The Envoy by Edward Wilson Read Free Book Online

must be fed up with hearing that old chestnut.’
    It had, thought Kit, been pretty damn insensitive. He should have seen the blood drain out of Jennifer’s face. Kit tossed back the last of his brandy. ‘In France, they say the same thing about les résistants de la dernière heure .’
    Brian was silent in the dark shadow. Kit realised that he hadn’t understood a single word – now he was competing too. He remembered how Brian had frowned whenever he or Jennifer had swapped a French phrase or quote.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind another drink,’ said Kit.
    ‘The bottle’s in the house.’
    ‘By the way, Brian, your point about the war loans was a fair one. It doesn’t seem fair that we make Britain pay up, while we shovel millions of pounds of Marshall Plan aid into Germany.’
    ‘In the end it could destroy British manufacturing.’
    Kit smiled. ‘But it could have been a lot worse.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘If Roosevelt hadn’t tricked the Japs into attacking Pearl Harbour, we might not have come into the war at all – and then we would have made even more money out of it. We could have made war loans to both sides.’
    Brian grunted a laugh. ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Jennifer warned me about you. She said you liked to play the professional cynic, the devil’s advocate.’
    ‘Did she?’ What, thought Kit, was the game now? Something like: Despite your kinship and shared past, Jennifer is closer to me than she ever was to you .
    ‘But she is very fond of you.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    The men turned to walk back towards the house. The light from a kitchen window began to cast shadows over their faces. Kit looked at Brian in profile and tried to analyse what attracted Jennifer to him. He was handsome in an English rough tweed sort of way: tall, raw-boned, strong jaw and big hands. In fact, Brian bore a striking resemblance to Group Captain Townsend – the RAF officer whom Princess Margaret had been forced to ditch. Brian’s hair was also curly and black, except – the light from the window struck at an angle and revealed something hidden in normal light – for the grey roots. Kit was mildly abashed: this blunt no-nonsense Englishman dyed his hair.
    When they entered the kitchen, Kit saw that the washing-up was done and everything put away. Jennie hadn’t been tired after all. Kit wished he hadn’t come.
    ‘Sleep well, I’m off to bed.’ Brian was smiling again. ‘Make yourself at home – and help yourself to the brandy. It’s your brandy anyway.’
    ‘It’s not a war loan – it’s a gift, a genuine gift.’ Kit knew that his voice sounded brittle.
    ‘Thanks.’
    Kit watched Brian’s back disappear into the darkness of the inner corridor. A second later, there was a faint loom of light as a door opened – then the door shut and the light was gone. He thought he heard Jennifer’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words. Kit blotted out what was going to happen next. He hoped that he could find the brandy bottle; he hoped it would help him sleep.
     
     
    The daffodils were coming out around the Roosevelt Memorial in Grosvenor Square. It was a bitterly cold March morning. Kit checked his watch: twenty past seven, too early for most people on his pay grade. He liked to arrive before the others so he could check the pigeonholes and in-trays of his colleagues while they were still bleary-eyed over breakfast coffee and the international edition of The Herald Tribune . He didn’t like to be left out of any loop and always wanted to be au fait with other people’s agendas. Nor was he above the odd act of petty malice. If some other FSO, Foreign Service Officer – especially the commercial attaché – had been giving him a hard time, Kit would ransack the offending officer’s pigeonhole for something marked ‘urgent’ and dispose of it in the burn bag or shredder. The best thing wasn’t hearing that the officer had been told off, but watching him spend hours afterwards emptying his trays and