The house was empty at last. Thomas had set off with Dodo through the snow to visit the Lützows. Gretchen had gone to her parents for the night. Irene was alone. Thomas had begged her to go with them but no, she had a headache, she needed to rest, then they would enjoy their evening together. She did look strained, Thomas had agreed, stroking her hair as he often did. It was easier for her to be warm and affectionate with Dodo, to wrap her in the coat Tante Sibylle had given her, so Thomas could carry her on his back across the snow. Don’t hurry back, she’d said, they love your visits. . . She watched him walk down the garden path they’d planned together. At the gate he turned and waved, and she waved back before they disappeared in the swirling snow.
She stood by the door for a while, just in case they came back. She knew where his briefcase was, in the room she used as a studio, where he worked sometimes. She had done with scruples, all she wanted was to carry out this job efficiently.
She locked and bolted the front door and the back door, just in case they returned unexpectedly. The day before, she had told him, in passing, that if she was ever alone in the house she locked the doors, it made her feel safer. This was quite untrue.
She had gloves ready. She grimaced, asked herself, would I be a good spy? Perhaps it ran in the family. She was sure Mark sometimes engaged in espionage.
The briefcase was locked. This, she expected. Thomas had taken his keys with him, but he kept a spare set in a drawer in their room. She had checked the day before, when he was playing with Dodo.
She felt icily calm. She found the keys, unlocked the case. It was full of papers, more than she could possibly read through. She looked through them at speed by the dim light of the oil lamp in their bedroom, with the curtains drawn – after all, she was supposed to be resting there. From the headings it was easy to see where Thomas was stationed, the work he was engaged in, the plans for new railheads and troop movements. It was the locations, the dates, the numbers that were wanted, rather than technical details. She made her notes on two pieces of paper from an old sketchbook. It took her less than an hour, she had time to spare – she’d told Thomas she needed at least two hours’ rest. She was confident she would be able to sense their approach but, once, she thought she heard the door latch being pressed down, though it was only the wind shaking the branches. And another time, the cuckoo clock made her jump.
She ran again through the papers, replaced them precisely in the right order in the briefcase, locked it and put it away, replaced the keys, took off her gloves, hid her notes. Thomas would never find them, he regarded her work materials as strictly private. She was sure she had found information that would be useful to Mark’s colleagues. Now she avoided the bedroom, knowing that if she lay down she might give way to an ocean of doubts, might even repent. Instead, she prepared supper.
When Thomas came home, with Dodo asleep on his back and gripping a tiny carved pine tree, he found his wife in her studio. She looked, he said, like an artist in a play. She had changed into one of her evening robes and put her hair up, she looked as appealing as anyone looked then in Germany. She embraced him warmly. They had a happy evening. She asked him to sing, and when he said he was out of practice, she declared he need have no fears, she was an easy audience. He did sing, Dodo lying in her mother’s lap listening. They ate their supper by the fire, as contented as could be.
Two days later she went to Berlin and delivered a letter to the Danish Embassy. She was just in time for the next postal delivery to Copenhagen, as planned. It was a sweet letter for her mother, full of news about Dodo and the cows and her painting. The letter, she said, was also intended for Mark, telling him among other things that she was re-reading the poems of Heinrich Heine – that was the code they’d settled on. Under this letter was another, written in the invisible ink contained in the bottle of scent Mark had given her.
In due course her mother wrote back. Mark had left again for Washington; she hated his leaving. He had asked her to tell Irene how much he’d enjoyed her letter, it was so full of nice news.
Irene wondered, now that she had betrayed Thomas, whether she could ever love him in the same way. She had, she supposed, done her duty. She wondered whether doing her duty meant, in some twisted way, that she had betrayed herself.