‘Just imagine,’ Martha said with a smirk, ‘having to explain the affairs of my poor heart to Washington, who naturally suspect Bolshevik infiltration.’ She linked her arm in Eleanor’s. ‘No, Daddy wasn’t best pleased. Mother’s putting her brave face on it, though.’
She was wearing a smart dun-coloured hat with a long feather poking from the top, which, when she turned her head, occasionally caught Eleanor right under the nose. They were watching Martha’s fiance proffering a peanut to a Barbary sheep.
‘Isn’t he divine?’ She had barely contained the squeal in her voice since meeting Eleanor at the airport.
‘He’s certainly outgoing,’ Eleanor said with a sporting nod of her head.
The sheep turned its nose away and scampered up the crag to join the rest of its ginger flock.
‘I hear all what you say,’ the man said, turning to them and popping the peanut into his mouth. He was tall, brown-haired, and boyish, with Tartar eyes, broad cheeks faintly pitted, and a gap-tooth smile that had a certain charm. He wore a suit of some indeterminate fabric.
‘I’m also Boris’s English teacher,’ Martha said, pinching him.
‘Yes, and when are you going to Moscow for learning Russian? Then I am teaching you lesson.’ He gave a loud laugh and put an arm around both of them. Eleanor caught a sweet hint of alcohol on his breath.
‘Have you set a date?’ she asked.
Martha’s smile wavered. ‘Actually, Boris still needs Stalin’s permission to marry… We’re waiting. Oh, here’s the lions’ house. I wonder what time they’re fed.’
Boris whispered something in her ear, and she slapped him playfully across the chin. Eleanor looked at them with a pang of concern. Somehow, she saw some of her own past mistakes foreshadowed in Martha’s little adventure. I hope you know what you’re doing, she thought.
It was the first of May, and the day was warm and muggy. The cottonwoods and acacias of the zoo, filled with the screams of tropical birds, made her feel they were strolling through some lush estate in New Orleans. The place was quiet, near closing time. Nannies pushing prams; a few soldiers on leave taking photographs; couples walking dogs.
‘If you think we’re being shadowed, we are,’ Martha said with an amused savoir faire. ‘But at least we can talk freely here. Daddy has all his important conversations at the zoo. You’ll have to be careful what you say at the party later.’
Ambassador Dodd had told Eleanor, in a loud stage whisper during her last visit, that the house and embassy were wired by the SD-along with every other ambassador’s residence-with listening devices in the telephones and light switches.
‘I’ll confine my remarks to the weather and the price of gas,’ she said.
D enham dozed on an overspringy bed. He had finally slipped into sleep, when he was jolted awake by the rattling of the windowpane and the wind whistling around the eaves of the exposed building. It was 1:00 p.m. on his wristwatch. Midday in London.
He lay on his back for a while with his hands behind his head, thinking of Eleanor, and Evans.
It’s done.
He got up. From the window he saw the gravel forecourt still deserted apart from the Morris Oxford. An enormous goods truck rumbled up the road towards the frontier of the Reich. He saw the girl carrying in a potted tree from the steps and the gale catching her skirts and apron, ballooning them up like a jellyfish around her thighs. The poplar trees groaned and thrashed in the wind, sending leaves and twigs flying against the window.