An Unlikely Spy Read online

  Jonty glanced toward the drawing room. The gramophone had stopped and someone started up on the piano; there wasn’t a hint of Hugh’s reedy cornet. Above the music came the dull throb of voices, and the din of laughter now and then drifted toward them. Jonty looked back at her, smoothing down his hair again.

  “We’ve never really had the chance to chat, have we, Evelyn? After all these years. Funny, isn’t it? But I am sorry for that.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I mean, you are Sally’s closest friend. She’s told me so much about you, but I still don’t feel like I know you well at all.”

  Evelyn looked away, unsure what sincerity sounded like in his voice.

  “I wouldn’t believe everything Sally tells you.”

  Jonty smiled, wolfish all of a sudden. “I don’t.”

  He took out his cigarette case and offered her one. She was careful not to touch his hand as she lit up from his match. They smoked in silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable between them, and Evelyn began to think that it was indeed funny how little they knew of one another. She supposed he wasn’t all that bad—no different from most young men at Oxford. She studied the hard line of his jaw. She imagined he’d be a rough lover, and she allowed her mind to wander toward the possibility of him putting his arms around her, and before she knew it she was imagining the feel of his lips against hers. Where all this came from she didn’t know—it had to be the wine and whisky. But he must have had some hint of her thoughts, because with a quick look over his shoulder he flicked his cigarette away and moved forward to kiss her, his lips knocking against hers. For a brief moment, Evelyn felt something leap inside her, but she quickly pushed him away.

  “What?” he growled, his grip still firm on her shoulders. “What?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because . . . Well . . .” She couldn’t think. “I don’t want it, that’s why.”

  Jonty released her and edged backward, refusing to look at her as he swiped at a lock of blond hair.

  Evelyn’s eyes grew dry, itchy; she was too tired for anger. She considered saying something, but why must she placate him? Instead, she stubbed out her cigarette and resumed her view over the lawn even though the atmosphere had been spoiled.

  “You don’t like me much, do you, Evelyn?”

  Jonty was watching her, his left eye bunched up as he kneaded his forehead. There was something menacing in that look—Jonty had always seemed to Evelyn like a man with thin skin, as if his flesh and organs and ebullience were so near to the surface you only had to prod to see the life of him. It frightened her, and she recalled the rugby match at Cambridge last year when he’d had his nose broken. He had been guided off the field by the wingers, blood gushing, bruises gathering like dark clouds across his cheeks, but he had raised a fist in triumph. Pain was an accolade to him, something to be earned, and something to be inflicted.

  “You’re . . .” He hesitated, grasping. “I just can’t work you out!”

  “Then don’t try to,” Evelyn said in a clear, glassy voice. “I can’t imagine it will trouble you for long.”

  But he still took another step toward her, and she hoped he wasn’t about to kiss her again.

  “What is going on out here?”

  A dark-haired woman stood on the edge of the terrace. Jonty glanced at Evelyn, and she knew he was wondering how long she had been there.

  “We were just taking some air. Awfully stuffy in that drawing room.” Straightening his bow tie, he flashed his teeth. “But I’m ready for a dance now. Maybe I’ll see you both back in there?”

  Evelyn followed his swagger down the path beneath the windows, a dull throb starting up behind her eye. When she looked back, she found the woman watching her.

  “It’s Evelyn, isn’t it?”

  She was tall, like Evelyn, though with a fuller figure, and her complexion was clearer, heartier. She had thick, almost unruly eyebrows, and her red lips were wet-looking in the dark. She wore a black felt dress with short sleeves and a narrow belt pinching in at her waist, her loose hair longer than it had been all those years ago.

  “Julia? I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you . . .”

  Julia blew out a long stream of smoke, laughing, as she made her slow way toward the fence.

  “It’s quite all right, I must have changed. You’ve certainly grown up since I last saw you.”

  “Have I?” Evelyn hid her hands behind her back, embarrassed to realize that, after the confrontation with Jonty, they were trembling. “I’m not sure I feel it.”

  She watched Julia remove the stub of her cigarette from the holder and flick it into the air, tracking the orange spark as it sailed into the rose garden below the terrace. She may not have been as sharp-featured as Evelyn remembered, something now softer around her mouth, but she still had that determined look in her eyes, as if she were looking past Evelyn in search of something behind her.

  “You must be pleased to have made it home for the celebrations,” Evelyn ventured.

  “Worked out well in the end, didn’t it?” Julia nodded at the drawing room window. “And old Sallywag will do all right with Jonty. I don’t think he’s much chop, but she’s always liked him. They’ll have very blond, very dim children. Hundreds of them.”

  “Yes.” Evelyn smiled. “You’re probably right.”

  “How are you enjoying the party?”

  “I’m having a marvelous time.” She held up her Scotch. “Though I fear I’ve drunk too many of these.”

  “Others certainly have.” Julia cupped a hand around her lighter as she lit up another cigarette. “I was watching you at dinner. Jonty really should have left Michael Talbert tied up in the stables.”

  “Oh.” Evelyn took this in. Usually she was the one doing the observing. “He’s not so bad.”

  Julia made a face. “Englishmen really are horrendous when they drink. All their worst impulses come rushing to the surface.”

  Evelyn wondered how much Julia could really know about Englishmen after so many years in Germany, but perhaps she had more intuition than most—anyone who could line her eyes so expertly with kohl was bound to have that kind of knowledge hidden away somewhere.

  “You know,” Julia pointed toward the dark hint of woodlands at the end of the lawn, “there’s a pretty little creek through those trees. When we were girls, Sally and I would play down there for whole days at a time. Like a couple of wildlings, we were, forever coming back to the house covered in dirt and scrapes. I liked playing Robinson Crusoe best. Sally was always Friday.”

  Evelyn followed the line her long finger made and they stood like that, staring in the direction of the creek, until a burst of noise erupted from the drawing room and the curtains flapped and rustled.

  “So how did you get on at school in the end? You were . . . unhappy.”

  “You remember that?” Evelyn smiled, her curiosity stirring. “It was fine. I studied hard. Went on to Oxford.”

  “You found a way to fit in?”

  Evelyn blinked. She wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.

  “Yes,” she said eventually. “I suppose I did.”

  Julia nodded, though there was something distracted about it. Far off, Evelyn made out the sound of birds in the woods, owls perhaps. In the muddy light, she thought she saw Julia grip the railing before suddenly tilting back her head to inhale the humid air.

  “I have missed this.” She sighed. “A body of England’s, breathing English air. I rarely got into the countryside when I was in Berlin.”

  “It is glorious, isn’t it,” Evelyn agreed. “I think if I lived here I’d never want to leave.”

  Julia glanced at her, then back to the dark lawn. “Hugh tells me you’ve been a fixture at the manor.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “He likes you. Thinks you’re awfully clever. But Hugh thinks everyone’s clever, so my real bellwether is Elizabeth. She’s a harder nut to crack.”

  The Scotch had taken hold, burning
around Evelyn’s blood. Sally’s stories of her cousin had painted a picture of a cold, restless woman, all mink coats and coral pink nail varnish, but as Evelyn watched Julia smoke she wondered if Sally had got her wrong; if there wasn’t in fact something more candescent inside her. She supposed Julia must have given up on whatever had kept her in Germany for so long—or it had given up on her—and she felt that curiosity quickening, sharpening, like an ax sparking against the grinder.

  “And what does Elizabeth say about me?” she asked.

  But Julia didn’t have the chance to reply. There was a rapping at the drawing room window and there at the glass stood Sally, waving, while in the background the Wesleys’ guests moved around the floor, now more like the swell of a rough sea, all taffeta, lace, and silk in the dance.

  “Looks like we’ve been rumbled,” Julia murmured.

  * * *

  It was bright and muggy the next morning as Evelyn strolled with Sally and Julia across the east lawn, an old knapsack of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee banging at her knee. At the bottom of the lawn they followed the creek toward the lush canopy where Wesley Farm began. There were workers in the fields tilling, while in the next allotment a few young hands were tending to the apples in the orchard that would soon make cider. The last of the party guests had left an hour ago, and Hugh and Elizabeth had motored over to the Birmingham factory, which meant the young women had the estate to themselves.

  On their walk they dissected the party, and the dancing, which had gone on until dawn. Aside from Michael Talbert throwing up in the foyer, they agreed, the event had gone off without a hitch. Eventually Sally found a plush spot beside the stream and the three of them sat on the bank with their feet dangling. They ate the sandwiches and drank the peaty, bitter coffee, and after sharing an apple Evelyn threw the browning core into the current, watching it fly over the rocks and eddy around the scummy shallows by the ferns. As the day’s heat peaked, the three of them stretched out under the shade of the enormous beech trees and slept until the afternoon sun crept along the moss, scorching their bare legs.

  Evelyn was the first to wake, her shoulder tender from a protruding root, and she sat watching the light strike in shards off the water. A few paces away, Julia had her back to a sycamore tree, eyes closed, smoking. The stream gurgled, spat, and a breeze fluttered at the base of the trees. Evelyn closed her eyes again, breathing in the warm, enlivened air. There had been few moments that she wanted to capture and contain as much as this one; it felt as though her life had been placed on a languorous, delicious pause.

  “Do you know Jonty left this morning without saying goodbye?” Sally suddenly croaked. “I thought that awfully mean of him. We won’t see each other for weeks.”

  “He probably felt filthy, Sal,” Evelyn said. None of them had woken up sprightly after only a few hours’ sleep.

  “Maybe.” Sally sighed, raising a hand against the glare. “Did things change, Jules, between you and Hans? When you got engaged, I mean?”

  “Well, we didn’t have an engagement party at the manor, did we?” Julia said.

  “No. But then you did cause a bit of scandal.” Sally tipped her head toward Evelyn. “I’ve told you, haven’t I, how she eloped to Germany? It caused such a scene—I thought Daddy was going to have a stroke. I was only fifteen, which meant you were, what, twenty-one?”

  “Twenty.” Julia ground out her cigarette. “It was romantic for a time. Everything is when it’s forbidden.”

  Evelyn studied the honeycomb shadow dancing by Julia’s legs and asked, “How did you meet your husband?”

  “I was visiting an old school friend in Berlin,” said Julia, crossing one foot over another to admire her toes. “Her father was the consul general and they lived in an apartment overlooking the Wörther Platz. They had lots of parties, full of artists and politicians and all the diplomats from the Foreign Office. One night they invited a cabaret singer named Honey and she sang Lilian Harvey songs—that’s when I met him. Hans. He was accompanying her on the piano . . .” She paused, her eyes fixed on the surface of the stream. “He played so well, and with such variety. Mahler, Brahms, von Sauer. I’ve always thought music can transform a person, though later I learned he wasn’t such a gentle man by nature. Still, it was all rather magnetic . . .” She smiled, her mind snared in the memory. “From the moment I met him I wanted to be always near him.” The smile wilted. “I thought he could offer me a different life.”

  “What does he do in Berlin?”

  “He was a sergeant in the army when I met him. Now he’s a lieutenant in their security police.”

  Sally laughed. “Which I always thought terrifically amusing as Julia has never been much good with rules.” She craned her neck to look again for Julia in the shade. “You were excluded from how many schools? Three, wasn’t it?”

  “Four.” Julia frowned, her attention drawn back to the stream. “I wanted to get away from all that. Boarding school. England. It’s all so conventional, so predictable. But after a while I realized Hans wasn’t the man I thought he was, and Germany wasn’t the place I thought it was either. It changed while I was there. Became . . .” She sighed. “I don’t know. It was like horses get before a thunderstorm. Everyone had a wild look in their eyes.”

  “And that’s why you came back?”

  Julia’s gaze drifted toward Evelyn. She shrugged. “This is my home. Sometimes you need to go away to remember where you belong.”

  Watching her chew on her bottom lip, Evelyn wondered just quite how Julia had done it—turned her back on her old life for a man she barely knew. Was that what love did to a person? Made them so . . . reckless? But Sally wasn’t like that; if anything, her love was grounding, solidifying. Evelyn scratched at the damp hair behind her ear. Perhaps Julia would have gone anyway, and she supposed it was easier to take those risks in the knowledge that family and friends would always welcome you home. What would her parents and the townspeople of Lewes make of such an expedition, Evelyn wondered. It was hardly worth thinking about.

  They sat for a while longer, the air silent except for the drone of the insects hanging above the stream.

  “Do you think you’ll ever marry, Ev?” Sally asked.

  Evelyn was doing up the straps on her sandals, wincing at the burn on the bridge of her feet.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “You never seem interested, that’s all. I always thought maybe you and Philip . . .”

  “Yes, well.” Evelyn sat up, rubbing at her face. She didn’t want to talk about it. “The less said about him the better.”

  “Who is Philip?” Julia asked.

  “He was Evelyn’s boyfriend at university,” Sally said. “Very serious chap—I’m sorry, Ev, but he was. And there was a touch of the red about him.”

  “He was a communist?”

  Evelyn snatched up a tuft of grass, the strands sticking to her sweaty hands. “No, he wasn’t a communist—he’d read Marx, that’s all, and joined the Labour Party for a time. He wasn’t my boyfriend, though.”

  “But he wanted to be?”

  “I suppose. Only I didn’t feel that way about him.”

  “Poor Philip.” And for a moment Julia looked genuinely sad.

  They had taken a couple of English literature tutorials together at Oxford. Philip wrote poetry, some of it published in the university magazine. He was softly spoken with gray eyes, and with his northern accent and his unionism he wasn’t like the other students. Evelyn had been attracted to him, but while there had been many shy looks, many stilted exchanges, she had never been quite sure of the depth of her feelings for him; it certainly wasn’t love, but there had been tenderness. Later, that’s how thinking about Philip always made her feel: tender, like someone had pounded at the flesh around her heart.

  He had invited her to a ball at Christ Church, and once or twice they had a pint in town. One night, at the end of term, they went to the birthday party of a boy in their class where there had been dancing and a
lot of red wine, and afterward Philip offered to walk Evelyn back to Somerville. She remembered leaning her head on his shoulder, the rub of corduroy at her cheek, and how it had smelled of wood smoke. At the gate, he had kissed her, gently at first, but then with more eagerness, his hands gripped around her hips, drawing her toward him. He was making noises she’d never heard before: moaning, almost as if he were in pain. The kiss went on for a minute or so until Evelyn felt the press of his erection right there against her leg. She couldn’t help it—she pulled away. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to stir these feelings in him, but she felt nothing back, no rush of warmth, no thrill of wanting, and suddenly that evening, and every other evening they had ever spent together, felt spoiled and tawdry, leaving them both embarrassed at his desire.

  “What’s the matter?” Philip had asked, but when she stayed silent he shook his head, something mean passing across his face. They didn’t see each other again before the term break. Evelyn wrote to him once or twice from Lewes but received no reply, and when she passed him in the Radcliffe Quad the first day back he simply nodded and looked away. This brush-off had hurt her more than she expected; she’d cried about it back in her rooms, but they were resentful tears that soon dried, and she didn’t think much about Philip again.

  “We used to have a name for Evelyn in halls,” Sally said, rolling onto her back and folding her arms behind her head. “Do you know what it was?”

  “Oh, don’t say it,” Evelyn groaned. “Please, Sal.”

  “Cold Fish. Because she’d never let a chap get near her!”

  Now Evelyn felt herself blush to the roots of her hair and waited for Julia to join in with Sally’s laughter, but she only stood up and brushed down the back of her legs.

  “I’ve never understood why we idealize one form of love over others. Romantic love has never brought me much happiness.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Sally said. “Romantic love keeps the world turning. You know—sex, babies, all that.”