“Emma, you’ve got to tell me. He was killed. You were the only one who knew him.”
“I didn’t know him,” she said, her back still to him. “I just slept with him. They don’t always go together. I thought I knew you.”
“Karl was blackmailing someone,” he began again. “He was getting money. If it wasn’t you, it was somebody else. Don’t you see what I’m saying? There’s somebody else. I’ve got to find out who. You’re the only one who can help me.”
She turned to face him, her eyes moist. “I can’t. Please.”
“But I will find out. You know that, don’t you? I’ve got to.”
“Why? Why you?”
“Because there’s been a crime and this isn’t just anyplace. It isn’t New York, it’s not even Santa Fe. It’s a weapons lab. That’s what they’re doing here. Not science. They’re making weapons. Secret ones. So everything’s different. Why do people get killed? Money? There isn’t any money here. Sex? Maybe. That would have been convenient for everybody. But what if it’s about the weapons? They can’t stop until they know. So they won’t. If it’s not me, it’ll be somebody else. Is there really anything so terrible you couldn’t tell me? You’ve got to trust me that much.”
“Do I?” she said, her face creased in a sarcastic smile. “I wonder why.”
“Because I’m going to find out anyway.”
She looked away, letting her shoulders slope wearily. “Yes, I suppose you will,” she said coolly. “For the good of the country or something. Nothing to do with you. A patriot. That was one lovely thing about Karl, he wasn’t a patriot. You can trust someone who doesn’t believe in anything. The rest of you-”
She walked back to where the remains of the picnic lay and lit another cigarette.
“Where do you want me to start? My first husband? He believed in everything. Mostly himself, it turned out.”
“You were married before?”
“Yes. Matthew. I seem to have a run of Ms. All great believers, too. Anyway, we were young-I suppose that’s no excuse, but we were-and he was a great rebel and so I adored him. He was fun. I don’t think you know how boring England can be. Sunday roast and all the eligibles in the Tatler and Matthew wasn’t having any of it. The people’s revolution was his line. God, all those treks to Highgate to see old Marx’s grave. My parents loathed him. So when he went off to Spain to fight the Fascists, naturally I went with him. My father always said I’d end up in Gretna Green-that’s where the wild girls elope to-but it turned out to be Madrid instead. That dreary registrar’s office. Not even a clergyman-you know how the comrades are about that. Actually, they weren’t very keen on marriage either, but free love in the trenches-well, it wasn’t madly me, was it? You can only take the country out of the girl so far. So there I was, Senora Matthew Lawson, International Brigade.”
“You were a Communist?”
She hesitated, as if his question had interrupted a reverie. “He was,” she said more seriously, drawing on her cigarette. “Party membership, the lot. You had to be, really, in the brigade. I was just-what? In love, maybe. Away. On my adventure. Not that I didn’t admire him for it. I did, tremendously. He believed in something. No one else seemed to. You know, the world is always coming to an end at that age and no one’s doing anything about it. Except then-well, it really was, wasn’t it? I thought he was right. Anyone could see the Germans were up to no good, and of course all the people one despised most didn’t seem to mind at all. Uncle Arthur. He actually went to the Olympics and said how inspiring it all was, the fool. That was typical. But Matthew, he knew, he actually did something. And then he was wounded. Nothing serious, a flesh wound it turned out, but I didn’t know that then. I thought he was going to die. You can see how romantic it was, me all weepy next to the cot in that awful field hospital and the comrades crashing around in Spanish, shooting anything that flew over, and my brave Matthew stopping the Fascists with his body while everyone back home was just out in the garden and being mean about the miners-oh, I was having my adventure. Sounds rather pathetic now, doesn’t it? It wasn’t, though. It was romantic. Exciting.”
