Lovers and Liars (13 page)

John Hawthorne was due to arrive for a brief stay that afternoon, and both the girls had been excited by that. Gini might never have met Hawthorne, but she knew of him from Mary’s stories; she had seen photographs of him - and had showed them to her friend. They were both thirteen at the time, and had agreed, with much giggling, that this young, handsome, and then unmarried American was, as her friend put it, a dish.

‘How old is he?’ said Gini’s friend, whose name was Rosie. ‘Too old for us. He’s thirty something.’

‘Great. I like older men.’

‘Don’t be a moron. He won’t even notice we’re there. Two stupid schoolgirls .

Rosie had given her a sideways look.

‘Oh, I don’t know. You look older. You look pretty good. I wish I had long blond hair. Still - you wait. When I’m introduced, I’m going to give him my look. Then I’m going to lick my lips.’

They both gurgled with laughter. ‘Lick your lips? WhyT

‘I read it in this magazine. You have to look them right in the ,eye when you do it. It drives men wild, totally crazy with lust, the “Magazine said.’

10K. I dare you.’

And, of course, that was all bravado and silliness. The actual %neeting had been nothing like that. John Hawthorne was late .ng. She and Rosie grew bored with waiting. They went the garden and played tennis on Mary’s old cracked court.

was a very hot sunny day, and Gini said she’d go back to the use for some lemonade. She ran back, across the terrace, in ough the french windows at the back of the house, carrying

-pink cardigan which she threw down onto a chair, and paused the doorway, out of breath, to refasten one of the buttons on short white tennis dress. She started across the cool of the m, and then stopped dead.

He was here. John Hawthorne was actually here. He was alone the room - Mary must have gone to fetch tea - and he was ding there, looking at her, a slight smile on his face.

e was, at that point, quite simply the most handsome man she ever seen in her young life. Much more handsome than he ared in photographs. Photographs might convey the colour of

hair, his tan, the extraordinary sharp blue of his eyes, but they not convey his vitality, his force. He could only have been rican: he radiated a peculiarly American fitness and health. stared at him, and then to her fury, started to blush. It was

abit she was trying to cure. She had thought she had almost ceeded, but now she could feel the colour sweep up from the ped neckline of her dress, to her neck, to her face. If only

would stop staring, she thought to herself. It was that intent e, now unsmiling, though still amused, considering, which was .g her blush. At which point, when with a thirteen-year-old’s

ssion she was telling herself it would be better to die, right now, held out his hand to her, and spoke.

And you must be Genevieve,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you at Genevieve.

He shook her hand. He looked her up and down: the scuffed s shoes wom with no socks; her long legs, her old mended s dress; her hair which was in a mess, tumbled and fall—

about her shoulders. Her hair was damp from her exertions the court; blond tendrils clung to her forehead. To her toastonishment, he lifted his hand, and with one finger he shed one of these damp curls back. He looked so deeply into

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her eyes that Gini told herself she was going to faint. Then he stepped back, and laughed.

‘Well, it was obviously some game of tennis. Did you winT

At that moment Mary returned with the tea tray, and started in on train timetables. Gini fled back to the garden, and Rosie, who was lying on the grass, flat on her back.

‘Oh my God.’ Rosie sat up. ‘He’s there, isn’t he? I can tell from your face. Why didn’t you call me, you pig? What’s he like?’ ‘Devastating,’ said Gini - it was that year’s word.

‘What did he doT

‘Shook hands. Then he lifted this little bit of hair off my face-2 ‘No! Were you looking like a beetroot then? You look like one now. Quick, let’s go back … ‘

They went back. Rosie was impressed. She was so impressed she forgot to give him the look, or lick her lips. Like Gini, she stared at the floor and went red.

They talked over this major, this significant event the whole way back to school. They boasted about the meeting shamelessly in the dormitory at night. They cut out pictures of John Hawthorne from Time, and pinned them up next to their beds. The infatuation was heady, intense. It lasted about two months, perhaps three, and then - in the ways of things - they gradually forgot this young American god, and the infatuation wore off.

So, yes, Gini could remember that meeting well, and she had no intention of describing the details of her own foolishness to anyone, least of all Pascal. Looking back at it now, she could see it for the unremarkable thing it was. It was her own emotions at the time which magnified it. Once she analysed what had happened, she could see that Hawthorne probably guessed what was going on and was amused.

He had been, in the half-hour before she and Rosie finally left, polite, considerate, urbane - and utterly the other side of that barrier between the young and the grown-up. Mary had probably shared his amusement - Gini could recall their exchanging wry looks as she and Rosie stammered their way through blushing, inarticulate replies to Hawthorne’s questions about their school, and the subjects they had been studying.

Gini sighed now, and stood up. She pushed this unhelpful memory to one side, and gathered up the press clippings. What she needed now was more direct testimony, she decided: an update on the Hawthornes, as seen by someone who knew them well.

1 It was eight-thirty. There was still time this evening. She dialled or stepmother’s number, hoping that for once Mary would be k, Mary was fighting a characteristically tough battle against the Oneliness and grief of her widowhood. She saw friends, and

01ont out, as often as she could.

IVairy answered on the third ring. On hearing Gini’s voice, The gave a laugh of delight.

*10h, it’s you, darling. How lovely. What? No - absolutely, noth—

0& Sitting curled up on the sofa, watching that new American *ap - the one that’s so bad it’s good … I’d love to see you, Owling. I’ll make us some sandwiches … What? Half a pizza? Ion? Gini, when will you learn? Wonderful, darling. Come at

:suspect/ Mary said, ushering Gini into the large untidy room Inch had once been her artist grandfather’s studio, ‘I suspect that ie, third wife is going to murder the second wife because they’ve th been having a huge affair with the husband’s son by his first ife … I

She moved across to the television, where the credits for the imp opera were now rolling. She switched it off.

00n the other hand/ she went on, ‘it could be that the son’s the id villain. He could be setting up wife number three, because khough he’s been having this mad affair with her, he’s actually my. and loathes all women… ‘

fit sounds complicated, Mary.’

rferribly.’ Mary gave her a smile of pure delight. ‘Complicated

01h - just the kind I like. In the end it will all resolve itself, odways does. Then I’ll know - who was really bad, and who ks really good. I like to keep that clear. None of this moda -muddying of the waters … Now, what will you have to ink?’

‘Coffee would be fine.’

0You drink too much coffee. You eat too many take-away meals. k good to have a chance to feed you once in a while. You sit by the le, and I’ll just finish making those sandwiches. Then we can sin. Jere’s a chocolate mousse.’

Gini smiled. She knew better than to argue, she knew better than bother Mary in her kitchen. She sat down by the huge fire, as lamanded, and looked around the familiar room with pleasure.

0t to be here, as always, brought a sense of contentment, of Oky. At Mary’s she could always relax.

Gini could not remember her own mother, who had died when Gini was little more than a baby. She could - just - remember the succession of nannies and friends who had been roped in by her father to look after her when she was a small child. It was not a period she liked to recall. But she could remember, with great clarity, the advent of Mary in her life.

Gini had been five, and one day Sam had arrived home with this impulsive untidy plain-spoken young Englishwoman. It had been a whirlwind romance - and this, he announced to Gini, was his new wife. Gini had liked Mary then; she had come to love her rapidly, for Sam was always away and it was the first time any one person had stayed long enough to be loved; she had loved, and trusted Mary, ever since.

Five years after that marriage, Mary finally decided that Sam’s infidelities, his long absences abroad, and his increasingly heavy drinking, could not be tolerated any longer. She had made this clear to Sam, without rancour, and they had duly - and quite amiably in the circumstances - divorced. Gini had spent the next year in Washington; of that year, her father was abroad for nine months. A new succession of friends and nannies were left to manage - and when Mary discovered this, she had told Sam in her clear firm way that this would not do. Since he could not cope, Gini would go to England to live. She would attend Mary’s old school. She would live with Mary who then, years prior to her second marriage, lived alone in reduced financial circumstances, in the country, in Kent. Sam was supposed to visit regularly, and did - for the first year. Then his good intentions slipped away; the excuses began. Mary would nag and cajole and argue, and Sam would say: ‘Sure, sure. Give me a break, will you? I’ll visit on my way back.’

Then he would take off, to the Middle East, or the Far East, or Afghanistan or wherever, and sometimes he would remember to visit, and sometimes he would forget.

But Mary, always, was there. When Gini thought of her now, she felt none of the muddle and pain associated with her love for her father: her feelings for Mary were simple and calm; they had remained so throughout the period of Mary’s second marriage, which occurred when Gini was seventeen (and just beginning work), and they remained unaltered now, though intensified, at this time of Mary’s widowhood. For Mary she felt love, and also an absolute trust. On only one occasion in her past life had she ever kept anything from Mary: she had never told Mary

mhat had happened to her that summer when, caught up in confusion and striving of adolescence, she had run off to t.

y one secret, Gini thought now, looking around her. She felt a anxiety at that, but it swiftly passed. This room calmed her, lulled her: Mary had the gift of imparting happiness, and room was very like Mary herself.

was attached to the side of Mary’s tall rambling Kensington ; it was where Mary now opted to spend most of her time. was here that she held her frequent and famous parties, with

catholic n-dx of guests. It was here that Mary devoured her urite crime novels, or worked on the water-colours she liked call her ‘daubs’ or her ‘mistakes’.

e room was spacious, generous, shabby and without pretenIt spoke of Mary’s past, of her strong affection for family friends. Mary’s greatest quality was her loyalty, Gini thought:

y and undeviatingly loyal to her living friends, she was loyal and loving towards the dead.

e room was filled with mementoes from Mary’s childhood and her grandfather’s huge Victorian oils, her diplomat father’s Somehow they had been crammed in beside the magpie of Mary’s own life - the Italian ceramics, the Moroccan the little rickety brass tables brought back from the Far Mary was an inveterate traveller, with a keen eye for a in. ‘What I cannot resist,’ she would sometimes wail, ‘is

So, here, cheek by jowl with inherited Chippendale, was

1e vase, picked up in some bazaar; here, too, was a fat china cat of unparalleled ugliness bought by Gini for Mary’s day - a long ago birthday in Washington DC, when Mary Sam were still married, and Gini, already devoted to her new lish stepmother, was aged six.

ere, too, was more evidence that for Mary love and affection of far greater importance than taste: a ghastly and vulgar of Steuben glass, presented by Sam to compensate for one ‘flings’, as he called them. Here, more happily, was all the

dimenta of Mary’s second marriage: bits of fishing-rods and a mounted stag’s head, with the date on which Sir Richard it engraved on a plaque beneath. Here were Richard’s books, rd’s pipes, his chess set, all the objects he and Mary had

d abroad on his various diplomatic postings. ‘Don’t they you sad?’ Gini had asked a few months after his death, and had been astonished by the question.

‘Sad? Of course not, darling. How could they? They bring him back.’

Gini sighed, feeling guilty. She had not done enough to help Mary through her first year of widowhood, she felt sometimes. She saw Mary as often as she could, when work did not take her away from London, but it was as if Mary needed some comfort Gini herself could not give; as if her own ability to show love were constrained, even with Mary, to whom she had been so close for most of her life. Sometimes Gini would ask herself when she had first become wary of showing emotion. Was it since Beirut, or in Beirut that she had become guarded - or did the damage begin much further back?

From the small kitchen beyond the studio came the rattle of plates. Impetuously, suddenly angry with herself, Gini rose to her feet. She went out to the kitchen, put her arms around Mary, and gave her a kiss. Mary returned her hug, then laughed.

‘That’s a nice surprise, darling. What brought that onT ‘Nothing. I’m very fond of you. Just occasionally, I guess it’s time to remind you of that.’

‘And a very good thing too. Now, you take this tray. We’ll eat by the fire, would that be nice? No, Dog, you damn well can’t have a sandwich.’

She bent and gave Dog, an ancient and malodorous Labrador, a shove. Dog, who had a winning disposition, did not budge. Once trained to the gun, and Sir Richard’s favourite gun-dog, he had in latter years grown soft. Since the demise of his sister - known equally succinctly as Bitch - he had lorded it over Mary’s heart and house. He continued, now, to sit under her feet, his eyes fixed on hers with liquid adoration. Mary sniffed.