Page 34 of Fire Must Burn

‘I could drop the act when I wasn’t with the target,’ said Iris. ‘I wasn’t living with him, fortunately. God, I couldn’t bear hearing Tony praise me for my honesty today when it was nothing but deception. Each word he spoke was another twist of the knife. I thought you did quite well, by the way.’

‘It wasn’t easy,’ said Gwen. ‘He’s very likable.’

‘He is.’

‘Much of that is a pose, though,’ said Gwen. ‘He needs to be liked, so he becomes likable. He’s concealing something. Any ideas as to what?’

‘No,’ said Iris. ‘Deep-rooted communism, perhaps?’

‘And now you’re concealing something,’ said Gwen. ‘What’s going on? Did something happen between you last night that you haven’t told me about?’

‘He sort of proposed to me,’ Iris confessed.

‘Sort of? What is a sort of proposal?’

‘It was couched in a way that meant he didn’t expect it to be taken seriously.’

‘When a man who shows the world a frivolous face makes a frivolous proposal of marriage, it might be serious underneath.’

‘That’s too convoluted for me to figure out,’ said Iris. ‘In any case, I turned him down without further discussion.’

‘Also frivolously?’

‘Actually, quite seriously,’ said Iris.

‘Because that would have contradicted our assignment.’

‘Right,’ said Iris. ‘And because I am not in the marrying mood at the moment. Even if I was, it wouldn’t be Tony.’

‘Why not, if you don’t mind my asking?’ asked Gwen.

‘Because I do want children,’ said Iris. ‘I want to leave someone behind to make a better job of changing the world than I have. All right, we should contact Miss Lowle and have her come in to brief her.’

‘Please tell me you don’t want to do that this afternoon. She’d have to come in after office hours.’

‘I’ve already deprived you of one hour with Sally,’ said Iris. ‘I won’t take a single minute more. Tomorrow is fine.’

Gwen met Sally at Istanbul, a Turkish restaurant on Frith Street not far from his Soho flat.

‘Ever eaten here before?’ he asked as he opened the door for her.

‘Not when it was this place,’ she replied. ‘I vaguely remember this location from before the war. Italian, perhaps?’

‘Yes. Battaglia’s was here. Istanbul opened in 1940, just in time for the Blitz.’

‘They’ve stayed in business. Good for them.’

The restaurant couldn’t have been more than eighteen feet wide, yet every available inch of space was crammed with tables packed with businessmen rehashing the day’s deals over small plates of olives and mashed vegetables. A young Bengali man in a dinner jacket and bow tie presided over a long table in one corner covered with bowls of salads and rice dishes, while another waiter whirled like a dervish through the room, deftlydistributing plates of various types and forms of meats on skewers. He looked at Sally with trepidation, the usual look inspired by a man of that height coming into any establishment that would be expected to feed him.

‘Smells divine,’ said Gwen.

‘The owner used to be the chef at the Turkish embassy,’ said Sally as they wedged themselves into a table for two across from the salad table. ‘The ambassador wanted to take him back with him, but he had enough encouraging whispers from salivating Londoners to set up shop here.’

‘What do you recommend?’

‘Shish kebab if you like things ground and spiced, shashlik if you like them cubed and marinated. Or is it the other way around? Either way, you can’t go wrong.’

They sorted out the differences with the waiter, who was accustomed to English ignorance of the menu.