Lovers and Liars Trilogy (93 page)

“Look.” It was Gini who spoke, making Pascal start. She had so far said very little, and her answers, though more polite than Pascal’s, had been noncommittal.

“Look,” she said again quietly, her voice very firm. “Why don’t we
all
stop this pretense? Pascal and I know quite well why we’re here. He has no film, no photographs. I have no notes and no tapes. You needn’t have bothered to organize this kind of clean-up operation. I discovered very little about John Hawthorne, and what I did discover, I have no intention of publishing at all. I am not going to write this story. And I’m leaving here right now.”

The quiet American and the tweed-suited Englishman exchanged tiny glances. The American nodded. Malone rose and moved toward the door. As she and Pascal were leaving, Gini stopped and looked at Malone closely; she said, “Did you know?”

Malone had honest eyes, Pascal thought—insofar as anyone in his profession did. His gaze met Gini’s without wavering.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “I give you my word.”

“Your word?” Gini gave him a cold look. She glanced back at the two silent men behind them, and the scorn in her voice was clearly directed at them as well as at Malone. “You’re trained liars, all of you. ‘Give me your word’? That’s a worthless assurance—and a meaningless term.”

That view, that however rotten Hawthorne had become, his deceptions were mirrored by the world in which he moved, was one Pascal partly shared. It made him all the more eager to expose the truth, even though he knew they lacked the means. Gini was as angered by their predicament as he was, but more realistic:

“No,” she would say whenever he raised the subject. “No. In the first place, I can’t prove anything, and in the second, I prefer the authorized version. Let them spin their myths. I don’t want to disillusion Hawthorne’s sons. Let them grow up believing in him. I don’t want to disillusion Mary. What’s the point in destroying his reputation now? He’s dead. I won’t do that, Pascal.”

“Okay. What about his father?”

“His father is a dying man. A broken man now too.”

“All right—what about Lise? She’s every bit as responsible for Hawthorne’s death as McMullen was. She’s halfway insane—and she now has custody of their sons.”

“I know all that. And I can’t prove it, any more than you can. Besides …” She hesitated. “I think Lise will be punished sooner or later, for sure.”

“You mean that overdose will be arranged? But, Gini…”

“Possibly. I think it’s much more likely that Lise won’t need any assistance. She’ll go right over the edge on her own.”

“Gini, wait—think a little…”

“No,” she said. “No.”

And then she would always turn away from him, and refuse to continue this argument. Once or twice Pascal suspected that there was one last thing here that Gini was not telling him, but even of that he could not be sure.

And so, with Gini immovable and himself unable to act, the weeks had passed. John Hawthorne’s death held the headlines for four days; then there was another IRA bombing, further outrages in Bosnia; the matter was relegated to the inside pages, then disappeared. James McMullen was depicted as a lone killer, a man with a medical history of mental instability, who—after leaving the army—had become progressively reclusive, obsessive, and deranged. Although very few details of his military career emerged, some material was leaked that suggested links with and sympathy for Arab activists dating back to contacts made when serving in Oman.

John Hawthorne’s reputation as a politician of exceptional promise, as a servant of his country, as a father and as a husband, remained unimpaired. Some of the most laudatory articles about him were published in Gini’s own paper, the
News:
Pascal believed that was easily explained. Nicholas Jenkins, far from being fired, had been just recently promoted. He was now executive editor of the entire group of Lord Melrose’s newspapers in Britain, and had been awarded a seat on the board.

Pascal gave a sigh and tried to push these recent events from his mind. He began to pace the cathedral steps again. From behind him, through the thick doors, he could hear music and the voices of the choir. The rest of the service would not last very long.

He leaned up against the doors and listened to the music. It quieted the angry resentment he still felt at the ways of his profession and the ways of the world. Perhaps Gini was right, he thought; perhaps some of his own motivation here was both personal and jealous; perhaps, indeed, Hawthorne might be better left in peace, and this story be better left untold.

Within the cathedral, the choir’s voices rose. Mary was now weeping openly; Gini stared straight ahead of her. She felt as if she saw John Hawthorne through the music; in its cadences she could sense his paradox—the frailty and the good in the man.

Her interpretation might be judged wrong by others, but she felt it to be true; indeed, from the mesh of deceptions here, the claims and counterclaims, it was the one certainty she retained. If she could not condone his actions, neither could she condemn the man.

As the music drew to a close, she shut her eyes. She knew that she had made the right decision in remaining silent, and she believed that with time, Pascal would come to believe that too. She had told him, these past weeks, every detail of what had happened to her that weekend, as he had told her of his experiences. She had left out only one thing; although she had told him about S. S. Hawthorne’s threats to him and to herself, she had not mentioned the threats against Marianne. It was better, she thought, to shield Pascal from that fear, and she was certain now that Hawthorne’s father could never present a serious danger to them or to anyone else. She wondered, glancing across at him now, if he might have suffered a second stroke; she thought:
he too has been punished; he will not live very long.

The choir was singing the Mozart “Sanctus” now; it seemed to Gini as she listened that both she and Pascal had learned and gained from this story, and experienced doubt and pain as well. Pascal had found the strength now to abandon the type of work that had occupied him these past three years; she knew he would never undertake it again, and she thought that among the other types of work he would now look to, he would almost certainly return to the thing he had always done best, the coverage of wars.

And she herself had learned too: Somewhere in these past weeks she had lost her dependency on her father: She had seen, by way of example, the destructiveness of Hawthorne’s father’s influence on him; her meeting with Sam had been a final reckoning; a burden long carried had been lifted: She no longer felt like a daughter, she felt her own woman now. She had little wish to see her father again; if she did, she knew she would have no illusions and make no excuses.
It’s over,
she thought;
I’m free.

As the “Sanctus” reached its close, the service ended and the congregation rose. Hawthorne’s family left first, proceeding slowly down the center aisle. As S. S. Hawthorne came closer, she could see clearly that these eight weeks and the loss of his elder son had affected him like the passing of twenty years. He sat hunched in his chair, which was pushed for him; his hands were trembling uncontrollably; he looked like a lost and frightened old man.

Lise clutched tightly at Prescott’s arm. Her white face wore a dazed expression, as if she did not understand where she was, or what her purpose was here. She walked stiffly down the aisle, staring straight ahead of her, like a woman in a trance. Her two small sons, Gini saw, had been detached from their mother—and she suspected that this arrangement was likely to continue in a more formalized way. Behind Lise, the rest of Hawthorne’s family bunched: They gave the impression of a clan. Hawthorne’s two boys now walked with his eldest sister, flanked by her sons. Both Hawthorne’s father, and his wife, Gini realized, were the outsiders here as the rest of the family closed ranks, defending his reputation, and his children. Gini looked at the pale, set faces of the two young boys; the elder, in particular, was very like his father. She looked away and let the music from the organist calm her. Mozart. She thought of John Hawthorne, playing her a Mozart opera in his car.
I find it gives me hope
—
while the opera lasts.

She remembered the instinctive liking she had felt for Hawthorne then, and that odd, brief pulse of attraction she had experienced when sitting alone with him that night in her apartment. Now that she knew exactly how ruthless and how amoral he had been, the remembrance shamed her. But however much she loathed to admit it, the memory could not be denied, and the feeling—unimaginable now—had been there. Neither she nor Pascal, she thought, had been able to approach this story with that cool analytic detachment she had always claimed was essential to journalism—she was not even sure now that such detachment was possible. Journalism dealt in facts, yet the true story here lay beyond and behind facts. If she had been able to publish this story, she realized, she might have been able to document a particular instance of corruption, but she would still not have answered the central question: what was the source of the evil in Hawthorne, and why did evil lodge itself so effectively in the heart of such a man?

The music in the cathedral came to an end. The general exodus from the church was beginning. Turning, she took Mary’s arm. Mary was wiping her eyes. Gini put her arm around her; she said, “Pascal will be waiting for us outside, Mary. We’ll take you home.”

“What I believe, what I truly believe,” Mary said some while later, “is that John’s father was to blame. You remember that story I once told you, Gini—about how John struck his father when he was only a child?”

She gave a little sad gesture; Gini said nothing—that story could be interpreted in more than one way, but she had no intention of hurting Mary by saying this.

Mary gave a sigh. “I always hated John’s father,” she went on. “Still—I shouldn’t judge him, perhaps. If he made John suffer, he must be suffering himself now. …” She bent toward the fire, stroked Dog, and gave him a chocolate biscuit. Pascal and Gini exchanged a quiet glance: Mary knew some of what had happened, but by no means all.

“What I do know,” Mary continued in a firmer voice, “is that I have lost a friend. All those people who still imply John was arrogant, cold—manipulative. That wasn’t the John I knew. He was a good man, a kind man, a fine man…” She sighed. “I hate it now, watching all these petty little people, picking over his soul. And as for that McMullen—I know I shouldn’t say this, but I can’t regret that that police marksman shot him. He can’t have been sane, but even so—the malice of the man! Even before all this, Gini, when Sam was here and he and John explained all those allegations McMullen had been making—it was so desperately perverse. John was an idealist. He was harder on himself than anyone I know. He hated to fall short of his own ideals. It tormented him to fail. How could that man spread such malicious rumors about John’s marriage, about his service in Vietnam?” She shook her head. “It’s so desperately unfair. You have an American president who gets pilloried because he didn’t fight, and didn’t believe in that war, and then you get a politician like John, who
did
fight, who was decorated, nearly killed—and that’s not acceptable either. Someone like McMullen comes along and starts querying every incident. You can’t
do
that. Surely in a war no soldier can be entirely blameless or innocent. Am I not right, Pascal?”

“Possibly,” Pascal said in cautious tones. “It’s certainly very difficult for an outsider to judge. Particularly twenty-five years later.”

“I suppose so. I suppose so.” Mary gave an unhappy shake of the head, then made an attempt to push these events away. She allowed herself a little sigh, looked at her watch, then smiled.

“Anyway,” she went on in a brighter voice. “There’s no point in going over the past. I don’t want to make you late for the airport. Do you want to ring for a taxi from here?”

“No.” Pascal rose. “I’ll flag one down in the street. It will be quicker.” He glanced at Gini, who gave him a tiny nod. “In fact, if you like, I’ll just go out and see if I can get one now.”

When he had left the room, Mary and Gini looked at each other. There was a silence, then they both rose. Mary took Gini in her arms.

“Oh, Gini,” she said. “Don’t look at me that way. I do like him. I’m sure I’ll come to like him more, when I know him better. It’s just…At the moment I can’t quite forgive him for all that business with John. I still feel that if he hadn’t influenced you—”

“You’re wrong, Mary.” Gini looked down into her kind face, and anxious eyes. “I promise you, you’re wrong. I would have acted the same way whoever I was working with. It had nothing to do with Pascal.” She hesitated. “He does influence me—you’re right. And I hope he goes on influencing me. Mary, when you know him better, you’ll see. Pascal’s good. He’s a rare man.”

Mary smiled. “Well, well,” she said. “Spoken from the heart. All right. I’ll reserve judgment. You can tell your Pascal he can come to dinner with you when you get back, but he needn’t think I’m a pushover, I’m not easily won over, you know.”

“Yes, Mary. You are.”

“Well, maybe a little bit. I’m softhearted. A sentimentalist. And he does have very nice eyes….” She smiled, and drew Gini toward the door. “You won’t tell me where you’re going?”

“No, Mary. It’s a secret. Just for now. We’ll tell you when we get back.”

“Not even a little hint? Oh, very well, very well….” She opened her front door. Pascal, who possessed an uncanny ability to find taxis in most major cities around the globe, even in torrential rain, even in rush hour, had found one now. It had pulled in at the foot of the steps. Pascal was standing beside it, explaining a route he knew to Heathrow that avoided all traffic jams. He did this with some verve.

Mary watched this tall, dark-haired young man. He made some Gallic gestures; he was speaking very fast. She glanced at Gini and gave her a little push. “I do see,” she said. “I do see, Gini. Was he like that when you first met him?”

“All that impetuosity and vitality—and impatience?” Gini smiled. “Yes, he was.”