Lovers and Liars (70 page)

Gini turned to look at Mary, whose face met hers with an expression of unhappy concern.

‘Yes I can,’ she said quietly. ‘Gini, I told you before about the scene I witnessed. It was terribly distressing for me, and quite appalling for John. You have to understand John is in an impossible position. He has his public duties to perform. He’s been trying to keep up appearances, trying to protect Lise from herself. He has to think of their sons. And he’s borne all this on his own. He couldn’t even discuss it, except with the doctors. Gini, just try to imagine for a moment what he’s been through-‘

‘I’m partly to blarne.’ John Hawthorne spoke suddenly. He had turned back to face Gini. The pain in his eyes was now unmistakable. He passed his hand tiredly across his face. ‘I have to recognize that fact. I have to live with it day and night. I should have acted sooner. I should never have allowed my sons to witness what they have witnessed. I should probably never have accepted this posting - and I should certainly have taken the doctors’ advice months ago. But you see … ‘His voice trailed off. After a moment he composed himself and continued. ‘It’s such a cruel disease. There are periods when Lise is almost her old self, when I start to hope again. And then there is always a relapse … and she turns into a person I hardly know. She’ll suddenly have one of these terrible rages. Or she’ll seem perfectly normal

- and then she’ll tell some extraordinary lie, when there’s no apparent reason to lie at all.’

He looked at Gini and at Mary. ‘You remember the night we came here for your party - it was Lise’s birthday?’

Mary nodded. An expression of pained bewilderment now came into Hawthorne’s features.

‘Well, that was one of the occasions when I thought she seemed better. She was animated, almost the way she used to be. And then, when we were about to leave - you remember, Mary? She showed you her coat, and the necklace she was wearing and she said they were my birthday present to her that day?’

‘I remember,’ Mary replied.

‘Well, that wasn’t true. I gave Lise the coat and the necklace last year, back in the fall. I took her away for the weekend then, just the two of us, to the country. It was our wedding anniversary. I wanted … I tried.’ He broke off, then controlled the emotion in his voice. ‘I thought if we could just have two days, two quiet, normal days … And she seemed pleased with the coat, and the necklace. Then she put them away. She never wore them,

t once, until the night of your party. Then she lied about en I’d given them to her. Why? Why? I can’t tell whether

genuinely makes a mistake or whether it’s aimed at me, if she wanted to forget that weekend, forget our anniver, forget our marriage. I just don’t know any more … ‘ He ed away. Mary rose to her feet, and crossed to him. She put arm around his shoulders.

ohn, don’t. Don’t,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re crucifying yourself er this and that doesn’t help anyone, you know. It’s better if talk about it. You should learn to talk to your friends. Look.

ve a drink. You’re exhausted, let me get you a whisky. Don’t e. just a small one. Come on.’

She crossed back to the drinks table, and poured the whisky. i looked at Hawthorne’s tense figure, and a terrible sick sense oubt welled up inside her. She thought: What have I done? I’ve wrong, totally wrong …

ere was a long awkward silence then. Hawthorne accepted drink from Mary, who returned to her chair. Gini saw her er look at Hawthorne with a kind of embarrassed concern.

‘Shall I go on, John? Gini might as well know it all.’

‘Why noff Hawthorne gave a bitter, dismissive gesture of the nd. ‘You explain. I can’t stand to talk about it any more.’

Sam turned back to Gini. He took a piece of paper from his cket pocket, and handed it to her. ‘Read that later,’ he said. ‘It’s copy of an article I wrote twentyfive years ago. It describes a

sion John’s platoon went on in Vietnam, in November nineteen Itixty-eight. I was attached to his platoon. We were cut off, up tountry, in the jungle south of Hue, south of the 17th parallel, not far from a village called My Nuc. John’s platoon was under Vietcong fire, pinned down, for over five days. Seventeen of his Inen died.’ He paused. ‘Has McMullen made allegations about imrhat happened at My Nuc to your newspaper? Because believe me, Gini, if he hasn’t yet, he will.’

Gini hesitated. She looked down at the floor. All three were now watching her closely.

- ‘Come on, Gini,’ said her father impatiently. ‘We know pretty rnuch what McMullen’s been saying about John and his marriage. Eas he made allegations about Vietnam as wellT

‘I told you/ Gini replied, ‘I’ve never spoken to McMullen. He’s disappeared. All I was doing was checking out rumours.’

‘About my marriageT Hawthorne said sharply. ‘Yes.’

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‘And about the events at My Nuc?’ This time it was her father who asked the question.

Gini shrugged. ‘I was told allegations had been made aboutt what happened there. Yes.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Her father shot Hawthorne an angry look. ‘OK, Gini. My book on Vietnam is due out later this year - maybe that helped trigger McMullen - but let’s get this straight. McMullen’s raised questions about My Nuc before. He’s made allegations before. Twenty goddamn years ago. Did you know thatT

Gini hesitated. ‘No, I didn’t/ she said.

‘Well he did. Atrocities, rape, murder of non-combatants. He made them first to a US Senator, who’s now dead. He took the story to two US newspapers back in nineteen seventytwo, when he spent six months in the States. They’re a fabrication from beginning to end. None of it happened, Gini. None of it. When he tried to get newspapers interested back then, he was laughed out of town - and he didn’t like that, not one little bit. Gini, I was goddamn well there. I was with John the entire time. The village of My Nuc had been razed before we even got there. When we reached it, everyone in it was dead including the girl McMullen claims was raped. Everything I wrote then is God’s own truth. I was a goddamn eyewitness, Gini, believe that.’

There was a silence. Out of that silence, John Hawthorne spoke. ‘McMullen has always claimed to know of witnesses also, Sam. I imagine Gini’s heard that. There’s no point in this claim and counter-claim, not twentyfive years after an event. What Gini should do is take a very close look at when McMullen made those accusations, and what he has done since.’ He turned his eyes coldly in her direction.

‘Since last July, when McMullen began on a campaign to influence my wife - knowing full-well, I believe, how ill she was - I’ve made it my business to have McMullen and his allegations checked out. The woman he claims was raped was not some peasant living in a tiny remote village. For a start, she was from North Vietnam, not the south. Her father and her brother were both prominent Hanoi activists. In fact, her father was on the Standing Committee of the North Vietnamese national assembly. She was twentyfive years old when she died and she’d been a political activist since the age of sixteen. She was half French and she was extremely welleducated. She had not only studied in Hanoi, but also Paris, Prague and Moscow. So I think there are some questions to be asked about what this woman was doing in My Nuc, in the south.’

‘She was a fucking NLF agent, that’s what she was,’ Sam burst vut. ‘She was working with the Vietcong, Gini - have you got ?that?’ He threw up his hands. ‘Jesus, John, this is a waste of time. .knows nothing about that war.’

‘All right.’ Hawthorne showed no sign of emotion. ‘Then perps she will understand better if I explain McMullen’s situation. the time of this woman’s death he had known her, in Paris, precisely two months. When news of her death finally reached , he had a mental collapse - a complete breakdown. His

rents tried to hush it up, but medical records exist. When British rity started checking him out last summer, at my behest, discovered McMullen left Oxford, and spent six months in a

ate nursing home. It was after he left there that this obsession t My Nuc began. When my people started checking back, they d he’d even written three times to my office for information t my military record. I had never even seen those letters now. They were filed as a routine request, dealt with by a nior secretary and forgotten.’

‘He wrote to me, too/ Sam burst out. ‘Twenty goddamn years o he wrote. I put my lawyers onto him, and never heard another ord. I just wrote it off, forgot it. Gini, you should know, all

rnalists get those kinds of letters, alleging this, alleging that. a man like John, it’s even worse. Every time he makes a speech, ry time he’s on TV there’s some ass-hole writing in, claiming to his long-lost son, claiming John’s sending the guy personal mesges over the airwaves in code - there’s a lot of nuts out there. If

,Y_ou want to stay sane, you ignore them. Usually, they go away.’ He paused and glanced at Hawthorne, then turned back to Gini. just remember, Gini, sometimes they don’t go away. Any merican knows

that. Sometimes they hole up, and they let their antasies fester away and then, eventually, they surface. They go vut one day and kill a president or slash a movie-star, or go into a playground and shoot up all the little kids.’

I He paused. ‘Now, I’m not saying McMullen is that kind of psychopath, but I am saying he’s badly disturbed. And I am saying he’s been trailing John for twentyfive years with this “goddamn crazy fantasy of his.’

There was a silence. ‘Trailing?’ Gini said.

Hawthorne gave a sigh. ‘Take a look at the pattern,’ he said in a :vool voice. ‘McMullen pursued an active campaign on the question of My Nuc for three years. He wrote to me and to Sam. We now

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know that he made more direct allegations, in the same period, immediately after his breakdown, first to Senator Melville then to two American newspapers. But he did more than that. As Sam said, towards the end of this period, he spent six months in the States.,

He stopped, and looked at Gini coldly. ‘Do you know who he spent those six months with? With some very distant friends of his mother’s. The Grenville family. Lise is distantly related to them. I am more closely related. They are my first cousins. I visit them often. That was when I first encountered James McMullen, their pleasant young English friend who was staying with them while he recovered from a somewhat vague illness. I met him first in nineteen seventytwo, Gini, at their house. It was the same occasion on which Lise first met him. She and McMullen became close friends, and remained friends afterwards. They shared an interest in art, a passion for Italy. I always suspected McMullen was a little in love with her - his devotion to her always amused Lise. She and I used to tease one another about it. He’d actually proposed to her, at some point or so she told me.’

His gaze became intent. ‘I now believe there was much more to that meeting, and to McMullen’s continuing contact with Lise, than I understood at the time. McMullen may well love Lise, in some strange way of his own, but he is also prepared to use her. Through Lise, he remains in close contact with me. And through Lise, and her illness, he thinks he has finally found the means of destroying me. It’s taken him twentyfive years. No doubt the revenge tastes all the more sweet for the delay.’

He turned away with a curt gesture as he said this, and stared down into the fire. Gini looked at the pale tight line of his profile, and she thought: I was right. Hawthorne might now have given her further substantiating detail, detail McMullen had been careful to leave out, but in essence the suggestion he was now making was the one she had made to McMullen herself. It was left to her father to drive the nail home, and he did so at once.

‘Come on, Gini/ he took a long swallow of bourbon then slammed the glass down on the table beside him, ‘you’re not that naive. You can see the pattern here. This guy’s been nursing this grievance a long time. Now my book’s due out and Lise’s illness, her fantasies about John - they give him the chance he’s been waiting for. So, he moves in for the kill. This time, when he goes to a newspaper, he makes sure he’s got a very different story to peddle. A sex scandal about an eminent man - about the one American politician I know who has a clean pair of

n s in t at respect. And who buys it? You do, Gini. You that bastard Lamartine.’

‘He turned away with a shudder of disgust. He refilled his rbon glass, ignoring Mary’s protests. When Gini still said hing, he threw up his hands angrily.

!You talk to her, John,’ he said. ‘I give up on this. Make her see se. I can tell when she gets that goddamn mulish look on her she’s not listening to me. You try.’

‘Very well.’ Hawthorne put down his whisky, and turned back look at Gini. ‘I’ll say this. I don’t know what exact lies McMullen been peddling this time. But I have a pretty fair idea. And he ‘t have invented those stories either, though he may have ellished them. He’ll have gotten them from Lise. Because Mary’s seen this - Lise is tormented with jealousy. It’s tearing apart. She imagines I have liaisons, affairs. She suspects any an I have any dealings with in the course of my work. Nothing

y or do can reassure her - and McMullen has been working on t, to my certain knowledge, since the summer of last year.’ He gave a sudden furious gesture. ‘That’s the kind of man he

He’s prepared to exploit my wife’s illness and I’m not going to nd for that any more. It’s all lies, from beginning to end - all of it. ve my wife - and as far as McMullen’s concerned, that’s my one forgivable sin. That and the fact that I married Lise, of course. n years after she refused - very wisely - to marry him.’

He stopped in an abrupt way, and looked Gini directly in the koves. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I won’t discuss this any further. It sickens One to have to discuss Lise and our marriage in this way. Make your Own judgement, Gini, but if you still intend pursuing this, despite What I’ve told you and what Sam’s told you, just remember this:

wouldn’t take a great deal to push Lise over the edge. If any Of this did become public you realize she could try to kill herself Pgain? You do understand that, do you? Because let’s be quite clear

that’s what’s at stake here. Not my reputation, not my future. I’ve reached the point now where I don’t give a damn about that any iftore. But I do care about my sons. And I do care about Lise.’