Lovers and Liars Trilogy (10 page)

“Your eyes haven’t changed, you know that?”

“Pascal, don’t.”

She drew back from him sharply, and looked away. She could feel his gaze rest upon her face. The sleet fell. Across the yard, a car engine started up. She tried to fight down all the memories that surged forward when she heard that tone, amused, half-tender, in his voice. She said to herself:
I will not let this happen to me again; I won’t.

Pascal moved a few paces off. He made an odd gesture of the hand, as if relinquishing something. He said, “You’re right. Of course.”

“Friends,” Gini began in a rush. “We can work together as friends, surely? We always said that was how it would be—if we met again. No bitterness. No recriminations.”

“Is that what we said?”

“It was. You know it was. More or less.”

“Maybe. I remember it rather differently.” It was his turn to look away. He frowned up at the sky, then turned back with a shrug. “Still. Friends. I’m sure you’re right. Reporters. Colleagues.
Tout à fait, les professionels, toi et moi.”

“Pascal, please don’t speak French.”

“You used to speak it once.” He smiled. “Bad grammar, the accent not so good—but you still spoke it. I can still hear the sound of your voice. Gini….”

“No. Don’t do this. I won’t work with you if you do this.” She had raised her voice. It echoed around the courtyard. Pascal seemed about to argue, then reconsidered. Gini thought:
He has changed too; he would have argued once.
She glanced at him; there was a tired gray resignation on his face.

“It throws me,” he said simply. “It throws me badly, meeting you like this.”

“I know.” She set her lips. “Me too. We’ll get over that.”

There was defiance in her tone. Pascal ignored it. He made no comment. Turning, he began to walk back toward the gates. Gini fell into step beside him. Behind them, from the
News
offices, a cold fluorescence spilled into the dusk. As they reached her ancient Volkswagen Beetle, Pascal said, “I’m divorced now.”

“I know. I heard. Someone in the office mentioned it. I thought of writing to you to say how sorry I was. I am sorry, Pascal.”

“It happens.” His tone was flat. Then his face lightened. “I still see my daughter, of course. Marianne. She’s seven now. She lives with my wife, but I see her every week. In the holidays—” he paused. “You never married, then?”

“No. I never married. I live alone. Maybe I’m not the marrying type. You know how it is.”

There was another silence. How awkward we are, Gini thought, and how bleak we sound. She opened her bag and began to rummage inside it for her car keys.

“I used to think of you,” Pascal said in a sudden, abrupt way. “I’d see articles you wrote. I could see you were doing well. I was glad. I always wanted you to succeed. To be happy. I hope you know that was the case—”

“I am happy,” Gini replied quickly. “I’m fine. Everything’s worked out very well. Listen, I should go, Pascal. We’ve got work to do. I think I’ll go over to the Press Association, go through the clippings on the Hawthornes. And you’ll want to check in at your hotel. Can I give you a lift?”

“No, no. There’s a cab pulling in. I’ll take that.”

He signaled to the taxi driver. Gini still fumbled for her keys in her overflowing bag. Her fingers touched wrapping paper, a box, the cold metal of a pair of handcuffs. She had almost forgotten this parcel. She fumbled again, and found the keys at last. When she looked up, she saw Pascal was still watching her, a slight frown on his face.

“Your father? How is he?” he asked. “Well, I hope.”

“My father’s at the Washington bureau now. Drinking just a little bit more. I rarely see him. You don’t have to be polite.”

“And your stepmother? She lives in the country still?”

“No. In London. She remarried some years ago. Very happily. Her husband died a year ago. So it’s been hard for her. But she’s fighting back. She’s like that.” She paused. “You’d like her, I think. You should meet her anyway.”

“I should?” He looked surprised.

“Oh, yes. She might help us. She’s the reason Jenkins put me on this story. She’s the ‘contact’ Jenkins mentioned.”

“Your stepmother?”

“Yes. Mary’s known the Hawthorne family for forty years at least. They’re old, old friends. She and Hawthorne are very close. It was through Mary that I met him. At her house, at her party.”

A look she could not quite interpret crossed Pascal’s face. “Oh, of course,” he said. “All those family connections of yours. Instant entrée.”

“I don’t advertise them, Pascal.”

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“Mary’s nothing like my father, in any case. And my father…” She broke off. “Pascal. You shouldn’t have blamed him.”

“I didn’t blame him.” He spoke sharply. “I blamed myself.” Across the yard, the taxi driver leaned on his horn. “Damn.” Pascal glanced over his shoulder. “He’s getting impatient. I’d better go. And you’d better hurry if you want to go through the clippings on Hawthorne. The files will be a foot thick. So…” He turned to glance at her. “What shall we do? Would you like to meet later? Shall we have dinner tonight?”

“No, not tonight. I’m going out tonight. Let’s make a start in the morning. Call me then. You’ve got the number?”

She stopped. Another memory had come back. For an instant she felt on her skin the heat of a Beirut summer. Sometimes, when he was working, Pascal would be away all night. If he was, he always called her hotel first thing in the morning. He always called at eight. She always picked up on the first ring. That was their ritual.
Darling can you come over now? I got the pictures. It’s all right. I’m safe.
She turned away. These memories hurt.

Pascal hesitated, as if about to say more, then moved off to the waiting cab. Over his shoulder, from a few yards off, he said, “I’ll call in the morning. I’ll call at eight.”

Inside her little Volkswagen it was cold. The seats felt damp. Gini switched on the windshield wipers. She watched the cab pull away, then disappear through the gates. She switched off the car engine. The windshield became a blur of water. Water rattled against the car roof. She slumped against the steering wheel and covered her face. She felt tense with the effort of concealment. If she had known she was to meet him, then she would have coped so much better, she thought. It was hard to be greeted by him as an acquaintance, a virtual stranger, yet if she had had time to prepare, she would have known that was likely, and what she should expect.

She straightened, started the engine once more, and looked out across this prison-yard place. It was twelve years since Beirut, and five since the last occasion, the only other occasion, when they had met. Sitting outside a café on a wide Paris boulevard on the Left Bank. It had been a day of bright sunshine, the light dazzled in the street. And she had not been alone, she had been with another journalist, an Englishman much older than herself. Her affair with him had been uneasy and quarrelsome from the first; the visit to Paris had not improved things. They had spent much of the previous night arguing, and all of the morning. As she sat outside the café, she was trying to blot out the stream of accusations that came from her left. She had been thinking:
In a moment I’ll just stand up and leave. Then I’ll never need to see him again.
And she looked away, up the boulevard, with its plane trees, watching the passing people, and her eyes focused on a single family group.

They were walking toward her at a leisurely pace, a tall, dark-haired man, a dark-haired woman, and their child. The man had his arm around the woman’s shoulder; the woman was pushing a stroller with a little girl in it. The child was laughing, and waving her fists. She looked about two years old, Gini thought. It was their ease, their evident contentment, that drew her eye. She watched them approach; the little girl was wearing a bright blue dress, a little pinafore—and then she realized. It was Pascal who was laughing at something this woman had just said to him. It was Pascal who took one of her hands, and swung it, and increased his pace. It was Pascal who stopped just a few yards away, turned to her, said something, and kissed her upturned face.

The shock was acute. She had known that he was married; she had heard he had a child; until that moment she had not understood what she had lost.

She had looked away quickly, and bent her head. She told herself that he would not notice her, and that if he did, he would walk on by, but he did not. He stopped, hesitated, and then he spoke.

She did not want to remember the scene after that. The stiff introductions, the meaningless exchanges, the fixed and glassy smiles. The air eddied with undercurrents. Pascal’s wife’s face became tight. The little girl began to cry. Eventually, the family group moved off. Beside her, the man with her knocked back his drink.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “Pascal Lamartine, no less. So tell me, when did you screw
him
—and don’t bother denying it, Gini. It was written all over your face. And his.”

She had not said one word. She simply rose and walked away. As she did so, she felt the headiest relief. She ran back to their hotel, packed her bags, and left. The man was completely unimportant. Now, still sitting in her car, she could scarcely remember his name, let alone his face.

But that glimpse of marital happiness—she could remember that only too clearly. Looking across the wet yard, she watched it, gesture by gesture, Pascal’s other life. When, just a few minutes earlier, he had mentioned his daughter, he had made no reference to the incident. Perhaps he had forgotten it, forgotten she had ever seen his wife or Marianne.

It was likely, to be expected. Releasing the brake, she drove forward, and out of the gates.

Pascal’s hotel turned out to be in Park Lane. It was large, efficient, international, and anonymous. He had been assigned a business suite with two telephones and a fax machine. His life was now lived in similar hotel rooms. He felt he could move around them blindfolded. It took him two seconds to unpack.

He checked his cameras, dialed room service, and told them to bring some food at eight. He showered, changed, inspected the crumpled garments in the closets, and resolved to reform. Would Gini want to work with a man who looked as if he’d slept the night before in a hedge? No, she would not. He rang the valet service, and feeling proud of himself, gestured grandly at the clothes hanging in the closets.

“Take them away,” he said. “All of them. I want them all cleaned and pressed. Oh, and the shirts laundered. Can you do that?”

The valet smiled and said he could. He made no comment when he opened the closet doors to find it contained three ancient shirts, three pairs of blue jeans, and innumerable pairs of mismatched socks.

“The leather jacket as well, would it be, sir?”

Pascal ran his hands through his hair, so it stood on end. “No. Maybe not the jacket. It’s cold. I’ll need this.”

“Replace the missing buttons on the shirts, sir?”

“That’s possible? Superb.”

“If you’ll be staying with us some while, sir, I could make a suggestion…”

“One week. Two weeks. Maybe more. What?”

“There is a very good shop in the hotel arcade, sir. It sells excellent gentlemen’s clothing….”

“Suits?” Pascal said on a suspicious note.

“More your actual informal wear, sir. I think you’d find it to your taste. It stays open until eight.”

“Excellent.” Pascal gave the man a very generous tip. He went downstairs at once. He inspected the shop in question warily, since clothes did not interest him in the least, and he bought them rarely, only when the previous garments gave up the ghost. Steeling himself, he went inside and began grabbing things from shelves.

“These,” he said, “and these. And three of these. And those over there…”

The pile on the counter mounted. The assistant watched him, straight-faced. “They’re all black, sir. You’re sure you—”

“Yes, yes, black,” said Pascal, proffering plastic. He was already bored with this. “Everything black. It’s simpler like that.”

The assistant knew a pushover when he saw one: customers in a hurry were usually the best. Besides, this customer would be a pleasure to advise. He was tall, lean, rangy. He deserved to be well dressed.

“If I might make a few suggestions, sir? To complement these purchases. A classic white shirt, perhaps? We have Turnbull and Asser in stock. And a nice tie to go with it. Knitted silk is back….”

Pascal was not aware that knitted silk had ever been away. He gave the man a blank look. “Ties? Ties? I never wear ties….”

“For a dinner engagement, sir? Or a business meeting, perhaps?”

Pascal hesitated. He had a sudden vision of Gini seated next to him at a candlelit table. He and Gini were drinking champagne and eating wonderful food. Gini looked rapturously happy. Women liked to be taken to restaurants, he thought vaguely. He frowned.

“A tie,” he said in a meditative tone. “A tie. Yes, maybe you’re right.”

“And then, sir, we have the new Armani jackets just in. The unstructured look, with just a
fraction
more tailoring than last year. Now, this one here…” He produced a jacket. Unfortunately, Pascal looked at the price tag. An expression of pure horror came upon his face.

“Ah, no. Here I draw the line. Impossible. Unthinkable. Indefensible. I have a leather jacket upstairs.”

“Ah, yes. But for that dinner engagement, sir? Would the leather really be suitable? This is cashmere, of course.”

Pascal still looked shaken, and unconvinced. Inspiration came to the assistant.

“And then it would last, sir, there’s always that. Classic styling, superb fabric. Ten years from now, you could still be wearing it.”

Pascal was less naive than he seemed. He knew an astute sales pitch when he heard one. He smiled and made a quick calculation: Perhaps it could be justified, this once. He added the white shirt, the knitted tie, and the jacket to the pile.

“
Ça suffit.
Not a sock, not a belt, not an item more. Enough.”

Returning to his hotel room, Pascal made an effort. He actually hung up the new clothes. Then they made him feel guilty and despondent. Restaurant, what restaurant? He’d probably never even take Gini to a restaurant. They would work together during the day, and then in the evenings she’d go out with whoever was the new man in her life. He glowered at the foolish clothes and shut the door on them at once.