Lovers and Liars Trilogy (31 page)

“I don’t know, Mary,” Hawthorne replied. He shot her an amused, affectionate glance. “I might give you a better answer if you slowed down and told me the story from the beginning. I’m not clear. Are we talking about a seduction or a romance?”

“A seduction, of course.” Mary gave him an indignant look. “John, it was twelve years ago. Gini was just fifteen years old.”

At that, his amusement vanished and his expression became intent. He leaned forward, and he listened with absolute attention. It was a long story, as Mary told it, and he scarcely interrupted once.

“It was that horrible summer,” Mary began. “The summer of nineteen eighty-two. It was the worst year of my life, one of the worst years. I hadn’t seen Sam in ages, and he had gone out to Beirut….”

She went through it all then—the icy telephone call from Gini’s headmistress, the ghastliness of contacting the police, the relief when late that night Gini telephoned from the Hotel Ledoyen and explained where she was. The conversation with Sam that same night, when Sam had been slightly drunk, at the three-bourbon stage, Mary would have judged. Sam’s careless reassurances that of course Gini would be fine, that he’d keep an eye on her, and Mary’s anxiety: Beirut was a dangerous place, and Sam Hunter had never kept an eye on Gini in his life.

“Oh, stop fussing, Mary,” Sam had said. “She’s here and she may as well stay for a while. Maybe it’ll knock some sense into her. You know what she’s saying now? She wants to be a journalist, for God’s sake.”

“She’s been saying that for the last five years, Sam. If you listened occasionally, on the rare occasions when you see her, you’d know that.”

“Mary, listen, this is a
child
we’re talking about here. A sixteen-year-old kid…”

“Fifteen, Sam. She isn’t sixteen for another four weeks.”

“Fifteen, sixteen, what difference does it make?” His voice had faded into a crackle of interference on the line.

“Journalist!” Mary made out as it cleared. “For Christ’s sake. Well, let her find out what reporting really means. I guarantee it—she’ll be out of here in a week.”

Looking into the fire, Mary paused, frowned, then continued her story. Sam, of course, had not been right. Two weeks went by, three. Mary herself would try to telephone, but Sam never took her calls, and Gini always seemed to be out, even when she called quite late.

Mary described the mounting anxiety and impotence she had felt. She described how she had scanned, every day, the Beirut stories in the newspapers. And she described the day when Sam and Gini suddenly arrived back on her doorstep, unannounced. It was ten in the morning; there had been problems with their flights. She heard the taxi pulling up outside the house in Kent. She rushed out, full of questions, had seen their faces, felt the thunder and tension in the air, and stopped.

Gini’s face was white and streaked with tears. Sam was sweating, cursing, belligerent. He had a swollen jaw, ten stitches in a jagged cut above his eye, and he was walking with a limp. He half pulled, half pushed Gini into the hall.

“All right,” he said. “You go to your room now, and you goddamn well stay in it. You come out when I say so and not before. Jesus Christ, Mary. I’ve been up all goddamn night. Fix me a drink, will you? A large drink.”

Gini ran up the stairs without a backward glance. Her bedroom was in the attic; in the distance a door slammed. Sam and Mary moved into the drawing room. Sam shut the door behind him. Mary stared at him in consternation. He drank three inches of bourbon straight down, then he came to the point.

“You want to know what’s wrong? You want to know what’s happened? Fine, I’ll tell you. A man’s happened. His name’s Pascal Lamartine. A fucking Frenchman. A photographer. One of the Leica leeches. That’s who’s happened. Get a hold of yourself, Mary. He’s been screwing Gini. He’s been screwing Gini day and night for weeks….” He stopped.

“Great. I mean just great, yes?” He poured another bourbon.

“I meet my daughter for the first time in three years, and what do I discover? She’s a goddamned little liar. She’s a goddamned little slut. You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you. He got her into bed the day they met. Then they stayed there. For three weeks. They’ve been at it, morning, noon, and fucking night. She couldn’t get enough of it. My daughter. Jesus Christ!”

He swallowed down the bourbon in one gulp, then mopped his face. “You know what’s next? Pregnancy, that’s what’s next. She’ll have gotten herself fucking pregnant, I know it—she’s goddamned stupid enough. Fifteen and pregnant. Do I deserve this? Well, if she has, I’ll pay for the abortion, then that’s it. From now on I wash my hands of her. The hell with her. The hell with that goddamned fancy school you chose for her, and the hell with their goddamned fucking fees. I hope they expel her. And I hope
you
understand, Mary.
You
look after her.
You
live with her. I blame you for this.”

And so it went on for several hours. The bluster, the excuses, the accusations, the obscenities, the abuse. Mary listened quietly until she had the story straight—or Sam’s version of it anyway.

Lamartine, Sam had declared, was thirty. He had a bad reputation; he and Sam had had a fight. Sam had half killed him, and didn’t understand now why he hadn’t gone the whole way, finished off the job. The story looped, looped back. For a second, a third time, she heard about the harbor room, its bed, its sheets.

“Sam,” she said finally. “He knew how old Gini was? You’re sure of that?”

“Sure? Of course I’m goddamn sure.”

“Did he admit as much?”

“Not to me, no—you think he would? He’s not a fool. Gini tried to cover up, said she’d lied to him. Lied to
him
! She’s a goddamned little liar through and through. He knew well enough. He’d been fucking
boasting,
Mary, in the bars, in the restaurants. How he seduced
my
fucking daughter. How he got her into bed the day they met. How she was fifteen years old, but underage girls were best. He told everyone.
Everyone.
Jesus Christ. The whole press corps, the barman, the fucking waiters. They
all
knew. I was a laughingstock. …He told them everything. Described it. What he’d taught her. What they did. …”

“What did they do?” Hawthorne had said.

The question startled Mary. She looked up, then sighed, and shook her head. “I’m sorry, John. I was miles away. I can still see it so vividly. How I felt, what Sam said…What was your question?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” He had been leaning forward, but now straightened up.

She had risen then, and made them both some coffee. Over the coffee she told Hawthorne the rest of it rapidly. How she had decided to say nothing and allow Gini to believe that Sam had kept his promise to remain silent. If the privacy of this matter was so important to her, then that seemed the best course. Mary would pretend, and had pretended, that she accepted as truth some foolish incident—staying out late, coming home drunk—as the reason for their return from Beirut. Then, when Gini was ready to confide in her, when she needed Mary’s help, when she was ready to give her own version of these events, Mary would be there, could help.

“And that moment never came?” Hawthorne had said, and Mary had an intuition that his attention was now wandering, that this aspect of the story interested him less. She nodded.

“Fine.” Hawthorne leaned across and touched her hand. “I understand. Now I’ll give you my advice. …”

Then he had done so. The advice, as usual, had been sensible. “Do nothing,” he had said.

Mary rose now and looked around the chaos of her kitchen. She was running behind; she must get a move on, finish preparing the mousse, begin on the pheasants. …She began again, in a halfhearted way, to whisk the eggs. She measured out the cream, and the doubts crept back. Was it the best advice? Was it the right course? She had been sure at the time, when he spoke, but then, John was so persuasive, so cogent, so cool and unemotional—and a little hard too, she had felt that.

“First,” he had said, “this Lamartine’s bad news—that’s obvious enough. The name’s familiar—I’ll run some checks, let you know what I come up with—” He paused. “Second. Gini has to discover for herself what Lamartine is. You can’t do that for her, and you shouldn’t try. She’s a grown woman, not a child, Mary. She’s an intelligent woman, judging from how she writes. Not a woman it would be easy to deceive.” He looked at Mary intently. “Am I right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then let her find out for herself what he is. Don’t interfere. And above all, don’t involve Sam. Sam can be guaranteed to make matters a whole lot worse.

“Third,” he continued after a pause, and it was this part of his advice that surprised her. “Don’t make up your mind in advance. You’re prejudiced against Lamartine—”

“Prejudiced?” Mary stared at him. “I don’t think I’m prejudiced. It’s obvious what he did. He exploited Gini and then waltzed off to the next woman. It was cruel and it was inexcusable.”

“Are you sure about that?” Something in his tone as he asked the question struck her as curious. It was almost as if he sympathized with Lamartine, she realized—and that was the last reaction she would have expected from him, for he could be old-fashioned, even censorious, when it came to matters of sexual morality. The Catholic in him, she had always thought.

“
Are
you sure, Mary?” he said again. “Think. You’ve heard only one side of the story. In my experience”—he looked away, frowning—“in my experience, that can be very misleading. It distorts. Maybe there were mitigating circumstances.”

“What nonsense.” Mary felt angry. “The facts speak for themselves.”

“No, they don’t.” He interrupted her curtly. “Facts rarely do that. You’re
interpreting
those facts you happen to have heard. People do that all the time.” His voice had become almost bitter. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that process. I should know.”

“All right, all right…” Mary replied “I’ll bide my time. Postpone judgment—is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. I am.” His tone was firm. It had a finality Mary did not like, and found difficult to accept.

“Don’t rush to judgment,” he continued. “Wait. See what you think when you actually meet the man. Meantime…” He paused, and a glint of amusement entered his eyes. “Meantime, Mary, loosen up. Be a little less straitlaced. Try considering it from Lamartine’s point of view. Think of the temptations involved. He’s under pressure, working in a war zone. It’s a dangerous place, it’s a dangerous time. Suddenly he meets a stranger, who happens to be a very beautiful blond-haired stranger. Come on, Mary. You can understand the dynamics of a situation like that. It has a certain eroticism, you know.”

“And that excuses his conduct? Not to me, it doesn’t.”

“Not excuses it, but explains it, perhaps? Be realistic, Mary.” His voice hardened, became almost impatient “Fifteen-year-old girls can be very provocative sexually—you know that as well as I do. They’re more than capable of leading a man on. They like to test their own sexual powers. It’s an open invitation, or it can be. And you can’t always blame the man when he responds.”

“You’re blaming Gini,” Mary burst out hotly. “Shame on you, John!”

“I’m doing nothing of the kind,” he said sharply. “I’m saying it’s a possibility, that’s all. For a seduction to be effective, Mary, two people have to be involved.”

She had stared at him then, with incomprehension, and a sense of remorse. Suddenly they were very close to quarreling. She saw that realization in his face as well, and his reaction was swift

“Don’t answer that. I’m sorry, Mary. It’s late and I should go. Meantime, I’m not putting this too well. …” He rose and put his arm around her shoulders. “All I’m trying to make you understand is the difference between men and women. All right for Gini it was just the way you describe—a love affair. I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure it was. But from the man’s point of view—just accept this, Mary, you have to admit it—the temptation was probably very strong. Men like sex, Mary. They like straightforward sex with no emotional strings. If it’s on offer, they’ll grab it…And don’t pretend you don’t know that as well as I do. Or pretend that you condemn it out of hand. You can’t. I know too much about your past.”

Mary hesitated, then, feeling grateful that a quarrel had been avoided, she smiled.

“Oh, very well. Very well. You’ve persuaded me, though why you should want to play devil’s advocate, I don’t know. All right. I’ll try to keep an open mind.”

“You know how often men think about sex in the course of a day?” He was smiling now, and moving toward the door. “I read some statistics just the other week. Every two minutes, Mary. Or was it every three?”

“You liar.” Mary laughed. “You’re making that up.”

“Not so. It’s true. I even tested it out on myself, to make sure I measured up.”

He flashed his boyish, appealing smile, and said, “And now it’s late. Very late. And I’d better go home.”

He had done so, and Mary congratulated herself. There had been a moment of tension, but that happened in close friendships, and fortunately they had both realized the danger in time. When he left, there was the usual easy and relaxed banter between them, and the friendship was unimpaired.

But had John’s advice been correct? Now, two days later, with Lamartine’s appearance imminent, she was less sure. Do nothing, or do something? She felt another flurry of indecision. Wait and see what she felt when she actually met Lamartine, she decided. Play it by ear. She began to whisk the eggs again. Just as they were reaching perfection, there was a ring at the door.

It was John Hawthorne. He was wearing informal weekend clothes, and was flanked by a new security man, one she did not recognize. The security man was loaded down with flowers, boxes and boxes of flowers.

“For you,” John said. “For the party tonight. Malone, take them inside, would you? Yes. The kitchen, that’s fine.”

Mary looked at the flowers and could have cried, they were so beautiful. Narcissus, hyacinth, iris, tulips. Spring flowers, out-of-season flowers, the kind of flowers she could not afford anymore. For a moment her vision blurred.