The Touch of Innocents

by Michael Dobbs

  After all, which baby was which came down to no more than a matter of paperwork, of officialdom.

  Of Paul Devereux.

  Bilshay Crescent, when they found it, backed onto the river. It was part of a long corridor of Victorian houses which snaked along the contours of the river bank. Red brick, ornately tiled roof in the fashion of the previous century, flaking paint and small front garden which had received scant recent attention. A smell of damp. It was locked and dark, with no sign of life. Curtains drawn, impossible to see inside, a broken bell-pull. No one answered their repeated knocking. They found nothing but a small brass plate beside the bell-pull which they read with difficulty by the light of a distant street lamp. It declared they had arrived at the ‘Mission of Mercy’.

  ‘We’ll come back, in the morning. First thing,’ she said.

  The restaurant was modest: tired cotton table cloths, a tang of fried garlic in the air. The sort of place Grubb would take his wife. Scarcely the sort of place he expected ET to choose while they discussed the future of the news operation. Maybe Hagi was trying to make a point about economies.

  ‘So long as that clown in the White House fails to squeeze any co-operation out of Congress, the economy’s going to keep on sliding south, dragging the dollar with it,’ the money man was explaining. Even by candlelight his face retained its unhealthy, unnatural cast. ‘This Administration’s an Enema Express. You understand the significance of that, Eldred.’

  ‘Sure, Hugo,’ Grubb lied through a mouthful of meatballs. ‘But don’t hide anything from me. Lay it on the line.’

  ‘We’re an international news-gathering operation, Eldred. Which means expenses abroad and revenues at home. The revenues are falling because of the recession and our expenses rising because of the devaluation of the dollar. Ten per cent of our annual budget, blown straight out the presidential ass.’

  Grubb noted that Hagi’s language was growing uncharacteristically flowery under the influence of the wine, their second bottle of a fine old Bardolino and thick enough to chew. Grubb relaxed a little; each bottle cost as much as the food, ET’s mask was slipping.

  ‘That’s tough, Hugo.’

  ‘Tougher for some than others. I need a ten per cent cut in wage costs across the board.’

  A meatball slid down, unchewed. Grubb went red, unable to respond.

  ‘Either salary cuts or redundancies, Eldred, but that’s for you to sort out. I need your recommendations within two weeks.’

  Grubb was rescued by the arrival of the waitress, a pretty if brassy blonde who set about her tasks with a youthful cheerfulness which compensated for her obvious lack of experience. Once more she refilled their glasses, leaving a trail of expensive wine across the table cloth. She apologized profusely, explaining that it was her first week, working her way through art school. For the first time he could remember, Grubb watched as the deadpan mask on ET’s face twitched. ET was trying to smile. He showered the girl in forgiveness and ordered another bottle.

  ‘So what do we do?’ Grubb prodded.

  ‘We cut. You cut, Eldred.’

  ‘I’m a foreign news editor,’ Grubb protested.

  ‘You are also a senior employee of World Cable News. I assume it’s a position you wish to retain.’

  ‘Are you threatening—’

  ‘No, simply stating a fact of life. We’ve got to find substantial savings or soon none of us will have jobs. Hell, the average American’s view of foreign affairs stretches no further than the distance between Massachusetts and Minnesota. So buy in more footage from foreign networks, maybe; close down some of our foreign bureaux.’

  ‘You mean Izzy Dean?’

  ‘If necessary. No room for passengers.’

  The waitress was clearing the remnants of their meal from the table, ET’s eyes firmly clamped upon her backside.

  ‘Tell me about Izzy Dean,’ the managing editor mused. ‘Is she one of us? A team player? Willing to make sacrifices?’

  ‘What sacrifices?’

  ‘The sort of sacrifices women have to make.’

  ‘Naw, not her. She’s never screwed around to get a promotion.’

  ‘But will she go to the limit for us professionally? Has she ever got on her back to get a story? It’s no more than we would expect of a male correspondent. The WCN Nightly Screws … Bedlines from around the world …’ He was growing intoxicated, beginning to giggle. It was ET cast in a new light. ‘I mean, does she have too many scruples to do the job properly?’

  ‘Too many kids, that’s for sure.’

  ‘So don’t let’s go soft on her. She can’t play both newsgirl and nanny. You get her little fanny across to the Ukraine by this time next week.’ He sipped. ‘Or it’s bye-bye birdie.’

  The waitress had brought the bill, which the managing editor thrust across at Grubb. While Grubb fumbled reluctantly for his card ET exchanged banter with the waitress, discovering where she lived, offering her a lift home. ‘We pass your place on the way, don’t we, Eldred?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sure. You can drive, give me a lift home too. It’s not so far out of your way. Earn your huge salary for a change.’ The alcohol and power thing had gone to his head.

  ‘What’s twenty miles between friends,’ Grubb griped.

  They drove in silence. ET had taken the back seat with the waitress, leaving Grubb to focus through a light drizzle on the road ahead. He needed all his concentration; too late he realized how much he had drunk. And he was worried about his future. And the foreign bureaux. It dawned on him that if there were no foreign bureaux, there was no foreign editor. No job. No Grubb.

  ‘We need the foreign coverage, Hugo. Now more than ever.’

  An uninterested grunt came from the rear seat.

  ‘Look, the whole friggin’ world’s in the process of falling apart out there. Ethnic wars all over what used to be Commie-land, South Africa burning, the Saudi ruling family about to be flushed down the pan and take a million barrels of oil with it, the biggest civil war the world’s ever seen threatening in China.’ He grazed a kerb. ‘Warheads from the old Soviet nuclear arsenals scattered everywhere. It’s like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The touch paper’s lit, we’re just waiting for the big bang.’

  ET offered no response. Grubb tried a new tack.

  ‘We shouldn’t be too hasty about Izzy Dean, either. She’s the best we have. There’ll soon be a bigger demand for foreign news coverage than at any time since Vietnam. You know, maybe we should be patient with her just a little longer and … Shit!’ As he concentrated on his argument the car had begun to stray, edging too near the brow of the road and into the path of an oncoming truck whose headlights blazed out warning. Grubb swerved sharply, glancing in his mirror to mutter apologies to his passengers.

  ‘Shit,’ he repeated, this time in a restrained tone of irritation. As the beam of the headlights swept across the interior of the car, it illuminated the lurid and contorted mask of Grubb’s boss, the pale and plentiful skin of a young girl working her way through school, and considerable dishevelled clothing. Christ, ET was human after all. And Grubb had been wasting his breath.

  ‘Sorry, Izzy, I tried,’ he muttered to no one but himself, rehearsing the call he now knew he could not avoid making. ‘It’s Kiev or quit.’

  It was in the morning, almost before first thing, when Pomfritt arrived. Daylight had scarcely broken through the long winter night, the Consular Officer must have set out from London well before dawn, but there he was, bright, besuited, flapping his wings before the door of the Devereux house, clutching two passports.

  ‘Miss Dean, I’m delighted. Even sooner than I’d expected,’ he exclaimed as they sat at the kitchen table sipping large mugs of tea. ‘It’s a pleasure to be able to help, and to get you and your son back home. I’m sure you must be looking forward to it; don’t hesitate to ask if you need any help with the arrangements …’

  Bizarre, she thought. That within hours of her receiving permission from the doc
tor to travel she was receiving encouragement from the Embassy to do precisely that. But she had long ago given up clinging to any belief in coincidence. ‘Thank you, Mr Pomfritt. I’m not going.’

  The brightly scrubbed face seemed to freeze in mid-breath; the moustache drooped.

  ‘My baby didn’t die in the crash, and I’m going to prove it.’

  ‘Oh, not that again, Miss Dean. Please, I beg you – don’t punish yourself.’

  As Izzy watched he actually wrung his hands.

  ‘What assistance can I get from the Embassy?’

  ‘Assistance? What sort of assistance?’ he lisped, unable to get either tongue or mind around this new challenge. ‘I’m afraid we can’t help financially—’

  ‘Assistance in tracing what happened to my baby. How she was switched for another baby. Where she is now.’

  In agitation he rose from his chair and proceeded to pace about the kitchen, his heels clicking on the flagstone floor. ‘This is so far-fetched, surely you must realize that, Miss Dean?’

  He waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘Yes. He says I’m perfectly fine.’

  ‘Physically, perhaps, but inside …? And who is supposed to be responsible for this alleged … baby-napping.’

  ‘Paul Devereux.’

  Pomfritt came to a sudden halt. The tea dashed against the side of his mug like a winter sea and began dripping down upon his brightly polished town shoes. He didn’t notice. All he could comprehend was that his Ambassador as well as Paul Devereux had taken a personal interest in this case, he had instructions to wrap it up quickly and without fuss, and his carefully plotted path to diplomatic preferment was now in jeopardy. Because of this woman. He had many interests in his life for which in appropriate circumstances he might consider endangering his career. His porcelain collection. The Tang grave statuary he had smuggled out of China in two pieces. Wagner. Tuscany – even the occasional man, although that only under the liberating influence of a few drinks and never in the country in which he was currently serving. But never a woman.

  ‘I have to warn you, Miss Dean, that you are taking this nonsense altogether too far. It is possible to sympathize with a grieving mother, but such absurd accusations are altogether too much.’ The hair above his lip was positively bristling. ‘Paul Devereux is one of America’s closest friends …’

  ‘So was the Shah of Iran and President Diem of South Vietnam. We betrayed one and shot the other.’

  ‘He has also been one of your best friends, if only you opened your eyes. Good God, woman, we’re sitting in his kitchen. Your accusations lack a certain logic, some might say. And what do you have as evidence – hard evidence, mind, not flights of feminist fancy?’ The sibilant alliteration posed a challenge with his lisp – too much of one, as it proved; he wished he hadn’t used it.

  ‘I am an American citizen, Mr Pomfritt.’

  ‘Since when did being an American citizen ever change things for you? Dammit, you media goons travel halfway round the world trying to show up America, criticizing and denigrating everything we do. Yet at the first hint of trouble there you are waving your passports and shouting for “good ol’ Uncle Sam”. I tell you, Miss Dean, there are some parts of my job and some of the people I meet in it that make me feel physically sick.’

  ‘Aren’t you taking this a little personally?’

  ‘And you are not, I suppose?’

  ‘Cut the crap, Pomfritt. I’m an American citizen, you’re a public employee and it’s your damn job to help me!’

  His jowls bulged as he chewed over his reply. ‘Your husband, too, is an American citizen, with just as much right to ask for our help. And your son, Benjamin, is also an American citizen whom we have a duty to protect.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your husband, Miss Dean – or, rather, his attorney – has been in contact with the Embassy expressing concern that the boy’s interests are being damaged by your erratic and irresponsible conduct, in particular by your refusal to return home, which is subjecting him to unnecessary hardship. It seems to me there are good grounds for that concern, and my report will reflect as much.’

  ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’re spying on me?’

  ‘Reporting, not spying. On Benjamin, to be precise.’

  He threw the remains of his tea into the sink and turned on her, cheeks mottled and burning like bush fires at the ends of his moustache.

  ‘Look, can’t you see how much damage you are doing to yourself? How irrational you are making yourself seem? Your husband is suing you for custody, and I can think of no better way of persuading a court of your husband’s case than doing precisely what you’re doing: running around a foreign country, subjecting your child to unreasonable hardship, making quite preposterous claims against a leading member of the Government. It’s utterly outrageous, woman. If you have the slightest interest in retaining custody of Benjamin you must return home immediately. You have your passports.’ He threw two, mother and son, onto the table. ‘If you want to keep the kid, use them.’

  She sat in silence. She had known it would come. Benjamin, her weak point, her vulnerability. Everything came down to Benjamin. Her reason for marriage, even the failure of that marriage. The custody proceedings. Her inability to pursue singlemindedly the trail left by Bella. The lorry.

  Since the lorry, what had been no more than an uneasy feeling had become firm knowledge, that she could not both pursue Bella as well as protecting Benjamin, not all at the same time. His demands, his needs, were too great. It simply couldn’t be done. Weighed down with Benjamin, she would in all probability never be able to catch up with Bella, and by seeking Bella she might end up losing Benjamin, too. Lose them both.

  She felt cold, too cold to shiver. She had fought with her conflicting responsibilities for long enough to know that she couldn’t keep it up forever, that the pain, far from becoming customary, simply grew worse. The missed anniversaries. The children crying for her down the phone, being unable to comfort them. Arriving late for Joe’s business dinners, or not at all. The death of desire. Losing the connection that would have flown her home in time for her mother’s funeral. The grease put under her professional heels every time she told them she was pregnant. Cutting that vital final half-hour from the edit, the time which turned a good piece into a great one, in order to make it home by Benjy’s bedtime.

  She had flown to Ethiopia that last time, to visit the hunger camps, carrying a cold which Benjy had brought home from kindergarten. She had returned home wondering how many starving children she had infected – condemned to death, perhaps, for the sake of that story.

  The juggling act was over. She had fumbled her marriage, her career, now the kids. It was time to decide. She knew what had to be done.

  ‘You make a persuasive case, Mr Pomfritt.’ The voice was subdued almost to a whisper, the eyes misted. ‘The whole world seems set against me, even my own Government. Very well, I’ll return home, as soon as I can. Sadly I have no money but I’ll get in touch with my husband. Today. Get him to send the money for the tickets. Back home to the States. Should only take a few days.’

  ‘A wise decision, Miss Dean.’ The moustache wobbled in imitation of a victory salute. ‘I’m sorry it came to this.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too.’

  Frostbite, frostbite of the heart; it was scarcely a new sensation with her. How often she had fallen into bed while on assignment, between clean, starched Sheraton sheets, exhausted, afraid of the world she had momentarily left and would visit again in the morning. You never got used to it, no matter how many times you were there. A few hours’ tormented sleep before climbing out of bed and into stale dungarees and yesterday’s knickers, swapping the security of the hotel for the sewage of war which lay beyond the front door. To save yourself, you tried to stop feeling.

  Izzy cared, how much she cared, but in order to go on caring and doing her job she needed to freeze her emoti
ons, place them in cold storage, until she got back home. It was the only way. Forget about your own life, your own children, because as soon as you started equating the mutilated carcasses and tiny corpses which lay around in the flowing gutters and rat-gnawed piles of rubble with your own children, it was the end. You would never go on. So you froze inside.

  She was frozen now, she must allow nothing else to matter. Close off the heart so that nothing else penetrated.

  She was solid ice by the time Daniel arrived to pick her up, shortly after Pomfritt had flapped his way out of her life. Daniel noticed the change, but said nothing.

  They set off in his smoking Volkswagen Beetle, coughing across the cobbled courtyard and past the stable door behind which she knew Chinnery was lurking. They headed for Weschester, through the December rain that clung in the air and which the primitive VW wipers moved inefficiently around the windscreen, mixing with the road spray until it had formed an opaque mask of rural muck. She couldn’t see where she was going. She felt vulnerable, exposed in this noisy, rudimentary metal box with its battered springs and sagging fender. She preferred the Rolls, and wondered if it were following.

  The ‘Mission of Mercy’ burned with light. There was life. At their knock the door was opened by two tiny figures, old ladies, with bright faces and chirping voices who hopped excitedly from foot to foot, but whose garb, by contrast, was unostentatious and even dull. Grey and brown cardigans, oversized and out of shape. They reminded Izzy of two rain-drenched sparrows.

  ‘Welcome to the “Mission of Mercy”. Come in, come in.’

  They were led into a large room, once used for dining, with views over an unkempt garden down to the river, and high shelves along the walls which sagged with assorted paperwork and files. There were long cracks in the plaster ceiling and signs of damp, with flower-embossed wallpaper which wilted in several places. Yet the room, like its occupants, was impoverished rather than uncared for; the window glass was clean, the floor swept, the two oversized desks polished and neat. The two elderly women appeared to share one desk, the other stood unattended.