Dangerous Thoughts (7 page)

Jessica Coburn looked slightly older than she had on television — well, I suppose we all did — and also more fragile. Her very fine white skin had an appearance of being stretched taut across the delicate bone-structure beneath — as, indeed, it may have been, so tightly dragged back was her black, glistening hair. It was fastened at the back into a lithe, lustrous pony-tail, gripped into position by a large silver buckle.

Lunch was nearly over, and Edwin (savagely coached by me in the privacy of the kitchen) was behaving reasonably well, considering that he was being expected to spend two precious hours on the concerns of someone other than himself. Mind you, I think the jet-black pony-tail had something to do with it — not one thread of grey, though she was certainly at least forty. She gave the impression of being someone who might be in films, or a writer, or something: the sort of person you would be rude to at your peril. He was playing for safety, I could see, until it became clear that she couldn’t (or perhaps could?) get him anywhere.

Besides, he had me to prompt him, and to make little hostessy noises to deflect any questions which seemed about to irritate him. Like the scorpions. No, there weren’t any scorpions; why would there be? Well, Leonard (yes, we were on Christian names at last) — had travelled in that part of the country many times. He’d been on a
Wild
Life
of
the
Desert
team not too long ago, and they’d got some wonderful shots of scorpions mating. I’m surprised he never mentioned it, going right past the very …

Edwin’s voice was becoming edgy.

“Yes, well, we were on a slightly more important mission this time than spying on creepy-crawlies. We didn’t have much attention to spare for …”

So what
did
they pay attention to? Cooped up for seven or eight hours in a jeep, they must have talked about
something.
Didn’t he even tell you …?

Little hostess-laugh from me, in the nick of time:

“My dear, you know what men are! I don’t want to be sexist, but let’s face it, if it had been three
women
driving along together for all those hours, they’d have exchanged their entire life stories, down to the last detail. They’d have covered absentee fathers, morning sickness, driving tests, epidurals and the scripture teacher who frightened them about Hell. But men aren’t like that, they really aren’t. I can quite imagine them driving along for a whole day and speaking about nothing but the road surface and the vehicle’s oil consumption …”

I don’t know if Edwin was duly grateful for this inspired intervention, but it did give him time to think, or to jog his memory, or whatever.

“Yes, well, actually Leo
did
mention the wild life bit, now I come to think of it. He did point out one or two — Oh, lizards and things amongst the scrub as we went past. Little yellow things, basking in the sunshine.”

“
Basking
…? With a great noisy jeep crashing past? But it’s only if you stay very quiet, and don’t move, that you have any chance at all of …”

Again the edginess. “Yes, well, we
were
being quiet at just that moment, as it happens. We were just sitting. Resting, you know. You couldn’t just keep going and going in that sort of heat with no rest at all. People don’t realise …”

Accusatory he was beginning to sound, and aggrieved, too, that he should be expected to have endured such a journey without any rest breaks at all.

And so the afternoon went on. It was plain that Jessica was left
dissatisfied with Edwin’s account of the journey, just as the Barlows had been, and I tried to fill in the yawning, desert-dry gaps with little flutters of inconsequential optimism worthy of Sally herself (“I’m
sure
he’ll be all right. We’ve been lucky, I know, Edwin being the one to get home first, but I feel certain the others …”). And so on and so on.

At last the afternoon drew to its unsatisfactory close, with Edwin more and more ungracious by the minute, looking at his watch more and more ostentatiously. Clearly, he had decided by now that the lady was not, after all, in films or journalism or anything else that could push him another rung up the ladder of fame, or even get him invited to another trendy party. He had forgotten, of course (if he had ever taken it in) that his colleague Leonard Coburn lived in a remote village on the north coast of Norfolk, a region in which trendy parties were likely to be thin on the ground.

By the time our visitor had left, Jason had arrived home from school, and one way and another I had no chance of talking to Edwin on his own. I’m not sure what I wanted to say to him, but certainly something, if only about those inhospitable glances at his watch. I wasn’t sure where to begin. Bringing your husband to book about the way he behaves to visitors is one of the trickiest areas in the whole of marriage, and there is nothing in the marriage service to give guidance: to all thy social gaffes I will turn a blind eye — something like that? Or will cover-up for thee? Or will ring up those whom thou hast offended and assure them that thou didst not mean that at all, thou didst mean something quite different, but didst express it badly?

Or, of course, resort to a stand-up row, ending with, “If only your friends weren’t all so bloody boring, I wouldn’t
need
to go to sleep while they’re talking”.

Not that it came to that on this occasion. What with Jason being around, and what with the constant telephone calls which had become the background to our lives of late, we did not really meet up again until it was time for the six o’clock news, for which
occasion the three of us gathered round the set, tense with expectation. Well, I was tense, anyway, for at any moment some sort of news might be released concerning the fate of Leonard and Richard. Already I was much exercised in my mind about what exactly I would do if and when the news came through that they were dead — as, alas, was all too likely. Despite the reassuring noises I naturally made when talking to the missing men’s anxious womenfolk, I knew in my heart that a happy outcome was extremely unlikely. Few terrorist victims in that part of the world ever lived to tell the tale, and it was obvious that with every passing day the likelihood that the two were still alive grew less. If the motive for their capture had been ransom, or the release of imprisoned terrorists somewhere in the world, then the demand would surely have been made by now?

Edwin must know this too. His body-language as he sat, hunched forward towards the set, lips tightly clenched, knuckles white, told me that he was at least as anxious as I was. More so, presumably, for he knew these men personally; they were his colleagues.

*

Oh, what relief! How marvellous — how incredibly marvellous! They had been released, both of them, and were on the way home! Well, not quite that, for apparently Leonard Coburn was in hospital out there with concussion and broken ribs — but goodness, all the same, how marvellous! I could feel my face, my whole body lit up with relief and excitement as I turned to share the moment with Edwin.

Share
it? But what was this? What was happening to Edwin …?
What
the
hell
was happening … Cowering back into his chair, glaring into the set like a creature at bay … face contorted with — what? Terror? Rage? The sight of him stopped me in my tracks. “How wonderful!” I’d been about to say — or something of the sort — but the words froze on my lips. Yes, they really did, I could feel the icy chill constricting my very jaw.

Had Jason noticed his father’s behaviour? Or mine, come to
that? Out of the corner of my eye — for I dared not make eye-to-eye contact with the boy for fear of what wordless message might flash between us — I tried to gauge his thoughts, but it was impossible. His attention seemed still to be focused entirely on the TV screen, which by now was occupied by a caring and puckered face expounding some caring and unshakeable opinion about the New Maths, was it, or fashion for the under-fives? Anyway, Jason wasn’t looking at either me or his father — maybe hadn’t given either of us a glance throughout the programme. His face betrayed neither shock nor elation, but of course that proved nothing because mine didn’t either. I had got it under control without even trying; I could feel its smoothness and blandness. And now — as if it was a minor illness we were catching from one another — I realised that Edwin’s face, too, had been swept clean of the emotions so inadvertently revealed.

“Yes, isn’t it great,” he found himself able to say in response to the words which by now
I
found myself able to say: “Isn’t it marvellous?”; “What a relief,” and so forth.

There followed an uneasy silence — or what would have been silence if any one of the three of us had had the hardihood to turn off the set when the news came to an end. As it was, our assorted and secret thoughts churned in our separate skulls against a background of penguins stamping their feet to dance music — an advertisement for some kind of bank loan, I suppose.

Jason was the first to move, rising rather abruptly from his chair and murmuring something about homework. His departure made things worse, made things better: better because whatever awful things Edwin and I might be going to say to each other would now be safely out of our son’s hearing: worse because we would now be more likely to say them.

In the event, nothing much was said at all.

“I suppose I should ring the Barlows,” I ventured uncertainly, after having summoned up the nerve to switch off the television, our only remaining bulwark against having to say something.
“They’ll be thrilled, won’t they? I — we — must congratulate them.”

“That’s right. Do that thing. Congratulate them.”

The words, forced out from between his teeth, stayed my hand as I reached for the telephone. How could I ring Daphne and Sally with Edwin hovering like this, radiating darkness and dismay where all should have been joy and light?

“Well … that is … perhaps not just now. They’ll be too … that is …”

“What’s their address? Give me their address,” Edwin interrupted urgently, and I complied without arguing. Well, surprise that he didn’t
know
their address hardly seemed relevant any longer. I didn’t feel capable of being surprised at anything any more.

Not many moments later I heard the car starting up, and I could imagine how the rain must be lashing against the windscreen, just as it was lashing against these windows. It was only now that I noticed the weather had broken, and all I thought was, “What a shame, all those flowers beaten down and sodden, just when Richard is coming home in triumph.”

His stunning good looks were what I noticed first on meeting Richard Barlow. Tall, dark and handsome as any hero of any romantic novel, hair greying at the temples in the approved manner, he greeted me with impeccable courtesy, ushering me into the library and seating me in the large armchair facing the window. The sun no longer streamed in as it had done during my last visit: the view outside was one of grey and windswept dissolution, wet leaves everywhere, wet plants flopping across the beds, and bare twigs tossing to and fro in rainy gusts of wind.

My host, still punctilious in his hospitality, and entirely self-possessed in spite of the hideous embarrassment that surely lay ahead, was offering me a cigarette, a drink. I noticed that he limped slightly as he moved from desk to cupboard and back, but only when he finally sat down facing me did I see how pale he looked, and how strained. As well he might, for not only had he just returned from his prolonged ordeal, physical and mental, but he was about to embark on what must be one of the most difficult interviews of his whole journalistic career: an interview, that is, with the wife of a man caught red-handed perpetrating the most monstrous fraud, stringing the world’s media along with a cock-and-bull story of truly gargantuan proportions.

He had thought it was going to be a shock to me.

“I am much afraid, Mrs Wakefield,” he began, “that what I am about to reveal to you is going to be very, very painful, but …”

Painful yes. He can say that again. But a shock, no. It was
difficult, now, to pin down the exact moment when I had realised that Edwin was lying, that his whole story of his adventures in the desert was being made up out of the top of his head. Perhaps there wasn’t an exact moment? Rather an accumulation of clues … of gaps and discrepancies in the narrative itself, culminating in that display of naked horror yesterday evening when the news came through that his two alleged companions were not, after all, either dead or held captive. Against all the probabilities, they were at large again, all agog (as any journalist would be) to publish a full account of their adventures, in the process of which they would inevitably be showing up Edwin as the unscrupulous liar that he was; a disgrace to his profession.

I listened, face averted and making no comments, while Richard Barlow gave me his account of what had happened, and it left no doubt at all that Edwin’s story was a total fabrication. He hadn’t been captured: he hadn’t been incarcerated in any terrorist hide-out. He hadn’t even gone on the trip with the other two journalists at all. He had been invited to come … he had agreed to come, and then at the last moment had backed out.

“Cold feet, I have to conclude,” Richard observed with a contemptuous curl of the lip. “Too dangerous — and of course it
was
a dangerous assignment, we knew that from the start. Though in the event we were set upon not by terrorists, but by a gang of hoodlums set on stealing our cameras and equipment. Which in the end — being half a dozen against two — they succeeded in doing: after cracking a few bones, I have to say, and bashing old Leo unconscious. That’s what held us up afterwards. He was flat out; I couldn’t carry him — I wouldn’t have dared try, what with all his broken bits and pieces — not to mention mine.

“No one came by all that day, and when we were finally picked up, by a couple of villagers with an ox-cart, there was still no telephone … no transport. It was quite a party, I assure you, and your hero husband wasn’t involved in any of it. I’m afraid, Mrs Wakefield, that he was sitting comfortably in some
anonymous little hotel somewhere concocting his story for his poor benighted editor —
International
Focus,
isn’t it? — and relying (mistakenly as it happily turns out) on us being either dead or permanently incarcerated, and thus unable to give him the lie. We were the only two people in the world who could have shown him up, and with us out of the way it looked as if he would get away with it.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Wakefield, it gives me no pleasure to have to talk to you like this about a one-time colleague, but I think you have to know.”

He was right. I did have to. I had to prepare myself for what was going to happen next. Edwin’s brief hour of glory was over. All those contracts for books, articles, TV appearances, films; all those headlines — FROM HOSTAGE TO HERO — EDDIE IS SAFE — SURVIVOR IN THE SAND — all this was at an end. From now on he would be a laughing-stock; he would sink not merely into oblivion, but into worse than oblivion. No editor, anywhere, would ever employ him in any capacity again. Among our friends he would never be able to hold up his head again.

“So—so now …?” I began. I wasn’t quite sure what question I was trying to ask. I could see clearly enough the disgrace that was coming to us, but I felt bemused about what to expect en route? What
does
happen to journalists who turn in phoney copy on this sort of scale? Immediate exposure? Public humiliation on the world’s media? Or would it be some more private death-blow? A condemnation from the Press Council? Or what?

“Well, as to that,” said Richard, fiddling now with a paper-knife which he had picked up from the desk, “it rests entirely with me — and with Leo, of course, when he gets back to this country, which I’m afraid won’t be for some days yet as they don’t think he’s ready to be moved. By which time, of course, the whole story will be stone-dead anyway. If I choose to do nothing, to play-down my own story, leaving out such bits of it as glaringly contradict your husband’s, then nothing will happen. I suppose that is what you would wish?”

Was it? What did I wish, other than to sink through the floor and never have to face anything or anybody ever again?

Richard was continuing:

“I take it you have had no chance as yet to talk this over with your husband? He asked me not to tell you — begged me, I may say (here once more the scornful curl of the lip) — but that of course is ridiculous. Obviously, you have to know. As a loyal wife you will, of course, take his side, you will back up any story he chooses to tell, so that even a coward like him will have nothing to fear from your knowing the truth. I pointed this out to him, but I’m sorry to …”

At this point, I seemed to recover my power of speech.

“Wait!” I cried, “when did all this …? I mean how is it that you’ve been talking to Edwin already? There’s been no time —!”

“My dear Mrs Wakefield, your husband
made
time, as the saying goes. He was on my doorstep when I arrived home at midnight, after a long exhausting journey. My wife was with me and we had hoped — indeed had expected and assumed — that we would get a few hours of peace when we reached home, but it was not to be. This distraught and insistent person, who had already blocked my driveway with his vehicle, was demanding absolute priority on my attention. Neither greeting my mother nor looking through my mail was permitted to take precedence …

“Now, where was I? Ah yes: your husband’s request (a trifle impertinent, I felt, in the circumstances) — his request that his midnight visit to me, and our ensuing discussion, should be kept secret from you. As I say, I could countenance no such plan. ‘Your wife has a right to know the truth,’ I told him, and I further warned him that if he persisted in keeping it from you, then I would tell you myself. And what do you think he said?”

What indeed? I pondered. No use just going into a sulk, as he would have done at home if he didn’t get his own way.

“I don’t know — what did he say?” I asked feebly; and
watched the firm, resolute face in front of me flicker into a scornful smile.

“He said, Mrs Wakefield, he said; ‘If you tell her, I’ll kill you!’ — and really, I had to laugh! The idea that a little ra — I’m sorry, I mean a man like him — that a man like him, who chickens-out of assignments because he’s scared, is going to have the nerve to commit murder — well, it’s ludicrous, isn’t it? So, ‘Go ahead!’ I told him, ‘Go ahead and plan your murder — and see what happens! You’ll get cold feet when it comes to the point, and you won’t do a thing.’ Isn’t that right, Mrs Wakefield? From what you know of your husband?”

Out of the depths of my humiliation, I felt a flicker of rebellion. I wasn’t going to be got at like this, justifiable though Richard’s anger assuredly was.

“If you mean that my husband isn’t a man who would commit murder, then you are quite right,” I was beginning, with some asperity; and at once his manner recovered its former suavity: he was the perfect host once more, apologising, smoothing over the worst of the awkwardness, and even inviting me to stay to lunch.

“My mother and my wife are expecting you,” he explained, “and I wouldn’t like them to be disappointed. Perhaps I should tell you that I have decided to tell them nothing of this unfortunate affair between me and your husband. As a matter of fact I have so far told nothing to anyone. I refused to give interviews until after I got home. My chief concern right now is not to upset my family. And they
would
be upset. Very much so. They already feel that you yourself are now a close friend of the family, and they would be much distressed if anything were to come about to destroy that friendship. Particularly Sally” — and as he spoke the name, a softness and a brightness came over the rather severe features, and one knew that here was a man in love — “I would be very sad indeed if this day — this
very
happy day for her — were to be spoiled by so sordid an imbroglio. And so, Mrs Wakefield, if you could find it in your conscience to say nothing to them about our conversation, and to continue
behaving to them just as you have done hitherto, I would be most grateful.

“By the way, to alleviate any embarrassment you may be feeling in my company, let me assure you that I won’t be present at this little lunch party. I have an appointment at one-fifteen (glancing at his watch) and shall be fully occupied all the afternoon. There is a lot to see to — and none of it made easier by your husband’s machinations, I’m sorry to say. Enough of that, though; I don’t intend ever again to refer to … Ah, Mother! Hello! I hope I’m not holding things up by keeping our guest chatting for too long …” and a minute later I was walking in Daphne’s wake across the polished floor towards the dining-room.