“Thanks, Max. It comes with practice.”
“And Gini—you liked her? She came up to spec?”
“It’s difficult to like someone on the strength of one handshake and one sentence, Max.”
Rowland turned away to inspect the pictures on the walls—rows of photographs from Max’s school days: a rugby team, a cricket team; then Oxford, Max and himself alongside the Oxford motorbike—he was touched by this. Max sank into a chair with an air of disappointment.
“Well, I did warn you,” he said. “She’s reserved. Difficult. I told you—every assignment she’s been offered since Bosnia… if you decide you do want her to work on this story, you’ll have to get her interest somehow.”
“We’ve been over all that.”
“I know. But you’ve got only two days, Rowland. All right, it’s a good story—it might be a very good story. The drugs angle might interest her. On the other hand, she’s been offered a number of good stories these past two months since she’s back from Bosnia. And she’s turned them all down flat.”
“Even so.” Rowland bent to another photograph.
“I’m all for the indirect approach—I buy that. Assess her. Give her a chance to get to know you socially first—fine. Make her like you, even. But I know Lindsay, and I know what she’ll have been saying about you. If you do decide to use Gini, you’re going to have your work cut out for you.”
He paused, looking at Rowland speculatively. Rowland, examining a photograph of Max in full cricket regalia, made no response.
“I mean, face facts, Rowland. Now that you’ve actually seen her, perhaps you’ll understand. You still think a two-day-charm offensive’s going to work?”
“I imagine it can’t do any harm.”
“Well, I wish you luck. I told you, it was a nightmare, hiring her. There she is—she and Lindsay—both at the News, both dying to leave it, because that bloody awful Nicholas Jenkins is taking it so far down-market, nothing but sex, sex, sex. Incidentally, have you seen his circulation figures?”
“Another fifty-two thousand? Yes, I have.”
“Bloody man. And it was a good paper once. Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes. Poaching Lindsay and Gini. Well, Lindsay was simplicity itself. Stated her terms—we had the entire deal sewn up over lunch. A very good lunch, actually, at Tante Claire. Best Meursault I’ve ever had in my life. Two bottles. It was fun. Whereas Gini…” He made a face. “She played me off against the Times. For months.”
“So? You’ve used precisely that technique in the past. So have I. Everyone does.”
“I know. But I just didn’t expect it, that’s all. Not from a woman who looks like that. Charlotte thinks she looks like a Crivelli Madonna.”
Rowland was silent.
“—And I told her, that certainly wouldn’t be most men’s response. It wasn’t mine, and I speak as the most happily married man I know. I mean, you must have noticed—there’s something about the mouth. And her figure—put it like this: it didn’t immediately bring Madonnas to mind.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Max.” Rowland gave a gesture of annoyance. “She’s a journalist. An exceptionally good journalist. Can’t you just leave it at that?”
“No, I can’t,” Max replied with spirit. He eyed Rowland narrowly. “And I have to say, that’s rich, coming from you. Since when were you indifferent to women? There’s a new one every week.”
“Maybe so. That wasn’t always the case. As you very well know, Max.”
There was a brief silence. This answer brought them perilously close to an area of Rowland’s private life he would never, perhaps could never, discuss. There, Max was afraid to trespass. The last time he had dared to raise the subject of Esther had been at least four years before—and he could still remember Rowland’s biting anger when he had done so.
“I do know,” he said now. “But it was six years ago, Rowland. And you’ve broken a lot of hearts since.”
“Not my intention.” Rowland turned his back.
“You use these women, Rowland,” Max persisted. “You may not see it that way, but it’s what you do. I know you loved Esther, but can’t you exorcise her some other way?”
“What would you recommend?” Rowland swung around, white-faced. “Drink? Work? I’ve tried those remedies. Mind your own business, Max.”
“You can’t grieve forever, Rowland. Not even you can do that.” Max spoke quietly. Rowland began on some angry reply, then bit the words back. He averted his face, and Max, having dared this much, said no more. He lit a cigarette and watched his friend thoughtfully. He considered certain comments his wife had made on the subject of Rowland; he considered her matchmaking plans for this weekend. Had he been right to curtail them? Charlotte had accused him of getting cold feet, and Max had agreed. “Yes, I am,” he had replied. “Rowland’s love life is a mine field. I should never have let you even consider this. Lindsay? I must have been mad. We should leave well enough alone.”
Charlotte, an apostle for married bliss, had marshaled her counterarguments with skill. Rowland, in her view, needed rescuing from himself: he was a handsome, kind, intelligent, good man who would one day make an exemplary husband and father; the course of his life, unfortunately, had taken a wrong turn since the events in Washington, D.C. of six years before.
“He’s eaten up with guilt and grief and remorse,” Charlotte had cried. “And women throw themselves at him. All those stupid girls, rushing about, ironing his shirts, cooking dinner for him, ministering unto him. Rowland’s so blind. He doesn’t even realize they’re in love with him—and when he does, he runs a mile. What Rowland needs is a wife, Max. Someone kindhearted. Someone mature. Someone with a sense of humor…”
“The love of a good woman?” Max put in, and groaned.
“Precisely,” Charlotte replied with force. “And since Rowland’s far too obstinate ever to admit that himself, he needs guidance. A helping hand. If he could just get to know Lindsay a little better—”
“No,” Max had interrupted. “No, Charlotte. It’s playing with fire—and it’s Lindsay who would end up in the burn unit. Forget it.”
Charlotte, after further resistance, had finally backed down. Now, looking at his friend, Max wavered; Charlotte’s instincts could be surprisingly sharp: what if his wife had been right all along?
“Tell me, Rowland,” he began cautiously. “Don’t you ever think about marrying, settling down?”
“No,” Rowland replied.
“I don’t see how you can be so certain.” Max persevered. “I might have said that before I met Charlotte. Then I changed my mind. Rapidly, if you remember…”
“I do remember.” Rowland glanced back at him and gave a smile. “I was standing next to you when you were introduced, if you recall. She silenced you. I knew you were in trouble right away.”
“I was deciding to marry her,” Max said with dignity. “I admit my repartee wasn’t too startling, but I was making silent plans. Of course”—he eyed Rowland in a speculative way—“it doesn’t always happen that way. It might be a more gradual process. A woman might be just a friend, a colleague, and then the relationship—well, it might develop in an unexpected way…”
He looked at Rowland hopefully, but Rowland had already lost interest. He had returned to his inspection of the photographs on the wall. He had unbent a little though, Max thought. Encouraged, he leaned forward.
“What happened to that last girl of yours,” he ventured in a casual way. “The French one? Is she still around?”
“Sylvie? No. I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“It’s over, then?” Max looked thoughtful. “Decisively over? You mean—she doesn’t write, or phone?”
“Decisively over.” Rowland’s voice was dry. “Which didn’t prevent her calling me thirty-two times last week. Or was it thirty-three?” He paused, half smiling, looking back at Max, then he frowned. “Extraordinary. She seemed so independent. I don’t understand women, Max. I don’t understand them at all.”
“Who does?” Max replied with delicacy, and waited. The expression on Rowland’s face became one of gloom.
“I mean—I try, Max. I make the situation perfectly clear. No commitments, either side. They always agree. They tell me they don’t want involvements either. They’re modern women…” He sighed. “For some reason they always stress that, just how modern they are. And then…”
“Yes?”
“They’re never very modern the next morning, however modern they claimed to be the night before.”
This statement, made with an air of profound bewilderment, both amused and touched Max. “For that,” he said tartly, “you have only yourself to blame. Presumably you do something to them in the interim to effect this remarkable change. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination, Rowland, to work out what that might be. My advice—”
“I don’t want to hear your advice.” Rowland, as Max could have predicted, moved sharply to the door. “I’ve had enough of this conversation. I’m going to have a bath.”
“Sure. Sure. Change the subject.” Max made an irritated waving gesture of the hand. “You always do. It’s a pity you won’t listen to a man of my wisdom and experience, especially now.”
Rowland paused. “Especially now? Why especially now?”
“Well, there is this weekend to consider. There’s Lindsay. There’s Gini. I’m sure you’ll handle them both perfectly. You’re the expert when it comes to female psychology, as you’ve just been explaining. So I’m sure it will be clear sailing.”
Rowland hesitated, his hand on the door. Then, with a sigh, he turned around.
“I might have known it.” He looked at Max closely. “You brought me up here for a reason, didn’t you? There’s something you haven’t told me—something I need to know?”
“I was biding my time.” Max gave a small smile. “I wanted you to meet Gini first. Now that you’ve met her, I’d better explain.” There was a brief silence. Without comment, Rowland pulled out a chair and sat astride it. He waited.
“I didn’t want to say this before,” Max began somewhat evasively, “because I know how prejudiced you can be. You will jump to conclusions. You can be censorious, Rowland, and—”
“Get to the point, Max.”
“Genevieve Hunter. Her trip to Bosnia. You want to know why I was so reluctant to send her? It wasn’t just because she’s a woman.”
“Then what was the reason?”
“She lives with Pascal Lamartine.”
This admission was met with silence, then a frown. Max shifted in his seat.
“You didn’t know?”
“You know perfectly well I didn’t know. And you were very careful not to tell me. Why?”
“Because I knew you’d disapprove. I guessed you couldn’t have heard the gossip when you said you wanted to use her.”
“I never listen to gossip. And you’re right—I would have disapproved.”
“Yes, well, not everyone shares your desire to separate their personal and their working lives,” Max said waspishly. “She—”
“I make that distinction now,” Rowland said quietly. “I try to make it. And I know just how hard it can be. I learned that six years ago. Come on, Max—I’m in no position to be censorious. You know that perfectly well…”
“Maybe so. Point taken.” Max, embarrassed by the gentle reproof in his tone, shifted his gaze. “But it was more complicated than that, Rowland. You see, I’d virtually decided not to send Gini to Bosnia. I had my doubts about sending a woman to cover that war, whatever her experience. Her relationship with Lamartine counted against her—that kind of involvement, in a war zone? I thought it could be counterproductive, unwise. On the other hand, I did want Lamartine’s photographs—very badly indeed. Everyone was after him. If you remember, it was over three years since he’d last covered a war. He’d had that period out, being—well, a paparazzo is really the only term. Now, God knows why he did that—I’ve certainly never dared ask. Massive divorce bills, or so I’ve heard. Massive demands from the not-too-pleasant ex-wife. Whatever the reason, the moment word got out that he was returning to war coverage, going to Bosnia, every single one of our rivals was chasing him. And I was determined to clinch the deal.” He paused, and looked back at Rowland, who was listening intently:
“I thought it would be a question of money, and autonomy, allowing him a major say in what he covered, when, and where. I was wrong. He had a third demand; non-negotiable. Genevieve Hunter went with him. They had to go as a team. And if I wouldn’t agree to that, then another paper would. That was the deal.”
This admission was met with a lengthy silence. Rowland’s frown had deepened.
“Now, listen, Rowland, I want you to be clear about this. She didn’t put him up to it. Well, I suppose I can’t say that with absolute certainty—I have only Lamartine’s word for it. But he isn’t a liar, and he wouldn’t let himself be used. Nor would she use him, Rowland. She has her faults, as you’ll discover if you work with her, but lack of scruples isn’t one of them. Quite the reverse.”
He paused. Rowland still remained silent. Max gave a shrug.
“So, now you know the truth. If I’m perfectly honest, if Lamartine hadn’t held a gun to my head like that, I’d have refused. But, as it was, he gave me very little option. And he was very persuasive on her behalf.”
Rowland gave him a sharp glance. “He’s a persuasive man?”
“Very. I like him, and I admire him, and I respect his judgment. If you met him, I’m sure you’d agree. All right, he was speaking as a man who was in love. He was partisan, and he admitted that. But he was fighting to get her a chance, a chance he felt she had earned.”
“And his confidence in her wasn’t misplaced,” Rowland interjected. “As subsequent events proved.”
“Well, yes.” Max hesitated again. “She was impressive. The work she did was very fine. So the ends justified the means. It’s just—”
He broke off; Rowland did not prompt him, and his silence gave Max a twinge of uncertainty. In the same situation, would Rowland have acted as he had?
He thought he knew the answer to that question. Rowland, who, in the workplace, was curiously indifferent to gender, was more likely than Max to send a woman to a battle zone; but Rowland confronted with Lamartine’s demands was another matter. He would not have liked pressure of that kind, and—had he suspected collusion—neither Lamartine nor Gini would ever have worked for him again.
In which case, Max thought with a return of self-confidence, Rowland’s scruples would have lost him first-class photographs and first-class reporting. One of Rowland’s little problems, he told himself, was a certain moral inflexibility, a refusal to compromise. To recall that his gifted friend had an Achilles’ heel restored Max’s humor at once. He rose.
“Anyway,” he said, “for good or ill, that’s what happened. I thought you should know, but all this is in confidence, needless to say. Gini thinks she won that assignment on her own merits alone, and if she discovered what Lamartine had done, if she even knew I had a private meeting with him—all hell would break loose. So not one word to her.”
“Of course.” Rowland also rose. “Trappist silence. You can rely on me. You probably made the right decision, from a professional point of view. Except—” He paused in the doorway. “Were there repercussions of a more personal kind? Why didn’t Lamartine come back from Bosnia with her? Wasn’t that the deal?”
“Yes. It was.” Max, who had expected Rowland to pick up on this, gave him an anxious look. “Then Lamartine suggested he stay on, and I agreed. I assumed that was purely a work decision. Now I’m not so sure. I get the feeling they may have quarreled, even split up—though I gather Gini’s admitted nothing to Lindsay. And I was shocked when I saw her tonight. She looks ill. Even shell-shocked, wouldn’t you say?”
“Her manner’s odd, certainly. I’m reserving judgment.”
“That’s unusual, for you.”
Rowland made no reply to this comme
nt. He opened the door to the landing.
“I just hope I’m wrong, that’s all,” Max continued, glancing in the direction of Gini’s room. He lowered his voice. “I like Lamartine. I like her. If anything has gone wrong between them, I’d feel partly to blame.”
“Not your responsibility, Max,” Rowland said, his manner suddenly brisk. He gave Max a smile of sudden warmth, then headed off to his room down the corridor, leaving Max to wonder: how exactly would Rowland have dealt with Lamartine? He would ask him over the course of the weekend, Max resolved, but as it happened, the weekend took an unexpected turn, so the question was neither answered nor asked.
Downstairs, Lindsay was sitting alone, staring thoughtfully into the fire, when Danny toddled into the room, looking anxious, and clutching a painting of a blue bristly animal.
“Where’s Rowland?” he said.
“Upstairs, I think, Danny. He and your daddy went up to wash and change.”
“Look.” He flourished the picture. “Dog. I made it for Rowland.”
“It’s a magnificent dog, Danny. I like it very much.”
“Short legs,” Danny said in a critical tone, surveying his handiwork.
“Some dogs do have short legs. That’s fine.”
“Could be a hedgehog,” Danny said craftily, turning it upside down. “I like hedgehogs. I like them best.”
“That’s what’s so clever, Danny. It could be a hedgehog or a dog. In fact, it could be a hedgedog.”
Danny thought this was hilarious. He fell over laughing and kicked his legs in the air. Lindsay was just remembering how wonderfully reassuring small children were, because they liked the feeblest jokes, when something else occurred to her. She remembered the cake. She frowned.
“Did you know Rowland was coming, Danny?” she asked, feeling instantly guilty and mean.
“Yes. Mummy said at breakfast. She said it was a secret, a nice secret. But if I ate up all my egg, she’d tell me. So I did. I ate it all up, even the yucky white bits.”
Danny’s eyes rounded. He became bright red. He looked at Lindsay anxiously.
Lovers and Liars Trilogy Page 83