Betrayals (36 page)

“I really am going to be made to look the complete fool, aren't I?” Janet said, crushed by the recollection of why she had been entrapped into the situation in the first place.

“No,” Zarpas said. “You did silly things … unthinking, ill-considered silly things. But everyone can understand and feel sympathy with
why
you did them: what you hoped to achieve. Complete fools behave without any logic or reason. So you're not a complete fool. Just a determined lady who made mistakes.”

Janet smiled at the policeman against whom she had felt antagonistic but didn't any more. She said: “I appreciate that, very much. That makes it seem right …” She stopped and at once blurted: “No! I didn't mean that! Not that killing. That could never be right, not completely, whatever the circumstance. But everything else.”

“The legal process has begun now,” Zarpas said.

“I know,” Janet said, curious at the reminder.

“There's a mob of pressmen outside,” warned Zarpas. “You mustn't give interviews or say anything that is likely to affect the outcome of any hearing. I don't want to give the Fettals any more loopholes through which to crawl back into the sewer.”

“I won't,” Janet promised.

“Would you like me to lay on a car?”

“I came with someone. I'll be all right.”

There
was
a mob. Two uniformed constables had to run interference to get her to the exit. Throughout Janet shook her head against the cacophony of demands and repeated: “Nothing to say,” and guessed that the photographs and the television footage would be as awful as they had been in Beirut, except that here she'd look as if she were trying to get away from the attention instead of cooperating with it. Every step of the way she searched against the glare for Baxeter's face in the crowd but couldn't see it. By the time she reached the steps the panic was beginning to well up, the fear that for some inexplicable reason he wasn't there to help her and that eventually she would be abandoned to be tugged and gnawed at by the pack around her.

And then she saw the car with its rusty dent and felt a surge of relief. He was waiting directly at the bottom of the steps, carelessly in a prohibited parking zone and with the engine running, and when he saw her emerge he leaned across to open the door for her to enter.

There was a grabbing struggle as she tried to enter the car and Baxeter pushed the throng back with the door edge. Someone yelled “Bastard!” and another voice said “Son of a bitch!” and as he took the car away from the curb, scattering them, Baxeter shouted back: “Fuck you!”

He made two very tight turns, an obvious attempt to lose any pursuit, and said: “I'm sorry.”

“What for?”

“Swearing like that.”

“I didn't notice,” Janet said. Wanting at once to get it out of the way between them she said: “He's dead.”

“I heard.”

“I can't accept I killed somebody!” she said, edging back to the disbelief of the first few moments with Zarpas. “I can't conceive the crap that the defense lawyer served up, either.”

Baxeter kept twisting and turning the tiny car around the central part of the city, using the ancient, difficult-to-negotiate streets. He said: “Some tried to follow. I think I've lost them.”

“What the hell did they hope to achieve!” she demanded, wanting to be angry at something positive.

“That you'd break down: say something that could be expanded into a bigger story,” said Baxeter. “And I've never encountered a photographer yet who's satisfied with the last picture he took.”

“They'll be at the hotel,” Janet realized.

“I'm afraid so: that's the obvious place to wait for you.”

“I don't think I could face it,” Janet said. She actually did feel physically—or was it mentally?—strange, her awareness of everything around one moment definite, the next receding almost foggily, then becoming definite again.

“Do you want to go to a restaurant? Or a bar?”

“Good God, no!” Janet said at once.

Baxeter turned away from the walled part of the town but Janet was unaware and uncaring, slumped in the Volkswagen with her head forward against her chest, playing Zarpas's reassurances over and over in her mind, like a child with a favored pop tune, but still unable to avoid the burden of guilt. Against every reassuring phrase or argument the policeman had provided, Janet put the contradicting litany of her own, I've killed, I've killed, I've killed.

“We're here,” he said.

Still unconcerned at her surroundings, Janet let herself be helped from the car and followed him up the outside steps of a two-story, flat-roofed house, not aware until she was inside the room that she was in somebody's home.

“Where is this!” she demanded.

“My flat,” said Baxeter, simply. “I'm sorry. It's not very tidy.”

It wasn't.

It appeared to be a workplace on to which living accommodation had been added as an afterthought. By the window was a cluttered desk dominated by a word processor with an umbilical cord between two screens, not just one. Above the desk, do-it-yourself shelves held uneven walls of reference books and on a small side table there were three separate telephones. Between the shelves and the window was a drying line from which strips of undeveloped negatives hung from pegs and immediately below, a photograph's magnifying stand stood ready to examine the tiny exposures. Two filing cabinets, with gap-toothed drawers, delineated the work space from where Baxeter lived. The living area was surprisingly expansive, easily able to accommodate two couches covered with garishly-colored Arab blankets, as well as easy chairs. Newspapers and magazines overflowed from a center table onto another brightly patterned Arab rug, and a television set stood in a corner, near a floor-to-ceiling wall cabinet which housed crockery and glasses. The bottles were on a central, flat shelf.

Seeing her look, Baxeter said: “Would you like a drink?”

“I actually think I need one. Brandy would be good.”

He poured for both of them, heavily, and when she took the glass Janet saw just how badly her hand was shaking.

He said: “There really is space to sit, on the couches.”

Janet did so and said: “It seems to be becoming a habit for me to break down in front of you.”

“It doesn't cause me any difficulty.”

Janet clamped her lips between her teeth, determined against any more nonsense, waiting until the sensation passed. She still didn't risk talking immediately, covering the moment by bringing the glass to her mouth.

“So much!” she said at last. “There's been so much!”

“I know,” he said, softly.

“I thought I could cope … was sure I could cope … that's one of the upsets, I suppose. Not believing any more that I can.” Janet felt his arm around her, pulling her against him, and let herself go: it was much more comfortable than it had been in the Volkswagen. The smell of his cologne wasn't really too strong at all: in fact it was rather nice, an indication of how personally clean he was.

“There was bound to be a reaction,” he said. “Of course you can cope.”

His hand was soothingly against her face, gently rubbing her cheek and up into her hair and Janet was aware of herself sighing, of letting herself go. She said: “When my husband died I curled up into a ball and never wanted to go out again. That's what I feel like now. That I want to hide away forever.”

“That's what we're doing,” he said. “Hiding away where no one can find us.”

Janet felt something else against the side of her head, near her hair, and could not at once decide what it was. Then she realized his lips were there, kissing her. She shifted but not away, bringing her legs up beneath her better to lean against him. She said: “That's where I want to be: hidden from everyone and everything.”

She brought her head around as she spoke. His kiss, like everything else about him, was gentle, and Janet responded just as softly, so that their mouths remained close together, exploring between quietly snatched breaths. Janet felt his hand upon her and momentarily stiffened but then eased again, not wanting to stop him, and the buttons parted and the clasps unsnapped. He explored with his fingers now and Janet didn't object, letting her mind stay in that fogged part of reality where she refused to think or to rationalize or to equate, just to feel. She felt him move again and raise her up with him and walk with his arm around, supporting her, to the bedroom where she was practically unaware of her clothes coming off. It was his mouth as well as his fingers that moved over her now and Janet reached out for him, sighing with the greatest relaxation of all when he entered her. They moved perfectly together, unhurriedly, and it was ecstasy and she cried out at the moment of bursting excitement, clinging to him and knowing his explosion too.

The pain of physical release brought her shudderingly back to the reality she had briefly refused to confront, and Janet did stiffen this time, hands gripped at her sides, making herself think of what she'd done. Betrayed, she thought: she'd betrayed—humiliated—a man she loved and whom she'd postured and posed and pretended to be trying to rescue. It didn't matter that John would never know of the betrayal or the humiliation. She'd know. Always. Carry it with her like a stigma, a constant weight. A thought began but Janet refused it. There couldn't be any excuse, any escape. She'd been betrayed and humiliated and battered and frightened but the need, for a few moments, to hide and forget wasn't an excuse. There wasn't even an equation. She paraded all the words in her mind, mentally shouting the accusation: whore and tart and prostitute and slut. And they weren't bad enough, cruel enough, to describe what she'd done.

She felt Baxeter's hand upon hers, on the fist she had created, and kept it tightly shut, refusing, too, to look sideways at him.

“I am not sorry,” he said.

“I am.”

“It happened.”

“It shouldn't have done.”

“Why not?”

“Don't be so bloody stupid!” she said. “You know why it shouldn't have happened!”

“It needn't complicate anything.”

“It will, won't it! You think I'll be able to forget!”

“It will only become a complication if you let it.”

“You think I'm a whore?”

“Now you're being bloody stupid,” he said. “I knew the situation. Do you think of me as a whoremonger or a lecher?”

The rejection quietened her. “No,” she said. “I don't think of you like that.”

“It hasn't hurt John: needn't hurt John.”

“How do you think of me?” she said, needing an answer.

Baxeter raised himself on one arm and moved over her, so that she was forced to look at him. He said: “I think you're very beautiful and I wanted almost from the first moment to take you to bed and I think you realized what was growing up between us just as much as I did, didn't you?”

“Yes,” Janet agreed, in a whisper.

“And didn't want it to stop?” he pressed, determined upon the complete catharsis.

“No,” she said, in further admission. “But I still love John.”

“I didn't ask you to stop: expect you to stop.”

“It
is
a complication!” she insisted, angrily. “It's a bloody mess.”

“It's an adult situation and we're adults.”

“I don't feel like an adult. I feel like an idiot child.”

“Stop it,” he warned.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don't …” she began and then stopped. “Yes I do,” she said. “I want us to forget about it: not forget but put it in the back of our minds like the mistake it was and …” she trailed off.

“And what?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't think it was a mistake. I knew what I was doing. Like you did.”

“Let's not start using words like love!”

“Not if you don't want me to.”

“My father wants me to go back to England in between the court hearings. I think that's what I'll do. The difficulty won't exist if I do that.”

Baxeter lowered himself off his arm and lay like Janet, on his back looking up at the ceiling. He said: “If you don't want to go, it won't be necessary for you to make the separation. Not for a week or so at least.”

“I don't understand,” she said, turning to him at last.

“I've got to go away,” said Baxeter. “I was going to tell you earlier.”

Despite the guilt and the resolutions Janet felt her stomach dip, at the thought of his not being near. She said: “Just for a week or so?”

“It shouldn't be any longer. It's just a quick in-and-out assignment.”

“Where?”

He was silent for several moments. Then he said: “Beirut.”

“What!”

“A situation piece,” said Baxeter. “It'll probably accompany the article I've written about you.”

“Don't go!” she blurted.

“Don't be silly,” he said. “I've got to go.”

“Be careful, darling. Please be …” said Janet and then stopped, realizing the word she'd used.

Baxeter smiled back but didn't pick up upon it, further to embarrass her. “I'm the sort of guy who does his reporting from the bar of the best hotel.”

“I'm serious,” Janet insisted. Unashamedly she said: “I don't want to lose anyone else.”

Serious himself, Baxeter said: “Do you want me to find out what I can about John?”

Janet held his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Please find out what you can about John.”

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