Skylark (29 page)

Jay didn't bother to hide his smile. The others looked relieved. Williams said, "I've
prepared a rough draft, Mrs. Dodge."

"I'm sure it's eloquent. You haven't heard my terms, yet, though."

"What do you suggest?"

"A joint conference tomorrow morning when Dad has had a chance to talk to Milos and
my mother. Dad and Ann and I can make brief statements, and Lord Henning, too, if he's willing.
You can field their questions, Mr. Williams."

Ann was making distressed noises. Served her right.

I said, "I won't be exhibited all by myself like some kind of freak giraffe."

Lord Henning cleared his throat. "Not a bad notion. Unusual, of course."

Williams was frowning. "I'll consult the Chief Constable. If he has no objection I
daresay I can arrange for a briefing session in one of the hotel's anterooms."

Henning interrupted. "At Hambly, Rhys. More dramatic."

"But Mrs. Dodge's health..."

"I feel fine." I beamed at Lord Henning, who blushed. "I think that's a great idea. The
photographers can take pictures of the rhododendrons or something."

Lord Henning ducked his head on a small smile. "The glaziers will have finished with
the ground floor by tomorrow. Blue salon, Rhys. It's large enough to accommodate the
gentry."

There was more discussion, and Williams trotted out his draft of my statement. I felt
mild resentment that he was so ready to put words into my mouth, but I suppressed it. He meant
well, and God knew his experience of the British press was greater than ours. Also the question
of what we should say about Milos required delicate handling.

Williams went downstairs to telephone. There were several awkward pauses in the
ensuing conversation. After the third ghastly silence I realized that Lord Henning was shy, an
insight that surprised me so much I was struck dumb.

Ann stepped into the breach. She told Henning how much she had admired his house
and how sorry she was about the destruction. I rallied and said I had been saddened to hear of
Mr. McHale's death and the watch dog's. His lordship responded with half a dozen sentences so
stiff I could tell he was distressed. I began to feel agitated myself, remembering.

Dad intervened with a tribute to the Henning Institute, and Ann drew from his lordship
the information that his mother was an Irishwoman and the Institute was her particular interest,
though his grandfather had established the London office and the fund-raising apparatus shortly
after World War II. My father had spent some time in London working for the Friends' Field
Service Committee in the early fifties, so there was historical overlap and Dad made the most of
it. Lord Henning seemed to find the reminiscences soothing. Jay kept quiet, though I could tell
he found the interplay of personalities interesting.

Presently Williams returned. He was smiling. "All set. I spoke to the chief constable and
made a brief announcement to the journalists in the lobby. Tomorrow at eleven. They'll pass the
word."

They left soon after that, the shy baron and his gregarious secretary.

Perhaps Williams's announcement did some good. We went down to dinner at eight.
Although a flashbulb popped in the lobby, and dining among the news hawks felt like the old
nightmare of nudity in public, we weren't harassed directly. Ann and Jay and I even went for a
cautious stroll on the green in the long English twilight. My father called home.

Afterwards we had a brief council of war in Dad's room. Williams had vowed to join us
for breakfast with fresh drafts for Ann and me, and Dad was preparing his own statement, so we
didn't talk long. When Jay and I went to our own room, a rollaway bed lay by the open
window.

"What's that?"

Jay said, "I slept on it last night, Lark."

"Well, once is enough. I feel a lot better."

He put his arms around me in a gingerly embrace. "Guess what?"

"You can tell?"

He kissed me, a nice long leisurely kiss. Then he helped me into my nightgown, and we
made cautious trips down the hall to the loo and retired to the double bed. I felt better, but I did
not feel up to strenuous lovemaking. We lay side by side, talking a little, while I waited for the
single pain pill I had taken to do its work. Eventually I drifted off.

When I woke it was dawn, and Jay was not beside me. I groped among the bedcovers
with my good hand, making sure, then sat up and looked around. He lay sprawled on the
rollaway. I opened my mouth to say something rude, but he looked so deeply asleep I hadn't the
heart to wake him.

It wasn't until I had tiptoed down the hall to the loo and returned to the room that the
significance of the separate beds came to me. I ought to have thought how all that stress, on top
of detailed discussion of the Lockerbie crash, would affect Jay. He was having nightmares again,
and when Jay had nightmares he thrashed around. Ordinarily I could put up with a little
thrashing, but he was afraid of hurting me in my damaged condition. He might have.

I sank onto the bed. I wondered how long it would take before Jay would talk openly
with me. We had been married five years, and there were still gulfs of reticence between us. I
was a straightforward person. God knew I loved Jay. Short of axe-murder, he could admit to
almost any fault and I would not just forgive it, I would find excuses for it, or turn it into a virtue.
Weak-minded.

My momentary anger gave way to despair. We would have to fly home in less than two
weeks. Jay would deal with the flight as he dealt with the nightmares, and never mind that he
shouldn't have to deal with either. I lay back on the bed and had a quiet cry. It didn't do me much
good.

My GP, a brisk woman with ingenuous blue eyes, made a house call after breakfast. She
changed the dressings on my arm and shoulder, said the cuts were healing nicely, and told me I
could take a bath. That was a relief. I do not like what my mother calls Pullman baths.

I wallowed in the huge Victorian tub. Jay pulled me out, and Ann hustled me into a
dress and pumps, and I was whisked off to Hambly in the Escort. True to his word, Williams had
showed up at breakfast with statements so innocuous I wondered why any journalist would want
to hear them. Ann liked hers. My father was prepared to make any number of generalizations
about terrorism and the forces of repression in the modern world.

As we drove to Hambly I asked Jay about the nightmares. He admitted that they had
recurred. That was that. He was not going to elaborate.

For me, the worst part of returning to Hambly was that it looked untouched. An illusion,
of course. Still, the broken glass in the family wing had been replaced, and we drove directly to
that entrance. Williams met us at the door. A kindly groom took Jay's keys and Dad's, promising
to park the cars out of sight. I didn't think the rentals were that awful.

We were ushered in to the main reception room, like honored guests, and Lord Henning
materialized to offer us a cup of tea before the onslaught. A woman from the Henning Institute
was showing the journalists the damage to the old wing of the house.

Henning--or, more likely, Williams--had brought in folding chairs for the press from the
nearest Women's Institute, and we were to face the reporters from stations in front of a handsome
Adam fireplace. Comfortable chairs had been arranged for us as if for a conversation. The only
flaws in the picture were the booms and lights and microphones the media seemed to require. I
thought Williams should have brought in a spaniel to sit at my feet, just to improve my dog
image, but I refrained from making the suggestion.

When the journalists entered they seemed unnaturally subdued. At first I believed they
had been sobered by their glimpse of destruction, but I soon realized that their restraint indicated
mere feudal deference. They were minding their manners. Once we had issued our innocuous
little statements, their questions were as goofy as ever, though more politely phrased than in
South Kensington.

We were trying to manage the news. Roughly summarized, we told the press that the
Institute had given Milos asylum after his stabbing, to which Ann and I had been witnesses. The
Czech secret police were trying to silence Milos blah blah blah. Dad announced that a leading
university press--my mother had been busy--would issue a collection of Milos's poems in
translation, and that freedom of expression was a right, not a luxury. He lectured a bit. I was
proud of him.

Then Ann explained that she had spotted Milos's attacker while on a tour of Hambly,
and that she and I had followed Smith and the Libyan with the intent of revealing their
whereabouts to the police. She lied with delicacy and an air of total conviction. I was proud of
her
. Then came the hard part.

I explained how I had tried to alert the Hambly staff and that I had spotted the
abandoned sedan. Overwhelmed by the conviction that the men had entered the grounds to make
another attempt on Milos's life, I had "effected" my own entry, run to the family wing, and
sounded the alarm just as the bomb went off. In Williams's neat prose I came across like one of
those heroines of Victorian music halls, Grace Darling in her lifeboat, or the young woman who
hung on the bell-rope to prevent curfew from sounding.

"Hang on the bell, Nellie, hang on the bell.
Your poor Daddy's locked in a cold
prison cell.
As you swing to the left, Nellie, swing to the right,
Remember that curfew
must never ring tonight."

After the explosion, I said, I had "detained the alleged assassin until Lord Henning's
employees could come to my assistance." My injuries were slight, and I was recovering nicely,
thank you. I completed this sanitized narrative, reading too fast, and Lord Henning made a
colorless little statement deploring Mr. McHale's death and the injuries the Hambly staff had
suffered. He summarized the damage to the house in some detail and gave an insurance company
cost estimate of half a million pounds. I thought that was grossly understated. He had, he said,
flown home at once when he heard of the tragedy.

Then came the questions. Williams fielded them, answering the ones he could
succinctly, and rephrasing the others and distributing them among his "panel." Reporters from
the more conservative papers directed some sarcastic questions at Lord Henning about the
Institute's supposed role in cosseting the Irish Republican Army. However, the questions were
surprisingly mild.

We later discovered that Henning had been a Tory back-bencher, an early supporter of
Margaret Thatcher, until his elevation to the peerage. His grandfather and his mother had been
strong Labourites. Insofar as the Institute had a radical agenda, its causes were not Lord
Henning's causes. He seemed to view it as a well-meaning group devoted to the defense of
traditional British liberties. The Tory journalists bought that, or appeared to. Everyone deplored
the use of violence in rural Shropshire for whatever reason. Had the explosion occurred in
Birmingham or Liverpool or London, the reporters would have found it much less
interesting.

All that was strange and enlightening, but the bulk of the questions were directed at me
and were of the "what were your sensations when" variety. There was sexual innuendo.

Ann answered as many of these probings as she reasonably could, pouring on the
Georgia color. The reporters liked her, but they weren't entirely stupid. My sling and battered
face made it obvious that my role had been active. This seemed to fascinate the television people.
I kept my answers brief and colorless, until a foxy looking woman in the third row asked twice
about my training in the martial arts and whether I thought women ought to be allowed to
participate in combat. It was clear that she regarded me as an Amazon and a freak.

Williams looked at me with a helpless expression and shrugged as if to say what can I
do?

I drew a long, wincing breath. "I have no martial arts training whatsoever, ma'am."

She simpered. In British English "ma'am" is reserved for royalty, and they find the
American usage amusing. I thought of the columnist in the
Independent
and found
myself telescoping the foxy reporter's smirk with that writer's self-righteous spite. If someone
had showed me a poodle at that moment I would have strangled it.

I adjusted the sling on my arm. "I'm a reasonably fast runner. When I saw Smith he was
running away from the house, and I was afraid he might escape. The explosion deafened both of
us, so he didn't hear me coming after him. I outran him, and I knocked him down. Then I sat on
him. I don't think that constitutes hand-to-hand combat, which I don't favor for anybody, male or
female. I'm a pacifist."

"But what about..."

I rode ruthlessly over her. "I think women and men have a responsibility to society. I
believed Smith had killed Milos Vlaçek, and I didn't think Smith should be allowed to
escape. I tried to stop him. Any grown woman and most girls would feel the same way. I was
angry and confused, but I was certainly not trying to kill the man, though he tried to kill
me."

"Lark..." Ann's voice, soft.

I didn't look at her. I kept my eyes locked on the reporter's. She was still smirking.
"Now, the thing that's interesting to me in this rather nasty experience is that Smith kept calling
me names. My hearing had come back by then. I heard him distinctly. He called me a whore and
a cunt and a number of other terms I won't trouble to repeat, every single one of them sexually
degrading. He had no other way of thinking about the situation. You seem to be suffering from
the same inflexibility,
ma'am
. I'm sorry for you."

Much murmuring and shifting on folding chairs. The foxy woman looked around as if
seeking help. My father, Lord Henning, and Mr. Williams had all blushed red. Ann, who was
sitting beside me, gave my right hand a squeeze. I couldn't see Jay.

Williams did his best. When the noise level reached the point at which he could be
heard, he said sternly, "Mrs. Dodge acted very properly. When she knocked at the door through
which you entered today, I myself responded. I can assure you her concern was for Milos
Vlaçek's safety."