The Englishman (69 page)

“I know.”

I look over at him in the half-dark of the car. “Why?”

“Because, Anna, implausible though it may seem to you, I am actually doing what I can to protect you.”

“Don’t protect me from what I want!”

He opens his mouth to counter this, but I interrupt him.

“The only other man I’ve ever—” I catch myself in mid-sentence and glance at him quickly, embarrassed. “When I was in my early twenties I loved someone very much, someone who just wanted to have sex with me. He was fond of me, fond enough to want my love, but he didn’t want to…he didn’t want to be with me, either. He came to London to spend a weekend in bed with me, and at the end he told me he was engaged to be married to someone else.”

And it took me years to get over it.

Giles reaches over, clasps my hand and draws it to his lips.

“Anna, I don’t just want to have sex with you. You know it’s more…it’s a lot more than that. But I can’t ask you to be with me. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be…honorable.”

And suddenly this discussion ends the same way it began.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Giles!”

I yank the key out the ignition and jump out of the car, slamming the door as hard as I can. The Subaru is hardly perturbed by my little anger. The drops of rainwater on the roof twinkle in the light of the street lamps like the stars in a clear, cold night.

Halfway up the entrance portal, he catches up with me.

“Go away and be an immature, screwed-up English schoolboy somewhere else!” I am not shouting. But I am about to knee him in the groin, and he is well aware of it.

“Anna, don’t. Don’t fight with me. Please.”

“But that’s what happens, Giles! You lie to people to keep them sweet, they find out about it, they feel jerked around, they shout at you! Which part is it that’s coming as a surprise to you?”

“You are very self-righteous for someone who has applied for a job across the pond herself.”

This comes so completely out of left field that all I can do is stare at him, slack-jawed. “How do you—”

“People keep asking me whether I know you and what I think of you.” He shrugs. “I always tell them the same thing, although I’m not sure any more that I’m doing you a—” A blood-curdling noise drowns out the rest of his words. “That’s the fire alarm!”

Oh, my God.

“Giles, Selena ran up to the dome! What if—”

It is raining more heavily now, and we run toward the huge dark building and up the monumental entrance steps. The great hall is empty, except for the ear-splitting wail of the siren.

“It’s probably just someone having a smoke in their office!” he shouts.

I shrug, too worried to reply.

“It could be anywhere,” he tries again. “You don’t know that it is on your floor!”

A few people trickle into the hall, some with their fingers in their ears, none of them particularly concerned, among them a security guard.

“Hey!” I tap his shoulder to get his attention. “Contact your colleague! He’s up in the dome, the fire may be there!” He tries his walkie-talkie and shrugs; it’s too loud. Giles taps my shoulder and points at Steve, Nancy Benning and a handful of other, vaguely familiar people, who come running down the stairs of the east wing.

“It’s somewhere along the hallway on E-four!” Steve yells, but he hardly stops on his way out.

Even plugged by my fingers, my ears are beginning to hurt. I see Giles chewing on a piece of tissue, which he rolls into balls and pushes into his ears.

“Give me your keys!” he mouths, and before I can process the intention behind his request, I have handed them over.

“No! Giles! No!” But he’s off, and much faster than I can follow him. The staircase is deserted, and I can’t smell anything, until I reach the third floor. Someone comes down the stairs, but it is only the security guard, and he is coughing violently and shaking his head.

“The girl! Where’s the girl?”

“Don’t know! Locked in, doesn’t answer—there’s smoke up there! Come!”

“No, I must—”

“Are you all crazy?”

He clamps my upper arm and drags me downstairs, and struggle as I might, I have no chance against him. We reach the great hall just as the fire trucks arrive and the alarm is switched off. Like on the morning after a long night in a club, every sound is now muted, except the hammering of my own heart. I can’t hear what the security guard tells the fire fighters, but they run up the staircase with their gas masks and huge rucksack-like contraptions on their backs.

A megaphone sounds across the hall. “Keep calm and vacate the premises now! Please vacate the premises
now!”

A few more people are trickling into the hall from all directions, and it is only the sight of the firefighters and the flashing engine outside that jolts them out of their irritation at being interrupted at their work.

Now I know what it feels like to be on the brink of madness. I’m so scared, I can only manage one second at a time.

Don’t panic.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

“Please, ma’am, you have to leave the building.” The crew leader comes up to me, and I realize what a nuisance I am to him for skulking behind a pillar.

“I will, in a minute. Look, it’s not dangerous down here. I have to—”

His face becomes even more impatient as something behind me catches his attention.

“No, sir, you can’t get in here! No—stop!”

“What’s going on?”

The voice stabs into me like a knife. Nick Hornberger, as big and broad-shouldered as any of the firefighters, stands in the middle of the entrance portal, staring. Without thinking twice, I rush up to him and slap him across the face, as hard as I can. My hand stings like hell, his cheek must feel worse, and he is not amused.

“Are you mad? What do you—will you restrain this woman?” He turns to the firefighter, who is staring at me, stunned.

“I had hoped you were stuck in a holding cell, being buggered by some Crips with
schlongs
like baseball bats!”

This makes him blench. “You fucking little do-gooder! Did you egg Giles on to hand the file to the police? I
told
him this would happen if he told you!”

“The police? No, we gave it to Louise Randall. Mary-Lou,” I add. “
She
reported you. And good for her!”

“There’s a fire in this building!” the crew leader asserts himself. “You can’t stay here!”

As if to confirm this, a loud groan rises from the crowd outside. I run out onto the landing; everyone is staring up at the dome.

“The dome’s on fire!” someone shouts.

Oh, God.

“Selena’s up there. And Giles has gone to fetch her. Did you know you knocked her up?” I am beyond shouting, but Nick’s eyes widen with sudden comprehension. It seems he didn’t.

And then I hear them, the firefighters’ heavy boots on the marble steps. The awful, intense nausea of fear rises in me again, and I tear away from the man holding me by the arm to run back inside to see Giles, wracked with coughs behind a gas mask, uncertain on his feet but upright, supported by one fireman, Selena carried by another. They are led straight past us into the cool, wet night air and down the steps to the medical response truck.

I don’t want to be in the way, but I need to see him, so I lurk at a short distance, just making sure. His ribcage seems too tight, he stretches out one arm while the other rests against the gleaming white metal.

“Anna…” he wheezes. I wasn’t even sure he had seen me, but he wants me to hold his hand. “I lost your keys upstairs.”

“Forget about the keys.” I clasp his hand between mine and press it against my cheek. He reeks of smoke, and his face is an odd shade of flushed pallor. “Are you all right?”

“Think so.” He breathes deeply, and more calmly.

We watch as Selena, sobbing, is laid on a stretcher and pushed up into the back of the truck.

“Sir, you had better put this on.” A young paramedic hands him an oxygen mask and adjusts the valve on the metal container. “Do you want to sit down? Do you feel dizzy, nauseous or confused?”

“I’m all right.”

“Please, sir, do you feel dizzy, nauseous or confused?” the paramedic repeats impatiently.

“No! I don’t need—”

“Giles, please! You’ve played the man enough!”

He groans, coughs, and slips the tube around his head and the openings into his nose.

“How is the girl? She’s pregnant,” he tells the paramedic. “Did she say that she’s pregnant?”

“Yes, sir, and she’s in hysterics. But as far as we could see, she’s not—um—hurt in that way.”

“Not bleeding?” Giles urges him.

“No, sir, she isn’t. Sorry, I must—” He dashes off.

“What’s Nick doing here? Why isn’t he with her?” Breathing heavily, Giles nods at the girl inside the truck.

“Don’t know. Returning to the scene of the crime, maybe. He didn’t know she is pregnant, though. Stupid male chauvinist heroism!”

Giles frowns. “Heroism? Nick?”

“No, you!” I laugh and cry and the same time. “You could have—what if you had—”

“No, no, don’t you see? I helped save his child. I’m free of him now. Of Nick and all that. Now I’m free of it.”

I try to digest this, and I dimly understand what he means, But if I’m honest, I don’t really care. He is safe. That’s all I care about.

“Anna…”

“Breathe, don’t speak!” I clasp his hand again, but he reaches underneath my coat and round my waist.

“Come close!”

I snuggle against him, push the plastic tube out of the way with my nose and gently kiss the soft, stubbly skin under his ear.

“That’s nice. Anna, the fire didn’t come from the dome.”

“Not? But Selena—”

He shakes his head. Breathes. Then speaks.

“Her key was stuck in the bloody…door. It…she couldn’t get out. I had to smash the door in…with the fire extinguisher.” He grins wanly at the irony.

“But then—”

“Corvin…Corvin’s office.”

“Oh, my God! Was he—was he in there?”

“Don’t know. It was all full of smoke. The firemen pulled me away before I could get to him.”

Another groan comes from the crowd, and shards of glass are sprinkling onto the asphalt. We step out from behind the truck and look up; smoke and flames are now pouring out the windows as well as the roof of the dome.

“Stand back!” the megaphone sounds again. “Stand back from the building!”

“What a mess,” I murmur, hiding against Giles’s body. “What a God-awful bloody mess.”

“Some of the mess is that you don’t know what you want.”

When I am angry, I flare up like a firecracker. Giles glimmers like a slow fuse. He doesn’t usually shout back when I shout at him, but when I have cooled down again, he goes on smoldering.

“I’m glad you weren’t burned to a crisp up there. That’s gotta be a good sign, right?” I doubt that flippancy will throw him off the scent, but the last thing I want tonight is to go on arguing with him.

“Mm-hmm.”

“I know that I want to come home with you tonight,” I offer.

At last, a sort of smile. He pulls me closer, and his hand inches lower. “That’s something to live for, isn’t it?”

Now I’m riled, too. “Well, do
you
know what you want?” Oddly enough, I have the feeling that I have been manipulated into asking him the question he wanted me to ask him.

“How did your interview at Queen Mary go?” he asks, as if he was merely making polite conversation.

I stare up at him, uncertain about his train of thoughts. He shrugs, as if he was bored, but I recognize the tell-tale tightening of the muscle next to his mouth.

“It’s just that if you didn’t make a complete hash of your interview, and if at Queen Mary they know a good thing when they see one, you could…” He hesitates.

“I could…?” I ask, leaning in.

Giles looks down at me, into my eyes, and my heart runs hot with anticipation.

“You could ‘
come and live with me and be my love
,’” he quotes. “‘
And we would all the pleasures prove
…’”

Epilogue

I
T
I
S
A Y
EAR
T
O
T
HE
D
AY
that we all assembled in the large auditorium at the Observatory of Ardrossan University to pay our last respects to Professor Andrew Corvin. While the President spoke of duty and dedication, all I could think of was that frantic old man in his fortress of paper. Giles reached over and, with the back of his four fingers, brushed away the tears running down my face. I slipped my fingers into his, and we sat hand in hand for the whole ceremony.