THE HEART COULD MEND, Gini thought. She raised herself on one elbow and looked down at Pascal’s face. He was sleeping deeply still, but then, it was early, only just six o’clock. His dark hair was rumpled, falling across his forehead. Sleep eased the intensity of his features, and one by one she enumerated these accidents of nature she so loved: this the brows, this the cheekbones, this the mouth. A ray of sunlight moved against his face; he stirred, then returned to sleep. Gini leaned over him, watching him with a jealous delight. If she kissed him, she wondered, just very lightly, would he wake?
She decided against it. She wanted this morning to be perfect, and she had preparations to make. Very quietly, she eased herself from the bed and stood by the balustrade looking down at their wonderful tall studio room, and its great north window, and its curtains edged with light.
They had been back in London two days. No one knew yet that they had returned. They had been right to keep their arrival a secret, she thought. Most of their friends would be away this weekend at the christening of Max and Charlotte’s daughter. She and Pascal had been away for so long, over three months, that people were unlikely to call anyway. Even so, this secrecy gave them a few days’ more protection from intrusion. They were alone, and it felt intoxicating, as if they possessed this city. She gave a quick impulsive gesture of exultation, hugging her happiness to herself. A May day, she thought; a beautiful May day in which the sun would shine without fail, and the new leaves would move in the lightest of breezes beneath the arch of their window. A May day; a heart mended; yes, happily ever after—a new life.
She crept down the stairs to the room below and began quietly to tidy it. Today had to be perfect, so she threw away yesterday’s newspapers, and neatly stacked the books she had been reading the previous afternoon, and folded a sweater Pascal had tossed down the night before. Then, on an impulse, she unshook the folds again and pressed her face against the wool; it smelled just discernibly of his skin and his hair, and at this time she felt inexpressibly happy. She thought: I was right; all my predictions were correct, and—refolding the sweater—she told herself that although occasionally he still infiltrated her dreams, she had cured herself of Rowland McGuire. She and Pascal had been close, very close, to disaster, but they had inched away from it, and escaped.
The escape had not been an easy one; there had been times in Paris when she had despaired, as had Pascal. But something—God, luck, perseverance—had been there to assist them. And now, today, she could feel her own good fortune: she might not have merited it, but fortune was hers and it had been lavishly dispensed.
Twice blessed, she thought, and gave a little pirouette of impromptu joy. Then she pulled the sweater on over her thin white nightdress because she wanted to feel Pascal against her skin. She padded out to the kitchen and began her preparations dreamily, laying a tray—maybe she should put a flower on that tray? Absurd, she thought; but these details mattered because she wanted them both to remember them always. So: perfect tray, perfect breakfast; and a perfect beginning to this, a perfect day.
“What a day…” someone remarked as Rowland opened the back door to Max’s house and stepped out into the freshness of the May morning.
Rowland halted, annoyed. It was not seven yet; he had not expected anyone else to be up. He had certainly not expected to encounter anyone else in Max’s garden, and the accents and intonation of that particular voice filled him with foreboding. He glared to left and right. No one was visible.
“Perfect,” he replied in a discouraging tone.
“A perfect day for a walk,” said the voice, which now appeared to come from behind a clipped yew. “Mind if I join you?”
Rowland did mind. He minded very much. He accelerated in the opposite direction, around a hedge, and along a laburnum tunnel. Just when he was congratulating himself on the success of this maneuver, Markov—the risible figure of Markov—materialized at his side.
“What a good idea,” Markov said in faintly satiric tones. “A walk before breakfast on an English spring morning. The wind in one’s face. A stride across the hills. Or maybe a gentle meander along the river valley…”
Rowland gave Markov one quick, assessing glance. He had not the least idea why Max and Charlotte had been insane enough to invite Markov to the christening of their daughter, although he assumed Lindsay had had a hand in the invitation. He regretted his presence in their house, and he regretted it even more here. He looked Markov up and down. The intolerable man was, as he had been the previous evening, wearing foolish clothes. His trousers appeared to be made of black velvet. His jacket—no, Rowland could not bring himself to look at the jacket. He was wearing earrings, and had set a black baseball cap back to front on his long flaxen curls. As usual—he had not removed them once during dinner the previous night—he was wearing dark glasses. Reflective dark glasses.
Rowland scowled at his own mirrored face. He glanced down at Markov’s very white high-top designer sneakers. His lip curled. With luck, he thought, Markov, the heavy smoker, would be out of breath before they left the orchard.
“Not the valley,” he replied with great courtesy. “I’m going up there.” He pointed in the direction of the hills. “Do join me, by all means. Only I should warn you. It’s steep. And it’s likely to be muddy.”
“No worries.” Markov waved a languid hand. “I guess I’ll manage to plow my way through. I love walking. Back home—I’m from California, did I mention that?”
“I guessed.”
“—Back home, you know where I go? You’ve heard of Yosemite?”
“I’ve climbed in Yosemite actually. Several times.”
“Wow. Cosmic coincidence! I go there every month. I get back from location, no matter where, and I trek. Out into the wilderness. Beyond the reach of man. It kind of irrigates my mind. I guess you’ll understand that…”
Rowland shuddered, and lengthened his stride.
Reaching the bottom of the steepest hill behind Max’s property, he began to lope up its narrow and indeed muddy path. To his intense irritation, Markov kept up. Rowland accelerated again; he waited for complaints, or pants, or sighs; none came. Markov was right on his heels, like some appalling hound of God.
“I would have thought,” Rowland said tightly some way farther on, “that a country christening wasn’t really your style. Or walks, for that matter.”
“In that case,” said Markov, putting on a spurt, “you’d be oh so but completely one hundred percent wrong. I wouldn’t have missed this occasion for anything.”
Rowland gave him a glance of pure dislike. Markov, who was tall, lean, and wirily built, had now somehow contrived to get in front of him. He bounded ahead, his ghastly sneakers flashing white as he negotiated boulders and rabbit holes. Rowland slowed, but this technique did not work either. Markov, blessedly lost from sight just minutes before, suddenly popped up from behind a thorn thicket. With a wide, authoritative smile, he once more took his place at Rowland’s tweed-jacketed elbow and matched him stride for stride.
“Of course, the real reason, the serious reason I’m here is Lindsay,” Markov went on in a reflective way. “Because I really admire her and like her, and right now she needs her friends. So—moral-support time. I guess she hasn’t told you? No—there’s no way she would. Poor Lindsay. She really needs help and advice—but can she ask for it? No. Too much pride, of course.”
He cast a little glance at Rowland McGuire as he made this pronouncement. Rowland’s handsome face gave no sign of any reaction, and Markov felt a grudging admiration. Just as devastating as Lindsay had claimed, he thought, and no pushover. This would require rather more labor than he had anticipated; Rowland’s scorn was almost palpable. It was there in the contemptuous flash of his green eyes, and in the set of his lips. Markov decided to be more impressive; wave the wand, he thought—oh, and better modify the speech.
Dispensing with his usual verbal mannerisms—so much camouflage, in any case—Markov talked on. He wondered how long it would take this McGuire man to realize that his companion was not a fool. Five minutes. Ten? It took fifteen. Five minutes on the subject of Scotland, where luckily Markov had been often on shoots; five minutes on the subject of Dostoevsky—here Markov knew he excelled—and five minutes of complete silence. It was the silence that clinched it, Markov felt. Rowland McGuire accelerated the last five hundred yards to the crest of the hill at a pace even Markov could not quite match, but he then waited for him there, a slight smile on his face.
“Okay,” Rowland said as Markov reached his side. “You walk well. You talk well. Why are you here?”
“I’m not hitting on you,” Markov replied with some impudence. “Just in case it like crossed your mind.”
“It didn’t. I’m sure you rarely waste your time.”
“‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me,’” Markov quoted smartly. “Not my style. You’re right.”
He leaned up against a wall, drew out a pack of Marlboros, and lit one. He turned his reflective glasses to the valley a long way below them. “Great view from here.”
They were not far from the place where Rowland had discovered Cassandra Morley’s body. Rowland, thinking of that night, and other events subsequent to it, made no reply. He, too, leaned against the wall, and with a closed expression turned his face to the valley below. After a while Markov, reading the alteration in him, silently passed him a cigarette. McGuire, who—as far as he knew—did not smoke, accepted it without comment. They leaned back in the sunshine, tobacco smoke curling into the air. Neither spoke. The silence lengthened and became almost companionable.
“Well, what do you know?” Markov said at last. “You’re not what I expected at all. Seriously, I quite like you. And I thought you’d be a prick.”
“Oh, really?” McGuire colored. “And who gave you that impression? Lindsay, I suppose.”
“Lindsay—a bit. Other people too. I asked around. After you killed those pictures of mine. Remember that?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Not that anyone had a bad word to say—exactly. I mean Lindsay’s always singing your praises. How much she admires your judgment. Your editorial skills.”
“Lindsay?” Rowland looked genuinely astonished. “I can’t believe that. She never stops telling me how to do my job.”
“Oh, that’s just her way.” Markov gave an airy gesture. “It means nothing. Just Lindsay being defensive. Or teasing you maybe. She might do that. She found you insensitive, I think, and she did mention you were pretty arrogant—but then, other people said that.”
McGuire’s color deepened. He shrugged. “Well, maybe so. It’s one of my faults. I have plenty of others, no doubt.”
“Yeah, sure. Don’t we all? And then, of course, you have a reputation as a womanizer, did you know that?”
McGuire’s color deepened even further. He shot Markov an angry glance.
“I can’t see that’s any of your business.” Then: “Lindsay said that?”
“Lindsay? No. Someone else. Lindsay wouldn’t bad-mouth you that way. One, she’s discreet, actually rather seriously discreet, and two—I told you, she likes you. You know, up to a point. Apart from the arrogance, that is. Not that she gives you much thought, except when I’m prompting her. She has other things on her mind right now. Too bad. You’ve noticed the change in her, I guess?”
“Change? Change? Since when? No—I haven’t.”
“Oh, well, she hides it, at work, I suppose. And then, you haven’t been at the Correspondent that long, have you? It’s about what, six or seven months?”
“About that. Yes.”
“Oh, well, it happened just after you arrived, so I guess you wouldn’t really notice the difference. How tense she is. Like really strung out. I mean, I know she wouldn’t break down, or cry—not at work, not in front of someone like you… But I’ve known her for years. I’m gay. She trusts me. So when she sees me, she really opens up.”
There was a silence. McGuire seemed to be weighing this. He frowned out across the valley, the wind lifting his hair from his face. Once or twice he glanced back at Markov, as if about to speak, and then remained silent. Markov was glad of his mirrored glasses; McGuire’s glance, cool and assessing, disconcerted even him. The obvious response of most people at this point would, of course, have been to ask exactly what was wrong with Lindsay. McGuire’s refusal to do the obvious interested Markov; he awarded him a few more points, and waited. Eventually, Rowland said: “I suppose, now that you mention it, I have noticed some alteration. As you say, she doesn’t take me into her confidence, but—she has been quieter just this last couple of weeks.”
It was two weeks since their dinner. Markov made no comment.
“And then—I did notice yesterday. She’s looking pale…”
Pale and interesting, thought Markov, who had supervised the makeup himself. In Markov’s view there were two types of men in the world; one knew when women were wearing makeup, the other did not. McGuire almost certainly fell into the latter category, he had guessed. He now congratulated himself.
“I hope she’s not ill in any way? Is there some problem at home—with her mother, with Tom?”
The question was asked in polite and neutral tones; it was accompanied by another penetrating green glance. Markov, unsettled by that glance, hopped down from the wall on which he had half perched, and moved off toward the path.
“No, no—all fine on the home front,” he said in an evasive way, and waited for further prompts. None came. Silently Markov cursed.
“So, what I was thinking was…” he began as they turned back down the path with unspoken assent, “the thing is—I’m off on location next week. First Haiti. Then Tangier. Then somewhere kind of… remote. In the African bush. So I won’t be back for over a month…”
“Haiti? You choose odd locations for your fashion pictures.”
“Don’t I just,” replied Markov, repressing a small smile. “I guess I like to shake up people’s expectations. Give them a surprise.”
“Yes. I can imagine you might like that.”
“The point being—I’m away, Lindsay loses her number-one confidant, right? So I’m looking around. I’m casting. I need a stand-in—just for four weeks. I had thought you’d do—I mean, you work in the same office, you seem to get along okay. I mean, she’s not going to pour her heart out to you the way she does to me, obviously, but you could help in other ways. Take her for a meal now and then. Maybe the odd trip to the theater, the movies. Nothing heavy. Just so she could get away from that monster of a mother of hers. So she had a chance to go out once in a while instead of just sitting alone, getting more and more miserable every night. I mean, the main trouble is, she’s been badly hurt, and when that happens to women, all their self-confidence goes, you know? Some jerk throws them over—after three years, would you believe—and wham suddenly the women, they’ve got this fixed idea in their heads—they’re hideous, they’re dumb, no one likes them, no one wants to talk to them—massive hemorrhaging of self-esteem…”
Markov paused. He had promised Lindsay, under oath, that he would tell no direct lies, but allow McGuire to make certain assumptions. He glanced at McGuire; surely this message had gotten through? Or would he need more narrative tricks?
“I find this hard to believe.” Rowland was frowning, looking puzzled. “Lindsay always seems so confident, so assured. She’s very good at her job, she’s highly successful, I wouldn’t have thought—”
“Oh, you know women—”
“No, actually, I’m not sure I do.”
“All the same. Unfortunately. Success? What does it mean? Nothing. Nada. Complete zilch. I mean it’s okay, up to a point—but it’s not what they really want, right?”
“What do women want?” Rowland asked with a sidelong glance.
“Love, of course,” Markov said, ignoring the glance, which might have been amused. “Love, love, love. The holiness of the heart’s affections. All that.”
“Very wise.”
“You think so? Perhaps. It’s fine until it goes wrong. When that happens, a man just picks himself up, gets on with his life—I speak from the sidelines here, of course…”
“That’s certainly what people say.”
“Whereas a woman—oh, no. Terminal angst. And when they’ve been lied to, of course, lied to for over three years, promised marriage, the whole bit, and then that turns out not to be in the cards, because, guess what, the bastard’s already married, with a very rich wife he can’t leave, and three beautiful, vulnerable little kids—and when the woman concerned, she’s had no inkling of this, and she’s been lied to and lied to, and it turns out he’s been boasting about her so all his friends know, know, I mean, these really intimate details…”
Markov stopped. That surely had to be enough. McGuire was now looking concerned. He felt pleased with himself. The lie indirect. Perhaps it needed one final tiny gloss.
“And of course,” he went on, “when the woman still loves the man concerned—then it’s worse. It makes me really angry, as a matter of fact.” He shot Rowland a quick glance. “I don’t like to see a good woman wasted. I mean, the way I look at it—from the sidelines, all right—Lindsay’s got everything going for her. She’s pretty. She’s smart. She’s kind. She’s generous. She’s good. She’s a great mother—and she ought to make some man a great wife.”
“I’m sure she will. In due course.”
“Maybe. I have my doubts. Because there’s a few problems. One of them being—as far as Lindsay’s concerned—other men don’t exist.”
Rowland, as Markov had hoped, looked faintly encouraged by this. “That’s why,” Markov went on, pressing home this advantage, “I approached you. I mean, I had reservations at first. Mr. Lothario, right? The last thing Lindsay needs right now is some other guy taking advantage of the state she’s in, making some cheap pass—”
“If that’s a warning,” Rowland said with edge, “I can assure you it’s unnecessary. It’s not my practice to take advantage of women. Particularly unhappy women. Despite what you may have heard.”
“My opinion too. Now that I’ve met you, that is.” Markov flashed a smile. “Besides, it’s just for a few weeks. Escort duties. At most a shoulder to cry on. Someone to give her reassurance and advice.”
This was met with further silence. They walked on, descending the final slope and approaching the entrance to Max’s orchard. McGuire paused at the gate, frowning again. Apple blossoms drifted from the trees, and lay like confetti at their feet.
“Look,” he said in an abrupt way. “If Lindsay truly needs that kind of help, then I’d be glad to provide it. Of course I’d be delighted to take her out for a meal, take her to the theater. I told you—I like Lindsay. But advice? Reassurance? A shoulder to cry on? I’m not sure I’m the best candidate. I always try to avoid getting involved in other people’s personal problems. Particularly those of women. I’ve found—”
“Yes?”
“—I’ve found I just end up making them worse. I’m not sure why that is.”
“I can’t imagine,” Markov said with the smallest of glances at Rowland’s magnificent physique.
“But if Lindsay just needs an escort occasionally, someone to listen, of course I’d do that…”
“And it is only for a few weeks,” Markov put in. “You’ll be my understudy. Then, when I get back from Tangier…” There was a slight pause.
“Or,” Rowland said evenly, “the remote part of the African bush…”
“Right. Right. Up the Zambezi someplace…”
Markov, feeling triumphant—this was not so very difficult after all—threw open the orchard gate.
“It just seems slightly odd that no one mentioned this to me before,” Rowland said in a thoughtful way. “And no one did. Not Max. Not Charlotte.”
“Did Max even know?” Markov cried on a rhetorical note. “Did Charlotte know? My impression is not. Lindsay’s secretive. She doesn’t open her heart to many people. Virtually no one in fact.”
“—And then, Lindsay herself gave me a rather different impression. This would have been back in January. She very kindly cooked dinner for me then, at my house. And I could have sworn she mentioned—”
“Other men?” Markov cut in fast. “A succession of other men? Oh, she does that. It’s a cover-up, of course. I can’t believe that took you in. You can’t be that slow, surely?”
“Maybe it’s that insensitivity of mine,” McGuire said politely with a half-smile. “It blinded me, I suppose. How stupid of me. Well, well, well.”
He followed Markov into the garden. Markov decided silence was now the best response. He was sweating with the effort of those fast final lies, and something in McGuire’s tone confused him. The man’s self-possession faintly irritated him, and also faintly alarmed him.
“Look,” he said as they approached the house. “Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut? Maybe this is a bad idea of mine. But I mean, how many single men are there to ask…”
“Very few. We’re a vanishing breed.”
“I can’t ask Max. He hasn’t the time. He’s got a wife. Kids. It had to be someone Lindsay knows, and trusts.”
“Not at all.” McGuire laid one large strong hand briefly on Markov’s shoulder. He gave him a warm smile. “It will be an honor to be your understudy.”
“You won’t say anything to Lindsay? I mean, if she knew I’d spoken to you, she’d have cardiac arrest…”
“You can rely on me,” Rowland replied. “I shall perform my role to the very best of my abilities. Until you come back, that is.”
Markov sighed. This, of course, was not the scenario he intended. But there was nothing more he could do. From now on it was up to Lindsay. Allowing Rowland to precede him into the house, Markov looked up at the brilliant sky and the whirling blossoms. His lips moved. He could on occasion be superstitious, even pagan: since it was now in their laps, he was offering up a little prayer to the gods.
Pascal had been dreaming about loss. These dreams had first begun in the early years, when he first covered wars. They had recurred, in various forms, ever since. Sometimes the dreams were replays of actual events he had witnessed but thought forgotten. He would see a tiny child crouched over the dead body of a parent, or a mother prostrate over the grave of her soldier son, and waking, he would recall the exact place where he had witnessed that incident—in Mozambique, or Bosnia, or Afghanistan. His unconscious mind had selected one random image out of millions, and he would think, on waking—why that particular grief?
At other times, and this made him more uneasy, the dream of searching and losing was a vague, shadowy thing. It would lead him through some remembered war zone, into the streets near his home; frantic, he would be searching for his daughter one moment, for Gini the next, and sometimes for a phantom presence that he would suspect, on waking, was himself. The search was always accompanied by acute anxiety and mounting fear. He woke, always, startled, dry-mouthed, and drenched in sweat.
Nearly twenty years of wars: he had learned how to deal with such nightmares. So, this morning, he applied the learned techniques. He waited quietly, until the pounding of his heart slowed. He concentrated on the details of his immediate environment, this bed, this room. Sometimes he might begin on a silent recital, a multiplication table, the list of his appointments for that day.
This morning the dream lingered longer than was usual. It clung with a cobwebby tenacity to the corners of his mind. He began to recite silently some lines of poetry taught to him by his father. Still the dream clung, leaving him with a paralyzing sense of misery. He persevered, and slowly the room began to reassert itself. The details of the dream shimmered, surged back, and then were gone. He had remembered that he was back in London again, that he was with Gini, that his arm was mended now and his fingers once again deft and strong. He sat up, listening, touching the sheets beside him, which felt cool. He could hear the sound of Gini’s movements below, the quietness of footsteps, the opening and closing of a door.
He felt an immediate, bounteous, and immeasurable relief: his first instinct was to call out to her, but he waited, then lay back and closed his eyes. For a few moments he wanted to listen to this relief, to the sound of hope, because it had not been easy to achieve, and there had been moments, those past weeks in Paris, when he had feared it would never return.
While he remained in the hospital, spending night after long night alone, he had believed that they could remake their life together, and reaffirm their love, because this was what they both passionately desired. Their difficulties could be surmounted. It was, he had told himself then, a question of determination, of will.
Released from the hospital finally, and reunited with Gini in that borrowed apartment belonging to friends, he had embarked—in a way he knew was very characteristic of him—on a program of reconciliation. At first he trusted in words. They would talk their way around every obstacle and past every evasion. Every one of those difficult topics: his work, her work, the nature of fidelity, the possibility of a child. He would resist the jealousy he still felt; they would both resist indulging in accusation; they would talk themselves back to truth, and they would become not less, but more than before.
Almost at once, however, they both sensed these conversations were leading them astray. However much they fought it, their words took on a dry, therapeutic tone, as if they were discussing the marital problems of two strangers. The more clinically truthful their language, the more strained these conversations became: Pascal felt they spoke across a chasm—and it was a chasm good intentions could not bridge.
What they needed, Pascal felt, was some fiercer link. They did not need some careful, engineered construct, but some invisible power that could arc between them. But to search for this power, to coax it back to flickering life, made them both fearful. Once upon a time, as they were both bitterly aware, this electricity had simply been there. Words had not been needed then to galvanize them; the current of communication had flowed from the simplest glance, or touch.
Now, even the touching was tentative. It could be unsure, or ill timed, or fumbled, or overassertive; all its former immediacies seemed to have been lost. For weeks Pascal felt watched. True intimacy was impossible, for he felt that a third person shared these rooms with them; his presence intruded into their conversations and interrupted their attempts at making love. Pascal tried to exorcise this man, then, realizing Gini was also attempting to do the same, felt the jealousy come surging back. Did she compare kisses? Had he touched her there, and in this way—and when he did so, if he did so, what had been her response?
He longed to know, and loathed himself for this. He would permit himself to ask no such vulgar questions, and he would not allude to his feelings, he was too proud to do that. He knew they affected what he came to think of as his performance—and how he loathed that term, though it was apt—and he could see the pained efforts Gini made to reassure him. The loving embraces, the strokings, the soothing words, her apparent fear that he no longer desired her—how he hated all that. She kissed him now as if she doubted her right to do so. Pascal, wanting her desperately but fearful of failure and comparison, would jerk away from her touch. This was torture to him. Pascal, an absolutist, hated all lies; until then he had never understood just how much the body could lie. He had assumed, naively, that untruth and evasion required speech.
It was six weeks before he could bring himself to make love to her. When he finally did, it was after a violent argument, during the course of which they had both drunk too much wine, perhaps because they had both begun to believe that antagonism might succeed where care and patience had failed. A short-circuit device; fucking her, Pascal thought—we both intended to incite precisely this.
The act had not been the reunion he had planned; it had been angry, unsatisfactory, and brief. Afterward, Gini wept—and for the first time in his life he turned away from those tears with a cold repugnance he had never expected to possess.
“You did this,” he said to her. “It was you who brought us to this.” He slammed out, and walked furiously and mindlessly through the dark Paris streets.
The next day, a reconciliation; both were contrite. Then more arguments, and reconciliations again. Pascal began to grow desperate: this cycle was only too familiar to him. He could not believe that with a woman he so loved, he was experiencing again the remorseless downward spiral of disaffection he had been through with his ex-wife.
Perhaps, he thought, as the ugly month of February became March, perhaps if he could only act love better, he would be released, and would be able to express the love he knew was there, locked somewhere inside himself. It had sprung to his lips unaided facing Star in Madame Duval’s apartment; looking at death fifteen feet away, it had been impossible to disguise: it had simply been there, and he had sensed in Gini its unhesitating and immediate response.
If the love could well up then, why not now? What was wrong? And he then began to believe that conscious action and careful speech would achieve nothing. They needed some near divine intervention for which he had no apposite term. Willpower was no use to them; love could not be willed. With fear, he began to believe that love was as mysterious as the welling-up of water in the desert: in essence, it was a gift.
If so, the gift proved elusive. He redoubled his efforts, as she did. Their mutual politeness pained them both. In long discussions late into the night, they planned new kinds of futures together: these visions—civilized, caring, egalitarian—convinced neither of them very much, he felt. He promised that he would either abandon war coverage altogether or restrict such work to a few months every year. She countered that this was unacceptable; she would not allow him to give up this work, this vocation, for her sake. Pascal listened to her arguments, remembered the comments of his ex-wife, and made his own private resolves: this mistake he could at least avoid again. Others also: one day he found the contraceptive pills she had begun taking again the previous month, and threw them away. They quarreled violently over this—and yet that action, that quarrel, proved a turning point. Pascal made love to her that night, and for weeks afterward, with a new and fixed determination: this act he intended to have consequences: Conception. Then, and only then, would she be repossessed.
This determination, they both found, altered the tenor of a familiar act. Pascal abandoned endearments and gentleness. He could sense some resistance in her, and so he set about fucking her into submission, then out the other side of submission. When this had finally been achieved, he knew that they were alone at last, and that he had found a route back.
For such a change, of course, you could not set a precise time or date, but some change they had both recognized: it was there when they fell asleep exhausted, and there again in the morning when they woke. It grew, day by day, after that; it came stealing back to them, not through the medium of words at first, but through glance and through touch. He had sensed a new calm, a cessation of striving, then the ghost of an old contentment, and finally, one evening, just there, unsummoned, an assured peace.
He rose now, suddenly eager to be with her, and quickly pulled on some clothes. He went barefoot down the stairs, and in the room below paused. He could sense something in the air of this room, some alteration in it, the eddyings of some unseen force.
He moved forward slowly and silently and looked into the kitchen beyond. Gini had not heard his footsteps; she was concentrating on some task with an eagerness that touched him to the heart. On the blue tray in front of her she was arranging a plate, a cup and saucer, and a glass. The glass was a champagne glass. Pascal frowned. He watched her take a flower from a vase on the windowsill, and cut its stem, and then arrange the flower on the tray. Its exact placing seemed to preoccupy her. She laid it first on the plate, then on the blue napkin, and finally next to the glass. She was wearing a nightdress, surmounted by one of his sweaters that was several sizes too large for her. The garments gave her the unstudied grace of a young girl; her head was bent over her arrangement; her hair, longer now, almost reaching to her shoulders, was tousled from sleep.
He felt suddenly the most profound love for her. It washed through his body with astonishing force; he felt it settle like an ache about the heart. The emotion was of such suddenness and intensity that for an instant he felt blinded, as if, newly emerged from some dark underworld, he stared directly at the sun. He lifted his hand involuntarily, as if to shield his eyes—and that small movement caught her attention. She looked up and gave a small cry of surprise.
He half knew already, he later thought. He stood looking at her for a few more moments in silence. Her face looked soft, a little sleepy, as if she had just recently awakened from more pleasant dreams than his own. Her lovely eyes—he had startled her—had widened. She made one quick gesture, as if she would have hidden the tray if she could; then her expression changed.
Watching her face, he began to know. He felt the knowledge, and the elation that came with it, begin to pulse along his veins. Her face had an almost secretive look, a very female look that was simultaneously triumphant and afraid. He felt such tenderness for her then that he could not speak; he took her hand, then drew her quietly into his arms.
He held her very close, and they stood for some time in this way, without speaking, their bodies interlocked. Gini could feel the beating of his heart; she listened to what she had so nearly lost, and what she had regained. Women, possibly, doubt less than men. That morning, she found all her doubts and prevarications had flooded away.
Her body spoke, and in accents of such joy that she had no desire to listen to any last cautious whisperings in the mind. She had silenced those whispers in any case, she believed; silenced them weeks before. Now her own grip on contentment was sure—and if Pascal’s was, or had been, more tenuous, she would cure him. That cure was now within her gift; she felt its power.
Today she could do anything: she could make water spring from dry rock; touch a mountain and make it move. Remake a marriage? Heal a breach of trust? Easy. Easy. She could do it with one finger, one flick of her wrist, one word. Never in her life had she felt so female, and never in her life—no, never—had she felt this power. Such bounty: taking Pascal’s hand, she waited; it passed through her palm and fingers; it passed from her hand to his.
Pascal said: “When did you know?”
“At once, I think. The next day. The next hour. But I had to be sure. So I waited. I saw the doctor yesterday.”
“Yesterday? You should have told me.”
“I had to wait. I meant it to be perfect. I was going to wake you, and then…” She caught his hand and pressed it against her stomach. “Do you think it’s a girl? Or a boy? I think it’s a boy. Your son. And you know how old he is? I know exactly. Six weeks, two days, and—oh, about five hours. I know you remember…”
“I think I do.” Pascal smiled.
“The Monday. By moonlight. We’ll have a moonlight child. We—” She stopped, seeing his tears. “Oh, tell me—please tell me. You did want this? You are happy? You will love him? Or her? And me… You will love me and trust me now? Always? I will, always. Oh, please, answer me, Pascal.”
Pascal drew her against him and pressed her face against his heart. Just for an instant, there and then gone, he felt some vestigial sadness, almost a weariness, as if his morning’s dream had returned. It clouded the edge of his vision momentarily, this product of the disparities between them, in years, in experience. Fortunately the sensation was brief; wisely, he concealed it.
“Which question first?” he asked gently, kissing her. “My darling, this may take some time…”
Lindsay always wept at weddings, and of course at funerals. At christenings, she discovered, she wept too. First she wept because the words of the service were so beautiful; then she wept because Max and Charlotte’s baby was sleeping so peacefully; then she wept again because holy water woke it, and on waking, the angelic baby bawled.
As she was leaving the group by the church after the ceremony, making her way along a narrow pathway bordered by gravestones and the foam of May wildflowers, Markov caught up with her.
“Good,” he whispered. “But don’t overdo it. Your mascara’s running again. We want discreet sentiment. Wipe your eyes.”
“Oh, piss off, Markov,” Lindsay said. “This isn’t acting. Go away.”
Markov went. Lindsay rubbed her eyes with a tissue, then skulked off to a corner, under some trees.
She watched the rest of the large christening party linger by the church for a few last photographs. Various friends and neighbors, whom she knew; Tom, persuaded into a suit for once, with his girlfriend Katya on his arm; Charlotte cradling her lovely baby; and Max, beaming at everyone, Max looking absurdly tall, thin, elbowy, and proud. For some reason Max’s elbowiness made her want to weep again. She sobbed quietly into her sodden Kleenex. From the church came wails from Max’s sons: “More pictures? Do we have to?”
“Shut up, Alex. Stand still.”
“What’s all the fuss about? It’s only a stupid girl…”
Lindsay smiled. She fixed her eyes on the tombstones in front of her and began to read the epitaphs: 1714, 1648, 1829. Much-loved wife, dearly beloved husband of, widow of, daughter of… The epitaphs calmed her; she dried her eyes.
The group by the church was leaving now. Only a few of the guests lingered, as the rest set off for the party at Max’s and the christening champagne. She could see the tall figure of Rowland McGuire, on the edge of the group as always. He was in conversation with a young girl Lindsay knew to be Mina Landis. Her parents were divorcing—or so Charlotte said; she and her mother were returning to America soon. The girl was slightly built, and seemed painfully shy; Rowland seemed to be making an effort to draw her out, but his kindness was receiving little reward. The girl hung her head, and seemed to make monosyllabic replies; shortly afterward she was claimed by her mother and swept away. Rowland lingered, looking up at the church, unaware he was observed.
Lindsay thought: I could go over to him and join him. I could put Markov’s advice into practice right now. I could ask him about buttresses and pillars. I could look at that famous Norman doorway with him. We could look at saints and angels together—and he could explain their symbolism, no doubt. But she turned away. She did not have the heart for the deception, and she could not bear the spectacle of Rowland, being kind.
None of this is going to work, she thought miserably; none of it. She waited until Rowland McGuire had disappeared back into the church—why? To examine its architecture? To pray?—and then she returned to the path. She picked some cow parsley—Queen Anne’s lace, Charlotte called it, a much prettier name—as she walked. She went down the old, worn steps, out through the lych-gate, and into the lane.
In the distance, some guests, the last stragglers, had reached the entrance to Max’s driveway. She saw the floaty pastels of the women’s dresses, heard a shout, then laughter from the men. Rowland McGuire said: “You cried.”
She turned around to find him at her shoulder, frowning into the sun, very nearly a foot taller than she was, impossibly handsome, unreadable, maybe amused, maybe sad.
“Yes, I did,” she replied a little irritably, walking on, Rowland keeping pace with her. “I’m sentimental. I like babies…”
“I can see that.”
“I also like puppies. Kittens. Foals. Lambs. The last time my cat had a litter—there were eight kittens—I cried all morning. It isn’t a virtue. I do know that. No one else cried back there.”
“Charlotte did.”
“Charlotte has cause.”
They walked on a short distance in silence. Lindsay tried to think of memorable remarks, and failed. For the first hundred yards she felt self-conscious and tongue-tied, an intellectual pygmy; for the second hundred yards she felt happy—he had chosen to walk with her, after all. By the time they reached Max’s drive—that cursed optimism of hers—full-blown elation had taken hold. He was there, she thought, drinking in the sunshine, and the air, and the scent of new-mown grass.
“I like your dress,” Rowland said into the silence, in somewhat cautious tones.
Lindsay tripped; she turned to stare at him.
“What did you say?”
“Your dress. It’s—I can’t stand fussy dresses. I like that. It’s…” He searched around for an adjective.
Lindsay looked down at her dress, cream linen, midcalf, high-necked, short-sleeved. She was aware that it looked good—well, quite good—against her tan.
“Plain?” she offered, smiling. “Modest? Elegant? Restrained? Matronly? Dull? Cream?”
“Most certainly not matronly. It suits you. It makes you look…”
Apparently the appropriate adjective failed him again. Lindsay could see how hard he was trying, and she felt a rush of pure affection for him. With a naturalness which surprised her, she took his arm.
“Come on, Rowland. I can see you find compliments difficult. It doesn’t matter. Let’s get some wine. There’s champagne, and a wonderful cake. It has three tiers, and a stork with a baby in a bundle in its beak…”
“Does it indeed?”
“God—what a glorious day!”
Lindsay lifted her face to the sky. Rowland watched her do this but made no comment. He escorted her through the gardens to the rear lawn, where formal Max, who liked ceremonies, had organized a resplendent marquee. Lindsay, among friends, began to enjoy herself, although every so often Markov would materialize at her elbow and remind her, in a sepulchral whisper, to look tragic.
“Jesus,” he hissed, toward evening, when the party was winding down. “You’re supposed to have a broken heart. Go off somewhere on your own. Linger in the distance, looking kind of pensive. Don’t argue. And give me that damn champagne.”
Lindsay obeyed him. It was actually quite natural to do so, because all afternoon Rowland McGuire’s polite attentions had been marked. He had ensured, for over three hours, that she was plied with canapés and cake, and that her glass was filled. He had ensured that, when trapped, she was extricated, and when stranded, she was not alone. As a result, Lindsay felt somewhat tipsy, but pleasantly and not dangerously so. She felt a benign dreaminess that might have been due to the attention as much as the champagne.
She wandered off from the remaining crowd of adults and children to the far end of the garden, where there was a lopsided summerhouse, constructed several years before by Max for his sons, and—thanks to Max’s inexpert joinery skills—now half falling down. It had a pleasing dilapidated air, and was canopied with a strangulation of roses and vines.
Lindsay sat down on the rickety bench beneath it and breathed in the scents of flowers. The light was just beginning to fade, becoming mauve on the flanks of the far hills. She could hear voices, and was glad they were distant and muted, and glad she was alone.
She closed her eyes and listened to these unfamiliar and welcome country sounds: birdsong and birds’ wings, from the field just beyond the hedgerow, the soft, velvety breathing of cows. In one more month, she thought, I shall be thirty-nine years old. She sighed contentedly; this fate, which had previously struck her as terrible, now did not seem so terrible at all.
“Are you all right?” said a voice. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Lindsay opened her eyes. There, outlined against the light, was the tall, dark-suited figure of Rowland McGuire.
“I’m fine,” said Lindsay, forgetting to act the tragic heroine. “I’m glorying in all this.” She gave a broad, encompassing gesture of the arm. “The smell of grass and flowers. The shade. The birds. The cows.”
“I’m interrupting you.”
“No, no—not at all.”
Rowland looked unreassured. He hesitated and then sat down next to her. He crossed his long legs, then uncrossed them again, then frowned in the direction of the fields.
He might have been calculating their exact acreage, Lindsay thought after a silence had fallen and endured for several minutes.
“Your friend Markov,” Rowland ventured, after a while. “He’s an interesting man. Not what I expected at all.”
“You were prejudiced, I imagine. People are. He plays to their prejudices—you know, the dark glasses, those foolish clothes.”
“I suppose,” Rowland said with a certain weight and a sideways glance, “that it was arrogance on my part…”
“Possibly. A little,” Lindsay said with a smile. “You can be arrogant occasionally, Rowland.”
“I know,” he replied with a certain amusement and possibly some gloom.
“You should let people surprise you.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve always liked the unexpected. Things coming at you, out of left field…” Lindsay, catching his eye, suddenly remembered her role. She gave a small sigh and folded her hands together. “Even when”—she went on, aiming at a pensive tone of voice, dignified but bravely sad—“even when the surprises are painful. Yes, even then. After all, in life, there’re always lessons to be learned.”
There was a silence; a long silence. Lindsay did not dare to look at Rowland. She felt almost sure she had overdone that last remark. Unconvincing, she thought, and fatuous. She rose.
“I was just wondering…” Rowland, who looked vastly amused by something, also rose. “I gather Tom and his girlfriend aren’t going back to London with you tomorrow?”
“No. They’re going on to friends.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t be possible for you to give me a lift back, would it? I came down with Max, you see…”
“You won’t criticize my driving?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Fine, then. Very well.”
Two hours, Lindsay was thinking as she made this crisp reply. Three if she drove slowly, if the traffic was bad. Why had she never noticed how glorious Max’s garden was? It looked like Eden. She began to walk back toward the voices, and the fluttering pink and white draperies of Max’s rented marquee. Rowland appeared to be intent on escorting her this short distance. Lindsay began to pray for traffic jams, for a ten-mile tie-up, for a punctured tire, a broken fan belt. In the distance she could just glimpse Markov, half concealed behind a bush, much the worse for drink, making faces at her. She began to pray that Rowland would not notice this odd behavior, and this prayer seemed to be answered. Giving a violent gesture, Markov toppled over into the bush with a crashing of branches. Lindsay stole a glance at Rowland; but no—God was merciful—he was looking the other way.
As they reached the French doors that led into Max’s drawing room, the telephone began ringing. Rowland excused himself, went inside, and presumably took the call, for the ringing stopped and a long silence ensued.
Lindsay lifted her face to the sun contentedly.
A few minutes later, his features expressionless, Rowland emerged.
“Did they want Max?” Lindsay asked. “He’s still up by the marquee, I think.”
“No. The call was for me. I’ve been expecting it, I suppose.”
“Good news? Bad news?” Lindsay looked at him curiously. “Are you all right, Rowland?”
“I’m fine. Shall we join the others?”
He guided her around to the terrace. As they reached the steps, he sighed, then smiled and took her arm.