‘How did you know it was me? You psychic?’
‘Who else do I know in London? Where are you?’
‘In the lobby.’
‘Well? Come on up.’
He walked to the lifts, rode to the ninth floor, wondered what he was doing here. It was an easy question to answer on one level: the girl attracts you. You’re lonely. Perplexed. But other levels were more difficult to reach. Did he want involvement? Was he looking for something meaningful? God help me, he thought. No, this was surely something else: infatuation, say. Or simple need.
She was standing in the doorway of her room when he stepped out of the lift. She smiled, raised a hand; she was barefoot and wearing a black velvet robe, knee-length.
‘Enter,’ she said.
He stepped into the room, she shut the door.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ he said.
‘It depends on your definition. You can disturb people in different ways. It doesn’t always have to be unpleasant.’
He gazed at her face. There was an air of expectancy in her expression.
Pagan scanned the room, looked at the newspapers and magazines strewn across the bed, an open box of chocolates on the bedside table. A single lamp was lit; the shadows were calming, but he felt awkward and wondered why she kept having this effect on him. He recalled the egg salad sandwich, the shredded mess he’d made of his paper napkin. He had the feeling that if he were to embrace her he’d somehow manage to break her spine or bring about some kind of calamity.
‘I should go,’ he said. He looked at his watch.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve only just arrived. Sit. Relax. Get comfortable. Have a chocolate. Here.’
She held the box toward him.
‘I’m trying to give them up,’ he said.
Was his desire for her a means of dismissing the variety of problems that confronted him? Easy to deal with on that level: Brennan Carberry as a rocket leaving planet Earth. Up up and away. No more conundrums, perplexities. The desire was suddenly strong; it had intensified, opened out into other possibilities. A mysterious kind of flowering had gone on. He remembered the way she’d touched him in the sandwich shop in Soho. He recalled the feel of her skin. He wanted to touch her even now – so why was he restraining himself?
‘Look,’ he started to say. He didn’t know where the sentence was going. Probably into a series of self-imposed objections and excuses. I’m old enough to be your father. You’re going back to the States. I won’t see you again. On and on.
‘No. You look,’ she said, and her voice was firm. ‘There’s something between us. Or am I way off beam?’
‘There’s something. Yes.’
‘It happened almost from the start. In this very hotel. When you were leaving I shook your hand. But what I wanted to do was kiss you. Call it some kind of chemistry. No, that’s not the word I want. That’s too clinical.’
‘Attraction,’ he suggested.
She shook her head. ‘Uh-huh. Too shallow somehow.’ She reached out, laid her fingertips on his wrist, then let her hand fall away. ‘Whatever it is, here we are, Frank. You and me. This bedroom. What next? What do we do about this … thing?’
Pagan didn’t move. There were particles of energy shooting aimlessly around him. The longing he felt was overwhelming but he made no effort to reach for her. She took the first step, in a manner both bold and wary, raising his hand and drawing it toward her breasts and for a long time he left it there, as if this were enough, this contact of his hand against velvet. Then she slid his fingers under her robe, placed them against a naked breast. Her skin was delightful, silken; he could feel the beating of her heart. He thought of blood running in her veins, the flow of life rushing through her.
She was gazing at him in a questioning way.
He laid her slowly across the bed; she swept aside the newspapers and magazines. She looked into his eyes and smiled. She placed a fingertip against his lips. He was drawn down, mouth upon mouth, breath on breath, a mutual yielding. She shifted her body slightly, undid her robe, letting it fall away from her shoulders. Fair hair on black velvet, brown eyes, scent of flesh: Pagan imagined he could live in this moment for a long time.
She whispered his name in his ear. He remembered how seashells contained the sounds of tides. He heard that same oceanic murmur in his head. He placed his face between her breasts and for a time lay without moving. There was no hurry, clocks had collapsed. He was aware of an onslaught of perceptions – the hardening of her nipple against his lip, the veins running under the surface of her breasts, a tiny mole just beneath her ear, a blemish he found enchanting. He was conscious of the chocolates on the pillow and the way they glistened darkly in lamplight. She pushed his overcoat from his shoulders, then his jacket, and undid the buttons of his shirt, and ran her hands along his chest. He caught his breath as she reached for the buckle of his belt. Her palm was cool on his skin. He had a sense of being cut free from ancient shackles. This girl was his liberator.
‘Frank,’ she said. ‘Frank.’
Whispers, the hush of breath, the touch of her tongue upon his upper lip, his teeth. When had he last felt this alive? Just when you thought solitude was the condition of your life, something happens, something changes, and behold: a whole new panorama appears before you. He buried his face in her hair, tasted the blond strands in his mouth. He felt her hips pressed against his.
‘I want you inside me,’ she said.
Yes, he thought. There was no other destination. He looked into her eyes; she was gazing back at him. What passed between them in that contact was a moment of such truth and frankness Pagan had the feeling that all his life since Roxanne had been nothing more than treading water. He didn’t think of his marriage, old grief, past pains. He had a sense of resurrection. How easy it seemed, how natural. When he entered her he experienced, under the surface of his excitement, an unexpected tranquillity.
She held him tightly, raising her knees on either side of him. ‘Come for me, Frank. Come inside me.’
Pagan was stunned by the fusion, the passionate interlocking, and yet nothing was hurried. He had the sensation they might have been lovers for a long time, because of the ease, the mutual understanding of each other’s body, the concern. He was profoundly touched by this insight, by the gentle way she said his name when he came, how she drew him deeper into her and clasped him as if his satisfaction were the only event of importance in history. She came with him, took the same trip, shivering. Even then, when it was over, they were reluctant to move away from each other. They were silent for a long time, enclosed in a private sphere. They might have been two people seeking retreat from the indifferent world that existed beyond the window.
She ran her hand across the side of his face. ‘Frank,’ she said.
He thought he’d never heard his name pronounced in quite that way before. She uttered it as if it were precious, a form of code only they understood. Wasn’t that what lovers did? Recreated language to please themselves? Gave it new sounds, fresh descriptions? Lovers, he thought. Love, lovers.
‘I want to ask you a strange question. Promise you won’t laugh.’
‘I won’t laugh.’
‘Do you believe in … past lives?’
‘Past lives?’
‘I’m out of my mind. But I have a feeling I must have met you before.’
He smiled. ‘Maybe you did,’ he said.
Her expression was serious. ‘Really. I think I believe in reincarnation. Something weird and wonderful is going on, and I can’t explain it.’
‘Neither can I.’ And he couldn’t. Past lives, reincarnation, dead souls linked through eternities? He was in the mood to accept anything. He might have been dancing on the moon in defiance of gravity. Love! For God’s sake, what was he thinking? He wasn’t a kid any more, didn’t believe in lightning striking the heart, the old bolt from the blue. He was surely immune to all that.
She moved out from under him, propped herself up on one
elbow. He lay on his back and she looked down into his face. ‘Explain it. How come it was like that. What’s going on between us, Frank?’
‘I don’t know. And I don’t want to analyse it either. Analysis is bad. It reduces things.’
‘Other men …’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve never known this … closeness with anyone else,’ she said. She looked puzzled, as if suddenly perplexed by a metaphysical problem.
Other men. The phrase created a shadow across his mind. Was it a sign of a new condition, this envy of other men? Adolescent of you, Frank. Of course there had been other men before you. What did you expect?
She said, ‘I didn’t plan on anything like this. It just seemed to blow in out of nowhere. I don’t know. I’ve never felt like this before. Are we crazy or what?’
He turned his face, looked up at the ceiling. He experienced an aftershock of orgasm. She reached out, clasped her hand around his penis, stroked it, and he was hard again. She took him inside her mouth for a few seconds, then raised her face, pushed hair from her forehead.
‘I wanted the taste of you,’ she said. He watched her: she had all that shining honesty, that astounding curiosity, of youth.
She straddled him, hair fell into her eyes, she tilted back her head, thrust herself against him. He was astonished by his own capacity. He watched the muscles in her neck strain, the motion of her small breasts, the mysterious little oval of her navel. Where did his reserves of desire come from? he wondered. Where this incomprehensible stamina? He couldn’t stop watching her, couldn’t refrain from marvelling at her, the closed eyelids, the slightly parted lips, the sculpted curve of hip. When he came again it was from a place far back inside himself. She fell flat against him, motionless, breathing hard. He enjoyed the feel of her face upon his shoulder.
She was silent for a long time.
‘Tell me about your world,’ she said. ‘Tell me how you live.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Anything. Everything. Just speak to me.’
He talked, as soon as he started he couldn’t stop, he talked in the way of a man making a confession many years too late, he spoke of his marriage, the emptiness of his life after, the various women who had drifted in and out, he spoke of his work, he travelled down with her into the Underground tunnel, described the devastation, he spoke of terrorism – a process of unburdening himself. And she listened. She looked into his face and listened with great concentration.
‘My life seems so dull by comparison,’ she said at one point. ‘I think of all the characters you’ve met, the people you’ve been involved with – and what have I done in my lifetime?’
‘Your lifetime has been considerably shorter than mine,’ he said. He heard this statement echo in his head, and it depressed him slightly. This lovely girl – why had she chosen him? Why give herself to him? Maybe it was something uncomplicated: she didn’t like men her own age, she found them immature, boring. But why me? he wondered. A cop in his mid-forties is no great catch, is it, Frank?
She ran a fingertip across his lips. ‘These people you hunt – are they always bad?’
Bad. The word struck Pagan as innocent in a fashion. ‘Most of them are psychotics you wouldn’t want to meet in an alley on a dark night. But some are just misguided zealots. Others are loners suckered into violence because they need to belong to a cause of some kind, any kind. It’s hard to categorize them.’
She continued to stroke his lips. ‘Have you ever met one you admired? One you liked?’
Pagan was quiet for a time. ‘Only Cairney.’
‘Cairney?’
‘Patrick Cairney. He called himself Jig. He was IRA.’
‘Why did you admire him?’
‘He was different from the others. Basically, I don’t believe he liked violence. He was above crude, unfocused terrorism. He was good at what he did – but he always went to great lengths to make sure nobody except the intended target was hurt. Discretionary terrorism, I suppose you’d call it. He had dignity. I think that’s the word. I spent months running him down. All the way to America.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He was killed.’ Pagan didn’t want to elaborate on this clipped sentence. He didn’t want to dwell on Jig. He remembered the final confrontation in a mansion in upstate New York, the treachery of relationships in that great grey mausoleum of a house that Cairney’s father, a United States senator, an old IRA fund-raiser, had christened Roscommon out of nostalgia for his upbringing in Ireland.
‘How was he killed?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not really.’ She pushed hair from her forehead. ‘I’m just curious.’
‘He was shot by his stepmother, a nasty character playing too many roles for her own good. She professed sympathy for the IRA because her husband was a misguided old Republican who raised funds in the States for the Cause. In reality, she was an Ulster Loyalist of a particularly vicious kind.’
‘I get confused about the different sides in the Irish conflict,’ she said, frowning.
‘You’re not alone in that.’
She was quiet for a time. ‘What became of Jig’s father?’
‘The stepmother took a gun to him. Father and son – she shot them both.’
‘Classy lady.’
‘Definitely.’
She moved her hand from his face. ‘Tell me about some of the others.’
‘Do you really want to hear all this?’
‘I want to know you,’ she said. ‘I want to know all there is to know.’
All there is to know. How was that possible? It was seven in the morning when he finally fell into silence; how could he have been in this room so long? Time had evaporated. He was dry, talked-out, light-hearted. He hadn’t shared his life like this in years.
‘I’m tired. Don’t leave me until I fall asleep,’ she said.
‘I won’t.’
She drew back the bed covers and he lay alongside her, holding her hand in a possessive way. She closed her eyes. He watched her, wondered about her life – about which he knew so very little – listened to the rhythms of her breathing, and then moved very quietly when he was convinced she’d fallen asleep. He dressed, scribbled a note on hotel stationery: I’ll be in touch. Love, Frank.
Then he slipped out of the room.
Outside it was cold and rain blew raggedly across Hyde Park. But he didn’t notice the weather. He walked to his dented Camaro and drove in the direction of Soho and Golden Square. Back to reality, he thought. But reality, in inscrutable ways, had changed.
On Piccadilly he passed the Tube station. It was still strung with scene-of-the-crime tape. A couple of uniformed cops stood idly in the entrance. He turned the car into the back streets of Mayfair with the intention of avoiding any early morning traffic around Piccadilly Circus.
He felt energetic, wired. Brennan Carberry filled his thoughts and he had a fierce longing to turn his car around and go back to the Hilton, crawl into bed with her, live with her the rest of his days in mutual bliss. Here, George Nimmo, this is my resignation. Thank you and good night. But he knew he wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it. He had never walked away from unfinished business; on the other hand, he’d never been this tempted before. Temptation at your age, Pagan, he thought. You ought to know better.
So why couldn’t he just ascribe the incident with Brennan Carberry to the category of good sex and let it go at that? What was preventing him? You reach a point in your life when you’re closer to the end than the beginning and you want something deeper – was that it? He tried to imagine a future that included Brennan Carberry, but he couldn’t, and the failure troubled him.
He found himself in the vicinity of Grosvenor Square. He saw the US flag hang limp from rain. The great eagle overlooking the Embassy gleamed above streetlamps that were still burning even though dawn was in the sky. A few windows inside the Embassy were lit.
He parked the car, got out, wandered toward the building. A man carrying a brie
fcase emerged from a car and went inside, passing the marine on security duty. Pagan strolled to the foot of the steps. The marine looked out at him from behind the glass doors. Pagan thought about Bryce Harcourt and Al Quarterman, visualizing them as they must have entered the building in the past. He gazed at the marine, whose expression was one of cheerless vigilance. Pagan walked to the corner, turned back the way he had come.
Why not, he thought. Why the hell not?
He went up the steps. The marine remained motionless. It was only when Pagan reached the glass door that the marine finally moved, allowing his white-gloved hands to fall to his sides. His black face was impassive. Pagan pushed the door open and the marine said, ‘Is there something I can do for you.’ It wasn’t a question.
Pagan took out his wallet. The marine studied the Special Branch ID, checking Pagan’s face against the photograph. ‘I want to see the Ambassador,’ Pagan said, a little surprised by his own nerve. But you needed gall at times. You needed brass.
‘You have an appointment?’ The marine handed back the wallet.
‘No, I don’t. But I think he’ll see me.’
‘Yeah?’
Pagan looked beyond the marine. There was a photograph on the wall of the President. Various signs indicated the location of offices. Visa Applications. Permanent Resident Applications. General Enquiries. US Citizens Advisory Office. Somewhere a vacuum cleaner was running.
‘Generally speaking,’ said the marine, ‘you need an appointment to see the Ambassador.’
‘Do me a favour,’ Pagan said. ‘Just get a message to him that I’m here. Then we’ll see what happens.’
The marine looked reluctant, but ushered Pagan to a chair and told him to wait. Pagan sat. The marine, walking crisply, vanished behind a door. While he was gone Pagan leafed through some tourist brochures. Visit Florida. See the Everglades. Wonder at the Grand Canyon. The Embassy was in the business of vigorously promoting tourism.
His thoughts ticked over into romantic fantasies in the course of which he and Brennan Carberry held hands in sight of Mount Rushmore or made love in a sailboat on some lonesome Minnesota lake as geese flew across the setting sun. While he leafed these glossy pages and amused himself, various office workers entered the building, secretaries, receptionists, men in raincoats whose functions you couldn’t guess. The place was coming to life.
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