A Quiet Life
Wife.Mother.Spy.A double life is no life at all.Since the disappearance of her husband in 1951, Laura Leverett has been living in limbo with her daughter in Geneva. All others see is her conventional, charming exterior; nobody guesses the secret she is carrying.Her double life began years ago, when she stepped on to the boat which carried her across the Atlantic in 1939. Eager to learn, and eager to love, she found herself suddenly inspired by a young Communist woman she met on the boat. In London she begins to move between two different worlds – from the urbane society of her cousins and their upper class friends, to the anger of those who want to forge a new society. One night at a party she meets a man who seems to her to combine both worlds, but who is hiding a secret bigger than she could ever imagine.Impelled by desire, she finds herself caught up in his hidden life. Love grows, but so do fear and danger. This is the warm-blooded story of the Cold War. The story of a wife whose part will take her from London in the Blitz, to Washington at the height of McCarthyism, to the possible haven of the English countryside. Gradually she learns what is at stake for herself, her husband, and her daughter; gradually she realises the dark consequences of her youthful idealism.Sweeping and exhilarating, alive with passion and betrayal, A Quiet Life is the first novel from a brilliant new voice in British fiction.
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The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Natasha Walter 2016
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photograph © Jayne Szekely / Arcangel Images.
Natasha Walter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008113773
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008113766
Version: 2016-11-24
For Mark, Clara and Arthur
Contents
How slowly the light dies on these interminable summer evenings. Laura is so keen for each day to finish that she pulls dinner earlier every night. She hurries Rosa through her bath. ‘Rub a dub dub!’ she sings with some impatience as she towels her daughter’s hair. Rosa looks up, her flawless mouth half open, her dark eyes serene. ‘Dub dub,’ she repeats in a serious tone. Her hair is still damp, sticking up in spikes, as Laura settles her into her lap with a bottle of warm milk beside them.
The potatoes are already bubbling in their pan, the glass of cold vermouth is already poured and waiting at Laura’s elbow, the way to Rosa’s bedtime seems clear; but then the child suddenly pushes away the half-full bottle of milk and slides to the ground. ‘Open, open,’ she says, standing at the door that leads to the balcony. Laura fights her impatience as she lifts and encourages her – ‘Come on, my sweetheart, for Mama’ – to come back and finish her drink. ‘Nearly supper!’ she calls out to her own mother as Rosa finally drains it. Mother is reading some magazine on the sofa, still mapping the world of new autumn modes that will never be bought and new destinations that will never be seen.
Rosa is still saying ‘More!’ hopefully as Laura carries her up the awkward ladder staircase to her attic room. For a two-year-old, every evening comes too suddenly to an end. She is never in a hurry for the day to close. Laura lays her down in her cot with a solitary white rabbit for company. ‘More’: that was Rosa’s first word. My life is all run out, Laura thinks, stooping over the cot, but nothing is ever enough for you. Her daughter burrows into the mattress, face-down, a chubby starfish. Struck with unexpected guilt at wanting to hurry her into unconsciousness, Laura whispers, ‘Lullaby?’ But Rosa is gone suddenly into sleep, that enviable sleep that ebbs and flows over her with unpredictable tides.
Then Laura is back downstairs again, standing in the kitchen in front of the stove. As she downs half of her second glass of vermouth, she prods at the potatoes, cuts some tomatoes roughly, slides slices of ham onto two blue plates, and that’s it. That’s supper. Her mother’s glance moves to the drink as she comes into the room. She doesn’t say anything, but in almost unconscious reaction Laura lifts the glass and finishes it as her mother sits down and waits to be served.
‘Potatoes, Mother?’
‘Just two, thank you – now, what time is it that you want to leave this weekend?’
They have been over this a dozen times, and Laura pauses before she answers. ‘It’s this Friday, we can get a train just after three. It’s quite an easy journey, really. Wine?’
‘No, not for me, not tonight. And he has booked the hotel, has he, this – Archie?’
‘That’s right. He said it would be quiet at the end of the season, but still fun. He’s got daughters himself, but doesn’t see much of them – I think he misses that side of things, family life.’
Laura goes on talking, reassuring her mother that the weekend will be easy, that Rosa will enjoy it, that all three of them, grandmother, mother and daughter, might have a good time. Laura’s voice is calm, yes, and measured too, until her mother breaks in again. ‘Have you remembered to tell the consulate where we’re going?’
‘Of course I have!’ There is something too emphatic in the response, and her fork falls with a clatter to her plate. As the women’s gazes meet, Laura tries to shift the tension in the room. ‘If another trip feels too much,’ she says, ‘you know you could stay here without me. Or you could always go back to Boston.’
