Skylark

by Sheila Simonson

  Lord Henning cleared his throat. "Not a bad notion. Unusual, of course."

  Williams was frowning. "I'll consult the Chief Constable. If he has no objection I daresay I can arrange for a briefing session in one of the hotel's anterooms."

  Henning interrupted. "At Hambly, Rhys. More dramatic."

  "But Mrs. Dodge's health..."

  "I feel fine." I beamed at Lord Henning, who blushed. "I think that's a great idea. The photographers can take pictures of the rhododendrons or something."

  Lord Henning ducked his head on a small smile. "The glaziers will have finished with the ground floor by tomorrow. Blue salon, Rhys. It's large enough to accommodate the gentry."

  There was more discussion, and Williams trotted out his draft of my statement. I felt mild resentment that he was so ready to put words into my mouth, but I suppressed it. He meant well, and God knew his experience of the British press was greater than ours. Also the question of what we should say about Milos required delicate handling.

  Williams went downstairs to telephone. There were several awkward pauses in the ensuing conversation. After the third ghastly silence I realized that Lord Henning was shy, an insight that surprised me so much I was struck dumb.

  Ann stepped into the breach. She told Henning how much she had admired his house and how sorry she was about the destruction. I rallied and said I had been saddened to hear of Mr. McHale's death and the watch dog's. His lordship responded with half a dozen sentences so stiff I could tell he was distressed. I began to feel agitated myself, remembering.

  Dad intervened with a tribute to the Henning Institute, and Ann drew from his lordship the information that his mother was an Irishwoman and the Institute was her particular interest, though his grandfather had established the London office and the fund-raising apparatus shortly after World War II. My father had spent some time in London working for the Friends' Field Service Committee in the early fifties, so there was historical overlap and Dad made the most of it. Lord Henning seemed to find the reminiscences soothing. Jay kept quiet, though I could tell he found the interplay of personalities interesting.

  Presently Williams returned. He was smiling. "All set. I spoke to the chief constable and made a brief announcement to the journalists in the lobby. Tomorrow at eleven. They'll pass the word."

  They left soon after that, the shy baron and his gregarious secretary.

  Perhaps Williams's announcement did some good. We went down to dinner at eight. Although a flashbulb popped in the lobby, and dining among the news hawks felt like the old nightmare of nudity in public, we weren't harassed directly. Ann and Jay and I even went for a cautious stroll on the green in the long English twilight. My father called home.

  Afterwards we had a brief council of war in Dad's room. Williams had vowed to join us for breakfast with fresh drafts for Ann and me, and Dad was preparing his own statement, so we didn't talk long. When Jay and I went to our own room, a rollaway bed lay by the open window.

  "What's that?"

  Jay said, "I slept on it last night, Lark."

  "Well, once is enough. I feel a lot better."

  He put his arms around me in a gingerly embrace. "Guess what?"

  "You can tell?"

  He kissed me, a nice long leisurely kiss. Then he helped me into my nightgown, and we made cautious trips down the hall to the loo and retired to the double bed. I felt better, but I did not feel up to strenuous lovemaking. We lay side by side, talking a little, while I waited for the single pain pill I had taken to do its work. Eventually I drifted off.

  When I woke it was dawn, and Jay was not beside me. I groped among the bedcovers with my good hand, making sure, then sat up and looked around. He lay sprawled on the rollaway. I opened my mouth to say something rude, but he looked so deeply asleep I hadn't the heart to wake him.

  It wasn't until I had tiptoed down the hall to the loo and returned to the room that the significance of the separate beds came to me. I ought to have thought how all that stress, on top of detailed discussion of the Lockerbie crash, would affect Jay. He was having nightmares again, and when Jay had nightmares he thrashed around. Ordinarily I could put up with a little thrashing, but he was afraid of hurting me in my damaged condition. He might have.

  I sank onto the bed. I wondered how long it would take before Jay would talk openly with me. We had been married five years, and there were still gulfs of reticence between us. I was a straightforward person. God knew I loved Jay. Short of axe-murder, he could admit to almost any fault and I would not just forgive it, I would find excuses for it, or turn it into a virtue. Weak-minded.

  My momentary anger gave way to despair. We would have to fly home in less than two weeks. Jay would deal with the flight as he dealt with the nightmares, and never mind that he shouldn't have to deal with either. I lay back on the bed and had a quiet cry. It didn't do me much good.

  My GP, a brisk woman with ingenuous blue eyes, made a house call after breakfast. She changed the dressings on my arm and shoulder, said the cuts were healing nicely, and told me I could take a bath. That was a relief. I do not like what my mother calls Pullman baths.

  I wallowed in the huge Victorian tub. Jay pulled me out, and Ann hustled me into a dress and pumps, and I was whisked off to Hambly in the Escort. True to his word, Williams had showed up at breakfast with statements so innocuous I wondered why any journalist would want to hear them. Ann liked hers. My father was prepared to make any number of generalizations about terrorism and the forces of repression in the modern world.

  As we drove to Hambly I asked Jay about the nightmares. He admitted that they had recurred. That was that. He was not going to elaborate.

  For me, the worst part of returning to Hambly was that it looked untouched. An illusion, of course. Still, the broken glass in the family wing had been replaced, and we drove directly to that entrance. Williams met us at the door. A kindly groom took Jay's keys and Dad's, promising to park the cars out of sight. I didn't think the rentals were that awful.

  We were ushered in to the main reception room, like honored guests, and Lord Henning materialized to offer us a cup of tea before the onslaught. A woman from the Henning Institute was showing the journalists the damage to the old wing of the house.

  Henning--or, more likely, Williams--had brought in folding chairs for the press from the nearest Women's Institute, and we were to face the reporters from stations in front of a handsome Adam fireplace. Comfortable chairs had been arranged for us as if for a conversation. The only flaws in the picture were the booms and lights and microphones the media seemed to require. I thought Williams should have brought in a spaniel to sit at my feet, just to improve my dog image, but I refrained from making the suggestion.

  When the journalists entered they seemed unnaturally subdued. At first I believed they had been sobered by their glimpse of destruction, but I soon realized that their restraint indicated mere feudal deference. They were minding their manners. Once we had issued our innocuous little statements, their questions were as goofy as ever, though more politely phrased than in South Kensington.

  We were trying to manage the news. Roughly summarized, we told the press that the Institute had given Milos asylum after his stabbing, to which Ann and I had been witnesses. The Czech secret police were trying to silence Milos blah blah blah. Dad announced that a leading university press--my mother had been busy--would issue a collection of Milos's poems in translation, and that freedom of expression was a right, not a luxury. He lectured a bit. I was proud of him.

  Then Ann explained that she had spotted Milos's attacker while on a tour of Hambly, and that she and I had followed Smith and the Libyan with the intent of revealing their whereabouts to the police. She lied with delicacy and an air of total conviction. I was proud of her. Then came the hard part.

  I explained how I had tried to alert the Hambly staff and that I had spotted the abandoned sedan. Overwhelmed by the conviction that the men had entered the grounds to make another attempt on Milos's life,
I had "effected" my own entry, run to the family wing, and sounded the alarm just as the bomb went off. In Williams's neat prose I came across like one of those heroines of Victorian music halls, Grace Darling in her lifeboat, or the young woman who hung on the bell-rope to prevent curfew from sounding.

  "Hang on the bell, Nellie, hang on the bell.

  Your poor Daddy's locked in a cold prison cell.

  As you swing to the left, Nellie, swing to the right,

  Remember that curfew must never ring tonight."

  After the explosion, I said, I had "detained the alleged assassin until Lord Henning's employees could come to my assistance." My injuries were slight, and I was recovering nicely, thank you. I completed this sanitized narrative, reading too fast, and Lord Henning made a colorless little statement deploring Mr. McHale's death and the injuries the Hambly staff had suffered. He summarized the damage to the house in some detail and gave an insurance company cost estimate of half a million pounds. I thought that was grossly understated. He had, he said, flown home at once when he heard of the tragedy.

  Then came the questions. Williams fielded them, answering the ones he could succinctly, and rephrasing the others and distributing them among his "panel." Reporters from the more conservative papers directed some sarcastic questions at Lord Henning about the Institute's supposed role in cosseting the Irish Republican Army. However, the questions were surprisingly mild.

  We later discovered that Henning had been a Tory back-bencher, an early supporter of Margaret Thatcher, until his elevation to the peerage. His grandfather and his mother had been strong Labourites. Insofar as the Institute had a radical agenda, its causes were not Lord Henning's causes. He seemed to view it as a well-meaning group devoted to the defense of traditional British liberties. The Tory journalists bought that, or appeared to. Everyone deplored the use of violence in rural Shropshire for whatever reason. Had the explosion occurred in Birmingham or Liverpool or London, the reporters would have found it much less interesting.

  All that was strange and enlightening, but the bulk of the questions were directed at me and were of the "what were your sensations when" variety. There was sexual innuendo.

  Ann answered as many of these probings as she reasonably could, pouring on the Georgia color. The reporters liked her, but they weren't entirely stupid. My sling and battered face made it obvious that my role had been active. This seemed to fascinate the television people. I kept my answers brief and colorless, until a foxy looking woman in the third row asked twice about my training in the martial arts and whether I thought women ought to be allowed to participate in combat. It was clear that she regarded me as an Amazon and a freak.

  Williams looked at me with a helpless expression and shrugged as if to say what can I do?

  I drew a long, wincing breath. "I have no martial arts training whatsoever, ma'am."

  She simpered. In British English "ma'am" is reserved for royalty, and they find the American usage amusing. I thought of the columnist in the Independent and found myself telescoping the foxy reporter's smirk with that writer's self-righteous spite. If someone had showed me a poodle at that moment I would have strangled it.

  I adjusted the sling on my arm. "I'm a reasonably fast runner. When I saw Smith he was running away from the house, and I was afraid he might escape. The explosion deafened both of us, so he didn't hear me coming after him. I outran him, and I knocked him down. Then I sat on him. I don't think that constitutes hand-to-hand combat, which I don't favor for anybody, male or female. I'm a pacifist."

  "But what about..."

  I rode ruthlessly over her. "I think women and men have a responsibility to society. I believed Smith had killed Milos Vlaçek, and I didn't think Smith should be allowed to escape. I tried to stop him. Any grown woman and most girls would feel the same way. I was angry and confused, but I was certainly not trying to kill the man, though he tried to kill me."

  "Lark..." Ann's voice, soft.

  I didn't look at her. I kept my eyes locked on the reporter's. She was still smirking. "Now, the thing that's interesting to me in this rather nasty experience is that Smith kept calling me names. My hearing had come back by then. I heard him distinctly. He called me a whore and a cunt and a number of other terms I won't trouble to repeat, every single one of them sexually degrading. He had no other way of thinking about the situation. You seem to be suffering from the same inflexibility, ma'am. I'm sorry for you."

  Much murmuring and shifting on folding chairs. The foxy woman looked around as if seeking help. My father, Lord Henning, and Mr. Williams had all blushed red. Ann, who was sitting beside me, gave my right hand a squeeze. I couldn't see Jay.

  Williams did his best. When the noise level reached the point at which he could be heard, he said sternly, "Mrs. Dodge acted very properly. When she knocked at the door through which you entered today, I myself responded. I can assure you her concern was for Milos Vlaçek's safety."

  "Did someone mention my name?"

  Oh God, Galahad. St. George. Robin Hood. Never was medieval hero more welcome than Milos Vlaçek to my sight. He was standing in the doorway, assisted by my husband and a person who turned out to be a nurse. Milos leaned artistically on a walking stick. Though he looked pale and thin, he had lost none of his pizzazz. He beamed at the assembled reporters.

  "The free press, aha! I am glad to see you all. I am Vlaçek, and I tell you these American women are marvelous. Ann, I kiss your hand. Lark, my dear, you have saved my life. What can I say?"

  He was awful, he was camp, he was terrific copy. Notebooks whipped out as Milos stumped up to the Adam fireplace. I had stood, and so had Ann, who was making clucking noises. We seated Milos in Ann's chair. She stood behind him like Elsa the lioness.

  Williams and Lord Henning had lost control. Williams rallied first. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Milos Vlaçek, the Czech poet, whose safety provoked the attack on Hambly."

  Five reporters shouted questions. William said, "Please, gentlemen," and never mind that three of the five reporters were women.

  When the noise subsided, Milos drew his cane up under his chin and smiled. "You want to know what happened? Very well, I tell you everything. In December, there is the airplane crash at Lockerbie."

  At the name there was a general gasp, as if the house had caught its breath. My father's brows drew together.

  Milos was now in dead earnest. His hand tightened on the cane. "The explosive that was used was manufactured in my country, and there are immediately rumors that the government supplied the terrorists. I am appalled. To kill innocent people, students, no, there is no justification. So I gather evidence of my government's role in the bombing. Then I escape to England where I am given every consideration. It is a great country, England."

  The reporters were coming out of their shock. They had begun to scribble frantically. The TV cameras ground on.

  "I am working in the Hanover Hotel while I wait for my papers to be smuggled out of Prague. I meet Mrs. Veryan and Mrs. Dodge. We go to see Macbeth, and my friend brings the manuscript of my report to the Barbican. It is storming, so I allow Mrs. Veryan to carry it in her bag. I am stabbed on the Tube, but Ann has the papers, and this the secret police do not know. When I come to my senses, I expect only trouble, but these lovely American women, they send the information to America, and they search me out. They find my place of hiding, because they are concerned for my safety. They raise the alarm. I am saved, the document is saved, and all because of these wonderful ladies. Ann, Lark, I salute you."

  Well, hey, I was ready to salute, too. Milos had just blown our elaborate cover-up out of the water and never mind that Ma had arranged for his poems to be published.

  As if by unspoken agreement, the tabloid reporters faded into the background, and the representatives of the responsible press began digging at his story. They had a full account within fifteen minutes and seemed to believe it within half an hour. Print reporters broke for the few telephones available, or for their cars. The tele
vision cameras ground away.

  I looked over at Jay, who was still standing in the doorway. He met my eyes and made a slashing motion across his throat. He was grinning.

  Chapter 18.

  We took Milos to dinner. Lord Henning apologized for his understandable lack of hospitality and suggested a good restaurant about five miles outside Ludlow. He even had Williams make reservations for us. Williams must have leaned on the proprietor, because we were taken directly to a secluded alcove, and no reporter invaded our privacy.

  Well before that we had left Hambly. The journalists evaporated to file their stories, and there didn't seem to be much point in hanging around. The workers resumed hauling debris as soon as Henning gave them the all clear, and the air filled with constructive noise. Lord Henning was flying back to his family that evening.

  Milos's miraculous appearance was easily explained. My father had told Milos of the press conference, and Milos had charmed an off-duty nurse into driving him to Hambly from the hospital. Since he had once again discharged himself, she drove him home to her mother afterwards for a long rest. The mother lived in a modern house in an unquaint village nearby. Dad and Ann picked Milos up at eight and brought him to Appleby's--that was the restaurant's name.

  I, too, had needed a rest. Milos's sensational revelations had diminished Ann's and my newsworthiness somewhat. Even so, photographers and TV cameramen dogged us at the Greyhound. I was depressed by that--and depressed in general. Jay, on the other hand, was so cheerful he whistled in the elevator.

  When Ann and my father showed up in our room with the makings of another picnic, I said I wasn't hungry and just wanted to sleep. They carted their feast into Dad's room, meek as lambs. They took the chairs again, too.

  Jay waited until they had busied themselves setting out the food then sat beside me on the bed. "What's wrong?"

  "I hurt." I was lying on my right side waiting for the pain pill to work.

  He began to massage my neck. "I know you hurt. Besides that."