European aristocrats. They’d met Joppi at Ascot the previous June. Joppi had a horse running in the Coronation Stakes and was there with a big party of German friends. Subsequently he’d invited the Rensselaers for a weekend at a house he’d leased near Paris. They had stayed with him there but Bret had not enjoyed it. He’d watched the unctuous Joppi looking at Nikki in a way that Bret did not like men to look at his wife. And Nikki had not even noticed it: or so she said when Bret complained of it afterwards. Now Joppi had invited Nikki to lunch without going through the formality of inviting Bret along. It made Bret sizzle.
‘Prince Joppi,’ said Bret with just enough emphasis upon the first word to show his contempt, ‘is a two-bit racketeer.’
‘Have you had him investigated?’
‘I ran him through the computer,’ he said. ‘He’s into all kinds of crooked deals. That’s why we’re going to stay clear of him.’
‘I don’t work for your goddamned secret intelligence outfit,’ she said. ‘Just in case you forgot, I’m a free citizen, and I choose my own friends and I say anything I want to say to them.’
He knew that she was trying to provoke him but still he wondered if he should phone the night duty officer. He’d have a phone contact for Internal Security. But Bret didn’t relish the idea of describing the nuances of his married life to some young subordinate who would write it down and put it on file somewhere.
He went and ran the bath: both taps fully on gave him the temperature he preferred. He squirted bath oil into the rushing water and it foamed furiously. While the bath was filling he returned to Nikki. Under the circumstances, reasoning with her seemed the wiser course. ‘Have I done something?’ he asked with studied mildness. He sat down on the bed.
‘Oh, no!’ said his wife sarcastically. ‘Not you.’ She could hear the water beating against the bath with a roar like thunder.
She was tense, her arms clamped round her knees, the cigarette forgotten for a moment. He looked at her, trying to see something in her face that would give him a hint about the origin of her anger. Failing to see anything that enlightened him he said, ‘Then what …?’ And then more briskly but with a conciliatory tone, ‘For goodness’ sake, Nikki. I have to go to the office.’
‘I have to go to the office.’ She attempted to mimic the Englishness that he’d acquired since living here. She was not a good mimic and her twanging accent, that had so intrigued him when they first met, was still strong. How foolish he’d been to hope that eventually she would embrace England and everything English as lovingly as he had. ‘That’s all that’s important to you, isn’t it? Never mind me. Never mind if I go stir-crazy in this Godforsaken dump.’ She tossed her head to throw her hair back but when it fell forward again she raked her fingers through it to get it from her face.
He sat at the end of the bed smiling at her and said, ‘Now, now, Nikki, darling. Just tell me what’s wrong.’
It was the patronizing ‘just’ that irritated her. There was something invulnerable about his resolute coldness. Her sister had called him ‘the shy desperado’ and giggled when he called. But Nikki had found it easy to fall in love with Bret Rensselaer. How clearly she remembered it. She’d never had a suitor like him: slim, handsome, soft-spoken and considerate. And there was his lifestyle too. Bret’s suits fitted in the way that only expensive tailoring could contrive and his cars were waxed shiny in the way that only chauffeur-driven cars were, and his mother’s house was cared for by loyal servants. She loved him of course but her love had always been mingled with a touch of awe, or perhaps it was fear. Now she didn’t care. Just for a moment, she was able to tell him everything she felt. ‘Look here, Bret,’ she said confidently. ‘When I married you I thought you were going to …’
He held up his hand and said, ‘Let me turn off the bath, darling. We don’t want it flooding the study downstairs.’ He went back into the bathroom; the roar of water stopped. A draught was coming through the window to make steam that tumbled out through the door. He emerged tightening the knot of his dressing gown: a very tight knot, there was something neurotic in that gesture. He raised his eyes to her and she knew that the moment had passed. She was tongue-tied again: he knew how to make her feel like a child and he liked that. ‘What were you saying, dear?’
She bit her lip and tried again, differently this time. ‘That night, when you first admitted that you were working in secret intelligence, I didn’t believe you. I thought it was another of your romantic stories.’
‘Another?’ He was amused enough to smile.
‘You were always an ace bullshitter, Bret. I thought you were making it all up as some kind of compensation for your dull job at the bank.’
His eyes narrowed: it was the only sign he gave of being angry. He looked down at the carpet. He had been about to do his exercises but she’d hammer at him all the time and he didn’t want that. Better to do them at the office.
‘You were going to bleed them white. I remember you saying that: bleed them white. You told me one day you’d have a man working in the Kremlin.’ She wanted to remind him how close they had been. ‘Remember?’ Her mouth was dry; she sipped more water. ‘You said the Brits could do it because they hadn’t grown too big. You said they could do it but they didn’t know they could do it. That’s where you came in, you said.’
Bret stood with his fists in the pockets of the red dressing gown. He wasn’t really listening to her; he wanted to get on, to bathe and shave and dress and spend the extra time sitting with a newspaper and toast and coffee in the garden before his driver came round to collect him. But he knew that if he turned away, or ended the conversation abruptly, her anger would be reaffirmed. ‘Maybe they will,’ he said and hoped she’d drop it.
He lifted his eyes to the small painting that hung above the bed. He had many fine pictures – all by modern British painters – but this was Bret Rensselaer’s proudest possession. Stanley Spencer: buxom English villagers frolicking in an orchard. Bret could study it for hours, he could smell the fresh grass and the apple blossom. He’d paid far too much for the painting but he had desperately wanted to possess that English scene for ever. Nikki didn’t appreciate having a masterpiece enshrined in the bedroom, to love and to cherish. She preferred photographs; she’d admitted as much once, during a savage argument about the bills she’d run up with the dressmaker.
‘You said that running an agent into the Kremlin was your greatest ambition.’
‘Did I?’ He looked at her and blinked, discomposed both by the extent of his indiscretion and the naïveté of it. ‘I was kidding you.’
‘Don’t say that, Bret!’ She was angry that he should airily dismiss the only truly intimate conversation she could remember having with him. ‘You were serious. Dammit, you were serious.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He looked at her and at the bedside table to see what she’d been drinking, but there was no alcohol there, only a litre-size bottle of Malvern water. She’d stuck to her rigorous diet – no bread, butter, sugar, potatoes, pasta or alcohol – for three weeks. She was amazingly disciplined about her dieting and Nikki had never been much of a drinker: it went straight to her waistline. When Internal Security had first vetted her they’d remarked her abstinence and Bret had been proud.
He got up and went round to her side of the bed to give her a kiss. She offered her cheek. It was a sort of armistice but his fury was not allayed: just repressed. ‘It’s a glorious sunny day again. I’m going to have coffee in the garden. Shall I bring some up?’
She
