Believing the Lie

by Elizabeth George

  Deborah knew what she was looking at. She’d felt the same for years. She said quickly, “I’m terribly sorry. As I said, I saw the magazine when I was here earlier. Your husband said you and he were trying. He said you’d been married two years, and… Mrs. Fairclough, I’m very sorry. I hadn’t meant to upset you. Please. Here. Sit down.”

  Alatea did sit, although not where Deborah would have wished it. She chose the inglenook of the fireplace, a padded seat just beneath a stained glass window that sent light streaming onto her crinkly hair. Deborah approached her but remained a safe distance, saying, “It’s difficult. I know. I actually lost six before I found out the truth about my body. They might be able to do something about it someday, all things about science considered. But by then I’ll probably be too old.”

  A tear streaked down Alatea’s cheek. She adjusted her position, as if this would keep her from shedding more tears in front of a relative stranger.

  Deborah said, “I find it odd that something so simple for some women is a complete impossibility for others.”

  Deborah kept expecting the other woman to respond in some way other than with tears, to admit to a fellow feeling somehow. But Alatea did not, and the only thing left was for Deborah to admit the why behind her intense desire to have a child, which had to do in part with the fact that her husband was disabled— a cripple, he called himself— and in part with what that disabling had done to his sense of himself as a man. But she had no intention of going to that place in conversation with Alatea Fairclough. It was difficult enough admitting it to herself.

  So she settled on another course altogether. She said, “I think this room has better possibilities for a filmed interview than what I saw outside. And actually, where you’re sitting is a wonderful location, because of the light. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take a quick photo of you there to illustrate— ”

  “No!” Alatea leaped to her feet.

  Deborah took a step backwards. “It’s for— ”

  “No! No! Tell me who you are!” Alatea cried. “Tell me why you’re really here! Tell me, tell me!”

  7 NOVEMBER

  BRYANBARROW

  CUMBRIA

  Tim hoped it was Toy4You when his mobile chimed because he was sick with the waiting. But it was bloody stupid Manette. She acted as if he’d done nothing to her. She said she was ringing to talk about their camping adventure. That was what she called it— an adventure— as if they were going to Africa or something and not where they would probably end up, which was in someone’s bloody paddock, where they’d be cheek by jowl with sodding tourists from Manchester. She said cheerfully, “Let’s get the date into our diaries, shall we? We’ll want to go before it gets much later in the year. We can cope with the rain, but if it snows, we’re done for. What d’you say?”

  What he said was, “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  She said, “Tim…,” in that patient voice adults tended to use when they thought he was barking, which was most of the time.

  He said, “Look. Drop it. All this bollocks about you ‘care about’ me.”

  “I do care about you. We all care about you. Good grief, Tim, you’re— ”

  “Don’t give me that shit. All you ever cared about was my father and don’t you think I know that? All anyone cared about was that filthy bastard and he’s dead and I’m glad so leave me alone.”

  “You don’t mean any of that.”

  “I bloody well do.”

  “No. You don’t. You loved your father. He hurt you badly, but it wasn’t really about you, dearest, what he did.” She waited, as if for a reply from him, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing anything in his voice. She said, “Tim, I’m sorry it happened. But he wouldn’t have done it if he could have seen any other way to live with himself. You don’t understand that now, but you will. Truly. You will someday.”

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “I know this is difficult for you, Tim. How could it be otherwise? But your father adored you. We all love you. Your family— all of us— want you to be— ”

  “Shut up!” he screamed. “Leave me alone!”

  He ended the call with his insides raging. It was her tone, that bloody soothing, motherly tone of hers. It was what she said. It was everything in his life.

  He threw his mobile onto his bed. His body felt strung as tight as part of a high-wire act. He needed air. He went to the window of his bedroom and forced it open. It was cold outside but who bloody cared?

  Outside across the farmyard, George Cowley and Dan came out of their cottage. They were talking, heads bent as if what they were saying to each other was of deadly importance. Then they approached George’s wreck of a car: a Land Rover thoroughly crusted with mud, not to mention sheep shit, which was thick in its tyre treads.

  George opened the driver’s door and hauled himself inside, but Daniel didn’t go round and get in as well. Instead, he squatted next to the door and fixed his attention on the pedals and his father’s feet. George spoke and gestured and worked the pedals. Up, down, in, out, whatever. He climbed out of the wreck and Dan got in, in his place. Dan worked the pedals in a similar fashion while George nodded, gestured, and nodded some more.

  Dan started the ignition then, as his father continued to talk to him. George closed the door and Dan rolled down the window. The vehicle was parked in such a way that he didn’t need to reverse it to set it going, and George gestured round the triangular green. Dan set off. First time with the clutch, the accelerator, and the brakes, he went in fits, starts, and lurches. George ran alongside the vehicle like a third-rate carjacker, shouting and waving his arms. The Land Rover got ahead of him, lurched, and stalled.

  George dashed over, said a few words into the driver’s window, and reached inside. Watching this, Tim reckoned the farmer was going to give Dan a smack on the head, but what George did was ruffle his hair and laugh and Dan laughed as well. He started the Land Rover again. They went through the process a second time, this time with George remaining behind and shouting encouragement. Dan did a better job and George punched the air.

  Tim turned from the window. Stupid gits, he thought. Two lame bastards. Like father like son. Dan’d end up just like his dad, walking in sheep shit somewhere. Loser, he was. Double loser. Triple. He was such a loser that he needed to be wiped from the face of the earth and Tim wanted to do it. Now. At once. Without a pause. Storming from the house with a gun or a knife or a club, only he had none of these and he needed them so badly, the worst, how he wanted…

  Tim strode from his room. He heard Gracie’s voice and Kaveh’s answer, and he went in that direction. He found them in the picture room at the top of the stairs, an alcove that Kaveh used for his office. The bugger was sitting at a drafting table working on something and Gracie— dumb old stupid Gracie— was at his feet with that bloody stupid doll in her arms and wasn’t she even rocking it and crooning to it and didn’t she need to be brought to her senses and wasn’t it time she just grew up anyway and what better way to do it—

  Gracie screamed like he’d stuck her in the arse with a pole when he grabbed the doll. He said, “Fucking bloody idiot, for God’s sake,” and he slammed the doll against the edge of the drafting table before he pulled off her arms and her legs and threw her down. He snarled, “Grow up and get a life, you freak,” and he spun and made for the stairs.

  He stormed down them and out of the door and behind him he heard Gracie’s cries, which should have felt good to him but didn’t. And then there was Kaveh’s voice calling his name and the sound of Kaveh coming after him, Kaveh of all people, Kaveh who’d created this whole pile of shit that was his life.

  He thudded past George Cowley and Daniel, who were standing by the Land Rover, and while he didn’t need even to go near them, he did anyway, just so he could shove that limp-wrist Daniel out of the way. George yelled, “Just you bloody— ”

  “Fuck you!” Tim cut in. He needed, he wanted,
he had to find something because everything was cresting inside of him, his very blood was cresting and he knew if he didn’t find something, his head would explode and the blood and the brains would surge out of him and while that didn’t matter a whit he didn’t want it to be this way and there was Kaveh calling his name, telling him to stop telling him to wait only that was the last thing he’d ever do: wait for Kaveh Mehran.

  Around the side of the pub and through a garden and there was Bryan Beck. On the stream the village ducks floated and on the opposite bank wild mallards rooted through the heavy-topped grass for slugs or worms or whatever the hell it was that they ate and oh God how he wanted to feel one of them all of them crushed beneath his fist or his feet it didn’t matter just to have something die die die.

  Tim was in the water without knowing he was in the water. The ducks scattered. He flailed at them. Shouting was coming from every direction and some of it he realised was coming from him and then he was grabbed. Strong arms came round him and a voice in his ear said, “No. You mustn’t. You don’t mean to. It’s all right.”

  And goddamn, it was the bumboy himself, the limp wrist, the queer. He had his arms and his hands on Tim and he was holding him God he was actually holding him touching him the filth the filth the filth.

  “Get away!” Tim shrieked. He fought. Kaveh held on harder.

  “Tim. Stop!” Kaveh cried. “You don’t mean to do this. Come away. Quickly.”

  They wrestled in the water like two greased monkeys till Tim squirmed away and Kaveh fell back. He landed on his bum and the frigid water was up to his waist and he was struggling to get back to his feet and Tim felt such triumph because what he wanted was the stupid git struggling, he wanted to show him, he wanted to prove—

  “I’m not a butt fucker,” he screamed. “Keep your fucking hands off me. You hear me? Find someone else.”

  Kaveh watched him. He was breathing hard and so was Tim, but something came over his face and what it was not was what Tim wanted it to be, which was hurt, devastation, destruction.

  Kaveh said, “Of course you’re not, Tim. Did you think you might be?”

  “Shut up!” Tim yelled in reply. He turned and ran.

  He left Kaveh sitting in Bryan Beck, water to his waist, watching him run.

  GREAT URSWICK

  CUMBRIA

  Manette had managed to get the tent raised by herself. It hadn’t been easy and although she had always been excessively competent when it came to anything that required her to follow instructions, she hadn’t done her usual perfect job with erecting the poles and the canvas, not to mention plunging the stakes into the ground, so she reckoned the whole thing would collapse on her. But she crawled inside anyway and sat Buddhalike in the opening, facing the pond at the bottom of the garden.

  Freddie had knocked on her bathroom door and said he needed to speak with her. She’d said of course and could he give her a few minutes. She was just… whatever. He hurriedly said absolutely as if the last thing he wanted to know was what she was doing in the bathroom and who could blame him, really. There were some forms of intimacy that were far too intimate.

  She hadn’t been doing anything. She’d been killing time. She’d sensed something was going on with Freddie when they’d met at the coffeemaker midmorning. She’d come down from her room; he’d come in from outside and since he’d entered wearing what he’d been wearing the previous day, she knew he’d spent the night with Sarah. Wily one, that Sarah, Manette reckoned. She knew a gem when she saw it.

  So when Freddie asked to speak with her, she reckoned the boom was going to fall. He’d seen in Sarah a potential to be the One or perhaps, Manette thought wryly, the Two, since she herself had been the one. At any rate, he probably wanted to bring her home this very night or move her into the house soon, and she wondered how she was going to cope with that.

  Obviously, they’d have to sell the house and go their separate ways. She didn’t want to do that because she loved this place. Not so much the house, which, admittedly, was rather pokey, but this particular little spot that had been her haven for years. It was, indeed, all about the place itself and having to leave it… this disquiet she was feeling. It was about the silence of Great Urswick, about the canopy of stars that hung above the village at night. It was about the pond and the resident swans that floated placidly on it and only occasionally went after an overly enthusiastic dog who stupidly tried to chase them. And it was about the old paint-flecked rowingboat tied to the dock and the fact that she could take it out onto the water and watch the sunrise or the sunset or sit in the rain if she wanted to.

  She supposed it was really all about roots, having them planted somewhere and not wanting them to be torn out because transplanting often killed the plant and she didn’t know what it was going to feel like when she herself had to move on.

  This wasn’t about Freddie, she told herself. This wasn’t about Sarah or any other woman Freddie might finally choose. How could it be when she herself had been the one to bring up the spark and how they had lost it, she and Freddie? It was absolutely, utterly, and irrevocably gone and didn’t he agree with her, at heart?

  Manette couldn’t recall the expression on Freddie’s face when she had initiated this painful conversation. Had he disagreed? She couldn’t remember. He was always so bloody affable about everything. It should have come as no surprise to her that he’d been equally affable about the idea that their marriage was as dead as roadkill. And she’d been relieved, then. Now, however, she couldn’t remember why on earth she’d been so relieved. What had she been expecting of marriage, after all? High drama, sparks, and falling all over each other like randy teenagers every night? Who could sustain that? Who would want to?

  “You and Freddie?” Mignon had said. “Divorcing? You’d better have a long look at what’s out there these days before you take that step.”

  But this wasn’t about trading Freddie in for a different model. Manette had no interest in that. It was just about being realistic, about looking squarely at the life she had and evaluating its potential for going the distance. As they’d been— best friends who occasionally made the time for a pleasant encounter between the sheets— they hadn’t stood a chance of lasting. She knew it, he knew it, and they’d had to deal with it. That was what they’d done and they’d both been relieved to have it out in the open. Hadn’t they?

  “Here you are. What the devil are you doing out here, old girl?”

  She roused herself. Freddie had come to find her, and he bore in his hands two mugs. He squatted by the tent opening and handed one over. She began to crawl out but he said, “Hang on. I’ve not been inside a tent in years.” He crawled in to join her. He said, “That pole’s going to go down, Manette,” with a nod in the general direction of the troublesome part of the structure.

  She said, “I could tell. One strong gust of wind, and it’s over. Good place to think, though. And I wanted a trial run.”

  “Not at all necessary,” he said. He sat next to her, Indian style, and she noted he was flexible enough to do the same as she: His knees went all the way to the ground, not like some people who couldn’t manage that because they were far too stiff.

  She took a sip of what he’d brought her. Chicken broth. Interesting choice, as if she were ill. She said, “Not necessary?”

  “Decamping,” he said, “if you’ll pardon the pun. Deciding upon the out-of-doors just in case.”

  She frowned. “Freddie, what are you talking about?”

  He cocked his head. His brown eyes seemed to twinkle at her, so she knew he was joking about something and she hated not to be in on the joke. He said, “You know. The other night? Holly? That was a one-off. Won’t happen again.”

  She said, “You giving it up or something?”

  “The dating? Good God, no.” And then he blushed that Freddie blush. “I mean, I’m rather enjoying it. I’d no idea women had become so… so forthright in the years I was out of action. Not that I’d ever really been in act
ion.”

  “Thank you very much,” she said sourly.

  “No, no. I didn’t mean… What I did mean is that you and I, having started so young, having been together from the word go, more or less… You were my first, you know. My only, as a matter of fact. So to see what’s going on in the real world… It’s an eye opener, I can tell you. Well, of course you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

  She said, “Not sure I want to.”

  “Oh.” He was silent. He sipped his chicken broth. She liked the fact that he’d never made any noise when he sipped. She loathed the sound of people slurping, and Freddie, for one, had never slurped. “Well. Anyway.”

  She said, “Anyway yourself. And I have no right to ask you not to bring women home, Freddie. Never fear. A heads-up would be nice, though. A phone call when she goes to the ladies or something, but even that’s not compulsory.”

  “I know that,” he said, “the thing about rights and the like. But I also know how I’d feel if I came downstairs and found some bloke dipping into a bowl of cornflakes in the morning. Bit odd, that. So mostly I’ll be suggesting we meet off the beaten track, not round here. You know.”

  “Like Sarah.”

  “Like Sarah. Right.”

  Manette tried to read something in his voice, but she wasn’t able to. She wondered if she’d ever actually succeeded in reading his voice at all. It was odd to think of it, but did one ever really know one’s spouse? she wondered, and then she brought herself up short and moved away from the thought because what Freddie wasn’t and hadn’t been for quite a while was her spouse.

  After a moment of silence broken by the sound of ducks honking from the air above them, Freddie said, “Where’d this come from, anyway?” in reference to the tent. “It’s new, isn’t it?”