family estate that grew smaller with each passing generation. Somewhere back in Wellington’s time, a cavalry general on her father’s side had been awarded a nice chunk of Shropshire farmland in exchange for doing some rather gallant and (she’d later learned at Cambridge) beastly things to Napoléon’s army at Waterloo. By the time Sarah was born, The Meadows, as home was called, was down to forty acres and had taken to boarding horses for urban equestriennes, whom her father described as women who liked to ride without getting any shit on their boots.
But Sarah had always preferred lone treks across the rolling countryside to the care, saddling, and endless grooming that went with riding. Slipping out of bed at dawn, she’d pull on her Wellingtons and rain slicker and disappear for hours on solitary reconnaissances of the surrounding meadows, trudging through marshes, dashing up hillocks, and navigating her way through dense woods, thick with thistle and pine. Returning at dusk, she’d sit at the table, quietly sipping her evening’s tea, resisting her mother’s and brothers’ entreaties about where she had been. “Out,” she would say with a secret smile, and savor their ignorance.
But when Daddy, home for one of his all-too-brief leaves, inquired, she would share her adventure with him from the first footstep beyond The Meadows’ immaculate white fences, and leaven her tales with nuggets of scurrilous information about their neighbors. She was first to know that Ben Bitmead was growing pot plants in the middle of his father’s corn plot. (The police found out a year later, though not from her, and Ben spent six months “on vacation,” as her Daddy told her.) She caught Ollie Robson siphoning the gas out of Mrs. McMurtry’s pickup on two occasions, and this time, she’d called Mary McMurtry to tell her, or at least her father had. On the matter of Mrs. Milligan, and why her Mini-Cooper was parked behind Father Gill’s parsonage at six in the morning three days’ running, her father had pledged her to secrecy. Every human being needs a little love in their life, he’d said. Leave it at that, kitten. And tousling her hair with his broad, calloused palm, he’d hauled her up on his shoulders and carried her to the kitchen singing, “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo,” the Royal Marines’ anthem.
Even then, Sarah had been a clandestine agent with a divided loyalty.
She’d also learned that silence often led to tragedy, and that the hardest job was not collecting intelligence, but in knowing who to tell it to, and analyzing it afterward for meaning.
She was thinking of Mr. Fenwick, the village grocer. Day after day, she’d spied him in his bedroom measuring the distance from his dresser to a rocking chair she recognized as Mrs. Fenwick’s, who’d passed away only a month before. He’d walk from the dresser to the chair, sit down, have a long stare straight ahead, then get up and set out the distance with a yardstick. Then one day, there was an ambulance parked in his drive, and Sarah found out that he’d laid a shotgun across the dresser, tied a string to the trigger, and taking a seat in his wife’s favorite rocker and making things right with the Lord, blown himself to kingdom come.
It was hardly a surprise when Sarah joined MI6, fresh out of Cambridge with her first in Oriental languages and a blue in crew. She had the brains and the brawn they were looking for, and God knew, the ambition to top her brothers, two of whom were military men, in the battle for her father’s accolades.
Already six years, she thought, stopping at a corner for a red light, and Daddy gone four of them. A melancholy breeze swept over her, and she found herself whistling “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo,” and wanting more than anything else to share this latest and most dire adventure with him. Not exactly Goose Green, but she’d cut it close just the same. She’d been blooded. “Not bad, kitten,” he’d say succinctly, but his
But Sarah had always preferred lone treks across the rolling countryside to the care, saddling, and endless grooming that went with riding. Slipping out of bed at dawn, she’d pull on her Wellingtons and rain slicker and disappear for hours on solitary reconnaissances of the surrounding meadows, trudging through marshes, dashing up hillocks, and navigating her way through dense woods, thick with thistle and pine. Returning at dusk, she’d sit at the table, quietly sipping her evening’s tea, resisting her mother’s and brothers’ entreaties about where she had been. “Out,” she would say with a secret smile, and savor their ignorance.
But when Daddy, home for one of his all-too-brief leaves, inquired, she would share her adventure with him from the first footstep beyond The Meadows’ immaculate white fences, and leaven her tales with nuggets of scurrilous information about their neighbors. She was first to know that Ben Bitmead was growing pot plants in the middle of his father’s corn plot. (The police found out a year later, though not from her, and Ben spent six months “on vacation,” as her Daddy told her.) She caught Ollie Robson siphoning the gas out of Mrs. McMurtry’s pickup on two occasions, and this time, she’d called Mary McMurtry to tell her, or at least her father had. On the matter of Mrs. Milligan, and why her Mini-Cooper was parked behind Father Gill’s parsonage at six in the morning three days’ running, her father had pledged her to secrecy. Every human being needs a little love in their life, he’d said. Leave it at that, kitten. And tousling her hair with his broad, calloused palm, he’d hauled her up on his shoulders and carried her to the kitchen singing, “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo,” the Royal Marines’ anthem.
Even then, Sarah had been a clandestine agent with a divided loyalty.
She’d also learned that silence often led to tragedy, and that the hardest job was not collecting intelligence, but in knowing who to tell it to, and analyzing it afterward for meaning.
She was thinking of Mr. Fenwick, the village grocer. Day after day, she’d spied him in his bedroom measuring the distance from his dresser to a rocking chair she recognized as Mrs. Fenwick’s, who’d passed away only a month before. He’d walk from the dresser to the chair, sit down, have a long stare straight ahead, then get up and set out the distance with a yardstick. Then one day, there was an ambulance parked in his drive, and Sarah found out that he’d laid a shotgun across the dresser, tied a string to the trigger, and taking a seat in his wife’s favorite rocker and making things right with the Lord, blown himself to kingdom come.
It was hardly a surprise when Sarah joined MI6, fresh out of Cambridge with her first in Oriental languages and a blue in crew. She had the brains and the brawn they were looking for, and God knew, the ambition to top her brothers, two of whom were military men, in the battle for her father’s accolades.
Already six years, she thought, stopping at a corner for a red light, and Daddy gone four of them. A melancholy breeze swept over her, and she found herself whistling “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo,” and wanting more than anything else to share this latest and most dire adventure with him. Not exactly Goose Green, but she’d cut it close just the same. She’d been blooded. “Not bad, kitten,” he’d say succinctly, but his
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