have failed at something, or been rejected by a board, but because I want to be with you.”
The train was almost at the platform. I never took my eyes off Sam’s face, but I could hear the squeal of the wheels, the hiss of escaping steam. The other passengers on the platform picked up their cases and bags.
“Go on.”
She made a face, as if I were as young as Will. “You are a good man, Hal. Very good. And you are good for me. I said last night that I don’t love you, and that’s true. For now it’s true anyway. But you’re … I like being with you, I can talk to you, I like touching you, feeling you’re there. Will’s calmer, too, when you’re around. You couldn’t know that.”
We were suddenly engulfed in steam. Everyone and everything else disappeared for a moment. I was reminded of what Sam had said about the mist on the canal, the night Will was conceived.
The steam cleared.
“I can’t marry you, Hal. That wouldn’t be right. Maybe… if I grow to love you … as I hope I can … then we’ll see. But we’ll have to pretend to be married. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my sisters but I’ve had enough of the way people look at me in the village, and the way they look at Will, calling him… names … as if he’s done anything wrong. At least in London we’ll be more anonymous, people won’t have to know… we can get on with living our lives.”
She bit her lip. “If you can accept that, if you don’t think I am using you, and if your offer still stands, I accept. But I’m not going to wait for that board to dismiss me. If your offer still stands, let’s act on it straightaway. We can make a start for London right away; today, I mean.”
She reached out and her hand touched mine. “I’ll tell the school I’m resigning. The board can go … they can …” She grinned again. “I really don’t care what they do.”
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, WHEN I FOUND IT, was gloomy beyond belief. I mean the street itself. It led from Trafalgar Square to the Thames but was lined with vast stone-faced office buildings. And I mean the ministry too, or that part of the ministry that was housed there. At first, I thought I had made a mistake, swapping the tranquil, provincial landscape of Stratford for a metropolitan warren that made the Ag seem like the latest word in modern architecture. My sister had misled me.
Things didn’t improve much when, eventually, and with some difficulty, I located Pritchard. It must have taken forty minutes and three different escorts (all in uniform, with medals, all missing an arm or a hand) before I was shown into his office, at the back of the building on the third floor, across a small, stone-flagged courtyard. His was a windowless room containing two desks, though the other appeared unmanned for the present. At any rate there were no papers on it, no pencils, no cup for tea or coffee, no ashtray, no photographs of husband or wife, children or dogs. It was as barren as no-man’s-land.
“There you are,” he growled, scrambling to his feet. “No saluting here, by the way,” he added as I raised my arm. “We don’t go in for it in intelligence. Here, I have some papers for you to sign, confirming your appointment and your promotion. And the Official Secrets Act.”
He laid them on his desk and I signed without reading them.
“Have a seat there,” he said. “I’ll brief you and then take you through to where you’ll be working. Find a hotel all right?”
I nodded. “In Bayswater.”
“Good,” he said, lighting his pipe. He wasn’t interested in where I lived. That suited me. Sam was looking for a flat.
I, of course, had been pleased—more than pleased, delirious, overwhelmed—that she had agreed to head south with me, right there and then, at Middle Hill station. She and I had had a good first weekend in London, even though it had meant lugging Will around the sights—Buckingham Palace, Parliament, the British Museum. But we’d found a cheap and cheerful restaurant near the hotel, where they made a fuss over Will and where a large Saint Bernard kept an eye on the proceedings. Will liked dogs.
“Okay,” said Pritchard, once his pipe was safely alight. “For the first few weeks, at any rate, you’re going to be doing