through difficult financial woods. Oh, pray this major gamble of
her professional career paid dividends to her as well as to the country! If
Harold Magnus had his way, she would receive very little of the credit, but
(andluck had nothing to do with it) she had managed the conduct of
Operation Search in such a manner that he would find it very difficult to steal
all her thunder.
There was no man in her life apart from
the occasional date she accepted more to be seen to be dating than from any
genuine desire to court an intimate relationship. She cared nothing for the sex
act, so obliged indifferently whenever it was demanded of her without attaching
one iota of importance to it, neither resenting nor thinking better of a man who
did demand it. Washington was an easy city to become a mistress in, a hard city
to find a husband in. However, a husband would not have suited her at all; he
would have taken up too much of time and energy she needed to apply to her work.
And a lover was basically a nuisance. Children she had taken care of when she
turned twenty-five by undergoing hysterectomy. These were not times to pin your
hopes and spiritual fires on domestic bliss anyway, but she was the kind of
woman who genuinely adored her work and could not imagine any close relationship
with a man rivalling it in her affections.
It was cold, so she changed into a
glove-tight pure cotton velour track suit, put on thick socks of wool and a pair
of knitted woollen bootees, and warmed her hands over the gas flame as she made
herself a snack of stew and boiled potato, the stew out of a can and the potato
fresh. Eating would warm her up. And then, even though the sun had risen several
hours before, she could go to bed fuelled for sleep.
3
When the fog came down at the end of
January some aspects of life stopped and some started. Out of its all-pervading
furtiveness it bred furtiveness. Things dripped hollowly. Footsteps came and
went muffled, directionless, threatening. Two people could pass within a yard of
each other and not know they had even passed. Some sighed and some died, each a
kind of giving up the ghost. An infinite weariness, that fog, as if the very air
itself gave up the ghost and sank in upon its own skin and in so doing condensed
enough to make itself visible at last. So much sighed in it, so much died in
it.
Among those who died in it was Harry
Bartholomew, of a gunshot wound in the chest. He was cold, poor Harry, he was
always cold. Perhaps he felt the cold more than others, or perhaps he was
essentially weaker. Certainly if he had had his way he would have been heading
for the Carolinas or Texas or anywhere in the warm south for the winter, but his
wife wouldn't leave her mother, and her mother wouldn't leave Connecticut.
Yankees did not venture south of the Mason-Dixon line for any reason short of a
civil war, said the old lady. So each winter Harry and his wife stayed on in
Connecticut, though Harry's job finished on November 30 and didn't start again
until April Fool's Day. And the cantankerous ungrateful old lady gobbled up
every bit of what precious little warmth the Bartholomews had. Harry's wife saw
to that, and Harry went along because it was the old lady who had the
money.
The result was that Harry became a
criminal of the worst kind. He burned wood. His
house was relatively isolated in the middle of its square six-acre block, so on
windy nights he could get away with it fairly easily. Oh, what a difference that
gloriously glowing mass of ignited carbon made!
Their stove dated back to the latter
decades of the last century, when everyone had begun burning wood in the
carefree days before local and state and federal authorities had clamped down
hard. For the trees were going far too fast, and the cold damp air clotted
around the huge increase in carbon particles to form genuine pea-soup fogs. The
fogs kept getting worse. And worse. More and more people burned wood,
her professional career paid dividends to her as well as to the country! If
Harold Magnus had his way, she would receive very little of the credit, but
(andluck had nothing to do with it) she had managed the conduct of
Operation Search in such a manner that he would find it very difficult to steal
all her thunder.
There was no man in her life apart from
the occasional date she accepted more to be seen to be dating than from any
genuine desire to court an intimate relationship. She cared nothing for the sex
act, so obliged indifferently whenever it was demanded of her without attaching
one iota of importance to it, neither resenting nor thinking better of a man who
did demand it. Washington was an easy city to become a mistress in, a hard city
to find a husband in. However, a husband would not have suited her at all; he
would have taken up too much of time and energy she needed to apply to her work.
And a lover was basically a nuisance. Children she had taken care of when she
turned twenty-five by undergoing hysterectomy. These were not times to pin your
hopes and spiritual fires on domestic bliss anyway, but she was the kind of
woman who genuinely adored her work and could not imagine any close relationship
with a man rivalling it in her affections.
It was cold, so she changed into a
glove-tight pure cotton velour track suit, put on thick socks of wool and a pair
of knitted woollen bootees, and warmed her hands over the gas flame as she made
herself a snack of stew and boiled potato, the stew out of a can and the potato
fresh. Eating would warm her up. And then, even though the sun had risen several
hours before, she could go to bed fuelled for sleep.
3
When the fog came down at the end of
January some aspects of life stopped and some started. Out of its all-pervading
furtiveness it bred furtiveness. Things dripped hollowly. Footsteps came and
went muffled, directionless, threatening. Two people could pass within a yard of
each other and not know they had even passed. Some sighed and some died, each a
kind of giving up the ghost. An infinite weariness, that fog, as if the very air
itself gave up the ghost and sank in upon its own skin and in so doing condensed
enough to make itself visible at last. So much sighed in it, so much died in
it.
Among those who died in it was Harry
Bartholomew, of a gunshot wound in the chest. He was cold, poor Harry, he was
always cold. Perhaps he felt the cold more than others, or perhaps he was
essentially weaker. Certainly if he had had his way he would have been heading
for the Carolinas or Texas or anywhere in the warm south for the winter, but his
wife wouldn't leave her mother, and her mother wouldn't leave Connecticut.
Yankees did not venture south of the Mason-Dixon line for any reason short of a
civil war, said the old lady. So each winter Harry and his wife stayed on in
Connecticut, though Harry's job finished on November 30 and didn't start again
until April Fool's Day. And the cantankerous ungrateful old lady gobbled up
every bit of what precious little warmth the Bartholomews had. Harry's wife saw
to that, and Harry went along because it was the old lady who had the
money.
The result was that Harry became a
criminal of the worst kind. He burned wood. His
house was relatively isolated in the middle of its square six-acre block, so on
windy nights he could get away with it fairly easily. Oh, what a difference that
gloriously glowing mass of ignited carbon made!
Their stove dated back to the latter
decades of the last century, when everyone had begun burning wood in the
carefree days before local and state and federal authorities had clamped down
hard. For the trees were going far too fast, and the cold damp air clotted
around the huge increase in carbon particles to form genuine pea-soup fogs. The
fogs kept getting worse. And worse. More and more people burned wood,
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