by Joan Smith
He started for the door. Alice moved out of the way and he hurried into the corridor, turning towards the back of the building.
Alice said, ‘That poor woman—’
They looked at each other in horror, not sure what to do. There was a loud yowl from the cattery and they both jumped.
‘That bloody Siamese, it’s starting again.’ Olivia grimaced and made an effort to pull herself together. ‘You make the tea,’ she told Alice. ‘Get Lisa to ring Tony when she comes back, to see if he can cover for me this evening. I’d better call Ricky’s father again, he must know—’
There was another noise from the back of the building, a toilet flushing followed by the sound of a cup or mug breaking on the tiled floor. Olivia said grimly: ‘It can wait. I’d better go after him.’
Landmine tragedy claims ex-model who wanted to help the world
by Ingrid Hansson in Beirut, and Chris Finegan
Tributes have been pouring in for the British model Aisha Lincoln, who has been killed in a horrific accident in the Middle East. Lincoln, 44, was pronounced dead yesterday in the American hospital in Beirut after being injured in an explosion in South Lebanon. She had been travelling with the prize-winning photographer, Fabrizio Terzano, who was killed outright in the blast on Monday. The tragedy apparently happened when the car they were travelling in ran over a landmine.
Lincoln and her driver survived the accident and were airlifted to hospital in Beirut by a UN helicopter. Initial reports suggested that her injuries were not life-threatening, but Lincoln died in the operating theatre as doctors battled to save her. The driver is in intensive care, where his condition is described as critical.
Ambassador
‘Aisha Lincoln was one of the best ambassadors this country could ever have had,’ said the Prime Minister (pictured left, arriving last night with his wife at a dinner in Birmingham with prominent Asian entrepreneurs), leading the tributes to the dead woman. ‘Our thoughts are naturally with her family and friends at this terrible time.’ His wife, who was wearing a blue silk sari in honour of the occasion, bowed her head as he spoke about the tragedy.
Textiles
According to Lincoln’s husband Tom, who was at the couple’s home in Dorset, she flew to the Middle East ten days ago. She was particularly interested in textiles, and was planning to do research for a book. She met the Italian-born photographer, who was going to provide photographs for the volume, last year when he photographed her for Tatler. Lincoln announced in 1995 that she was giving up modelling and had since concentrated on projects to help women and children in the Third World.
‘Aisha was a smart, intelligent woman who decided to use her success to do some good in the world,’ said top stylist Saskia Dawes last night. ‘Her death is an absolute tragedy.’
Inspiration
Asian, the London-based Turkish designer who always chose Lincoln to open his catwalk shows, said he was ‘devastated’ by her death. ‘Aisha was a good friend as well as an inspiration. I cannot believe this news.’
The investigation into the accident is concentrating on the theory that the couple’s Syrian driver may have got lost in a mountainous and uncultivated region of Lebanon. According to the UN, thousands of landmines were left behind when the country’s civil war ended in 1990. Around six local people a month are killed and injured in accidents.
Princess
A spokeswoman for Diana, Princess of Wales, who is involved in a high-profile campaign to ban the sale of landmines and recendy lobbied the Foreign Secretary in support of a ban, said she had been informed of the tragedy.
A statement from Kensington Palace said: ‘This terrible accident confirms the importance of the Princess’s campaign.’ The Princess, who is on holiday in the south of France, is believed to be writing privately to Lincoln’s family.
Aisha Lincoln had been married for more than twenty years, and has two teenage sons. Arrangements were being made last night to return her body to Britain.
The Aisha Lincoln I knew, by Amanda Harrison, page 3
Obituary, page 32
Cars and vans belonging to reporters and TV crews were parked in the lane that ran down the side of the house, providing a soundtrack of slamming doors and occasional bursts of laughter. If anything, there seemed to be even more of them today, according to Tim and Aisha’s neighbour, Sue Hickman, who left a rather flustered message on their answering machine. Tim moved restlessly round his first-floor office, avoiding his desk, where he could not bring himself to look at the black-and-white postcard next to the phone. He picked up a series of familiar objects which should have been comforting but merely seemed unreal: a paperback book he had started reading at the weekend; a framed photograph on his bookshelves, showing Aisha and the boys, all much younger, on holiday; an Edwardian hand-held blotter with an inlaid top that Aisha had given him as a birthday present; a magnificent ammonite that one of the boys had found on the beach.
Abandoning this pointless activity – though what else was there to do until Ricky arrived? – Tim went to the window and threw up the sash, glancing with distaste at the radio car which was just visible beyond the hedge. A movement caught his eye and he turned to stare at the pebble-dashed bungalow which had been built in what was once the back garden of Cranbrook Lawns. It was the reason he and Aisha had been able to afford the house but he had never got on with the elderly couple, now in their seventies, who lived in it. Jack and Beattie Bell complained frequently about the boys and their friends, about noise and even about the position of the Lincolns’ dustbins; Tim could not be sure he had seen someone at the kitchen window, but the Bells must have heard about Aisha by now.
Sue Hickman had ended her message by saying that the vicar was going to have a word with the journalists and ask them to show some respect — a pretty futile gesture, in Tim’s view. He despised Reverend Roger Crammer, a low-church evangelical who had startled the village when he banned Aisha’s Wednesday evening yoga class from the church hall. Tim had heard Aisha tell the story several times, almost doubled up with laughter at the notion that Sivananda yoga involved pagan rites — he winced, ambushed by the memory — and he didn’t want Reverend Rodge turning up on his doorstep now, mouthing platitudes. Some jour no had been doing just that when Tim switched on the Today programme this morning, babbling about Aisha’s desire to make a difference. It was more than he could take after a night spent drifting in and out of febrile dreams.
Tim snapped off the radio and he had had the sense not to turn on breakfast TV, guessing that the coverage would be even worse. The rat bag — Max’s mishearing of the phrase ‘rat pack’ was a family joke — had started to turn up in Cranbrook before the British embassy in Beirut even confirmed that Aisha had been seriously injured. How did they get to know such things? The first crew was local and withdrew to film from the main road in front of the house when Tim, looking out the window in Aisha’s bedroom, recognised the logo on their vehicle and decided not to answer the door.
The people who lived opposite, who were founder members of Neighbourhood Watch, phoned the police around the same time and complained that a TV van was idling on a dangerous bend — a fact Tim discovered from the WPC who turned into the drive shortly after the film crew, parking just inside the gates. She told Tim she had discovered from the producer why they were there, and immediately radioed for reinforcements.
‘They’ll be here in droves,’ she observed, in a way that Tim considered unfeeling. She added that an inspector was on his way from the station in Minehead to talk to him about how to handle the melee: ‘The last thing you want now is reporters crawling all over the lawn. Have you got anyone with you, sir?’
Over her shoulder, Tim saw that her male colleague had got out of the passenger seat and was leaning back against the far side of the squad car, his head thrown back in the sunshine. For some reason, the orange light on the roof was flashing through Aisha’s old roses, which were in full flower over the front door. It was a surreal sight,
‘What thing?’ She turned in the direction he was looking. ‘Yeah, if it bothers you.’
‘Mr Lincoln!’
It was the TV reporter again, hovering at the gate with a cameraman just behind, recording the scene. Tim had seen her occasionally on the early evening news, talking vivaciously to the camera in a West Country imitation of the anchorwomen on American TV shows.
‘Please — it’ll only take two minutes!’
‘You want to talk to her?’
Tim turned on the WPC. ‘My wife’s been blown up by a fucking landmine. What do you think?’ A spasm twisted his face. ‘Sorry. Sorry. No need to be rude. You’ve got your job to do.’
‘It’s shock, sir, we see it all the time. Excuse me a moment?’ She followed the path along the front of the house, under the Victorian metal canopy Aisha laughingly called the loggia, and headed down the drive. ‘Sorry, Nicola, nothing doing.’
Tim had watched them fall into conversation, as though it was an ordinary summer afternoon and his wife was not lying unconscious in a foreign hospital, fighting for her life. That was the cliché the reporter had used, the one who got through on the phone shortly after the first devastating call from the Foreign Office, before it had even occurred to Tim that he would have to deal with the press. She was from the Daily Mail and he couldn’t speak to her coherently, eventually giving up and putting down the phone. After several more calls, all from journalists, he turned on the answering machine, forgetting that the next call would trigger Aisha’s recorded voice: ‘Hi, this is the number of Tim and Aisha Lincoln. We re not here right now, but leave a message after the tone and we’ll return your call. Or you can call my mobile on...’
Tim had been paralysed. His first reaction was to wonder whether he would ever hear his wife’s voice again, his second that there must be a way of turning down the volume on the bloody machine. But then he wouldn’t know who was calling. The man from the Levant desk — the Levant desk? — at the Foreign Office had checked whether he had a mobile, said nothing when Tim admitted he hadn’t and then asked him to stay within range of the house phone.
The guy hadn’t given much away, other than confirming that Tim was Aisha’s next of kin and saying he regretted to have to tell him that Mrs Lincoln had been involved in an ‘incident’ in Lebanon. It was only when the man added, in a studiedly neutral tone, that her ‘travelling companion’ had been killed in the same incident that Tim began to suspect how grave Aisha’s condition was; his first reaction was to blurt out that he’d better get on the next plane to Beirut, at which point the FO man revealed that Aisha was undergoing a lengthy operation and the outcome was ‘uncertain’.
‘Uncertain? What the fuck does that mean?’
‘Your wife has life-threatening injuries, sir. She’s having surgery now. It’s a four-hour flight to Beirut, even assuming you can get a seat. We’ve got embassy staff at the hospital, and you’ll hear more quickly this way.’
Everyone, from the Foreign Office to the British embassy in Beirut — Tim called directory inquiries for the number as soon as he had downed a small brandy and got his trembling hands under control — had been so reasonable, ignoring his outbursts as though they were talking to a fractious child. Tim wished someone would shout back, but he knew it was more important to concentrate on all the things that needed to be done. The boys, Aisha’s sister May in France, her assistant Becky — Tim had put off making the calls he most dreaded, taking an almost spiteful pleasure in cancelling a meeting with a planning officer and an uncongenial client, and then calling directory inquiries a second time to ask for the number of the House of Commons. He didn’t know what Stephen Massinger could do exactly but the wretched man was an MP and he must know people at the Foreign Office.
Hesitating in the hall after speaking to Massinger’s secretary, who sounded efficient if not exactly friendly, Tim had forced himself to dial Ricky’s mobile and felt guiltily relieved when he got voicemail; a few minutes later he tried again, unable this time to keep an edge of anxiety out of his voice.
As for Max, who was on the other side of the world, just the thought of speaking to his younger son made Tim’s stomach churn. Max had a mobile that worked in South America, Aisha had seen to that — Tim had a sudden memory of Ricky showing Max how to access his messages, his dark head bent over the phone while his brother looked on. Max’s hair had been red at the time, almost mahogany, and cut like a bog brush in imitation of some pop star — a typically idiotic gesture, Tim thought, when Max was about to visit a country which had been run by a military junta in the not-too-distant past. Aisha smiled when he complained to her, tolerant of the boy’s eccentricities in a way Tim was not.
‘I expect there are punks in Latin America,’ she said calmly. ‘He’s not going to get arrested just for a haircut.’
‘Punks? Is that what it’s supposed to be? You mean he’ll be wearing tartan trousers with giant bloody safety pins when he gets off the plane in Santiago?’
‘I didn’t mean literally. He’s eighteen, remember.’
‘Going on eleven.’
Recalling the conversation, one of their last before Aisha flew to Amman, made Tim feel even worse. In something close to desperation, he had grabbed the phone between calls from reporters — how on earth was the Foreign Office supposed to get through when total strangers kept leaving incredibly long messages? — and dialled the number of Aisha’s friend Iris Benjamin, whose daughter was travelling with Max.
‘Iris — have you heard?’ It came out more abruptly than he intended.
‘Heard what? Is it Max? Has something happened to Clara?’
‘Not Max. It’s Aisha.’
‘Aisha?’
He explained, stumbling over the phrase ‘life-threatening’, which suddenly struck him as a hateful euphemism.
‘You mean she —’ There was a long pause. ‘Tim. I’m just going to sit down. Wait.’
Did she always have to be so damned collected? Just because she was a fucking shrink. Tim heard footsteps, an exclamation of pain, a door closing, and found himself yelling into the phone.
‘Iris? Iris? What am I going to tell Max? How can I ring the lad in Santiago and tell him his mother’s—’
‘I can hear you, Tim. Try and breathe deeply, don’t think about — are you going to fly out there?’
‘To Chile?’
‘Beirut.’
‘I wanted to but the chap from the Foreign Office said — I think he was telling me to wait and see what—’
At the other end of the line, Iris drew a shuddering breath. ‘Have you told Ricky?’
‘I — no. Look, I’ve left messages on his mobile, it’s not my fault if—’
Iris said incredulously: ‘You left messages?’
‘Just to ring home, I’m not completely witless.’
Iris exhaled. ‘How good is Max’s Spanish? He did GCSE, didn’t he?’
‘So-so, and he’s got a phrase book. Why?’
‘Hmm, and Clara’s not exactly fluent. I’m just thinking whether they’re likely to hear it on the news.’
‘Max listening to the news? You must be joking.’
‘Aisha’s not unknown there, she did that show in Brazil a few years ago.’ She added firmly: ‘You have to call him, you can’t take the risk.’
Tim grunted.
‘What about May, have you spoken to her?’
‘There hasn’t been — I thought I should tell the boys first.’
Iris heard something in his voice. ‘Are you on your own there, Tim? Do you want me to come over?’
‘No, I can — um, yes. It’s — very decent of you.’
‘Would you like me to be there when you call Max?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes.’
‘I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’
‘You’ll have to get through the scrum.’
‘What?’
‘Reporters. I’ll tell the police you’re coming.�
� He remembered something. ‘An inspector’s on his way, supposedly.’
He was about to ring off when Iris said, ‘Tim? I’d better find out about flights from Santiago, unless you’ve—’
‘No.’
‘I assume Max will want to come home and I don’t think Clara will want to stay on her own. I wouldn’t want her to, anyway.’
It had not even occurred to him. Embarrassed, he began to talk about credit cards but she cut him off.
‘We can sort it out later. I’d better get on to British Airways.’
Tim grimaced as the call ended and tried Ricky’s mobile again. The phone rang almost as soon as he’d finished leaving another message and he seized it, steeling himself to talk to his elder son, only to get some woman from a radio station in Milan. He’d put the phone down on her and not long after, the inspector turned up at the house with a female colleague, both of them grim-faced. Tim invited them in, saying something disparaging about reporters, before he realised that the man had something else on his mind.
‘You’d better sit down, Mr Lincoln. Is anybody else in the house? You’ve got two sons, haven’t you? Are they at home?’
Tim remained standing in the hall, a sensation of giddiness starting in his head.
‘Mr Lincoln?’ The policeman glanced into the living room. ‘Let’s go in here. Your sons, are they here, sir?’
Tim managed to get out that they were not. The inspector shepherded him into the spacious room where dust danced in shafts of golden afternoon light. When the three of them were seated, which happened almost without Tim being aware of it, the man said formally: ‘Mr Lincoln, I’m very sorry to have to tell you that your wife has died. She passed away in the operating theatre—’
Tim exploded: ‘Don’t they do this sort of thing on the phone? Get you to do their dirty work, do they?’ He meant the Foreign Office.
