Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  “It’s not a secret now, is it?” he whispered. “He’s here now. He brought me a ray gun. He ate his cake.”

  “No, it’s not a secret now, Danny.” Lindsay gave him a kiss. “Besides, I won’t breathe a word.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Zip the lips. Sure.”

  Danny loved zip the lips. He zipped his own, several times, then toddled off upstairs. Lindsay remained. She glared at the fire. Skunk, she thought: laughing up his sleeve at her throughout their meeting that morning. Lying, devious, manipulative, two-faced skunk! How long had he been planning this? What was he up to?

  Charlotte stuck her head around the door, looking pink and flustered.

  “Oh, there you are, Lindsay. I’m—I thought I’d just go and have a chat with Max. And change. Gini’s gone to read. We’re having guests for drinks at seven-thirty. They’ll stay only an hour. Then we’ll eat. I’ve made a huge steak and kidney pie. I hope it’s all right. I’m afraid you and Gini are sharing the end bathroom with Rowland, so if you want a bath…”

  “I’d love a bath.”

  “Well, turf Rowland out. Don’t let him hog all the hot water. And ignore the boys. Rowland brought them all ray guns. It sounds like World War Three up there.”

  She disappeared, and Lindsay went upstairs. Martian noises emanated from the boys’ attic bedroom. Gini’s door was shut. The bathroom door was shut: the gushings and rumblings of ancient plumbing proclaimed Rowland’s occupancy. What in hell was the man doing—running a bath, or filling a swimming pool? Did he have to whistle while he did it? Lindsay glowered at the door, then retreated to her own room.

  She looked at the clothes she had packed. She had planned to wear a rather dull dress, which she had brought mainly because it happened to be pressed and clean. Suddenly, she didn’t feel like it. She felt like wearing that very short Donna Karan skirt, that very short, tight skirt, made of the softest leather, a skirt that proclaimed to the world that Lindsay had excellent legs.

  Cursing the low priority the English gave to bathrooms in old country houses, she lurked by her door, waiting. Surely even Rowland McGuire must have finished bathing by now?

  The whistling had given way to operatic snatches. Rowland sang “La donna è mobile” with gusto, out of tune. Lindsay waited until the various arias had ended; she heard the bathroom door open at last. She counted to ten, then darted out.

  She collided with a half-naked Rowland, and reeled back. Six feet five inches of tanned muscle blocked her path. Rowland’s wild hair was wet and black and tamed and sleek. It dripped water onto his powerful shoulders; water ran down his muscled chest. He was wearing a white towel around his waist, and nothing else.

  “Do you have to parade around like Tarzan?” Lindsay snapped, trying to avert her eyes from biceps, pectorals, and narrow waist and hips. “You’re half naked.”

  “Ah, you object to the towel? I’ll remove it, if you prefer.”

  His hands dropped to his waist. From the attic came the stuttering burst of ray-gun fire. Lindsay fled. She dived into the bathroom, slammed the door, and bolted it. She was standing in thick fog; she swore at the steaming billowy air, paddled her way forward blindly, then stopped. He’d had the grace, she noted, to clean the tub, but like all men when bathing, had left the room half flooded and the towels in a sodden heap.

  She sat down by the vast iron monster of a bathtub, and stared at its clawed feet. The room smelled deliciously of Rowland’s aftershave. Its scent made Lindsay feel angry, nostalgic—and weak.

  Chapter 5

  ROWLAND WAS NOT GOOD at cocktail parties, which he disliked. He was not gifted at small talk, and he did not suffer fools gladly. Deficient in these necessary requirements, he avoided such occasions whenever possible, and when trapped, as now, preferred to retreat to the edge.

  He talked briefly to an Oxford don, and to a painter who lived in the next village, both of whom he had met before and liked. The don, a close friend of Rowland’s former Oxford tutor, sought to persuade him, as he had done before, that he was wasting his abilities and his honors degree, and should return to academic life.

  “Too cloistered,” Rowland said.

  “Scholarship can be narrow, I grant you,” replied the don, who was elderly, and an authority on Wittgenstein. “The corollary is that it’s deep.”

  “Even so. I like journalism. It suits me. Wrongs can be righted.”

  “Often?”

  “Sometimes. Besides, I like a patchwork life.”

  “Do you still climb?” the don asked, and when Rowland said that yes, he still did, the old man’s face lit up. They talked mountains for a while, most enjoyably, and rock types, and the Cairngorms and the Skye Ridge. Then Charlotte came up, and led the old man away, and Rowland was able to shift a few paces backward toward the bookshelves. There, for a while, he was left in blessed peace.

  Rowland thought how much he liked this house, which was very old and rambling, which smelled of woodsmoke and cooking, and which seemed to him to enshrine the settled pleasures of family life. He watched Charlotte, who was wearing an old fisherman’s sweater and a long, embroidered Rajasthani skirt as she moved among her guests. She was the calmest and most maternal woman he knew, and sometimes Rowland envied Max for marrying her. Very occasionally, it would occur to Rowland, who lived alone and liked to live alone, that Max had outstripped him in the years since Oxford. Rowland’s own circumstances were little changed since leaving Balliol: Max had four sons, a happy marriage. Max was anchored; above and beyond his work he had meaning and purpose in his life. He himself was without religion, family, or strong political creed; he was neither Irish nor truly English; he was an outsider, a spectator, and likely to remain so for the rest of his life.

  The thought drew his eyes to Genevieve Hunter, also an outsider, he suspected, neither quite American nor quite English: his first impression of her, which remained, was of a woman adrift.

  She seemed intent, he thought, on camouflaging herself. She had been wearing gray, indeterminate clothes when he arrived. She was wearing something different, but also gray and indeterminate, now. Twice she had left the room to make a telephone call, and twice returned, almost immediately, with a tense white face. He considered the information about her that Max had given him earlier, and it seemed to him that it raised more questions than it answered. He moved forward a few paces. She had a low voice, and he found himself curious to overhear the little she said.

  She had been trapped now, for some time, by one of the other local guests, an American woman in her early forties to whom Rowland had been introduced earlier, and from whom he had immediately, and not very courteously, escaped. The woman’s name was Susan something—Susan Landis, that was it. Her husband, an officer at some nearby U.S. air base, a tall loud-voiced man, was now boasting about his golf handicap to Lindsay.

  Mrs. Landis was overdressed in English terms for an occasion such as this. She was the only woman present wearing heavy makeup, high-heeled shoes, and a tailored suit. She was nervous, socially ill at ease, and she had latched on to Gini as the only other American present. Gini, Rowland noted, had been making a stiff but polite attempt to draw her out.

  Scraps of their conversation drifted across to Rowland. Susan Landis was extolling the delights of the Cotswolds; she found old Elizabethan houses quaint. She and her husband lived only a few miles away, and were settling into the area very well. Everyone was just so friendly and hospitable, why, if she and her husband accepted all the invitations they received, they’d be out every night. And her daughter—she had a daughter called Wilhelmina, or Mina for short—she just adored it here, had made so many friends—was at the Cheltenham Academy, such a fine, exclusive school, and—imagine—was staying overnight in this very village with a school friend, in the manor, had Gini seen the manor? Well, it was historic; it had cost the school friend’s mother—a very well-known interior designer—the better part of a million, or so people said.

  “What is just so won
derful about being here,” she was now saying, “is that it’s so safe. I mean, can you imagine, Gini, bringing up a teenage girl in New York City these days—any big American city, come to that? Whereas here, all these darling little villages—I always know where Mina is. No hooliganism, no drugs, no muggers—” She hesitated. “I guess I shouldn’t say this, but you know I haven’t seen a black face since we moved here? Except around the base, that is…”

  “Really?”

  Rowland saw Gini raise her cool gray eyes to Mrs. Landis’s face.

  “Well, my boyfriend’s due here any moment. He’s black. So that should even things out a little. Excuse me, will you? There’s a telephone call I’m trying to make.”

  It was perfectly done. For a second, even Rowland was convinced. Mrs. Landis blushed crimson. Gini left the room. Very shortly afterward, the Landises left.

  “Don’t, Rowland.” Charlotte had materialized at his side. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I imagine you would. Why on earth do you allow them in your house?”

  “He’s a horror, I admit.” Charlotte shrugged. “She isn’t half as bad as she seems. She’s bullied and lonely and desperate to make friends. The bloody snobby English around here snicker about her clothes and her house.”

  “How about her views on race?”

  “Oh, come on, Rowland. They agree with those. One of the penalties of living in Gloucestershire. So stop standing there in the corner, making superficial judgments on my guests. Come and cheer Lindsay up. She’s been fielding Robert Landis for hours. First we had golf, then the virtues of Newt Gingrich, then he remembered who she was and wanted to know what the little ladies would be wearing this year.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Only a bit. Lindsay told him breasts were small last year, but this year they were going to be big.” Charlotte linked her arm through his. “Come on, Rowland, only ten more minutes, then it’s steak and kidney pie. I made it specially for you.”

  Rowland hesitated. Lindsay, who had been strenuously avoiding him since he walked in, had just given him a cold glance and turned her back. She was looking very fetching in a short, tight black leather skirt and black flats. She wore a white shirt with a high collar. With her short, curly hair and her slim figure, she looked boyish, like a medieval page, Rowland thought.

  He consented to be led across. Charlotte immediately left them. Lindsay said: “I had an excellent bath, thanks, Rowland. One and a half inches of lukewarm water. And all the towels were wet.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not very house-trained,” Rowland said.

  “You don’t look sorry.” Lindsay raised her face and inspected his. “You look amused and unrepentant.”

  “Not true,” Rowland replied lazily. “I do repent. I repent in my heart. It just doesn’t always show on my face. My standards have slipped. That happens to men who live alone.”

  “Then it doesn’t apply in your case,” Lindsay said smartly. “If rumor can be believed, you don’t spend much time alone.”

  “None of those rumors is true,” said Rowland with feeling. “People spread these wicked lies about me. I’m a man who’s much misunderstood.”

  “Are you trying to be charming?”

  “Certainly not. Have you had a chance to look at that file yet?”

  The question, for some reason Rowland could not fathom, was a mistake.

  “No, I damn well haven’t,” Lindsay replied, and stalked off without a backward look.

  Women, Rowland thought. He added a few adjectives to that noun, which cheered him up. Then, since Charlotte had left the room, and Max was deep in conversation, he seized his opportunity and escaped.

  Passing Max’s study off the hall, he heard Gini, arguing with a telephone operator by the sound of it, and repeating a string of numbers in a weary voice. Charlotte bumped into him at the foot of the stairs; from the top came the sound of ray guns and whoops. She gave him an exhausted look.

  “Would you, Rowland? Just for five minutes? It’s because they know you’re here. They want one of your gory stories. Could you frighten them to sleep?”

  Rowland was a traditionalist when it came to stories. “Once upon a time,” he began.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the boys’ large attic bedroom. Teddy bears flanked his tall frame; above his head, model airplanes were strung from the rafters; a procession of plastic dinosaurs was arranged at his feet.

  Max and Charlotte, orderly in unexpected ways, had named their children alphabetically. Alex, at eight the eldest, was in the top bunk to Rowland’s left, with Ben, the next son, beneath him. Colin, who was just six, and Danny, were on his right. All the boys had laid their ray guns reverently on the ends of their bunks, and Colin, who had the most nervous temperament of the four, was clutching a stuffed penguin very tight.

  “Once upon a time,” Rowland continued, “on the far west coast of Ireland, where I grew up, lived a leprechaun called Leaf. He had bright green skin, orange eyes, and a tail—”

  “Leprechauns don’t have tails,” Alex interrupted.

  “This leprechaun did,” Rowland said. “He had a tail one millimeter long, and he lived with his mother in a mousehole in the wall of my grandfather’s farm. They were both as happy as the day is long, but unfortunately—” Here Rowland, who had lowered his voice to a chilly whisper, paused.

  “Did he have an enemy, Rowland?” Ben asked with a shiver of delight. “Was he horrible?”

  “He most certainly was,” Rowland confirmed. “His name was Groilach. He was a black-hearted hobgoblin, and he lived in the peat bogs by the loch. He drank frogs’ blood for breakfast, he had scaly skin, and he was covered in slime.”

  “Yuck.” Ben screwed up his nose. “I bet he smelled really foul. I fell in a peat bog once, in Scotland—d’you remember, Alex? I stank. I stank for days.”

  “He smelled appalling,” Rowland agreed, improvising obligingly. “Think of all the nastiest smells in the world. Boiled cabbage, for instance, and—”

  “Danny’s farts!” Alex shouted, and all four convulsed.

  “Groilach smelled even worse. As well as an evil heart, he had a huge appetite, and he’d been after Leaf the leprechaun for years. Leprechauns, you see, were his favorite food of all…”

  Rowland talked on quietly, until he could see the boys were lulled. First Danny fell asleep, then Alex, then Ben. Only Colin remained awake, hanging on every word.

  “He didn’t eat Leaf, did he, Rowland?” Colin whispered, stealing out a hand from under the bedclothes, and holding Rowland fast.

  “Well, and of course he didn’t,” Rowland replied, knowing it was now time for his story to take a different course. “Not a chance. Leaf was good-hearted and brave, so he was bound to triumph in the end. Besides, he had a sword. And to tell you the truth, he wasn’t that worried about Groilach.”

  “Why not, Rowland?”

  “Because he had other things on his mind. He’d heard of this princess, you see. A very beautiful and very sad princess, a leprechaun princess who had eyes like sapphires and pale golden hair. She’d been imprisoned by a spell a long time ago. The spell kept her in this tower, which was a hundred feet high, and made of glass. She wept tears like crystals every day, because she longed to be rescued…”

  Colin was sleeping now. Gently, Rowland released his hand. He rose and stretched his legs. The room was peaceful and still, the only sound the quiet breathing of the boys. For some reason, a residue of sadness from his story remained with Rowland, and he felt reluctant to leave.

  His story had brought his childhood back; he could see in his mind’s eye the farm buildings he had described, where he himself had lived until he was around eight, Alex’s age.

  He moved across to the window and eased the curtains aside. The moon was high; the trees and hedges were already white with hoarfrost; he looked out at a silver world. On the far side of the orchard he watched a shape detach itself from the shadows of a hedgerow; he watched th
e dog-fox move delicately across the grass. It circled the henhouse, lifted its snout, sniffed the air, then stiffened as, from the front of the house, came the noise of people, and cars.

  The last of the local guests must be leaving. Soon one of Charlotte’s wonderful dinners would be served. Rowland listened to the cars crunch their way down the drive. He watched the dog-fox trot back to the hedgerow, then move off across the fields toward the hills. For a moment, straining his eyes to follow the fox’s movements, Rowland thought he saw lights move, high up behind the house. This puzzled him slightly, for he had walked that way many times, and he knew there were no villages up there, and no roads, just open wolds.

  Voices drifted up from the kitchen below. Rowland let the curtains fall and left the room quietly. Ducking his head beneath the beams, he made his way down the narrow, twisting stairs.

  It was some while, during dinner, before his feelings of nostalgia, of separation, finally passed. Gradually though, he was drawn back into the present, warmed by wine, by conversation, by good food. It was then he noticed that he was not the only person at this convivial table to be abstracted. Genevieve Hunter’s attention, he observed, was also elsewhere. She took little part in the conversation, and spoke seldom. When she did participate, the effort involved was palpable.

  She was seated opposite him. Covertly, Rowland examined her. She had very short, pale, silvery hair, a pale complexion, and the expression in her gray eyes remained unreadable. She reminded him of someone, and at first he could not place the resemblance. Then it came to him. It was no one he knew: she resembled the princess of his own fairy tale that evening. Like that creature, she looked spellbound, as if someone or something had imprisoned her, as if she were looking out at the world through glass walls.

  By the time Mina and Cassandra finally reached the barn, it was bitterly cold. The huge barn doors were open, and its interior was lit with strobes. People were already dancing inside, and the field around was rutted with the wheel tracks of the travelers’ trailers, ancient buses, and vans. Campfires illumined little patches of ground and intensified the blackness beyond.