The Dilemma

by Penny Vincenzi

  She kept remembering all the times she had said that of course wives must know, wives of burglars, of train robbers, murderers’ wives, people like Sonia Sutcliffe, that it was impossible that you could live with someone and not see, not guess what was going on; that it was impossible to believe that a wife could be so stupid, so blind, that she could not see the person she lived with could be lying, cheating, stealing, had actually discussed with her friends how extraordinarily unlikely it was that the wives involved in some of the big financial scandals had continued to think that their husbands were conducting their businesses in an entirely honest, straightforward way, that nobody could be that naive, that gullible. Now suddenly she could see exactly the truth of it: how it really was, and how it been for her, which was that she had known, of course she had known, and had been at the same time quite sure that she had not, had crushed the doubts, ignored the fears, denied the terrors, had told herself it could not be, had turned her face to the wall and said no, it was impossible, that a man she had loved, slept with, borne children to, known intimately, could be at best duplicitous, and at worst dishonest. And at the root of it had been a kind of arrogance, a determination that all must be well, otherwise she had to be naive, gullible: laughably, pathetically so. She had known, of course she had known, she had seen, heard, read the evidence for herself, and while she had not understood it, had turned her back most resolutely on what it meant, had forced herself to assume that Bard’s secrecy, his erratic behaviour, his often inappropriate reactions, had been symptoms of the complex, high-handed arrogant attitude towards her and indeed everybody else that she accepted as the norm.

  And that had been made easier because he had never actually lied to her; she had accepted, gratefully, while pretending she did not, the lack of explanation, of information, could see it had been used deliberately to confuse, to divert her, and had allowed that because it was what she had needed it to do.

  And so she was implicated; and so she must now, perhaps, accept the implication and do what he asked. The dilemma she found herself confronted with now had, through her own fault, actually existed for some time: it had merely been polarised by Bard’s request. She thought sharply, wretchedly, now of the night not so very long ago, when Bard had asked her how much she loved him, and whether she would do something dishonest, something wrong for him, and how definite she had been that she would not. Now suddenly, it was reality, not a piece of idle, amusing speculation, and she felt a great deal less certain about her answer. Had he known then, she wondered, had he been thinking even then of what might be required of her, what she might do?

  Her sense of isolation, strong already since the crash, seemed dreadfully increased: she was quite, quite alone in this dilemma, it was an entirely private matter, concerned only with her own conscience, affected only by her own intellect and emotions – but relevant, most dreadfully relevant, not only to herself, but to a great many others. Others, some dear to her, some less so: she tried not to think of them, knowing their influence on her decision to be dangerous and confusing, and failed. Jack, Kitty, her mother, Jess, Kirsten, Barnaby, Oliver, Melinda, Heather Clarke – all with a requirement for her to do what Bard asked, to keep him as they had always known him. She wondered what each of them would have told her to do: Jess, she knew, would have told her to say no, to tell the truth, as she would have done. But Jess did not know; and the pain she would be caused by learning of it would be immense. She could save her that. Her own mother she was less sure about; pragmatism was Rachel’s creed.

  The children’s opinions she hardly considered, with the exception of Liam. Liam: her lover, her partner in adultery, in an almost incestuous crime. Liam who had become so central to her life within the space of days that she could no longer imagine it without him. And yet she had not thought of him for hours; she remembered him now and what he had become to her with a sense almost of shock. She found it impossible to imagine what he would counsel. He would hardly be surprised; his opinion of his father was already so low. She had left Brown’s Hotel that night shattered, profoundly disturbed, both physically and emotionally; had closed the door of the room still hearing his voice, telling her she was mad in her loyalty to Bard, mad to continue to protest her love for him.

  ‘You don’t love him, I know you don’t. And he doesn’t deserve you.’

  ‘Liam,’ she had said, ‘he’s my husband, and the father of my children. And I can’t leave him now.’

  But if she did not do what Bard had asked, then she would have to leave him anyway.

  And her dilemma was as much about her marriage as it was about anything else.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Oliver had hardly ever cried. Having been told he was the man of the family from the age of three, he had always known he couldn’t. Men didn’t cry. Just very occasionally he had: he had cried, he couldn’t help it, when the coffin had been carried out of the church at the end of the funeral service, because that had been when he felt his father had actually finally gone from him. He had cried the first Christmas morning he had woken up after his father had died, thinking of the day ahead without him (but had hidden the tears most successfully, he knew, from his mother); he had cried when his mother’s wheelchair had arrived, sitting in the porch, so hideous and uncompromising, with its dreadful implied message, that she was now actually and unarguably a cripple; he had cried when she had finally had to go into the nursing home; and he had cried for some reason and to his intense shame when he had got straight As in his GCSEs because although he could phone his mother at the nursing home and tell Melinda (who burst into tears herself), it just all seemed rather bleak and empty when all his friends’ fathers were clapping them on the back and shaking them by the hand and giving them drinks and buying them mountain bikes.

  And he had cried (with still more shame and misery) after his first sexual experience, because it had been a disaster and although obviously he didn’t think he would have told his father about it, he felt he was growing up without any proper male support, even of the most tacit nature, and – well, that had been about all really. Until that Friday morning, when he had got a letter from Kirsten, saying that she really thought it was best if they didn’t see each other any more: ‘or not for quite a long time, anyway,’ he read in her extravagant handwriting. ‘I just don’t think it’s going to work out, but thank you for a great time anyway. Please take someone else to Paris, don’t waste the ticket! And I hope you get a really good, proper job soon. Kirsten.’

  Oliver stood in the hall, the hall where Kirsten had kissed him and told him how much she liked his house, looking at the letter, reading it over and over again, trying to make sense, to find sense in it, and failing totally. In the space of one day, less than one day, they had moved abruptly from closeness to distance, warmth to coolness, ease to tension, and in the space of a week, their relationship, their warm, loving, lovely relationship, stretching before them with all its promise and delight, had been ended. How, why, where had it happened? What had he done, what had he said? It had to be his fault, he had to have offended her, hurt her, damaged things between them. He thought again of that evening, the evening she had come to the house; of the long taxi ride, laughing with her, telling her some stupid incident in the office, hearing of some equally stupid one in hers, remembered her turning to him, kissing him first tenderly, then with more passion, of her resting her head on his shoulder, slipping her hand into his, of her voice, her husky, gorgeous voice saying, ‘You’re so nice, Oliver, I like being with you so much.’ That was the last time really, the last time they had been happy; he saw her vividly now, standing in the sitting room, the sun behind her, haloing her wild hair; saw her smiling at him, the funny, rather lopsided smile that made her face so much less beautiful, so much more desirable; remembered every tiny detail of her: she had been wearing a short white dress, her legs and arms bare, quite tanned, she was, there were even some freckles appearing on her nose – and as he stood there, concentrating so hard he felt
he could summon her up in actual physical fact, he realised that he couldn’t actually see very clearly, couldn’t see the flowers that Melinda had put on the hall windowsill, couldn’t see the letter, couldn’t read the awful words any longer, even though they were written so large, and the reason was that his eyes were full of tears.

  ‘Anyway, it was brilliant,’ said Barnaby, pushing back his long blond hair, still tangled from the wind. ‘Bit scary on the Sunday night, before we turned back, but we had some great meals, and a gorgeous trip back yesterday. You’ve got to hand it to Dad, he’s one hell of a guy in a crisis.’>

  ‘Well, he certainly needs to be that at the moment,’ said Kirsten irritably. She was slumped in a chair opposite him, picking at a hole in her sweater, a habit of hers when she was out of sorts. She was very pale. ‘Did he say anything to you about it all? The company, I mean?’

  ‘No, not really. Just that it was a bit tough, but he thought it would be all right in the end.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad someone believes in him,’ said Kirsten. ‘Anyway, I hate sailing him with him, he’s such a bully.’

  ‘No he isn’t. He just knows what he wants, there’s no time for saying would you mind awfully, or excuse me please, when the boat’s about to go over. Which it nearly did. And he’s got a lot of guts, and I – You’re awfully pale, Kirsten, you all right?’

  ‘Yes of course I’m all right.’

  ‘You don’t look it. You look rotten.’

  ‘Barnaby, I’m all right, OK?’

  ‘Yes, OK. Want to come out tonight? I’ve had enough of the simple life for a bit, we’re going clubbing.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t, thanks.’

  ‘Going out with Mother’s Boy, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Kirsten, ‘no I’m not. And just shut up about him, Barnaby, will you? He’s – I’m – oh God.’ And she found herself, to her huge irritation, bursting into tears.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what is it, Kirsten, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh – I don’t know. Nothing. Nothing really. It’s just – ’

  ‘He hasn’t chucked you, has he? Because I’ll break his nasty little neck if he has.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t chucked me. I – well, I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘OK’. He shrugged. ‘Have it your own way. But you’re not looking good, Kirsten.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. Just fuck off, Barnaby, will you, leave me alone.’

  ‘Yeah, OK. If you change your mind, we’re meeting over at Tory’s. She’s coming with us tonight.’

  ‘God. Not with that slime-bag of hers?’

  ‘No, that’s finished. She’s got some other little gnome now. I really don’t go for her blokes.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Kirsten, with a ghost of a smile.

  ‘Yuk! Don’t even think about it. Anyway, you can get me there.’

  ‘Who are you going with, anyway?’ she said. ‘Morag?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I tried her, but she seems to have decided I’m not worthy of her. Silly girl.’

  ‘She’s such a slapper anyway,’ said Kirsten, ‘I don’t know what you ever saw in her. She ought to be stuck up her own arse.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that,’ said Barnaby, grinning, ‘if I see her. Bye, Kirsten.’

  ‘Bye, Barnaby.’

  After he had gone, she made herself a mug of tea and sat down, huddled into the corner of the sofa. She half wished she’d told him. It might have helped. He was unshockable, Barnaby was, and he always made her feel better. In spite of being such a nightmare in lots of ways, he had a lot of common sense: more than she did herself. Well, maybe she could tell him another time.

  ‘I think Kirsten’s in trouble,’ said Barnaby cheerfully to Tory, scooping a tinful of baked beans into a microwaved jacket potato.

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘The usual sort.’

  ‘What – pregnant? Oh, Barney, surely not! Not again.’

  ‘Think so. She’s gone all moody, she looks like a corpse – I just think she is.’

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ said Tory, her small pretty face distraught. ‘She never learns. This is the third time. And whose is it?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I hope it’s not Oliver’s.’

  ‘Might be, I suppose. What about that berk Toby, she still seeing him?’

  ‘No. No, they broke up ages ago. Well, at her party. I suppose that’s not ages ago, actually. And there hasn’t been anyone since. Except Oliver. Oh God, Barnaby, this is terrible. Dad hasn’t got over the press thing yet. What can we do, how should we – ’

  ‘Easy!’ said Barnaby. ‘We don’t know yet. I’m only guessing. And you’d better not rush over with that worried look on your face, or she’ll bite your head off. But I think it’s a bit likely. That’s all.’

  ‘I’m off to Jersey on Monday,’ said Gray to Alan Ferrers over a glass of rather indifferent champagne — God, these City bars ripped you off – ‘Got any contacts?’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Well, because of those shares of Channings’ which got bought there that day, by the offshore trust. That you alerted me to. Just before the crash. I’ve just got to crack that one. Then I’m there.’

  Ferrers shook his head. ‘Tough one. They’re very close over there. Worried about their reputation. You’ll never find it.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to try. And I’m actually quite good at finding things.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that. Thing is, those trusts are absolutely confidential. No-one knows who’s running them, they’re not registered, it’s real needle-in-a-haystack stuff. And anyway, it might have been a bona fide purchase. You never know.’

  ‘Alan! You don’t really think that. Half a million quid’s worth at that stage in the game!’

  ‘No, you’re right, I don’t. So what are you going to do, just wander about asking if anyone runs a trust for Channing and if they bought some of his shares?’

  ‘That sort of thing,’ said Gray with a grin. ‘No, I think I can do a bit better than that. I just need a tiny leg-up, that’s all. I thought you might give it to me.’

  ‘Well, I do have a chum there,’ said Ferrers, ‘as a matter of fact. I’ll give him a bell. I’m sure he’ll help if he can. As long as it doesn’t implicate him in any way.’

  ‘I’ll try not to let it,’ said Gray.

  Clive Hopkins was recovering fast. He was out of Intensive Care and in a side-ward now, bored, irritable, chastising poor Maureen for bringing him cherries when he had wanted grapes – ‘What am I going to do with the stones, dear, just tell me that’ – his cotton dressing gown when he had particularly stressed towelling – ‘It’s after the shower, Maureen, I did explain most carefully why I needed the towelling one’ – the new John Grisham when she knew he preferred Jeffrey Archer – ‘You know I don’t like American authors’ – his reading glasses when he had stressed the bifocals – ‘I’m being constantly interrupted, Maureen, and I need to be able to see properly without taking my glasses on and off.’ And the last straw had been the Daily Mail, which as he pointed out to her, he would have finished by mid-afternoon, when he had said the Telegraph. ‘Surely you can see I need a proper paper at least, if I haven’t got a book to read.’ Fortunately the nurse who brought in his lunch was waving a Spectator about, asking if anyone wanted it; although it was a little extreme in its comments at times, Clive Hopkins liked the Spectator, its politcial views coinciding so neatly with his own. He read the Portrait of the Week and Auberon Waugh’s column and then turned to the City page, where he read, with mounting distress, an article on what the writer called the minefield of Docklands, citing the collapse of the Channing empire as the latest example.

  Realising that this was clearly why Bard Channing had not responded in any way to the messages he had sent him when he had been ill — which had been, he was able now to admit, a little hurtful – he reached in his bedside table for his writing paper and envelopes and wrote Bard a note,
saying how sorry he was and how he quite understood that he must have been too busy and preoccupied to respond to his earlier messages. And when Maureen arrived, bearing grapes, a towelling bathrobe, the latest Jeffrey Archer and the Daily Telegraph, he sent her out immediately to post it.

  ‘Because I want it to arrive at his home tomorrow. Without fail. Poor Mr Channing, what a terrible thing.’

  Maureen arrived at the letter box to see the van disapearing with the last post in it. She saw no reason to tell Clive this; it really wasn’t going to make the slightest difference to Bard Channing if he got one of what were presumably hundreds of letters at the end of the weekend, rather than the beginning of it. And since he clearly wasn’t nearly as interested in Clive as Clive seemed to think he was, it wouldn’t matter at all.

  Kirsten had phoned the surgery, as she had been told to do, and was told, as she had known she would be, that her pregnancy test was positive: just the same, on hearing the news she burst into tears and cried for a long time. And then she found herself shivering violently: she had a bath, and then climbed into bed on that hot summer evening, with a hot-water bottle and a big mug of warm milk, and fell fitfully asleep; an hour later, she woke, sweating, to hear the phone ringing. Thank God, thank God she had left the answering machine on; when it had done its work, she went to listen to it.

  The message was from Oliver. ‘Hallo Kirsten,’ he said, ‘it’s me, Oliver. I just rang to say I got your letter and of course I quite understand. I’ll maybe see you around.’ She knew why he had rung, of course, for she knew him so well, and knew what the message had meant; he had rung on the off-chance that she would be there and he could persuade her to talk to him, to tell him what the matter was, and it must have been immensely hard for him to do that; since she was not there, clearly out enjoying herself, he was not prepared to look foolish, had dismissed her therefore with a cool, detached explanation. And standing there, listening to his light, easy voice, seeing him with horrible vividness, his heavy fair hair, his dark blue eyes fixed on hers, playing the message over and over again, touching the machine as if it could convey him physically to her, she began to cry, only this time not from shock, but from grief and as if her heart would break.