Lovers and Liars (28 page)

He was twentythree years old, and this was his third Beirut trip. He had a growing reputation, and very little money. Two writers he had worked with in the past were now dead, so he

rred to work alone. On the day he met Gini, he had been back irut two months. Two months of mayhem, fit by the cries of

ng. Two months of constant unrelenting heat. Two months t alcohol, or sex. When he was working he never drank he never slept with women. This code, this puritanism, was

d by friends and enemies alike. It made him conspicuous, did not care. It was his code.

was 1981, July 1981 and one morning a friend took him to the bar at the Hotel Ledoyen. The great Sam Hunter would be this friend said, and if Pascal minded his manners just for the friend - who had known Hunter in Vietnam - would e Pascal was introduced. Pascal shrugged and agreed. He on the edge of the group, ordered a mineral water, and ed Hunter perform. A thick-set aggressive American with a

Yard accent. He was wearing Brooks Brothers clothes, heavily, drinking bourbon on the rocks. It was eleven in the morning. Pascal watched Hunter contemptuously. loathed the man on sight.

ntuallv, the introduction was made. Hunter was gracious dismissWe. ‘Sure, sure/ he said. ‘I’ve seen your pictures. Who ‘t? Amazing stuff. But you want to watch it - that adrenalin ess. One of these days you’ll get too close. You’ll get yourself I

at was it. Hunter’s attention span for others was short. He pped his gaze away; the cronies joked and the sycophants mpted; Sam Hunter held court. This great Pulitzer prizener, Pascal thought, had gone soft. Men who had made ir reputations, he implied, were not like ordinary mortals. re was always time for yet another bourbon on the rocks.

anything of any significance happened, one of his stringers,

… . .of his street-boy network, would get in touch. Meantime, kbanon was a small affair, an historical footnote. Sooner or later,

fighting would peter out. He’d filed a couple of reports, sure, t he was planning on leaving. Hunter had covered bigger wars n this one; he could coast.

.0 Over in the corner, ignored, silent, the only female in a group Of twenty men, was a girl - Hunter’s daughter, someone negNgently said. She was a daughter, Pascal noted, that Hunter not bother to introduce.

Pascal edged past the man from UPI; he avoided two sweating Peuters men, a reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald, an EngJishman from The Times. He positioned himself between his

friend from Le Monde and a gloomy Russian, who spoke poor English, the representative from TASS. He took a closer look at the girl, and his French friend, following his gaze, gave a grin. There was more to this kid than met the eye, he said. Hadn’t Pascal heard the story? Where the hell had he been this last week? Everyone else in the bar had. She’d been at some fancy English boarding-school, this friend said. One day, she’d just cut hockey or lacrosse or whatever damn game it was girls played at schools like that. She walked out, and turned up at six in the morning, unannounced, in Beirut.

Hunter had been regaling all and sundry with this story for the past few days: how he’d been roused by the hotel manager, how he’d come downstairs with a massive hangover, to find this kid in the lobby clutching her suitcase. Hunter, apparently, hadn’t recognized her at first. He hadn’t laid eyes on her in three years - the girl lived in England with his ex-wife - and in those three years, the girl had grown up, filled out … Here, Pascal’s friend winked.

When he realized it was his only child, Hunter had not been pleased. He’d been all for putting the girl on the next plane back. The kid had dissuaded him, stood her ground - and Hunter changed his mind. He was like that. Her presence had amused him for a couple of days, he’d treated her like a lucky charm, a mascot. But now he was finding the girl’s constant presence an irritant: the amusement was rapidly wearing off.

It was an interesting story, Pascal thought. Not too many teenage girls would fly out to Beirut in the middle of the night, get themselves from the airport through the city - through this dangerous city - and arrive in a strange hotel at dawn. His friend moved away to the bar, and Pascal turned back to study the girl again.

She was sitting to one side of her father in silence; since Pascal’s arrival, she had not spoken once. She was tall, slender and boyishly dressed; Pascal put her age at seventeen, eighteen perhaps. She sat quietly, with an unconscious grace; her skin was tanned, and her somewhat untidy hair was sun-bleached. She wore it caught back carelessly at the nape of her neck; she was wearing khaki shorts, and an ordinary white T-shirt. On her feet was a pair of battered tennis shoes. From time to time, she would shift in her seat, glance towards the windows, glance back at her father, stretch. It seemed to Pascal that she longed to be outside, away from this crowded smoky room. Glancing towards the windows, her face became wistful; she crossed then uncrossed her long legs.

appeared not to notice that when she did so, she riveted the of every man in the place.

al moved a fraction closer, so he had a better view of her She had fine eyes, widely spaced. It was, he decided, a not active face, but it wore an obstinate expression, as if there elements in this room she disliked, but she was detern-iined to

them, for her father’s sake. Whenever she looked at Hunter, as with a painful devotion. As Pascal watched, her father hed himself on yet another long wandering anecdote. The

seemed embarrassed. She coloured, then stared at her feet. I’s friend, returning, and seeing he was still watching her, d. Pathetic, wasn’t it, how the girl worshipped that old ag, her father? A little firebrand, too. She’d told Hunter

rently, in no uncertain terms, that nothing would make her k to England. She intended to stay here and learn. Pascal’s made a face. Lowering his voice, half-laughing, he said, vre I)etite flile. Elle veut Otre journaliste.’

ascal lost interest. The girl’s ambitions were nothing to him. If wanted to be a journalist, fine; it made a change from a model, actress, or movie-star. He felt a sudden angry impatience; he s wasting time in this place.

He finished his drink, put down his glass, and left the bar. In lobbv of the hotel he paused, looking out into the white midday From the distance, somewhere in the direction of West Beirut, the chatter of machine-gun fire, then the muffled roar of an losion. Another car-bomb.

The girl was at his elbow: Hunter’s daughter was at his elbow. had not realized this until, half-turning, about to leave, he d himself confronting accusing eyes, a pale fierce face.

saw you watching my father,’ she said; no preliminaries. I know what you thought. You arrogant French bastard. How re you look at him like thatT

In those days, Pascal’s temperament was volatile. He could lose ‘his temper very rapidly; he lost it then, at once. He looked at Wis stupid teenage girl, straight off the plane, a girl straight from Sbme stupid boarding-school, a girl whose father he’d disliked on t.

‘You want to know why?’ he answered her in English. ‘Fine. I’ll show vou. Come with me.’

“She’hadn’t expected this reaction, no doubt. It took her by rise, so when he gripped her arm, and pulled her out of the

1, she did not struggle or protest.

Pascal let go of her almost at once. He slung his camera bag over his shoulder, and strode off up the street. The girl followed him. He increased his pace. He already regretted this action, and would have shaken her off if he could, but the girl wasn’t having that. She broke into a run, she was out of breath in the heat, but she kept pace.

Her tenacity angered him, as did his own foolishness. Even then, when the conflict was still localized, the streets of Beirut were not the place for teenage American girls. He stopped; he said: ‘Go back. Forget what I said. This isn’t safe.’

‘The hell with that.’ She glared at him. ‘Do what you said you’d do. You’re not getting rid of me. I’m not going back.’

Pascal was tired. He had spent weeks under stress, with little sleep. Confronted with this fierce female obstinacy, his temper snapped again.

‘OK. Have it your way.’ He turned. ‘Take a look at your father’s unimportant little war. You won’t find it in an hotel bar, any more than he will. It’s just down this street.’

He turned the comer, and she followed him. As they rounded the corner, the dust was beginning to settle. The remnants of a car were skewed across the street. Huge chunks of masonry lay across their path; half a house tilted crazily against the skyline; there was a pile of rubble twenty feet high from which protruded a child’s feet.

A water-main had burst: water gushed and pumped across the street. People were gathering: Pascal scarcely heard the screams and wails, he had learned to block them out, but the girl did.

Pascal had his cameras out. He worked with two - colour film in the Leica, the Olympus for monochrome. He had his eye to the viewfinder, on the attitudes of grief. Behind him, dimly, he was aware that the girl was still in the same place. Lowering his camera, glancing back, he saw her face register horror in slow motion. In slow motion she covered her ears, then her eyes, then her mouth.

There was a child-sized plastic sandal on the ground in front of her. It was red, cheap, thonged - almost all the Arab children wore them. She bent, and picked it up. Some men pushed past her. A woman dressed in black sank to her knees by the rubble, and raised her hands to the sky. The space became confused: people ran, pushed, shoved, began to claw at the rubble. Pascal could see the girl, then he could not see the girl. Masonry dust billowed. Pascal turned, became frantic, appalled by what he had done.

He ran in this direction, then that. People pressed.

e found her, finally, where the lamentation was loudest, where were lifting what remained of a man onto a sheet of tin g, an improvised stretcher. She was helping them to lift

body, and getting in the way. A woman screamed at her in , then spat. The girl stepped back, her face rigid. She had on her hands, blood on her face.

en Pascal touched her, she did not speak. He put his arms rid her, and pressed her tight against his chest. The tumult confusion intensified. Her whole body was shaking. Her s locked around his neck.

could still hear the noise when he led her away. It pursued down the streets. She stumbled, and he led on, walking y: when they were three blocks, four, five, from the scene car-bomb, he could still hear the turmoil in his head.

s room was over a bar, not far from the harbour. Outside, Ihesitated, uncertain, confused. The girl was clasping his it was painfully hot in the street. He led her into the shade e doorway: something was happening, and he could not tell t it was. Uncertainly he touched her face, then her throat. She ed at him. He helped her to the stairs. She stumbled as they t UP.

When they were in his room, it seemed very silent, very empty, y white. The louvres were closed, and their shadows striped floor. The air felt urgent. He pressed her back against the door, kissed her mouth. She caught at his hands in a frantic way

d drew them under her shirt, against her bare breasts. Neither them spoke. He had never felt desire so intense.

Her hands were fumbling at his jeans, trying to unfasten them. e moaned a little. Lifting her shirt, he bent his head and kissed r breasts. She clasped his hand tight and drew it down inside r shorts; her cunt was wet.

She pulled him down to the floor, still kissing him. Her hair read out across the floorboards. They fucked on the floor, I half-dressed. He came with his mouth on her mouth, his

‘hands on tier breasts. She gave a cry which sounded triurnhant. He kissed her, then held her, then kissed her again. Her eyes were astonishing, the room was astonishing, the world was

stonishing. Pascal, who never slept with women while in a war zone, looked at his changed life.

Back in France, between wars, there was a long trail of women; he liked women, who sometimes accused him of using them, and .,he liked sex. Like most people, he had experienced good sex,

bad sex, memorable sex, indifferent sex - but this, he had never experienced this.

He stared down at the girl in bewilderment. From the distance came the rattle of machine-gun fire. The air in the room was stifling; both their bodies were slick with sweat. He looked down at her. He felt exultant, on the edge of some danger. He could feel the patterns of the world moving, altering, aligning themselves. They began to make perfect sense, perfect shape.

This and this and this and this. The long slow attitudes of love-making. He bent his head and kissed her breasts. He hardened inside her, and without withdrawing, began to fuck again. He felt a determination, an absolute determination, to make her come. She was not, he thought, very experienced but Pascal was; he was moved by her clumsiness, her awkward timing, her innocence of technique.

‘Like this/ he said. ‘Like this. No, more slowly. Don’t fight me. Yes, yes … ‘

And slowly, stroke after stroke, it became sweet. Pascal forgot the tricks of pleasure, and the ways in which the correct touch, or word, or rhythm could make that pleasure increase. He pushed into some oblivion, a dark place, and she went with him. It was frantic, then calm; first a kind of war, then a kind of peace. He reached across, found a pillow, raised her up on it, thrust deeper. When she came, she shuddered against him. Pascal was close to climax himself, but he forced himself to wait. He watched her abandonment move like waves of light across her face. She closed those astonishing eyes, and arched her throat. He put his arm under her neck, and brought her mouth up to his. He could feel her cunt pulse, and when he came he felt he came for ever. Lying beside her, becoming calmer, he thought: I do not know her name. He began to stroke her hair, he clasped her hands. He kissed and licked the salt on her thighs, and her belly, and her breasts. There was blood on her thighs. She tasted of iron, and sweat and sex. He kissed her thighs, touched her, then drew her up. He held her close, and met her eyes. It felt like drowning. He could feel the waters closing in above his head. He showed her his hand, which was sticky and wet with blood.