“That piece in the paper-the woman spy in love with an Israeli-”
“Ah, you saw that. I wondered. Premature, I’m afraid. She won’t talk to us. Too much conflict already about what she did for love-”
“I, too, did it for love,” Clemency said, interrupting her. “You could say that I, too, gave up everything for love.” She was busy stubbing out yet another of those wretched cigarettes, and she did not look at Jemima as she spoke.
“You mean there was a man involved?” Jemima spoke tentatively. Clemency’s nervousness was perhaps not surprising under the circumstances but quite marked all the same, including this sudden out-of-the-blue request for a face-to-face interview. She had no wish to frighten her off at this stage.
“Correct. There was a man.” Clemency pulled on her cigarette with increasing ferocity and then once again stubbed it out.
“That didn’t come out at the trial.”
“I didn’t want it to. I pleaded ‘guilty’ and that was that.”
“Is he still involved? Or rather, are you still involved with him? You were in prison a long time. Or is it over? Is it this love-versus-duty question of the woman spy and the Israeli you mentioned when you first contacted me? Is that what we might talk about on the program?”
Jemima realized too late that she had posed too many questions too quickly. An obstinate closed expression on Clemency Vane’s face warned her of her mistake.
“I don’t want to say anything more at the moment. You must understand: there are problems.” And Clemency declined to explain any further, sharply and inexorably. That was all Jemima was left with-until the summons this morning.
So there was a man involved. And this was him? Was Jemima now looking at the man for whom Clemency-product of a privileged education, showered with worldly advantages by her doting parents, clever enough to achieve university, achieve anything she wished, in truth-had thrown it all away? Infatuation was a fascinating subject. One woman’s infatuation was another woman’s poison… Take this man. Very strong physically, perhaps-she hoped not to find out-and certainly quite handsome… this was the man for whom a privileged English girl had wasted five years of her life. This Santangelino without even a name…
“My name is Alberto,” he said to her with a smile-his first smile, and that might be a good sign, might it not? Once again, however, he had apparently read her thoughts-not such a good sign, that.
“First of all you will take off all these clothes. Even the shoes now. Then we will know each other better. And perhaps we will love each other.” Alberto put both his big hands on her shoulders as though he were measuring her for something.
“Shouldn’t we get to know each other first?” Jemima spoke in the most reasonable tone she could muster. She must at all costs, she knew from studying such things, humor him: she must not arouse his violence, his hostility, give him that psychological impetus he needed to transform the situation from polite parleying to physical action. It was the feeling of helplessness that was so terrible, just as she had been told so many times.
And perhaps we will love each other. For God’s sake, it wasn’t the stripping that mattered! Jemima had a beautiful body, or at least had been assured of it enough times to lack self-consciousness on the subject. She had no particular feeling about nudity and privacy either, sunbathing topless or even naked when it seemed right without giving much thought to the subject. The exposure of her body, however disagreeable the demand in this secret claustrophobic context, was not the point. But to love each other!
How near, for example, was the hotel telephone? Looking round, she saw the telephone was on the far side of the bed. Her eye then fell on an ashtray with stubs in it. That gave her an inspiration. It was worth a try: even for a dedicated non-smoker like herself
“Could you let me have a cigarette first, please? Then I promise…”
Alberto hesitated. Finally he said: “I have no cigarettes.”
Jemima gazed again at the stubs. Half-smoked. In spite of herself, she found she was trembling. And her voice shook when she spoke. She had not realized before how much she had been counting-subconsciously-on Clemency’s arrival to interrupt them, somehow save her. Clemency Vane was after all the one person in the world who really did know where she was.
Jemima looked at the bathroom door. It was closed. She had not really thought about it, but now the blank door had a sinister look. “What’s happening here? Is she-wait a minute-is she still here? Is this a plot?”
Alberto smiled again. Jemima, her fear rising, decided that his smile was not after all a good sign.
“A plot? Yes, you could call it that,” he said. “A plot to get to know you. You thought it was your plot with your silly program about love and duty-even an intelligent woman like you, with your fine education, can be a little silly sometimes. But it was not your plot. It was our plot!”
“Clemency knows about this,” exclaimed Jemima. “Well, she must. How else did you know I was coming? Listen, Clemency’s here. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Don’t you understand? Clemency would do anything for me. She’s my woman. The drugs, everything, prison, that was all for me. And now she has brought you here for me. She set you up for me.
“Clemmie told me to come here,” he went on with that strange horrible exhilaration. “She laughed, yes, she laughed at you, for thinking that she would take part in your stupid program.”
He was becoming vehement again but apparently unaware of what he was doing as the grip on her arm tightened.
“I’m a strong man, you see, the kind of man women love; women love to support and help men like me. Clemency knew that. ‘Strong man,’ she said, ‘you get to know Jemima Shore then, if you want, get to know Jemima Shore if you like, because during all those years you never knew anything really about me. And now you never will. Poor Alberto, you will never know me.’”
Alberto’s hand loosened again, and his voice too had changed subtly as though he were imitating Clemency herself. Her abrupt rather scornful tones. There was a silence between them.
You will never know me. But it was Alberto who had said that, quoting Clemency, not Jemima. It was Alberto himself, imitating Clemency.
“She did do it all for me, didn’t she?” He was questioning Jemima now; there was something pathetic about him, despite his fierceness and the strong hands that still held her prisoner.
But then that temporary glimpse of something pathetic was quite gone. Alberto started to pull at Jemima’s clothes. The beige jersey dress came off quite easily, or would have done so, but the very violence of his actions hindered him, those scrubbed strong hands seemingly frustrated by his own haste.
I must not struggle, thought Jemima desperately, I must not even scream. I know what to do, I must be passive, I must endure, I must survive. Otherwise he’ll kill me. Now she was in her silk petticoat and the man was panting horribly, sweating much more. He began to talk, gabble: “Women, you like this, this is what you really want, bitches, traitors…” He talked on, and then half hissed, half shouted at her: “You I’m really going to possess-”
In spite of herself Jemima lost control. The careful passivity went. She began to struggle in Alberto’s grip, to shout at him.
“Even if you killed me”-having raped me was the unspoken phrase, for still she did not wish to pronounce the words, in spite of everything-“even if you killed me, and especially if you killed me, you would not get to know me. You would not possess me.”
Alberto stopped. He still held her. Now they were both sweating, panting.
“She said that, Clemency.” But before Alberto spoke the words, Jemima knew the truth, understood suddenly and clearly what had been implicit all the time. What had been done for love. Once long ago. And once only recently.
“Alberto-” She spoke more strongly now. “Release me. Then let me go into the bathroom.”
“No. It’s not right.” Some of the power was waning in him, the passion. Jemima felt it. Her own increased.
“She’s there. Clemmie,” he added in a low voice.
“I-I want to see her,” said Jemima.
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“You must let me go in there. There may be something I can do.”
Alberto shook his head. “It’s too late,” he said.
“Listen, for God’s sake-”
“It’s too late. It was already too late when you arrived here.” Now the force she had felt in him was totally extinguished. She was in command. In command as Clemency Vane had once been-had been until the very end.
“I followed her here,” he went on. “I knew she was stealing out to come and see you. I pleaded with her when I got here. I knew she was trying to leave me, that she was getting frightened of what I might do to her. She found me so violent, so demanding after she came out of prison. She said sex didn’t interest her. She never ever wanted to make love with me. She said I bored her.”
Alberto began to sob convulsively.
“Then when I pressed her more, she said she never loved me in the first place. She did it all for the cause. Yet I helped her, I protected her. She wouldn’t listen. The money was needed then, she said, so she did what she had to do. Now it was not. Santangela was safe. And she would tell the world why she did it all-not for me, but for the country, the cause.”
He sobbed more terribly.
For love. Clemency’s words came back to her. You could say indeed that I gave up everything for love. Dry, wry, defiant words. But for love of the cause, not the man.
Jemima jumped up and Alberto did not even try to stop her. She pulled on her dress and he made no move to stop that either. She went into the little clean white hotel bathroom, saw the shower, the bright pristine towels on the rail, not very big towels and an unremarkable beige color-it was that kind of hotel. All the towels were clean and untouched except one: that was the towel draped inadequately over the body of Clemency Vane lying in the bath.
The towel left her face exposed, or perhaps Alberto had not wished to cover it. Certainly he had not closed Clemency’s eyes: they stared at Jemima, sightless and bulging, above the purpled discoloration of her face, the mouth, and the tongue. There was no sign of what Alberto had used to strangle her-but the memory of his strong, black-haired, well-tended, well-scrubbed-afterward, muscular hands came back to her. The hands that had held her, Jemima. And tried to know her, as in the end they had never known Clemency Vane.
“I told you it was too late,” Alberto said from the bedroom. He had not moved. “You can go away now,” he added, in a remote voice as though the subject no longer interested him. “I shan’t harm you. Go. It’s nothing to do with you anymore.”
Much later, back at the Megalith office about seven o’clock, Cherry said to Jemima with that cheerfulness she maintained even toward the end of the office day: “Where were you this morning? There were quite a few calls. You left a message saying you were out seeing that woman, what’s her name, the drug runner who did it all for love, the persistent one who kept ringing up about the new program. But you never left me a number. Did you see her?”
“I saw her,” said Jemima. Later she would tell Cherry, of course, as she told her everything, and later still everyone would probably know. But not just now.
“Was there anything in it for the program?” inquired Cherry. “She was so sure she could help us.”
“No, after all, nothing in it for the program.”
“Ah, well,” said Cherry comfortably. “You never really know about people, do you?”
Jemima Shore agreed.