The Righteous Men (2006) (5 page)

‘No, as it happens, I don’t think it is good news, Will. I don’t
think it’s good news at all. It just makes it more fucking mysterious. If
my eggs are so perfect and your sperm is so fucking tip-top, why the hell CAN’T
WE HAVE A BABY?’

She threw the wooden spoon at the wall, where it splattered tomato sauce
into a Jackson Pollock pattern, turned and fled for the bedroom. Will chased
her, but she slammed the door. He could hear her crying.

How could he have screwed up so badly? He had promised they would go to the
clinic together, that he would take an hour or two out during the afternoon.
Instead he had gone to work and clean forgot about everything else for the rest
of the day. He had even sent a BlackBerry message about work — to Beth at
the time of the appointment. He knew what his psychologist wife thought. That
he was throwing himself into his career to avoid dealing with the real issue:
four years of marriage, two years of unprotected sex and one year of serious ‘trying’
— and still Beth was not pregnant. Will knew it looked like that, but she
was wrong.

This was not some new phase. He had always been ambitious.

Even at college, he had worked hard: when he was not editing
Cherwell
he was trying to hawk tales of university life to Fleet Street. That was what
he was like.

The phone rang.

‘Will?’

‘Oh, hi, Dad.’

‘I was just calling to see if you enjoyed the concert.’

‘Yes, of course. I loved it,’ Will said, running his fingers through
his hair and facing the floor. How could he have been so stupid? ‘I
should have called. Amazing choir.’

‘You sound subdued.’

‘No, just tired. It’s been a long day. Remember that thing I was
called out on after the concert, that killing? I had this idea to take what
everyone thinks is a bog-standard murder and see what really happened. “Portrait
of a crime statistic”, the life behind the death, that kind of thing.’

Beth’s presence behind the slammed door of their bedroom was burning
up the apartment. Surely he should be going over there, talking through the
door, coaxing her back out.

Or at least coaxing his way in.

‘That’s good thinking. What did you find out?’

‘That he was a low-life pimp sleazeball.’

‘Well, I guess that’s no great surprise. Not in that place.

Still, I can’t wait to read your IMF piece: much more you, I suspect.
Listen, Will, Linda’s gesturing. It’s a dinner for Habitat — “you
know who” is here — and we’re expected to mingle.

Speak soon/ Even on his nights off, thought Will, his father and his ‘partner’
— a word Will could not bring himself to utter except in quotation marks
— were doing something morally worthwhile.

Habitat for Humanity was one of his father’s favourite charities. ‘I
like the idea of a cause that asks you to give your time and your labour, not
just your money,’ Monroe Sr had said, more than once. ‘They ask you
to open your heart, not just your pocketbook.’ Hanging in the judge’s
chambers was a photograph of himself and the former president — ‘you
know who’ — each midway up a ladder, both clad in lumberjack shirts,
the ex-president holding a hammer. They were taking part in one of Habitat’s
trademark events: building a house for the homeless in a single day. In Alabama
or somewhere.

He wondered about all this great do-gooding fervour of his father’s.
In fact, he was suspicious of it. The most cynical reading was that it was
merely a career move, designed to burnish William Monroe Sr’s image as a
man of fine character, eminently suited to a place on America’s highest
bench.

More specifically, Will wondered if his father was trying to improve his
chances with the evangelical Christian constituency that were such key players
in the nomination of judges to the Supreme Court. Some of his father’s
rivals were committed, vocal Christians. A secular liberal like William Monroe
Sr could not match that, but if he could smooth out some of his hard, godless
edges, it could only help. That, at least, was his son’s guess.

Will tiptoed over to the bedroom, creaking the door open just a crack. Beth was
fast asleep. He closed the door; recovered what was left of the pasta and ate
it from the saucepan.

He felt as if a high wall had just appeared in their apartment — and
he and his wife were on opposite sides of it.

He reached for the remote and jabbed on his default channel: CNN.

‘International news now, and more trouble in London for Britain’s
finance minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gavin Curtis, today under fire
from the Church. The Bishop of Birmingham took to Britain’s House of
Lords to step up the pressure.’

Will sat up to take a close look. Curtis looked harried and much older than
Will had remembered him. He had come to Oxford when Will was a student. Curtis
was then in opposition, shadowing the environment department. He had come up to
act as lead speaker in an Oxford Union debate: ‘This House believes the
end of the world is nigh.’ Will was then the news editor on
Cherwell
— and he had given himself the plum assignment of interviewing the
visiting politician.

He had not thought about it in years, but at the time Curtis had left quite
a mark. He had taken Will seriously, treating him as a real journalist when
Will could not have been much more than nineteen. The funny thing was Curtis
had not seemed like a politician at all, more like a teacher. He had constantly
peppered their conversation with references to books and films, wondering if
Will had read some obscure Dutch theologian or seen a new and controversial
Polish movie. Will had left their conversation feeling inadequate but also
convinced Curtis was destined for oblivion: he seemed too intellectual for the
blood sport of high politics.

As his former interviewee had risen through the Cabinet, Will became
embarrassed by his own lack of political foresight.

CNN was now showing a clip of a white-haired cleric in a grey suit with just
a slice of purple showing underneath. The bishop’s face, flushed with
wrath, seemed to be trying to match the colour of his shirt. CNN identified him
as the leader of the British equivalent of America’s Church of the Reborn
Jesus, a fiercely moral wing of Christian evangelism. ‘This is a sinful man!’
he was saying of the Chancellor, to the murmured rhubarb of agreement and
disagreement in the chamber. If it is true that he has been embezzling from the
public purse, he must be cast out!’

Will turned it off and went to the computer. Beth would sleep till morning
now. He thought about waking her up so they could talk some more. They had a
rule: never go to bed on a fight. But she was so deeply asleep he would hardly score
any points by disturbing her now. He had seen how she looked. She could wear a
dozen different expressions in the course of the night: serene, brow furrowed,
even ironic amusement. More than once, Will had been woken by the sound of his
wife laughing in her sleep at some secret joke. But just now, even with her
autumn-brown hair falling over most of her face, he spotted what he feared was
a worry line in her forehead, as if she was concentrating hard.

He imagined smoothing it away, with just a touch of his hand.

Perhaps he should go back in and do just that. No, he thought.

What if she woke up and their row reopened? Better to leave it be.

Might as well pull an all-nighter instead, write up the Macrae story and
deliver it first thing. At least that would impress Harden. And it would be an
excuse not to go into the bedroom.

At the keyboard, his mind kept wandering away from Letitia, Howard and the
streets of Brownsville. He knew what Beth wanted and biology, or something, was
standing in their way. He had been encouraged by the hospital’s attitude:
give it time. But Beth was not used to being a patient. She liked to sit in the
other chair. And she wanted clarity: a diagnosis, a course of action.

Besides, he knew, getting pregnant was only part of the story. Beth had
become irritated by his professional singlemindedness, his determination to
make his mark. When they first met, she would say how much she liked his drive;
she found it sexy. She admired his refusal to coast along, to trade on his
father’s prestige. He had made things difficult for himself — he
could have gone back to America when he turned eighteen and used the family
name to breeze into Yale — and she admired that. Now, though, she wanted
the ambition to cool down. There were other priorities.

He finally crashed out just after four am. He dreamed he was on a boating
lake, pushing a punt like some cheesy gondolier. Facing him, twirling a
parasol, was a woman. It was probably Beth but he could not quite see. He tried
squinting, determined to make out the face. But the sun was in his eyes.

The good sinner: the story of a New York life
— and death.

Will stared at it, not on B6 or B11 or even B3 but A1: the front page of
The
New York Times
. He had stared at it on the subway into work, looked
at it some more as he walked to the office and had spent most of the time at
his desk pretending not to look at it.

He had arrived to a bombardment of congratulatory email, from colleagues
sitting three feet away and old friends living in different continents, who had
learned of his feat via the paper’s online edition. He was receiving a
plaudit by phone when he felt a surge move through his little desk-pod, a
silent movement of energy like the magnetic force that passes through iron
filings. It was Townsend McDougal, making a rare descent from Mount Olympus to
walk among the troops.

Suddenly backs were stiffened; rictus smiles adopted. Will noticed Amy
Woodstein reflexively reaching round to the back of her head to plump up her
hair. The veteran City Life columnist sought to tidy his desk with a single
back-sweep of his arm, thereby despatching a couple of crumpled Marlboro packets
into his pencil drawer.

The high command at The
New York Times
was still getting used to
McDougal: appointed as executive editor only a few months earlier, he was an
unlikely choice. His immediate predecessors had been drawn from that segment of
New York society that had produced so many of the city’s best known names
and given it so much of its humour and language: liberal Jews. Previous
New
York Times
editors looked and sounded like Woody Allen or Philip Roth.

Townsend McDougal was a rather different proposition. A New England
aristocrat with Mayflower roots and Wasp manners, he wore a panama hat in
summertime and tasselled loafers in winter. But that was not what had made
Times
veterans anxious when his appointment was announced. No, what made the editor
and The
New York Times
an unlikely fit was the simple fact that Townsend
McDougal was a born again Christian.

He had not yet made Bible study classes compulsory, nor did he ask reporters
to link hands in prayer before each night’s print run. But it was a
culture shock for a temple of secularism like The
New York Times
.
Columnists and critics on the paper were used to a tone that was not quite
mocking but certainly distant. Evangelical Christianity was something that
existed out there, in flyover country — in the vast midwest or the deep
south between the coasts. None of them would ever say so explicitly, still less
write it, but the undeclared assumption was that born-again faith was the
preserve of the simple folk. ‘Trust in Jesus’ was for the women in polyester
trousers watching Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, or for recovering alcoholics
who needed to ‘turn around’ their lives and declare their salvation
in a bumper sticker. It was not for Ivy League sophisticates like themselves.

Townsend McDougal unsettled every one of those presumptions. Now
Times
journalists had to check the default arithmetic that stated that secular
equalled smart. From now on, religion would no longer be cast as a matter of
poor taste, like big hair or TV dinners. It was to be treated with respect.

The change, in articles from the fashion pages to the sports section, became
apparent within weeks of McDougal’s arrival.

The new executive editor had not sent out a memo. He did not have to.

Now he was walking among the Metro staff, with his gaze aimed in only one
direction.

‘Look, I better go,’ Will said into the phone in what he hoped
was a low whisper. As Will replaced the receiver, McDougal began.

‘Welcome to the Holy of Holies, William. The front page of the
greatest newspaper in the world.’ Will felt himself blush.

It was not embarrassment at the compliment, nor even McDougal’s klaxon
of a voice, bellowing his praise all around the office in an accent that was so
Brahmin as to be almost English, though that was embarrassing enough. It was
the ‘William’ that did it. Will thought his father had reached an understanding
with McDougal: that there was to be no public acknowledgement of the friendship
between them. Will knew he would be resented as it was — the hotshot
young journo on the fast track — without his colleagues assuming he was the
beneficiary of that old-fashioned career-enhancing drug, nepotism.

Now it was out there; McDougal’s decibels had seen to that. The
internal emails would be flying: Guess who’s on first-name terms with the
boss? As it happened, Will had applied for this job the same way as everyone
else: sending in a letter and turning up for an interview. But no one would believe
that now. He could feel his neck becoming hot.

‘You’ve made a good start, William. Taking some unpromising raw
material and turning it into something worthy of page one. I sometimes wish some
of your more mature colleagues would show similar degrees of industry and
verve.’

Will wondered if McDougal was deliberately setting out to make his life
hell. Was this some kind of initiation rite practised by the Skull and Bones
set at Yale, where he and his father had first become such pals? The editor
might as well have painted a target on Will’s back and handed crossbows to
each of his colleagues.