Her Name Will Be Faith (16 page)

When she reappeared, made up and smiling in a pretty
sun suit, Babs
jumped up and ran to put her
arms round her. "Dearest Jo, we all do
love you so much. Please
don't give up, please. Anyway, don't let it get
you down. We'll all have a talk with Michael, and maybe… if you'll
just
be patient."

Jo hugged her back. "I love you all too,
remember?"

"Then you're not thinking of… well… separating?
Or anything like that?"

She was actually considering the
dread word, divorce. But she couldn't
tell
them that. Certainly she didn't intend a separation, which could only
make matters worse while solving nothing.
"No. No, I'm not," she
promised. But Babs and Mike both
noticed she wasn't smiling.

The phone on Jo's desk buzzed,
and she picked it up, heart pounding.
She still hadn't called Richard, although she had almost
made up her
mind to, knowing full well
that it meant she would go to bed with him.
But
Michael had returned from Newport as aggressively contemptuous
of her as
ever.

So perhaps Richard had grown
tired of waiting; Mark would have gone
back
to Florida by now.

"Josephine Donnelly."

"Washington here, Mrs Donnelly.
There's a..." Washington hesi
tated.
"Gentleman down here to see you."

"Gentleman?"

"Says his name is Stuart Alloan. Says you and he
are old friends."

"Stuart Alloan? I've never
heard of him. Oh, well, you'd better send
him up." She was preoccupied, at once with thoughts
of Richard and
with
researching her next assignment, Nino Fabretti, the famous guitarist,
who was going to be in New York
the following week. Stuart Alloan? She
looked
at her watch; it was half past three, and Florence and the children had not yet
got home from school.

The doorbell rang, and she looked
through the peephole, while releasing
the
locks. All she saw was a face, which was certainly familiar… then the door was
pushed in with a violence that all but knocked her over. "What on earth..."
She gazed at the young man in the dirty sweatshirt and jeans, and the cowboy
hat.

"Hope I didn't hurt you,
ma'am," he said. "You remember me?
Name's Stuart Alloan."

Jo drew a sharp breath.
"Yes. I remember you, Mr Alloan. How did
you know where I lived?"

"You told me your name and the magazine you
worked for, ma'am. They gave me your address."

That stupid girl, Jo thought; am I going to have a
word with her. But first, this lout had to be removed. "What do you
want?"

He looked her up and down.
Working at home, she wore only a
housecoat,
as he could certainly tell, however tightly she had retied the
cord before answering the door. "Well,"
he said. "I thought you might
have a copy of that article you were
gonna do on me."

"Not on you, Mr Alloan. On hurricanes. But the
magazine only comes out once a month, and the article is in July's issue.
Sorry. So if you'd like to leave..."

He had closed the door behind
him, and now looked around the lounge.
"Say, some place you got here, doll. Must be money
in writing for
magazines, eh?"

Jo discovered her heart was
pounding quite painfully, and she was
feeling a little sick. The nearest telephone was in the
study – on the far
side of the
intruder. And Nana was in the kitchen, asleep; she would be
awakened by a call, but the kitchen door was shut,
again behind the
intruder. How on
earth had she been so careless? Simply because her
brain had been
entirely filled with thoughts of Richard. But there was no
use in losing her head. "The apartment
belongs to my husband," she
said. "Who will be home any
minute."

"Is that a fact?" he asked. "You know
that's what they all say?"

"They all?" She licked
her lips, slowly backing across the room towards
the brass-edged glass table. It was used to display
ornaments, one of
which was a tall, slim
statuette, cast in bronze, on a marble pedestal. It
could be a serviceable weapon. "You mean you make a habit of calling
on women in the middle of the afternoon?"

He pointed at her. "Don't gimme any sauce, lady.
I kinda like you. All of you. I really came up to see if you was ready to show
me those tits."

Jo reached the statue, and
wrapped her fingers round it, breathing a
sigh of relief as she lifted it from the table. "If
you don't leave right now,"
she
said, "I am going to brain you, and then hand you over to the
police."

His finger was still extended.
"Now that's fighting talk, doll. You know
what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna take that thing and
stuff it right up your
ass. You'll like
that, eh?"

He came round the sofa, and Jo inhaled. She hadn't
expected to be challenged. But then she hadn't expected anything like this to
happen at
all. Not in her own apartment,
guarded by Washington… but she had
told
Washington to send Alloan up without checking further– Washington
had all but told her, without actually being rude
to a possible friend of
hers, that he didn't like the look of the fellow.
"I mean it," she warned. "I …”

Alloan moved far more quickly
than she had anticipated. She swung
the statue, but he easily evaded it, and then caught her
arm with a
strength that surprised her,
twisting it so that she yelped with pain and dropped the ornament to the floor
with a thud. Then his other arm went round her, clutching her against him, and
his fingers were tugging at her housecoat, tearing it open to fumble inside,
digging into the flesh of her breasts and buttocks. She gasped and twisted and
used her elbows and
kicked at him, and
managed to get away, although leaving the gown in
his hands as she
stumbled forward and fell across the back of the sofa.

Before she could recover he had seized her shoulder to
hold her there,
head down, legs flaying.
While he also picked up the statuette. "Now,"
he said.
"Just let's part these pretty little cheeks..."

"No!" she screamed,
hating herself for being so terrified. "No,
please..."

The front door opened and
Florence and the children stared at the
scene
in front of them.

"Florence?" Jo shrieked. "Call Washington.
Call the police. Call..."
She realized
the hand had left her shoulder as Alloan straightened, and she
turned,
kicking as hard as she could for his crotch. Momentarily distracted by the
intruders, Alloan did not defend himself and gasped with pain.

"Nice work, Mom," Owen Michael shouted,
running into the room, seizing a large Chinese vase, and smashing it over the
man's head.

Alloan was still bent double; clutching his genitals… and
he had
dropped the statue. Jo grabbed it
again in both hands, swung and hit
him on the head with all her
strength.

Park Avenue
—
5 pm.

"May I ask just what the
shitting hell has been going on?" Michael
Donnelly stood in the center of his lounge and
looked around him.

"Oh it was terrible, Mr Donnelly," Florence
said.

"A man was here," Tamsin shouted.

"Assaulting Mommy," Owen Michael declared.

"Mommy was all bare," Tamsin informed him.

"But Mommy bopped him one
with the statue," Owen Michael assured
him,
proudly.

"And Owen Michael hit him with the big
vase," Tamsin added.

"Blood everywhere," Florence managed to get
a word in.

"You were all bare?"
Michael echoed, looking at Jo who was now fully
dressed.

"Washington came, and the police, and took the
man away," Tamsin said.

"The sergeant said Mommy had
been awful brave," Owen Michael
went
on.

"And he said Owen Michael
had been brave too," Tamsin added loyally.

Nana barked and attempted to frisk; even if she had
missed the actual combat, she hadn't had such an exciting afternoon in years.

Michael continued to glare at Jo.
"I think you kids had better go do
your
homework," he said. "Your mother and I would like to have a little
chat."

"Yes," Jo agreed,
understanding that her ordeal was not yet over.
"Run along, children. Thank you so much,
Florence. I think you saved
my life,
literally."

Michael waited until they had
all left the room, taking Nana with them.
Then
he said, "Perhaps you'd like to explain." His voice was deceptively
quiet.

"Well… there's not a lot to explain,
Michael." She sat down. "This druggie broke in here and tried to
assault me..."

"In the altogether?"

"He pulled off my housecoat," Jo said,
refusing to lose her temper.

"Is that a fact. Druggie? Broke in here? How the
hell did he do that? This is supposed to be a burglarproof building. What the
hell do we pay round-the-clock porters for?"

"Well, I suppose the fault
was mine. Washington called to say there
was this man to see me, who said he was an old friend,
and without
thinking I said to send him
up. I was working, and just never thought, I guess."

Michael went to the bar and poured himself a drink.
"You expect me to believe that? Jesus Christ, entertaining hashed up
dropouts in my apartment in the middle of the afternoon..."

"I ought to kill you for saying that," Jo
said.

He half turned, and flushed.
"You going to pretend you didn't know
the
guy? How did he know to come to this apartment and, no other?"

"Sure I knew him," Jo
snapped. "He was one of the people I interviewed
for my hurricane article. Nothing more than
that."

"How'd he know your name?"

"I told him my name," she shouted.

"A street side lay about?"

"An interviewee. I always tell them my name, and
who I work for."

"Who you work for." His momentary
embarrassment had disappeared now he had discovered another handle to twist.
"That goddamned stupid
job. Do you
realize it could've got you raped? The kids hurt. And
Jesus..." He
looked at the empty pedestal. "Do you have any idea how much that shitting
vase cost? I demand you give it up. Now."

She stared at him. But she had been frightened; she
could almost be
tempted. If he would
co-operate. "And if I do, will you come to Eleuthera
next
month?"

"You have got to be
joking." He pointed. "You have nothing with
which to hit me, sweetheart. You're the one out of
line on this one. And I'm the poor bastard whose wife's name is going to be
splashed all over the newspapers. I suppose you have to give evidence at the
trial?"

"Of course I do. Don't worry,
they tell me it won't be until after the
yacht
racing season."

"Bitch," he commented. "But you are
giving up that job. Now."

"Go to hell," Jo told
him, and went into the bedroom. She had had
just
about all she could stand.

The concept of what had happened had set Michael
going, in an almost
obscene way, Jo
thought. That the idea his wife had been wrestling naked
with a strange
man should start the vibes was horrible… but that night he wanted to return to
her – she had slept in the spare room since their quarrel – and
when she refused to let him they had another flaming row.

Yet what had happened had set
her going too. It had been the unaccept
able face of sex, but so were her relations with her
husband. She wanted to
lie naked in a
man's arms, feel them about her and him against her – but the arms had to
be loving rather than angry or hating or claiming a right.

And in any event, having read the
morning paper, she knew she had to contact Richard. But in fact he contacted
her, at the office, just after
she had
finished enduring the comments and sympathies of Ed and the staff, and the
apologies of Jeannie Ryan for having divulged her address to a total stranger.

"Jo?" Richard's voice
was fraught. "I've just seen the paper. My
God..."

"Nothing happened," she assured him.
"The guy was just hashed up."

"But… the papers say he broke in and assaulted
you. That he's being charged with..."