Restless - Boyd William. Страница 11

When it finally grew almost completely dark by the river, as dark as a Scottish summer night could become, Eva buttoned and belted her mackintosh and folded her scarf up as a pillow. There was a half moon and the light it shed made the river and the small gnarled trees on its banks look eerily beautiful as their colours left them and the monochrome world of the night established itself

Only two other 'guests' had been at Lyne as long as she had: a young gaunt Polish man called Jerzy and an older woman, in her forties, called Mrs Diana Terme. There were never more than eight or ten guests at any one time and the staff changed regularly, also. Sergeant Law seemed a fixture but even he was absent for a two-week period, being replaced by a taciturn Welshman called Evans. The guests were fed three meals a day in a dining room in the main house with views of the valley and river, a mess staffed with young trainee soldiers who barely said a word. The guests were housed in the newer wing: women on one floor, men on another, each with their own room. There was even a residents' lounge with a wireless, a tea urn and newspapers and a few periodicals – but Eva rarely lingered in it. Their days were full: the comings and goings and the unstated but acknowledged nature of what they were all doing at Lyne made socialising seem risky and slack, somehow. But there were other currents circulating through Lyne that made personal contact diffident and guarded.

The day after she arrived a kind-looking man in a tweed suit and a sandy moustache interviewed her in an attic room in the main house. He never gave his name, nor was there any mention made of rank: she supposed he must be the 'Laird' that Law and some of the other staff referred to. We don't encourage friendships here at Lyne, the Laird told her, think of yourselves as travellers on a short journey – there's really no point in getting to know each other because you will never see each other again. Be cordial, make chit-chat, but the less other people know about you the better – keep yourself to yourself and make the most of your training, that, after all, is what you're here for.

As she was leaving the room he called her back and said, 'I should warn you, Miss Dalton, not all our guests are who they seem. One or two may be working for us – just to make sure the rules are adhered to.'

And so the guests at Lyne Manor all distrusted each other and were very discreet, polite and uncommunicative, exactly as the Laird would have wished and planned. Mrs Terme once asked Eva if she knew Paris and Eva, immediately suspecting her, said, 'Only very vaguely'. Then Jerzy once spoke to her in Russian and then apologised immediately. As the weeks went by she became convinced that these two were the Lyne 'ghosts' – as double agents were known. Lyne students were encouraged to use Lyne's own vocabulary, different from that employed by the service at large. There was no talk of 'the firm' – rather it was 'head office'. Agents were 'crows'; 'shadows' were people who followed you – it was, as she later learned, a kind of linguistic old-school tie, or Masonic handshake. Lyne graduates gave themselves away.

Once or twice she thought she saw Law giving a knowing glance to a new arrival and her doubts reintroduced themselves: were these the actual plants and Mrs Terme and Jerzy only naturally curious? After a short while she realised that everything was going to plan – the warning itself was enough to start the guests policing themselves and being watchful: constant suspicion makes for a very effective form of internal security. She was sure she was as much a potential suspect as any of the others she thought that she might have uncovered.

For ten days there had been a young man at Lyne. His name was Dennis Trelawny and he had blond hair with a long lock that fell over his forehead and a recent burn scar on his neck. On their few encounters – in the dining room, on the Morse code course, she knew he was looking at her, in that way. He only made the most nondescript remarks to her – 'Looks like rain', 'I'm a bit deaf from the firing range' – but she could tell that he was attracted to her. Then one day in the dining room when they met at the buffet, where they were helping themselves to dessert, they began to chat and sat down beside each other at the communal table. She asked him – she had no idea why – if he was in the Air Force: he just seemed like an RAF type to her. No, he said instinctively, the Navy, actually, and a strange look of fear came into his eye. He suspected her, she realised. He never spoke to her again.

After she had been a month at Lyne she was called one evening from her room to the main house. She was shown to a door, once again under the eaves, on which she knocked and walked in. Romer sat there at a desk, a cigarette on the go and a whisky bottle and two glasses in front of him.

'Hello, Eva,' he said, not bothering to stand. 'I was curious to know how you were getting on. Drink?' He gestured for her to sit and she did so. Romer always called her Eva, even in front of people who addressed her as Eve. She assumed they thought it an affectionate nickname; but she suspected that for Romer it was a little indication of his power, a gentle reminder that, unlike everyone else she would meet, only he knew her true history.

'No, thank you,' she said to the proffered bottle.

Romer poured her a small glass none the less and pushed it across to her.

'Nonsense – I'm impressed, but I can't drink alone.' He raised his glass to her. 'I hear you're doing well.'

'How's my father?'

'A bit better. The new pills seem to be working.'

Eva thought; is this true or is this a lie? Her Lyne training was beginning to take effect. Then she thought again: no, Romer wouldn't lie to me about this because I could find out. So, she relaxed a little.

'Why wasn't I allowed to go on the parachute course?'

'I swear you'll never need to parachute while you work for me,' he said. 'The accent's really good. Much improved.'

'Unarmed combat?'

'A waste of time.' He drank and refilled his glass. 'Imagine you're fighting for your life: you have nails, you have teeth – your animal instincts will serve you better than any training.'

'Will I be fighting for my life while I work for you?'

'Very, very unlikely.'

'So, what am I to do for you, Mr Romer?'

'Please call me Lucas.'

'So what am I to do for you, Lucas?'

'What are we to do, Eva. All will be made clear at the end of your training.'

'And when will that be?'

'When I think you are sufficiently trained.'

He asked her some more general questions, some of them to do with the organisation at Lyne – had people been friendly, curious, had they asked her about her recruitment, had the staff treated her differently, and so on. She gave him true answers and he took them in, ruminatively, sipping at his whisky, drawing on his cigarette, almost as if he were evaluating Lyne as a prospective parent might, seeking a school for his gifted child. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, slipping the whisky bottle into his jacket pocket and moving to the door.

'Very good to see you again, Eva,' he said. 'Keep up the good work.' And then he left.

Eva slept fitfully by the river, waking every twenty minutes or so. The small wood around her was full of noises – rustlings, crepitations, the constant melancholy hoot of owls – but she felt unafraid: just another night denizen trying to rest. In the small hours before dawn, she woke, needing to relieve herself, and moved to the river bank, where she lowered her trousers and shitted into the fast water. Now she could use her toilet paper, taking care to bury it afterwards. As she walked back to her sleeping-tree she paused and stood and looked about her, surveying her moon-dappled grove with the twisted grey trunks of the trees in a rough circle around her like a loose, warped stockade, the leaves above her head shifting drily in the night breeze. She felt strangely otherworldly, as if she were in some kind of suspended dream state, alone, lost in the remote Scottish countryside. Nobody knew where she was; and she didn't know where she was. She thought suddenly of Kolia, for some reason, her funny, moody, serious younger brother, and felt her sadness come over her, fill her for a moment. She was consoled by the thought that she was doing all this for him, making some small personal gesture of defiance to show that his death had not been for nothing. And she felt, also, a reluctant, grudging gratitude towards Romer for pushing her towards this. Perhaps, she considered, as she settled down between the embracing roots of her tree, Kolia had talked to Romer about her – perhaps Kolia had seeded the idea that she be recruited one day.