Anne Korkeakivi - An Unexpected Guest

Edward closed the door and came around to sit behind the desk. His face looked calm; his expression pleasant and neutral. But she saw the set of his eyes and knew something serious was coming. He folded his hands over one another. “Two more de Louriacs, then?”

“The son and fiancée. They’re in Paris.”

“How lucky.”

“They’ll probably be better dinner companions than the parents.”

Edward laughed. “Oh, well, he’s an all right sort. Where will you seat Madame?”

“You want the fiancée, do you? I’m pretty sure she won’t be in a miniskirt.”

Edward laughed again, this time cracking his wide knuckles. They both knew he wasn’t interested in other women. “Just as long as the mother-in-law isn’t. What are we having?”

“We’ll start with baby asparagus and jambon de bayonne. And there will be some nice fish, with new potatoes in a spring-herb pesto, but I asked Mathilde to go very light on the garlic.” Edward wasn’t any bigger on garlic than he was on spices. “I think it’s going to be brilliant. Mathilde’s whipping something amazing up for dessert.”

“Literally, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes. She’s got her favorite instrument of torture going around as we speak. Well, second favorite, after the cleaver. She’s making her chocolates, of course. And fresh rolls. And, for the cheese course, I found some really nice cheddar. I bought oatcakes to go with it.”

Edward nodded. “Sounds super.” She stared at him through the following silence, waiting. This had all been filler. Now, he would tell her what was going on. He tapped his desk a few times. “There’s been an incident.”

Clare nodded.

“An assassination.” He spoke softly now, with the gentleness he always brought to bad news. “Not one of ours. A French parliamentarian, at Versailles this morning.”

“Do I know him?”

Edward shook his head. “I’ve never met him myself.” He ran a hand over his brow, rubbing as though he hoped to smooth it out. “Phff,” he said.

She stood up and touched his knuckles gently, leaving her fingers on his until he stopped rubbing. He caught her hand with his, and pressed the cool skin of her fingers against his forehead.

“Do they know…?” she said. She withdrew her hand and laid it on his shoulder.

“An idea. There have been numerous threats since the French State passed the law officially declaring the Armenian business genocide. Now there’s some talk of making it against the law in France to deny it. A Turkish nationalist group.”

“Oh.” She remembered hearing about the controversy when they first arrived back in Paris; how furious the Turks were that the French, with whom they’d painstakingly cultivated diplomatic relations for centuries, had officially decided to call the death of more than a million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War One by the term “genocide.” The Turks themselves never accepted that this had been a situation of deliberate extinction of the Armenian people, insisting the deaths were a by-product of the war. She recalled a heated discussion at one dinner party, just shortly before Christmas; the British still refrained from using the word, which stance some people had supported and others had considered morally reprehensible.

She sighed. “Dinner tonight?”

He shook his head. “No need to cancel dinner.”

All right, she thought. The guests would be upset, especially the French ones; everyone would be uneasy. Before he returned to the embassy, she and Edward would have to come up with a master plan on how to handle the situation. The correct mood had to be created — sober, respectful — but unbowed.

But they would go on. That was the essential. One had to keep going.

Clare picked up her and Edward’s dirty lunch plates from the small table in the study and carried them towards the kitchen. She and Edward had spent some time discussing whether to ask Reverend Newsome to lead a prayer for the slain politician when they sat down for dinner. Having decided yes, they had agreed not to allow the assassination to dominate discussion throughout the evening — one of the duties of the Foreign Service was to maintain balance. Then Clare had gone into the kitchen to fetch the lunch Mathilde, before leaving for her break, had quickly fashioned. She must have found her way back into Mathilde’s good graces, because there was a plate of chicken in cream sauce waiting for her also. She and Edward had eaten mostly in silence as Edward went through a briefing he’d brought from the office for a workshop he was attending in the ambassador’s place that afternoon. He’d shuffled the papers into his briefcase and announced he was heading back out.

“There’s a chancery post in Manama coming up,” he’d said as he’d shut the clasp on his bag. “The P.U.S. asked me in passing — I was reading from a French document — this morning whether I still had my Arabic.”

“Bahrain?”

“Bahrain.”

“What did you say?”

“That I figured it was pretty rusty.”

She’d smiled. “I hope you didn’t make any bad jokes about oiling it. How much longer do we have in Paris?”

“We’ve been here more than three years,” he’d said, adding, “there’s also something in Bishkek.”

She wrinkled her brow.

“Kyrgyzstan,” he said. “Between Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Electricity is a bit of a problem, but there are some lovely yurt stays. The mountain views are probably spectacular.”

She’d kissed him. “Dinner will go well. I promise.”

She’d stuck with her decision not to tell him about Barrow. If Jamie chose to unveil his presence during tonight’s dinner, Edward would be caught out, surprised by his own son. But the assassination had left her all the more loath to introduce Jamie’s latest indiscretion into his day. That was another thing about diplomatic life; the concerns of the wider world put one’s personal issues — especially the humbler ones, such as whether Peter made the First or the Second Senior rowing team at Fettes, or the dry cleaner had left a mark on one of Edward’s best jackets — in perspective. Even the shock of having your fifteen-year-old son suspended from school and left to wander around the airports of Europe slid down a notch when it came up for comparison against irrevocable tragedies such as an assassination — or, after thirty years of service, being relegated to someplace in central Asia without much electricity.

Clare pushed through the doorway into the kitchen with her shoulder, her hands encumbered by their plates. Jamie wouldn’t appear suddenly during dinner. She would speak with him now, try to get some more details and, at the same time, make him promise to keep a low profile until tomorrow. They would be the only ones in the apartment for a little while, with Edward gone and Mathilde and Amélie out for their midday breaks. Moments of domestic privacy had become rare since moving into the Residence; you had to seize them.

She set the plates down and surveyed the kitchen. Everything looked in order. She peeked into the fridge; a colander of deep-red strawberries sat on the middle shelf. She stole a handful with the hope that Mathilde wasn’t planning to use them to garnish this evening’s dessert or, if she was, wouldn’t notice. The first bite burnt into her tongue, a warm sweetness with an acidic edge. Jamie loved strawberries; she’d tote the rest of her handful to him. As a little boy he’d make himself sick eating too many at one sitting. “Moderation,” Edward would tell him, and Jamie would turn his back and pop another in his mouth. “Mommy…,” he’d moan within the hour, “my tummy doesn’t feel good.”