He said, “Is that true, Comrade Mellings? I would like some kind of explanation.” He spoke as it were abstractly, his own personality removed, but the words he used were enough, and she was suddenly furious. Who the fuck did he think …
“It certainly is true,” she said calmly, and coldly. “It was quite out of order to bring it here. No arrangement has ever been made that any sort of stuff should be sent here.” She deliberately used the word “stuff,” which sounded unimportant.
He licked his lips, and his eyes were slightly narrowed as he stared.
“That is not possible,” he observed, at last. But she could see he was nonplussed, was trying to find some thread or loose end to guide him in.
“Oh yes, it is,” she asserted herself. “All kinds of things were dumped next door and picked up again. But that had nothing to do with us in this house. This is a quite different situation.”
There were sounds from the kettle that enabled her briskly to rise and go to it. Her back to him, she stirred powdered coffee into two mugs. Slowly. Something about him bothered her. He was rather like those large, smooth, shiny bales upstairs, with not a mark on them, and with God knows what inside.
An American? Well …
She took her time in turning, in setting the mug down in front of him. She had not asked what he would drink. Then she surprised herself by yawning, a deep, irresistible yawn. After all, she had hardly slept. He glanced at her, covertly, surprised. This glance was not, as it were, on the agenda; and she felt suddenly in control.
She calmly sat down, and when he seemed to be looking about for milk, or sugar, she pushed a half-empty bottle of milk towards him, and a quite pretty old cup with sugar in it. She could see that these domestic arrangements did not meet with his approval.
She waited, her mind at work on what it was about him that disturbed her.
“The American revolutionaries depend on this liaison, so that their aid can reach the Irish revolutionaries,” he said.
“What American revolutionaries?”
“As you know, Comrade Mellings, large numbers of honest Americans wish to aid the Irish in their fight against the British oppressor.”
“Yes, but most of them are just ordinary people; they aren’t revolutionaries.” There was considerable contempt in this for him—for his inexactness.
He was now staring down at his mug, as if examining her was not yielding him the information he needed, and the mug might provide inspiration.
“Just let’s get this clear,” she said. “You are supposed to be an American supplying the Irish comrades with
matériel?”
She had not meant to sound so raw and derisive.
He said, still looking at his mug, “Yes, I am an American, Gordon O’Leary. Third-generation American. An old Irish-American family. Like the Kennedys.” He laughed, for the first time. The laugh offered her this joke like a present, and he looked full at her, with confidence.
“And Comrade Andrew is an American too?” she enquired, her voice quite stifled with derision.
“Yes, he is an American. Of course. But I think his family came from Germany.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” she said. “Comrade Andrew is about as American as …” She looked straight at him, with the full force of her essential innocence, her candour, and said, “And you are not an American. You couldn’t be an American, not in a thousand years.”
His pale, obedient cheeks coloured, and his breathing changed as he dropped his dangerously angry gaze. Regaining control, he said, “But I can assure you I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You are Russian. Like Andrew. Oh, you speak perfect American, of course.” Alice laughed, from nervousness. But she was fuelled by the most sincere anger. She had never been able to stand being treated like a fool. She was being treated like one now.
He made some internal adjustment or other, sighed, sat up straight in his chair, as if reminded by an inward monitor that one didn’t slump in a chair, and looked at her. He said, mildly enough, “Comrade Mellings, as it happens I am an American. From Michigan. I am an engineer, and when I have finished certain little assignments here, that is what I shall return to do. Do you understand?” He waited for her to reply, but while she was listening to him, her gaze fixed on his face, the gaze was a little glassy, because her mind was hard at work. Why could he not be an American? His accent was perfect, better than Andrew’s! No, it was his style. It was something about him. What were Americans, then? (She even shut her eyes, allowing Americans she had known to appear in her mind’s eye, for examination.) All the ones she had met—which, she reminded herself, were mostly young and belonging to the network of international wanderers and explorers but, nevertheless, real Americans—were quite different. There was a quality—what was it? Yes, there was a largeness, an openness, a looseness … there was a freedom, yes, that was the word. Whereas this man here (and she opened her eyes to make comparisons with what she had been examining on her inner screen, to see him most curiously watching her) was tight and controlled, and looked as if he couldn’t make a spontaneous movement if he tried. He looked, even though he sat “relaxed”—presumably that was meant to be an informal pose—as if he wore an invisible straitjacket and had never been without it, ever, in his life. His very molecules had got into the habit of being on guard.
“You are not American,” she concluded. “But I don’t care anyway. You are not to bring any more of that stuff here. We won’t take it in.”
“You will do as you have contracted to do. As was understood,” he said, very soft, very threatening. She felt this way of conveying threat had been taught to him: method 53 for intimidating the subject. The contempt she felt for his obviousness was putting her out of his reach.
“I told you, we haven’t contracted for anything.”
“You have! You have, Comrade Mellings!”
“When did I? It was never even mentioned. It wasn’t mentioned once.”
“How could it not have been mentioned? Did you or did you not accept money from us, Comrade Mellings?”
This did set her back a bit, and she frowned, but said, “I didn’t ask for the money. It was simply given to me.”
“It was just given to you,” he said, with polite derision, mild, to match his general style.
“Yes. All I knew about it was when Comrade Muriel, you know, the woman who looks like a goose, handed me a packet with five hundred pounds, just before she went off to her spy course in Lithuania or wherever.”
This time he went properly red, a raw beef red, and he did actually glare at her, before recovering himself. Again he sat himself up straight, reminded, perhaps by his anger, that even when one was sitting relaxed at a table, nevertheless one’s knees should be set together and one should at the most have one elbow on it.
“If Comrade Andrew or anyone else said anything about spy schools anywhere at all, then it’s just a pack of nonsense.”
She thought about this, taking her time. “I don’t think it was nonsense. Where have Muriel and Pat gone to? They’ve gone off somewhere for training. Well, I don’t care anyway. I’m not interested in America or Czechoslovakia or Russia or Lithuania. None of us are. We are English revolutionaries and we shall make our own policies and act according to the English tradition. Our own tradition.”
He said cautiously, after a considerable pause, “It is of course understandable that you owe first loyalty to your own situation. But we are dealing with a struggle between the growing communist forces in the world, and capitalism in its death throes. That is an international situation, which means that policies must be formulated from an international point of view. This is a world struggle, comrade.”
“I don’t think you quite understand,” said Alice. “We are not taking orders from you or from anyone else. Not from
anybody,”
she added.
“It’s not a question,” he said slowly, emphasising each word, “of what you have or have not decided, comrade. You cannot renege on agreements already made.”
She completed the circular argument by repeating, “But not by us.”
His violently hostile eyes were hastily shielded from her, as he lowered his gaze.
The silence went on for a time, and Alice remarked, quite in her good-hostess manner, putting people at their ease, “It seems to me that your Comrade Andrew has goofed things up. Isn’t that it? And you are sorting it all out?”
She heard his breathing come too loud. Then slow and regular as he controlled it. His eyes were not available for inspection. Everything about him was tight, clenched, even his hand, where it lay on the table. “Well, don’t get so uptight about it. With so many in the KGB—millions of you, aren’t there?—yes, I know that is for the whole of Russia, only some of you are out keeping an eye on us—well, there are bound to be some inefficient ones.” His glance upwards at her did quite frighten her for a second, and she continued bravely, even kindly, for now she genuinely wanted to set him at his ease, if possible, having won the advantage and made him accept her point of view: “I am sure the same is true of our lot. I mean, what a shitty lot, that is, if even half of what you read in the papers is true.…” This last part of the sentence was her mother, straight; and Alice wondered that her mother should be speaking so authoritatively and naturally from Alice’s own mouth. Not that Alice minded. Dorothy Mellings’s voice sounded quite appropriate, really, in this situation. “Getting caught the way they do all the time. Well, I suppose we wouldn’t be likely to hear about yours: you’d just rub them out. I mean, that’s one thing about having a free press.”
Now he moved his position, apparently trying to relax, though he had a fist set upright on the table in front of him. His look at her was steady, his breathing normal; some turning point had occurred in the conversation, if conversation was the word for it. Some decision had probably been taken. Well, so, that was all right. He’d go off in a moment and that would be that.
But he showed no signs of moving yet.
Well, let him sit on there, then. What she really wanted to think about was not him, or why he was here, but tonight, and the adventure that awaited her with Jocelin, with whom, at this moment, she felt an almost sisterly bond, in contrast to the murky complicated feeling she had about this Russian. This
foreigner
.
She remarked, “I do think that part of our problem—I mean, now, between you and me—is what is referred to as a culture clash!” Here she laughed, as Dorothy Mellings would have done. “Your traditions are so very different from ours. In this country you really cannot turn up and tell people what to do or think. It’s not on. We have a democracy. We have had a democratic tradition now for so long it is in our bones,” she concluded, kindly and smiling.
What was happening with him now was that he was thinking—as, after all, happens not so rarely in conversations—But this person is mad! Bonkers! Round the twist! Daft! Demented! Loco! Completely insane, poor thing. How was it I didn’t see it before?
At such moments, rapid and total readjustments have to take place. For instance, the whole of a previous conversation must be reviewed in this new, unhappy light, and assessments must be made, such as that this person is really beyond it, or perhaps is showing only a rather stimulating eccentricity, which, however, is not appropriate for this particular situation.
Alice had no suspicion that any such thoughts were in his mind; she was happily afloat, all kinds of reassuring and apt phrases offering themselves to her as though off a tape coiled in her mind that she did not know was there at all. If, however, she could have seen her own face, that might have been a different matter; for the upper part of it, brows and forehead, had a worried and even slightly frantic look, as if wondering at what she was saying, while her mouth smilingly went on producing words.
“And I think that was probably Comrade Andrew’s problem.” (Here the scene on the bed came into her mind, and she actually gave her head a good sharp shake to get rid of it.) “He seemed to have a good deal of difficulty in understanding Western culture patterns. I hope you don’t think too badly of him. I thought very highly of him.”
“So you did, did you,” he remarked, not enquired, in a quite good-humoured way. Everything about him said he would get up and go.
“Yes. He seemed to me a fine person. A really good human being.”
“Well, I am glad to hear that,” said Comrade Gordon O’Leary from Michigan or Smolensk or somewhere, who now did in fact get up, but in slow motion. Or perhaps that was how Alice saw it, for there was no doubt she was not feeling herself. Lack of sleep, that was it!
“Someone will come for the
matériel
tonight,” he said.
“It’s not here,” improvised Alice smoothly. They couldn’t have this Russian, this foreigner, creeping all over their house. Not with all those bombs and things upstairs. The next thing, he’d be telling them what to do with them. Giving them orders! Well, he’d never understand; he was a Russian; they had this history of authoritarianism.
“Where is it?” He whipped about on her, standing very close. She had stood up, holding on to the back of her chair. Now he didn’t look smooth and clerkly and
nothing
. All the terror that she might reasonably have felt during the last half hour swooped down into her. She could hardly stand. He seemed enormous and dark and powerful looming over her, and his eyes were like guns.
“It’s on the rubbish tip at Barstone. You know, the local rubbish dump, the municipal dump.” Her knees seemed to be melting. She was cold, and wanted to shiver. She had understood, but really, that this was indeed a serious situation, and that somewhere she had gone wrong. Without meaning to. It was not her fault! But the way this man was looking at her—nothing like this had ever happened to her before. She had not known that there could be a situation where one felt helpless.
He was so angry
. Ought he to be so angry? He was white, not red, a leaden white, with the effort—she supposed—of holding himself in, the effort of not hitting her. Of not killing her. She knew that was it.
She should not have said, in that casual way, “rubbish dump,” that the stuff was on the rubbish tip. Yes, that had been foolish. Hasty. Perhaps even now she should say, No, I was joking, the cases are upstairs. But if she did, he would go upstairs and find Jocelin at work, and then …