“Then you won’t mind if I steal away the old man for just a moment? Matters of state, you see.”
“Not at all,” Iris said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie.
After a moment or two of trivial conversation, the blond woman—her name was Fischer, Nedda Fischer—invented some excuse and left Iris and Philip to each other. Iris smiled. Philip smiled back. The effect was ever so slightly sinister, because Philip had encountered some terrible calamity during the war—exactly what, nobody could agree, and Philip himself wasn’t going to talk about it—that had left the right side of his face scarred and pitted and not quite as mobile as the left side. Also, most of the ear was missing.
It was commonly accepted that Philip’s hair turned white after the injury. Iris found the effect somewhat dazzling, next to his dark eyes and surreal face. They’d met at a party like this one, about a month or so after she and Sasha moved here from Turkey. Sasha had become incapably drunk and Philip had driven them home in his Morris Eight, and it was only later that Iris discovered what a sacrifice this was, because of petrol rationing. She wrote him a thank-you note, and they went out to dinner the following week, Iris with Sasha and Philip with some woman they never saw again. Sasha told her that Philip’s wife had left him right after the war, had simply taken the children and moved to Canada, and was now dragging the divorce interminably through the courts because of Philip’s money. Iris spent weeks calling him Mr. Boh-shahm in her best French accent before he took her aside and confessed that his surname was actually pronounced Beecham, English style, and their mutual embarrassment was so severe that they agreed she should simply call him Philip, and just like that, they became the best of friends.
Which explained why the smile they shared now was one of mutual relief, because the flinty blond woman had finally left them alone.
“Has this aunt of yours arrived yet?” he asked her.
“Not until next week. She’s setting herself up in the Dorchester for a week to show the girls the sights, Tower of London and Buckingham Palace and everything, and then we head down to Dorset, thank God.”
He made a little bow. “Delighted to be of service.”
“Honestly, we’re awfully grateful for the cottage. I’m so desperate for some country air, I could scream.”
“Will your husband be staying long?”
“The first week, and then only on weekends. He says it’s a good time to catch up on work, when everyone’s off in August.”
“Digby’s got a reputation for hard work.”
“It’s very nice for his employers. Less so for his boys and his poor neglected wife.”
“Ah, how are the boys? Relieved to be out of school at last?”
“They are absolute terrors at the moment. The woman in the downstairs flat came up this morning and very politely requested that they stop running up and down the corridor, because her chandelier was shaking dangerously. I’m at my wit’s end without a garden.”
“It’s jolly criminal, this business of stuffing young families into these beastly so-called mansion flats. You’ll recall I did recommend you find a nice detached house down in Surrey or even Kent.”
“You’ll recall I did my best to convince Sasha to take your advice.”
They exchanged a look of understanding.
Iris drank her champagne and continued. “Anyway, all will be forgiven in August, if the three of us can survive that long. Will we see much of you?”
“That’s all up to you, my dear. Generally I go down after Ascot and don’t come up to London again until after Boxing Day. But I wouldn’t dream of intruding on your summer holidays.”
“You wouldn’t be intruding at all. How far away is the main house?”
“About a mile, I should think. Enough we shouldn’t be on top of each other.”
“Oh, but I’d be delighted if we were on top of each other!” Iris said, without thinking. Philip turned a little red and started to laugh, and Iris clapped her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you didn’t. It’s part of your charm.”
Iris looked away and said, “What were the three of you talking about when I came up? You were awfully engrossed in each other.”
“Oh, just business. These hearings in Washington, you know. The—what do you call it?—the Un-American Activities Committee. Such a typically American name. There’s a woman testifying right now who claims to have run a Soviet spy network in the State Department for years.”