Free A Place Of Strangers by Geoffrey Seed

The war that is coming will be fought in many different
ways and places. Do you understand?’
    Bea understands all right. But she is not to have another
starring role like Prague. She feels cheated and angry like a child that cannot
get its own way.
    ‘Who was that on my telephone?’
    ‘Someone you would not know.’
    ‘Maybe not but who was it?’
    ‘Beatrice, please... I am humbled by all your kindnesses but
I cannot answer.’
    ‘It was a woman, wasn’t it?’
    ‘No, not a woman – a comrade.’
    Why should she believe him? She gets up and washes their
cups at the sink so he does not see the tears she cannot stop. If it is not
another woman then he is going to his death with Casserley and she will have
brought it about and will suffer like all those widows after the Great War.
Suddenly, she is aware of time passing.
    ‘How long before Casserley is ready?’
    ‘Soon, very soon.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘I’ll be sent for special training.’
    ‘How do you know all this?’
    ‘We’re not without friends, Beatrice.’
    ‘They couldn’t help you in Prague, could they?’
    ‘No, then there was only you.’
    ‘And why can’t it be me again... both of us – working here
for Casserley?’
    ‘Understand this, Beatrice. There is a rope around our necks
wherever we fight.’
    ‘Might you be sent abroad?’
    ‘I will be sent to wherever I’m of most use. Those will be
my orders.’
    Bea is unable not to cry openly now. Arie comes to her and
holds her. He has not done this before, not in this way. There is a new
tenderness about him... a compassion for her and maybe for himself. Arie knows
they are trapped in this hour glass together, helpless against the gravity of
events.
    They kiss, gently at first. She is aware of the roughness of
his chin and the tight, tensile feel of his shirted back. It excites her like
nothing she has ever experienced before. Bea knows what is to happen next. It
is as if she has been created for this moment, this sweet meeting of destinies,
pre-ordained like their first had been.
    She prays he needs her as much as she wants him. Whatever
she had been given in her indulged life was as nothing when set against her
longing to possess this Christ-faced man.
    She leads him to the bed where none but her has ever slept.
The light outside is failing. The children have finished their game. Bea
unbuttons her dress and allows it to fall to the floor. Arie watches but does
not move. She takes off her remaining clothes, indifferent to modesty or
convention and stands before him like an offering to the gods who cast them
together.
    ‘Come, Arie... for me. Please.’
    In a moment more, they are in bed. She takes him unto
herself, takes the life which is hers and sustains her own, caressing, biting,
loving the whip-cord body that writhes in spasm in her arms till he is spent
and wordless in the dark by her side.
    They lie covered by a white sheet like the newly dead.
    Night passes. Bea stirs. She hugs Arie who has not slept. He
is warmed by the closeness but afraid of the breaking dawn. She makes tea and
brings it to him. They sit, backs against the bed head, still naked. Bea is
vibrantly alive, initiated at last into womanhood and all its power. But Arie’s
face is grey with guilt. Bea fears he will now talk of the wife he must surely
have and the children he has lost in the east. She kneels astride him and takes
his face in her hands.
    ‘What is it, Arie... what’s wrong?’
    ‘Why did you choose me?’
    ‘I didn’t choose you. It was written, it was meant to be.’
    ‘I do not believe in predestination, Beatrice. We all have
free will.’
    ‘Yes, but in that queue, in the embassy yard... I saw you
and I knew.’
    ‘You knew what?’
    ‘That our lives were somehow meant to join together.’
    ‘So because of a stranger coming to that place, I should
live while others die?’
    Arie is confronting an idea far outside political theory and
rationality.
    ‘That you should come from your