Lovers and Liars Trilogy

by Sally Beauman

  “Yes. I remember. I enjoyed it too.”

  “So I can’t help wondering… what brought this on.” He hesitated again. “Mum says it’s post-traumatic stress disorder—did she tell you?”

  “No, she didn’t. And it’s nothing so grand.”

  “Too many dead bodies, Mum says. I said—Pascal can handle all that, he’s covered hundreds of wars, so why can’t Gini? Mum says it’s different for women, because they feel things more, but I don’t buy that. I think…” He weighed his words. “I think you’ll get inured to it in time. And it had to be hard for you, because it was your first war, and it meant a whole lot to you because that was always your ambition, right? To cover wars?”

  “Yes, it was. Once. Why don’t we change the subject?”

  “Sure.”

  There was a brief silence. Tom dried a saucepan and some plates while Gini grimly scrubbed and rinsed. She would be fine, she told herself, if she could just concentrate on this small, menial task. Then Tom did the one thing she would never have expected, the one thing she could not deal with at all.

  Blushing again, and with a gauche clumsiness that reminded her of him as a much younger boy, he put his arm around her shoulders and apologized. He said he knew it was crass, and he shouldn’t have raised the subject, and he was sorry he had, but someone—well, his girlfriend, actually—had told him he had to get in touch with other people’s feelings, so he had been making an effort, and it seemed to be working, kind of, and he hadn’t meant to be intrusive, but Gini did look so different that he felt he had to say something…

  She began to cry. She could see that her tears distressed Tom, but she was powerless to stop them. Tom drew her to the table. He brought her a handful of Kleenex. When she saw how agitated he had become, she battled the tears, and finally controlled them. Seeing her grow calmer, Tom grew kinder still. He made her some coffee, then he sat down beside her and took her hand.

  “Tell me,” he said. “You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone else, I promise. I understand. What made you cry?”

  “It wasn’t you, Tom.” Gini squeezed his hand, then released it. “Please don’t blame yourself. You were very kind. It’s just—in Bosnia I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t let myself. So it’s as if the tears stored themselves up. They waited till I got home—and now I suddenly remember something, and they begin, and I can’t stop them. That’s all.”

  “What do you remember?” He looked at her gravely, and Gini was touched. She could see that, half-boy, half-adult, he was trying to act as he considered proper for a man.

  “Ugly things I saw. People dying. Wounds. You watch the news on TV, Tom. You can imagine. I’d seen those programs too, before I went, obviously. I’d seen Pascal’s photographs. I knew what I’d find. I thought I was prepared. Only when you see it, stand by it, for months at a time—when you know that nothing you do, and nothing you write, is going to alter it…” She bent her head.

  He frowned. “Why did you want to go there, Gini? Why cover wars? Was it because your father did? Because he won that Pulitzer Prize thing? Or Pascal, maybe? So you could work with him, be together?”

  “All of those things, I guess, Tom.” She sighed. “I don’t know anymore. All I know is—I couldn’t go back to Bosnia. I’ll never write about another war.”

  “I expect you will,” Tom said in an encouraging tone. “I read those pieces you wrote. They were really moving. When Mum read that one from Mostar, she cried, and—”

  “Don’t, Tom. Let’s not talk about it anymore. Okay?”

  “You miss Pascal.” Tom rose. “Mum says that’s half the problem, and I agree. She says you’ll be okay when he gets back. In fact, she’s pretty mad at him for staying away so long. She said the other night, if she had his number, she’d call him, give him a piece of her mind.”

  “What?” Gini also rose. She looked at him in consternation. “Tom—she didn’t mean that, did she? She mustn’t do that. She has no right to interfere.”

  “It’s okay. She won’t. She just gets these ideas.” He paused, his face changing. “Oh, I see. I understand. You haven’t told him, have you? He doesn’t know you’re ill—”

  “I’m not ill. Can we stop this?”

  “Because if he knew, Mum’s right, he’d be on the next plane.”

  “Tom, will you just stop this?”

  “No. I won’t!” Tom, she realized suddenly, was also angry. His face had paled. He shot her a glance fierce with adolescent purity. “You’re lying to Pascal. You shouldn’t lie, not to someone who loves you—”

  “I am not lying.” Gini rounded on him furiously. “There may be certain things I prefer not to tell him, but there are reasons for that. He has to work, Tom.”

  “It’s still a lie. It’s a lie by omission, that’s all. I don’t lie. I wouldn’t lie to my girlfriend. I haven’t told one lie, not since November ninth last year. Not even a single white lie—”

  “So I see. Well, you should learn, Tom. Sometimes the truth causes pain. Sometimes lies can be helpful. Or merciful. When you’re older, you’ll understand.”

  The final remark was fatal, she knew instantly. Blood rushed up into his neck and face.

  “Couples shouldn’t lie especially,” he burst out. “That really makes me sick. Wives lying to their husbands. Husbands lying to their wives. My dad does that. When he’s here, which is once every century, he just fucking lies all the time.”

  Gini could now hear the mounting distress, could feel his sudden rage. The turn in the conversation, and the speed of his unforeseen reaction, took her by surprise.

  “Tom, don’t,” she began, holding out her hand. “I’m sorry I said that. And you mustn’t think that way. Lindsay doesn’t lie. Lindsay is one of the most truthful people I know. And your parents aren’t together. They haven’t been for years. You mustn’t make judgments about them like that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. I know the facts. They were married. For ten minutes. They had a wedding. They made all those vows. I was born. Then they split. They made a promise, and they never kept it. And you—you’re just as bad…”

  “Tom, I don’t think you mean that. You don’t understand.”

  “I thought you were different, you and Pascal.” His voice rose: “I should have known—”

  He broke off. From below, a door slammed. They both listened to his mother’s footsteps climbing the stairs. Tom’s face worked. Gini stared at him helplessly. She had little experience of children, no knowledge of how you spoke to someone who was half-adult, half-child. She was only twelve years older than he was, not yet thirty, but she watched him now from across a huge divide. Her own inadequacy silenced her. Her hand was still extended toward him, and Tom was still ignoring it. His mother had reached the first landing below. He gave a sudden angry gesture, began to speak, stopped, then stalked from the room and slammed the door.

  The door of his own room thundered shut a few seconds later; almost immediately, a blast of rock music rent the air. Lindsay entered, looking ebullient, and secretly pleased with herself. As if on cue, the second she entered, the telephone began to ring. Lindsay picked it up and listened in silence.

  “Markov,” she said eventually. “I don’t want to hear this now. I don’t need to hear this. It’s the weekend, okay? Now, piss off, Markov, and leave me alone.” She replaced the receiver, turned to the door, and raised her voice. “Tom,” she shouted, “down a few decibels, please…”

  The boom of drums reduced.

  “What happened?” She turned to Gini. “A row?”

  “Sort of. I’m not sure. Tom was being very good to me. We were talking. Then the conversation took this sudden swerve. Then…”

  “Fission?”

  “Yes. Oh, Lindsay—I think I failed him in some way.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s what adults are there for. I fail Tom around five times a day. Teenagers!” She flashed a smile. “Let’s get going. I’ll call Charlotte, then we’re on our way. I have a million things to tell you
…”

  Heading west toward Oxford, Lindsay drove at top speed, and without sign of skill. Gini, who had forgotten just how appalling a driver she was, eventually closed her eyes while Lindsay steered and talked. She talked all the way to Oxford; she talked in Oxford, where having missed the turnoff, she lost the way. She talked on the country roads beyond Oxford, and she did not, it seemed to Gini, have a million topics to discuss, despite her claim.

  She had one topic, and variations upon it. Her subject was a man Gini had never met, and in whom Gini was not interested. His name was Rowland McGuire—and Lindsay could not stand him. Or so she said.

  Chapter 3

  CHARLOTTE FLANDERS HAD BEEN making pastry, and her hands were still floury and white. Her youngest son, Daniel, was seated at the table at the far end of the large country kitchen, happily, if messily, engaged with finger paints.

  Tubs of slurpy paint in brilliant colors surrounded Danny and herself. He had deposited paint on his hands, face, elbows, and clothes; there was paint on the floor and the table. So far, he had drawn a red tree, a square house, a blue bristly dog, and a fat orange Charlotte with a fuzz of pink hair. The large, untidy, comforting room smelled of yeast; a clock ticked. Charlotte knew that she should feel tranquil, and in this situation usually did; but this afternoon she was anxious and tranquillity remained elusive. She looked down at Danny’s portrait of herself. Why is my hair pink, she wondered, and found she suddenly wanted to cry.

  She hugged Danny impulsively and rested her face against his hair. The scent of his hair and skin, a scent peculiar to babies and young children, affected Charlotte deeply. It tugged at her heart. She kissed Danny, then withdrew, because he was wriggling in that maternal embrace, eager to get on with his art.

  Shortly after three, still preoccupied, thinking about the weekend to come and the arrival of her guests, she left the house to take the four dogs—two fat Labradors and two violent Jack Russells—for their afternoon walk. She left Daniel with Jess, a neighborhood girl who’d come to help in the preparations for the weekend. Both were now engaged in making little sponge cakes for tea. In the garden Charlotte paused and looked back through the bright rectangle of the kitchen window, the dogs woofing and circling at her heels.

  Jess was beating up sugar and butter; Daniel was assembling the cake decorations he loved, the crystallized violets, brightly colored sweets, and silver balls. Daniel liked cakes only with acid-pink icing and lots of decorations. For his fourth birthday next month, they were going to make one in the shape of his favorite animal, a hedgehog. It was to be a pink hedgehog, with chocolate-flake quills.

  It was a beautiful cold, clear afternoon; the air smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke. By the time Charlotte had reached the end of her driveway, she felt calmer and soothed. Her natural serenity—the quality in her that Max most loved—was beginning to reassert itself. She tightened the bright red headscarf over her untidy hair, clasped her old coat tighter around her stomach, whistled to the dogs, and set off on her usual circuit. She would walk down to the river, past the church, and then back across the hills. By the time she reached home again, it would be almost time for Gini and Lindsay to arrive. She would just have time to shut the hens in the henhouse before it grew dark—and she must remember to do that, for there was a dog-fox hunting the area. Then, once Jess had returned to her own family, and her own older sons had returned from school, they would make tea. Toast on the fire, Charlotte thought; Danny’s acid-pink iced sponge cakes. It would be fun. She was looking forward to seeing Lindsay. In fact, Charlotte thought with a smile, she had plans for Lindsay. Her husband, Max, might have his doubts about those plans, but Charlotte, a born matchmaker, believed they might work.

  Lindsay was warmhearted, independent, and strong. But Lindsay’s life, unlike her own, was difficult. She had a son who desperately needed a father figure. His own father, Lindsay’s ex-husband, whom Charlotte had met once and instantly loathed, was a handsome, weak-willed deadbeat, last heard of in Canada, who contacted Lindsay rarely and Tom never, and who put in an appearance only when short of cash, or abandoned by the latest in a long line of girls.

  Lindsay deserved better than a man who had walked out on her six months after Tom’s birth. She deserved better than to spend the rest of her life supporting her supremely selfish mother—and that, once Tom left home, was a possible fate, Charlotte feared. Every man with whom Lindsay had ever been seriously involved since her divorce had been chased off by Louise, whose instinct for self-preservation was acute. Lindsay needed a man capable of freeing her from her mother’s clasp. Charlotte, much to her husband’s surprise, even had a candidate for this role; a gallant knight who would rescue her friend.

  Of course, Lindsay might well feel she did not want, or need, rescuing. Well, Lindsay was wrong. Lindsay needed rescuing from herself as well as from her mother. She had to learn to trust, to perceive that pain and abandonment were not always and inevitably attendant on love. She had to be made to see that some men could be trusted, and that the right man could transform a woman’s life, just as Charlotte’s life had been transformed by Max, and—to take another triumphant example—as Gini’s life had been transformed by Pascal.

  She had reached the river; Charlotte stopped. She clipped on the dogs’ leashes, walked along the narrow road, and paused on the bridge. Thinking about marital contentment and tranquillity, she watched a fish move through the reeds. Then, seeing the hills were now mauve, and the light was beginning to fade, she hustled the dogs together, stepped back into the road, and began making for the fieldgate just beyond the bend. Before she could reach it, and at a point where the road narrowed, she heard the car. It was on her in seconds, swerving on the bend, being driven far too fast. It cut in close, a large, brand-new silver BMW. She felt its slipstream clutch at her coat; its rapid passage sprayed her with mud. Charlotte shouted angrily after it, but its driver, a man, neither acknowledged her nor slowed. Charlotte watched the car turn into a track farther on, and begin to bump its way up the steep gradient to the beech woods beyond.

  Feeling shaken, wrapping her old coat more tightly around her stomach and her unborn child, Charlotte walked on. She encountered no one on this stage of her walk, and glimpsed only one other pedestrian, a man, walking along the river road below, with what looked like a lurcher dog. He paused at the bridge, as she had done. The wind gusted. Charlotte shivered, and whistled to her own dogs. They had had their romp: it was time to return.

  She made her way back through the village, past the graveyard, the Norman church, the almshouses, and the tall drystone wall that bordered the manor gardens. Lights now shone from the windows of the cottages she passed, and Charlotte’s heart lifted. Her despondency and unease faded. She wanted to be at home with her sons, and her friends, and her husband; she wanted afternoon to ease toward evening, and the evening to lengthen companionably as they sat together by the fire.

  She passed two people only on this, the last stage of her walk: two girls, in school uniform, making their way back to the manor. One was Cassandra Morley, a pretty fifteen-year-old who sometimes baby-sat for her, and whose mother—a brittle divorcee—Charlotte disliked. Her companion looked like Mina Landis, who had moved to the area recently, whose father was the commanding officer of the nearby U.S. air force base. Charlotte had invited Mina’s parents for drinks that evening, along with a few other local friends.

  She called a greeting to both girls, but to her surprise they seemed determined not to see or hear her. They made no acknowledgment; Cassandra, the taller of the two, broke into a run; Mina hastened after her. Charlotte heard laughter as they reached the manor gates.

  How odd and ill-mannered, Charlotte thought. Rudeness from Cassandra was not unknown, but Mina, quiet little Mina, had always struck Charlotte as well brought up. She shrugged and walked on, then quickened her pace. As she approached her driveway, a small black car skidded to a halt, reversed, then roared into the drive, only narrowly missing the gateposts. By the time Charlotte
had shooed the hens to safety for the night and made her way back through the orchard, Lindsay and Gini were already settled in the kitchen, which now smelled of newly baked bread.

  Lindsay had Daniel in her arms, and was deep in conversation with the departing Jess. Gini—and it took Charlotte an instant to realize that it was indeed Gini—was seated at the kitchen table. Charlotte stopped short in consternation, and stared.

  Lindsay had warned her to expect an alteration, but Charlotte, who had not seen Gini since she left for Sarajevo, was still insufficiently prepared. Charlotte had once considered Gini one of the most beautiful women she knew. Now she was painfully thin, and her face was without animation or color; her extraordinary silvery-blond hair, once long, had been inexpertly, even savagely, cropped.

  Charlotte heard herself give an involuntary exclamation, then controlled herself as she caught Lindsay’s warning glance. Forcing herself to smile, she hurried forward. Gini rose, and Charlotte took her warmly in her arms, overwhelmed with sudden pity and distress. Gini returned the embrace, then quietly disengaged herself. As she drew back, Charlotte caught the glitter of tears in her eyes, and Gini—proud and deeply reticent by nature—at once turned her face away. Presently, with a muttered excuse, she left the room and went upstairs with her suitcase.

  Charlotte turned to Lindsay, her kind face dismayed; her immediate question was what might have caused this transformation in their friend—but Lindsay, she found, was curiously reluctant to answer, and became evasive at once.

  “Was that Charlotte Flanders?” Mina said as the door of the manor slammed behind them.

  Cassandra was busy deactivating the expensive alarm her mother had installed: eventually, the beeping stopped.

  “Four vile dogs? Pregnant yet again? Yes, it was.”

  “Oh, Cass.” Mina took off her coat and hung it up neatly. “We should have spoken to her. She’s nice. She’s been really good to my mother, trying to help her fit in…”