Betrayals (6 page)

“Their concentration span is limited,” he said, mockingly. “They'd rather hear opinions than be forced to read an assessment. I think it's all the fault of television: a hundred years from now no one will be able to read.”

At Christmas, during the university break, Sheridan had time owing for a holiday. When Janet suggested it, he said he thought it would be terrific to spend the time in England with her parents. Janet wrote suggesting it and her mother was so excited that she telephoned.

“I never thought I could be like this again,” Janet said, to Harriet. “Not this happy.”

They were having an early dinner in Chinatown, so it was still only ten o'clock when Janet got back to Rosslyn.

Sheridan, who had had a key to her apartment for several months, was waiting as she entered, sitting forward on a couch, grave-faced.

Janet was stopped by his expression, remaining just inside the door. “Darling!” she said. “What is it?”

“I've been posted,” said Sheridan. “Overseas.”

“But …” started Janet, confused. “Where overseas?” she managed.

“Beirut,” he announced, simply.

Janet stayed where she was, her mind and body frozen into incomprehension. The images and the thoughts flustered through her head, all half-formed and refusing to become whole. Not Beirut! That was inconceivable! There'd been U.S. embassy bombings by suicide squads and the kidnapping of U.S. embassy staff and Reagan's Irangate fiasco, and the apparently insoluble conflict between Christian and Moslem formed part of practically every lecture that she gave at the university. John Sheridan—
her
John Sheridan—couldn't go there; couldn't become involved in a situation like that! It was murderous, for God's sake! People
had
been murdered! Janet shook her head, disbelieving despite having heard him say it. She said: “No … no it's got to be a mistake.”

Sheridan stood and came to her, holding her to him. Without knowing why, Janet was rigid, almost resisting. Sheridan said: “I don't want to go … you know that. Who would? I've tried to get out of it but I can't.”

Janet pulled back from his embrace. “But you told me … a long time ago … that you weren't going to travel any more … that you were always going to be here, in Washington …”

“I know,” he agreed. “I thought I was. They think I might be some use there.”

“NO!” she wailed, finally confronting what he was saying.

Sheridan led her into the room and sat her where he had been sitting, kneeling at her feet. “Shush now,” he said. “Now listen. There's no way I can get out of it: like I said, I've tried. No way. But it won't be for a long time. Six months; a year at most …”

Janet sat shaking her head, consciously—determinedly—refusing to absorb the words.

“It's an unaccompanied posting, obviously. I couldn't take you with me, even if we rushed the marriage through,” Sheridan pushed on. “But we won't be apart all the time. We can spend our vacations together. Cyprus. Anywhere you like in the Mediterranean.”

“But we've made plans,” she said, in weak protest.

“It'll only mean delaying things a few months,” assured Sheridan. “I promise. As soon as I'm reassigned—and don't worry, the time limit is a firm commitment—we'll get married. That's all it means, really. Putting the wedding back a month or two.”

“That's not all it means!” Janet argued, recovering further. “You're going to Beirut, for Christ's sake! Beirut! You hear the name I'm saying?”

“We keep everything there as safe as it can be now,” Sheridan tried to placate her. “No one takes any chances.”

“Bullshit!” yelled Janet. “And you know it's bullshit. How can you be safe in a place where there's no law, no government! Beirut is a bunch of rival gangs, everyone fighting everyone else and stealing and kidnapping and killing. It's not religion any more: hasn't been for a long time. It's gang warfare: I've taught little else, for years, and I know!” She had to stop, breathless, but then blurted off again, extending her fingers and then collapsing them as she counted. “William Buckley, American, murdered. Peter Kilburn, American, murdered. Alec Collet, Briton, murdered.”

“I know …” he tried to stop her but she wouldn't stop.

“… Seven slaughtered, in all,” she said. “Four Russsians, too. At least seventeen still held. Nothing's been heard of Terry Anderson, the AP bureau chief, since 1985. Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy, has been missing almost two years.”

“I've got to go,” he said, simply.

“No way of refusing!” she pleaded.

“None.”

“When?” she said, dully.

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks!”

“Everything is being done in panic.”

“That's not fair … not enough time …”

“It gives me an edge, to get back.”

“Why, when everything was so good!” Janet demanded, allowing herself the briefly forgotten self-pity.

“It'll be all right,” Sheridan said. “Everything will be all right.”

They changed their vacation dates so they could spend the final week completely together, which they did at the Rosslyn apartment. They stored what furniture and effects he wanted to retain from the Columbus Circle flat and sold the rest and Sheridan assigned Janet power of attorney to act on his behalf to dispose of the property. They drove again out into Virginia and Maryland, house-hunting but it was impossible in the circumstances so they abandoned the pretence. They made love every night but anxiously, as if it might be the last time, and when he suggested a farewell dinner at their Virginia inn Janet said no, because that was a place to celebrate good times, not bad.

“There's something we haven't done,” Sheridan announced, the night before he was due to leave.

“What?”

“I haven't bought you a ring,” he said.

Janet looked down at the hand where she still wore what Hank had bought her. “No,” she agreed. “It isn't right to go on like this, is it?” As she spoke Janet realized that to remove the rings would be the final cutting off, the final parting from one to another.

They only had time to get to two shops but in the second Janet saw a sapphire surrounded by diamonds and said it was beautiful, then tried to pull back when she learned the price. Sheridan insisted on buying it and she sat for their final lunch with her hand before them, proudly displaying it.

“I love you,” said Sheridan.

“I love you, too.”

“You mustn't worry. Everything is going to be fine,” he said. “Trust me.”

“I do,” said Janet.

6

J
anet had forgotten the aching loneliness and when it immediately returned, that positive physical feeling she'd never wanted to know, ever again, she was surprised—and vaguely embarrassed—how easy it had been to put from her mind. The first echoing night she came close to embarking on one of her private conversations but quickly and determinedly stopped herself. That indulgence—that need—was over, she thought, gazing down at the new engagement ring. It was John now, not Hank; wrong then to talk about one to the other, even secretly when no one else would ever know. Everything was different now: like the loss was different. With Hank, when she'd eventually confronted reality, it had been absolute. Final. Finish. But not this time. This time it was only a separation—an unwanted, intrusive, resented, irritating separation—but no more than that. A separation. John could come back: would come back. A lot of women temporarily lost their men in situations like this, although perhaps not in places as dangerous as Beirut. She had to be logical about it: logical and sensible. She had to stop behaving like a spoiled child.

Janet tried hard. Work was still the obvious blanket and she wrapped herself in it beyond her customary dedication. And studied beyond that dedication, reading everything and watching everything and listening to everything connected with the Lebanon as a whole and Beirut in particular. Her assessment was that it was as lawless and as ungoverned and dangerous as she'd declared it to be, the night of Sheridan's announcement that he was going there, but Janet consciously opposed the depression. Separation, nothing more.

Before he'd left Sheridan had explained the correspondence procedure, providing her with the specific State Department address in Washington through which their letters could be channeled in the embassy's diplomatic bag, which resulted always in an unusually quick and reassuring exchange, better than any normal mail service. His letters touched upon the destruction of the city and the difficulty of civil control but never in detail, an attempt not to avoid the obvious but not to worry her, either. Janet out-wrote Sheridan, sometimes despatching as many as three letters a week. She related a great deal from what she was studying with increased interest about the Lebanon and she recounted the gossip of Washington and she gave practically an hour-by-hour account of what she did and how she felt, every day. Always, repeatedly, she told Sheridan how much she loved him. There was never a letter from Sheridan without the same assurance.

Apart from her Sunday brunches with Harriet, househunting occupied much of her weekends and provided more material for the letters. After two months Janet was shown a brick colonial she instantly adored, just over the D.C. border into Maryland, with a Chevy Chase address. It had only been on the agent's books for three days and Janet was frightened of losing it so she took a chance and on the spot handed over a nonreturnable deposit. That night she sent Sheridan all the photographs and the brochure together with her own excited plea that it was the best house she had ever seen in her entire life and could they have it, please. Because of the diplomatic routing, his reply came within the week. Sheridan thought the agent's house looked great and was sure that if she liked it he would too and said he wanted her to go ahead and secure the property, contingent on the sale of his apartment, and included an authorization notarized by an embassy lawyer giving her similar attorney power to take to his bank, for the mortgage to be arranged.

Janet at once secured the contract. The sellers were a charming, Pentagon-retiring colonel and his wife, fleeing the East Coast winters to California, who said she could come in any time, irrespective of the legal exchanges, to measure and to plan her own fittings. Two couples were interested in Sheridan's apartment; she asked the agent to put pressure on them to act.

Janet made two visits to the Chevy Chase house, on each of which Harriet accompanied her. Janet did not intend any major structural alterations, not even in the kitchen, so there was no need for any extensive measuring, but at Harriet's urging Janet decided upon color changes in practically every room, which meant some tape measure work where she decided to recarpet and again at the windows where she was going to hang new drapes. The activity occupied Janet—an inner lining to the work blanket—and her late shopping evenings and weekends were filled with visits to furnishing departments and making comparisons between the best deals that each offered. Although it was never demanded—never hinted at—by Sheridan, Janet determined to get the best for the least, to prove to him that she was not profligate, despite her reaction to the too-expensive sapphire and diamond ring.

Sheridan's apartment was sold. Then lawyers at Sheridan's bank wanted to check directly with Sheridan about his power of attorney for the house purchase, despite already having the legally sworn deposition from the Lebanon. Janet said of course, and by using the diplomatic channel the confirmation came back from Beirut in five days.

“I'm sorry,” the bank executive said. “We want always to be sure.”

“I understand,” assured Janet.

That night, in the third letter of that week, Janet wrote that everything had been finalized and that the purchase was expected to be completed in six weeks, which was perfect timing for the carpet fitters and curtain hangers to move in to get everything ready. Sheridan's letter by return—just four days—was the one for which Janet had been waiting, from the moment of his going to the Middle East. It began beguilingly, responding to what she had written and saying that he was delighted and that he was sure the house was going to be wonderful. He could hardly wait, Sheridan said. And then wrote that he was not going to have to wait much longer—neither of them were—because he'd been officially notified that the date of his return was May 24. Which was just three and a half months away: or put another way, not more than six weeks beyond the originally chosen wedding date. Why didn't she, Sheridan demanded, start sending out the invitations and warn her parents to rearrange the wedding for some convenient date after the twenty-fourth?