“How are you?” he asked.
“I hoped it would be you,” said Janet. “All right, I guess.”
“I’m downstairs.”
“What took you so long to call?”
“Reasons,” he said, enigmatically. “There’s a lot of guys still hanging around. Photographers, too.”
“What the hell for?”
“In the trade it’s known as doorstepping,” he said. “It literally means what it says. You’re a running international story so they’ve got to stay on your doorstep to be ready if anything develops.”
“I want to see you.”
“I’ll come up: be ready to let me in the moment I knock.”
She was and immediately he thrust through the door Janet put her arms out to be held and he brought her close to him, soothing his hand through her hair, curious at her obvious need.
“I thought you said you were all right?”
“They attacked me at the conference,” protested Janet. “Why did they do that? It hasn’t happened before.”
“Only one or two,” Baxeter said. “The majority are still on your side.”
“Why the change at all?”
“Stories like yours, stories that keep going over a long period of time, develop a kind of cycle,” Baxeter tried to explain. “A person is built up into a hero—or in your case heroine—and for a long time everything goes their way. Then, at the slightest whiff of doubt, some change. Having created their pedestal, they start trying to knock it down and their hero with it.”
“That’s stupid!”
“That’s the way it is.” Baxeter smiled. “But it’s nothing for you to worry about. Like I said, it’s only one or two. It’ll all be OK after the full hearing.”
“Zarpas virtually told me it’s my word against theirs. He can’t find Haseeb, and the people at the cafe say they don’t know anything about it,” pointed out Janet.
“The evidence will be found,” promised Baxeter.
“You were a long time calling,” Janet said, again.
“I had something else to do after your conference.”
Janet had become to feel warm, protected once more, in his presence, but it was washed chillingly away by the tone of his voice. “What?” she said.
“My visa’s come through.”
“When are you going?” asked Janet, heavily.
“Tomorrow.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“We’ve been through that,” he reminded her. “We’ve been through it all.”
“If they’re watching downstairs I can’t stay away from here again tonight.”
“And I can’t stay all night here, either.”
They abandoned themselves to an afternoon of absolute love, unthinking, uncaring, unaware of anyone or anything but themselves and the cocoon of Janet’s room. Four times the telephone rang without her answering and once they held each other, laughing silently, as they tried to pick out a muffled conversation outside the repeatedly knocked-upon door. Minutes after the knocking ceased a note was pushed beneath the door but neither was sufficiently interested to get out of bed to see what it said.
The encroaching blackness of evening, the time he had to leave her, darkened their mood. And they were exhausted anyway by the lovemaking which had left them damp and physically aching.
“Can I say something?” asked Baxeter.
“What sort of question is that to ask me?”
“It’s been wonderful,” said the man. “But for one thing.”
“What?” she said, guessing that she knew.
“It was the same with both of us: the frenzy. It was like we were desperate; that it would never happen again.”
“Don’t: there’s no point!”
“It will.”
“I said ‘don’t.’”
“Last night you asked me not to say something else,” he remembered. “That I couldn’t tell you I loved you. Which I do.”
“Come back!” said Janet. “Please come back.”
“I will,” he said. “I know I will.”
“How can you know!”
“I just know.”
Two hours earlier there would have been hilarity in the cautious way they checked the corridor before Baxeter left, but now there wasn’t. He did it mechanically, ducking back once because of a passing guest, and was then gone without any farewell. Janet stood directly inside the door, head pressed against the wood, and it was several moments before she moved away. The room was completely dark but she didn’t bother to switch on a light: didn’t bother to do anything. She just climbed back inside the wrecked bed and begged for sleep to come, to blot out everything. Which surprisingly it did, very quickly. She was conscious of stirring twice during the night but it was not abrupt wakefulness and she drifted off again.
It was brightly light by the time she fully awoke. Beside the bed the message light on her telephone was blinking redly and she remembered the pushed-under-the-door message. She retrieved that first, smiling down at the request from Germany’s Der Spiegel for an exclusive, in-depth interview. There were four telephone messages being held for her by the switchboard. All were from newspapers, all seeking the same. She decided to reply to none of them.
She escaped by going down the fire stairs to her hire car, which had not been identified, and drove into Nicosia for a breakfast which she needed, not having eaten at all the previous day. Afterwards she lingered over coffee, not knowing what to do next. Alone again, she acknowledged.
Without any positive intention Janet drove towards Troodos, retracing the route along which she had gone with Baxeter. It had been, she admitted to herself, that day when she’d realized—although refusing to realize it at the time—that she loved him. No, not love! It hadn’t been that quick: that positive. That she was attracted to him and that there was a possible danger, she corrected. Sensible people who recognized danger avoided it. So why hadn’t she? Janet didn’t have logical, easy answers to the logical, easy questions. Everything was mixed up, not confused but differing factors interlocking to make some sort of (although not entirely satisfactory) explanation. She had been alone and fed up with being alone. Frightened and in need of someone. Vulnerable. And Baxeter had been kind and understanding. Janet stopped the mental examination, curious. Why did she think of John as John and Baxeter as Baxeter? Subconsciously, she supposed, she was trying to separate them, accord one greater intimacy (and greater love?) than the other.
Was it possible to love two men at the same time? It was an uncertainty Janet had never before had to consider. There had been a passing affair at university before she’d met Hank, but once they’d established their relationship it had been enough for her. There’d been approaches, of course. In England, and later in Washington: approaches almost every time they had attended one of Harriet’s parties. She and Hank had laughed about it, absolutely sure of each other, neither feeling threatened.
Was John threatened by what had occurred between herself and Baxeter? The automatic mental division, she recognized again. And there was a division. Groping for a way to rationalize it to herself, Janet thought that it was practically as if she were thinking of herself as two women, one in love with John Sheridan, the other in love with David Baxeter. Hardly rational: positively irrational. Nevertheless it was how it settled in her mind. She accepted it was still not a resolve: not even a proper explanation. Little more than a weak attempt at easing her conscience. Sufficient, though, for the moment. That’s all she really wanted to do, go from moment to moment, hour to hour, unwilling to make plans for the next day or the day after that because there was nothing sure enough to make plans about. Wasn’t that just another attempt to avoid the most difficult question of all, the one she had adamantly refused even to bring to mind? She did so now, making herself consider it. Whom would she choose, if it came to the choice?
Janet was sitting on the tavern verandah from which Baxeter had photographed her looking out over the thickly wooded valley. She shook her h
ead, refusing to answer. Moment to moment, hour to hour, she thought.
She drove aimlessly and slowly back to Nicosia, regretting the trip because it had not been the same without Baxeter and she’d become further depressed by her failed attempts at personal honesty.
She was surprised by the amount of mail awaiting her back at the hotel. There were three more written requests for interviews from journalists and in addition two airmailed letters both postmarked from the United States. The first she opened was from the talk show agency in Atlanta, increasing from $5,000 to $10,000 their offer for a country-wide tour for after-dinner or lunch talks. The second was from a New York publishing house proposing a $100,000 advance for a book which they had tentatively entitled The Love of Janet Stone. If she cabled her acceptance, they would fly an executive to Cyprus to finalize the details and discuss whether she felt able to complete a manuscript herself or would like to work with a ghost writer.
Janets vision blurred at the suggested title. She threw everything angrily into the wastebasket and stood at the window gazing out over the city and its sun-bleached, dun-colored outskirts, arms rigid by her side, both hands clenched into fists. Fuck it! she thought, not even sure at what or at whom she was swearing. Fuck it! fuck it! fuck it!
The following day Zarpas called: there was no necessity for her to attend the next remand hearing unless she wanted to, because it would be even more of a formality than the initial appearance. There was a follow-up call from the New York publisher which she refused to accept.
She let another twenty-four hours pass before calling England. Her mother, as always, answered the telephone and announced at once that she had very bad news.
“What?” demanded Janet.
“George is dead. I am so sorry, my darling.”
“George?” Janet could not think what her mother was talking about.
“Your cat: Harriet telephoned last night.”
It struck Janet as bizarre and she snickered. “Oh,” was all she could manage.
“I knew you’d be upset,” said her mother. Janet realized her instant reaction would have sounded like a sob.
She said: “Quite a lot has actually happened since I was last with George, Mother. And I’ve kind of been expecting it.”
“Still a shock.”
Could people think of animals dying as a shock? Janet guessed she would have known that—felt more than she was feeling at the moment at least—if she’d never met John Sheridan and never done what she was doing now but remained in the Rosslyn apartment with George. She said: “Thank Harriet for me, will you? Say I’ll settle the vet’s bills when I get back.”
“She wanted to know that,” the older woman said. “When you’re getting back, that is.”
Janet sighed, not responding. “Should I speak to Daddy?”
“He wants to speak to you.”
He must have been standing next to her, because he came on the telephone at once. “There was a lot of publicity about that remand hearing.”
“I didn’t bother to read any of it,” said Janet, who hadn’t.
“No definite date for a full hearing?”
“Not yet.”
“You could come home in between times, couldn’t you?”
So Partington and her father were still in close contact. Wearily Janet said: “I haven’t decided yet.” And don’t want to decide, she thought.
There was desultory talk about the cat, which Janet found utterly inconsequential, and an attempt to bring the conversation back to her return, which Janet ignored. He told her, as always, to call again soon and Janet, as always, promised that she would, gratefully replacing the telephone and deciding upon at least a week’s interval. Poor George, she thought, trying but still failing to feel more. Had she changed so completely, about everything and everybody? She didn’t want that to happen: not to become so hardened that nothing mattered or moved her any more. She’d known women like that—she supposed Harriet was close to being one—and thought it was ugly.
She started going back to the pool again and on the second morning realized from a faraway bustle that she was being photographed by cameramen using long focus lenses. Her immediate reaction was to feel indecent and she moved to cover herself in a wrap but then she stopped, lying back on the lounger. So what? she thought. What the hell did a picture of her in a swimsuit matter! If it made them think they were doing their job—made them think it was important—it was all right by her.
It was ten days after Baxeter’s departure, in the late afternoon when she was returning sun-throbbing and still oiled from the pool, the room key slippery in her hands, that she heard the room telephone ringing. The key slipped further and she almost dropped it, running anxiously into the room when the door finally opened.
“I’m back,” he announced.
Janet closed her eyes, swaying.
“Thank God!” she said. “Oh, thank God!”
“You OK?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling strangely breathless. “Where are you?”
“My apartment. The pack still there?”
“Some.”
“Could you get here?”
“Of course. An hour.”
“Make it thirty minutes.”
Janet showered and changed and didn’t bother to dry her hair, so eager was she to get to him. She used the fire escape stairs again and was sure she reached the hire car unobserved. She was still cautious, driving not straight to Baxeter’s home but into Nicosia, parking the car near the Paphos Gate where she had been cheated of Baxeter’s money. She entered the walls through the Paphos Gate, twisting at once through the narrow alleys of the oldest part of the city, constantly looking behind in an effort to detect anyone following. She couldn’t see anyone: certain not an obvious camera-hung photographer. She emerged from the citadel at Eleftheria Square, where there was a taxi rank, and rode away staring through the rear window. Again there was no indication of pursuit.
Baxeter snatched at her without speaking and Janet didn’t need any words either. They made love hurriedly, hungrily, and it was much too quick, but the second time was slower and better.
“I’ve missed you so much,” said Baxeter.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
“You’re going to hate me,” he announced, abruptly.
She pulled away, staring curiously at him. “Hate you?”
“For cheating you: making love like this without telling you first.”
“Telling me what?” Her stomach dipped.
Instead of replying Baxeter reached sideways for an envelope, taking out a photograph. John Sheridan looked older and grayer than in any previous prints, sagged against a wall. He was being made to hold up a copy of the New York Times to show the date, just a week earlier.
“Do you hate me?” said Baxeter, beside her.
“No,” said Janet. “I don’t hate you.”
25
Janet became aware that she was upright, naked with her legs splayed for support and sitting directly in front of him: despite their having made love every way that love could be made and the fact that there was no secret about either of their bodies that the other had not explored and discovered (and delighted in exploring and discovering) she snatched—immediately regretting the haste—at the crumpled top sheet to pull it up over herself.
“I thought that was how it might be,” he said and Janet regretted the haste even more.
“He’s alive!” she said. It was not until now, this precise moment, that Janet had opened another locked and sealed compartment, that most secret part of her mind in which she’d believed John to be dead. Now, abruptly, unexpectedly, incredibly, she had proof—that he wasn’t dead! That he definitely hadn’t been dead, as of just one week ago. And Janet knew—just knew—that if he weren’t killed by now, he wouldn’t be. That somehow, somewhere, she would be reunited with him. The awarenesses rushed in upon her, a tidal wave, and Janet was swamped by it, tumbled head-over-heels upon a bruising, scratching mental shore.
For a long time she just sat, the creased sheet like a toga held with increasing tightness before her, gazing at the stained bed upon which she had just made passionate and uninhibited love to one man while she thought about another. “Alive!” she said again, empty-voiced.
“There isn’t any doubt,” confirmed Baxeter.
“I want to say … I want to say …” stumbled Janet, looking down at herself and then across at his nakedness. “I want to say thank you but that’s bloody ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Baxeter agreed. “Bloody ridiculous.”
“You know what’s even more ridiculous!” she said. “It makes me love you even more.”
Baxeter shook his head, becoming aware of his own nakedness and pulling part of Janet’s sheet over himself. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“No.” Janet made a sound halfway between a sad choke and an excited laugh. “I don’t either.”
“I’m glad,” said the man. “However it affects you and me, I’m glad …” There was a gulped pause. “No, I don’t mean that at all. I’m glad he’s alive, certainly. I mind very much how it affects you and me. Very much.”
“I don’t know how it affects you and me,” admitted Janet, with matching honesty.
“I want to tell you something,” said Baxeter. “Even if it resolves the uncertainty about what happens between you and me, I want to tell you something …” There was another hesitation. “… I thought he was dead.”
“I did, too,” said Janet, quietly.
He stared at her, twisted-faced. “But then why!”
“I thought it, but I wouldn’t accept it,” said Janet. “And I was right, wasn’t I?”
“So what’s the answer?” asked Baxeter.
“Answer?”
“About you and me?”
“Darling!” implored Janet. “How can I tell you that? I secretly thought that a man I was engaged to marry was dead. You give me confirmation that he’s not and within minutes want me to make decisions like that!” Would it be an easier decision weeks or months or years from now? she asked herself.
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