The sunlight, filtered by net curtains, lay like ground mist on the white carpet. Roper's side of the enormous bed was not slept in. Roper's pillows were still puffed up. On his bedside table lay current copies of
His eye quickening, he began reading the whole page at once: her dressing table, cluttered with mementos of nightclubs, people, restaurants, horses; photographs of laughing people arm in arm, of Roper in bikini shorts, his maleness much in evidence, Roper at the wheel of a Ferrari, of a racing boat, Roper in white peaked cap and ducks, standing on the bridge of the
The room felt airless. I'm a tomb robber, but she's alive. I'm in Herr Meister's cellar with the lights on. Bolt before they wall me in. But escape was not what he had come for. He had come for involvement. With both of them. He wanted Roper's secrets, but he wanted hers more. He wanted the mystery of what joined her to Roper, if it did; of her ludicrous affectations; and of why you touch me with your eyes. Setting the flower vase on a coffee table, he picked up one of her pillows, held it to his face and smelled the wood smoke from singing Aunt Annie's hearth. Of course. That's what you did last night. You sat up with Caroline in front of the fire and talked while the children slept. So much talk. So much listening. What do you say? What do you hear? And the shadow on your face. You're a close observer yourself these days, eyes staying on everything too long, including me. You're a child again, seeing everything for the first time. Nothing is familiar to you anymore, nothing is safe for you to depend on.
He pushed the mirrored door to Roper's dressing room and entered not her childhood but his own. Did my father own a military chest like this, with brass handles to lug it through the olive groves of Cyprus? This folding campaign table stained with ink and sundowners? This pair of crossed scimitars hanging in their scabbards from the wall? Or these dress slippers with their braided monograms like regimental crests? Even the rows of handmade suits and dinner jackets, wine red to black to white, the handmade shoes braced by wooden trees, white buckskins, patent evening pumps, had an unmistakable air of uniforms waiting for the signal to advance.
A soldier again, Jonathan checked for hostile signs: suspicious wires, contacts, sensors, some tempting trap to consign him to kingdom come. Nothing. Just the framed school groups from thirty years ago, snapshots of Daniel, a heap of small change in half a dozen currencies, a list of fine wines from Berry Bros. & Rudd, the annual accounts of his London club.
* * *
The door to the inner office stood before him. The inmost room, he thought. The last secret is yourself ― but which self: his or mine or hers? The door was of solid cypress, set in a steel frame. He listened. Distant chatter. Vacuum cleaners. Floor polishers.
