Lovers and Liars Trilogy (52 page)

He lifted his glass. “Lord Melrose, ladies and gentlemen, I give you a toast. The freedom of the press. May the fourth estate continue to flourish, especially its many representatives here.”

The applause began and mounted. Hawthorne’s audience cheered. At several tables, people rose to their feet. Others followed their example.

“The claque’s here,” Stein said irritably. “They always are. Where they lead, others follow. Jesus Christ—Vietnam. Is there any string that man wouldn’t pull?”

“Well, he did fight there,” Gini began.

“Precisely my point.” Stein gave her a hard look. “While America was changing, he wasn’t there. He was out in Nam, killing Vietcong. Take a look at his war record sometime, Gini. He was decorated three times—and it wasn’t for winning hearts and minds. Hawthorne didn’t speak out against that war until around 1985, long after it was safely over. He was a hawk right through the seventies and beyond.”

“Well, maybe.” Gini hesitated. “But it was a good speech, of its kind. I agreed with his arguments—”

“Sure. You’re a reporter, like nearly everyone else here. He gave the right speech for this audience. Perfect pitch. Nazis, Goebbels? He didn’t miss a trick.”

“That wasn’t irrelevant. It’s germane.”

“Sure. It’s also emotive. I should know…” Stein shrugged. “Forget it, Gini. I guess I’m biased, but then, I’m one of those Jews Hawthorne would never invite to dine.”

After the remaining toasts, guests began to circulate between tables, as the evening drew to a close. On the dais, Hawthorne and Lord Melrose stood talking. Gini looked around for Nicholas Jenkins. When she finally located him, he was deep in conversation with one of Melrose’s assistants. A few minutes later she saw Melrose himself join them. He drew Jenkins aside, into a lobby and out of sight.

John Hawthorne, she saw, had now made his way down from the dais into the throng. He was surrounded by well-wishers and by security men on all sides.

She sat down at the now-empty table to wait for Jenkins’s return. She stared at the tablecloth, fiddled with the cutlery. She did not want to admit it to herself, but Hawthorne’s speech had touched a nerve. Even now, after all Pascal’s arguments, after all that had happened, she still felt a residual resistance to the idea of Hawthorne’s involvement in these events. Earlier that day, at the escort agency, or when she had been speaking to his wife the previous evening, she had almost been able to accept the idea of his guilt. Now, again, it seemed so unlikely. A failure of imagination, perhaps, she told herself, but she could not imagine the man who had made tonight’s speech making a series of appointments with hired blondes, or authorizing killings.

“Gini…it is Gini!”

She looked up to find Hawthorne and his entourage had reached her table. He was standing by her side. She rose and took the hand he held out to her. His handshake was brisk and impersonal; people were milling around on all sides. Nevertheless, she could read something in his face and in his eyes. It might be wordless, but she could see that it was directed at her and her alone, and it looked like an appeal.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “Taking Lise out yesterday evening. That was a very good idea of yours.”

Gini did not correct him. “Lise is not here tonight?”

“No. No.” He hesitated slightly. “She had a migraine.”

“I hope she feels better soon.”

“I’m sure she will. They don’t usually last that long. I—”

He stopped, and Gini realized it was the first time she had seen him betray awkwardness; it was as if he were off guard. Just for one passing instant she saw that beneath the pace and energy he looked desperately tired. He looked, she realized, as Mary had described, as if at heart he was in despair. Already he was beginning to turn away to the next table, the next group of admirers and friends.

“Give my love to Mary,” he said, and he was gone. Gini watched him leave the room, table by table. At the door, the security men bunched. She saw Frank Romero’s burly figure, and that reminded her. She turned back, but she had missed the departure of Hawthorne’s father. His table was now deserted, and S. S. Hawthorne had gone.

She went in search of Nicholas Jenkins and found him eventually, on the far side of the room, still in conversation with Melrose. Jenkins was flushed and sweating. As she glanced across, she saw him pull out a handkerchief and mop his brow.

She was about to move quietly to one side until this conversation was over, but Jenkins caught sight of her. He beckoned her over.

“Henry, here she is now. Gini, that was very good timing. We’ve been talking about you.”

“Among other things,” said Melrose with a little smile.

Jenkins looked flustered at this. He performed the introductions clumsily, and his proprietor brushed them aside.

“I do know who Miss Hunter is, Nicholas.” He turned back to Gini. “I’ve read her stories. And admired them too. I wonder…” He drew Gini a little to one side. A tall man, aged about sixty, elegantly dressed; he had a courteous manner. “I wonder,” he repeated, “I give these luncheons occasionally, Gini—may I call you Gini?—for my writers, some of my editors, that kind of thing. Very informal. Just to toss ideas back and forth, you know. What kind of stories we should be covering, how we cover them, whether the paper can be improved…”

He paused. Gini said nothing. She had heard of these lunches, and had never expected to attend one. More senior journalists than she lobbied hard to be invited, since they knew the lunches were the path to promotion. She knew Jenkins had attended in the past, and that the ambitious Daiches had never made the grade, though he continued to try. “I generally have one a month if I’m in London,” Melrose was continuing, “and I have one planned for the
News
next week. I’d like you to attend. I’ll ask my assistant to contact you shortly. You’ll be free? Good, good. So glad to have met you.”

He wished Jenkins good evening briefly, then drifted away. Jenkins gave her an angry look. He was now clearly in a bad temper, and in no mood to disguise it.

“Bloody man,” he said with some vehemence once Melrose was out of earshot. He took Gini’s arm. “Christ, what an evening. Let’s go.”

In the Jaguar, driving north, Jenkins was preoccupied, speaking only to his driver, and then only to tell him curtly to take the quickest route.

When they reached her apartment, Jenkins saw her as far as the top of the steps. There he hesitated, then said, “I’ll come in if I may. Just for five minutes.”

In her living room Jenkins did not sit down or remove his coat. He stood in the center of the room, looking ill at ease. He refused Gini’s offer of coffee or a drink.

“Look,” he said in an abrupt way. “I’d better get this over with. I’ll come straight to the point. I’ll talk to Lamartine in the morning, but you may as well know now. The Hawthorne story is off.”

There was a silence. Gini looked at him. “The story’s
off
?”

“That’s right.” Jenkins shifted from foot to foot “It’s dead. Killed. I’m killing it. You leave it alone from now on, both you and Pascal. You’ve got that?”

There was another silence. Gini let it run on. She removed her coat.

“You want to give me a reason, Nicholas?”

“I could give you several. One will do. I was misinformed. McMullen told me a pack of lies. We’re not going to make this story stand up.” Jenkins shifted his eyes away from her face. His normally pink complexion became suffused with a dark flush. Gini looked at him for a moment, measuring his discomfiture. It was considerable.

She sat down and stared across the room. Of course: It was so obvious. Every little event of the evening replayed itself, the conversations she had seen between Hawthorne and Melrose; Melrose’s subsequent conversation with Jenkins: She had been caught in the middle of a power play, she realized. Both the carrot and the stick were being used here, the classic approach.

She looked back at Jenkins. “I see,” she said. “Melrose told you to pull the story.”

“It’s fucking well nothing to do with Melrose.” Jenkins lost his temper at once. “It’s my decision. Just do what I fucking tell you, Gini, for once.”

“Give me a break, Nicholas.” Gini rose. She gave a furious gesture, and realized she was suddenly very angry. “Do you think I’m some kind of idiot? Dear God—we sit there tonight, we listen to Hawthorne, and all that rhetoric about the freedom of the press. I even damn well start to
believe
the rhetoric—and then what happens? Hawthorne has a quiet word with his old buddy Melrose, and the next thing is—the story’s off. The hell with it, Nicholas. I thought the whole point of being an editor was that when someone leaned on you, you stayed standing up.”

Jenkins’s face darkened further. “Gini, I’m going to forget you said that. I’m telling you, Melrose has nothing to do with it. He doesn’t even know about the Hawthorne story.”

“Come on, Nicholas. Don’t give me that crap. Melrose knows. If you didn’t tell him, his friend John Hawthorne did.”

“Listen,” Jenkins rushed on, paying no attention, “I’ve been reconsidering our overall editorial policy. We have to watch all these sex and scandal stories, that’s all. The
News
relies on its middle-class readership….”

“Don’t tell me. We go too far and we alienate them. You know I’ve heard that same view very recently? And you know who from? The U.S. ambassador, that’s who. He fed it to me, he fed it to Melrose, and Melrose bought it. Plus, of course, he’s delighted to intercede on his friend Hawthorne’s behalf, so he leaned on you, and you promptly collapsed. Great. Do you usually alter your entire editorial policy, Nicholas, over dinner, during a fifteen-minute speech?”

“Just cut it out, all right?” Jenkins turned away, tight-lipped. “Forgive me for saying so, but that’s a woman’s response—a typical woman’s response. You see male conspiracies, Gini, everywhere you look.” He gave a curt gesture. “Anyway. I might just remind you. I don’t have to explain my editorial policy to my reporters. You don’t like it, you know what you can do.”

“Resign, Nicholas? Oh, I don’t think I should do that now, do you? After all, my damn proprietor has just invited me to one of his famous lunches. That’s a big break for me, Nicholas—except I get the feeling there’s a few
conditions
attached to that invitation. Like I agree to be a good little girl. Like I drop the Hawthorne story, and play ball. If I don’t do that, I suspect that lunch invitation might be canceled rather suddenly. Who knows, I might even get fired. Dear God! The whole thing makes me sick—”

“Look, look. No one’s talking about firing anyone….” Jenkins seemed suddenly alarmed. He switched to a pacifying tone. “We don’t want to lose you, Gini. I don’t want to lose you—”

“Oh, sure. You’d just hate me to take this story elsewhere. Which, come to think of it, is one hell of a good idea.”

Jenkins opened his mouth to make some angry retort, then shut it again. If he had fired her then and there, Gini would not have been surprised, so it was interesting—and revealing, she realized—that he continued, with some effort, to take a conciliatory tone.

“Listen,” he said, “you’re overreacting. There’s no need for this to be a resignation issue. You have to learn to face facts, Gini. All right, so this story didn’t pan out. There are other stories, you know. You remember we talked about Bosnia? Well, now maybe we could take a look at that idea again, and…”

He talked on in this vein while Gini watched him coldly, with increasing disgust. If he were prepared to go as far as discussing Bosnia again, he must really be desperate, both to get her off this story and to prevent her from taking it elsewhere. She looked away from him, around the room, and suddenly remembered the possibility of its listening walls. In her anger she had completely forgotten this factor, but now she saw it was one she should turn to her own advantage: If someone outside was listening in, why not tell them what they most wanted to hear? She let Nicholas Jenkins continue talking. When he finally finished, she gave a shrug and a sigh.

“Okay, okay,” she said carefully. “Maybe you’re right, Nicholas. I guess I was overreacting. It was sudden, that’s all.” She paused. “You really mean that about Bosnia?”

“Sure, sure.” Jenkins beamed. “Get it into your head, will you, Gini? I really value your work at the
News.
A woman’s byline on reports from Bosnia, maybe a photograph of you—yes, it could work out very well.”

“Well, I guess if that was really a possibility…”

“It is a possibility. It’s more than a possibility. Look, Gini, you’ve got that lunch with Melrose sewn up. You and I can talk new stories, next week maybe. This could all turn out well for you. Don’t screw up now.”

“But I’d have to agree to drop the Hawthorne story?”

“Yes. And no more garbage about swanning off with it elsewhere.”

“Okay.” She gave him a decisive smile. “You’ve sold me on it, Nicholas.” She paused. “Actually, I didn’t want to say this before, but I wasn’t making a whole lot of progress with it anyway. There were a lot of leads, then they all turned out to be dead ends. I could have worked on this for months and gotten nowhere. Pascal feels the same. I don’t want to do that—marking time. And if there was a serious possibility of Bosnia—”

“Gini, it’s as good as fixed. Say no more.”

“The only thing is…” She gave him a little glance. “I’m pretty exhausted, Nicholas. The Hawthorne story really took it out of me. I don’t want to go into details now, there’s no point, but it was getting pretty scary. I could do with a break—just a short one. And I am owed some vacation time. …”

“Take it. It’s yours. You deserve it. A week, two weeks?”

“Two weeks would be amazing. You’re sure, Nicholas?”

He thought he had won, and he now bubbled with benevolence. Crossing the room, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Two weeks. Done. Go get some sun. Forget about work. Forget about the office. I don’t want to see or hear from you, Gini….” He smiled broadly. “You know how you are. Well, this time I want to forget I employ you, okay? Then come back, with a good suntan, and we’ll start lining up the work for you. Or maybe fit in the Melrose lunch, then take off. It’s up to you.”