Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  He moved quietly into the sitting room and eased the tightly drawn curtains aside a crack. Two of the houses opposite had lights in their upstairs windows; the streetlights were still functioning. Not a general power cut, then, but, as he had thought, another game, similar to the games played with Gini in her apartment earlier that week. He thought: It’s beginning; someone knows I am here. At once he became alert, concentrated. He moved silently to the stairs, crossed the landing above, and went into the back bedroom.

  The arrival had been well timed. Sunday was now just twenty minutes away, and the gothic villa opposite had its first visitor. Pascal could see well in the dark; he could see the man even without the aid of his viewfinder. The man was dressed in dark clothes; he had entered the driveway of the gothic villa. As Pascal bent to his camera, he began to mount the porch steps.

  Pascal bent over his viewfinder, made an adjustment, and scanned the man’s face. One of Hawthorne’s security shadows, he thought. It was not that man Malone, but it could have been Frank Romero—he certainly fit Gini’s description. He was tall, dark-haired, and thick-set. Pascal focused on his clothes. He was wearing a thick black overcoat, which was undone. Beneath it, Pascal could just glimpse the gleam of brass buttons. Then the man stamped his feet, and blew on his hands, and drew his overcoat tighter around him. His breath made white puffs in the cold air. He turned up his coat collar, frowned. He stood there, making no attempt to enter the house, just waiting at the top of the steps.

  Pascal fired off some shots. The man had a crude-featured, wide-planed, somewhat brutal face. Pascal could see a shaving cut on his left cheek; he could see the stitching on the man’s lapels. The man glowered up at the sky, glanced toward the gardens behind him, then turned back to look down the cul-de-sac. Minutes passed. The man checked his watch. Pascal flexed his damaged right arm, his fingers. He bent again to the viewfinder. He waited; the man waited—but the wait was not long.

  The black car arrived three minutes after midnight, three minutes into Sunday. It was an anonymous car, but fast, a black Ford Scorpio. One driver, one passenger. Pascal tensed. His camera motor whirred. He fired off ten shots. The man in the black overcoat descended the steps and approached the car, which had pulled in at their foot. He held open the driver’s door and John Hawthorne climbed out.

  He paused, rested one arm on the roof of the car, and turned to look across the gardens behind. Pascal had him in close-up, full-face. He could see strain, and an odd, almost bored impatience in his face. He too was wearing a black overcoat. Beneath it, Pascal could see the gleam of a white shirtfront: Hawthorne was wearing evening dress.

  He frowned, moved around the front of the car, and paused. His security man slid into the driver’s seat. As he did so, Hawthorne stooped and opened the car’s front passenger door. For a moment Pascal’s view was blocked by the car door and Hawthorne’s shoulder, then he saw movement, brightness, a swing of long, pale blond hair. He tensed; the camera motor whirred and the woman stepped out.

  As Hawthorne and the woman moved toward the steps, her face was averted. The car, security man at the wheel, backed out of the driveway, circled the end of the cul-de-sac, then accelerated out into the main road beyond. Its lights moved south against the night sky. Hawthorne and the blond-haired woman were now mounting the porch steps. Neither gave any impression of haste; there was nothing furtive in their manner. Hawthorne’s arm was around the woman’s waist. She too wore a black coat. Against its collar her hair was startlingly bright. They paused on the porch steps: close, close, close. Pascal watched Hawthorne feel in his pocket for a key and draw it out. His lips moved. He turned and said something to the woman. Pascal focused on that long bright hair. Turn around, he muttered to himself, turn around—just once.

  The wind gusted. It lifted the pale strands of hair that lay across her shoulders and shielded her face from view. She moved her head slightly. Pascal caught a pale profile, pale lips. He tensed. He fired off a few more frames, then faltered, then stopped.

  He froze. It was as if the woman had heard his thoughts. As Hawthorne inserted his key and the door swung open, the woman looked over her shoulder—full-face at last. Her level brows contracted in a slight, almost puzzled frown. She looked across the empty gardens toward the house and the window where Pascal waited; she looked directly at the heart of his camera lens. Her expression was dazed, a little bewildered. She had, Pascal saw, a lovely face. But he took no pictures of it. His hands refused to function; his fingers refused to function. He stared through the viewfinder and his heart went cold. His vision blurred. He swore, adjusted focus, stared again.

  The woman was Gini.

  Moonlight bloomed on her skin. Darkness made her hair more silver. She was as pale and as still as an apparition. She moved a fraction, and shadows moved across the pallor of her face like water; air rippled her hair. For a second, half a second, less, her eyes held his in a long, blind, vacant look, then she turned, and her hair swung forward, screening her face. She moved into the doorway in a slow, trancelike way. Hawthorne, from the shadows of the doorway, held out one black-gloved hand to her. She clasped it and moved into the shadows. The light of her hair was just visible, then invisible, then the door closed and she was gone.

  They used the ground-floor room at the back—the room with the largest windows. It had curtains and shutters that folded back into the window recess, but they neither drew the curtains nor closed the shutters. Suddenly, from outside Pascal’s field of vision, all the lights in that room came on, then Hawthorne entered. He stared toward the windows, then turned and removed his overcoat. He undid his black silk tie and loosened the top button of his evening shirt. He moved across to the windows, clasped his hands behind his back, and stood there, frowning, looking out into the darkness of the garden beyond.

  Gini must have followed him into the room, for the next second, she too came into frame. She walked slowly forward, head bent, like a somnambulist, or an actress on a film set searching for her mark. Hawthorne turned and said something over his shoulder. Gini’s head jerked around to look at him; her long hair swung across her face. She gave a little shiver, turned so her back was to Pascal, and removed her coat. Pascal drew in his breath sharply. Beneath the coat she was wearing a dress Pascal recognized. It was the dress she had worn the night of Mary’s party, that sliver of elegant black silk crepe, with two knife-thin straps. Pascal saw Hawthorne speak; it seemed to be some brief question. He handed her something, which Gini took. Hawthorne spoke again, made a gesture.

  Gini hesitated; she turned a little aside, so she was almost out of frame. Pascal could just see the fall of her hair, her right shoulder, her right arm. Then he realized what Hawthorne had given her, and what she was doing. She was drawing on a pair of gloves, a pair of long black gloves. They fit her exactly: Pascal saw her flex her fingers, lift her arm, and hold out her hand to Hawthorne. The black glove covered her arm from just above the elbow to fingertips.

  Pascal stood there, frozen with indecision, unable to move, unable to think. A few moments before, in the brief interval after they entered the house, and before the lights in that room came on, he had started away from the cameras, out onto the landing. He had gotten as far as the top of the stairs when, over his shoulder, he saw the sudden blaze of light and moved back. He hesitated now, irresolute, torn: This was possible and impossible. Hawthorne was distant one moment, then—when Pascal bent to the viewfinder again—startlingly close. Gini was close too, still just on the edge of frame; she seemed close enough to touch.

  Pascal reached out his hand and touched air. His hand was shaking. He trusted his eyes; he trusted his vision—his vision was his work. He saw now. So, was this Gini, or some crazy hallucination? Pascal thought: I am watching my own imaginings; I am watching my own secret fears.

  Pascal stared, as if details could tell him whether or not to believe his own eyes. Gini would never wear those shoes, he thought—but the shoes, black, stiletto-heeled, were identical to the ones she had be
en sent. Pascal half turned, turned back, looked again.

  She had turned toward Hawthorne now, and they were standing close to each other, quietly. Hawthorne was looking down into her eyes. Pascal saw him speak. Lifting one hand, Hawthorne drew her gently to him. Her back was now to Pascal, and her face lifted to Hawthorne’s. Hawthorne was still speaking. Pascal felt pain and incomprehension blinding his mind. To see and yet not to see, to be able to watch speech but to be unable to hear—this was a new agony. This is not happening, he said to himself. In the room opposite, Hawthorne had just taken Gini’s hand. He lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed it, kissed the palm of the glove, and Pascal thought: That is what he did yesterday. That was how he began then; that was what Gini described.

  He stepped back from his cameras. The room and its two occupants were now blurred. Pascal passed his hand across his face. He felt trapped in his own suspicions, forced to watch his own worst dreams.

  He stood there a moment, trapped by fear, by disbelief and guilt. Only a few seconds had passed, but each one felt an hour long. While one part of his mind was mesmerized by this replay of his own thoughts, another part was calculating, calculating. Thirty seconds to get downstairs and out of this house. Thirty seconds to cross the gardens and vault the fence. Thirty seconds to those steps, that balcony, and those French doors. They looked frail; one kick would burst them open. One and a half minutes. Pascal felt paralyzed. He started for the door, turned back, and bent to the viewfinder.

  The man and the woman opposite were now locked in an embrace. Hawthorne’s hands clasped her tightly on either side of her rib cage, then moved to stroke the curve of her spine. Both seemed very aroused. Hawthorne’s hands gripped her by her narrow hips; he drew her tightly against him. The woman shuddered, then bent her head forward and rested it against his shoulder. Her pale hair caught against the dark material of his jacket Look up, just once, turn around, Pascal thought.

  The woman was visibly trembling. Hawthorne slid his hands up over her body and began to unfasten those knife-thin straps, first the left, then the right. The dress slithered from her shoulders. Beneath the dress she was wearing a black corselet, which lifted and bared her breasts. Hawthorne caught her against him; he closed his eyes. He began to kiss her mouth, then her throat, in a frantic way. His hands cupped the weight of her breasts, and he began to caress them. The woman’s hair swirled. Suddenly the tempo of their lovemaking altered. From being slow and dreamlike, it became hungry and fast. The woman caught Hawthorne’s face between her hands and pulled his head lower, so that his mouth was against her breasts. She half turned, her movements jerky and hectic now, and the swirl of movement was very swift, so that for one long black quarter-second Pascal thought: He is going to push her down onto the floor, her hair is going to spread out under him across the floor. And then he realized Hawthorne was not responding, not kissing her breasts, and the woman turned a fraction more, and Pascal thought no.

  He could still not see the woman’s face, which was averted, protected by her hair, but he could see her breasts, and the angle from shoulder to collarbone, and relief surged through him. He knew Gini by touch as intimately as he knew her by sight. He knew the exact span of her throat, the exact curve of her spine and shoulder blades. He knew the exact jut, curve, and weight of her breasts. This woman was not Gini. She was not even a woman Gini’s age: She was older by perhaps a decade, a woman in her middle to late thirties, attractive, but with small, childish breasts. Her nipples were small and crudely rouged, and her movements were all wrong for Gini, Pascal could see that now. Gini moved with ease and grace: This woman’s movements were too jerky, too avid, too bold, too crude.

  Hawthorne had moved now, a little to his left, and the woman turned to face him. She picked up something from a table on the edge of frame, and then began to massage oil into her breasts. Her skin gleamed. Her black-gloved hands moved assiduously; her nipples stiffened. She paused, looking at Hawthorne as if for approval, then smiled, and hung her head.

  Everything was wrong, Pascal thought. He couldn’t understand, now, how his eyes and his mind could have been deceived like that. The hair, and the way it was arranged, that might be a careful copy of the way Gini wore her hair, and the dress, of course, was the same, but now that he could see this blonde full-face and in full light, the resemblance to Gini was small—this was not his Gini, but Gini as imagined by someone else, Hawthorne presumably. At that, Pascal’s mind went blank with anger, his limbs and his hands began to function again. He would fix this bastard once and for all, he thought. The camera motor whirred, and the shutter began to click.

  Ten frames, fifteen, twenty exposures. Pascal’s habitual cold objectivity locked into place. What was actually happening opposite became now almost an irrelevance: To him it was work, a task, a sequence of light, shade, and angle. It was without nuance or emotional content, not sex witnessed, but abstract shapes. Shapes to be captured on film, given these lighting conditions, this distance, this equipment. His concentration was absolute. The only reality was the moving patterns in his view-finder and the infinitesimal alterations in focus or shutter speed. What he saw through his viewfinder was depersonalized: It was not Hawthorne and an unknown blonde, but a series of actions. All that counted was to capture with technical precision the attitudes and angles which, when processed, when printed, would provide him with proof.

  He stopped to change film. His injured arm ached. He extracted the used film, inserted the new one, and wound it on. He bent to the viewfinder again. The black corselet the woman wore cinched her waist viciously; it was made of some high-shine material that refracted light. Pascal made a tiny adjustment to aperture to compensate for this, and refocused. While he had changed film, the couple had moved away from the window. Hawthorne, Pascal saw, was still fully dressed, and for the purposes of his pictures was now badly placed, sideways on, with his head bent, looking down at the blonde. The blonde was kneeling in front of him, looking up. Pascal fired off a few shots, then waited for the moment when Hawthorne might lift his head. The woman was now beginning to fumble at Hawthorne’s crotch. She ran her gloved hands up the inside of his thighs, then began to stroke his groin. It was then that Pascal began to have the uneasy sensation that all might not be as it seemed.

  The woman’s eagerness was evident: She was clearly aroused and Hawthorne, equally clearly, was not.

  He was watching her in a cold, dispassionate way; nothing in his attitude suggested response. His hands were by his sides. He made no attempt to touch the blonde, or to aid her. He lifted his face very slightly. Pascal took one shot, then another, then stopped. His mind was now beginning to work again, he could think in a more normal mode, and he could read the expression on Hawthorne’s features, which was one of dislike and contempt. The woman shuddered, and rubbed her breasts against his thighs. As she reached up, as if to unfasten his pants, Hawthorne hit her. The action was sudden, swift; the arm lifted, swung, and smashed the woman across her face.

  The blow was so hard that it knocked her to the ground. She fell back, half rose, collapsed again, and then dragged herself a few feet away from him. She was now out of frame, hidden from Pascal’s view by the edge of the window. At exactly that moment, just as Pascal realized he could not go on with this, Hawthorne looked up. He turned full-face to the window, full-face to the camera, and gave a tight triumphant smile.

  Pascal straightened, and stepped back. He saw now what he should have seen at once. This was not—could not be—unintentional. Would any man in Hawthorne’s position do this? Why stand in front of uncurtained, unshuttered windows, in full light? Why do any of those things, unless what was taking place opposite was a performance for Pascal’s benefit, his very own private viewing, carefully arranged and staged, by John Hawthorne himself?

  Bewildered, Pascal bent to the viewfinder again. If this was intentional, it made no sense. Why should Hawthorne wish to provide him with evidence, with proof? One second later, as the woman stepped back into frame, Pascal h
ad the answer to that question. Instinctively he had begun to shoot. He stopped.

  The woman in front of him now was no longer blond-haired; her hair reached just to her shoulders, and it was black. Perhaps the blow, and the fall, had dislodged the blond hairpiece she had been wearing, perhaps she had simply decided to dispense with it. Either way, something, a departure from normal rules maybe, had made her acutely distressed.

  Her face was chalk-white, and she was trembling with emotion. She began to pull off the black gloves. She threw them to the ground. She launched herself at Hawthorne with a sudden ferocity, punching and clawing, as if she were trying to scratch his face. Hawthorne caught hold of her and put her aside with an easy strength. This seemed to please her. She shuddered and swung around so she was once again full-face to Pascal’s camera. She began to speak, a taunting expression on her face. Though Pascal could hear nothing, he could lip-read the words easily enough. Hit me, she said once, twice, three times.

  Hawthorne gave her a long, cold, and considering look. In a deliberate way, he turned his back on her, crossed to the window, and began to close the shutters. Before he did so, he looked up one last time, directly at the window where Pascal stood. There was no mistaking the small, tight smile he gave, or the derision in his eyes.

  That smile said: Your pictures are unusable. Pascal straightened. He watched the shutters opposite close. He felt an instant’s anger, then a flood of self-loathing. Game, set, and match to Hawthorne, he thought. Of course the pictures were unusable. His pictures proved nothing beyond the fact that both the ambassador and his wife shared a taste for sexual games.