Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  “It wasn’t.”

  “You can’t mean that.” He rounded on her angrily. “Gini, he talks to you about his love affairs, his one-night stands, his fucks? If you can’t see it, I certainly can. I know why men talk that way to women—I’ve seen men do it a thousand times. It’s a goddamned come-on, you know that.”

  “It didn’t sound that way. It wasn’t calculated. He was being honest. I believed what he said.”

  “All right. All right.” Pascal threw up his hands. He rose and began to pace back and forth. She could see him fight down the anger and the impatience. He returned to his chair and looked at her intently.

  “Okay. We go over it one last time. I don’t want to. You don’t want to. Still, that is what we do. Fine. I’ll buy the first part of your story. It’s been an emotional evening with your father. Hawthorne comes to your aid. He drives you home. He plays you Mozart, God help us. He asks to come in, and you agree. It’s insane, but that’s what you do. He then sits there, and he has a very proper, honest conversation with you—no undertones, no suggestivity, and you warm to him. Am I right so far?”

  “I didn’t warm to him exactly,” she said. “I admired him, I think.”

  “What?”

  “I admired him—as a person. I didn’t necessarily like him, or approve of him, but he was interesting. Complex. Guarded. Hurt. Honest, at some cost.”

  “You were falling in love with this man? That’s what it sounds like…Jesus Christ, Gini, I don’t understand this.” He gave another furious gesture, then stood up. “I need a drink. You want a drink?”

  “No, I don’t. I want to go to bed. I want to stop going over and over this. What’s the point?”

  “The point is, you’ve come to a totally irrational, foolish, female decision about this man.” He gave her a sharp glance. “It’s all instinct, intuition.”

  “I don’t care. I still think I’m right.”

  He poured himself a brandy and turned to look at her. “You do realize that’s no way to work on this, don’t you?” he said more coldly. “It’s a totally stupid way. And I won’t work like that.”

  “Fine. So we take a different approach.”

  “Why do you have to be so obstinate? Why? Gini?” He moved across, sat down, and took her hands in his.

  “Darling, let’s just get one thing very clear. No matter what you thought while he was talking to you, you know what happened next.”

  “Do I?” She gave him an exhausted glance. “I’m not so sure I do.”

  “All right.” He sighed. “We go through it one last time. When did he first touch you, before the telephone call or after it?”

  “After. No, before. No—I could sense what was coming before. He—well, he took my hand. He kissed my hand.”

  “You never mentioned that.”

  “Well, I forgot. He did. And then I asked him to leave—just after, or just before. I can’t remember. Then that call came and I think it made him angry. He looked angry.”

  “How did you expect him to look? Jubilant? He must have arranged those calls, Gini, come on—you know that.”

  “I don’t know that. And neither do you.”

  “Fine. All right. So he took the call. What happened next?”

  “I’m not sure. It was all very swift. He started talking.”

  “Did he kiss you?”

  “Yes. All right. He did.”

  It was the first time she had made that admission. Pascal’s face became blank. He gave a bewildered gesture.

  “Are you saying you let him do that? I don’t understand—”

  “No. I told you. I didn’t let him do any of it. I told him to stop. But it happened very fast. And he’s strong. And I was afraid. I struggled—and then I thought maybe he liked that, maybe that made it worse. So I waited until I could hit him. When I hit him, he stopped.”

  There was a silence. Pascal passed his hand wearily across his face. “Gini,” he began. “Can you imagine how this makes me feel? To think of this happening? It makes me sick, ill. It makes me ache. I can’t bear to think about it. How can you say you trust this man? He tears your blouse. He traps you against your desk. He comes very close to raping you—”

  “No. Not exactly. It sounds like that. But I’m not sure it was like that.”

  There was another silence. Pascal gave a sigh. “So, what am I supposed to conclude? He was not forcing you? You were not resisting?”

  “Yes. I was. Pascal, it’s not that straightforward—”

  “Was he forcing you, yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. Then why exonerate him now? Why, Gini?”

  “I don’t know why. All right, it was instinct. The things that he’d said earlier. The way he looked. The fact that he did stop. And afterward…”

  She broke off. Pascal drew back from her. His face became guarded and cold.

  “Oh, really? There was an afterward? You never mentioned that. You mean there’s more to this?”

  “No, there wasn’t—not in that sense. He didn’t touch me again. I told you, he left almost immediately. He, well, he apologized.”

  “That’s good of him.”

  “He said…it was a misunderstanding. He looked—I can’t tell you how he looked. He looked as if he’d lost everything, and he knew he had. Pascal, it was a terrible look.”

  “I don’t really care,” Pascal said coldly, “how he looked. If there’s a hell—which there is—he can burn in it. I hope he does. I hope he’s there right now. So don’t tell me how he looked, Gini, just tell me what he said.”

  “You can’t divorce the two….”

  “Just tell me what he said.”

  “All right. He justified himself, if you like. I told you. He said it was a misunderstanding. He said he’d picked up the wrong signals from me. He implied that he’d thought I wanted all that to happen. That’s what he said.”

  Gini looked away and bent her head. There was a long and painful silence. She waited for a new outburst, more anger, but it did not come. When she looked up, Pascal’s face was changed, transfigured. All the anger and bewilderment and anxiety had left it. He held out his hand to her.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She rose and crossed to him. He took her in his arms very gently and looked down into her face. He smiled.

  “What a fool,” he said, “to make that mistake. Gini, why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “I don’t know. I was ashamed. I thought you’d be angry, I guess.”

  “No. Not angry—relieved. Darling, you must see now. He was lying. Giving him signals? You couldn’t have done that. I know you wouldn’t do that. Not you, not now. It’s impossible. So he was using the cheap little excuses men like him use to extricate themselves from situations like that.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Darling, I know so. Listen, this is my fault. I shouldn’t have gone on and on questioning you like this. It was just—I couldn’t understand, how you could defend him. But I understand now. He tried to make you feel guilty, and he succeeded. You’re exhausted and confused and upset. In the morning you’ll see it in perspective. You’ll see him for what he is. …Darling, don’t turn your face away. Look at me. I was jealous, and angry. …Come to bed now, yes? Listen, you hear? The rain has stopped. And we have so much to do tomorrow. It’s almost over, I can sense it, all of this. One more day, two—then we can leave it behind us. And…”

  “Pascal…”

  “No more words.” He laid his fingers against her lips. “Come and rest….”

  When they were in bed, in the darkness, Pascal held her in his arms. There was no rain, no wind. Pascal said: “How still the night is.”

  “I want you,” Gini said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her very softly and stroked her back, and her throat and her breasts. It was the slowest of lovemakings and very sweet; it felt like a pledge. Afterward, when Pascal slept, she wept, partly fro
m happiness, partly from pleasure, and partly because despite the slowness and the sweetness and the love and the trust, the ghost of Hawthorne still returned, and all of Pascal’s arguments, excellent though they were, rational though they were, still did not convince.

  In the morning, Gini woke to a London transformed. Pascal was still deeply asleep. She drew back the edge of the curtain at the bedroom window and looked out across the heath. The grass was white with hoarfrost, the sky glittering and unclouded. She quietly opened the window a fraction. The clear air was dry and bitterly cold, like an inhalation of ice.

  She closed the window and crept silently from the room. Today was Saturday; this morning they were to station themselves in that rented St. John’s Wood house so that Pascal could set up his cameras well before midnight came. She sat in the kitchen, with some coffee, and looked at this plan; she turned it this way and that, she wondered if she had the courage to explain to Pascal that sleep had not changed her view: she still believed in Hawthorne’s statements, just as she had done the previous night.

  Shortly before nine, she let herself quietly out of the house. She walked up the narrow lane that led to the summit of Holly Hill, and from there down a series of steep steps and cobbled passageways to the High Street. A newsagent’s shop was open there; she bought ten newspapers—all the major dailies—and turned back up the street.

  She was eager to check the papers before she returned to Pascal, and near the summit of the hill, just above the old Hampstead graveyard, she found the perfect place. There, tucked away in a steep lane, was a tiny white-painted Catholic church. Inside, its eighteenth-century nave was warm and light. Candles burned beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. It was deserted. She moved to the back of the side chapel, sat down in a pew, and opened the papers in turn. She scanned them all carefully, but only one carried a further report on James McMullen’s death.

  It was on page five of the Daily Mail, two inches, single column. It told her more than the brief Stop Press item in the Standard the previous day. Even so, the accident—if accident it was—had attracted little attention. McMullen had died an anonymous death.

  The body later identified as his had been found on the Oxford-London rail line, ten miles east of Oxford itself. Badly disfigured, it had been spotted from a bridge over the line, on Friday morning, by a man out walking his dog. The rail line here was easily accessible from the bridge: Death might have been accident or suicide; police inquiries were continuing. McMullen’s family had been informed. The story ended with brief references to McMullen’s father’s work as an art historian, and to his sister’s appearance, some years before, in a thrice-weekly TV soap. Gini closed the paper. An accident? A suicide? McMullen had died within hours of their meeting with him in Oxford. Had he looked like a man about to kill himself? No, he had not.

  She sat for a while, thinking, watching the candles flicker against the blue hem of the Virgin’s dress. She remembered one tiny aspect of McMullen’s behavior when they met, which had puzzled her at the time, and now struck her with renewed force.

  Toward the end of their last conversation in his car, when McMullen had tried to thank them for their work, Pascal had suggested he wait until the story was concluded, and thank them then.

  “Yes. Then. Of course,” McMullen had replied, and Gini had noticed something odd in his tone. She might not have been able to account for it then, but now she could: Even then, the night before his death, McMullen had not expected ever to see them again.

  Why? Had he known for certain that he was close to death? Had he perhaps expected the accident to happen to Pascal, to herself? Or was there another explanation?

  She rose from her seat and moved back into the body of the church. She stood facing the altar for a moment, thinking of Hawthorne, and what he had said the previous night. She tried to imagine what it must mean to be brought up a Catholic and then to lose your faith. Her own childhood had been godless in most respects. On an impulse, she put a coin in the box and lit one of the votive candles. Opening the door to leave, she glanced back at it. There was a draft from the doorway; the flame of the candle wavered, guttered, but did not go out.

  When she returned, Pascal was up. There was a smell of coffee brewing. He was on his knees in the sitting room, checking his camera equipment, fitting some last small components into their cases.

  He looked around as she came in; he took her hand and kissed her palm, then returned, absorbed in his work. Gini stood next to him and watched. There were two heavy aluminum camera cases. Inside them, packed into cavities cut in black latex, were the tools of Pascal’s trade: the cameras themselves, the light meters, the panoply of lenses. Two were telephoto, swollen, heavy things about twenty inches long. Next to the cases, in a long black leather carrier resembling a gun case in size and shape, were the tripods.

  Gini looked at the dull gleam of casings and dials, at the dark, luminous eyes of the lenses. She watched Pascal’s hands move, the left quickly and deftly, the right more stiffly. He flexed the injured arm, then continued. Gini thought: Pascal’s weaponry.

  She disliked cameras for their capacity to freeze time, and she understood little of their technical workings. The potential power of this arsenal disturbed her. The lenses winked, snug as jewels in their box. By this means, possibly, a truth could be fixed.

  Pascal closed the cases and snapped them shut. He looked round at her with a smile.

  Gini hesitated; then, because she knew that if she was going to say this she would have to do so at once, she said, “Pascal. I’m not coming with you today. You don’t need me. I’m going to Oxford instead.”

  “What?” He straightened, and stared at her.

  “I’m going to Oxford. I can’t help you take photographs. You don’t need me. I’m going to Oxford. I’m going to check out McMullen’s death.”

  “Darling, you can’t possibly mean that.” He rose and took her hand. “We must stay together now, you know that. I won’t let you do that. It’s pointless, and it’s not safe.”

  “No, Pascal. I’m going. I’ll come to the St. John’s Wood house with you. It’s on the way to the station. But then I’m going to Oxford. Someone has to check this out. You can’t, so I will. We owe McMullen that much, surely?”

  “Owe? Owe?” His eyes flashed with sudden anger. “This is a story, not a crusade. We owe McMullen nothing. There’s plenty of time to check his death out later—next week. For God’s sake, Gini, if he’s dead, he’s dead. Going to Oxford won’t alter anything.”

  “It might.”

  “I don’t understand you. How can you do this? Everything we’ve been working toward, everything, has been leading up to Sunday, to this damn assignation of Hawthorne’s.” He broke off. His face hardened. “Oh, of course. I see. This has very little to do with McMullen and everything to do with John Hawthorne. Am I right? Yes?”

  “Insofar as I don’t believe those assignations ever happened, maybe. Yes. I don’t believe you’re going to see Hawthorne, or any blond woman, let alone photograph them. They won’t be there. It’s not going to happen, Pascal.”

  “How can you know that?” He rounded on her angrily. “Is that what you thought yesterday afternoon, when you’d talked to that call girl? No, it wasn’t. Have you said that once before? No. So what’s made you change your mind? That bloody man Hawthorne has made you change your mind. …Well, enough. I’m not going over that again. I’m not arguing either. I’m going to that house, and you’re coming with me. That’s that.”

  “No. It isn’t….”

  “How many times do I have to say this?” He gave her a look of desperation. “I want you to be safe. Four people are now dead. Last night I was nearly killed. You’re not going to Oxford without me, Gini. I won’t let you do that.”

  “You can’t stop me, you know that. I’ll be perfectly safe. It’s an hour on the train to Oxford, that’s all. I just want to talk to the police there—maybe Anthony Knowles, if he’ll see me. Then I’ll come back. I’ll probably be
back by early evening. I’ll come straight from the station to you. Nothing can happen before midnight, anyway—if any of this is true, that’s the deadline, midnight tonight. I’ll be back hours before then. …”

  “No. You know I can’t come with you. I have to go to that house. I have to set up the cameras. That takes time. I have to wait Gini, I promise you, we’ll go to Oxford first thing on Monday if you want. You’re not going to learn anything. Why can’t it wait?”

  “It just can’t, that’s all. I feel it here.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “And anyway, it makes sense. This way we cover twice as much ground I deal with the McMullen question, you deal with Hawthorne. I’ll be back by six.”

  “No! Let’s be very clear about this.” He cut her off, his voice now very cold. “I can’t work this way. Constant arguments, foolish plans, last-minute changes. You’re right—I can’t compel you. Very well, I ask you: Don’t do this.”

  “Pascal, I have to do it. I think it’s right.”

  “So, you won’t listen to me? My views, and my feelings, my concern for your safety mean nothing to you?”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Do I?” He stared at her. “I’m not sure I know you at all anymore. First last night. Now this. I love you, Gini—and because I love you, I ask you one last time. Stay with me, the way we planned….”

  “No,” Gini said. There was a long, tense silence. Pascal turned away.

  “Very well.” He bent, lifted the cases, and moved them to the door. “In that case, there’s no point in your hurrying back. Stay in Oxford as long as you like.” There was another silence. Gini stared at him. “Do you mean that?” she said quietly.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Those are your terms?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Fine.” She bit her lip and forced back the tears. “In that case, you leave me no choice. I’ll come with you to the house, then I’m going to Oxford. I won’t be blackmailed, Pascal.”

  “How can you say that? How dare you say that? Christ…” He took a step forward, and for one moment she thought he might hit her—or embrace her. He stopped at the edge of both these actions. They stood looking at each other, both pale, both fighting back distress.