mate,” he said. “That’s no way to talk to a lady.”

  Miranda couldn’t move. Her usual impulses were reined in by fear of aggravating the situation or embarrassing Finn. As she studied the man’s buzz cut and bloodshot eyes, something fell into place. Norman. The name finally came to her. And suddenly, she remembered where they’d met before. They’d been at a buffet dinner at someone’s house—who was it? One of the EU people. He’d cornered Miranda as she balanced a plate of hummus and tabouli on her knees, regaling her with stories of his glorious security career as she shoved food into her mouth as quickly as possible. As the evening dragged on, she had had to keep pushing his hand off of her knee. Any minute now, he’s going to tell me how lonely he is here, she’d thought. Any minute now, he’s going to tell me how he and his wife hardly have a relationship anymore. And he had. “And so I’m hardly married at all,” he’d started, before Miranda had cut him off.

  “I’m sorry, but I must get home,” she had said as politely as she could manage. “My girlfriend is expecting me back.”

  Now, he stood before her, still fuming, unsteady on his feet. “Lady?” he sneered. The wife, with whom he hardly had a relationship at all, lurked dourly behind him. She was massive, with vast, drooping buttocks and pendulous breasts resting on the mound of her belly. When Norman—she wouldn’t forget his name again—shook his finger at Miranda, his wife let out a piercing giggle.

  He turned back to Leo. “I’m serious,” he said. “You watch it with her.”

  And he and his wife turned and waddled out the door.

  Miranda looked down at her drink. I am not going to cry, she told herself. I am not going to cry in front of the entire fucking embassy staff.

  “Hey,” said Leo softly. “That was despicable. That was unbelievably rude. He had no right to do that.” His face was kind. He was young, Miranda thought. Probably younger than she was.

  “I’m okay,” said Miranda. “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior.”

  “It’s really okay,” she said, slipping off of her stool. “But I think I need to go now.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you need a lift?”

  Mutely, she shook her head. She had no intention of going anywhere but next door to Finn. She gathered her abaya and shawl, and without looking around the bar, slipped out the front door. In the dark street, she started to run before she remembered the security cameras. She didn’t want to look like a terrorist about to charge into the Residence. The tears trembled just behind her eyes, but she could not let them come yet. She first had to get past the guards.

  Finn always knew the second something was wrong. He read every fleeting expression on her face, often sensing distress before she had fully experienced the emotion herself. “What is it?” he said when he opened the door to her. “Has something happened?”

  Miranda opened her mouth to speak and burst into tears. Finn took her in his arms before leading her into the living room. “Tell me what happened.”

  Sobbing, she told him, watching his expression morph from tender concern to rage—and strangely, fear. “Mira, this is terrible. He had no right to do that to you.”

  “That’s what Leo said.” And she told him about Leo, how solicitous he had been.

  “He’s a good man,” said Finn. “And I’ve got a serious conversation to have with Norman tomorrow. I have made it abundantly clear to him and to my entire staff that you are my partner, and for him to treat you like that is disrespectful of my position, of me, and of my choices. It was totally and completely inappropriate.” He paused for a moment. “Do you think it could be jealousy? Did you ever—I mean, before I got here…”

  “God, Finn! No! Are you serious?”

  “I didn’t really think so,” he said quickly. “But I can’t help wondering if he has some kind of infatuation with you.”

  “Intriguing way of expressing it.”

  “Lustful men are irrational creatures.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Finn studied her for a moment. “It’s just. Well. I shouldn’t say.”

  “Finn?” Miranda pressed a palm against his denim-clad thigh. “Please tell me.”

  “It’s just that—and you didn’t hear this from me—it wouldn’t be the first time he strayed from home.”

  “Ah.”

  “In fact, he’s rather notorious for it.”

  “And his wife hasn’t left him?”

  “She may not know.”

  Miranda raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Finn. Wives know.”

  “I presume she doesn’t want to rock the boat. They have a comfortable life, a position of respect. Why would she throw that away just because her husband is a jackass?”

  Miranda shuddered. “Save me from a life so comfortable I would settle for a dishonest relationship.”

  “There’s a gentlemen’s agreement about this sort of thing,” Finn said, flushing. “It just isn’t done to tattle on your fellow diplomats. No matter how naughty they are.”

  Miranda withdrew her hand from his thigh. “And you’re all naughty, are you?” Her heart thudded heavily, rattling her rib cage. Why did so many grown British men still have the vocabulary of schoolboys?

  “No. Not me. Not in that way. Oh, Miranda, you have nothing to worry about, please believe me!”

  “I’m no hypocrite, Finn. I’m not expecting to marry a virgin. But I would hope you’d trust me enough to tell me any of your past indiscretions. I really
don’t mind however many women you’ve seduced, as long as you’re mine from now on.”

  Finn looked down at his hands, his curling lashes golden in the lamplight. “I do trust you.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m yours from now on.”

  “Okay.” Miranda leaned forward to find his eyes, forcing him to look at her. “So what do we do about Norman?”

  Finn sighed. “I wish we didn’t have to talk about Norman.”

  “Leo said that it was a firing offense.” Miranda looked hopefully at Finn, who was quiet for a long moment.

  “Miranda,” he began, and fell silent again. Then, “I can’t fire Norman.”

  She simply looked at him.

  “He did something for me in Afghanistan—”

  “He was in Afghanistan with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t think this worth mentioning to me?”

  “It didn’t come up. Look, Miranda, I promise I will explain all of this to you someday. But please, not now.”

  “Why not? I have time.” Miranda crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. He had never spoken to her at all about Afghanistan, deflecting all of her questions. She had been patient, not wanting to force him into talking about what was obviously a source of trauma—who returned from that country unscarred?—but now she felt a burning need to know.

  “Don’t,” he said, filling that one word with quiet desperation. “Please.”

  Miranda lifted a hand to his face, touched the side of his cheek, rough with a day’s stubble. “Sweetheart. Can you really not trust me?”

  He took her hand in both of his, squeezing her fingers until she feared for her bones. “It’s not about how much I trust you.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  He was silent for a moment, his eyes turning toward the windows at the far side of the room. “I made a mistake,” he finally said. “A mistake that will live with me for the rest of my life. And I don’t want you to have to live with it. Not yet.”

  A flutter of fear rippled through Miranda’s stomach. What terrible thing could Finn have done? He wasn’t capable of terrible things. And how bad could it really have been if he was still an ambassador? She had a dozen new questions.

  Still, sensing that this was as far as he was capable of going tonight, she softened. “But someday.” It was not a question.

  “Someday,” he said. “I promise.”

  Upstairs, Miranda climbed into bed while Finn rummaged through the top drawers of his dresser. “It’s not quite your birthday yet,” he said. “But maybe this would be a good time to give you this.”

  She slipped a finger under the flap of the envelope and pulled out a reproduction of a painting she didn’t recognize. A dark-haired woman leaned over the balcony of a square, mosaic-covered villa, stretching her arms above her head as a bearded man on a camel tucked his hands just above her ribs, like a parent lifting a child from a crib. Behind the house stretched an improbably (given the camel) green landscape, more reminiscent of England than of Arabia.

  Inside, in his tiny, immaculate handwriting, Finn had written:

  To my darling Miranda, my camel is on order. I have never before felt so profoundly and passionately about anyone. My love for you is unequivocal. You fill me with joy and inspiration and give purpose to my existence. I cannot wait to share the rest of my life with you, and to join you in the adventures and success that await you in the years ahead. With all my love, Your Finn xxxxxxxxoxxxxxxxxx

  “You see?” he said as Miranda started to cry again. “No one can hurt us. No one can really hurt us.”

  SEPTEMBER 17, 2007

  Finn

  After Miranda had finally fallen asleep, her eyelashes and cheeks crusted with salt, a tissue still clutched in one hand, Finn found himself unable to stay in bed. That ugly guilt had risen from its shallow grave, wrapping his heart in its clammy fingers. Did he have any right to marry Miranda without telling her this story? Did he have any right to remain next to her in this bed? He padded down the hall to the bathroom and pulled on his robe. No shortage of places to pace in this house. Still, even the enormity of the Residence felt claustrophobic. Pocketing the key, he pulled on his slippers and walked downstairs to the heavy front door.

  Outside, he descended the stairs and stepped onto the spongy lawn, his slippers instantly soaked with dew. A warm breeze caressed the back of his neck, sending a shudder down his spine. It was a kind night, a soft, jasmine-scented, moonlit night. A night that nurtured dreams and calmed fears. A night he in no way deserved. The city was uncommonly silent around him, no growl of cars from the main road, no whining muezzins, no shouting vendors. All around him good Muslims slept peacefully in their beds, awaiting the signal to rise for morning prayers. And here he was, he with a guilty conscience and no god. The only thing in the world that meant anything to him at all was Miranda. And he wasn’t sure that he would be able to keep her.

  Where was Afsoon now? Was she still living? Or had he ultimately been responsible for her death too? It was too dangerous for him to try to find out. Or that was what he told himself. Perhaps he simply could not bear to find out. Even now, that night in Afghanistan, March 19, 2003—a date he would never forget—returned to him easily, instantly, indelibly. The sounds and smells of that country, not so unlike those of Mazrooq. The blaring muezzins, leaded exhaust fumes, bleating goats, frankincense, the haunting absence of feminine laughter, burning rubbish, the twang of the rubab, perspiration, rose. And the taste of hot, metallic dust in his mouth.

  —

  “SLEEP NATO,” FINN murmured to himself that night, rolling over in his narrow bed. “Sleep NATO. NATO, NATO, NATO.” There was no shortage of women in the twenty-six member countries; why could he not fall in love with one of them? Yet here he lay, dreaming of an Afghan girl with wide, dark eyes and the slender ankles and wrists of a dancer. Every day he saw her in the office, and every day she grew the slightest bit bolder, crossing her long legs so as to reveal a tantalizing stretch of brown calf, perching on the edge of his desk, so close he could smell her Iranian rose perfume. Afsoon wasn’t your average Afghan woman, if there was such a thing. As a child she had traveled extensively with her diplomat father and been educated at Durham, reading French and Chinese, which she spoke as fluently as she spoke English. It was entirely possible she was the cleverest person in the embassy, wasted in the Siberia of the visa section. God knows why she had come back to this hellhole. If he were a woman he couldn’t get away from this country fast enough.

  In his first few months she had been an invaluable guide, helping Finn sort through the strands of tribal politics and wade through government bureaucracies. She was patient with him, drawing charts of tribal ancestries and geographical diagrams, filling in the holes in his historical knowledge—none of which was part of her job. He had people to do these things for him, but none of them explained things as lucidly as she. He had not wanted to flatter himself that she treated him any differently from the others, but for no one else did she make herself as available. Slowly, they became real friends, drinking tea together cross-legged on the floor of his cell-like pod while analyzing the latest news. They were careful not to be seen together outside of work. Even an innocent friendship could ruin a girl here. Finn wanted to be cautious.

  He had always been careful, perhaps too careful. As a child he was shy and bookish, nervous around the opposite sex. Not until he was assigned Claire Henderson as a lab partner in chemistry class in third form had he developed a friendship with a girl. A scrawny, dark-haired sprite, Claire was nearly as timid and earnest as he was, and probably smarter. Throughout high school they had been inseparable, competing in class, editing each other’s papers, and taking the train to London on the weekends to go to the theater or the movies. He adored her unreservedly, painfully, loved the light in her pale blue eyes when she laughed, the smallness of her feet, the tiny bones of her white wrists, even the thick black frames of her glasses. He had ne
ver dared to touch her. It would have been irreverent, disrespectful. He told himself that his love for her was on a higher plane than the “love” he witnessed in the school corridors, boys backing girls against their lockers, forcing their meaty tongues down their throats. And ultimately, he couldn’t face the prospect of her turning away.

  His friend Charlie hadn’t had such compunctions. In their final year he had wrested Claire away, seducing her with his easy confidence, casual athleticism, and a keen scientific mind. They ran off to Cambridge together to read physics and were now married and settled in Dorset with two children. Would things have been any different if Finn had had the courage to act? It was impossible to know. And the truth was that she and Charlie were happy, he could see it every time he visited, in the way she smiled at him over the heads of their children, stroked the back of his hand when she asked him a question.

  There had, perhaps inevitably, been a few romances at university, but not love. His ardor for Claire took years to wither, to reconcile itself with reality. Only during his first year in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had he fallen in love again. Cordelia was a fast-tracker, an Oxford-educated, ginger-haired diplomatic rock star who spoke more languages than he did and had once played cricket for England. They met on their first posting, to Amman, where they courted in the Roman amphitheater, countless coffee shops, and the ancient ruins of Petra. Lying on their backs in the sands of Wadi Rum, they watched summer stars shower toward Earth while they plotted their meteoric careers. Now that she had mastered Arabic, Cordelia wanted to learn Mandarin and Thai. Thai? Finn said. Who learns Thai? Hardly anyone, said Cordelia. So I won’t have a lot of competition. Everyone wants China; I need a backup.

  Finn hadn’t known what he wanted to do. He never thought that far ahead. Only by accident had he become a diplomat at all. Having finished a degree in contemporary Arabic and Spanish literature, he had assumed he was destined to teach. A professor of his convinced him otherwise. “You’re an Arabist,” she said. “We need you working on world peace.”

  He’d found himself surprisingly well suited to the work. He had the patience to endure the impoverished slog of the early years, a curiosity about the world that increased with each foray beyond Britain’s borders, and most of all, an ease with and expertise in languages. It exhilarated him to shed both his mother tongue and his country. In a new land, with new vowels and verbs, he slipped into unfamiliar alphabets like a second skin, like an alternative persona. He could be anyone; he could reinvent himself. Clothed in a novel idiom, he brimmed with confidence.