Captive of Desire

by Alexandra Sellers

  Laddy turned on her heel and walked towards the door.

  “Lady,” he said when she had reached the doorway, in the voice of a man waking from a dream. But the woman who would have turned and listened then was dead. Without a sign that she had heard, without the least break in her stride, Laddy walked out of Mischa’s bedroom into outer darkness.

  Chapter 13

  The sun was beaming down on London as if it had never done anything else in the whole course of its existence, though in fact it was the first warm weather the city had seen in ten days. Along Oxford Street, tourists and natives alike were smiling with the happy surprise of those who have just discovered the miracle of spring.

  In the bustling Saturday morning throng of shoppers, Laddy wandered, unaware of the sun on her skin, the faint warm breeze or the sprinkle of summer green glimpsed down side streets along the busiest street of the city she loved most in the world. She felt like a ghost. Never before had the touch, the air of London failed to put the world right for her; never since her father had brought her here at the age of ten had she been in this city without the comfort of knowing that here was home.

  She had left Trefelin on Friday, after a lunch with Richard and Helen, without seeing Mischa again. She had driven to London nonstop, like a robot, and when at last she had pulled up in front of the dark and empty house in Highgate, she could not remember one mile of the trip.

  Margaret and Ben Smiley were not at home upstairs, and since they hadn’t expected her, there’d been nothing welcoming in her flat, not even milk in the fridge for tea. Laddy had stripped off her clothes in the middle of her bedroom, crawled shivering into her cold empty bed and lain waiting for exhaustion to pull her into unconsciousness. As on the long drive, her mind was a blank. She couldn’t think of anything, of anyone....

  “Oh, excuse me, I very sorry,” a voice said, disrupting her thoughts, and Laddy blinked into the politely perturbed face of a Japanese man with a camera around his neck.

  “Sorry,” said Laddy, for if they had bumped into each other it had to be her fault. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Prease, okay,” said the man, nodding his head and smiling, and his wife and two children at his side smiled, too. The camera around his neck was of German manufacture, she saw, and Laddy smiled as she moved past.

  A Japanese man with a German camera taking pictures of England, she would have said to Mischa, and he would have laughed with her, as taken as she by the incongruity.

  Suddenly the sunlight was hurting her eyes. Blinking, Laddy stepped into an Italian trattoria she was passing and made her way to a table with a view of the Oxford Street crowds through large tinted windows.

  She didn’t often shop on Oxford Street, and certainly never on Saturday. But today she had come here deliberately, to be in the crowds, to be assaulted by the music from the boutiques, to breathe in the diesel exhaust of black London cabs...as if the presence of so much life around her might make her feel alive. But nothing touched her. Even Oxford Street moved along the periphery of her senses, like a half-attended-to television program.

  “Good morning, Miss Penreith,” said a voice, and with her cup of coffee halfway to her lips, Laddy glanced up and then froze. The fat white face of Pavel Snegov smiled down at her.

  “Good morning,” she returned, sipping the coffee and placing the cup very methodically in the centre of the perfect white saucer before looking at Pavel Snegov again.

  “What a surprise to meet you in London—May I sit down? I had thought of you as being settled in Wales for awhile,” said Snegov, dropping into the chair opposite without waiting for her nod, stolidly adjusting the knees of his grey suit pants, then leaving his hands on his knees, as though he had forgotten them.

  Laddy’s mouth curved in a wary half smile. “That’s a coincidence,” she said. “I thought you would be there for several more days.”

  Pavel Snegov ignored that. “I must congratulate you on your interview with Busnetsky. The segments that appeared on Thursday and Friday were excellent,” he said comfortably. “I am looking forward to seeing the rest. He is a most interesting man, is he not?”

  Laddy gazed at him a moment, her face grave. It occurred to her that she was frightened of Pavel Snegov. And she didn’t have the energy to spar with him.

  “On Monday he talks about his time in prisons and labour camps,” she said. “Are you familiar with prison conditions in the Soviet Union?”

  Pavel Snegov spread his hands. “Prison conditions are regrettable the world over, I am sure,” he said sadly.

  “Yes, I think they may be,” Laddy agreed. “Not all nations, however, subject their best thinkers and artists to such conditions.”

  “Best thinkers and—!” Snegov shook his head in disbelief. “My dear Miss Penreith, what would you? A disruptive element even in his early school life, thrown out of the university—”

  Laddy smiled in real amusement. “You know, I thought you might spare me that,” she said, and he fell silent. Finishing the last of her coffee, she set down her cup and dropped a coin on the table beside it.

  “Tourist prices already,” she said, “and it’s only the last day of May.”

  “Supply and demand, Miss Penreith,” responded Snegov with a smile. “The essence of the capitalist system.”

  “And what is the essence of the communist system, Mr. Snegov?” she asked.

  “Equality,” he returned, so promptly that she laughed aloud.

  “Not repression?” she said, opening her eyes at him, as she got to her feet.

  “Certainly not,” said Pavel Snegov lightly, but he was no longer smiling.

  Laddy stopped smiling, too. “Now that is news,” she said. “I only wish my father were alive to hear it.”

  With a brief nod she left him, then threaded her way through the tables to the street. After the restaurant’s cool, dark interior, the sunlight hit her with blinding force, and Laddy realised she had a headache.

  It was a long walk through nearly deserted side streets to her little red car, and Laddy thought about Pavel Snegov all the way. What did he want? To frighten her a little? To pick up any information she might inadvertently drop? Or, perhaps…to assess the possibility that hell had no fury like a woman scorned?

  * * *

  “I saved you the papers, in case you hadn’t seen them,” Margaret Smiley said that afternoon, as she refilled their cups and returned the pot to the stove.

  “I haven’t seen Thursday’s or Friday’s,” Laddy said. “Thanks, Margaret, I’d like to have a look at them.”

  They were sitting in Margaret’s kitchen, which was immediately above Laddy’s, overlooking the blooming back garden. Before her father’s death, the room had been first Laddy’s playroom and later her study. With the remodelling of the house they had had stairs built onto the tiny exterior balcony to give the flat access to the back garden, where Ben Smiley spent most of his time. Laddy gazed down at him now, moving lovingly through the plants and flowers.

  “Ben’s made the garden a showpiece in these past three years,” Laddy said. “Look at the lawn, Margaret. There isn’t a square inch anywhere that isn’t green.”

  Under Ben’s tutelage, the garden was in flower from May till October, with everything from lilac to magnolia, pansy to anemone.

  “It’s therapy for him,” Margaret said prosaically. “It takes his mind off his problems. Stops him brooding. And, of course, flowers don’t bite the hand that nurtures them.”

  “No...” Laddy agreed slowly. The door to the balcony was open, and a soft perfumed breeze, warm with sun, blew into the kitchen. “I need to get out in the garden,” Laddy realized. “Will he need any help tomorrow, do you think?”

  “Oh, Ben can always find something,” Margaret said, taking newspapers off the top of the refrigerator. “Here are Thursday’s and yesterday’s,” she said, dropping two copies of the Herald on the table. “Really, Laddy, those are excellent interviews. I don’t know when I’ve read
anything so good.”

  Margaret Smiley was the features editor of the Herald; this was praise indeed.

  “Margaret!” Laddy exclaimed, overwhelmed. Margaret had twenty-five years of newspaper experience behind her, and she was not often lavish in her compliments.

  “Harry copyrighted the interviews, of course,” Margaret said. “I imagine the American syndicates will take them, especially as Busnetsky’s going over there next week.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Laddy, closing her eyes in dismay.

  “My dear, what on earth is wrong with that?” demanded Margaret, astonishment rippling through her tones. “You surely are delighted?”

  “The interviews weren’t for publication at all, Margaret,” Laddy said quietly. “John Bentinck stole them from my desk and brought them to Harry as being from me, and by the time I knew anything about it, it was too late.”

  “Good Lord!” exclaimed Margaret, utterly incredulous. “Stole them? John Bentinck? Why, for goodness’ sake?”

  “Oh, Margaret, don’t ask. In a fit of pique, I suppose. He told me he loved me.”

  “Why weren’t the interviews for publication?” Margaret asked, frowning. She had long ago learned to believe anything she heard in the realm of human behaviour, and the real anomaly in this story was not John Bentinck’s underhanded activities but that the articles should be written, but not for publication.

  “Mischa Busnetsky was a friend of my father’s,” Laddy explained dully. “He talked to me as a friend, but he was giving no press interviews. I was going to show them to him later on, ask if I could use them.” And that was as near the truth as she was going to get. “It’s bad enough just having them appear in the Herald. If they’re syndicated, he’ll be so angry I expect I’ll be blackballed by every dissident group in London.”

  “No, you won’t, my dear,” said Margaret, with brusque good humour. “If the next two articles are anything like the first two, you’ve done the dissident movement more good than they’ve seen in years. They’ll love you. And so will Busnetsky, when he calms down. But I must say, John’s behaviour is very shocking. Does Harry know about it?”

  “He does now,” said Laddy. She paused. “There’s something else about John,” she said hesitantly. “I’ve thought it over, and I’m going to keep quiet about it, but I’d like to tell you about it, Margaret, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course,” said Margaret.

  She listened intently, stroking her lips with forefinger and thumb and shaking her head as Laddy told the story of the photo exclusive of the cave art.

  “He doesn’t look the type, does he?” she said, when Laddy finished.

  “I never thought so,” Laddy agreed. “Am I right to keep quiet about it, Margaret?”

  Margaret shrugged. “If that’s your instinct, I suppose so, though…have you talked to John since you discovered this?”

  “No, and I don’t want to,” said Laddy. “I don’t want to speak to him ever again. I wish he’d just disappear.”

  But John Bentinck was not about to disappear. As Laddy sat over her typewriter and telephone in the Herald newsroom Monday morning trying to get back in touch with her job, she became aware of a presence in front of her desk and knew without looking that it was John.

  She continued to read the copy she had just typed, her hand stretched across the typewriter to hold up the paper in the carriage.

  “Congratulations, Laddy,” John said, his northern voice warm but hesitant. “That stuff on Busnetsky was really good.”

  “Go away, John,” she said, her fingers dropping onto the typewriter keys as she resumed typing.

  “Laddy, I’ve got to talk to you,” he said in an urgent undervoice. “Come to lunch with me today. Please.”

  “No,” Laddy replied. She had so far not looked at him, but she did so now, cold, distant, accusing.

  “Laddy, I’ve got an explanation!”

  “No doubt you do,” she said shortly. “So does everybody. I don’t want to hear it. For the record—” she pulled the copy from her typewriter, ripped the carbons from it and separated the sheets into their various piles “—I don’t want to listen to you, talk to you, be with you, eat with you, drink with you, see you or hear from you.” She looked up. “Ever.”

  “And when we have to work together?” John asked. Laddy stood up and pushed her chair under the desk.

  “Get out of my life, John,” she said tiredly. She turned and walked past the clippings library towards the coffee machine. She was shaking from head to foot, and there was a scream in her throat that would surely escape her if John Bentinck said another word to her.

  Gratefully she reached for the plastic cup of coffee the machine produced in response to her coin, and brought it trembling to her lips.

  “I did it because I love you, Laddy,” said his voice beside her, and in another second she was looking at a stunned John Bentinck shaking his head and gasping, and blinking hot coffee out of his eyes. For a frozen moment Laddy watched the stain spread over his shirt, then she turned on her heel and strode down the corridor towards the newsroom and her desk.

  Harry was looking for her. “Your Busnetsky stuff has been taken by the syndicates,” he told her. “It’ll be running all over North America next week.”

  Laddy smiled shakily. “That’s...that’s terrific, Harry. Thank you.” She knew Harry had worked hard to sell the interviews. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll get so big-headed you’ll lose me?”

  Harry looked at her consideringly. “Frankly, dear girl, I am,” he said. “But never mind. You keep onto Busnetsky while he’s in America, will you? There’s a lot more there than we’ve seen.”

  “Could you give it to somebody else, Harry?” she said, striving to keep her voice toneless. Harry gave her a startled look from under raised brows. “He was really angry about those articles,” she explained. “He won’t want to speak to me again.”

  Harry laughed. “He’ll soon get over that, if he’s got any sense. Those articles are the best thing that could have happened to him. The Americans will love him before he’s opened his mouth.”

  Shouting his name, somebody waved the phone receiver at Harry from the back bench, and he sidestepped Laddy to go to take it. “You stick with him, Laddy. He’s all yours,” Harry said as he moved away. Laddy sank into her chair and automatically reached out her hand as her own phone rang.

  It was the Israeli stringer, calling her from The Good Fence on the Lebanese border. There had been a dogfight in the air over Israel and Lebanon, and three planes had gone down. The stringer had an exclusive on the identity of the downed Israeli pilot: he was the son of a famous general who had fought in the 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 wars and who had lost another son in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. No one knew whether the young pilot was dead or taken prisoner in Lebanon.

  “Thank you,” said Laddy, when she had got the story.

  “Shalom,” said Saul Ben-David.

  “Shalom,” agreed Laddy. “Do you think it’s possible on this earth?” But Saul Ben-David had rung off.

  * * *

  “Don’t close the door, Laddy,” John pleaded. “Please, I just want to talk to you, I just want to explain.”

  “There’s no need to explain what’s self-evident,” Laddy said tightly, and moved to shut the door. The sight of John on her doorstep filled her with such anguished hatred she nearly gagged. Was this what Mischa had felt when he told her to stay off his property, she wondered? The thought tore at her, screamed through her body. If what Mischa felt for her was any shadow of this horrid, evil feeling, it would kill her.

  “Please, Laddy,” John was begging her in the summer dusk. She closed her eyes, felt her nails digging into her palms.

  “All right, John,” she said, and stepped back to let him in.

  “I can’t clear myself, Laddy,” he said when they had moved to the sitting room. “I can’t make it look any better. I just want you to know how it happened, that’s all. Okay?”

  He
sat with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped lightly between them, his blond head hanging forward as he looked down at the floor. Laddy took a breath.

  “Go ahead,” she said flatly, and waited for the explanation that could explain nothing.

  After she had left him on the meadow that night, John said, he had seen Mischa walking to the cottage from another direction, and immediately knew who he was. Professional instinct took over and he ran back to the car for his camera. He had taken several pictures through the kitchen window.

  The meeting between Laddy and Mischa had not seemed friendly, and John had gone into Laddy’s cottage to wait for her. After an hour Mischa’s cottage was dark, and John insane with jealousy. He began to search through the papers on her desk for some evidence that she and Mischa were lovers, had known one another before. When he found the interview file, he had thought of nothing except that if the press knew Busnetsky’s whereabouts, the idyll would be over and Laddy would return to her senses. He had driven back to London like a madman.

  “You loved me, Laddy, you know you did,” John said. “If he hadn’t been released just when he was, damn him, you and I would have gone on holiday together. Don’t say we wouldn’t,” he said sharply, “because I know we would. Those bloody Russians! If they’d waited one lousy month, Laddy, it would have been all the other way around....I kept thinking about that, all the way back to London. I drove straight to the Herald and got there just as Harry was getting in, at seven. I gave him the file. I said you’d asked me to give it to him, and then it was all out of my hands. I was sorry afterward; I’m sorry now. But Laddy, after all those years, if they’d only kept Busnetsky one more month!” he said pleadingly.

  Mischa had said the same thing that night. “After eight years, I came so close to losing you?” he had whispered. But they were both wrong, and she knew it as surely as if she had lived her life twice: there was no way she would ever have been lost to Mischa Busnetsky, whether she had gone to Lanzarote with John or not. She loved him, she had always loved him. No matter where she was, who she was with, if he had called, she would have run to him.