Acts of Love (12 page)

The ringing of the telephone broke into her thoughts. Arianne answered it. ‘Good afternoon, can I help you?’

‘No,’ said the voice quite emphatically. ‘Old books have never been my particular thing. How would you like to join me here at the Connaught for lunch, a little Christmas lunch, just you and I? If you have a previous engagement, not to worry.’

‘Artemis, I thought you were winging your way to the Caribbean today.’

‘I am. After lunch. Can you make lunch with me?’

‘I’d be delighted.’

‘Now.’

‘Yes, Mother, right now.’

‘I’ll send the Bentley round for you.’

‘No, don’t do that. The traffic. I’ll get there much faster on my bike.’

‘Bike! Motor-bike?’

‘Bike, as in two-wheeler, Mother.’

‘I’ll time you.’ Artemis hung up the telephone, but not before the lilt of laughter in her voice was caught by Arianne. It seemed that Arianne pedalling to the Connaught amused her.

Artemis was on her third martini when she saw her daughter cross the dining room of the Connaught Hotel. Artemis was well known there and it remained one of her favourite places to dine when she was up from the country. She liked the solid elegance of the room, the service and most especially the food. They all went together in perfection. Nor was she averse to the handsome, well-dressed men dining there in their pin-stripe suits and Turnbull and Asser shirts. Those smart silk ties … they inspired her to flirt. Only rarely when she had been alone had some man not been smitten enough to send over at least a bottle of champagne with his note. The women were mostly attractive enough and well dressed, even the American ones. She always put it down to their coming from Boston or Philadelphia, despite the Texas twangs or the New Yorkers’ far from dulcet
tones audible in the ladies’ room.

She thought that Arianne was looking just right for lunch there. She was wearing a steel-blue, two-piece suede dress. The top had a curved neckline that showed off her slender neck and the shoulders, though padded, were round looking, the sleeves long and loose. It was cut short to hang loosely just below the waistband of the skirt, which was long and flared slightly away from the hip. It covered the tops of her black leather boots. What was particularly pretty was that the leather had appliquéd on it several flowers of the same coloured suede, their petals slightly raised. Around her neck she wore a leather thong and one of the suede flowers.

Artemis’s first reaction to the outfit was that Arianne had not bought it. She still found it strange that Jason had always dressed his wife, having the taste and money to do it in style. Jason had always been a puzzle to Artemis, his love for Arianne even more a mystery, for she had always considered him a cad, someone not quite honest. Yet her feelings had little to go on. Accordingly she had had almost no contact with him. And Jason? She had been well aware that he had been content never to see her. She reckoned he sensed she was on to him.

There was something quite attractive about Arianne today, she told herself, and saw it confirmed in the attention several of the men gave her daughter as she passed their tables. Well, thought Artemis, I do have to give that devil Jason his due. Arianne may have been blind to what I saw in him, but he did make her happy. Grudgingly she had to admit that her daughter might not have been as dull as she had thought her. The quiet ones … She pondered. But not enough to become more embroiled in her daughter’s life than she already was.

‘Old habits die hard,’ she said aloud as the maître d’ drew back the chair at Artemis’s table and a smiling Arianne sat down.

‘What?’ Arianne asked, puzzled.

‘Old habits die hard. That’s a good thing to remember when judging people.’

‘Who’s judging, Artemis? Me or you? I don’t quite get what you’re on about. Shall we start again? Hi, Mother, really nice of you to ask me to lunch.’

Artemis felt really pleased, even a little proud to have Arianne
there dining with her. She actually reached across the table to pat her hand.

‘You’ve turned out quite a nice woman, Arianne.’

Arianne could make no sense of what Artemis was saying. Was she being cryptic about something or just slipping into one of her vague periods? A waiter placed a Kir Royale in front of Arianne. She raised her glass and smiled at her mother. ‘Christmas.’ Her toast. It seemed to please Artemis.

‘Ah, yes. Christmas.’ She in turn raised her glass and the two women drank. Artemis replaced her glass on the table and told Arianne, ‘I’m really looking forward to this holiday. I don’t know how long I’ll be away. You know what I’m like, you may or may not get a card from me.’

‘You don’t have my address.’

‘Quite right. I don’t.’ Arianne made an attempt to take her small shoulder-bag from the banquette where Artemis sat and where she had placed it next to her. Artemis stopped her. ‘Not now, later. We must order.’ Discreetly she summoned the maître d’ to take their order. She waved the menu away. ‘Oysters, nine, I think. And wild duck for me.’

‘Mange-touts, and purée of celeriac?’ the maître d’ asked, familiar as he was with her preferences in vegetables.

A nod of her head, and she asked, ‘Arianne?’

‘The same,’ Arianne told the frock-coated man poised with a smile, pad and pen in hand.

‘You don’t have to have what I’m having, Arianne.’ Why must her daughter decline to make a different choice from her own?

‘Duck and oysters. It can’t be bad, Artemis.’

‘Well, as long as it’s what you want.’ She took a long swallow of champagne and then said, ‘Hadley is travelling with me. The flat at Chessington Park is closed, and the key is with Clive, the housekeeper there. I’ve left instructions with him that you are allowed to come and go in the flat as you like while I am away. I’ve given the staff a month’s holiday, so there will be no one there to cook or clean for you. You may sleep over in the guest room if you like.’

‘That’s very generous of you, Artemis.’

‘Generous? Hell, it’s Christmas.’

‘But still, I didn’t expect the invitation.’

‘Well, it’s possible because I’m not there. You do understand.’

Oh yes, Arianne did understand. It was not to be expected when her mother was in residence. Mother and daughter understood very well the ground rules of their relationship and just how closely it was allowed to develop.

It turned out to be a pleasant lunch. Artemis was looking quite vivacious in her sable hat and a chocolate-brown silk-jersey dress made for her by Givenchy. She wore her fabled pearls, and jewels on her fingers. Not for the first time did Arianne think that Artemis had missed her vocation. An actress – she could have been a brilliant one. A spy – they’d have had to do a film. She never spilled a secret worth the telling. Where might Artemis be going? With whom? Hadley might have been accompanying her. She certainly wouldn’t limit herself to the butler for company. One thing for sure: Arianne would never know who the man was.

Arianne was looking the dessert trolley over. To reach a decision from among the toothsome array of cakes and puddings, each more luscious and tempting than the last, seemed impossible. Torn between the
milles feuilles
and the trifle, she turned from studying the trolley to ask Artemis what she was going to have. But her mother was putting on her gloves. Now what? Before she could say anything, Artemis looked at her and said, ‘There really is no contest here, Arianne. It has to be the trifle. The best trifle you will ever eat. I adore it, but, alas, no time. One more sip of wine, and I’m off. But you stay and have the trifle and finish the bubbly. It is Christmas, after all.’

The maître d’ arrived with Artemis’s sable coat over his arm and held it out ready for her to slip into. She slid over the banquette, and the table was pulled away by a waiter. As she passed by Arianne she leaned over and pressed her cheek briefly against Arianne’s. This served as a mother-daughter kiss. It was what a best girlfriend would have received. ‘Merry Christmas.’ She was gone.

Arianne stood up to watch Artemis leave the room. That was lunch, then. It took a few seconds for Arianne to realise that her mother had indeed gone. The maître d’ suggested that Arianne take the seat on the banquette where Artemis had been sitting.
This she did, and in a flash waiters had cleared and rearranged the table. The trifle was served and her glass recharged with vintage Bollinger.

Long after Artemis had gone, when Arianne had finished her pudding, and was sipping the strong black
demi tasse
of aromatic coffee, she realised how very much alone in the world she would be without Artemis – Artemis who was always there in her life, but not there. Arianne sighed. She marvelled at the degree of their attachment. Each had made the best of a relationship that neither had ever excelled in.

Arianne’s Christmas lunch had come to its second ending. She looked at her wristwatch. It had been a long and delectable lunch. It left her disinclined to pedal back to Christie’s. But she picked up her handbag, and lo! – a long white envelope had been slipped beneath it. She read her name and recognised the hand. Artemis’s. How had she missed seeing her mother place it there? Arianne opened the envelope. Inside: a cheque for two thousand pounds and a card with a very jolly Santa Claus on it. She opened the card and read:

That was Artemis, always catching her off-guard. ‘No presents this Christmas,’ she had said. Indifference to Arianne’s holiday plans, and now, this. Arianne’s world seemed to be getting bigger every day. Well, at least a chance of it expanding by the day existed. Options loomed suddenly in her life. She considered that on the way to the ladies’ cloakroom. She gave the elderly attendant, smart in her black silk dress and white-lace collar and cuffs, a pound piece by placing it in the saucer on the marble-topped dressing-table. She slipped into her black and tan herringbone cashmere wrap-around jacket and tied the soft belt, adjusting the wide revers. From its large patch-pocket she withdrew a black beret. Outside the doorman accepted his tip with a smile and wheeled her bike out. ‘I don’t get much of a chance to park one of these, madam. Merry Christmas!’ – accompanied by a broad smile.

He held the bike while Arianne put her hat and gloves on. She smiled back, ‘Merry Christmas.’ She mounted the bike and rode off round Carlos Place towards Berkeley Square. Where, she wondered, should she go for Christmas?

LONDON,
GLOUCESTERSHIRE,
EGYPT

Chapter 9

Women sometimes do that. Play little games with themselves to muster the courage to step out of themselves and into the unknown. At such times, real desires sometimes get confused with the game and what they think they
should
want. Arianne’s game was to keep asking herself: Where would you most like to go over Christmas? For days, she mentally ranged the world with that question and arrived nowhere. Finally, she realised why. It was the wrong question. She changed the game. Who would I like to be with this Christmas? It came as something of a shock to Arianne that Jason no longer sprang immediately to mind. Instead, Ben Johnson. When she thought of him, she thought of love: the caring way he had with his uncle; his silence, and the solicitude shown during that ride to London. She had appreciated his avoiding mere small talk. She liked his sureness of self; the way they had become friends without much effort by either of them. Had it been an imaginary closeness or real togetherness she had sensed between them?

Ahmad. He was someone she would like to be with. Since their breakfast together at Claridge’s, she had been thinking of him on and off in a rather different way. Without Jason. When he had been among her thoughts she had quickly banished them from her mind. But today it no longer seemed an act of betrayal to want him, to love him without Jason. She sensed that talk at Claridge’s had changed their relationship – on her side, anyway. Yes, to see and be with Ahmad was a real possibility. And she knew where he would be; that he would welcome her, if not as a lover then assuredly as a close friend. A half dozen other people drifted in and out of her thoughts – friends, for she had never had a lover other than Jason and Ahmad. But they could not match the interest that Ben and Ahmad had.

It was easy for her to figure out that she was looking for a man
in her life. And that she had little idea how to go about finding one. For nearly three years she had forgotten about getting involved sexually with someone. It had hardly entered her mind. She had lost interest in the sexual act. The erotic Arianne had died with Jason. But now suddenly that appeared not to be true. Desire for sex with an exciting man, the love and passion, the hot lust men can have for women, was what she wanted for Christmas. Romance.

How had Artemis known? Somewhere in her strange and remote relationship with her daughter Artemis did understand and appreciate that Arianne was more than she appeared to be. Beneath the calm and quiet there was another woman striving to get out, a woman unable to do so alone. Jason had recognised that in her, and had rejoiced in being the man to release her. Ahmad? Was he the man to take on that sort of commitment? He had been happy enough to participate in a lustful
ménage à trois
. But as one of a couple in love, without Jason? Too many questions, she told herself. The more she thought about Ahmad, the more she wanted to be with him, the more she wanted to try to enter his erotic world again.

She booked the only flight she could get to Cairo. Christmas day. While waiting for her ticket to be processed she thought about Ben Johnson. Would he be at Chessington Park with his uncle for the holidays?

Jim O’Connor was not happy to be in Cairo. Nor was Ahmad any too thrilled to have him there. It was an unpleasant business for both men. What made things even more uncomfortable for O’Connor was that he had never been able to figure out the man he was working for, still less his motives. There was something else – he liked the man, and he wasn’t so sure that he should. Jim O’Connor was one of the south Boston Irish. He had punched his way out of the bars and docks of Boston and New York, footballed his way through Notre Dame, and fought his way out of a Korean war, with a medal of honour to prove it. Now, as owner of the hottest and most respected detective and security agency in the States, he found himself almost charmed by this urbane, handsome, international playboy-millionaire into overseeing the investigation himself.

O’Connor had done some investigating of his own. On Ahmad Salah Ali. He turned out to be the genuine thing, all that he had a reputation of being and more. Something else. He was a nice guy, even though a Harvard man. And that was what bothered Jim O’Connor. For a nice guy, he had a helluva lot of wealth and a great many serious connections. Princes, and yes, even kings, had dined at his table. He was on intimate terms with a variety of prominent men. Here was a guy with a great deal of power. Yet he acted like he didn’t have any. He claimed he was just a dilettante, an amateur geo-politician, and a friend. Enough there for a full-time job.

Jim knew more. The women. The many women. The debauched and depraved sexual life he led
and
that he took enormous pains to keep secret. Even the names of the few men he shared his erotic games with. Important names. Sure of making the headlines on two continents if a scandal blew up in their faces. He knew about Ahmad’s wife, whom he almost never saw and who was settled in LA. His three teenage sons, whom he was very close to. And his best friends, Jason and Arianne Honey. By all accounts they were like real family to him. They went everywhere together, were everything to each other. So why was there no report of a sexual relationship between them? Jim O’Connor didn’t believe that, not for a minute. That twitchy nose of his told him differently. Until he was introduced to Arianne Honey. Then he believed it. She was not the type for a sexual threesome. Too quiet, refined, pretty. And there was a subtle sexiness about her. Too subtle, surely, for a man like Ahmad. He liked them wilder than Arianne Honey. And besides, by all accounts, the Honeys had been mad about each other. Crazy in love, neither of them had wandered. They were each other’s lives, and both loved Ahmad.

When Jim had his findings on Ahmad, Jason had already died. That was why Ahmad had hired Jim O’Connor: Jason was dead, and Ahmad wanted to know why. How it could have happened to an experienced pilot such as Jason. What Jason had been doing flying the red, single-seater, supersonic jet over the Himalayas. His own pet plane. Was he test-flying it? If so, why in a place so remote from his bases in England and the States? Ahmad had been a man distraught at the loss of his best friend in a hideous accident when he called in Jim O’Connor to
investigate. That was nearly three years ago. Now here was Jim, the day before Christmas, in Cairo, summoned by Ahmad and even flown out on a chartered private jet.

Any one of numerous good operatives could have been there in his place. But when the call came from Ahmad, Jim, without hesitation, had agreed to be there. Over the years, Jim had been in contact with Ahmad Salah Ali no more than three or four times. That had been enough to see and dislike the way the man worked. It was his generosity, the way he gave and stayed in the background of things, minded his own business and did not get involved. The way he put people together and stood in the wings watching, waiting to see how they were going to act out the scenario he created. Jim O’Connor didn’t care to be a puppet on anybody’s string, but that was how he felt when he was in the presence of Ahmad Salah Ali. That was bad. But, worse, the man had never given him any real justification for those feelings. Justified or not, Jim felt he was being used. This Mr Good-guy was not all good. He was corrupt, that was his kick, being corrupt and corrupting others. Jim’s professional nose detected the whiff of a minor genius at it.

Jim liked to know where he was with people. With Salah Ali, he never knew. He got to think of him as an Arab Mafia Don, just waiting for that moment to call in a favour, a debt that had to be paid. And Jim
was
in Ahmad’s debt. The O’Connor Agency had picked up, on a direct recommendation from Ahmad, the security consultancy and control of several heads of state and consequently fat contracts in their countries. Massive and powerful jobs that propelled him and his company into a position of power no private company in their line of work had ever had before. The CIA watched with interest and respect bordering on envy, and bought him expensive lunches. And Ahmad? Not once had he put himself forward as the man in the middle. Not once did he acknowledge Jim’s notes of thanks. Was this summons on the day before Christmas the pay-off at last? He hoped so. It made him uneasy to be indebted to Ahmad. Jim always liked to know what a thing cost. Then he could pay on delivery.

It was a smiling Ahmad who walked across the room to greet Jim. ‘It’s really good of you to come at such short notice, Jim.’

‘Ahmad.’ They had been on first-name terms since they had
met. Ahmad’s insistence. The two men shook hands. Ahmad placed an arm around Jim’s shoulders. Anyone seeing them would have thought they were old friends.

‘Good flight, Jim?’

‘Very comfortable. I travelled with two of my men. Do you want them in on this?’

‘Not for the moment. I’ll let you deal with them. I don’t think there’s any need for me to see them. Can I offer you a drink?’

Three fingers of malt whisky and a lump of ice. Ahmad had a flattering memory for Jim’s favourite drink. Jim took the Lalique crystal tumbler in his hand and watched Ahmad open the clear bottle of champagne, Louis Roederer Crystal. Ahmad’s favourite drink, registered Jim’s computer mind. Watching Ahmad, Jim had to admit to himself that the man held a kind of fascination for him. Was it the hedonistic style? In matters of pleasure Ahmad was certainly a front runner. His success with women? His erudition? An urbanity rare in macho men like Ahmad? Or was it the polish laid on so thick that Jim doubted his own intuition of Ahmad’s corrupt soul searching out people’s weaknesses, working on them for his own amusement? Well, it had not been
all
intuitive. Hints had emerged from his discreet digging into what went on in Ahmad’s life behind the baize door.

Jim took a long swallow of the amber liquid in his glass. The bite of the whisky was an instant pick-up. Yes, the man before him remained, even with all he knew about him, an enigma. An enigma, OK,
but
, he told himself: You’ve been around too long, seen too much, Jim O’Connor, to be fooled by Ahmad Salah Ali. There’s something not quite kosher going on here. He took another large swallow. Suddenly he felt better about being in Cairo with Ahmad. He had made up his mind to crack the mystery of his fascinating client. Simply for his own satisfaction.

The two men walked together towards the impressive Boule desk, set in front of three twenty-foot-high windows. Arched at the top, they were French windows that opened as twelve-foot-high doors on to a wide terrace of white marble softened in colour to a mellow whitish-beige by a century of sun, heat and the mist that rose intermittently from the Nile. The silk taffeta draperies, a faded burnt orange draped voluptuously, were tied back with thick ropes of entwined silk in luscious colours: plum, and coral,
aubergine, and emerald green. Huge pairs of tassels hung from them. A choice frame for the unobstructed romantic view of the Nile flowing past the windows, the feluccas – the working lateen sail-boats of Egypt-plying the river. And on the opposite shore, tall, rich green palm trees, an impressive open eighteenth-century pavilion in the Ottoman style, and a closed building of the same period and style: the Cairo boathouse of Salah Ali. At a dock with several feluccas tied up, white turbaned and robed men, several women covered from head to foot in black, and children, all busily running about, brought life to the scene.

The winter sun cast a warm light into the two-storey library of cherrywood, splendid for its books and the gracious curve of a staircase leading to the narrow gallery that encircled the room. There the shelves lined the walls and reached to the ceiling with a fine collection of rare books. The library, with its reading tables and comfortable tapestry-covered, eighteenth-century high-backed chairs, its worn leather sofas and priceless Persian rugs, the large Chien Lung, Han and Tang vases with lids topped with golden dogs, again impressed Jim O’Connor, as it had the first time he had seen it.

Then he had become acutely aware of time stood still, history, ancestry, incredible power and stability, beauty and class. The kind of rank that comes with hundreds of years of privilege, power meted out in just the right proportions, and a cultured life that had been nurtured for centuries. He had been cynical then and was no less so now, still believing there were plenty of skeletons dangling in this family’s closets. The mere fact of having survived into the nineteen-nineties guaranteed that. As head of the family, Ahmad, he was certain, had plenty of his own messy secrets. On top of the depraved and debauched sexual life that Jim knew about. He smiled to himself, having to admire the man. He mused: You bury your skeletons deep, Ahmad, but not deep enough. My curiosity feels as if it’s just about to conquer my discretion.

He stood for several minutes at the window watching the scene outside. The room smelled of beeswax polish and jasmine, sandalwood. The scent drew him back into the room and he turned to walk past one of a pair of huge antique globes, spun it with his hand, and continued on towards a mahogany curved-back
chair that boasted a pair of superbly elegant and sensuous swans for arms. Covered in an eighteenth-century Persian embroidered cloth of pomegranates, it was a thing of both beauty and comfort. It was placed in front of the desk behind which Ahmad sat watching Jim O’Connor. Jim stroked the mahogany swan’s head, the curve that imitated a neck. He gazed from it to Ahmad. ‘Very Leda and the Swanish.’ He was quite proud of his cultured hint that he was on to Ahmad’s appetite for ‘anything-goes’ sex. He had even given an indication that he was no slouch himself in the sexual arena. Not very professional, maybe, but promoted by a sense that Ahmad was somehow using him, pulling the wool over his eyes about something.

The smile at the corner of Ahmad’s lips irritated Jim; his remark even more. ‘A large, beautiful white swan, huge downy wings spread wide to embrace a lovely, voluptuous and naked lady. His long, sensuous neck wrapped around hers, ecstasy in her limbs and on her face. The human aspect of the bird, an erotic expression in his eyes that suggests to the viewer a man.’ Here Ahmad hesitated for a moment, giving Jim a look behind which lurked a sly smile. ‘I have a small oil painting of Leda and her swan. You must allow me to make a gift of it to you.’ The offer seemed much more than just a generous act.