The Forever Girl (9 page)

He invited her to sit down while he went to prepare coffee. “Where’s David?” he asked. His tone was level. “Working, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Not my fault,” he said. “I keep telling him to work less. He puts the rest of us to shame.”

“Yes, I think so too. But …”

He looked at her expectantly.

“This isn’t easy for me,” she said.

He stared at her, and then sat down. He would make the coffee later.

“It’s about today? About that business out at the reef?”

She nodded. “I know what you’re probably thinking.”

He held her gaze. “I try to keep out of other people’s private affairs,” he said. “It crossed my mind that it was a bit … how should I put it? Surprising that you were out there with … what’s that doctor’s name again?”

“George Collins.”

“Yes. George Collins.” He paused. “I hardly know him. I’ve met him once or twice at the usual functions, but they seem to keep to themselves for the most part, don’t they?”

“They do.”

He sighed. “I didn’t think it was any of my business what was happening on that boat.”

“But there wasn’t anything happening,” she blurted out. “We just went out in the boat together.”

He stared at her for a moment, as if he was deciding whether to say something. Then he shrugged. “Well, that’s fine then. You’ve made the point that it was just a casual trip. I’ll go and make coffee.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not the point. The point is that David doesn’t know that I went out. I didn’t tell him.”

He stared at her. “Oh.”

“Yes. I didn’t tell him. George bumped into me at the tennis club and asked me on the spur of the moment.” That was not strictly true, she thought, but it would become too complicated if she had to explain further.

“He just suggested it? Like that?”

“Yes.” She wondered if that sounded implausible.

He seemed to be weighing up the likelihood of her telling the truth. “So what you’re saying is that this was an unplanned
outing that you didn’t tell David about. And now you think that David will be …”

“Will be suspicious.”

He looked out of the window. “You must forgive me,” he said. “As a bachelor, I’m not sure that I understand how these things work. Are you saying that a husband would automatically be suspicious if his wife went off on an outing with another man?”

She wanted to laugh. Was he that unaware of how the world worked? “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. And he would be. As would a wife.”

“Always?”

She thought about this. “Well, it depends on the circumstances. You couldn’t go out for dinner with another man, for example, unless you discussed it with your husband first.”

He asked about the position of an old friend of both husband and wife. Could he take the wife out for dinner if the husband was away?

“Of course. An old friend could do that, yes. As I said, it depends on the circumstances.”

“Well, that seems reasonable enough. But …” He frowned. “But you’re telling me that David would think that you and this doctor … George Collins were having an affair?”

She did not answer him immediately. It was possible that David would not form that impression, but there was a good chance he would. She explained her anxiety to John, who listened attentively. But halfway through her explanation, she faltered.

“I suppose I should tell you the truth.”

She saw the effect that this had on him. He drew back slightly, as if offended.

“I would hope you’d tell me the truth,” he said stiffly. “Who
likes to be lied to?”

“I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t want to be lied to. The problem is, you see, that I’ve felt attracted to George Collins. I like him. I’d go so far as to say that I’m interested in him, but I haven’t been having an affair with him. We discussed it – yes, we did talk about it, but it hasn’t gone anywhere.”

He looked at her intently. “I’m sorry that you feel you can’t trust me with the truth.”

She was aghast. “But what I’ve just told you is absolutely true.”

“Is it?”

She became animated. “Yes, it is. It is the truth.”

He held her gaze. There was an odd expression on his face, she thought; it was as if he were just about to pull the rabbit out of the hat.

“Well,” he said evenly. “If that were the case, then I must have imagined what I saw from our boat.”

She looked puzzled.

“I saw,” he continued, “the two people in that boat kissing. I’m sorry, but that’s what I saw. I just happened to be looking through my binoculars at the time. We’d seen the signalling and I was interested to see what was going on. I looked through my binoculars.”

She stared at him in silence. George had kissed her – that brief, entirely chaste kiss of relief. It was not even on the lips. A kiss on the cheek. And he had been seen.

“That’s not what you think it was,” she stuttered.

He spread his palms in a gesture of disengagement. “I saw what I saw. Forgive me for jumping to conclusions.”

“He kissed me when he saw that you were coming to our rescue. It was the equivalent of … of a hug. That’s all. There was
nothing more to it than that.” She paused. “I promise you, John. I give you my word.”

She could tell that he did not believe her. And had she been in his position, she would not have believed herself either.

“Well, I don’t think it has anything to do with me,” he said. “As I said, I like to avoid getting involved in other people’s entanglements. I know that these things happen, by the way. I’m not standing here being disapproving.”

“I feel so powerless. I can’t make you believe …”

He interrupted her. “You don’t have to make me believe anything, Amanda.”

“I’m not cheating on David,” she said, putting as much resolution into her voice as she could muster. “I want you to know that.”

“Fine. So you’ve told me.”

“But I need to know: will you tell David about what happened today?”

He rose to his feet. His tone now was distant. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to lie. I know you may have little time for it, but I happen to hold a religious position on these things. I will not tell a lie.” He looked at her. “Does that make me sound pompous? Okay, it does. But that’s where I stand.”

She struggled to control herself. Tears were not far off, she felt, but she did not want to break down. “You don’t sound pompous, John. And I’d never ask you to lie. All I’d like to ask you is not to tell him about my being out there in the boat. That’s not a lie. It’s just …”

“Concealment?”

She tried to fight back. “We don’t have a duty to tell everybody everything. That’s not concealment, for heaven’s sake.”

He seemed to reflect on this. He walked to the window and looked out across the grass to the sea beyond. She thought: he’s never been involved in the messiness that goes with relationships. He doesn’t know. He’s a monk, with a monk’s understanding of life, which is not how life is for most of us.

“I’ll not say anything,” he said after a while. “I won’t mention the incident to David, but, and I’m sorry to say you won’t make me change my mind on this, if he were to ask me about it, then I would have to tell him the truth.” He turned to face her. “And that truth would be the whole truth.”

She knew what he meant by this. If he were asked, he would mention the kiss.

She nodded her acceptance. Then she said, “John, may I just say one thing more? I haven’t lied to you today. I promise you that. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Apart from what you’re hiding from David.”

She looked down at the floor. She would not lose her temper.

“You know something?” she said. “You think that you understand things. You don’t, you know. You’ve kept yourself apart from the messy business of being an ordinary human being with ordinary human temptations and imperfections and … and conflicts. You’re looking at the world through ice, though, John.”

His look was impassive, but she could tell that she had wounded him. She had not meant to do that, and she immediately apologised. “I’m sorry. That came out more harshly than I intended. I’m very sorry.”

He held up a hand. “But you’re right,” he said. “I have kept myself away from these things you mention. But have you any idea – any idea at all – of what that has cost me? You don’t know,
do you, about how I’ve come back here sometimes, at night, by myself, and cried my eyes out? Like a boy? You don’t know that, do you?”

“I’m sorry, John …”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to burden you with that. It’s nothing to do with you.”

She got up and went towards him. She put an arm around his shoulder, to comfort him. He flinched at her touch.

“I understand,” she whispered. “I understand.”

“Do you? I don’t think people do.”

“They do. Some may not, but most do.”

After that, they were, for a time, quite silent. She moved away from him and told him that she would not stay for coffee after all. He nodded, and accompanied her, unspeaking, to the door. The heat outside met her like a wall.

11

Teddy’s father was arrested four days later. It was done with the maximum, and unnecessary, fuss, with two police cars, sirens wailing, arriving at the front of the house shortly after eight in the morning. Amanda was taking the dog for a walk round the block at the time, and saw what happened.

“They made a big thing of it,” she said to David that evening. “There were six or seven of them – one or two senior officers, I think, and the rest constables. It was totally over the top.”

He snorted. “Role playing.”

“Anyway, they bundled Gerry Arthur out of the house, put him into one of the cars, and then drove off, sirens going full tilt.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Then one of the constables came out carrying a computer, put that into the other car, and off they went.”

“A show – that’s what it was.”

She looked at her husband. He had a built-in antipathy to officials.

“What was it all about?” she asked. “Have you heard?”

“I met Jim Harris,” he said. “He told me that Gerry Arthur is being charged with being party to some fraud or other. Something to do with the scuttling of a ship to get the insurance payment. Apparently that sort of thing happens. You sink your boat and claim the insurance.”

“I’m surprised. They go to that Baptist church, don’t they?”

David laughed. “Baptists are every bit as capable of sinking ships as anybody else, I suspect. But I wouldn’t have thought that Gerry Arthur did that sort of thing anyway. He’s one of our clients. We audit his books, and they’re always scrupulously
clean. This’ll be a put-up thing.”

She asked him to explain.

“You know what it’s like here. You make a remark that offends somebody high up in the political food-chain. All of a sudden, it’s discovered that there are problems with your work permit. Gerry has status, I think, which means they can’t chuck him out, even if he’s not an actual citizen. So the next best thing is to get him into trouble with the police.”

She pointed out that it would be difficult to set up the sinking of a ship.

“No,” he said. ‘The ship would have sunk anyway. So all you have to do is to create some evidence of an instruction to the captain that points to the thing being deliberate. You’ve got your case. You leak something to the police and they’re delighted to get the possibility of a high profile conviction. Off you go.”

“What will happen?”

He was not sure. “I heard that they’ve let him out on bail. They might drop the charges if he agrees to go off to the British Virgin Islands or somewhere like that. It’ll die down. It usually does.”

“It’s very unfair.”

“Of course it is.”

She looked at him. “To be accused of doing something you haven’t done. That must be very hard.”

He returned her gaze. “Yes. Certainly.” Then he said, “To be accused of doing something you have done – that must be hard as well, don’t you think?”

She caught her breath. “Yes, I suppose so.”

He was still watching her, and it was at that moment that she became certain that he knew.

Clover said to Teddy: “Your dad was taken off to jail, Teddy. The police came. Is he still in jail?”

The boy bit his lip. “They brought him back. They made a mistake.”

“Really? Why did they take him anyway? Was he spying?”

Teddy shook his head. “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. We know there are spies here.”

Teddy kicked at the ground in his frustration. “He hadn’t done anything. They said he’d sunk one of his boats, but he didn’t. You’d have to be stupid to sink one of your own boats.”

She nodded. The world of adults was opaque and sometimes difficult to fathom; but the proposition that one would not normally sink one of one’s own boats seemed reasonable enough. “I’m sorry for you, Teddy,” she said. “It must be awful having your dad taken away by the police.”

“Thank you. But he didn’t do anything.”

Later, she talked to James about it. He agreed with her that the sinking of the boat might just be a cover for the real charge of spying. Now that the police had become involved, though, he thought there was no need to continue with their observations. “It’s in their hands now,” he pronounced. “We can stop.”

He had lost interest, she sensed, and so the notebook, and the photographs they had collected, were filed away in a cupboard in James’s room. The photographs, of which there were about fifteen, had been printed on James’s computer and labelled with the date, time and place when they had been taken.
At the tennis club, Saturday morning. Suspect 1 gets into the car with Suspect 2
. And
At the tennis club, Suspect 1 talks to Suspect 2. Details of conversation unknown
.

She sensed that he was more concerned with other things. She
invited him to the tree-house, but he rarely came now, and when he did, he seemed detached, as if he wanted to be somewhere else. He never stayed long.

She made suggestions. “We could fix the tree-house; I could get some wood. We could take more things up there. If you wanted, I could make you a shelf of your own for your stuff.”