The Last Letter from Your Lover
Page 5She had removed one when she looked up to see him standing in the doorway. He was gazing at her legs. “You looked very beautiful tonight,” he said quietly.
She blinked hard, rolling off the second stocking. She reached behind her to undo her girdle, now acutely self-conscious. Her left arm was still useless—too weak to reach round to her back. She kept her head down, hearing him moving toward her. He was bare-chested now, but still in his suit trousers. He stood behind her, moved her hands away, and took over. He was so close that she could feel his breath on her back as he parted each hook from its eye.
“Very beautiful,” he repeated.
She closed her eyes. This is my husband, she told herself. He adores me. Everyone says so. We’re happy. She felt his fingers running lightly along her right shoulder, the touch of his lips at the back of her neck. “Are you very tired?” he murmured.
She knew this was her chance. He was a gentleman. If she said she was, he would step back, leave her alone. But they were married. Married . She had to face this some time. And who knew? Perhaps if he seemed less alien, she would find that a little more of herself was restored to her.
She turned in his arms. She couldn’t look at his face, couldn’t kiss him. “Not if . . . not if you’re not,” she whispered into his chest.
She felt his skin against hers and clamped her eyes shut, waiting to feel a sense of familiarity, perhaps even desire. Four years, they had been married. How many times must they have done this? And since her return he had been so patient.
She felt his hands moving over her, bolder now, unclipping her brassiere. She kept her eyes closed, conscious of her appearance. “May we turn out the light?” she said. “I don’t want . . . to be thinking about my arm. How it looks.”
“Of course. I should have thought.”
She heard the click of the bedroom light. But it wasn’t her arm that bothered her: she didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to be so exposed, vulnerable, under his gaze. And then they were on the bed, and he was kissing her neck, his hands, his breath, urgent. He lay on top of her, pinning her down, and she linked her arms around his neck, unsure what she should be doing in the absence of any feelings she might have expected. What has happened to me? she thought. What did I used to do?
“Are you all right?” he murmured into her ear. “I’m not hurting you?”
“No,” she said, “no, not at all.”
He kissed her br**sts, a low moan of pleasure escaping him. “Take them off,” he said, pulling at her knickers. He shifted his weight off her so that she could tug them down to her knees, then kick them away. And she was exposed. Perhaps if we . . . , she wanted to say, but he was already nudging her legs apart, trying clumsily to guide himself into her. I’m not ready—but she couldn’t say that: it would be wrong now. He was lost somewhere else, desperate, wanting.
She grimaced, drawing up her knees, trying not to tense. And then he was inside her, and she was biting her cheek in the dark, trying to ignore the pain and that she felt nothing except a desperate desire for it to be over and him out of her. His movements built in speed and urgency, his weight squashing her, his face hot and damp against her shoulder. And then, with a little cry, a hint of vulnerability he did not show in any other part of his life, it was over, and the thing was gone, replaced by a sticky wetness between her thighs.
She had bitten the inside of her cheek so hard that she could taste blood.
She was glad he couldn’t see her lying there, gazing at nothing, the covers pulled up to her chin. “That’s quite all right,” she said quietly.
She had discovered that memories could indeed be lodged in places other than the mind.
Chapter 3
AUGUST 1960
“A profile. Of an industrialist.” Don Franklin’s stomach threatened to burst over the top of his trousers. The buttons strained, revealing, above his belt, a triangle of pale, pelted skin. He leaned back in his chair and tilted his glasses to the top of his head. “It’s the editor’s ‘must,’ O’Hare. He wants a four-page spread on the wonder mineral for the advertising.”
“What the hell do I know about mines and factories? I’m a foreign correspondent, for Christ’s sake.”
“You were,” Don corrected. “We can’t send you out again, Anthony, you know that, and I need someone who can do a nice job. You can’t just sit around here making the place look untidy.”
Anthony slumped in the chair on the other side of the desk and drew out a cigarette.
Behind the news editor, who was just visible through the glass wall of his office, Phipps, the junior reporter, ripped three sheets of paper from his typewriter and, face screwed up in frustration, replaced them, with two sheets of carbon between.
“I’ve seen you do this stuff. You can turn on the charm.”
“So, not even a profile. A puff piece. Glorified advertising.”
“He’s partly based in Congo. You know about the country.”
“I know about the kind of man who owns mines in Congo.”
Don held out his hand for a cigarette. Anthony gave him one and lit it. “It’s not all bad.”
“You get to interview this guy at his summer residence in the south of France. The Riviera. A few days in the sun, a lobster or two on expenses, maybe a glimpse of Brigitte Bardot . . . You should be thanking me.”
“Send Peterson. He loves all that stuff.”
“Peterson’s covering the Norwich child killer.”
“Murfett. He’s a crawler.”
“Murfett’s off to Ghana to cover the trouble in Ashanti.”
“Him?” Anthony was incredulous. “He couldn’t cover two schoolboys fighting in a telephone box. How the hell is he doing Ghana?” He lowered his voice. “Send me back, Don.”
“No.”
“I could be half insane, alcoholic, and in a ruddy asylum, but I’d still do a better job than Murfett, and you know it.”
“Your problem, O’Hare, is that you don’t know when you’re well off.” Don leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Listen—just stop crabbing and listen. When you came back from Africa, there was a lot of talk upstairs”—he motioned to the editor’s suite—“about whether you should be let go. The whole incident . . . They were worried about you, man. Anyway, God only knows how but you’ve made a lot of friends here, and some fairly important ones. They took everything you’ve been through into account and kept you on the payroll. Even while you were in”—he gestured awkwardly behind him—“ you know.”
Anthony’s gaze was level.
“Anyhow. They don’t want you doing anything too . . . pressured. So get a grip on yourself, get over to France, and be grateful that you’ve got the kind of job that occasionally involves dining in the foothills at ruddy Monte Carlo. Who knows? You might bag a starlet while you’re there.”
A long silence followed.
When Anthony failed to look suitably impressed, Don stubbed out his cigarette. “You really don’t want to do it.”
“No, Don. You know I don’t. I start doing this stuff, it’s just a few small steps to Births, Marriages, and Deaths.”
There was another lengthy pause. Outside the room, Phipps ripped out another three pages, smacked his forehead, and mouthed expletives.
Anthony stubbed out his cigarette and shot his boss a black look. “I’ll go and pack,” he said.
There was something about seriously rich people, Anthony thought as he dressed for dinner, that always made him want to dig at them a little. Perhaps it was the inbuilt certainty of men who were rarely contradicted; the pomposity of those whose most prosaic views everyone took so damned seriously.
At first he had found Laurence Stirling less offensive than he had expected; the man had been courteous, his answers considered, his views on his workers pretty enlightened. But as the day had worn on, Anthony saw he was the kind of man to whom control was paramount. He spoke at people, rather than soliciting information from them. He had little interest in anything outside his own circle. He was a bore, rich and successful enough not to try to be anything else.
Anthony brushed down his jacket, wondering why he had agreed to go to the dinner. Stirling had invited him at the end of the interview and, caught off guard, he had been forced to admit that he didn’t know anyone in Antibes and had no plans, other than for a quick bite at the hotel. He suspected afterward that Stirling had invited him to make it more likely that he would write something flattering. Even as he accepted reluctantly, Stirling was instructing his driver to pick him up from the Hôtel du Cap at seven thirty. “You won’t find the house,” he said. “It’s quite well hidden from the road.”
I’ll bet, Anthony had thought. Stirling didn’t seem the kind of man who would welcome casual human interaction.
The concierge woke up visibly when he saw the limousine waiting outside. Suddenly he was rushing to open the doors, the smile that had been absent on Anthony’s arrival now plastered across his face.
Anthony ignored him. He greeted the driver and climbed into the front passenger seat—a little, he realized afterward, to the driver’s discomfort, but in the rear he would have felt like an impostor. He wound down his window to let the warm Mediterranean breeze stroke his skin as the long, low vehicle negotiated its way along coastal roads scented with rosemary and thyme. His gaze traveled up to the purple hills beyond. He had become accustomed to the more exotic landscape of Africa and had forgotten how beautiful parts of Europe were.
He made casual conversation—asked the driver about the area, who else he had driven for, what life was like for an ordinary man in this part of the country. He couldn’t help it: knowledge was everything. Some of his best leads had come from the drivers and other servants of powerful men.
“Is Mr. Stirling a good boss?” he asked.
The driver’s eyes darted toward him, his demeanor less relaxed. “He is,” he said, in a way that suggested the conversation was closed.
“Glad to hear it,” Anthony replied, and made sure to tip the man generously when they arrived at the vast white house. As he watched the car disappear to the back and what must have been the garage, he felt vaguely wistful. Taciturn as he was, he would have preferred to share a sandwich and a game of cards with the driver than make polite conversation with the bored rich of the Riviera.
The eighteenth-century house was like that of any wealthy man, oversize and immaculate, its facade suggesting the endless attention of staff. The graveled driveway was wide and manicured, flanked by raised flagstone paths from which no weed would dare to emerge. Elegant windows gleamed between painted shutters. A sweeping stone staircase led visitors into a hallway that already echoed with the conversation of the other diners and was dotted with pedestals containing huge arrangements of flowers. He walked up the steps slowly, feeling the stone still warm from the fierce heat of the day’s sun.
There were seven other guests at dinner: the Moncrieffs, friends of the Stirlings from London—the wife’s gaze was frankly assessing; the local mayor, M. Lafayette, with his wife and their daughter, a lithe brunette with heavily made-up eyes and a definite air of mischief; and the elderly M. and Mme Demarcier. Stirling’s wife was a clean-cut, pretty blonde in the Grace Kelly mold; such women tended to have little to say of interest, having been admired for their looks all their lives. He hoped to be placed next to Mrs. Moncrieff. He hadn’t minded her summing him up. She would be a challenge.