Captive of Desire

by Alexandra Sellers

  “Unless?” prompted Laddy.

  “Unless he’s a much sicker man than I thought,” Ned Bear said.

  There was a short, thick silence.

  “Look,” said Ned Bear. “I’ll make inquiries if you like, and why don’t you take the address of the clinic and write him? He would certainly tell you his plans. In fact, I thought—” He broke off. “Let me get the address,” he said.

  In the small hours of a sleepless night, Laddy got up to write Mischa Busnetsky a letter. “Rhodri and I were talking about you yesterday...” she wrote, sitting at her kitchen table in the circular glow cast by the hanging lamp. In the peaceful solitude of the kitchen at night, the memory of Mischa was suddenly strong, so strong that she felt that if she turned her head he must be there. She deliberately did not turn her head, revelling in that sense of his presence, not wanting it destroyed.

  When she let it out of its tiny box, her love, her need to see him, expanded like the mythical “Arab’s tent”, small enough to fold in her hand, large enough to house an army. In seconds it had attained uncontrollable proportions.

  She would beg one more time. She would beg for the third time for Mischa Busnetsky to love her—the third and last time. There was nothing to prevent her except pride, and Laddy cast that impatiently aside as though she had never had more than a nodding acquaintance with it. She was a beggar, anyway—starving and needy, and pride would provide no nourishment. So she forgot his betrayal, forgot his accusations, forgot everything except love; and very gently she begged Mischa Busnetsky to love her.

  That night autumn arrived, and the air was suddenly crisp and alive. In the morning the garden seemed thick with fall colours: bright red and gold and burnt orange. Going out with the letter to Mischa in her hand, Laddy paused and breathed deeply in the autumn air. It was the season of the dying of the year, and yet for her it had always been a source of energy, excitement, new resolution.

  And optimism. At the corner of the street she slid the letter into the mouth of the round red postbox and listened to it drop. Third time lucky, she told herself gaily. If he doesn’t answer this I’ll make myself stop loving him. I’ll never think of him again. But in her heart she knew he would answer it.

  On Wednesday afternoon, Salvatore, the copy-boy, paused by her desk with a pile of teletype newsprint in his hand.

  “Are you still covering Busnetsky?” he asked, so unexpectedly that she snapped forward in her chair and spilled her coffee.

  “Yes, yes I am,” she said, her heart pounding. “What is it?”

  “Here,” he said, dropping a scrap of newsprint in front of her, and ignoring the stain spreading on the knee of her trousers, Laddy snatched it up and devoured it with her eyes. It was a bulletin from a wire service, short and to the point. Soviet dissident Mikhail Busnetsky was going on the lecture circuit in the United States, and to kick it off, he would be making his first appearance on a talk show the following week.

  * * *

  In the first week of October, one of the prestigious national dailies approached Laddy with the offer of a job as reporter in the newsroom: her interview pieces with Mischa Busnetsky and Beth had not gone unnoticed. It took Laddy by surprise, but when she had absorbed the impact, she was thrilled. That such a paper should come to her was a massive compliment. Biting her lip with excitement, Laddy arranged to meet with the paper’s editor.

  She was buoyant with an accumulation of excitement and expectation now, for on top of this staggering offer was the deep-seated realization that if Mischa were going to answer her letter at all, it would have to be very soon.

  For three days she lived in a bubble of almost unbearable excitement. She met with the famous editor on Friday, and he told her quite frankly he was impressed. There would have to be another meeting on Monday, and he expected to be able to make her a firm offer by Monday afternoon. Suddenly Laddy knew it would happen. It had to: the time was right, the feeling was right, everything was perfect.

  And it was only fitting that on Saturday she should walk out to the front hall to see a letter on the mat with an American stamp on it. From Mischa, she knew at once; it could only be from Mischa. She bent and picked up the letter, smiling, felt her heart open like a flower. She perceived how cold she had been in past months by the unfamiliar warmth that flowed through her. Mischa loved her; there was nothing else in the world that mattered.

  The address was typed, the postmark was New York City. Ten days ago, she knew, he had been in New York for his talk-show appearance. Laddy moved down the hall to sit in the kitchen. The letter was typed too—a single sheet.

  Dear Ms Penreith,

  Mr. Busnetsky is very busy now, as I am sure you will understand, with his travel and lectures taking up a great deal of his time and energy. He has read your letter, however, and has asked me to thank you for it. He appreciates your warmly expressed support and encouragement and hopes that you will understand why he cannot answer your letter personally.

  Yours sincerely,

  Marcia Miller,

  Personal Secretary

  Laddy stood up, her breath coming through her open lips in uncontrolled gasps, her hand clasped over her mouth. Like a demented, brutalised animal she ran, wildly, gasping, stumbling against the furniture and doors in her erratic path, until finally she reached the bathroom. There, as though she had drunk in sickening poison through her eyes, she threw up.

  Then, sweating, shaking and colder than she had ever been in her life, she bathed her face in warm water. Then she reached for a towel and patted her face dry. Now she was calm. She took a deep breath and stood straight. She felt different, strange, and it was a moment before she understood the difference: the pain was gone. The nagging ache she had lived with for the past four months had disappeared. Mischa Busnetsky had no power to hurt her; she was only surprised that she had ever thought he did. How could he hurt her? People could only hurt you if you loved them, and she had been mistaken in thinking she had ever loved Mischa Busnetsky.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror over the sink and gave her pale haggard reflection a cool smile. Of course she didn’t love Mischa Busnetsky. How could you love someone you hated?

  * * *

  On Monday morning one of the unions went out on strike against the broadsheet that Laddy had been thinking of as her new home, and the editor called her with his apologies.

  “I’m afraid this is going to put off any hopes of your joining us for the duration,” he said. “I’m really awfully sorry, Laddy. I hope that when this is over there’s enough money in the till to warrant our talking to you again.”

  “I hope so, too,” she said, and discussed the details of the strike with him with interested concern. She knew she was disappointed, but the disappointment did not touch her. She felt as though she were hearing the news at a distance or reading an item in a ten-year-old paper: it was unfortunate, but it had happened so long ago.

  “Well,” she muttered to herself as she hung up the phone by her typewriter—the editor had called her at the office as soon as he heard the news—”at least I didn’t hand in my resignation.” She sat for a moment wondering when she would get another chance like the one that had just passed by.

  * * *

  Mischa Busnetsky was making waves on the lecture circuit. Not content with the traditional dissident fare of a discussion of Soviet methods of suppression and prison-camp conditions, he had begun to tell the Americans how Western capitalism was contributing to the maintenance of that system and what mistakes they were making in their perceptions of and dealings with the Soviets. His name began to come over the wire-services teletype now and then, more and more frequently attached to the epithet “outspoken.”

  Oddly enough, the Americans loved him. “This is not the traditional anti-Communist dogma,” a prominent newspaper said in an editorial. “Mr. Busnetsky is not concerned with Reds in the woodshed but with the real attitudes underlying policy in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He deserves a hearing....”


  “He’s being cheered by the college audiences,” a stringer in Florida told Laddy over the phone late in October. “No one knows exactly why, but the magazines are starting to say that he’s ‘tapping the new mood in America.”

  “What new mood is that?” asked Laddy dryly, smiling at this sample of journalese.

  “You tell me,” said the stringer.

  “Have you talked to Busnetsky at all yourself?” she asked.

  “Not so far,” the stringer said, “but I cornered his secretary for five minutes in the hotel bar last night, and she—”

  “His secretary?” Laddy interrupted, her voice growling oddly over a frog in her throat.

  “His personal secretary—his traveling companion, if you want my opinion. Marcia Miller—of a New York family that has enough money to guarantee that the beautiful Marcia is not performing this arduous duty to keep the wolf from the door,” he said, with heavy double entendre.

  “No?” Laddy asked, unable to open her mouth on another word.

  “The salary, if she’s getting one, might be keeping her in panty hose—no, strike that—I can’t believe the beautiful Marcia wears anything as prosaic as panty hose. The salary keeps her in nylon stockings, if she’s getting a salary.”

  “What does she look like, Gary?” Laddy couldn’t stop herself from asking.

  “Hair as black as midnight,” the stringer answered with warm promptness, “and blue eyes that could turn a man to ice at twenty paces, and a Southern-belle charm that she can turn off and on like a tap. I tell you, whatever Busnetsky has been through in the past ten years, she intends to be his compensation—and in my book she stands a very good chance of succeeding. She could compensate me for nearly anything.”

  The newsroom was drafty and cold, and Laddy shivered as a block of cold October air settled around her. When she had hung up on Gary Boyle in Florida, she rolled copy paper into the typewriter carriage and with fingers made awkward with cold, began to type.

  “Soviet dissident Mikhail Busnetsky, who was expelled from Russia to the West six months ago, took his American hosts to task yet again yesterday in a hard-hitting speech that accused the American government.... “

  “Wasn’t Busnetsky a friend of your father’s?” Harry asked mildly, nudging her copy with a negligent hand when she crossed to the back bench later to ask him a question.

  “Well—he was certainly one of my father’s pet causes,” Laddy said. “Why?”

  “He must have thought you were his friend, too, when he gave you those interviews.”

  Laddy sighed. “What are you trying to say, Harry?”

  “This sounds like a pretty hostile reading of the facts, Laddy,” Harry said, exhaling smoke and looking at her with one considering eye squeezed nearly shut.

  “I just spoke to a stringer in Florida, Harry. That’s what’s going on. Do you want me to lie about it for old times’ sake?”

  Harry did not answer that. “Do you know what it is, dear girl?” he said, after a moment. “You lose your objectivity where he’s concerned. And you’ve done so right from the beginning. Right from the first time you mentioned his name to me.”

  “Harry, that’s simply not true,” she blustered.

  “Think it over,” was all Harry said.

  After that she toned down her accounts of Busnetsky, because if she didn’t, Harry would. Nevertheless, other people noticed her change of attitude. Not the slowest of these was John Bentinck.

  In the last week of October there was a major jewel robbery in central London. Harry got the tip almost the moment it happened and, his crime reporter being out of reach, asked Laddy to rush over to cover the story for the Herald’s final edition.

  Shortly after she arrived on the scene—a large exclusive jeweller’s shop patronised by the very wealthy—John Bentinck arrived, camera bag over his shoulder, having been routed out of a Fleet Street pub by Richard Snapes.

  They had worked together several times since Laddy’s return from Wales and had always kept conversation to a minimum, but today John kept up a friendly chatter as he tried to get a clear photo of the interior of the large glass-fronted store, where it was obvious that Scotland Yard was still questioning the patrons who had been in the shop when the armed but bloodless robbery had occurred. And when Laddy came out of the phone booth after calling in the story, John was waiting for her outside.

  “Harry ask you to stick around?” he asked, and she nodded shortly.

  “If you want my opinion, they’ll be in there till it’s time for us to go home,” he said, with his old, easy smile. “If we grab the front table in that restaurant before anyone else we can keep an eye on the proceedings in comfort. Quick!” he whispered conspiratorially, taking her arm. “Here comes what’s-his-name from the Mail to grab it.”

  They began to run towards the restaurant in the crisp exhilarating fall air, Laddy stumbling in her high heels and being saved by John’s firm grip on her arm. By the time they had made their way to the booth in the window, they were laughing together like truant school children and were just in time to see “what’s-his-name from the Mail” hail a taxi and drive off.

  “Now there’s a sore loser,” John said in exaggerated northern lugubriousness, and set them both laughing again. They ordered coffee, and it came strong and hot. Laddy comforted her chilly hands on the cup and sobered suddenly, looking at John.

  “Oh, Laddy,” he said ruefully, smiling. “It’s so good to laugh with you again.”

  “John—” she began warningly.

  But he interrupted her with, “Don’t put me off saying it. Maybe I’ll look a fool and you’ll tell me you despise me even more, but I don’t care. It’s been five months, Laddy—I know because I’ve counted every day. I don’t want to go on like this. I want to be your friend again, on whatever terms you say.”

  She was silent, looking at him, her lower lip between her teeth.

  “You don’t love him anymore, Laddy. If you ever did. That stuff you’re writing these days isn’t bitter, it isn’t hurt—it’s just cold. You’ve got nothing for him.

  “I know how badly he hurt you, lass, I know because I know you. And I know you think that it was my fault. But if he’d really loved you, Laddy, a few newspaper articles wouldn’t have changed his mind. He might have been angry, he might have come and killed me—but he couldn’t have put that look in your eyes, not if he loved you. Don’t forget I saw that look. It ripped my guts out. If I’d made you look like that I’d have crossed the desert naked to put things right for you again.” He paused and rubbed his hand across his face. “As God knows I tried.”

  “What do you mean, you tried?” Laddy asked, frowning her surprise.

  He looked at her a long moment. “You mean he never told you?”

  “Told me what?” she demanded.

  “Laddy, I wrote Busnetsky and told him how those interviews got into the Herald,” John said slowly. “Didn’t he ever mention it?”

  Laddy felt suddenly breathless.

  “When?” she asked, gazing at him like a battered child waiting to see if she would be struck again. “When did you write him?”

  John’s mouth tightened and she saw in his eyes that he knew that what he said would hurt her. “Last June,” he said gruffly. “Before he left Wales.”

  Long before she had written him herself. Long before he had let his beautiful secretary read and answer Laddy’s own pleading letter. Laddy laughed shortly, a harsh bark of self-deprecation.

  “What a bastard!” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “Why do we always fall for the bastards?”

  John reached out his hand and covered hers. “You fell for me first, remember,” he said softly. “And I’m no bastard. A fool, an idiot sometimes, but no bastard. Don’t think of him anymore, Laddy.”

  She said calmly, with perfect truth, “I never think of him, except when I do a story. You were right—I don’t feel anything for him—I can’t remember now why I ever did.”

  His hand
some face crinkled into a devastating smile that made the waitress coming up with their check inhale audibly and smile back with a hypnotised air.

  She was a very pretty young girl who had erased most of the Cockney from her voice, and breathily she asked, “Are you American?”

  “Not likely, love,” John said, emphasizing his northern accent, and she laughed delightedly.

  “I thought you were a film star,” she said. “You should be, really.”

  “No talent, love,” he replied, rolling his eyes at Laddy, and reluctantly his admirer left them.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that,” Laddy said, and John laughed.

  “Be fair, now. Did I encourage that?” he asked.

  “No,” replied Laddy. “You were encouraging me, and all she got was the spillover. That’s what makes you so dangerous.”

  “Too dangerous for you to have dinner with me tonight?” he asked.

  She dropped her eyes uncomfortably.

  “John, I don’t think....”

  “Just dinner, Laddy, no strings attached. I’m not expecting anything. Come on, lass—say yes.”

  She had to start living again sometime.

  “Yes, all right, John,” she said.

  * * *

  “Laddy,” Richard Digby said over the phone a few days later, “who’s your source for these stories you’ve been writing on Mischa lately?”

  “No one particular source, Richard,” she said, and chewed on her lip. “Why?”

  “Because the stories are slanted and your facts are wrong. Mischa isn’t insulting the Americans, and the Americans aren’t feeling insulted. Helen and I have just come back from California where we heard him speak, and he is being extremely well received.”

  “That’s a bit different from what I’m hearing,” Laddy lied.

  “Well, then, you are listening to questionable sources, and you need to be wary,” Richard said. “What you’re doing is having an impact, and Mischa is very unhappy about it.”

  Good. “An impact on whom?”

  “Laddy,” Richard sighed audibly. “You’re your father’s daughter. Can you really not be aware that you’re giving ammunition to the Kremlin, who want nothing more than to be able to discredit Mischa?”