Read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold for Free Online Page B

with feverish energy. She found a clean tea cloth and spread it neatly on
the bedside table and she washed up the odd cups and saucers which lay around
the kitchen. When everything was done she looked at her watch and it was half-pasteight. She put the kettle on and went
back to the bed. Leamas was looking at her.
    “Alec, don’t be cross, please don’t,” she
said. “I’ll go, I promise I will, but letme make you a proper meal. You’re ill, you can’t go on like
this, you’re—Oh, Alec,” and she broke down and wept, holding both hands
over her face, the tears runningbetween
her fingers like the tears of a child. He let her cry, watching her with his
brown eyes, his hands holding the sheet.
***
    She helped him wash and shave and she found some
clean bedclothes. Shegave him
some calf’s-foot jelly, and some breast of chicken
from the jar she’d bought at Mr. Sleaman’s. Sitting on the bed she watched him
eat, and she thought she had never been so happy before.
    Soon he fell asleep, and she drew the blanket over his shoulders
and went to the window. Parting the threadbare curtains, she raised the sash
and looked out. The two windows in the courtyard above the warehouse were lit.
In one she could see the flickering blue shadow of a television screen, the
figures before it held motionless in its spell; in the other a woman, quite
young, was arranging curlers in her hair. Liz wanted to weep at the crabbed
delusion of their dreams.
***
    She fell asleep in the armchair and did not wake
until it was nearly light,feeling
stiff and cold. She went to the bed: Leamas stirred as she looked at him and
she touched his lips with the tip of her finger. He did not open his eyes but
gently took her arm and drew her down onto the bed, and suddenly she wanted him
terribly,and nothing mattered,
and she kissed him again and again and when she looked at him he seemed to be
smiling.
    She came every day for six days. He never spoke to
her much and once, when she asked him if he loved her, he said he didn’t
believe in fairy tales. She wouldlie
on the bed, her head against his chest, and sometimes he would put his thick
fingers in her hair, holding it quite tight, and Liz laughed and said it hurt.
On Fridayevening she found him
dressed but not shaved, and she wondered why he hadn’t shaved. For some
imperceptible reason she was alarmed. Little things were missing from the room—his
clock and the cheap portable radio that had been on the table. She wanted to
ask and did not dare. She had bought some eggs and ham and she cooked them for
their supper while Leamas sat on the bed and smoked one cigaretteafter another. When supper was ready
he went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of red wine.
    He hardly spoke at supper, and she watched him,
her fear growing until she could bear it no more and she cried out suddenly,
“Alec…oh Alec…what is it? Is it good-bye?”
    He got up from the table, took her hands and
kissed her in a way he’d never done before, and spoke to her softly for a long
time, told her things she only dimly understood, only
half heard because all the time she knew it was the end and nothingmattered any more.
    “Good-bye, Liz,” he said.
“Good-bye,” and then: “Don’t follow me. Not again.”Liz nodded and muttered, “Like
we said.” She was thankful for the biting cold of the street and for the
dark which hid her tears.
***
    It was the next morning, a Saturday,
that Leamas asked at the grocer’s for credit. He did it without much
artistry, in a way not calculated to ensure him success.He ordered half a dozen items—they didn’t come to more than a
pound—and when they had been wrapped and put into the shopping bag he said,
“You’d better send methat
account.”
    The grocer smiled a difficult smile and said,
“Fm afraid I can’t do that.” The “sir” was definitely
missing.
    “Why the hell not?”
asked Leamas, and the queue behind him stirred uneasily. “Don’t know you,” replied
the