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?”