Lady of Hay (61 page)

She stared down.

One of the four stone effigies that lay with their feet toward the east was the carved figure of William Marshall, first Earl of Pembroke. On his left arm he carried a shield, in his right hand a sword. His face, moustached and bland, stared from his mail hood up past them toward the dome of the church, the eyes wide. One foot was broken, the other rested on a small snarling animal. A thin ray of sunlight straying through the clear glass of one of the south windows touched his face.

“We knew him, you and I,” Tim said softly.

For a moment neither of them moved, then Jo turned and, with a little sob, she almost ran from the church.

Tim followed her slowly, closing the door behind him with a clatter that echoed in the silence of the building.

She was standing outside, staring up at the sky. “I am going, Tim,” she said wildly. “I am going to the States. None of this will matter there.”

Tim nodded slowly. “So. When will you leave?”

She shrugged. “I’m seeing Bet late this afternoon. There’s a contract I’ve got to tear up.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Once that is over I’ll sort things out and leave as soon as I can.” She shivered. “It’s cold. Let’s do what you first suggested and walk down along the river.”

The tide was high, the moored ships riding up alongside the river wall, the thick Thames water deeply opaque as it slopped cheerfully against the gray stone. They leaned on the wall and stared over at the river boats chugging up the center of the tide. Tim’s fingers itched suddenly for his camera as he stared south toward the opposite bank. The choppy water, sparkling in the breezy sunlight, threw a rippled haze of refracted light onto the black paintwork of the old Thames barge moored against the green piles.

He took a deep breath. If Jo could throw off the past, surely to God he could too!

Slowly they began to walk west toward Westminster. He glanced at his watch. “I have got to get back by two, Jo,” he said gently. “I’ve got another session starting then.”

She smiled. The wind had pushed the hair back from her face, bringing some color back to her cheeks. “You do think I’m right to go, Tim.” She was almost pleading suddenly.

“One can’t run away from destiny, Jo.” He didn’t look at her. “But then your destiny is tied up with Nick.”

“Is it?” she said in a small voice. “All I know is, I want to be with him.” She walked on, her eyes narrowed in the dazzle of light off the water, watching the gulls wheeling and diving in the wake of a police launch as it churned westward. “The trouble is, I have a feeling that in that previous life of ours he hated me.”

“You do know who he was, then?”

Tim had almost to run to keep up with her as she began to walk faster and faster. Then she stopped dead, staring unseeing toward the Festival Hall across the glittering water.

“But it’s not real, Tim,” she said at last. “That part of it is not real.”

Tim clenched his fists in his pockets as she began walking once more, but he said nothing. It wasn’t until they reached Westminster that she stopped again.

She turned to him at last. “You’ll have to take the subway back if you’re going to make it by two. I’m sorry. I’ve made you late.”

He nodded.

“Tim”—she caught his hands—“Tim, that night in Raglan. I’m glad it happened.”

He smiled at her. “So am I, Jo.” The smile broadened. “I owe destiny one now.”

“Perhaps in our next life…?”

He laughed out loud. “It’s a date.”

He stood watching as she dodged across the road and jumped on a bus as it moved up the road, then he turned toward the steps that led to the station near Westminster Pier. His smile had died as swiftly as it had come.

***

“No! No! No!” Bet slammed her fist on her desk, making the pens jump up in the air. “No, you can’t tear up that contract! I won’t let you! If you try to wriggle out of this I’ll see your name is mud with every magazine in the country!”

Jo sat tight-lipped in front of her. “Look, for God’s sake, be reasonable!”

“I am being reasonable! I have offered you as much time as you need. I’ve promised you a monumental fee. I’ve offered any research facilities you care to name. I arranged for one of London’s top photographers to go with you to Wales. I will do any goddamn thing you like, Jo, but I want that series! What’s wrong, anyway? Is it Nick? He’s put you up to this, hasn’t he, the bastard! Or is it that you are afraid of him?” Her eyes were probing suddenly. “You didn’t tell me what happened in Wales.”

Jo looked away. “Not much,” she said guardedly. “Look, Bet, please. You won’t get me to change my mind—”

“Then you’ve got to give me a good reason for your decision. Did Nick threaten you?”

Shaking her head, Jo sighed. “On the contrary. He told me he loved me.”

“But! There has to be a but!”

Jo smiled. “You’re right, of course. There are so many buts. Even so, I want to go to New York to be with him.”

Bet groaned. “Jo, do you know what the temperature in New York was yesterday? It was ninety-four degrees with a humidity of ninety percent. Are you serious about going? You’ve only to touch another human being and you both die of nuclear fusion.”

Jo laughed. “Isn’t it fission? If I remember, they’ve got pretty efficient air-conditioning over there—”

“Passion flourishes on the streets,” Bet said darkly. With her customary impatience she stood up and went to her favorite stance by the window. “If it’s not Nick, then something else has happened to frighten you off,” she said over her shoulder.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell me what?”

“I don’t think so, Bet. Let’s just say that I’m worried about my sometimes tenuous grip on sanity.”

Bet laughed. “Oh, that!”

“Yes, that. I’m not doing it, Bet. And you know you can’t make me. That contract only bound me to exclusivity.”

Bet threw herself back into her chair. She took a deep breath. “Okay, I tell you what. Let’s both go away and think about it, and in the meantime you can do me a favor to put me in a good mood.”

Jo relaxed a little, but even so she eyed Bet suspiciously. It was not like her to surrender so easily. “What favor?”

“I’m planning to run an article about a fellow called Ben Clements and his wife. He is one of these self-sufficiency buffs. The types you were about to try to discredit in your original series. Back to nature, nostalgia—everything modern and chemical and easy is bad. Everything old and muddy and difficult is good. How would you like to go and interview them for me? I want a nice three pages with pictures. But not Tim Heacham this time, please. I can’t afford it.”

“I’ve heard of Clements,” Jo said thoughtfully. “He lives up in the Lake District somewhere, doesn’t he?”

Bet looked vague. “I heard he’s moved. I’ll call up the file if you’re interested.”

Jo smiled. “Okay. If I can do it straight away I will, just to put you in that good mood. Then I’ll go to New York.”

Bet leaned forward and pressed the buzzer on her desk. “Sue? Get the Ben Clements file, would you?” She glanced over her glasses at Jo. “You won’t back out of this?”

“I won’t back out of it.” Jo stood up. “You’ve got to try to understand about the other thing, Bet. It’s not just a series of articles. It’s
me
, and I can’t be objective about what’s happening anymore.”

The door opened and Bet’s secretary appeared with a manila folder. She grinned at Jo as she put it on Bet’s desk.

Bet flipped open the file. In it were one or two cuttings, some notes, and a photograph. She passed the photo to Jo. “There he is, a nice old boy by the look of him.”

Jo studied the face before her. Ben Clements looked as if he were in his early sixties, his hair and beard white, his face tanned and wrinkled, netted with a thousand laughter lines.

“I gather he has a young wife, and hers is the angle we want, of course. Here”—Bet thrust the file at her—“stick that in your bag and work on it when you get home. I am scheduling it for the December issue, so I’ll want it by the sixteenth at the latest. Obviously I don’t want you to make it too summery—but you needn’t waffle on about Father Christmas on the farm. I’ve enough references to seasonal spirit in the rest of the issue. I’m trusting you, Jo. Normally I’d get one of our own feature writers on this.”

Jo took the file. “Don’t worry, Bet. You’ve made me feel so guilty already that I won’t let you down. I promise. I wouldn’t mind a trip up north actually.”

“He’s moved, I told you. But you’ll find all the details in there.” She looked at her watch. “God, I’ve got a meeting downstairs in three minutes. Good luck with the article.”

Jo didn’t open the file until she was home. She threw herself down on the sofa and, kicking off her sandals, put her feet on the coffee table before taking out Ben Clements’s photo and studying it closely. As Bet had said, he looked a nice old boy.

She tipped the contents of the file out onto her lap and looked through it. His address and phone number were on a card by themselves, the last item to come to hand. Jo picked up the card and looked at it, then she put it down. For a moment she stared into space, then slowly she began to laugh. “You are seven kinds of no-good clever scheming cow, Bet Gunning,” she said out loud to the empty room. “But it won’t change my mind!”

The card read:

Pen y Garth

Mynydd

Near Brecon

***

The headline in the morning paper in huge black letters was Bad King John Good for Jo. Judy stared at it in stunned silence as she stood on the curb, not seeing the traffic as it streamed within inches of her along the Fulham Road. Pete had done it! He had printed what she had told him, word for word!

Advertising executive Nick Franklyn can comfort himself after his latest big disappointment in the world of business. In the wake of live-in girlfriend Jo Clifford’s revelations about her previous life as a medieval femme fatale, Nick, not to be outdone, had himself hypnotized by his psychiatrist brother. Imagine his surprise when he found out that in his previous life he had been, not Jo’s lover, nor her husband, but her king!

Judy folded the paper abruptly and shoved it in the litter bin on the lamppost beside her. She felt slightly sick. Turning, she began to walk slowly up the road, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her peacock-blue jeans. Pete had promised he would not tell anyone who had given him the story, but would he keep his word? She bit her lip nervously. Nick was in the States, but someone was bound to tell him about the article. Jo would see it too. And Sam. She shivered.

***

Sam had spent the rest of the night he had been arrested in jail. He had appeared before the magistrates on Wednesday morning contrite and very sober, accompanied by his impeccable character and his professional qualifications, to say nothing of Nick’s solicitor, Alistair Laver. The outcome had been a heavy fine, and he was bound over to keep the peace. When he rang Judy later to apologize she hung up on him.

She bought a pint of milk and some bread and cheese, and on second thoughts another copy of the paper, then she made her way back to the studio.

Pete answered on the second ring. “Hi! Have you seen the article?”

Judy grimaced. “It’s a bit sensationalized, isn’t it?”

Pete laughed. “I thought you wanted it shouted from the rooftops. That was the biggest print I could persuade the editor to use without being considered vulgar! Has the victim screamed yet?”

“Pete! You’re looking for trouble!”

“No. No. I was just doing a lady a favor.”

Judy sighed. “I almost wish I hadn’t told you now. It seems a cheap thing to do. Nick’s in the States. Jo is the only one who is likely to see it.”

Pete chuckled. “And the redoubtable Ms. Gunning. I can’t wait for her to spot it. I tell you what, sweetie. Why don’t you and I have lunch? We’ll split a bottle of bubbly and plan your next revelation. At this rate I shall have to pay you a retainer. What do you say? Joe Allen’s at one?”

“Okay. Thanks, Pete, I’d like that.” She hesitated suddenly. “But supposing someone sees us? They might guess it was me that told you!”

“Deny it.” Pete was smiling to himself as he stirred milk into his cereal. “Deny everything, Judy. I always do. I’ll see you at one o’clock!”

***

Bet rang Jo at four minutes past eight. “Have you seen what that unprincipled bastard Pete Leveson has done now?”

Jo sat down, pulling the phone onto her knee. “That’s a good one, coming from you, Bet! What has he done?”

“He’s printed the sequel to your story.”

Jo froze. “The sequel?”

“About Nick. Dear God! No wonder I thought there was something odd about him last time I saw him. And to think I nearly—” She shut up abruptly.

“You nearly what, Bet?” Jo said sharply.

“Nothing, Sweetie.” Bet swiftly turned on the charm. “Jo, love, you must have known all this for ages. You might have told me! It explains his crazy behavior, for God’s sake. And it makes the story so much more exciting. And to have had a declaration of love from him too! You must go through with it, Jo. You must! You do see that, don’t you?”