by Monica Ali
Lydia knelt down, picked up the dachshund, and unwound the leash from his legs.
“Last night he pulled all the cushions off the couches and when I came in there were feathers all over the room.”
“Oh dear,” said Lydia. She made a fuss over Otis, who wriggled on his side while Lydia rubbed his belly and his back. She looked up at Mrs. Jackson. On the steps of the bed-and-breakfast, over Mrs. Jackson’s shoulder, she saw the back of a man’s head, square and gray, going inside.
“And there he was, lying on the floor, looking like butter wouldn’t melt, with a feather behind his ear.”
Lydia laughed. She set Otis down and stood up. She chatted a while longer with Mrs. Jackson and when she glanced up at the bay window, the curtain stirred as if moved by the breeze.
Chapter Six
Grabowski lay on the four-poster at the bed-and-breakfast. When he’d kicked off his shoes and loosened his belt he’d been thinking about knocking one out then a quick nap before lunch. But the prissy white lace curtains and the overstuffed room (colonial style furniture—mincing fiddleback chairs, haughty side tables with animal paw feet) was definitely a turnoff. His gut wasn’t helping either, when he looked down at it now. He sucked it in. Then he closed his eyes and tried again.
Riffling through his stock of mental images, he failed to land on anything that caused a stir. He wondered if he’d bolted the door. Wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Jackson to come busting in unannounced. She was desperate for someone to talk to and she’d already bored her husband to sleep in his armchair. That woman she was with earlier was pretty. Long dark hair, long legs, amazing blue eyes, which she’d turned up toward Mrs. Jackson just as he’d walked by and up the front steps. He’d gone into the sitting room and checked her out from the window, thought about going down and trying to strike up a conversation. Bottled it, of course. All mouth and no trousers. Funny, before Cathy kicked him out he’d found it easy to chat up women. It seemed so much harder now.
He gave up and zipped his trousers, stumbled over to the desk, and switched his laptop on. All the photos, even from the early days, were on the hard drive. He’d had all the film turned into digital files. He opened one at random, Necker Island. That was a “private” holiday, but she’d arranged a photo call, inevitably. She looked stunning in that red bikini, coming out of the surf. He zoomed in. She was smiling, apparently carefree and enjoying a little time to herself. Just her and a phalanx of photographers, out of view.
He spun through more shots. Why couldn’t he get himself going? He hadn’t even made a final selection of pictures, never mind got off the starting block with the writing. This book was supposed to be his retirement fund. Although Cathy might put a stop to that with her incessant financial demands. It didn’t excite him. He was a photojournalist, not a bloody archivist. He liked the thrill of the chase. Crawling through the gorse at Balmoral, staking out her favorite restaurant haunts, getting tip-offs from his network of informers, intercepting the police radio with his handheld scanner while eating sandwiches in his car in Kensington. He’d broken the code almost straightaway—52 rolling—that meant she had passed the internal security checkpoint in her dark blue Audi and in another minute would be nosing out into the West London traffic. One minute and he’d be on the move.
Grabowski sighed. He pulled his rosary beads out of his pocket and rubbed them one by one through his fingers. Well, he wasn’t going back to London to take more pictures of all the second-rate celebs. He’d had enough of them. When you start at the top, it’s very hard to come down. Pop singers, soap opera divas, reality television goons. The occasional genuine Hollywood star. But even then . . .
No point being stuck in the past.
He picked his cell phone off the desk and jabbed in a number.
“It’s John Grabowski,” he said.
“Grabber,” said Tinny, “what gives?”
“I’m coming out.”
“Finally he comes to his senses. Why’d you want to be anywhere but LA? I’m sitting by the pool, drinking a Bud Light, I’ve got five guys on Britney, boy, is she going to blow, I’ve got three on Cameron, she’s up to something, I’ve got . . .”
“Tinny, you don’t need to persuade me.”
“I been trying to persuade you for years. Get the fuck out of London. Hey, I’m sorry about you and Cathy, heard it from—I don’t know who I heard it from, it gets around, and listen, there’s a job for you here, the agency is booming, it’s booming big-time, but some of these wetbacks I got working, they drive me nuts.”
“You got Mexicans working for you?”
“Nah, I got French, I got Spanish, I got Italians, I got English. My European wetbacks. They can shove a lens up someone’s nose, but they got no finesse, you know what I mean?”
Grabowski knew. The art was going out of the business. “I left London. I’m in the States. I’m on my way.”
“Fucking-A,” said Tinny. “The beers are on ice, the chicks are on fire. What the fuck’s been keeping you?”
“I’m supposed to be putting a book together. Not just pictures—the definitive book, you know. It’s taking some time.”
“What? Ten years? You’ll do it here. I’ll put you on two, three days a week. Grabber, I gotta take a call. You know where to find me, right?”
Yeah, he knew where to find Tinny. They’d met on that Necker Island trip when Tinny had been working for one of the American news agencies. He’d set up his own shop shortly afterward and got himself some scoops straightaway. They’d stayed in touch. Tinny had offered him a job—payroll, decent split on the sales—and Grabowski and Cathy had gone out there for a week to get the lay of the land. Cathy said she couldn’t stand it. It’s all so false, she said. Said they’d be getting a divorce if that’s what he wanted. Then she wanted a divorce anyway.
It was a good thing his mother was dead. Divorce, in her view, was a sin. Something a Protestant like Cathy would never understand. At the wedding his mother wept into her handkerchief, and they weren’t tears of happiness.
He opened up another file on his laptop. A ski trip. No use for the cover shot, that’s the one he wanted to find today. If he did that at least he would have achieved something. Another file from a polo match that she was watching from beneath some trees. She was wearing a horrible hat. It wouldn’t do.
This was more promising, a charity gala at the Ritz. She wore her favorite pearl choker and a killer little black dress. He cropped in to head and shoulders. Then he zoomed in again to head and neck. He got in closer on her face. The picture was still clear and sharp. He stared into her eyes, looking directly back at him.
“Knock, knock,” said Mrs. Jackson, opening the door without actually knocking on it.
“If you were hoping to catch me naked, Mrs. Jackson, I’m afraid you’re just a few minutes too late.”
She appeared not to catch his drift. “All decent?” she said. “Great. I’ve had a telephone call about vacancies. Now, will you be wanting the room tomorrow? You said you weren’t sure when you registered.”
“I’ll be . . .” He turned to close down the image. It was about time to have some lunch. “I’ll be going in the . . .” He stared once more at those eyes. How many hours had he spent, over seventeen years, looking at them, either through a lens, or in person, or in a photograph? Thousands and thousands, he reckoned. A great deal more time than any lover she ever had.
“In the morning?” said Mrs. Jackson. “Oh, Otis, you bad dog. You know you’re not allowed in here. Scram!”
Over the years, thought Grabowski, she had changed so much. She grew into her beauty when she cast off the frumpy Sloane of the early years. She started off big and awkward, then became frighteningly thin, before filling out again. Her hairstyle changed and when it did it was cause enough for another front page. Her clothes and the confidence with which she wore them developed every year. But her eyes remained the same. They were mesmerizingly beautiful, and he’d never seen another pair that was half as striking.
Until today.
“In a few days,” said Grabowski. “I’ll be leaving in a few days.”
Mrs. Jackson had Otis, who had not scrammed, tucked beneath her arm. The dog looked frantic to escape and Grabowski decided he could not blame the little fellow. It was not a clinch in which he would like to find himself.
“We’ll be happy to have you,” said Mrs. Jackson. “Excuse us, I think someone is desperate to go potty.”
“I won’t keep you then,” said Grabowski. “But just one question.” He should at least try to meet that woman. So what if she knocked him back? You never knew unless you tried and maybe, just maybe, he would get lucky. He’d put on a little weight recently, all the stress, but he was a decent-enough-looking guy. “One question—who was that you were talking to outside this morning? She had a little spaniel with her.”
Mrs. Jackson forgot about potty for Otis. She told him what she knew about Lydia Snaresbrook—little enough, but she plumped down on the end of the bed and spun it out for as long as she could.
Chapter Seven
23 January 1998
Had to stay in bed yesterday. Nothing too alarming—copious vomiting into a bucket, an almighty weariness. It’s good that I can’t smell a thing. The bucket sat by the bed until this morning and didn’t bother me at all. While I’m in the mood for counting my blessings I shall offer up thanks that the tumor is not on the left side of my brain, my “dominant hemisphere,” the one that controls language and writing. And I am, in truth, pathetically grateful for that.
I have been feeling so much better in recent days that yesterday really knocked me down. Hope is a sly old dog; it creeps up with a shy little wag of the tail and lodges its muzzle in your crotch, trying to worm its way back into your affections. I should know better. I do know better. If the tumor didn’t respond to chemo and radiotherapy it is not going to respond to “positive thinking,” as it is termed by the self-help brigade. All that “brave fight” nonsense. What is it that I should be fighting? Fight cancer with a smile?
The Macmillan nurse looked in, and she’ll be back again later today. She’s rather wonderful, Gloria. She has big square hands, a shapeless dress, and gray hair that looks as if it could be used for polishing pans. She’s warm and thorough and competent, and she can tell a filthy joke. At no point has she suggested that I battle the tumor with willpower and a winning personality. Instead she checks and counts my medications, takes a blood sample, inquires about pain control.
Yesterday she did ask about my book and I confessed to her that I have become a little too absorbed in the byway of a New York Times article from the 1898 archive, discussing Chamberlain’s speech in Birmingham from the perspective of German diplomats and journalists.
It was something of a false confession. Compared to the time I’ve spent dwelling on Belo Horizonte, my doodlings in the margin of fin de siècle history have been of microscopic proportions. The irony of the situation has not escaped my notice. An historian who is at pains to conceal a moment of history. That appears to be my fate.
24 January 1998
When I prepared the house in Belo Horizonte, or Beaga, as it is familiarly known, I fussed and fretted about how sterile it seemed. Naturally it was no palace but that wasn’t my concern. Her informal drawing room and bedroom at KP were not grand, they were homely, filled with cushions and keepsakes, the children’s artworks and photographs. I did my best. It was, perhaps, what is termed in pop psychology “displacement activity.” I went shopping for soft furnishings, vases, and—my pièce de résistance—a menagerie of stuffed toy animals. I lined them up at the bottom of the bed, as she did in KP, and how baleful they looked, especially the elephant—I had to turn him around so I couldn’t see those sad little eyes, that furrowed brow.
I chose a “safe” suburb, of course, and within that a gated and security-patrolled enclave. I am, though I say it myself, a diligent researcher and meticulous planner. It was better not to have too grand a residence (there were budgetary considerations as well), and I wanted someplace with a fluid demographic of internationals as well as locals, where a newcomer would attract little attention. Belo Horizonte has a significant business population among the nearly five million inhabitants of the metropolitan area, so it wasn’t too difficult.
I’d bought clothes for her, and the other essentials of life, toiletries and so on. At first when we were devising our “little plan” she would say, “Oh, Lawrence, you will bring at least one photo album, won’t you?” Or, “The two things I absolutely must have you take are the little wood carving from the drawing room and the painting in the blue frame on the mantelpiece. Masterpieces, both!” I had to work quite hard to persuade her that it was not wise to have anything go missing (even the children’s artistic “masterpieces”) at the time of her disappearance. I’m not so sure about that now. The whereabouts of numerous of her personal effects is presently quite unknown within the royal household, or at least known only to individual members of staff who may have spirited them away for “safekeeping.”
Could I have worked more strenuously to persuade her that her schemes for seeing the children again were neither feasible nor advisable? I did try. But I couldn’t bear to press the point too hard.
I did take one thing that she had asked for, an audiotape made by her former voice coach (how she used to dread giving speeches), one among many, which had never been cataloged or noted in any way. He filmed her during their sessions. I was present once or twice. I remember her sitting on the couch, she was wearing black capri trousers and a black polo neck above which her blond crop looked beautifully boyish, and she had her legs tucked up, and her feet in a pair of those flat ballet-style pumps that she favors, and he was pretending to interview her like a television presenter. He said, “You are well known for your charity work. What is it that draws you to do so much work for charity?” And she gave what may only be described as an impish grin and said, “It’s because I’ve got nothing else to do.” She fell about. She can giggle with great abandon.
How long will it be, I wonder, before one of those videotapes turns up on television, sold to the highest bidder? She can be remarkably, naively, trusting, as she was with that man, allowing him to keep the films of her talking so candidly. And she can take suspicion to the level of paranoid derangement. Just one of her many contradictions.
25 January 1998
It wasn’t true, of course, what she said about having nothing else to do. Perhaps there was an element of that—not wanting to be simply a clotheshorse. But she is fantastic, sometimes, at putting herself down. One of her favorite lines to repeat is, “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that, I never learned terribly much at school—the only prize I ever won was for Best-Kept Guinea Pig.” But she was brilliant at the work that she did, and I think the key was that she was never merely fulfilling her public function, her allotted official role; she truly gave of herself and people sensed it, and that gave her something in return. Her husband resented that—the fact she got real pleasure from what he regarded as the dreary rounds of duty and destiny.
The voice coach had prepared an audiotape that he advised would help her “connect” more with the public by taking the edge off her cut-glass accent. She gave that short shrift. Public speaking was never her strong suit, but she is perceptive enough to know that it wasn’t a question of the class divide, and that it is better to be posh than phony. Despite its aristocratic pedigree, and despite the work she put in with her coach, her voice remained really rather undistinguished and relatively unknown. That is an advantage now, but she won’t believe it and is, or at least was when I saw her, wearing out that tape, determinedly chiseling away at the upper-crust diphthongs and pure vowels. I thought to tell her that nature would take its course and that they would fade over time but I refrained, because now she really does not have anything else to do.
I had some misgivings, as I say, about the sterility of the house when I leased it, but I did do my best, although home decoration is not my natural
preserve. When I look around me now I can see that the coffee table might benefit from a strategically placed bowl, that a throw might soften the chesterfield, that the regimental order of this capacious desk could be relieved by a knickknack or two. But most of the time I remain in a state of grace, accepting my intimate surroundings as if they had been ordained from on high.
By the time of my third, no, my fourth, visit, she had wrought some feminine transformation, and—I was glad to see—kept the menagerie as well. I did have four stays at that house. The first was when I set up the rental, the second when I took her there, the third when I returned after the funeral, and the fourth when I went back in November and, after her recuperation from the surgery, took her to the Promised Land. The third time was the most fraught, though each visit was not without its challenges.
I had done what I could to protect her by removing the television set from the house. Although it is a favorite trope of the thriller writer, watching one’s own funeral cannot be psychologically healthy; watching one’s children in attendance would be enough to drive anyone over the edge. Had she imagined that scene while we were planning her escape? I think, most certainly, she had not. Toward the end she was so hunted and haunted and desperate, and there was a part of her mind—wherein the boys were safely stowed and sacrosanct—that was simply unreachable.
After the funeral I called her on the prepaid mobile I had purchased for her. She begged me to bring as many press cuttings from London as possible. I counseled against it. She called me back later, although we had agreed to keep calls strictly to the necessary minimum, and this time commanded me to do as I was told. For someone who has “the common touch” she can be quite startlingly imperious on occasion. “Lawrence,” she said, “I am not your prisoner. You can’t keep me in the dark.” I said she most certainly was not my prisoner, that she was free to do as she pleased. She said, “I shall do as I please, Lawrence, and it pleases me to tell you to bring those cuttings with you, as many as you can manage in your suitcase.”
