Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) (7 page)

She might have read more into it, had she not felt ashamed for wanting to hide behind her daughter, to use her as a shield of sorts in this awful ordeal she was going to have to face.

“All right. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone,” she said as she crossed to the door. She looked back, but Megan and her daughter were oblivious to what she was saying. She gave up. “Goodbye.” There was no response. No one seemed to have even heard her. Johanna raised her voice. “Goodbye.”

“Huh? Oh, yes, goodbye,” Jocelyn answered, then turned her attention toward Megan and more important matters.

Hero worship, Johanna thought as she rode down the elevator. Jocelyn had a bad case of hero worship. It was easy to see why. Megan was tall and pretty and seemed to have everything. Certainly clothes and a sharp, flashing wit. But the shallow streak that Johanna detected within Megan made her wish that she hadn’t chosen her to come along with them. There hadn’t been enough time to make a proper choice. The woman they had used and relied on all these years had quit, only two days before the trip to London. Johanna had frantically accepted the first civilized person who had arrived from the agency with no communicable diseases.

Just goes to show you, you can’t go by first impressions
. Well, it would pass. They’d be going home soon. In the fall school would start and Megan would be gone. They had a housekeeper at home and that was sufficient.

The tall, burly doorman snapped to life when he saw her walk through the revolving door and approach him. His name was Masterson and Johanna had made his acquaintance the first day they had arrived. He unconsciously approved of the white two-piece suit she wore. The single strand of pearls at her throat was just the right accent. A lady, through and through. There were so few of them these days.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Whitney. It looks like a very pleasant day for you. Shall I have someone bring your car around?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No, I think I’d rather have a cab this afternoon. I really don’t know my way around London that well and driving on the wrong side of the street always confuses me.”

“The wrong side, ma’am?” Masterson’s tone was amused as he beckoned for a cab to break free of its formation and pull over to the curb.

Johanna smiled up at the man. “I guess you don’t consider it the wrong side.”

“No, madam, we don’t.” He held the door open for her and tried not to admire her legs too much as she slid into the cab.

Johanna leaned forward. She glanced at the rearview mirror. The cab driver had small, squinty eyes, set in a pockmarked, lined face that had seen more than its share of the rough side of life. It sent a slight chill down her spine. She was just being unduly jumpy of late, she thought.

“Heathrow airport, please. Pan Am terminal.”

The wiry cab driver nodded as he pulled the handle of the meter down. “Pan Am terminal it is, mum.”

Johanna tried to settle back in the seat but found that she was too tense. Maybe she should have driven, she thought. That way, on the way back, she would have had something to occupy herself with, to fill in the silences. A reason to lapse into silence herself. God, what was she going to say to Denise? What words were possible in this kind of a situation?

“I had a friend on the plane those terrorists bombed,” Johanna said, suddenly wanting to talk, to talk to a stranger because it didn’t hurt so much to tell a stranger things. “And I would have been on it, too.”

She said the last sentence softly, half to herself in wonder, abruptly remembering Paul’s urgings to leave London and fly home with him. If Paul had convinced her, she and Jocelyn would have been on that flight with him. And now it would be Harry collecting bits and pieces of them. Would he have wept? Would he have even cared? She thought of telling him, and then rejected the idea. The plain truth was that Harry didn’t care, not in his present state. It was useless to try and force him to be something other than what he was now. Nothing she had done thus far had accomplished anything to make him change.

She saw the cab driver’s eyes looking at her sympathetically in the rearview mirror.

“Oh, it’s sorry I am to hear that, mum.”

“That’s all right. I’m going to meet his widow now.”

“Then the meter’ll be off,” Gallegher said, gently but firmly.

Johanna rested her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes as the cab wove its way through midday traffic.

Chapter Eight

“I won’t take no for an answer, Johanna. You need to get out.”

Johanna held the telephone receiver in her hand as she paced about her bedroom. She was alone in the large suite. She had planned to spend the afternoon with her daughter only to find that the girl had gone, leaving a note in her wake. Not even so much as a verbal communication.

She felt completely useless. The meeting with Denise at Heathrow Airport had been dreadful. At least it accomplished Denise’s need to confirm that Paul’s body was missing without hope. But on a face-to-face basis it was agonizing. She loved Denise and felt for her, but it was a relief for Johanna finally to return to the apartment. But Harry was back on the set, and now she was left alone in the apartment with no one to talk to and only her own thoughts to contend with. And her thoughts were all too bleak.

Still, she felt a reticence about going out to lunch with Arlene. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the older woman. She did. And, in the right mood, Johanna found her company amusing. Arlene, ten years her senior, knew everything about everyone—Harry most definitely included. Her privileged information came by way of her marriage to Sam Baker and through the entertainment world connections she nurtured almost zealously. Bawdy, loquacious, she was born to gossip. Not to malign, but to share in whatever there was to share about other people’s lives.

And for what it was worth, she had, without warning, appointed herself Johanna’s guardian angel.

“You can’t stay locked up in that hotel room forever, sweetie.” For a moment, only for a moment, the woman’s voice softened. “I know how you must feel about the accident. “

“But—“

“No buts. At least,” Arlene laughed lustily, “none worth a second glance these days. Now, I’ll be by in half an hour. Sam’s busy with work Harry dumped on him today, so I’m totally fancy free and I intend to make you my fancy. Get dressed to the teeth, sweetie. I’m taking you out to lunch.”

She didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see anyone. “Arlene—“

“Fine, I take that as a yes. See you.” The line went dead.

Johanna hung up. A small smile curved her lips. Arlene was right, she had to get out, to do something, however meaningless, before she became dubbed the madwoman of the Hyatt Carlton Towers Hotel. Johanna glanced down at the plush carpet beneath her slippered feet. She had roamed her bedroom so much these last couple of days that she was surprised there weren’t worn paths in the rug.

With a sigh, half in resignation, half in anticipation, Johanna turned toward her closet.

True to her promise, Arlene was at her suite within half an hour. It never ceased to amaze Johanna that Arlene was always punctual. Women of her acquaintance were notorious about disregarding time. To be late was to be fashionable. Arlene was always afraid she’d miss something crucial if she wasn’t there on time.

Arlene breezed into the hotel suite, dressed in pearls, a fur stole haphazardly thrown about her shoulders and a designer dress at least one size too small for her ample frame. Arlene was always just about to go a diet. Tomorrow. Today there was always too much good food to be sampled.

The petite woman made Johanna turn around as she studied her critically.

“Well, you look none the worse for this beastly weather.” She stopped to consider her words. “’Beastly.’ My God, I’m beginning to talk like them. Any day now, I’ll be asking for tea instead of a coffee and tonic.” She leaned over and pressed her hand to Johanna’s arm, as if imparting an important confidence. “When that happens, I want your word that you’ll shoot me.”

Johanna couldn’t help smiling. “If it’ll make you happy.”

“What’ll make me happy,” Arlene answered, easily linking her arm with Johanna’s—it didn’t seem to trouble her that Johanna, slender, with a model’s bone structure, made her look like a comic foil—“is if that leading man they’ve picked for this little so-called ‘epic’ of Harry’s would give me a tumble and take me off for a weekend in the Cotwolds.”

“Where?”

“Ready?”

Without waiting for an answer, Arlene pressed Johanna’s purse into her hands. Johanna tucked it under her arm and nodded.

“The Cotwolds, sweetie. The country made by God when He was practicing for the rolling hills of Ireland.” She grinned wickedly, nudging Johanna out the door and to the elevator.

Johanna knew that the only time Arlene let her native chauvinism come to the fore was when she felt she was confronted with British snobbery. Arlene Baker had been born Annie Mahoney of some county in Ireland that Johanna never could remember. Her flaming red hair had been real once. Now it needed a helping hand from a well-known bottle of hair rinse. But nothing could dilute the fire in the woman’s eye or in her soul.

“You find Dale Kincaid attractive?” Johanna asked as they walked into the elevator. She thought that he was far too pretty to be labeled as masculine.

“Attractive?” Arlene rolled her eyes and heaved a big sigh, her hand to her ample bosom. “He makes me forget to breathe. Where are your eyes, girl?” She jabbed at the first floor button.

Johanna shrugged, her shoulders moving restlessly. “I guess I don’t notice things like that.”

Arlene pressed her fingers to Johanna’s wrist. “There’s a pulse there, so you must be alive.”

“Am I?” Johanna couldn’t resist asking, a smile playing on her lips.

The doors yawned open, exposing the plush furnishings of the opulent lobby. Arlene, as always, led the way out. “Oh, now we come to the heart of it. Tell Aunt Arlene all about it, sweetie,” she coaxed.

“Just baiting you,” Johanna dismissed her momentary slip coolly.

Arlene was far from convinced, but she let the matter drop.

Until cocktails.

Seated at a prominent table in the Cafe Royal, breathing in the ambience where once Oscar Wilde had roamed freely, Arlene subtly urged a cocktail on Johanna. And then another. She had herself a well-earned reputation for being able to hold her liquor with the best of them, but Arlene knew that Johanna needed little more than white wine before her edge slipped away. She wanted the younger woman to relax. She looked far too tense for her own good, although considering what Johanna had to put up with, Arlene could hardly blame her for being tense.

“Now then,” Arlene began, leaning over the small, white linen-draped round table and covering Johanna’s small hand with her own, “spill it. What’s really been bothering you, Johanna?”

She knew without hearing the words, but felt that Johanna needed to verbalize the matter.
Getting things off your chest always helped
, Arlene thought.

Johanna played with the stem of her glass. The overhead light was caught in the fluted crystal, shattering into a rainbow of colors. There were no rainbows anymore, she thought sadly. Not for her.

“It’d take less time to tell you what wasn’t.”

“But that would be boring.”

Arlene smiled up at the young, slim-hipped waiter who came to serve them their main course of sinfully delicious French cuisine. Johanna thought the woman would devour the young man with her eyes.

“Another round, please,” Arlene gestured to the two glasses. She gazed after the waiter until he disappeared, then turned back to look at Johanna. “Do I embarrass you, Johanna?”

Johanna watched the amber liquid coat the sides of the glass as she moved it. “No.”

Arlene laughed. “You don’t lie well after one whisky sour.”

Johanna looked up at her and shrugged, grinning. “Sorry.”

“I like to look. They won’t let me touch.” Arlene sighed deeply. “Besides, I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did.” She frowned down at her broiled halibut. “It’s been a long, long time since Sam found his way into my bed for anything more than a good night’s sleep.” The impish smile was gone and her blue eyes were serious as she regarded Johanna. “The same, I take it is true with you.”

The waiter appeared with their drinks and Johanna fell silent.

“Here.” Arlene pressed the new glass on her. “Take a good sip of this and then tell me.”

Johanna started to protest and realized that she really didn’t want to. Why not? Just this once, why not loosen up a little and admit what was wrong? She probably wouldn’t say anything that Arlene and the immediate world didn’t already know. She tossed back the drink and closed her eyes as she felt it slip, warm and comforting, to her belly.

She opened her eyes to see Arlene looking at her, waiting. “I think Harry’s made love to every woman in a ten mile radius in the last nine months but me.”

Poor kid. “By last tally, other than skipping me, you’re probably right.”

Even in her present semi-euphoric state, shame began to lick at her. “Does everyone know?”

Arlene shrugged as she drained the last of her glass and looked wistfully at it. “I don’t know. The prime minister might still be in the dark, but as for everyone else, they know.” She raised her eyes to Johanna’s, wondering how a louse like Harry had won a woman of breeding like her. “He thinks with his pants first.”

“When he bothers to think at all.” It surprised Johanna that she could sound so vehement about Harry’s faults in someone else’s presence. Usually, she played the loyal, forgiving wife, suffering in silence. Except to Paul, she had hardly ever voiced her unhappiness. It appeared now that she didn’t have to.

Johanna took another long swallow. The drink was strong and soothing. She felt warm and oddly happy. The details of the plush surroundings and lavishly painted ceilings were now lost on her. They all kind of blurred together. She knew the mild, contented feeling she was experiencing was temporary, but it was here now, and that was all that mattered.

“You know, Arlene,” Johanna confided, “the Amazons really had the right idea about men.”