He turned her on her back. He was stark naked, warm and damp-skinned and salty-fresh, like he’d gone swimming in the sea. “I can’t tell you unless I’m drunk. It doesn’t work. I’m only happy when I’m drunk.”
“Were you swimming?”
“Yes. Best way to sober up, a nice cold swim in the sea.”
He kissed her. She stiffened her lips, but he persisted until she yielded. As they kissed, he reached down and pulled her nightdress up and up, until he had to break off the kiss to pass it over her head. Then he moved down to kiss her breasts, and she gave up—stopped fighting this thing, whatever it was, this chemistry still lingering between them, even when she was furious at him. Anyway, he didn’t stink of cigarettes and sin—he was like a sea creature, all washed clean, and she hadn’t slept with him in weeks, and she was hungry for something, for any man at all. His wet hair fell on her skin. They mated like animals, a wrestling match, tangling and rolling and biting. She made him pay for it, by God. In the end, they lay panting, Iris on her stomach and Sasha a dead weight atop her, all four hands gripping the headboard for dear life. Why did they do it like this? Why couldn’t they have tender intercourse anymore, like two human beings who loved each other? He rolled away, and his long limbs caught the moonlight from the window. His nose made a sharp, elegant triangle against the dark wall. For the longest time, until she drifted to sleep, he was her beautiful Sasha again, the father of her children, her warrior, her paladin of peace.
Iris woke at dawn to the shrill noise of all the world’s birds outside the open window. Yesterday was hot; this morning, the sky was cloudy and restless. Sasha lay asleep on his stomach, one arm thrown across her ribs. She untangled herself and slipped out of bed. She ached all over; when she looked in the mirror, she saw red smudges scattered across her breasts and stomach and thighs. She put on some clothes. When she returned to bed to stare at Sasha, she was pleased to see she’d marked him, too. His mouth hung open a little. His hair splayed across his forehead. Iris wondered how he looked after he went to bed with Nedda Fischer—whether they made love like this, snarling and snapping—whether they discussed Marxist theory afterward, among the tangled sheets—the dialectic and all that, the class struggle as the basis of all history—the inevitable revolution—all the things Iris didn’t care about.
She wondered if she should tell Philip Beauchamp what she knew—whether that would be an act of patriotism or of vengeance.
Downstairs, the cottage was still quiet. Not even Mrs. Betts had risen to put order to all the chaos. Iris found Burgess sprawled asleep on the library sofa, covered by a horse blanket; Major Davenport lay on the floor half ensnared by a raincoat. Neither was wearing a shirt; God knew if they had anything on down below. The room stank of male perspiration and of stale cigarettes. Iris picked up the empty bottles of gin from the weary Oriental rug and threw them in the trash. She put on her sturdy leather Oxford shoes and slipped out the kitchen door.
The air was speckled with fragile golden light and the dew coated the meadow. Iris inhaled the smell of wet hay, the new clean green morning. She started on the lane, toward Highcliffe, then veered down a path that angled to the sea. Like the birds, she couldn’t settle. She tried to tie together Sasha and Nedda Fischer and Guy Burgess, but the threads kept dropping as she picked them up, because Sasha was at the American embassy and Burgess worked for the British Foreign Office and what about the Fischer woman? The SIS? How did they all tie together, how did it work? Sasha said it was finished. Why? Because the war was over, fascism was vanquished? Why did they still see each other, then? Why did they get drunk and trade messages and rush off?
Iris stopped in the middle of the path and held her hand up against the sun, which had broken between a pair of clouds to illuminate the world. Through her fingers, she spied some tiny movement to her left and turned her head. Along the edge of the meadow, on the other side of the wooden fence, a gray horse galloped hard, urged on by a taut man in tweeds and tall shining boots and no hat. The sun flashed on his silver hair. Iris made herself small in the grass. She watched the horse pound toward the fence, which must have been four feet high at least, and soar over it in a neat, perfect arc. They galloped on toward the cliffs. A foreboding took hold of Iris—the sea—something terrible! She held her breath and marveled at the beauty of the animal, his giant stride, the expert stillness of the man riding him. Her lungs almost burst with fear—with awe—no, don’t!—turn, for God’s sake!—