Acts of Love (36 page)

‘My boss, Jim O’Connor, the Managing Director and owner of the company I work for. He must be getting his instructions from somebody pretty important, certainly very wealthy. Jim O’Connor doesn’t fuss with little things or deal with men way
down the ladder like me. Not ordinarily, anyway.’

‘And he is giving you instructions as to what you are to tell us?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘Arianne, I think we’d better hear him out.’

Fresh drinks were brought to the table, and a platter of tiny filo pastry squares stuffed with rice, slivers of pigeon, currants and pine-nuts, for them to nibble on. No one touched them. Once the servant had disappeared, Mike began.

‘I got involved with this case because I was instructed to find Jason Honey, keep it a secret and report back when I did. I found him on a mountain in the Himalayas. My instructions were to locate him and not to let on that we were a search party.

‘He was in bad shape at that point, dying a slow death from his injuries. He had been rudimentarily taken care of. The villagers and one doctor had done their best for him, saved his life. Your husband couldn’t have made contact with you for a year after his crash. He was in a comatose state. Then he came out of it, miraculously without any brain damage. I didn’t know that then, but I know it now because the doctors treating him here have discussed it with me. When I found him, and that was only several months ago, he was paralysed down one side. He had what we thought was a broken back and all sorts of internal injuries, and he was and is a serious heroin addict.’

Ben squeezed Arianne’s hand, a gesture of reassurance that he was there for her and concerned about her. ‘I’m all right, Ben. Go on, Mr Chambers.’

‘The next instruction from my boss was to bring him out, get him the best medical care possible, give him what he wanted, anything at any price. A simple enough order, but hard to accomplish. It wasn’t easy to persuade him to leave the village. He was living in that great, heroin-induced twilight zone, floating in and out of pain and consciousness, with no interest in life. He had everything he wanted in that village. It took time to get through to him, to convince him to leave for a more comfortable life. It was he who chose Tangier, he who chose the hospice he is in. We got him a false passport in what he claimed was his name. It was a chancy thing to do, to bring him out of there-an 80:20 chance he would survive the trip. My instructions
were to stay with him and play his game, and at any cost give him what he wanted.’

‘That has to be Ahmad, Ben. Only he would do that for Jason. Only he has the money to finance such an undertaking.’

Ben chose to ignore Arianne’s comments. She made it sound as if Ahmad was acting from a sense of love and generosity. Ben didn’t believe that for a minute, though he did believe Ahmad was behind the rescue operation, and for many an ulterior motive. ‘Go on, Mike. Let’s hear it all.’

‘Your husband knows Tangier well. He knew the hospice. Your husband is hiding in that monastery under an assumed name, the name he used whenever he was in Tangier before. He is never going to come out. He has money; he has made a miraculous recovery; he doesn’t want to see anyone; he doesn’t care about anyone. He has a friend, a young woman – she is the only visitor except for a couple of men he does some sort of sneaky business with. I am never allowed in the room when they are there, so I can’t tell you anything about that, and frankly I don’t want to know.

‘Your husband is never going to walk again – or so the doctor said. I wouldn’t bet on that, though. They said he would remain paralysed for the remainder of his life, and he is no longer paralysed. I needn’t tell you about your husband, Mrs Honey. He is an extraordinary man, one of the smartest men I have ever met, but he is also a wilful, dangerous man. A man of extraordinary charm – that is all still there. There is also something else, a darkness. A lovelessness. He won’t be generous about you or your showing up there.

‘I had a new set of instructions sent a week ago that Mr Johnson would make contact. I was to tell you what I have just told you, no more, no less. I am to deliver Mrs Honey and you, Mr Johnson, to her husband. I suggest you be very careful about approaching him for a divorce. Don’t raise any hopes. He’s not going to let you go. I don’t think he can. Your husband has to stay dead; he has to stay in hiding, which is what he is doing in the monastery, in the middle of that souk in Tangier. I think he has done some very bad things to some very bad people. You would have to expose him to get a divorce. Do that and you might be responsible for killing him. I have been on this case for a very
long time and I’ve been putting pieces together. He’s a charmer, but he’s one very bad guy, and bad guys come to bad ends an awful lot of times.

‘Look, when we spoke on the telephone, Mr Johnson, I had my instructions to get you here and tell you what I just have. It’s my job. To bring you to him, that’s my job too. I may be stepping out of line here, but you seem like nice people, so for what it’s worth, go away. If you see him, he will only hurt you. He may not even want to, but he is a heroin addict, living in a world of dreams and fantasies, and unfortunately, he plays games. He likes to play with the darker side of people’s lives. I’m a strong guy, I can fight him off, but he is a charmer with the devil in him, and he knows how to get to people and hurt them.’

All the while Mike Chambers was speaking, Arianne kept thinking, That’s the man I lived with, loved, was obsessed with. Jason made me the woman I am now. Mike’s not telling me something I never knew or closed my eyes to. She looked at Ben and felt appalled that he should be hearing this, that he should know that this was the man she mourned, who was still controlling their lives. What life could she and Ben have, unless she found a way to dissolve her marriage legally?

‘I don’t want you to see him, Arianne. Let’s get on the next plane back to London. We can still go to New York and get on with our lives.’

Mike stood up. ‘I’ll go see about lunch and give you some time to talk this over.’

‘Arianne, come away with me now. We’ll make a life and make believe he’s dead. He is dead to you, isn’t he?’

‘Emotionally, yes. But I am tied to him by a wedding licence and I want it dissolved.’

‘You’re playing with fire here.’

‘We’re playing with fire, anyway. We’re here. Let me see him and try to get a divorce.’

‘It’ll take years.’

‘No, months maybe, but not years. I’ll make him give me a divorce. He’s so crooked, he’ll find a way to get us a divorce. He owes me that. We have to see him, Ben.’

‘Who are you doing this for?’

‘For us. For the children we’re going to have. So that he or
Ahmad can never come back at us in the future. I don’t want to be punished any more. The weakness! The mistakes I made loving them! Allowing myself to be so dependent on their pleasure, their adoration of me! God, it makes me sick! I’m so happy you found me now that I’m a complete person, myself unto myself. Think about it, Ben – in a few months, we can get round him. And then be free to marry. You can see what he’s done to me. How can he deny me a divorce? I love you, Ben. I can’t bring this to you. It’ll hover over us for the rest of our lives.’

‘We’ll go and see him,’ Ben told her in a near-whisper.

She closed her eyes. A sigh of relief, and then she said, ‘Thank God, you understand.’

He did understand. He understood that she was naive, no more able to swim with the sharks than she had ever been. What could he do? Her mind was made up. He would give her her chance to prove him wrong.

‘Oh, I love you, I love you so much, Ben.’

‘And I love you, and it will all work out.’

Chapter 26

Jason felt himself pulling out of a dreamless sleep into the state that Mike Chambers called his twilight zone. There was no place lovelier in the world than that twilight zone. All things came together for Jason in that hazy world of no pain. He drifted for several more minutes into sleep and out again. He did that often. It helped him gather energy to turn his brain on. How delicious. He wanted to be nowhere but where the needle was king.

He opened his eyes, only just. He liked this room: the white stone walls and floor; the white semi-transparent cotton curtains that swayed with the slightest movement of air; the misty view through them on to the balcony that overlooked the roof-tops of the souk. Often he pretended that he could see a ribbon of blue sea beyond them. The bright blue sky, and under it, the narrow streets, crooked houses, the bougainvillaea, the potted flowers, the colour of Morocco: it all came alive in his imagination.

Nature within the hubbub of people living and laughing, scheming and cheating and dealing in secrets … The mysteries … He liked the poverty, the strength of character to be found in the souk-dwellers. The wily merchants, even the ugly tourists who swarmed the streets. It was here he lived without having to leave his room.

He opened his eyes just that little bit more. Jason savoured the silence of the monastery, his aloneness, the swishing of the monks’ habits, the clicking wooden beads and crosses as the monks moved silently through the cloisters. Most of all he liked the barrier: the high vaulted ceilings and the narrow slit-windows of the stone halls that ringed the hospice rooms, once monks’ cells, now enlarged to accommodate the terminally ill and dying, the famous in retreat. They kept the outside firmly where it belonged, outside his life, and let him control when to admit it.

The mosquito netting that hung from a rosette on the ceiling had been draped around the bed. To look through it now was to see everything as if shot in soft focus. Jason smiled – that was his life, a world in soft focus. Brother François had closed the shutters. The afternoon sun, still bright, slid into the room in slits of light. The room was hot and the air, what there was of it, was being moved lazily by the blades of the ceiling fan. He liked that fan, so reminiscent of a fine old wooden propeller.

In the shadows of the room, he saw a lovely creature dressed in white, a beautiful woman, romantically ethereal through the netting. She had a strong back, bare, crossed by white straps, slender naked arms and long, luscious legs. Who was this woman? A vision in his twilight zone? Or a visitor? A man … Jason drifted off again into a half-sleep. When he opened his eyes again she was still there. Only now she had turned around. It was Arianne.

The man was still there too, and looking at Arianne in the same way that he, Jason, used to look at her. He was handsome: sexy bastard, fucking my Arianne. He approved of that: he had always liked other men fucking his wife. It was a turn-on for him because he knew that she never gave everything to them as she did to him. She always held back that little bit for Jason. He smiled and feigned sleep while he listened to the man and his wife. They were talking in whispers. He lowered his eyelids to slits, just enough to watch them. He found it strange to have them there in this half-world of his. She was still beautiful, but was she still vulnerable? That had always been her best quality, her vulnerability. The thing he liked to play with.

‘Yes, that’s Jason. How handsome he still is. I once loved that handsome man. How like him to discover Tangier and hide here. I thought he would look worse for all he has been through, but he doesn’t. Except for that scar, he looks exactly the same – older, maybe, a little grey in his hair, thinner, and he’s a little more haggard-looking.’

‘The man has been through a lot, Arianne.’

‘Ben, hold me.’

Jason watched the man put his arms around her, kiss her, fondle her shoulders, place his hand on her breast, and then Jason slipped back into sleep.

Time was irrelevant for Jason. He had lost track of it. It had no meaning for him. Now was just now – later, earlier no longer mattered. It was blissful to live in a void.

She was there again, with Brother François. Whispering – he liked it when people thought he couldn’t hear them because he had slipped into his private twilight. They whispered and were usually indiscreet. He learned more by pretending to drift into a heroin-heavy coma. He played games with whisperers, though they never knew it.

Jason heard them leave the room. Awake now, he was beginning to feel some pain. Clarity of mind, too much clarity. But he sometimes liked that too, especially today. He rang the bell next to his bed. Brother Vincent glided silently into the room and raised the netting from around the bed.

‘We are awake?’

‘Yes, Brother Vincent. Up with the shutter. Awake enough to want some fresh air and to look through the balcony.’

‘And the pain?’

‘There’s always the pain, Brother Vincent. It’s a constant companion. We’re like Siamese twins.’ And Brother Vincent ministered the immediate nursing that Jason needed.

On the third visit, Arianne was more bold, bold and beautiful. This time she was dressed in yellow. The man stood next to her holding her hand. She spoke, ‘Jason.’ The man moved away from her. ‘Too sensitive’, Jason labelled Ben, unable to tell the difference between kindness and sensitivity.

‘Jason! Can you hear me?’ Jason opened his eyes and looked directly at Arianne. The room was filled with sunshine. The balcony curtains were open and a light, hot breeze was ruffling the curtain.

‘That was very bad of Mike Chambers, bringing you here. Very bad indeed.’

‘That’s as maybe, but I’m here, Jason, and you’re alive.’

‘Not for you or anyone else, Arianne. What brings you here?’

‘Is that all you have to say to me?’

‘I think that it was a good question. You’ve intruded on my privacy.’

‘Now see here …’ said Ben.

Arianne grabbed Ben’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Jason, this is my friend Ben Johnson.’

‘Hello, Ben. Look, why don’t you two go out and see the city? It’s an exciting, thrilling city. Go and have a good time.’

‘Look here, we’re not in Tangier to play the tourist.’

‘What are you here for, Ben?’

‘I am here to ask you for a divorce, Jason.’ Jason began to laugh. ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘There is no Jason. He’s dead. Dead men can’t give divorces, Arianne. Go away, forget me. Forget you found me, ever saw me. I gave you away once, I don’t intend to give you away again. Maybe I should have said, I gambled you away once.’

Ben had a sinking feeling. This was too unsavoury. He didn’t think it was good for him, still less Arianne, to hear it. He took her hand. She pulled it away.

‘What do you mean, “gambled me away once”?’

‘Ask Ahmad.’

‘I’m asking you, Jason.’

‘Go away, Arianne. You’re a complication I can no longer handle. And this is becoming tedious.’ The door opened and Brother François entered with a doctor in a white coat, pulling a trolley, from which was suspended a clear plastic bag of fresh blood. An orderly, in a long white robe and white turban, rolled in an oxygen tank.

‘I did tell you it was time to leave!’ Jason spat out.

Arianne was stunned. Asleep, he had seemed so much the Jason she had once loved. Awake, he was a Jason he had never shown her. The sight of the medical team and their equipment shocked Arianne. It was a reality of Jason’s condition that she had not quite taken in. Without another word, she and Ben walked from the room.

Arianne had to lean against the stone wall in the corridor. Ben placed an arm around her and she leaned her head on his shoulder. It was silent and peaceful in the long, narrow hall. She closed her eyes; tears stained her lashes. She took a deep breath, and when she felt more composed they walked slowly down the long hall. The only sound was Arianne’s high heels echoing off the stone floor. From there they walked down the spiral stone staircase, through a cloister and across a courtyard paved in
stone, in its centre a well of marble worn by centuries of use, the angels and flowers carved in it impressively beautiful still. There was silence, except for a bird perched on the rim of the well, singing. The fluttering of wings – several white doves sitting on the cloister roof – ruffled the peace of this haven of quiet hidden behind walls in the midst of the teeming souk. From the cloister they entered another wing of the sixteenth-century monastery – the hospital wing, crowded with people, the poor people of Tangier.

It was a free hospital for the needy. People were everywhere. On chairs, sitting on the floor, leaning against the walls. Crying children and adults, white-coated doctors, nursing monks. Some Catholic sisters in their nun’s habits, wearing huge wimples reminiscent of enormous white butterflies, flitted through the halls. It smelled of disinfectant and unwashed bodies, garlic, stale urine. Arianne and Ben elbowed their way through noisy crowds to burst out into the street where unruly lines of people formed to enter. They made their way through the narrow street of the souk to a café. Here they were to meet Mike Chambers.

Seeing the young man sitting at a table under an awning, Arianne halted and, placing a hand on Ben’s arm, stopped him. In the midst of the crowds on the move they were jostled but Arianne stood firm, holding on to Ben. ‘Ben, I want you to go, return to England. You’ve got to leave me here.’

‘Impossible. I want you to come home with me today. We’ll get a lawyer and let him handle it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, I want you out of here.’

‘Don’t do this, Ben. I honestly don’t think you should insist upon that.’

‘That’s a sick man in there, not just because he needs blood transfusions or because he’s bedridden, but because he’s sick in mind. He’s a lost soul, because he’s a drug addict living in a half-world. Because he doesn’t love you. He loves no one. He’s a loveless creature and he’s going to hurt you. He’s hurting us now. You’ve seen him, he’s alive. So what? You cannot deal with this. I can’t deal with this. That boy sitting at the table over there, he’ll tell you that. He’s already told you that. We’re leaving, even if I have to charter a plane.’ He took her hand and pulled her along.

Arianne stopped him once more, just a few feet from the table.
‘Everything you say is probably true, Ben, but I can’t leave him now. I need some time with him. Even if I come back to you empty-handed, I need some time with him. I didn’t think I did, until I saw those men come in. He’s alone, utterly alone. He’s getting the best medical care, I believe that, but he has no one to love him.’

‘You love him?’

‘Not in the way you mean. The sick need all the love they can get, and there is no love for him. The sick and the dying need love. Unconditional love. I’ve got to give him a little of that. I spent years loving that man. He was the biggest part of my life until you came along. I cannot leave him just now. Please understand that.’

‘Ahmad understood that, Arianne. He knew you could never leave Jason, that you would go back to him. That son of a bitch, he knows you better than I do. How clever he was to plot all this – he knew it would separate us, bring you back into the fold.’

‘It won’t!’

‘You don’t think it will, but you’re wrong.’

‘A month, give me a month, not a day.’

‘A month. And what after that? Another month, and another? Arianne, think well about this. I know this is hard for you. And if I could make it easier for you I would, but I can’t, no one can. This is no overreaction to what I saw today. This is trying to avoid a tragedy.’

‘Two more days,’ she begged.

Ben hesitated. They remained for a time gazing intently at one another. ‘I’m booking a reservation for the day after tomorrow, for two. The rest is up to you.’ He walked away from her to join Mike. Arianne was appalled. Ben had never walked away from her before. Not since that day he served her coffee at Fortnum & Mason’s.

At the table Mike asked, ‘How is he?’

‘I would say he was in cracking form.’

‘Oh.’

‘Precisely. Arianne wants to stay with him.’

‘Oh, Arianne – you don’t know what you’re taking on.’

‘Oh, but I do!’

‘You’ve only seen him a few times and he was asleep most of the time.’

‘She thinks he needs love and she’s the one to give it to him. “Unconditional love”, isn’t that what you said, Arianne?’

‘Yes. I do think that’s what he wants, what he needs, and I can’t walk away from that. Just a month, just to stay here in Tangier, and visit him, care for him, love him … Not the way I love you, Ben, this is something else. I will give him that and I know Jason: he’ll give me a divorce. I can’t just walk away from him.’

‘You’ve never been able to walk away from him.’ Mike Chambers discreetly vanished from the table. ‘The first time I made love to you he was there. You gave me up for him then, and he was dead. At least, that’s what you thought. And you couldn’t give him up. If you stay now, what’s going to happen to us?’

‘I’ll come back to you. I can never love anyone, Ben, not as I love you. And I don’t think you can love anyone the way you love me. I’ll come back to you.’

‘And what if I’m not there? What if I won’t wait? I ran after you once and won you back, but I’ll not run after you a second time. I’m warning you now, Arianne, you risk losing me.’

‘Then I’ll find you when I’ve done what I have to do. When I’m really free. I’ll take my chances that you’ll wait for me. I believe we feel so deeply, so profoundly for one another, that time and distance are irrelevant. You’ll be there for me – I have to believe that or I could never do what I feel compelled to do.’

‘And how will you know when it’s time to leave him?’

‘I’ll know.’

‘That’s not an answer. And did it ever occur to you that he might not let you go?’

‘He will, because I’ll tell him that I’m just visiting, staying with him. But you’re my life, my future, my happiness.’

‘Your mind is made up, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘No matter what I say?’

‘You wouldn’t want it any other way. You’d always be wondering whether I should have stayed. Please indulge me in this.’