“Buck up!” he called back to Sasha and Iris. “Nearly there! Can’t wait to see the look on old Abby’s face when we turn up at last.”
“Oh, he’ll be delighted,” said Aunt Vivian. “Everybody wants a gang of drunken louts to turn up at his home at two o’clock in the morning.”
Sasha said to Iris in a low voice, “I want her out of the house as soon as we get back.”
“Sasha, she’s my aunt. And the girls!”
“She goes or I go.”
“You’re hardly ever there to begin with.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and tore out a packet of cigarettes. He was down to the last two. He jiggled them a moment and took one out and lit it, and when he smoked it was as if he were sucking life into himself.
“She doesn’t mean what she says, you know. She just likes to stir people up.”
“She’s exactly what I’m fighting against. Don’t you see? That kind of ignorance and . . . and willful selfishness . . . that individualism that’s got no regard for the common good—”
“Not now, Sasha. For God’s sake.”
“Chambers is a rat, a goddamn rat. He’s going to get people killed. Innocent men killed, just for believing in something.”
“Please, Sasha—”
Burgess cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted a halloo. “There we are! Thank God. Abby! Abby, old boy!”
“He can’t hear you, you sod,” said Davenport.
Iris squinted into the distance and didn’t see much, just shadows next to the moon-speckled Solent. “I think everyone’s gone to bed.”
“Nonsense.” Burgess jogged heavily ahead. Davenport shrugged and followed him, then Sasha chased them both down the narrow, rocky strip of shore.
Iris ranged up next to Aunt Vivian. “Can you see anything?”
“There’s a house there, all right, but I don’t see a single light. This should be good.”
Iris squinted harder and discovered the outline of a large, rectangular, symmetrical building, maybe Palladian, right on the brink of the water. The moonlight glinted white on its edges and corners. There seemed to be a terrace of some kind. Already the men had reached it. Iris caught their movement up some steps—heard their drunken shouts for the owner.
“God help us,” she said.
They’d left the picnic basket on the shingles near the terrace steps. Aunt Vivian perched on one side and Iris on the other. More shouting. A spotlight flashed on, illuminating the terrace. Someone cried out—stumbled—a couple of thumps—a howl of pain.
Iris leapt from the basket and ran to the steps. Guy Burgess staggered up, clutching his head. Blood streamed out between his fingers.
“My God, he’s hurt!” she screamed. “Somebody get help! Aunt Vivian, the napkins!”
Aunt Vivian opened the picnic basket—rummaged around until she found the napkins—bounded triumphantly to Iris and Burgess, who lurched away.
“S’fine—s’fine—”
“You’re not fine, you’re bleeding to death—my God—hold still—”
Iris stuck a napkin to the side of his head. The blood soaked right through and she told him to sit down, for God’s sake. He sat. Above her head, there was more shouting, a new voice. Abingdon, in his dressing gown, roaring like an elephant.
“What the devil’s going on here? Burgess?”
“He’s fallen off your step,” said Davenport. “Haven’t got a doctor about, have you?”
Abingdon swore. “Lay him out on the chaise—that’s it—Christ, what the devil d’you think you’re doing, turning up at this hour? Everyone’s long gone, you bloody fools!”
Iris grabbed another napkin and Davenport supported Burgess to some kind of chaise, like a deck chair. Burgess shouted out obscenities.
“We’ve got to use your telephone,” Sasha said to Abingdon.
“Who the devil are you?”
“Chap from the American embassy,” said Davenport. “I say, that’s an awful lot of blood.”
Iris was starting to get woozy from the coppery smell of Burgess’s blood. She handed the napkin to Aunt Vivian and stepped to the edge of the terrace, where she vomited onto the shingles. When she looked up, she saw another man bounding up the steps, followed by a man in a constable’s uniform.
“What the devil’s going on here?” said the constable.
“It’s a private matter, damn it!” said Abingdon.