“DAMN,” GINI SAID. “DAMN, damn, damn…”
She slammed down the telephone receiver. From across her living room, Pascal watched her. He was holding the pair of handcuffs she had been sent. In a thoughtful way he weighed them from hand to hand.
“They won’t cooperate?”
“Won’t or can’t. The woman who took delivery of the parcels isn’t there this afternoon. Her mother’s ill apparently, so they let her go home. She’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning. Her name’s Susannah. We can talk to her then.”
“Can’t someone else help? It must all be on computer.”
“Of course it’s on computer. ICD is a huge firm. But this Susannah has to give her authorization, apparently. All transactions are confidential. We’ll have to go down there, Pascal. Tomorrow. I can tell we’ll get precisely nowhere on the phone.”
“That’s okay. I’ll go down there, first thing—”
“We’ll go down there,” Gini said a little sharply. “We’ll both go. I want to talk to this Susannah as well.”
“Sure.” Pascal hesitated, then glanced away; Gini frowned. They had returned here, to Islington, straight from McMullen’s apartment. It was now past three in the afternoon, and the wintry light was fading. Gini’s clothes were still soaked, but she couldn’t be bothered to change them. She could still feel it, that adrenaline rush, the sensation that one more phone call might bring a vital lead they needed. She couldn’t understand Pascal’s reaction: Surely he felt this too?
He gave no sign of it. Indeed, from the moment she showed him the handcuffs she could sense a change in him, a withdrawal, a slowing-down.
She looked at him uncertainly. There was something he was keeping from her, she felt sure of it. He was still standing, holding the handcuffs. All the energy and drive of the morning seemed to have left him. For the past hour, while she explained, and telephoned, he had remained silent and thoughtful. Now he looked up, with a frown.
“You should change your clothes, Gini—take a warm shower. You’re soaked through. There’s nothing more we can usefully do now anyway. We’ll just have to wait. And that’s no bad thing. It gives us time to talk this over, think it through.”
“Pascal, is something wrong?”
“Wrong? Wrong?” He gave her an odd glance. “Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong. Someone sends you a pair of handcuffs. It’s the most normal thing in the world….”
“So? They sent you a glove. There’s a direct link to McMullen. It has to be some kind of signal, some kind of clue. Four parcels were sent out altogether, the courier told me. One to you, one to me—and two others, which both went abroad. Don’t you see, Pascal—if we can just find out who sent them, where the other two went…It has to be a lead. It just has to….”
“Oh, I agree. We’ve been handed it on a plate. And I don’t like that at all.”
“So it’s too convenient, too pat—who cares? We still have to check it out. As soon as we can—”
“Who cares? I care.” He gave her an angry glance. “And if you thought for a second instead of flying off the handle like this, you’d care too. Do you usually work like this—it’s your method, is it—to act first and think afterward? Well, it isn’t mine. Just slow down.”
Gini started on some quick sharp reply, then stopped herself. The accusation stung, particularly coming from Pascal. Also, there was some truth in it, as she knew. She could be impetuous when she worked. Sometimes that had paid dividends, but not always: It could lead to errors, to trouble as well.
Her father had always said that the secret of journalism was detail, a passion for detail: “I check,” he used to say, “then cross-check, then cross-check again. I put the pieces of the puzzle together very slowly and very carefully. Then, when I’ve got every piece in place—every piece, mind you, not just some of them…Well, then I’m home and dry. That’s the good part.” He grinned. “That’s when I nail the lying bastards to the wall.”
She felt herself color, and looked away. Both her father and Pascal were right. In a careful voice, avoiding Pascal’s eyes, she said, “Sure. Maybe you’re right. I can rush at things. Go too fast. I do know that….”
Pascal seemed to ignore the implicit apology. He shrugged. “When we’re starting out,” he said, “we all do….”
Gini swung around to look at him. There was a small loaded silence.
“Starting out?” she began. “I’m not starting out, Pascal. I know I haven’t reached your exalted heights, but I have been a reporter for nearly ten years. I’ve worked on some big stories. I’m not a schoolgirl now. For God’s sake…” She felt a sudden spurt of anger. “I’m not some kid out of journalism school, Pascal. I’m twenty-seven years old.”
“It’s not likely I’d forget your age.” His face, too, had become set. “I’ve every reason to remember it, given past circumstances.”
“I don’t believe this….” Gini rose angrily to her feet. “Do you have to bring that up now?”
“I didn’t bring it up,” he snapped. “You did. And in any case, you misunderstood. When I said starting out, I wasn’t suggesting you lacked experience. I meant starting out on a new story, that’s all.”
“The hell you did. Don’t lie. You were patronizing me. You were putting me down.”
“I damn well was not.” His eyes glinted with anger. “You’re jumping to conclusions again. You’re getting things wrong. Look, Gini, if we’re going to work together—”
“If? If?” She took a step toward him. “I was damn well assigned to this story. No ifs and no buts. If you don’t like that, Pascal, too bad because—”
“Jesus Christ!” Pascal began to swear, at length, and in French. They were now only a few feet apart. The warm air in the room was acrid with sudden anger. Gini felt flushed and hot, almost blinded by resentment, and a horrible weakening distress. She never wept—it was years since she had wept—but she could feel now that tears were close.
She was about to launch herself on some new angry reply when something in his eyes stopped her. The anger fell away. She gave a small resigned gesture, and to her surprise Pascal suddenly took her hand and drew her toward him. He, too, was no longer angry, she saw. There was sadness and bewilderment in his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’re arguing about the past, aren’t we, Gini? Not this story at all. We’re fighting about something that happened twelve years ago.”
Gini gave a sigh, and looked away. “Yes. You’re right. I guess we are….”
“We mustn’t do that. Gini.” His hand tightened its grip. “Look at me. If we let that happen…. We mustn’t make that mistake….”
“I know that. I know that. It’s just sometimes…Pascal, it’s not so easy to put it aside, to forget…”
“I know that too. It spills over, and then—” His tone was gentle now. “Listen, Gini. You’re right—that time it was my fault. I expressed myself badly. I’m not used to working with anyone else, I expect. I’ve been a loner too long. I get irritable and impatient. But there is a reason, Gini, can’t you see that? You’re a woman—no, listen to me. You’re a woman, living alone, and someone’s sent you an anonymous gift. A pair of handcuffs. Now, that may not alarm you, but it alarms me.” He looked down at Gini as he said this. He watched as color came and went in her face, and her expression changed, as if within her a short and painful struggle took place.
“I’m not used to that,” she answered at last in an odd, stiff voice. He could hear pride and pain in her tone. “I’m not used to someone’s being protective, maybe it’s that. I usually work alone, and I live alone. There’s no reason for anyone to care where I go, what I do, what time I get back. I guess I’ve made a fetish of that. And then—” She broke off.
“Tell me,” Pascal said.
She raised her head to look at him. An odd, pinched expression had come over her face.
“Oh, nothing…” She made an attempt to sound dismissive. “My father always said women couldn’t be independent, the way a man could. I used to think I’d prove him wrong. Maybe I have proved him wrong. I’m different, Pascal—I’m not the girl you used to know.”
“I’m not so sure of that.”
“I am. I was so weak then, so stupid. I rushed into things. I let my heart rule my head.”
“That’s not always a sin, is it?”
“Maybe not. Just a part of growing up. Anyway”—she released his hand, and stepped back—“I’m different now, Pascal. I can take care of myself. I find any protectiveness from a man hard to deal with.”
“You do?” Pascal looked at her curiously. “Why is that?”
Gini smiled suddenly. “Oh, I guess because I’m afraid I’ll get to like it. Depend on it—”
“And that would be a bad thing?”
“Judging from past experience, yes.”
“I see.” Pascal frowned, then he too smiled. “Well, if it helps, think of it as a weakness on my part. My French upbringing, an irresistible impulse to be gallant. I’d be protective to any woman, in these circumstances. It’s my age—it’s a sort of generalized complaint I suffer from.”
There was a silence. Gini, looking back at Pascal, saw an expression she could not interpret cross his face. Abruptly, he moved away from her. When he next spoke, his voice was much more brisk.
“So,” he said. “That’s cleared the air, I hope? Maybe if we make a few rules? No references to the past. If my protectiveness gets out of hand, you rein me in. Meantime, I still think you should change those wet clothes. While you do that, I’ll make us some coffee. Then we’ll sit by the fire and talk this story through, yes?”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“Fine. Now, think this over. There’s one peculiar thing, something that especially puzzles me.”
“Yes?”
“Take a look at the timing on this. We were assigned to the Hawthorne story yesterday morning. That same morning we each received a parcel. Who knew we’d be working on the story?”
“Nicholas Jenkins.”
“Who else?”
“No one. Until I went into his office, even I didn’t know. And neither did you.”
“Yet someone else did know, don’t you see that, Gini?” Pascal frowned. “They must have known. They sent out those parcels twenty-four hours before we were even briefed. They laid out a trail for us before we even started work. It can’t be coincidence. Someone else knew we’d be working together on this. Can you explain that? Because I certainly can’t.”
When the door closed behind Gini, Pascal knew he could stop acting. He ran his hands through his hair. He began to pace the room. He told himself that he had at least managed to disguise it, but his agitation was intense. It had been a mistake to touch Gini. He should never have allowed himself to take her hand. He should not have lost his temper, that was the worst mistake: That made it all shortcircuit, brought the past roaring back. Three weeks in a war zone twelve years before, but the time gap was immaterial. He had wanted Gini now; he had wanted her then. The need was unchanged, still as sharp as ever. It was as immediate, as fierce. Yesterday, yesterday, he told himself; yesterday he’d felt safe. He’d been watching her carefully, right through the lunch with Nicholas Jenkins, and he’d been able to tell himself that he was, thank God, invulnerable now. This was a new Gini, a stranger: Of course he could work with this woman—when he looked at her he felt nothing at all.
“The thing is,” Jenkins had said before Gini arrived, “she’s a good reporter. She’s quick, she’s got an instinct for leads. She does her homework. You could make a good team….” Pascal could hear the “but” coming; he waited. Jenkins grinned. “But—and it’s a big but—she can be difficult to work with. Like a lot of the ladies now…you know, the feminist thing.”
Jenkins made a face. “Plus, she has one helluva chip on her shoulder about her father. Every fucking story she works on—it has to be bloody perfect. Daddy might read it, you see. Not that Daddy ever does, I suspect, because Daddy doesn’t give a damn by all accounts. But she can’t see that. She’s trying to prove something, and when she writes an article, she’s writing it for him.”
“I’ve met her father.” Pascal gave Jenkins a quick glance, but there was no reaction. Again Jenkins grinned.
“You have? Well then, you’ll know. Just stay off the subject of Sam Hunter and his fucking Pulitzer Prize. She’ll sing his praises for an entire evening. Believe me, I know.” A note of more personal resentment entered his voice as he made this remark. An overture rejected?
“Anything else?” Pascal said.
“Yes. She’s pushy. Sharp. Very good-looking, of course, but a bit short in the female charm department.”
“Meaning?”
“Put it this way. She can freeze a man’s balls at five paces. So don’t try making a pass.”
“That’s okay.” Pascal gave him a cold look. “I’m here to work with her.”
Jenkins laughed. “Pascal, please—so very PC. Just wait till you see her.” He sketched a female outline with his hands. “You may just change your mind.”
And then Gini had come into the room; for a moment Pascal did not recognize her. He stared at this tall, thin young woman. She had a cool manner, a slightly combative air. He looked at her with dismay and with regret. He thought: My lovely Gini, and then he thought: All that beauty, and it’s gone.
All through lunch he felt the same. He could see that she disliked Jenkins, and was containing her hostility for him with some difficulty—that was fine; his own reaction was much the same. But it was more than that. She gave off an almost palpable chill. She sat opposite him, and she never once smiled. It seemed to him, as time passed, that there was something false, something forced, in her behavior, as if she chose to act a part. Such pains to play the professional, to emphasize the information on Hawthorne she possessed. And then she couldn’t resist capping the remarks Pascal himself made, remarks to which she had listened with a tight set face.
“Your turn, Gini, there’s plenty to add,” Jenkins had said.
“There certainly is,” she’d replied with a dismissive glance in Pascal’s direction.
It was a put-down, and it startled him. Watching her, he thought: How changed she is—she’s hard as nails.
She showed no emotion as the story about Hawthorne emerged: There was no sign of shock, or sympathy, just that cold, alert, dispassionate appraisal. Pascal had watched it, listened to it, and it seemed to him deeply unfeminine. By the end of the lunch he was hideously depressed. He had known that Gini must be altered; it had not occurred to him she would become a woman he disliked.
When they left the building, he was arguing with himself; he was telling himself that with dislike came relief. He could work with this woman: There was no entanglement here. The girl he remembered, he told himself, was dead. She was a ghost, a phantom, alive only in his memory; how strange. For twelve years he had been thinking about her, and now that he’d met her again, she did not exist
And then something happened!—something he could not explain. A little magic, a trick of the light, some accidental angle of the head, some shadow that passed across her eyes. She had been silent in the half-dusk, staring toward the security gate across the yard, and then, suddenly, a transformation took place. Suddenly he could see the girl in the woman she had become: He glimpsed vulnerability beneath that new combative façade. He saw the ghost of the girl in the shape of her eyes, in the curve of her cheek. He rested his eyes on her face, and he saw again that she was lovely. Recognition flooded through him; a sudden and astonishing joy swept through him. Before he could stop himself, he greeted her. He said her name, in the old way, in the old accents. She swung around, startled, color ebbing from her cheeks, and before she could disguise it, it was there, still there, absolutely unaltered, that quality he had once loved, transparent in her face.
Nothing he could define: Gravity, honesty, the courage to give joy—in the past he had used these poor terms, and others equally inexact to explain the inexplicable, what it was that he found delightful in her face. He had tried many times in Beirut to capture it on film. He had of course failed. Film could not capture her resonance any more than words could: Film froze the instant; it could not convey the touch of her hand, or the tone of her voice. This reductiveness became a challenge. Pascal told himself that the camera could and did convey so much: It could convey anger, happiness, desolation, vanity, grief. His determination to capture her on film became an obsession with him, a quest. “Stand here,” he would say. “Turn your face to the light. Look at me. Yes. Yes. That’s right….”
But what he saw with his eyes was not what his lenses recorded. When he looked at the printed images, they were effective but dead. He kept them, nevertheless, and one of them in particular, just a small black and white shot, he kept still. Sitting in Gini’s London room now, he drew it out.
He had taken it late one afternoon, close by the harbor. From a technical point of view it was a failure, he knew that. The light had been difficult, the shutter speed, possibly the aperture, incorrect. It was overexposed: Her face was given a translucent, hazy quality, the fault of reflected light. Even so, it was his favorite picture. Looking at it in the past, even looking at it now, he knew why he had kept it, why he had allowed it to become such a talisman. It was a young girl, just a girl, someone who had lied about her age and who was in fact much younger than he had realized when he took this shot. Her pale hair blew across her forehead; she was wearing only one earring and a loose, ordinary open-neck shirt. She had a wide-set, level-eyed gaze; she was half frowning, half smiling. It was an unremarkable picture in every way, it belied his professional gifts, it was, to most eyes, just a pretty girl, with the movement of waves behind her, a typical holiday snap—but to Pascal it was of crucial importance. To look at this was to look at his own truth, a truth that would never alter or erode. Whatever love meant, however much, later, he came to doubt its deceptions and seductions, there was still this. The day he took this picture, his camera had been lucky—for once it had captured joy. That still had the capacity to astonish him: He was so used, by then, to capturing death.
It happened, he told himself now. It happened, and this picture had been his proof. Then, not half an hour earlier, he had seen far greater proof than this. He had seen the past as he remembered and hoped it had been: He had seen it written in Gini’s eyes and face. Let go, he thought; he had no further need for photographs.
Bending, on a sudden impulse, he touched the picture to the flames of the fire, and watched it catch. It burned instantly, in a flare of chemicals, and he brushed the telltale ashes underfoot. Rituals had their uses. To acknowledge once and for all that it had happened, but it was over, helped. Hearing movement from the room beyond, he went out to the kitchen and made coffee. Colleagues, friends, professionals, a working team: He said this to himself.
“What we will do,” he announced cheerfully when Gini returned, “is go out for dinner, have some good red wine, some food, discuss the case.”
He broke off. Gini was watching him quietly. She agreed, in a subdued way, that this was a good course.
Pascal was careful; he kept up this note of camaraderie until, a while later, they were about to leave her apartment. Then, although he knew it was wise to leave the past interred, because that way it retained its perfection and its power, and it remained untainted by the mess he had made of the rest of his life, he asked a foolish question, one he had resolved not to ask.
“That earring,” he said as they were moving toward the door. “You remember? The one we chose together? Did you keep it? Do you ever wear it?”
A bad question. Gini crimsoned. “The earring? No—I don’t wear it. In fact, I don’t know if I still have it. The last time I moved apartments I lost it, I think.” She unlatched the chain on her door and held it open for her cat, who marched ahead of them, tail waving, intent on exploring the streets.
“Come on, Pascal,” she said. “The reservation’s for eight. We’ll be late.”
The restaurant Gini had chosen was a few blocks from her apartment; it was a small, unpretentious neighborhood place run by a local Italian family. Midweek, it was quiet and it served simple good food.
They were given an alcove table to the rear of the restaurant. On either side of them there were photographs of Italian film actors and Italian soccer stars; the walls were painted white; the ceiling was strung with Chianti bottles and plastic vines. Pascal looked at these decorations and smiled.
“A little Italy in North London. It’s nice, Gini.”
“It’s quiet. The pasta’s good. We can talk.”
When the waiter had brought them their spaghetti and salads, and poured the wine, Pascal drew out a notebook.
“Now,” he said, “let’s make a start.”
“List the possible leads? Sure.”
“First there’s the courier company, obviously. We find out where the other two parcels went, and who sent them. That may indicate why they were sent, whether or not it’s a deliberate trail….”
“Then there’s McMullen himself….” Gini leaned forward. “We ought to trace his family and his friends. Check out his past—Oxford, that army career. It could help us to find him.”
“Jenkins gave me some contacts—names and phone numbers. He sent them with the tape….” Pascal tapped the notebook thoughtfully. “There’s that sister of his, for instance, the one mentioned on the tape. An ex-actress, apparently. It would be worth talking to her.”
“She lives in London?”
“Yes. Near Sloane Square. The parents are still alive too—apparently the father’s an art historian. Distinguished, according to Jenkins.”
“London?”
“No. Shropshire, unfortunately. Miles away—and I’d rather not approach them by phone. Not initially anyway. The sister first, then, and some of the friends.”
“Are there many?”
“Not according to Jenkins. McMullen seems to be something of a loner.”
“And then there’s Hawthorne himself,” Gini said. “We could try checking out parts of McMullen’s story. After all, if Hawthorne requires these blondes every month, there must be some source of supply. How do you hire a blonde, Pascal?”
Pascal shrugged. “Escort agencies, call-girl networks. Talk to the head porter in any top London hotel.”
“Hawthorne’s not exactly likely to do that, is he?”
“No, but the point is, it’s not difficult. If a man has the money, the women are available.”
“I can’t believe he’d go through some agency.” Gini shook her head. “It’s too public, too risky.”
“I would say so too. On the other hand, he would use a false name, obviously.”
“But he’s so well known, Pascal. He’d be recognized.”
“So? He wouldn’t be the first—or the last—famous man to hire call girls. You can buy discretion—and cooperation—if you know where to go.”
“You sound very knowledgeable.”
“I am very knowledgeable. I’ve been down this particular route before.”
“Call girls? Prostitutes?”
“Models. Massage parlors. Madames. Sure. Come on, Gini”—he tapped the notebook impatiently—“whom do you imagine I get leads from? Bank presidents? You know the kind of work I do.”
“Yes. Yes. I know.” Gini looked away. There was a silence while Pascal continued to make notes, and she toyed with her food. She found she had lost her appetite. The question of Pascal’s present mode of working, of the kind of stories he now chose to cover lay between them, a territory she would have liked to explore. She would have liked to ask him why he had embarked on this work, and whether he saw it as a betrayal of himself and his gifts. But the question was one she instinctively shied away from. Let it wait until she had been working with him longer, until he perhaps had more reason to trust her than he did now. For he did not trust her now, not entirely; she could sense that. Perhaps he trusted no one. Any mention of his wife, his child, or his work, and the shutters came down.
A shadow had passed across his face when he made his last remark about his sources. As he concentrated on his notes, however, that momentary darkening passed. She watched him as he jotted words and phrases, his concentration absolute. His dark hair, now graying a little at the temples, fell forward across his forehead. His eyes were lowered to the notebook in front of him. She could watch him with impunity, and with a secret pleasure too.
Pascal, who was altered and unaltered. There was, on his left cheekbone, a tiny scar, the mark of some childhood accident, some fall. Once upon a time, lying in darkness while the music from the dance hall below moved the air in his room, she had traced that scar with her fingers as he slept beside her. She had read all the details of his face with her fingers, the dear geography of eyes, nose, chin, throat, hair. She could remember with absolute precision the particular scent of his skin, the shape and grip of his hands, the ways, words, and hows of physical intimacy. She could remember little shafts of detail: ways he moved, inflections he used. It pained her that these recollections were so sharp, for there was now, of course, one component missing, the component that gave vitality to all the rest. Once, when they looked at each other, there had been such interaction of the eyes. But then, lovers did not need words, because a glance spoke a better language.
“Is something wrong?” Pascal looked up suddenly.
“No. Nothing.” She snapped back to the lesser present. “Why?”
“You looked sad, that’s all.”
“Not sad, concentrated. I was just thinking about this story….” She gestured toward the waiter. “Shall we get some coffee?”
He nodded, lit a cigarette.
“We have one other lead,” she went on, speaking rapidly. “That piece of paper I found in McMullen’s apartment, we mustn’t forget that. It might mean something—and it might mean nothing at all.”
She took out the scrap of paper as she said this and passed it across. Pascal frowned, holding it up to the candlelight. “Three sets of numbers. They’re not dates. They could be anything. A set of measurements, some combination…they could be old, or recent….”
“They’re carefully written, Pascal.”
“Even so. It could just be something someone jotted down. Then they needed a piece of paper to pad out that photograph frame, so they used this. It might not even be McMullen’s writing.”
“That’s true.” Gini took the piece of paper back from him and scanned it. “It’s just…the way McMullen disappeared. Why contact Jenkins, then disappear?”
“Something happened, obviously between the meeting when he delivered that tape and December twenty-first last year. Maybe he thought he was in danger.”
“But then surely he’d want to make contact? The story was reaching a crucial stage. He was about to provide that assignation address. If he had to disappear for any reason, surely he’d try to make contact of some kind.”
“Leave a trail, you mean? Possibly.” Pascal looked across at the paper. “But if that’s some kind of coded message, I can’t crack it, can you?”
“No. I can’t. But then, codes aren’t my strong point. Never were. We could try the obvious things, I guess, substituting letters for numbers. Try that, Pascal.”
“With the letter A as number one? Okay.” He scribbled in the notebook, then grinned. “Not too helpful. Look.” He passed the page to Gini. It now read like this:
3 C
6/2/6 F/B/F
2/1/6 B/A/F
“Gibberish. Damn.” Gini frowned. “Let’s try it with B as number one, or C. C is the third letter of the alphabet, maybe that’s what the number three at the top means…. Try that.”
They tried this and other combinations for some time. None of the combinations produced anything resembling a message, not even a clear word.
“Hopeless.” Pascal was the first to grow impatient. He pushed the paper to one side. “I think we’re wasting our time.”
“One last try. Think, Pascal. It was the only scrap of writing in that whole flat. It was inside Lise Hawthorne’s photograph. That suggests something, surely?”
“Maybe, maybe…” Pascal smiled. “I can see it’s tempting. Okay. Perhaps you missed something. Maybe you can’t make this work on its own. Maybe it has to be matched to something else. Tell me again how you found it.”
“I went through the desk twice. There was a leather blotter….”
“Clean blotting paper?”
“Pristine. Unused. I checked under it—nothing there. Then there was a pile of books, but there were books everywhere, on the shelves, on the coffee table, piled on the floor, by his bed—you saw.”
“You checked inside the books?”
“Obviously. Nothing. Oh, one of them had his name, his Oxford college, and a date written—1968. I’ll check, but I imagine it’s the date he was there.”
“Nothing underlined in the book texts, written in the margin?”
“Nothing I could see. I was looking quickly. They were well read, but clean.”
“What books were they?”
“A poetry anthology, Milton’s Paradise Lost, a Carson McMullers novel.”
“Eclectic.”
“Sure, but the bookshelves were the same. Novels, political works, poetry, history. Masses of history, maybe that was his subject at Oxford. Oh, and books in foreign languages, German, French, Italian…”
“A well-educated army officer. Interesting…” Pascal sighed. “It doesn’t seem to help, however. Go on.”
“That was it. The books, the blotter, the photograph of Lise—not a recent photograph by the way—and a leather container for pens and pencils. Nothing more.”
Pascal shook his head. “Then I don’t see it. It’s a blind alley.” He smiled. “You don’t know any friendly neighborhood code crackers by any chance?”
“Unfortunately, no. Not my line. Except—wait a minute. There is someone who might help. A friend of Mary’s, an erstwhile Cambridge don. He worked in military intelligence in the war—at least, I think he did. He compiles crosswords now, fiendish crosswords for The Times.”
She broke off. Pascal, she saw, was watching her closely, his expression absorbed.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” he said. “I like it when you concentrate, that’s all. There’s a certain expression that comes onto your face then. You push your hair back, behind your ears, and you…It’s nothing. Just the way the light was falling on your skin. My photographer’s eye.”
Gini looked at him uncertainly. Pascal rose abruptly to his feet.
“I’ll get the check,” he said. “And then I’ll walk you home.”
When they were back in her apartment, Pascal showed no inclination to leave. While Gini made coffee, he prowled the room. He checked the doors, the windows, the pictures, the bookshelves, in a way that made her nervous. She sat down by the fire, stroking Napoleon, while Pascal peered at framed posters from art exhibitions. Eventually, she could stand it no longer.
“Just what are you doing, Pascal?”
“What?” He swung around and gave her an absentminded look, as if his concentration were elsewhere.
“It’s a very ordinary apartment,” Gini said patiently. “Ordinary posters, pretty obvious books. You appear to be casing it. I just wondered why.”
“I’d like to know you perhaps.” He gave a shrug.
“You do know me.”
“Maybe. You’ve changed. I’m not so sure.”
“So what does your investigation tell you?”
“Oh, a number of things. We like the same painters. We’ve even been to some of the same art exhibitions. This one, for instance—in Paris.” He gestured at the poster. “You were there. I was there.”
“Yes, and so were roughly twenty-five thousand other people, Pascal. It was a very successful exhibition.”
“Even so.” He gave her a sharp glance. “It was in Paris. I live in Paris. That exhibition was last year.” He paused. “Did you go to it on your own?”
“Yes, I did, as it happens.”
“No boyfriend?”
“I was probably between boyfriends. I quite often am.”
“I also went to this exhibition on my own….” He hesitated again. “You never thought of calling me then, when you were in Paris?”
“No, I didn’t. Pascal, it was years since we met. You had a wife, a family, I—”
“Not last year. No wife. I was divorced three years ago. You knew that.”
“Did I?”
“That’s what you said yesterday. You said you’d heard.”
Gini looked away quickly. This deception was hard. She wondered what Pascal’s reaction would be if she told him the truth: that she could never go to Paris, or anywhere else in France for that matter, without every street, every café, singing his name. She remembered the times, the many times in the past, when she had walked the Paris boulevards, sat in Paris cafés, and seen his features in the air, in the reflections on the Seine. “What about London?” She turned back to look at him. “You must have been to London hundreds of times. You never called me, Pascal. You never wrote. There was just that one accidental meeting in Paris.”
It was Pascal’s turn to look away. He wondered what Gini’s reaction would be if he told her the truth: that he had called her, that he had spoken to her—many, many times, in his own mind. Could you explain to someone that despite absence and the passing of time, it was perfectly possible to maintain an imagined dialogue with her, that those exchanges could take on vitality, a life of their own? No, you could not explain, he decided grimly, any more than you could explain how their influence remained with you, how it entered into you and stained you, and how sometimes, with a particularly painful trickery, it would surface in dreams.
He stared at the curtains of Gini’s room, and for a brief instant saw his own home in Paris, the home he had then shared with Helen, five years before. Mid-afternoon, spring sunshine; his daughter was asleep in the next room; Helen had gone shopping. He picked up the telephone, put it down; he did this three times, then finally he dialed.
He had seen Gini outside that café just a few hours before. All that time, the impulse had been mounting. Now, guiltily, he gave in to it. During that brief glacial embarrassed conversation she had mentioned the name of her hotel. Such was his perturbation, he was incapable of thinking. All he knew was that he had to speak to her, hear the sound of her voice. So he dialed, spoke to the receptionist, waited; his pulse accelerated. The room number rang three times, four, five…. Then a man’s voice answered. Pascal froze. He should have foreseen this, it was so obvious, and she had made the situation perfectly clear…. He was about to hang up, and then found he was unable to do so:
Je peux parler à Mademoiselle Hunter?
Non. Je regrette…. The Englishman’s French was good, almost unaccented. There was a slight pause. Elle est partie.
Quand?
Cet après-midi—une demi-heure…Vous voulez laisser un message?
Non. Ce n’est pas important. Merci. Au revoir….
He knew, as he replaced the receiver, that Helen had returned. He could feel her presence through his shoulder blades. He swung around.
“No luck?” She gave a small, tight smile. “What a disappointment for you. I wondered when you’d call.” She gave a quick glance down at her watch. “Two and a half hours. I’m surprised you waited that long. But then, of course, you couldn’t call earlier, could you? I was here.”
She placed her shopping bag on the table and began calmly to unpack it: bread, wine, vegetables, cheese. “Never mind, Pascal. Try her next time you’re in England. She’ll be delighted to hear from you. She made that very clear.”
“She’s a friend,” Pascal began hopelessly. “I told you—”
“Oh, I know what you told me—and you lie terribly badly. You always did. I thought that particularly interesting. After all—why lie? Why should I care? It was years before you met me. Just another of your foreign affairs. Why pretend otherwise—unless, of course, it was a very special affair. Was it special, Pascal?”
“I won’t discuss this. You’re wrong. You wouldn’t understand….”
“Wrong?” She met his eyes coldly. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. Not at all. I find it quite remarkable that you’ve never once mentioned her name, not in all the years I’ve known you. So secretive. Her hands were shaking—did you notice?”
“No, I damn well didn’t.”
“Well, they were.”
“Look, can we just forget this?”
“Oh, I can. Probably.” Her gaze became coolly speculative.
“The question is, can you?” She folded the grocery bag very deliberately. “Unfinished business, I’d say. I can always tell. My advice would be to go to London, finish it off, and when you’ve got it out of your system, come home.”
“Helen—”
“Why not? It’s much the best way. Go to bed with her. You obviously still want to. Why else phone?”
“For Christ’s sake, that’s the only reason to phone a woman, is it? Because you want to go to bed with her?”
“No. Of course not. But it’s the reason in your case, whether you know it or not.”
“That’s not true.”
“Do you know, I really don’t care? I don’t care anymore where you go, what you do, or whom you screw.” She paused, gave him a considering look. “Have you been faithful? Are you faithful?”
“As a matter of fact, yes, I am. With difficulty.”
As always, anger and retaliation pleased her. She gave another chill smile. “Well, don’t fight it anymore on my account, Pascal. If you loved me, I might feel differently. But since you don’t, it really makes no difference. Feel free. Fuck around.”
She turned away, still quite calmly, opened the refrigerator, and began to put away the groceries. Pascal lost his temper. He smashed his hand down hard on the kitchen table.
“Why,” he shouted. “Why do you say that? I married you, after all.”
“Ah, yes. You married me.” She turned around and looked at him. “And you said that you loved me. I even believed you—for a while.”
“I believed it, damn you.” He hit the table again, and knocked over the wine. “I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”
Helen righted the bottle expertly. She gave him a cool glance. “Ah, but did you believe it, Pascal? I could see you tried—but did you really believe it in your heart?”
There was a silence, a long silence. Pascal turned away and Helen sighed.
“Precisely,” she said, and this time the bitterness came through in her voice. “Maybe that’s why I never felt like your wife even with your ring on my hand. Face facts, Pascal. You married me because I very unwisely let you get me pregnant. You married me because it was the decent thing to do, and you can be a decent man. Very sweet, very touching—only then, unfortunately, I lost the child.”
Her voice had risen. It hit a high, strained note. Pascal swung around.
“Why?” he said. He could scarcely speak. “Why, in God’s name, do you do this?”
“Because it’s the truth. Do you think I’m totally blind? After my miscarriage I knew exactly what you were thinking. You were thinking you needn’t have married me after all.”
“How can you say that?” He advanced on her, white-faced. “I was here. I did everything possible. I found us this apartment—you said you wanted this apartment. I gave up job after job—for six months, longer, I scarcely left your side. My mother tried to help.”
“Oh, don’t bring your bloody boring mother into this. Your mother thinks like a French peasant. She thinks childbirth’s nothing. She expects a woman to give birth like some bloody animal in a farmyard. What does she understand?”
Pascal bit back an angry reply. His mother had come up to Paris, had stayed several months, had tried hard to help Helen after the miscarriage: She had shopped for her, cooked for her, and been insulted for her pains. He looked at his wife, and his face hardened.
“Forget that, then,” he said. “Distort everything. There’s one thing even you can’t forget. We had Marianne.”
A tiny spasm of pain tightened her face. She made a shaky gesture of the hand, then regained control. “Ah, yes. We had Marianne. I finally gave you a reason to stay with me. Thanks, Pascal.”
She turned away and began to set the table for Marianne’s meal. She shook out a tablecloth, found a bib, a child’s plate, Marianne’s special spoon. Pascal felt a sense of pain and bewilderment. Some of these charges were old, some new, and they left him wary. He had been down this particular road so often before. He could go to Helen and hold her; she would cry. Later, a day later, two days later, it would begin all over again.
Perhaps she had been expecting him to make just such an overture, because when he did not, it angered her. Two patches of color rose in her cheeks. She stopped setting the table, looked up at him.
“I always knew,” she said on a tight shrill note of control. “Right from the very beginning. Before you married me—I knew then. I knew there was someone else at the back of your mind. Well, at least she has a face now. I’m glad I’ve seen her. And she has an interesting face, I’ll say that much. A lover in tow, of course, but I’m sure that won’t worry you. He was so much older than she was, and your little Genevieve didn’t seem very keen.”
Her use of Genevieve’s name made him flinch. His face became pale with anger. He turned, and moved toward the door. “That’s enough.” He could not bring himself to look at her. “I’m going out. I’m not listening to this anymore.”
“Just tell me, was it really an accidental meeting, Pascal? Or did you know she was in Paris? Was it planned?”
“No, it damn well wasn’t planned. I told you. I had no idea she was here. I haven’t seen her in years.”
“I’m sure you’ll make up for lost time.” She smiled. “Take my advice. Pursue her to London. Maybe then you’ll learn the lesson I’ve learned, the hard way.”
Pascal was in the doorway. He stopped. “Lesson? What lesson?”
“Perfection doesn’t exist, Pascal. And if it does, it doesn’t last. So fuck around in London. Have your affair. Then you’ll find out how it feels.”
“I do not understand. I do not damn well understand….”
“You will. Because you’ll find out she’s not the person you imagined, just the way you weren’t the person I imagined. Try it, Pascal.” She gave a thin tight laugh. “Find out how it feels to fuck a dream.”
He could still hear the words, their precise intonation. They repeated themselves, and again repeated themselves. They invaded Gini’s living room. Pascal looked around him blankly. He had been asked a question, and he had not answered it. Gini was still watching him expectantly. In the interval, how many centuries, how many seconds had passed? Helen’s advice had never been taken, and one of the many reasons for that was a residual fear, still with him, that her final remark might be true.
He turned back to face Gini. She continued to stroke her cat; Napoleon purred. Gini bent to him affectionately; one gold strand of her hair mingled with his marmalade fur. Pascal thought: She does not look like a dream, or an invention, she looks as I remember her—actual, exact, real. “London?” he said. Gini smiled; the time gap, then, must have been short between question and reply. How odd, the distortions of the mind.
“Yes, London,” she replied. “You must have come here very often. You never called.”
“I know.” He gave an awkward gesture. “Superstition, maybe.”
“Not anger?”
“No. Not anger. Never that. I was angry when you left Beirut. Not afterward.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.”
She gave a sigh. “I’m glad.”
There was a silence. Outside, the rain still fell, and Gini listened to it. It was lulling, peaceful; she could feel a new contentment creeping up on her. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Pascal was still standing, watching her, his manner awkward. “You’re tired,” he said, “it’s late. I ought to go.” But he hesitated. “You’ll lock the door after me? Bolt it? You promise me?”
“Of course.”
“Gini, I mean it. I don’t like to leave you alone, in a basement flat.”
“Pascal, I’ll be perfectly fine. I told you. I’ve never had a break-in, and—”
“And you’ve never been sent a pair of handcuffs before,” he said. “Gini, take this seriously. This story on Hawthorne. It’s a story about sadism. With women as the victims.”
“We don’t even know if the story is true.”
“Maybe not. But someone knows where you live. Whoever sent those handcuffs knows where you live. If he knows that much, he probably also knows you live alone.”
“Pascal, don’t.” She rose and crossed to him. “You’re adding two and two and making ten.”
“Oh, no.” He looked down at her gently, touched her face, then drew away. “I have an instinct for trouble. And I can feel it coming. I know.”
There was obvious concern in his voice and his eyes, and Gini was touched by it. Looking up at him, she said, “No one’s safe, not these days, Pascal. Not me, not you…”
Something flickered in his eyes, some glint of amusement or irony. “Oh, I know that,” he replied. “Believe me, I know.” There was a tiny pause, a beat, as if he waited for her to pick up some meaning in this remark, then Pascal turned to the door. “I’ll call you in the morning, at eight?”
“Eight would be fine.”
“I’ll pick you up around eight-thirty. We can be down at that courier office by nine.”
Still he lingered. Gini, who wanted him to linger, stared at the floor.
Eventually, still awkwardly, he touched her hand. “Good night,” he said.
“Good night, Pascal.”
She closed the door behind him, and bolted it, as promised. Then she stood for a long while, looking at her own warm, familiar room. Something about it puzzled her, and it took her some time to understand what it was. Then she realized. It was the same room but depleted. It lacked Pascal’s presence. It felt a thousand times emptier than it had ever felt before.