A Perfect Spy

And that was the feeling she had now, sitting demurely in the centre row in Caroline Lumsden’s overfurnished drawing-room, with her hideous Thai tables and her garish Chinese paintings and her shelf full of factory-made Buddhas, listening to Caroline trying to sound like the Queen as she moaned out the minutes of the last meeting of the Vienna Branch of the Diplomatic Wives Association in her plummy swansong. I’ll do it, Mary told herself, dead calm. If it doesn’t work one way, I’ll make it work another. She glanced to the window. In their hired Mercedes across the street, Georgie and Fergus were sitting with their heads together, two lovers pretending to study a street map while they kept an eye on the front door and her Rover parked in Caroline’s drive. I’ll take the back way out. It worked then, it’ll work now.

“It was therefore unanimously agreed,” Caroline was lamenting, “that the Foreign Office Inspectors’ report on the local cost of living was both distorted and unfair, and that a Finance subcommittee would be formed immediately, headed, I am pleased to say, by Mrs. McCormick”—respectful hush. Ruth McCormick was the wife of the Economic Minister and therefore a financial genius. Nobody mentioned that she was screwing the Dutch military attaché. “The subcommittee will itemise all our points and, having done so, submit a written objection to our association in London for submission through the proper channels to the Head of the Inspectorate himself.”

Patter of soprano applause from fourteen pairs of female hands, Mary’s included. Great, Caroline, great. In another life, it will be your turn to be the rising young diplomat and your husband’s to stay home and imitate you.

Caroline had turned to Any Other Business. “Next Monday, our weekly transatlantic lunch at Manzi’s. Twelve-thirty sharp and four hundred schillings a head, cash, please, to include two glasses of wine, and please don’t be late as Herr Manzi took an awful lot of persuading to give us a private room.” Pause. Say it, you fool, Mary urged her. Caroline didn’t. Not yet. “Then on Friday, one week today, please, Marjory de Weever will be giving her really fascinating lantern lecture here on aerobics which she taught very successfully to an all-ranks class in the Sudan where her husband was second man. Right, Marjory?”

“Well, chargé really,” Marjory roared from the front row. “The Ambassador was only there for three months out of fourteen. Not that Brian got paid for it but that’s beside the point.”

For pity’s sake! thought Mary furiously. Now! But she had forgotten about Penny Sharlow’s bloody husband landing a medal.

“And I’m sure we’d all like to congratulate Penny on the fantastic support she’s given to James over the years, without which I’ll bet he wouldn’t have got anything at all.”

This was apparently a joke because there was hysterical laughter by too few voices, which Caroline quelled with a mournful stare into the middle distance. She put on her Official Mourning voice.

“And Mary darling — you did say you wouldn’t mind if I mentioned it.” Mary looked hastily downward to her lap. “I’m sure everyone would like me to say how sorry we are about the death of your father-in-law. We know Magnus has been hit very hard and we do hope he will get over it soon, and be back among us in his usual high spirits that we all find so refreshing.”

Sympathetic murmurs. Mary whispered “Thank you” and keeled forward not too far. She sensed the anxious pause while everyone waited for her head to come up, but it didn’t. She began to shake and was impressed to see real tears flopping on to her clenched hands. She let out a little choke and from her willed darkness heard cheerful Mrs. Simpson, wife of the Chancery guard, say “Come here, lovey,” as she put an enormous arm round Mary’s back. She choked again, pushed Mrs. Simpson half heartedly away and struggled to her feet, tears everywhere: tears for Tom, tears for Magnus, tears for being deflowered in the potting shed and I bet I’m pregnant. She let Mrs. Simpson take her arm, she shook her head and stammered “I’m fine.” She reached the hall to find that Caroline Lumsden had followed her out. “No thanks. . really I don’t want to lie down. Far rather just take a walk. . get my coat, please?. . Blue with a foul fur collar. . Rather be alone if you don’t mind…. You’ve been so kind. Oh Christ, I’m going to cry again. . ”

Once in the Lumsdens’ long back garden, she wandered, still hunched, along the path until it dropped out of sight behind the trees. Then she moved fast. Training, she thought gratefully, as she unlatched the back gate; nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. She headed quickly for the bus stop. There was one every fourteen minutes. She had looked them up.

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