Len Deighton - Mexico Set

'I'm sure you explained that to the people you bought this place from,' I said.

He gave a quick, appreciative grin. 'Ah, you're right. Property is always a good investment, Bernard. And when the market is depressed a sensible man should buy the most valuable things he can afford. I'll drop anything up to twenty-five grand on the Hampstead place but I reckon I'm getting this at about eighty grand less than it would go for in normal times. And I'll do it through my own company's pension fund and save a lot on tax.'

'Tessa thinks you don't love her any more.'

'She's led me a dance, Bernard. No need to tell you that. She's been a rotten wife.'

It was true. What could I say to him. 'Perhaps things could be different. She feels neglected, George. Perhaps you give too much time to your work.'

'My business is all I've got,' he said. He raised the tape and measured the dining-room window for no reason except to have something to do with his hands. 'She's a cruel woman. You don't know how cruel.' He stepped through the doorway into the kitchen and his voice echoed in the smaller space. 'I'm putting self-cleaning American ovens in here. The bloody fool who's supplying them was practically telling me the German ovens were better.'

'And are the German ovens better?'

'I don't care what they're like; don't expect me to buy anything German. My Dad would turn in his grave. Bad enough selling bloody Jap cars. Anyway, that idiot didn't know an oven from a vacuum cleaner. You don't think I go into a shop and ask the opinion of the people selling the goods, do you?'

'Don't you?'

'It would be like expecting someone to come into one of my showrooms asking me what's the best sort of car. The best son of car is the one that pays me the biggest mark up. No, the Americans are the only people who can design self-cleaning ovens.' He sniffed. 'She's suddenly decided that she can't drink anything but champagne. 'It's costing me a fortune but I don't stop her – she's only doing it to make me angry. She thinks it's very funny.'

'Oh, I don't know about that. She drinks champagne at my house too.'

'She drinks it at a lot of houses but it's always my champagne she drinks.'

'Perhaps you're right,' I said.

'She needn't have made such a show of it,' he said sadly. 'She could have been discreet. She didn't have to make me a laughing stock, did she?' He opened the door of the high-level oven and looked inside. 'She's a good cook, Tessa. She likes to pretend she's a bad cook but she can make use of a decent kitchen.'

'Perhaps she didn't realize…'

He closed the oven door and then studied the complicated array of dials and the clock that controlled the cooking. 'She realized. Women realize everything, everything to do with love affairs and those antics. Women realize that, all right. She realized that she was hurting me. Don't make any mistake about that, Bernard.' He said it without any rancour, as if discussing some particular feature of the oven.

'I didn't know you felt so bitter,' I said.

'I'm not bitter. Look at this apartment. Does it look as if I'm bitter?'

'Tessa is worried that you went to Italy with someone else,' I said tentatively.

'I know she is. Let her worry.'

'If it's serious, George, you should tell her. It would be better for both of you.'

He sighed. 'My brother Stefan and his wife were on holiday in Rome. We spent a couple of days in the same hotel. Got it?'

'So when Tessa asked for Mrs Kosinski the hotel thought she meant your sister-in-law? Why don't you tell Tessa that?'

'She never asked me,' said George. 'She lectures me and argues. She never asks me anything.'

'Women are like that,' I said. 'You're not thinking of a divorce, then?'

'No, Bernard, I'm not thinking of a divorce.' He stepped into another small room that had obviously been used as a laundry room. Even the plumbing for the washing-machine was still in the wall. The room was painted white with a grey-tiled floor and a central drain. 'This would make a nice little darkroom, wouldn't it?'

'I suppose so,' I said.

'But Tessa says she'd like a little room for sewing. Sounds a funny idea to me, having a room just for sewing, but that's what she wants, so I said okay. There's a bathroom that I can make into a darkroom. In a way it's a shame to use a room with a good window for photography when I can easily make do with one of the inside rooms.' He moved into the next room and tried the switch, even though he knew that there was no electricity. The feelings I had for her have died, of course. There's no love that can survive the battering that a constantly unfaithful wife gives.' The daylight was disappearing and his face was rimmed with a reddish-gold line. He looked out of the window to get another glimpse of his parked car.

I said, 'It sounds like a grim prospect, George, living with someone you don't love.'

'Does it? It would to you, of course. But I'm a Catholic.' Of course, how could I have forgotten? I felt a fool for having mentioned divorce, and George must have known that, for he quickly added, 'No crucifix in the living room, no gold cross dangling round my neck, but I'm a Catholic and my faith is important to me. I'm up before six in the morning, so I can be at seven o'clock mass and not be late for work. My Dad and Mum were the same. Until Dad fell into the hold of a ship and smashed his legs and spent the rest of his days in the wheelchair. After that she took him to a later mass. Back in Poland both my mother's brothers are priests. I wasn't brainy enough for the priesthood but my faith is strong.' He smiled. I suppose by now he knew how surprising such announcements could be to people who thought of him as a cockney capitalist who would bow only before Mammon. 'It will be easier for me here. I'll go to mass at Farm Street. I am Jesuitical…' He smiled. 'Always have been. And its only a few steps along the road. It's a wonderful little church and I'll get an extra few minutes in bed every morning.' He smiled artfully but I couldn't imagine anyone for whom an extra few minutes in bed would make so little difference.

'She's insecure,' I said. 'Tessa is insecure.'

'Is that what she told you?'

'She's very vulnerable, George. She needs reassurance. You surely realize that all that flamboyance conceals a terrible lack of self-confidence. Fiona always said it was the second-child syndrome. And now I see it happening with my own children too. Tessa grew up in the shadow of a brilliant, strong-willed sister.'

'You missed out the domineering father,' said George. He took his hat from the ladder where he'd left it and said, 'You've thought about it a lot, I can see. Perhaps we married the wrong sisters. Perhaps you could have stopped Tessa going off the rails in a way that I failed to do.' It was difficult to know if he was being sarcastic or serious.

'And you could have stopped Fiona going off the rails in a way that I failed to do. Is that what you mean?'

'Who knows?' said George.

'I'm beginning to think Fiona hates me,' I said. I don't know why I suddenly confided to him something I'd admitted to no one else, except that George had the dispassionate manner of a highly paid medical specialist. And, I suppose, of the confessional.

'You're a reproach to her,' he said unhesitatingly. Perhaps he'd thought about it before. 'You make her feel small. You make her feel cheap.'

'You think that's how she sees it?'

'Betraying your country is like betraying your partner. And when a marriage breaks up it can't count as a success for either party; it's a mutual failure. How can Fiona bear to think of you continuing, business as normal with the job, the kids and the home. It makes her look silly, Bernard. It makes her look like a spoiled little girl playing at politics, no better than any of these loud-mouthed film actresses who like to pretend they're political activists. Of course Fiona hates you.' He had been toying with his hat but now he put it on his head, as a signal that he wanted to change the subject. 'Now if you'd still like a drink, let's go round to the Connaught. I prefer hotels and a comfortable place to sit down. I'm not very keen on pubs for pleasure. I see too much of them when I'm doing business. A sandwich too, if you like. I've nothing to go home for.'