Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Chapter 27

ALONE IN THE car, Jims escaped from Fredington Crucis House, pursued for several hundred yards down the lane by reporters and photographers. Leonardo he had left behind to fend for himself. They had had a row.

Half an hour had passed before he understood why the reporters and cameramen were there. During that time, having berated Leonardo for being such a fool as to put the light on, he had showered, shaved, and dressed, and braced himself to go outside and meet them. But that had to be postponed, for first he looked out of a window. The eyes and cameras of the crowd were turned to the front door and he was able to observe them for a moment or two without being seen. “Predators,” he said to himself, “vultures,” and, rather outmodedly, the legacy of a classical education, “harpies.”

Then, as one, they turned toward the gates. Mrs. Vincey was shutting them behind her and had started up the drive. The reporters closed in upon her, but not before Jims had seen she was carrying a newspaper, the only word of which he could read from this distance in the large-lettered headline was “MP.” Since he’d asked her not to come this morning, the idea was inescapable that the newspaper and curiosity had fetched her. He could see she was quite willing to talk to them and if they weren’t all that anxious to take her photograph this wasn’t for her want of readiness to pose for them. What was she saying? And what was it all about, anyway? He soon knew.

She let herself in, and herself alone, by the front door. Jims met her in the hall and found himself in a situation comparable to that Zillah had experienced with Maureen Peacock. Mrs. Vincey held up the newspaper’s front page in both hands and told him she’d never been so disgusted in all her life. For the first time, she didn’t call him Sir or Mr. Melcombe-Smith. In the words of Cleopatra when her power was waning, he might have asked, “What, no more ceremony?” Instead, he stood in silence, reading the headline over and over: THE GAY MP, TWO WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? A member of Parliament! I wonder what the queen thinks about you.”

“Mind your own fucking business,” said Jims, “and get out. Don’t come back.”

He went upstairs. At that moment, immediately, he couldn’t bring himself to read more. But he had seen the photographs on page three, notably the one of himself and Leonardo in the Maldives, and he blamed Leonardo for all of it. Leonardo had talked, gossiped perhaps, at any rate told someone, had given their picture to a gutter rag. He found him in the bedroom, sitting on the bed fully dressed but looking very hangdog and, to Jims’s mind, guilty as hell. Jims began to shout and rave at him, waving the newspaper, accusing him of treachery, perfidy, and barratrous betrayal-his once-successful career was in part due to his command of language-and not listening to his indignant defense.

Leonardo stood up. “I haven’t talked to anyone. You’re mad. I’ve got my career to think of as much as yours, remember. Let me see that.”

They struggled with the paper, pulling it this way and that until the front page was torn in half. Leonardo finally got possession of it. “If you’ll read it instead of ranting like a maniac you’ll see it’s your precious wife who’s been talking, not me. And talking, my God!”

Jims half believed him but he refused to look in his presence. He grabbed the paper, shouted, “You can get yourself back to London. Walk to bloody Casterbridge, it’s only six miles,” then ran downstairs.

Mrs. Vincey had gone. The pack was still outside. Jims put the newspaper in his briefcase, his wallet and car keys in his pocket, and, like General Gordon solitarily confronting the Mahdi’s soldiery at Khartoum, opened the door and stepped outside. The pack roared with pleasure and flashbulbs popped.

“Look this way, Jims!”

“Give us a smile, Jims!”

“I’d like just two words, Mr. Melcombe-Smith.”

“Is it true, Jims?”

“If you’d like to make a statement…”

Jims said in his patrician tones, “Of course it isn’t true. It’s all lies.” He embroidered, recalling Leonardo’s words, “My wife is having a mental breakdown.”

“Did you know you were a bigamist, Jims? Will your wife stand by you? Where’s Leonardo? Do you expect to lose your seat?”

This last, which they all seemed to take as some sort of ghastly and obscene pun, raised a roar of laughter. Jims, in what was nearly a reflex because he’d felt his face grow hot and therefore red, put up his briefcase to hide it. Bulbs flashed. One exploded almost in his face. He tried to grab the camera, failed, and plunged for his car. They were all over it, he thought, like monkeys in a safari park. He pushed a girl off and she fell over, shouting she’d get him for assault. He got the door open, squeezed in, and shut it, hoping to slam a man’s fingers in it but the hand was snatched back in the nick of time. As he drove down the drive he could see ahead of him that the gates were closed. That bitch Vincey had shut them after her on purpose, he thought, when nine times out of ten she left them open, in spite of his admonitions.

“Open the bloody gates!” He shouted it out of the window but they took no notice. Or rather, one of them stuck a camera in through it.

He got out and they clustered about him, plucking at his clothes, cameras in his face. Someone was actually sitting on the top bar of the left-hand gate.

“You off to London, Jims?”

“What’ll you say to Zillah when you get there?”

“Was it a contract killer who murdered Jeff Leach?”

“Will Zillah stick by you, Jims?”

Jims pulled open both gates, The reporter sitting on one of them tumbled off and lay on the ground, shouting that he’d broken his leg. He shook his fist and said he’d get Jims for that if it was the last thing he did. While they were trying to bar his exit Jims, resigned to sacrificing his expensive oak gates if necessary, drove straight at the pack and forced them to jump out of his way. Most of them pursued him into the village, only giving up when they saw that the Crux Arms was open. He drove through Long Fredington, eyeing with bitterness Willow Cottage, where his courtship, such as it was, had begun, and then with a glimmer of interest, for he saw it was up for sale. He was reminded of what Leonardo had said about his “precious wife” talking. There was nothing for it but to stop being a coward and read that newspaper. He pulled off the road at Mill Lane, where Zillah, on her way to Annie’s house, had once dreamed of her future with him, its affluence and its glamour, and read the story.

It was even worse than he’d expected, but now, after making his getaway from the pack and, thanks to them, becoming somewhat inured to a rain of onslaughts on his privacy, his proclivities, and his reputation, he was more able to take it. Plainly, Zillah was entirely responsible. He had underrated her, had treated her in a way he thought she would tolerate but had not. This was her revenge. There were imponderables in the story, though, things for which she could surely not be blamed. He turned back to page one and saw Natalie Reckman’s byline. It was she who’d done that snide article about Zillah in the early days of their marriage! Jims could easily imagine her watching Leonardo’s house, spying on his arrival, probably bribing the neighbors. Ah, the world was a wicked place, and those caught in the fierce light that beats upon its high shore, exposed to perpetual threat and peril.

For all that, everything was over between Leonardo and him. If he’d fancied himself in love for a few short weeks, all that had vanished in the blink of an eye. He never wanted to see Leonardo again. Jims was nothing if not a snob and he asked himself what sort of a fool would walk about a gentleman’s house wearing only a pair of vulgar underpants from Cecil Gee. And not have the sense to know a light in an uncurtained room showed up the occupants clearly to anyone outside? He wouldn’t be at all surprised if Leonardo’s mother lived on a council estate. That it was in (or more probably well outside) Cheltenham meant nothing. Congratulating himself on his escape, both from Fredington Crucis and Leonardo, Jims drove eastward and left the road to mount the steep escarpment that rises out of the Vale of Blackmoor and on which Shaston stands. Even today the view from Castle Green over “three counties of verdant pasture” is almost unchanged from Hardy’s time and still a sudden surprise to the unexpectant traveler, but Jims didn’t linger to look at it. He put the car in Shaston’s pay-and-display car park and walked along Palladour Street to an estate agent’s. The woman seated behind the desk was probably the only person in the United Kingdom, thought Jims, who hadn’t read the story in the newspaper and who didn’t recognize his name when he gave it. That was all to the good. His business transacted, he returned to the car and headed back to the London road.

On the journey he turned over the facts in his mind and saw that, come what might, his career was in ruins. There was nothing left to salvage from the wreck. He was branded a bigamist, which he could perhaps feebly deny, and a practicing homosexual, which he couldn’t deny and no longer wanted to. And he had been questioned as a suspect in a murder case. All those years of campaigning, accepting the offer of a hopeless candidature in the industrial Midlands before getting at last a safe seat, all those Fridays or Saturdays spent in appointments, all that rattling about the county in a Winnebago, all that speech-making and fête-opening and baby-cuddling-how he disliked children!-and lying to pensioners and huntsmen and pro-vivisectionists and hospital patients and schoolteachers, all of it an utter waste of time. The Party would probably expel him, take away the whip, send him to Coventry. There was no possibility of his ever making his way back. He was done for. He could only be thankful that he had an unbreakable alibi for the Friday afternoon when that miscreant Jerry Leach was killed. And that, whatever she might think, he’d pulled a fast one on Zillah.

At an exit leading to a couple of villages he pulled off the main road. It was three-quarters of an hour past noon. He drove to a hotel he knew-in the days when he was carefree, he and Ivo Carew had once spent a pleasant weekend there-and ordered lunch. But his appetite failed him and he couldn’t eat a thing.

Before she went down to the reporters Zillah had dressed herself and the children with great care and forethought. She’d devoted a lot of time to planning it the night before. Eugenie and Jordan wore the uniform of fashionable upper-middle-class children in summertime at the turn of the millennium: white sneakers, white shorts, white T-shirts, with stripes in Jordan’s case and modish spots in Eugenie’s. Zillah herself was in white trousers and a blue shirt with plunging neckline. Remembering what some awful journalist had said about her shoes, she’d put on flat sandals.

Eugenie hadn’t wanted to wear shorts and at first had refused flatly: “I’m not that sort of girl. You ought to know by now. I either wear long trousers or a dress. You ought to know.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” said Zillah recklessly. “Five pounds.”

“Ten.”

“You’ll come to a bad end.” Zillah used the same words her mother had used to her twenty years before.

Jordan sniveled. Zillah had thought of quietening him in some positive and dramatic way, such as by giving him a tot of whisky, but she’d lost her nerve and had resorted to junior aspirin instead. It had had no effect.

She smiled charmingly at the reporters and posed, holding a hand of each child, for the photographers. Jordan stopped crying for five minutes, fascinated by the biggest dog Zillah had ever seen that one of the cameramen had brought with him. She said she had something for them all and passed out copies of a statement she’d done on Jims’s computer the night before. It said that everything in that morning’s paper was true and she’d only like to add that she’d be standing by her husband and supporting him through thick and thin. She and he had spoken several times on the phone that morning and she’d assured him of her devotion and her determination to be a rock for him to cling to. She answered only one question before retiring into the building with dignity.

A young woman with a Yorkshire accent asked her if Jims was bisexual.

“I’m sure he won’t mind my saying that yes, he is. Everything has to come out into the open now.” In one of Malina’s favorite phrases, she added that trust and caring “must be the building blocks of our new relationship.”

Jordan burst into fresh tears. Satisfied with what she had done, Zillah carried him up in the lift. After the interviews and the photographs she felt rather flat. She was in the position of having absolutely nothing to do. When would Jims get back? It was a lie she’d told the newspaper people when she’d said she and Jims had spoken several times that morning. She knew he wouldn’t phone and she’d no intention of phoning him. But he’d be home and she wasn’t going to be there when he came if she could help it. When she’d rejected the idea of the cinema, swimming pools, and the various entertainments on offer at the Trocadero, she took the children out to lunch at McDonald’s and then on a river boat to the Thames Barrier. The water was calm and the motion slow, but Jordan was sick and cried all the way home.

They returned to the flat at six and Jims still wasn’t back. Unless he’d come in and gone out again. She suspected this wasn’t so and was proved right within ten minutes. By that time she’d changed into a pair of beach pajamas she’d bought at a shop at The Cross, remembered her father was ill but didn’t phone her mother, and put both children in the bath. The front door opened and closed. When she turned round she saw Jims standing in the doorway. His face was pale and he looked racked with anxiety.

“I’m just going to phone my mother,” she said nervously.

“Not now,” he said, and “May I get you a drink?” in the silky tones he used when he was either very pleased or very angry.

She didn’t know whether to say yes or no. She rinsed her hands under the tap and dried them. “A gin and tonic, please.” Her voice came out rather timidly. She followed him into the living room.

He brought her the drink and stood over her for a moment or two. There was nothing threatening in his stance but he himself was a threat to her and she flinched. He laughed, a bitter, dry laugh. “I’ve seen the newspaper,” he said, sitting down. “I suppose it’s a newspaper, I don’t know what else to call it. And I’ve talked to the media. A bit OTT, wasn’t it?”

“Wasn’t what?”

“The things you said to La Reckman. And the photograph you gave her. Did I really deserve that?”

“Of course you did, the way you’ve treated me.”

A wail came from the bathroom and Eugenie walked in, wearing her nightdress and dressing gown. She looked at Jims as a householder might look at a dog turd on the doorstep but said nothing. “I’m not getting him out of the bath,” she said to Zillah. “He’s your responsibility, as I keep telling you. He says his tummy hurts.”

Zillah went. So, after a moment or two, did Eugenie, returning in a few seconds with a book. Jims’s world had ended but he meant to die bravely, triumphantly exacting vengeance. He took out of his pocket a packet of cigarettes and lit one. It was the first he’d had for six months and it made him feel a bit faint, but he savored it and thought he might start smoking seriously again. Nobody would admonish him now, no one would ask questions in the Commons Chamber about disgusting habits, no one would suggest he set a good example. He inhaled and his vision swam. If he hadn’t been sitting down he’d have fallen over. Jordan’s yelling heralded his entry into the room.

Zillah came after him. “Why are you smoking?”

“Because I like it,” said Jims. “Put that child to bed.”

“There’s no need to talk like that. He hasn’t done you any harm.”

“No, his mother has.” He got up and switched on the television. A cartoon happened to be on and for five minutes Jordan was quiet.

“Give me a cigarette, please.”

“Buy your own. God knows, I give you enough money.” Jims drew showily on his cigarette, blowing smoke into Zillah’s face. “I don’t expect you to be out of here until Friday,” he said. “I am, in fact, giving you a week’s notice.”

“Now, wait a minute. You can’t do that. If anyone goes, you do. You’re married to me, remember? I’m your legal wife. I’ve got children and therefore a right to your home.”

“You didn’t really believe in that marriage ceremony, did you, my dear? I wouldn’t have credited that the wool could so easily be pulled over your eyes. You believed Kate Carew was a registrar? You actually swallowed Kevin Jebb as a witness? You and I haven’t even been cohabiting. Neither of our so-called marriages was consummated. You’re just a friend I’ve taken in when you hadn’t a roof over your head. Out of the goodness of my heart.”

Zillah stared at him. She couldn’t speak.

“But I grant you’ve grounds for expecting some sort of maintenance from me. So I spent the morning negotiating a purchase with an estate agent. I’ve also had a pleasant chat with the owner. That’s why I was so late back. And I’m glad to say the sale’s been agreed. I’ve bought Willow Cottage for you. Aren’t you pleased?”

As Zillah began to scream, Eugenie looked up from the floor and said, “Mummy, do you mind? I can’t hear the TV.”