Dr Berlin by Francis Bennett Page B

Thank you.’
    Stevens laughed. ‘You don’t need me to bolster your convictions, Marion, though I’m flattered you think I could.’ He poured her some more tea. ‘Who else was against you? Not Peter Chadwick, surely?’
    ‘No, Peter’s an angel, backed me all the way.’
    ‘Who then?’
    She hesitated. ‘Bill Gant.’
    ‘Poor old Bill. Doesn’t surprise me at all. When has he ever been for something? Such a shame. He was an able undergraduate – best historian of his year. Great things were expected of him but our high hopes never came to anything. Bill ran out of steam before he was thirty. The charitable explanation is that his career is a casualty of his wife’s illness. He’s never been able to concentrate on anything for long enough, he’s always had to have half an eye on her. How well do you know him?’
    How well indeed? Here come the lies.
    ‘Our paths cross from time to time.’
    ‘Don’t worry if he’s against you. He’s a fading influence now. His opposition doesn’t count.’
    ‘I can deal with Bill,’ she said. ‘It’s Michael Scott I’m worried about. He took me aside afterwards and told me that in all the years of the Blake-Thomas, there’d never been a decision on a casting vote before. He made his disapproval quite plain. In his opinion I should have withdrawn before Eastman intervened. I’ve got to make Berlin’s visit a success or Michael isn’t going to let me forget it. This is a bad time for me to make an enemy of him. I’m up for a university lectureship.’
    ‘You’d better make sure Berlin’s visit is a huge success, then Michael won’t dare raise a whisper against you.’ Stevens reached for a piece of paper and wrote a telephone number on it. ‘If you think you need more ammunition, talk to my son, Danny. He’s Berlin’s publisher. I’m sure he’ll be able to help you. The pair of you should be able to put paid to any thoughts of revenge Michael Scott may have.’
4
    Kate watched the dawn creep into the room through the break in the curtains, its soft light flooding into the bedroom like an incoming tide, illuminating first the chair with the stuffing coming out of its arm, then a section of the woodenfloor (how uneven the floorboards were), the end of the bed and up the sheet that covered them, until finally it painted the face that she loved so much with its grey light. At that moment, she wanted to wake him with her kisses, hold him in her arms and tell him that she was his and that nothing could ever separate them.
    Had she spoken, he would have opened his eyes at once and stared at her with that troubled look that hurt so much. The world is a prison, he would solemnly tell her, in which we are all trapped and from which there can be no escape, no happy ending. Her mind translated his words to mean we have no future together, only a number of days and nights together, and each day that number is reduced by one.
    ‘When you leave Moscow,’ he had told her once, ‘we will shed tears, we will make promises to each other as we say goodbye, but in our hearts we will know that when we part we will never meet again. From that moment on, we will be simply a memory to each other that over time will fade and die. That is how our love will end.’
    She refused to believe him. If she left Moscow, she said, in the knowledge that she would never see him again, her life would end. She loved him with a certainty and a passion that meant there was nothing she wouldn’t do to keep him. He was hers and she would never let him go.
    ‘Such dreams are impossible,’ he had replied. You must not hope for a future that cannot be realised. We must live in the real world. Dreams are dangerous deceptions, creatures of darkness, which is why they vanish when you wake.’
    She called that his Russian pessimism and dismissed it. He had smiled sadly and looked away, accepting what he saw as his fate, their fate, with a resignation that infuriated her. In moments like that, when he