He poured drinks-sherry for her and whisky for himself-and as he handed the glass to her said: “What does ‘not for long’ mean?”
“I’m sorry?” Janet frowned, momentarily not remembering.
“That’s what your mother said you told her on the telephone: that you were coming home but not for long.”
Janet sipped her drink, unsure how to say it and then decided there was only one way. “I’m going there,” she announced.
Now it was her father’s turn momentarily not to understand. “Going where?”
“Beirut”
For a long time her father stared across the room at her, unmoving, his face expressionless, and when he responded his voice, predictably, was just as controlled. He said: “That’s ridiculous: you wouldn’t even get a visa.”
“Cyprus then,” insisted Janet. “Since the war there’s been as much Lebanese activity there as in Beirut anyway.”
“To do what?” asked the man.
“A bloody sight more than is being done at the moment to find John!”
Her father shook his head, still talking evenly. “It’s a fantasy, darling. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can, if you’ll help me!”
“Me?”
“You’ve still got friends in the Foreign Office. And in the area.”
He shrugged. “A few, I suppose.”
“Introduce me,” demanded Janet. “Personally in London: by letter where you can in the Middle East.”
“For what! ” repeated the man.
“They could make inquiries, couldn’t they? Isn’t that how it was done, in the embassies where you served: questions from London relayed to you and in turn taken up with the authorities?”
“There isn’t any authority in the Lebanon any more: not the sort of authority you’re talking about,” argued her father. “You should know that better than most!”
“There is still diplomatic representation in Beirut, nominal though it might be,” Janet argued back. “John’s not the only person being held: there must be some contact with these groups! Some links!”
“Darling,” said the man, gently. “Don’t you think the Americans will have explored every possibility like that?”
“I think they’re just sitting around, doing bugger all.”
Her father hesitated, as if he were surprised at her swearing. He said: “That isn’t true: can’t be true. And you know it.”
“ I want to do something!”
“OK,” he said, a diplomat whose entire career had involved patient argument and inevitable compromise. “What happens if people I know do have contacts with friends in Beirut? And those friends have the sort of links you think must exist? And through the chain you do get some sort of information about John? What then?”
Now it was Janet who hesitated, not having thought that far ahead. “Tell the Americans,” she said. She indicated the scrapbook that lay on the settee between them and went on: “Tell them and let them know that if they don’t try to do something to get him out I’ll ask why, through the newspapers.”
“Get into a public slanging match, you mean?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Haven’t you thought of an inherent danger?”
“I don’t care what happens to me,” said Janet, thoughtlessly.
“I wasn’t thinking about you at that moment,” said her father, still gentle. “I was thinking of what could happen to John if some suggestion were given as to his whereabouts and demands made that America do something to get him out. Do you imagine whoever’s got him would just sit around and wait for it to happen?”
Janet bit her lip, uncomfortably. “Threaten,” she said, retreating. “Just threaten to go to the newspapers unless they did something.”
“As you mentioned it,” said the man. “What about you?”
“I said I didn’t care.”
“That’s stupid, which is something else you know,” her father said, still not raising his voice. “And again you’ve misunderstood. Let’s not think of physical danger for a moment, although of course we should. You’re a woman. What sort of chance do you really think a woman-any woman-would stand of achieving anything in any sort of Middle East situation?”
“I know the area and I know the language and I know the dangers and the likely difficulties,” insisted Janet.
“You’re still a woman.”
“A very determined one.”
He shook his head, more in sadness than refusal. “I do care,” he said. “I care and I feel sorry-desperately sorry-for what’s happened. Your mother and I liked John enormously and hoped, really hoped, that you were going to get a second chance. But this isn’t the way, darling. Leave it to the people who know what they’re doing: you really could do more harm-harm to John, I mean-than good by trying to get involved like this.”
Janet’s eyes clouded with anger. “You know what you’ve just done!” she said. “You’ve just talked of John in the past tense, like he’s already dead and there’s no possibility of our ever marrying: that I’ve lost the second chance. And you’ve lectured me like Willsher, the CIA man. Patronized me and patted me on the head and told me to go home and be a good girl and stop making a nuisance of myself. I haven’t had to wait until I got to the Middle East to be treated like a second-class person. From you, of all people, I didn’t expect that: neither attitude!”
Her father went to the drinks tray and refilled his glass, without inviting her to have another. Still standing by it, he said: “I’m sorry. I did not intend to talk of John as if he were dead. I didn’t intend to patronize, either.”
“I will go,” insisted Janet. “Whether you help me or not, I will go.”
“Yes,” accepted her father, shortly. “You will, won’t you?”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Do I get help or do I get patronized?”
“Do you really have to ask a question like that?”
“After tonight I’m not sure.”
“What’s this sort of conversation going to achieve?”
Janet shrugged, regretting the outburst. “I’m fed up, Daddy: so fed up! I love John and I really do think of it as a second chance and I want it so very much. So I’m fed up being told to go away: being told that everyone else knows better than me. That I haven’t the right to know anything, even!”
Her father moved from where he stood, coming to her and pulling her to him. “You know I’ll do everything I can.”
Janet twisted, to look up at him. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head, dismissing her apology. “Don’t regard it as anything more than it is,” he cautioned. “I don’t know yet whether anyone I know personally is in any position to help. Or if they will, if they are.”
“It’s good just to have someone on my side,” she said.
“I’ll always be that,” her father said.
Janet was further encouraged the following day, when her father emerged from his study after an entire morning’s telephoning, to announce that he had located two old diplomatic acquaintances, one in London, the other working out of the British embassy in Nicosia.
“Cyprus!” exclaimed Janet.
“It isn’t significant,” warned her father. “We don’t know yet if he’ll be prepared to do anything.”
“It’s wonderful!” insisted Janet, refusing to be disheartened.
Depression was, however, a feeling that was quick to come. Her father’s friend in London was named McDermott, and he’d served under her father at the British embassy in Cairo. They met not at Whitehall but over lunch at Lockett’s, nearby. He was a tall, thin, pink-cheeked man with the habit of looking reprovingly, like some schoolmaster, over half-rimmed spectacles. The frames had grooved the bridge of his nose and the sides of his head, where his hair was white. He said he remembered Janet from her Cairo visits during school vacations and she smiled, unable to remember him, and agreed that Egypt had been a fascinating country. He’d read of Sheridan’s kidnap but had not realized her association, because she had been referred to in all the newspaper stories by her previously married name. He was sorry. He said the situation in the Lebanon appeared, regrettably, quite intractable and ordered gulls’ eggs, with lemon sole to follow.