“Why?”
“Jesus Christ, darling! For every reason!”
“I’m going to do it,” said Janet, feeling positively excited.
“What if John dies?”
Janet gazed for several moments across the dinner table at her friend and then said: “That’s almost inevitable, the way it’s being handled so far. Which is what I’m trying to prevent. The last time there wasn’t anything I could even try to do to prevent the inevitable, remember?”
“Darling!” exclaimed her mother, when Janet telephoned five minutes later. “It would be wonderful to have you home!”
“Not for long, Mother,” warned Janet. “Not for long.”
11
It was an overnight flight from America, landing in London early in the morning. Janet had been unable to sleep at all and arrived feeling unwashed and gritty-eyed. It was not until she got through Immigration and was waiting by the carousel for her luggage that Janet remembered the original plan: to be here with John, for the wedding. She half turned, as if expecting him to be by her side, an unthinking reaction of tiredness. She blinked, feeling stupid, relieved that her bag came up almost at once so she could grab it and move away.
Her parents were waiting right by the exit, behind the barrier, and the moment Janet emerged her mother waved to attract attention. The woman hugged her and released her and hugged her again while her father waited patiently for his turn and just hugged her and kissed her once when it came.
From the first kiss her mother began a non-stop jabber of questions without ever waiting for answers and over the woman’s head her father smiled and Janet smiled back. Janet thought her mother twittered and decided the word was apposite: she was a thin, small-boned woman with jerky movements, like a twittering bird. Her father was a complete contrast, a quiet, unemotional man who she doubted had ever done anything or said anything without considering it first. From their time on postings together Janet always thought of him as someone in black because he really had worn a kind of uniform, dark subdued suits when it had not been striped trousers with black formal jacket. Now the suit was a retired country tweed but the sharp trouser crease and the waistcoat still gave a vague formality to it. He seemed fuller in the face than Janet remembered from her last visit, but it was his hair that registered with her most. Although he had to be twenty-five years older than John, her father’s hair was still almost completely black: from those awful pictures that remained so vivid in her mind Janet decided it was John who could be this man’s father rather than the other way around.
Responding minimally to her mother’s back-seat chatter Janet agreed that she was tired and that it was nice to be back and that it had been a reasonable flight—although already she could scarcely recall it—and that it was awful what had happened to John and that she was managing to cope and that Harriet had been wonderful and that everyone else had been wonderful, too. Her mother proudly announced she had kept a scrapbook of all the newspaper stories and features, knowing Janet would want one. Janet, who considered it the last thing she wanted, thanked the other woman and said it was a kind thought.
Her father picked the orbital motorway and as they drove south he looked sideways across the car and said: “You all right?”
“I don’t know, not really. I suppose so.”
“Was the pressure bad in Washington?”
“Not after I moved in with Harriet.”
“We had the press camped at the bottom of the lane for a week.”
“I’m sorry,” said Janet, not sure what she was apologizing for.
“They wanted photographs of you when you were a child,” intruded her mother from the back seat. “I let them have that one of you at the Necropolis of Thebes, on a camel.”
She’d been terrified and it had shown, Janet remembered. She said: “I don’t mind, whatever you did.”
“One or two papers have kept in touch, but we haven’t said anything about your coming home,” assured her father.
“I’m glad you haven’t.”
“I’m sure everything is going to work out all right,” said her mother.
Janet was surprised it had taken so long: it had usually been her mother’s second or third remark in every conversation since the kidnap. She said she hoped so, wanting her mother to stop talking. It was a gray, pressed-down day with the clouds low against the beginning of the Sussex hills. An uncertain mist kept the windows damp and the tires sounded sticky on the road beneath them. The motorway was jammed, far more crowded than the Washington Beltway, and dirt sprayed up from the stream of cars ahead of them. The traffic did not improve when they left the motorway to head further south, into Sussex, on a lesser-used road. Although it was not cold inside the car Janet shivered and guessed it was another reaction to her tiredness.
Her parents lived in a hamlet just outside Cuckfield and it was still only midmorning when they arrived. Her father carried her case and her mother ran a bath and turned down her bed. When she went into the bedroom Janet was sorry for the impatience she appeared constantly to feel towards the woman. It was, she acknowledged, quite unfair: her mother was doing her best, in her way, to help and to be supportive. Janet further acknowledged that impatience had been her predominant feeling about everything and towards everybody since John had been taken hostage. And that it wasn’t, either, a constructive or useful attitude, whatever that might be.
Janet wanted to sleep and tried hard to do so but it was not the proper sort of rest, more a submission to exhaustion. She was suspended in a conscious sort of a dream, one she knew to be a dream, from which she would awaken: mental images of John Sheridan and William Buckley kept being confused and she could recall whole tracts of commentary from television and newspaper coverage. Willsher featured prominently although not in the Franklin Park office but in the sort of lecture hall she used at the university, and he was at the podium in the manner of an instructor, admonishing her for not listening or understanding and making mistakes through lack of concentration.
When she did awake Janet lay in bed, although not balled up as she had when Hank died, but fully outstretched and reflective, with her hands cupped behind her head. So what the hell did she imagine she was doing by coming here and intending to go on, as she did intend to go on! What could she do that wasn’t already being done, with more expertise and more resources than she could ever have? Unanswerable questions. So she stopped trying to answer them. Janet accepted that a lot of the rationale—if rationale were the right word—lay in her response to Harriet, that night of the decision in the Georgetown house. She had felt—and still felt—guilt at not being able to do anything to combat Hank’s cancer. She knew it to be an illogical—even absurd—feeling because she wasn’t a doctor or a surgeon or a specialist and so there was nothing she could have done, during those last few months. But it still remained an impression that she could not lose: would never lose. She was determined that she would not feel guilty about John. Now there was something she believed she could do, some physical movement it was possible for her to make. Was that all it would be, just moving around to give herself the impression of some sort of useful activity? Janet closed her mind against the inrush of questions: she was going to do, not think.
Janet got up in the late afternoon and agreed to tea she didn’t want and looked at the cuttings book her mother had assembled. She was surprised at the British media coverage engendered by the kidnap and hoped it would help. She wished her mother hadn’t given away the photograph of herself on a camel.
It was not until the early evening, when her mother was busying herself over supper, that Janet was alone with her father. It was he who initiated the conversation.
He poured drinks—sherry for her and whisky for himself—and as he handed the glass to her said: “What does ‘not for long’ mean?”
“I’m sorry?” Janet frowned, momentarily not remembering.
“That’s what your mother said you told her on the telephone: that you were coming home but not for l
ong.”
Janet sipped her drink, unsure how to say it and then decided there was only one way. “I’m going there,” she announced.
Now it was her father’s turn momentarily not to understand. “Going where?”
“Beirut”
For a long time her father stared across the room at her, unmoving, his face expressionless, and when he responded his voice, predictably, was just as controlled. He said: “That’s ridiculous: you wouldn’t even get a visa.”
“Cyprus then,” insisted Janet. “Since the war there’s been as much Lebanese activity there as in Beirut anyway.”
“To do what?” asked the man.
“A bloody sight more than is being done at the moment to find John!”
Her father shook his head, still talking evenly. “It’s a fantasy, darling. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can, if you’ll help me!”
“Me?”
“You’ve still got friends in the Foreign Office. And in the area.”
He shrugged. “A few, I suppose.”
“Introduce me,” demanded Janet. “Personally in London: by letter where you can in the Middle East.”
“For what!” repeated the man.
“They could make inquiries, couldn’t they? Isn’t that how it was done, in the embassies where you served: questions from London relayed to you and in turn taken up with the authorities?”
“There isn’t any authority in the Lebanon any more: not the sort of authority you’re talking about,” argued her father. “You should know that better than most!”
“There is still diplomatic representation in Beirut, nominal though it might be,” Janet argued back. “John’s not the only person being held: there must be some contact with these groups! Some links!”
“Darling,” said the man, gently. “Don’t you think the Americans will have explored every possibility like that?”
“I think they’re just sitting around, doing bugger all.”
Her father hesitated, as if he were surprised at her swearing. He said: “That isn’t true: can’t be true. And you know it.”
“I want to do something!”
“OK,” he said, a diplomat whose entire career had involved patient argument and inevitable compromise. “What happens if people I know do have contacts with friends in Beirut? And those friends have the sort of links you think must exist? And through the chain you do get some sort of information about John? What then?”
Now it was Janet who hesitated, not having thought that far ahead. “Tell the Americans,” she said. She indicated the scrapbook that lay on the settee between them and went on: “Tell them and let them know that if they don’t try to do something to get him out I’ll ask why, through the newspapers.”
“Get into a public slanging match, you mean?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Haven’t you thought of an inherent danger?”
“I don’t care what happens to me,” said Janet, thoughtlessly.
“I wasn’t thinking about you at that moment,” said her father, still gentle. “I was thinking of what could happen to John if some suggestion were given as to his whereabouts and demands made that America do something to get him out. Do you imagine whoever’s got him would just sit around and wait for it to happen?”
Janet bit her lip, uncomfortably. “Threaten,” she said, retreating. “Just threaten to go to the newspapers unless they did something.”
“As you mentioned it,” said the man. “What about you?”
“I said I didn’t care.”
“That’s stupid, which is something else you know,” her father said, still not raising his voice. “And again you’ve misunderstood. Let’s not think of physical danger for a moment, although of course we should. You’re a woman. What sort of chance do you really think a woman—any woman—would stand of achieving anything in any sort of Middle East situation?”
“I know the area and I know the language and I know the dangers and the likely difficulties,” insisted Janet.
“You’re still a woman.”
“A very determined one.”
He shook his head, more in sadness than refusal. “I do care,” he said. “I care and I feel sorry—desperately sorry—for what’s happened. Your mother and I liked John enormously and hoped, really hoped, that you were going to get a second chance. But this isn’t the way, darling. Leave it to the people who know what they’re doing: you really could do more harm—harm to John, I mean—than good by trying to get involved like this.”
Janet’s eyes clouded with anger. “You know what you’ve just done!” she said. “You’ve just talked of John in the past tense, like he’s already dead and there’s no possibility of our ever marrying: that I’ve lost the second chance. And you’ve lectured me like Willsher, the CIA man. Patronized me and patted me on the head and told me to go home and be a good girl and stop making a nuisance of myself. I haven’t had to wait until I got to the Middle East to be treated like a second-class person. From you, of all people, I didn’t expect that: neither attitude!”
Her father went to the drinks tray and refilled his glass, without inviting her to have another. Still standing by it, he said: “I’m sorry. I did not intend to talk of John as if he were dead. I didn’t intend to patronize, either.”
“I will go,” insisted Janet. “Whether you help me or not, I will go.”
“Yes,” accepted her father, shortly. “You will, won’t you?”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Do I get help or do I get patronized?”
“Do you really have to ask a question like that?”
“After tonight I’m not sure.”
“What’s this sort of conversation going to achieve?”
Janet shrugged, regretting the outburst. “I’m fed up, Daddy: so fed up! I love John and I really do think of it as a second chance and I want it so very much. So I’m fed up being told to go away: being told that everyone else knows better than me. That I haven’t the right to know anything, even!”
Her father moved from where he stood, coming to her and pulling her to him. “You know I’ll do everything I can.”
Janet twisted, to look up at him. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head, dismissing her apology. “Don’t regard it as anything more than it is,” he cautioned. “I don’t know yet whether anyone I know personally is in any position to help. Or if they will, if they are.”
“It’s good just to have someone on my side,” she said.
“I’ll always be that,” her father said.
Janet was further encouraged the following day, when her father emerged from his study after an entire morning’s telephoning, to announce that he had located two old diplomatic acquaintances, one in London, the other working out of the British embassy in Nicosia.
“Cyprus!” exclaimed Janet.
“It isn’t significant,” warned her father. “We don’t know yet if he’ll be prepared to do anything.”
“It’s wonderful!” insisted Janet, refusing to be disheartened.
Depression was, however, a feeling that was quick to come. Her father’s friend in London was named McDermott, and he’d served under her father at the British embassy in Cairo. They met not at Whitehall but over lunch at Lockett’s, nearby. He was a tall, thin, pink-cheeked man with the habit of looking reprovingly, like some schoolmaster, over half-rimmed spectacles. The frames had grooved the bridge of his nose and the sides of his head, where his hair was white. He said he remembered Janet from her Cairo visits during school vacations and she smiled, unable to remember him, and agreed that Egypt had been a fascinating country. He’d read of Sheridan’s kidnap but had not realized her association, because she had been referred to in all the newspaper stories by her previously married name. He was sorry. He said the situation in the Lebanon appeared, regrettably, quite intractable and ordered gulls’ eggs, with lemon sole to follow.
McDermott seemed genui
nely surprised at the request for assistance, which her father introduced into the conversation and which Janet at once took up and expanded upon, elaborating the early, first-night debate with her father.
When she finished McDermott said at once and again apparently genuinely: “Why are you asking me to do this?”
“I would have thought that was obvious,” said Janet.
McDermott put down his knife and fork, not immediately looking up, assembling his words. When he did speak, it was to her father rather than to Janet, and Janet thought again that she didn’t have to wait until the Middle East to encounter the dismissive relegation of her sex.
“You should know better than to ask me!” said McDermott. “John Sheridan is a foreign national, an American. What right has the Foreign Office to interfere!”
The same rejection, only reversed, that she’d encountered on her first approaches to the State Department and the CIA, remembered Janet: it was like being on a roundabout with a forwards-and-backwards control, but always in the same direction.
“We were thinking of it more as a personal favor,” said her father. “A discreet sort of inquiry.”
“There is no such thing in the Lebanese hostage situation,” lectured McDermott. “We’ve had the special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury held for over a year! A British television journalist for two. How on earth can I get involved, risk tangling up whatever negotiation might be going on to gain the freedom of Britons, by intruding into the affairs of another country? It’s unthinkable!”
“It wasn’t our intention to embarrass you,” said Janet’s father, diplomat soothing diplomat.
McDermott retrieved his knife and fork. “This is a social occasion,” he said. “Nothing official. So there is no embarrassment.” He looked at last to Janet. “Please don’t think I’m not sympathetic. I am. I recognize very well the predicament in which you find yourself: that you’re in a kind of limbo. But there is nothing I can do, either officially or unofficially.”
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