The picnic in McCarry’s The Secret Lovers, a Cold War spy-versus-spy novel, is a sly allusion to Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe. When Paul Christopher’s boss David Patchen complains that Impressionists bore him and “Picnics explain nothing,” Paul remains noncommittal. Similarly, he is taciturn when Paul and Maria Rothschild try to outwit each other at a picnic on the grass in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne.
Christopher and Rothschild look like ordinary people sitting on a “light picnic blanket,” eating ham sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, fruit, and cheese, and drinking wine in glasses, But they are spies and antagonists with matching wits. As usual, Christopher is opaque. But concentrating on being amiable, Rothschild fails to notice that Christopher skips the sandwiches, nibbles the cheese, and drinks half of his wine.
Only on reflection after the picnic does Rothschild realize that Christopher has set her up and has shrewdly guessed that she has betrayed “The Outfit” (the CIA). “Oh, Paul,” she says to herself, “you bastard!”
See Charles McCarry. The Secret Lovers. New York: E.F. Dutton and Company, 1970
Featured Image: First edition of The Secret Lovers.