Anthony leaned over the desk. “Look, Philmore told me the editor asked specifically for me. You want to disappoint him?”
Don lit another cigarette. “Of course not. But he wasn’t here when you were . . .” He tapped the cigarette on the edge of the overflowing ashtray.
“That’s it? You’re afraid I’m going to crack up again?”
Don’s embarrassed chuckle told him everything he needed to know. “I haven’t had a drink in years. I’ve kept my nose clean. I’ll get inoculated against yellow fever, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m just thinking about you, Tony. It’s risky. Look. What about your son?”
“He’s not a factor.” One visit, two letters a year, if he was lucky. Clarissa was only thinking of Phillip, of course: it was better for him not to have the disruption of too much face-to-face contact. “Let me go for three months. It’ll be over by the end of the year. They’re all saying as much.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Have I ever missed a deadline? Haven’t I pulled in some good stories? For Christ’s sake, Don, you need me out there. The paper needs me out there. It’s got to be someone who knows their way around. Someone with contacts. Picture it.” He ran his hand along an imaginary headline. “‘Our man in Congo as the white hostages are rescued.’ Look, do this for me, Don, and then we’ll talk.”
“You’ve still got itchy feet, eh?”
“I know where I should be.”
Don blew out his cheeks, like a human hamster, then exhaled noisily. “Okay. I’ll talk to Him Upstairs. I can’t promise anything—but I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you.” Anthony got up to leave.
“Tony.”
“What?”
“You look good.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. Fancy a drink tonight? You, me, and some of the old crowd? Miller’s in town. We could grab a few beers—iced water, Coca-Cola, whatever.”
“I said I’d go to some do with Douglas Gardiner.”
“Oh?”
“At the South African embassy. Got to keep up the contacts.”
Don shook his head resignedly. “Gardiner, eh? Tell him I said he couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag.”
Cheryl, the news-desk secretary, was standing by the stationery cupboard and winked at him as he passed her on the way out. She actually winked at him. Anthony O’Hare sighed, shook his head, and reached for his jacket.
“Winked at you? Tony, old son, you were lucky she didn’t pull you into the damned cupboard.”
“I’ve only been gone a few years, Dougie. It’s still the same country.”
“No.” Douglas’s eyes darted round the room. “No, it’s not, old chap. London’s now at the center of the universe. It’s all happening here, old chum. Equality between men and women is only the half of it.”
There was, he had to acknowledge, truth in what Douglas had said. Even the appearance of the city had changed: gone were many of the sober streets, the elegant, shabby facades and echoes of postwar penury. They had been replaced by illuminated signage, women’s boutiques with names like Party Girl and Jet Set, foreign restaurants, and high-rise towers. Every time he returned to London, he felt increasingly a stranger: familiar landmarks disappeared, and those that remained were overshadowed by the Post Office Tower or other examples of its architect’s futuristic craft. His old apartment building had been torn down and replaced by something brutally modernistic. Alberto’s jazz club was now some rock-and-roll setup. Even clothes were brighter. The older generation, stuck in brown and navy, looked somehow more dated and faded than they actually were.
“So . . . you miss being out in the field?”
“Nah. We’ll all have to lay down our tin helmets one day, won’t we? Better-looking women in this job, that’s for sure. How’s New York? What do you think of Johnson?”
“He’s no Kennedy, that’s for sure.... So, what do you do now? Weave your way through high society?”
“It’s not like when you left, Tony. They don’t want ambassadors’ wives and tittle-tattle about indiscretions. Now it’s pop stars—the Beatles and Cilla Black. No one with any breeding. It’s all egalitarian, the society column.”
The sound of smashing glass echoed in the vast ballroom. The two men broke off their conversation.
“Whoops. Someone’s had one too many,” Douglas observed. “Some things don’t change. The ladies still can’t hold their drink.”
“Well, I have a feeling that some of the girls in the newspaper office could have drunk me under the table.” Anthony shuddered.
“Still off the sauce?”
“More than three years now.”
“You wouldn’t last long in this job. Don’t you miss it?”
“Every damned day.”
Douglas had stopped laughing and was looking past him. Anthony glanced over his shoulder. “You need to speak to someone?” He shifted to one side obligingly.
“No.” Douglas squinted. “I thought someone was staring at me. But I think it’s you. She familiar?”
Anthony turned—and his mind went blank. Then it hit him with the brutal inevitability of a demolition ball. Of course she’d be here. The one person he had tried not to think about. The one person he had hoped never to see again. He had come to England for a little less than a week, and there she was. On his first evening out.
He took in the dark red dress, the almost perfect posture that marked her out from any other woman in the room. As their eyes met, she seemed to sway.
“Nope. Can’t have been you,” Douglas remarked. “Look, she’s headed for the balcony. I know who that is. She’s . . .” He clicked his fingers. “Stirling. Thingy Stirling’s wife. The asbestos magnate.” He cocked his head. “Mind if we go over? It might make a paragraph. She was quite the society hostess a few years back. They’ll probably drop in some piece about Elvis Presley instead, but you never know . . .”
Anthony swallowed. “Sure.” He straightened his collar, took a deep breath, and followed his friend through the crowd toward the balcony.
“Mrs. Stirling.”
She was looking down at the busy London street, her back to him. Her hair was in a sculptural arrangement of glossy bubble curls, and rubies hung at her throat. She turned slowly, and her hand lifted to her mouth.
It had to happen, he told himself. Perhaps seeing her like this, having to meet her, would mean he could finally lay it to rest. Even as he thought this, he had no idea what to say to her. Would they engage in some polite social exchange? Perhaps she would make an excuse and walk straight past him. Was she embarrassed about what had happened? Guilty? Had she fallen in love with someone else? His thoughts careened wildly.
Douglas extended his hand to her, and she took it, but her eyes settled on Anthony. All color had drained from her face.
“Mrs. Stirling? Douglas Gardiner, the Express. We met at Ascot, I believe, back in the summer?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. Her voice shook. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I—I—”
“I say, are you all right? You look awfully pale.”
“I . . . Actually I’m feeling a little faint.”
“Would you like me to fetch your husband?” Douglas took her elbow.
“No!” she said. “No.” She took a breath. “Just a glass of water. If you’d be so kind.”
Douglas shot him a fleeting look. What have we here? “Tony . . . you’ll stay with Mrs. Stirling for a minute, won’t you? I’ll be right back.” Douglas stepped into the party, and as the door closed behind him, muffling the music, it was just the two of them. Her eyes were wide and terrible. She didn’t seem able to speak.
“Is it that bad? To see me, I mean?” There was a slight edge to his voice—he couldn’t help it.
She blinked, looked away, looked back at him, as if to check he was actually there.
“Jennifer? Would you like me to leave? I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have bothered you. It’s just that Dougie—”
“They said—they said you. Were. Dead.” Her voice emerged as a series of coughs.
“Dead?”
“In the crash.” She was perspiring, her skin pale and waxy. He wondered, briefly, if she was indeed going to pass out. He took a step forward and steered her to the ledge of the balcony, removing his jacket so that she could sit on it. Her head dropped into her hands, and she gave a low moan. “You can’t be here.” It was as if she was talking to herself.
“What? I don’t understand.” He wondered, briefly, if she had gone mad.
She looked up. “We were in a car. There was a crash . . . It can’t be you! It can’t be.” Her eyes traveled down to his hands, as if she was half expecting them to evaporate.
“A crash?” He knelt beside her. “Jennifer, the last time I saw you was at a club, not in a car.”
She was shaking her head, apparently uncomprehending.
“I wrote you a letter—”
“Yes.”
“—asking you to come away with me.”
She nodded.
“And I was waiting at the station. You didn’t turn up. I thought you’d decided against it. Then I received your letter, forwarded on to me, in which you made the point, repeatedly, that you were married.”
He could say it so calmly, as if it had held no more importance than if he had been waiting for an old friend. As if her absence had not skewed his life, his happiness, for four years.
“But I was coming to you.”
They stared at each other.
Her face fell back into her hands, and her shoulders shook. He stood up, glancing behind her at the lit ballroom, and laid a hand on her shoulder. She flinched as though she’d been burned. He was conscious of the outline of her back through her dress, and his breath stalled in his throat. He couldn’t think clearly. He could barely think at all.
“All this time”—she looked at him, tears in her eyes—“all this time . . . and you were alive.”
“I assumed . . . you just didn’t want to come with me.”
“Look!” She pulled up her sleeve, showing the jagged, raised silver line that scored her arm. “I had no memory. For months. I still remember little of that time. He told me you’d died. He told me—”
“But didn’t you see my name in the newspaper? I have pieces in it almost daily.”
“I don’t read newspapers. Not anymore. Why would I?”
The full ramifications of what she had said were beginning to sink in, and Anthony was feeling a little unsteady on his feet. She turned to the French windows, now half obscured by steam, then wiped her eyes with her fingers. He offered her his handkerchief, and she took it tentatively, as if she was still afraid to make contact with his skin.
“I can’t stay out here,” she said, when she had recovered her composure. Mascara had left a black smear under her eye, and he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “He’ll be wondering where I am.” There were new lines of strain around her eyes; the dewiness of her skin had been supplanted by something tighter. The girlishness had gone, replaced by subtle new knowledge. He couldn’t stop staring at her. “How can I reach you?” he asked.
“You can’t.” She shook her head a little, as if she was trying to clear it.
“I’m staying at the Regent,” he said. “Ring me tomorrow.” He reached into his pocket, scribbled on a business card.
She took it and gazed at it, as if imprinting the details on her memory.