“What kind of mess?” demands my uncle. “They’ve already defected. What more mess could there be?”
I dangle my glass at him. “You know, these martinis are really terrific. I don’t suppose you’ll allow me another before dinner?”
When Uncle Charlie rises to refill the martini glass, Aunt Vivian sits back in her chair and drags from her cigarette. “Odd, about that postcard. Is she really having another baby, do you think?”
“I suppose she must be. Unless it’s some kind of code, but why write something obviously false? I mean, they must have censors or something, watching the mail.”
“You know she has a terrible time having babies. I don’t know why she allows that man near her anymore.”
“Love finds a way, I guess.”
Aunt Vivian watches the movements of her husband’s arms as he mixes and shakes at the liquor cabinet. “He drinks, you know.”
“Everybody drinks, Aunt Vivian.”
“Maybe she’s finally leaving him.”
“Then why defect with him in the first place?”
“I don’t know. Tell me, why did they defect? You did stay with them in England, that summer before they left. You and the girls.”
Aunt Vivian sits back in her chair and crosses her long legs. “Never mind. Tell me about this FBI man.”
“What’s there to tell? He looks the part, if that’s what you mean. Sumner Fox. Do you remember him, Uncle Charlie? He played football somewhere.”
“Sumner Fox. Christ. The Sumner Fox?”
“How many could there be?”
He hands me the glass. I lick the drops from the edges.
“He played fullback for Yale, mid-’30s,” says Uncle Charlie.
“Then what happened?”
“Flew torpedo bombers off a carrier in the Pacific. Crashed on an island somewhere and spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp. Don’t you read the newspapers?”
“Only the news I like.”
“Well?” says Aunt Vivian. “Is he handsome?”
I throw up my hands. “For the last time. Not every girl needs a husband. For God’s sake, look what it’s done to you! No offense intended, Uncle Charlie.”
He settles in his chair and picks up a newspaper. “None taken.”
Now, I forgot to mention that Aunt Vivian and Uncle Charlie have children of their own. Three of them, to be exact, all of whom come tumbling into the dining room at the appointed hour and spoil our hard-won cynicism. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve always liked Tiny best. Pepper and Vivian are so goddamn exhausting and far too much like me. Tiny turned thirteen a few weeks ago and her personality’s changing by the minute. She’s always been a serious child, always worried about beggars and stray animals and the atom bomb, and now she spends all her time buried in schoolbooks and newspapers. At dinner she’s awfully quiet while her sisters yammer on about Singin’ in the Rain, which they’ve just seen for the ninth time, and how Pepper’s going to be an actress when she grows up. Over dessert, I ask Tiny what’s wrong, and she says she’s been worried about the missing diplomats.
Which missing diplomats? I ask.
“The Englishmen,” she tells me. “Mr. Burgess and Mr. Maclean. They’ve been gone a year now. Didn’t you see the story in the Times?”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, of course, and I’m just drunk enough not to pay much attention when she tells me. What’s a pair of British diplomats to me?
Still, something bothers me about the incident, though I can’t say what. Coming so adjacent to the postcard and the FBI visit, possibly. When I stagger home to my apartment in Sutton Place, I stop by the little grocery around the corner to buy the usual quart of milk, and at the last instant I pick up a newspaper, too.
Mike the doorman nods as I swing through the revolving door. I collect my mail from the slot and climb the stairs as a form of exercise, as is my habit, in order to maintain my maidenly figure. Inside my apartment, I pour the milk into a glass and spread out the newspaper on the table. The story about the diplomats appears on page 7, below the fold.
still no word from missing british diplomats, runs the headline.
A year has now passed since the disappearance of Mr. Guy Burgess and Mr. Donald Maclean, both of the British Foreign Office, caused an international uproar, and the British government admitted yesterday there is still no definitive word on their fate. The two men were last seen boarding a pleasure cruise aboard the ship Falaise in the English Channel on Friday, May 25th of last year and went ashore during a brief stop at the French port of Saint Malo, at which passports are generally not checked, according to the French government. Clothing and personal effects of both men were discovered in their cabin when the schooner returned to port at Southampton the following Sunday morning, and the alarm was raised when Mr. Maclean did not report to work as usual on Monday morning. His wife, Mrs. Melinda Maclean, who was then expecting their third child in a matter of weeks, apparently saw nothing amiss and did not inform his superiors at the Foreign Office until . . .
By now my memory is jogged. Burgess and Maclean—of course. What a fuss that was. I recall—now, don’t laugh—my first thought was one of pity for poor Mrs. Maclean. At the time, it was perfectly clear to my dirty mind that the two missing diplomats had, in fact, run off together to liberate themselves from the disapproval of a Puritan world.
A year later, though, other details strike me. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t notice them before. For one thing, there’s something odd about this business of the passports, and the clothing and personal effects left inside the cabin of the good ship Falaise. Why not take them with you? And my God, what kind of monster skips out on two children and a wife so very pregnant as that, unless he absolutely has to? Sex is lovely, all right, but surely Maclean could not have been so deficient in basic decency, even if he was a diplomat.
I fold the paper back up and finish the milk, and it’s not until I wash the glass and return to the table that I turn my attention to the day’s mail. I’m not much of a correspondent, I’m afraid, and I tend to receive few letters of a personal nature. Just the usual brusque envelopes from banks and charities and insurance companies, the occasional missive from some government department of this or that, hardly the kind of communication you rip open with trembling fingers.
So I’m surprised to discover a slim, light envelope tucked between the usual correspondence, marked PAR AVION on one side. I flip it over and find no return address, just my own name in beautiful handwriting, and my own address. I don’t think to look at the postmark before I open it. Tug out a single, tissuelike sheet of airmail paper, folded over once, and unfold it. A square black-and-white photograph falls out, three children posing against a fence in what seems to be a zoo.
I return to the letter itself and begin to read.
Dearest Ruth,
I’m so sorry not to have written sooner. The time has simply slipped away from me. I thought perhaps you might like to see how your sweet nephews and niece are growing, so I took this photo of the children at the local zoo.
I’m writing to ask if you wouldn’t mind coming out here to lend me a hand with the baby’s arrival. I am so drained by the pregnancy, and as you remember, these ordeals are always difficult for me. I know you’re busy with your own work, and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need your help so desperately.
Your loving sister,
Iris
P.S. Our apartment here reminds me so much of the one we shared in Rome, all those years ago. Do you remember how happy we were then? I was just thinking of what you said to me that last day. Am I too late to admit that you were right?
Iris
April 1940
Rome, Italy
Ruth was matter-of-fact, as you would expect. “All things considered, you’re pretty lucky. A broken ankle is nothing.”
“Don’t forget the stitches,” said Harry.
“Still, the ankle’s the worst part, because she can’t walk. Thank goodness that fellow was there to snatch her out of the way. What’s his name again, Harry?”