Free MAMista by Len Deighton Page B

plane arriving?’
    â€˜London–Heathrow at five.’
    â€˜Wednesday is not an auspicious day for travelling, Ralph,’ she said.
    â€˜Perhaps not, but we can’t consult you every time anyone wants to go somewhere.’
    She sighed.
    Ralph said, ‘I wish Jennifer had chosen a college somewhere in the south.’
    â€˜You fuss over her too much, Ralph. She is nineteen. Some women have a family and a job too at that age.’ Serena took a small antique silver case from her handbag and produced a cigarette. She lit it with a series of rapid movements and breathed out the smoke with a sigh of exasperation. ‘You should think of yourself more. You are still young. You should meet people and think about getting married again. Instead you bury yourself in that wretchedhouse in the country and finance every whim your daughter thinks up.’ She extended a hand above her head and flapped it in a curious gesture. Ralph decided that it was an attempt to wave away the smoke.
    â€˜That’s not true, Serena. She never asks for extra money. If I bury myself in the country it’s because I’m in the workshop finishing the portable high-voltage electrophoresis machine. It could save a lot of lives eventually.’ He smiled. ‘And I thought you liked my house.’
    â€˜I do, Ralph.’ He’d discovered the ramshackle clapboard cottage on the Suffolk coast, and purchased it against the advice of everyone, from his sister to his bank manager. It was now a welcoming and attractive home. Ralph had done most of the building work with his own hands.
    Sitting here with his sister – so far from the home in which they’d grown up – Ralph Lucas wondered at the way both of them had changed. They had both become English. His sister had embraced the English ways enthusiastically, but for Ralph Lucas change had come slowly. Yet even his resistance and objections to English things had been in the manner that the English themselves rebelled. Nowadays he found himself saying ‘old boy’ and ‘old chap’ and wearing the clothes and doing all kinds of things done by the sort of upper-class English twit he’d once despised. England did this to its admirers and to its enemies.
    â€˜South America,’ said Ralph to break the silence.
    â€˜I knew you’d be crossing the water, Ralph,’ she said.
    â€˜Do you make it three weeks or a month?’ he asked with raised eyebrow.
    â€˜Oh, I know you’ve never believed in me.’
    â€˜Now that’s not true, Serena. I admit you’ve surprised me more than once.’
    Encouraged she added, ‘And you will meet someone …’
    â€˜A certain someone? Miss Right?’ He chuckled. She never gave up on arranging a wife for him: a semi-retired tennis champion from California, an Australian stockbroker anda widow with a flashy country club that needed a manager. Her ideas never worked out.
    She leaned forward and took his hand. She’d never done anything like that before. For a moment he thought she was going to read his palm but she just held his hand as a lover – or a loving sister – might. He recognized this as a sign of one of her premonitions.
    â€˜Chin up! I’m only teasing, old girl. Don’t be upset. I didn’t mean anything by it.’
    â€˜You must take care of yourself, Ralph. You are all I have.’
    He didn’t quite know how to respond to her in this kind of mood. ‘Now! Now! Remember when I came back from Vietnam? Remember admitting the countless times you had seen a vision of me lying dead in the jungle, a gun in my hand and a comrade at my side?’
    She nodded but continued to stare down at their clasped hands for a long time, as if imprinting something on to her memory. Then she looked up and smiled at him. It was better to say no more.

4
    TEPILO , SPANISH GUIANA . ‘A Yankee newspaper.’
    Ralph Lucas did not much like