Such Men Are Dangerous (27 page)

“What do you say, Simon? If you tell me it’s my duty to come along, support
you
, that’s all I need to hear. I would come with you anywhere; yes, to the ends of the earth if you’d let me. I’d even…” But then she recollected herself and he suddenly saw she was Pitiful, not Pious, this podgy woman with the porous, over-pancaked complexion that looked about to crack up—crumble in the wet weather—and he half lifted a hand towards her in a vague gesture of comfort.

He said, “Paula, I told you from the pulpit that anyone who had to take care of the elderly or the sick was automatically exempt.” But he wasn’t sure whether it was gratitude or disappointment he noticed in her eyes or whether it was rainwater or tears he witnessed on her cheeks.

“What time do you make it, Paula?”

He’d long since realized that the three others in the porch were made up of a photographer and two journalists. It struck him with faint irony that there weren’t any TV cameras or radio microphones. The media had shrunk a bit since Sunday.

“It’s after nine,” she said. “It’s really quite surprising that your
Saints Alive
group isn’t out in force.”

“I imagine you’ve heard about Tony?”

“Yes. Poor Simon. You mustn’t take it as a sign.”

“I don’t.”

“Myself, I just don’t see how people could have stayed away. It was the best sermon I’ve ever heard. I told you that, didn’t I? And afterwards over coffee everyone was talking about it. Your mother said she felt like clapping at the end. And I agreed with her. How
is
Mrs Madison this morning?” Paula’s voice had grown a bit unsteady.

“She’s standing over there. I suggest you go and ask her.”

“I think she’s so courageous.” She was taking a thickly folded wad of papers out of her handbag. “I took the liberty of preparing a few hymn sheets, Simon. I only did about three hundred. I thought that everyone could share them.”

He transferred them to an inside pocket of his waterproof. “Thank you, Paula.”

She took out something else, which was wrapped in gold paper and tied with red ribbon. “Simon, I hope you won’t be offended: I bought you six bars of fruit-and-nut. The large ones. I believe they ought to be sustaining and in none of the shops—not even Binn’s—could I find any Kendal Mintcake, like I’ve read all the mountaineers take on their expeditions.”

Simon—sincerely appreciative of such thoughtfulness and generosity, albeit a little embarrassed—caught a whiff of Bluebell as he accepted the heavy gift. The smile he summoned up felt as though that, too, were made of plaster and starting to crack beneath the pressure of the infiltrating damp.

“And you’re really determined to go ahead with it?” she asked. “Just you and your dear mother?”

“My mother isn’t coming, Paula. I’m sorry—I think these men are waiting to speak to me.”

“Well, yes, sir, if we
could
trouble you with one or two more questions…?” Both the reporters were local: one from the
Telegraph
, the other from the
Star
.

While he was answering them as civilly as he felt able and while the photographer was energetically lining up a shot of Paula and his mother and Alison and Dulcie, another journalist, this time a woman, and this time, he knew, from one of the national dailies—well, formerly so at any rate—stepped out of a taxi that had just pulled up; and, having settled with the driver, lifted her brand new knapsack off the back seat.

Yes.
Formerly so at any rate
. Geraldine had both handed in her notice to the
Chronicle
(and it wasn’t
everybody
who could resign upon a Sunday afternoon!) and then had to say she didn’t intend to work it out, either.

Geoff had told her not to be a bloody fool. This was hardly unexpected. She had held the receiver some distance from her ear and even at one point put it in her lap (she was sitting on the hotel bed) and smiled at it benignly.

If she wanted to join in this demonstration he had said…well, that was entirely all right; just to phone in her copy in the usual way; she was back on the assignment. He had apparently found it incomprehensible that she should wish to take part in the march completely free of professional commitment.

And then she had rung up Alex, not caring much whether his wife answered the telephone or not. He also had called her every kind of fool, not simply because she had given up a good job (“Don’t you realize yet that there are four million unemployed?”), not simply because she intended to “roam the country like some half-witted gipsy,” but because she had told him she was pulling the plug on their affair, there was nothing to discuss, neither owed the other anything, she didn’t want to meet him again. Alex was as incredulous as Geoff—more so. “Then are you in love with this preacher boy, this mountebank? It sounds as though he’s got you just where he wants you, twisted around his no doubt highly inadequate little cock?”

“Yes to the first—though I don’t quite recognize your description. No to the second—though as you’re speaking from experience you clearly think yourself the better judge.”

“Listen, I can’t talk now,” he’d told her, urgently. “Come back to London, we’ll thresh this thing out properly, you’ve had these crazy whims before. Perhaps they’re even, I shouldn’t say this, in some way a part of your appeal.” Why did this remind her of
the endearing charm of Fleet Street
? “And as to our never seeing each other again—not merely absurd but patently out of the question: what about my bathrobe, my dinner suit, my electric razor?”

She suddenly remembered how she had spoken about this man to Josh Heath.

“Oh, I’ll take them to a charity shop,” she reassured him. “Don’t worry. Hard though it is to imagine, there could even be somebody somewhere who may shortly bless your name. God moves in a mysterious way…” (She thought Dawn would be pleased with her.)

“Always the joker!” he said. “Besides. I’ve been going a little more deeply into this question of divorce and I really think that now—”

“Goodbye, Alex,” she said and put down the receiver, uncharitably enjoying the idea of leaving him a little more deeply into this question of divorce. (In fact, it
had
been his wife who had answered the telephone. This was the first time Geraldine had spoken to her. Only a few words, obviously, but actually she’d sounded nice.) Then she began to remember how much she’d loved him at the start and to think of how kind he’d often been; began to think of some of the silly things they’d enjoyed doing together and of how he had sometimes reduced her to a positive ache of laughter. She remembered, too, how he’d occasionally made her body lift to his in a passion of ecstasy which although she could now recall it only intellectually she knew at the time had seemed utterly unsurpassable…and she abruptly regretted their affair should have had to end this way in bitterness. She felt a sense of loss along with liberation.

The sense of loss extended itself. She had spent almost ten years working on the
Chronicle
and as she’d said to Josh they had been pleasant years. She owed a lot both to Geoff and to several others on the staff including Graeme. She would write to Geoff, she decided—at the first opportunity call in, as well, and further make her peace.

Peace…She stretched out on the bed, luxuriously, and told herself she didn’t for one moment regret the fact of having terminated those ten years: only the fact that, perhaps, she had handled the phone call too lightly. Both phone calls, possibly. Never mind. That slightly unstable but basically underlying awareness of happiness was returning to her. Earlier, during Simon’s sermon and for at least twenty minutes afterwards, it had felt overwhelming. Intoxicating. She could have hugged herself with the enormity of it.

Yet then she’d had an encounter in the church hall and that elation had faded. To be truthful, it must have been fading a little beforehand (and, of course, she knew why), otherwise she
couldn’t
have conducted herself in the way she had. Return of the demon, possibly?

She had said a short prayer, however, and—beginner’s luck?—things had righted themselves: Mrs Madison had come over to invite her to the vicarage that evening for a light supper; and clearly she wouldn’t have done this without consulting her son.

Euphoria returned.

But…
Always the joker
? No, that wasn’t true, except maybe in one respect. The fifty-third card…The outsider…Used only in certain games; and often employed as a substitute.

Too late, she thought of what might have been an appropriate exit line. “This joker,” she could have snapped, “is wild!”

But from now on, she vowed, she was going to be one of the pack. More than that. One of the court cards.

She smiled. Simon would say, of course, that every card in the pack was of equal value. (She couldn’t imagine Josh Heath ever saying such a thing!) But she wasn’t thinking of celestial parity. She wanted to be (for once) the highest in value. Or at any rate, remembering that photograph on his desk, she wanted to be
currently
the highest.

With the chance and the challenge, she knew, of eventually taking over!

She dreamt a little…then after some half-hour reached out lazily for one of the books on her bedside table. Her hand first encountered the Gideon bible which she’d put there on the Friday evening out of a vague sense of obligation but so far done nothing about. She supposed that really…
really
…

Having acknowledged this much, however, she instead picked up the paperback of
Jules and Jim
which had come as a free gift with a copy of
Options
and which she found that she was very much enjoying.

She said: “Has everybody gone? Am I really that late?”

“No, you’re not really that late. And it isn’t that everybody’s gone; it’s more that nobody’s arrived. It seems as if the two of us are on our own.”

“But…? But, Simon…?” She looked at the group of women sheltering from the rain. Out of the four of them the only one she knew was Mrs Madison.

“They’re here to see us off,” said Simon.

“Then where’s Dawn? And William and Michael? Why, I’d have bet a thousand pounds…”

He told her about the accident.

“
You
don’t want to back out, do you?” he asked.

“No!”

She added a little less explosively: “Besides. I wouldn’t dare.”

“Good.” She could tell that he was doing his best to be upbeat. “So how many banners do you reckon you can carry?”

In fact, she and Tony and Mrs Madison had spent most of the previous day preparing them.

“Fully spread?” she checked.

“Well, naturally. What on earth would be the use if people couldn’t read them?”

“Then I’m sorry,” she answered. “I know this must sound pretty feeble. No more than half a dozen.”

37

Josh awoke on that Tuesday morning having spent like Mrs Madison and many others a further sleepless night. He’d been having a lot of them lately. Dawn had said he should go to the doctor and get some tablets, either that or sleep on the sofa in the lounge. On Monday night he had slept on the sofa in the lounge. The principal benefit, for him, had been that he could lie there and masturbate without any fear of detection: slowly and with intense enjoyment: although it hadn’t helped him to relax. He’d been chiefly in a wood with Geraldine Coe, the warm sun filtering through the branches, and had lain on the leaf-strewn, perfumed earth and watched her perform a tantalizing striptease. Then, naked, she had come to him and freed him of the little clothing he himself had worn.

He had seen her at St Matthew’s on Sunday. (They had both been fully clothed.) It was the single time he’d been there since the confirmation of Dawn and the children. In the church hall, after the service, she had tried to avoid him.

But when it had proved impossible to do so she gave in to what had been a very strong temptation.

“You shit!” she said. “You complete and utter shit!”

Josh had been more than a little disconcerted—although it was true that he’d expected difficulties.

“People will hear you.” He couldn’t give it quite the levity he’d aimed for.

“You knew how much it meant to him.”

“Whom?” he asked, teasingly.

“How could you do it? For just a bit of rotten money.”

“I told you. I was mercenary. In
The Buccaneer
you seemed more understanding.”

“In
The Buccaneer
I didn’t know what was involved.”

“Four-and-a-half years of unemployment.
That
hasn’t changed.”

“My God!
Still
he offers me a sob story!”

“I’m sorry.” He tried to indicate that the apology covered more than merely the offering of a sob story.

“May I go now?”

“I can’t hold you here against your will.”

He watched her starting to walk off, between small crowded tables and animated groups of people holding Pyrex cups of tea. A minute or two earlier (it was laughable) he had been feeling somewhat uplifted. By lots of cheap emotion, by the thrill of mass involvement, by the thought of seeing her. But now he felt tired. All he wanted was to get away.

She turned.

“And something else while we’re about it. Purely personal yet it still rankles.”

“I know what it is.”

“‘Part of the endearing charm of Fleet Street…’ If I hadn’t actually heard that with my own ears—”

“What else could I have said?”

“
What
else
could you have said
!”

“In such a situation? It really wasn’t done without a twinge of conscience.”

“Oh?
Thank
you for that twinge. Well, that makes it all all right, then.”

She was again on the point of leaving.

“But do you remember what you said yourself?” he added. “How sometimes you come out with things just to impress or to amuse: things which you later feel ashamed of?”

“Yes,” she said. “I do remember that.” But her tone remained cool.

“And you were wanting (I mean, I know it was only at
that
stage, don’t think that I’ve forgotten), you were wanting to amuse or impress merely one person—or maybe two. But I was wanting to amuse and impress…millions.”