William Boyd - Restless

She had found a boarding-house on a quiet street – Bradley Street – in the bourgeois suburb of Westboro, run by Mr and Mrs Maddox Richmond, all of whose clients were young ladies. Bed and breakfast was offered at ten dollars a week; half board at fifteen, rates by the week or the month. 'Open fires on chilly days' it said on the small sign attached to the gatepost. Most of their 'paying guests' were immigrants: two Czech sisters, a Swedish woman, a country girl from Alberta, and Eva. Family prayers were held in the downstairs parlour at 6.00 p.m. for those who wished to attend and from time to time Eva duly and with unostentatious piety did. She ate out, choosing diners and restaurants near the ministry, anonymous places, busy, where the turnover of hungry clients was swift. She found a public library that opened late where some nights she could read undisturbed until 9.00 p.m. and, on her first weekend off, travelled to Quebec City, simply to be away. She really only used the Richmond Guest House to sleep in and she never came to know the other paying guests better than as nodding acquaintances.

This quiet life, this regular routine suited her and she found she came to enjoy living in Ottawa almost without effort: its wide boulevards, its well-kept parks, its solid, Gothically grandiose public buildings, its tranquil streets and civic cleanliness were exactly what she needed, she realised, as she pondered her next move.

But all the while she was there she covered herself. In a notebook she logged the registration of every car parked in the street and learned to which household they belonged. She noted down the names of the owners of the twenty-three houses on Bradley Street, opposite and on either side of the Richmonds, and kept track of the comings and goings in casual chats with Mrs Richmond: Valerie Kominski had a new boyfriend, Mr and Mrs Doubleday were on vacation, Fielding Bauer had just been 'let go' from the building firm he worked for. She wrote everything down, adding new facts, crossing out redundant or outdated ones, looking all the time for the anomaly that would alert her. With her first weekly salary check she had purchased some sensible items of clothing and dipped into her dollar supply to buy a bulky beaver coat against the cold that was growing as Christmas approached.

She tried to analyse and second-guess what might be going on at BSC. Despite the euphoria of Pearl Harbor and the arrival of the USA as the long-awaited ally, she imagined that they would still be investigating, digging deep, following up leads. Morris Devereux dies and Eve Dalton disappears that very night – not events that can be casually ignored. She was sure that everything that Morris had suspected of Romer would now be laid at his door: if there were Abwehr ghosts in BSC did anyone need to look any further than Devereux and Dalton? But she also knew – and this gave her satisfaction, made her more determined – that her continued disappearance, her invisibility, would be a persistent, annoying worry and goad to Romer. If anyone would be urging that the search be maintained at its highest level it would be he. She would never be complacent or relax, she told herself: Margery – 'call me Mary' – Atterdine would continue to lead her life as unobtrusively and as cautiously as she could.

'Miss Atterdine?'

She looked up from her typewriter. It was Mr Comeau, one of the under-secretaries in the ministry, a neat middle-aged man with a trimmed moustache and a nervous manner that was at once shy and punctilious. He asked her to come into his office.

He sat at his desk and searched through his papers.

'Please sit.'

She did so. He was a proper man, Mr Comeau, never acting in a superior or dismissive manner – as some of the other undersecretaries did as they thrust their documents at the typists and issued their instructions as if they were talking to automata – but there was something melancholy about him, too, about his neatness, his propriety, as if it were his guard against a hostile world.

'We have your application for the London posting here. It's been approved.'

'Oh, good.' She felt a heart-thud of pleasure: something would happen now, she sensed her life taking a new direction again, but she kept her face expressionless.

Comeau told her there was a new draft of five 'young women' from the Ottawa ministries leaving St John on 18 January for Gourock in Scotland.

'I'm very pleased,' she said, thinking she must make some comment. 'It's very important to me-'

'Unless…' he interrupted, trying for a playful smile and failed.

'Unless what?' Her voice was more sharp and abrupt than she meant it to be.

'Unless we can persuade you to stay. You've fitted in very well here. We're very pleased with your diligence and ability. We're talking about promotion, Miss Atterdine.'

She was flattered, she said, indeed she was surprised and overwhelmed, but nothing could persuade her otherwise. She alluded, discreetly, to the unhappy experiences in British Columbia, how all that was behind her and she wished simply to go back home now, home to her widowed father, she added, throwing in this new biographical information spontaneously.

Mr Comeau listened, nodded sympathetically, said he understood, and told her that he too was a widow, that Mrs Comeau had died two years ago and that he also knew that loneliness her father must be experiencing. She realised now where his air of melancholia originated.

'But think again, Miss Atterdine,' he said. 'These Atlantic crossings are dangerous, there's risk involved. They're still bombing London. Wouldn't you rather be here in Ottawa?'

'I think my father wants me back,' Eva said. 'But thank you for your concern.'

Comeau raised himself from his chair and went to look out of the window. A small rain was spitting on the glass and he traced the squirming fall of a raindrop on the pane with his forefinger. And Eva was instantly back in Ostend, in Romer's office, the day after Prenslo, and she felt a giddiness overcome her. How many times a day did she think of Lucas Romer? She thought of him deliberately, wilfully all the time, thought of him organising the search for her, thought of him thinking about her, wondering where she was and how to find her, but these inadvertent moments when memories pounced on her took her unawares and were overwhelming.

Comeau was saying something.

'I'm sorry?'

'I was wondering if you had plans for the Christmas holiday,' he said, a little shyly.

'Yes, I'm staying with friends,' she said, instantly.

'I go to my brother's, you see,' he continued as if he hadn't heard her. 'He has a house near North Bay, on the lake.'

'Sounds wonderful, unfortunately-'

Comeau was determined to make this invitation, overriding all interruptions. 'He has three sons, one of them married, a very nice family, eager, friendly young people. I wondered if you'd like to join us for a night or two, as my guest. It's very relaxed and informal – log fires, fishing on the lake, home cooking.'

'You're very kind, Mr Comeau,' she said, 'but I've already made all the arrangements with my friends. It wouldn't be fair on them to cancel at such short notice.' She put on a frustrated smile to console him a little, sorry to let him down.

The sadness crossed his face again – he had had his hopes high, she realised. The lonely young English woman who worked in the typing pool – so attractive, leading such a drab, quiet life. The London transfer would have galvanised him, she knew, made him act.

'Yes, well, of course,' Comeau said. 'Perhaps I should've asked you earlier.' He spread his hands abjectly and Eva felt sorry for him. 'But I had no idea you would be leaving us so soon.'

It was three days later when Eva saw the car for the second time, a moss-green '38 Ford parked outside the Pepperdines' house. Before that it had been outside Miss Knox's and Eva knew the car belonged to neither Miss Knox (an elderly spinster with three terriers) nor the Pepperdines. She walked quickly past it, glancing inside. There was a newspaper and a map on the passenger seat and what looked like a thermos flask in the door pocket on the driver's side. A thermos flask, she thought: someone spends a lot of time in that car.