The pain of physical release brought her shudderingly back to the reality she had briefly refused to confront, and Janet did stiffen this time, hands gripped at her sides, making herself think of what she’d done. Betrayed, she thought: she’d betrayed-humiliated-a man she loved and whom she’d postured and posed and pretended to be trying to rescue. It didn’t matter that John would never know of the betrayal or the humiliation. She’d know. Always. Carry it with her like a stigma, a constant weight. A thought began but Janet refused it. There couldn’t be any excuse, any escape. She’d been betrayed and humiliated and battered and frightened but the need, for a few moments, to hide and forget wasn’t an excuse. There wasn’t even an equation. She paraded all the words in her mind, mentally shouting the accusation: whore and tart and prostitute and slut. And they weren’t bad enough, cruel enough, to describe what she’d done.
She felt Baxeter’s hand upon hers, on the fist she had created, and kept it tightly shut, refusing, too, to look sideways at him.
“I am not sorry,” he said.
“I am.”
“It happened.”
“It shouldn’t have done.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid!” she said. “You know why it shouldn’t have happened!”
“It needn’t complicate anything.”
“It will, won’t it! You think I’ll be able to forget!”
“It will only become a complication if you let it.”
“You think I’m a whore?”
“Now you’re being bloody stupid,” he said. “I knew the situation. Do you think of me as a whoremonger or a lecher?”
The rejection quietened her. “No,” she said. “I don’t think of you like that.”
“It hasn’t hurt John: needn’t hurt John.”
“How do you think of me?” she said, needing an answer.
Baxeter raised himself on one arm and moved over her, so that she was forced to look at him. He said: “I think you’re very beautiful and I wanted almost from the first moment to take you to bed and I think you realized what was growing up between us just as much as I did, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Janet agreed, in a whisper.
“And didn’t want it to stop?” he pressed, determined upon the complete catharsis.
“No,” she said, in further admission. “But I still love John.”
“I didn’t ask you to stop: expect you to stop.”
“It is a complication!” she insisted, angrily. “It’s a bloody mess.”
“It’s an adult situation and we’re adults.”
“I don’t feel like an adult. I feel like an idiot child.”
“Stop it,” he warned.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t…” she began and then stopped. “Yes I do,” she said. “I want us to forget about it: not forget but put it in the back of our minds like the mistake it was and…” she trailed off.
“And what?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think it was a mistake. I knew what I was doing. Like you did.”
“Let’s not start using words like love!”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“My father wants me to go back to England in between the court hearings. I think that’s what I’ll do. The difficulty won’t exist if I do that.”
Baxeter lowered himself off his arm and lay like Janet, on his back looking up at the ceiling. He said: “If you don’t want to go, it won’t be necessary for you to make the separation. Not for a week or so at least.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, turning to him at last.
“I’ve got to go away,” said Baxeter. “I was going to tell you earlier.”
Despite the guilt and the resolutions Janet felt her stomach dip, at the thought of his not being near. She said: “Just for a week or so?”
“It shouldn’t be any longer. It’s just a quick in-and-out assignment.”
“Where?”
He was silent for several moments. Then he said: “Beirut.”
“What!”
“A situation piece,” said Baxeter. “It’ll probably accompany the article I’ve written about you.”
“Don’t go!” she blurted.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
“Be careful, darling. Please be…” said Janet and then stopped, realizing the word she’d used.
Baxeter smiled back but didn’t pick up upon it, further to embarrass her. “I’m the sort of guy who does his reporting from the bar of the best hotel.”
“I’m serious,” Janet insisted. Unashamedly she said: “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
Serious himself, Baxeter said: “Do you want me to find out what I can about John?”
Janet held his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Please find out what you can about John.”
24
J anet slept at Baxeter’s flat that night and in the morning they made love again and it was as good as the first time. She insisted upon returning alone to the hotel, which was still besieged by reporters. On Baxeter’s advice Janet did not try to avoid them, which he argued would merely prolong the pressure, but agreed to meet them all at once in a small conference room the hotel made available to them.
When everyone was seated and the lights were on, a cacophony of questions erupted. Janet held her hands up to stop the babble, not bothering to speak until the sound lessened. Then she said, simply, that she was unable to answer any questions because she had been legally advised that having come before a court everything was now sub judice until a verdict.
She was ignored.
“What’s your reaction to the defense assertion which would appear to make your story complete fabrication?” called an American voice, from the rear.
“The truth will come out during the court hearing,” refused Janet, doggedly. I hope, she thought.
“Mrs. Stone, has this whole episode been an exercise to achieve personal publicity?” An English voice this time, a man in the front, balding and bespectacled.
The demand unsettled and to an extent bewildered Janet. Until now-particularly in Beirut-she had been treated sympathetically by the media, but she recognized that the attitude had shifted. Now it was suspicion, actual hostile suspicion. “From the time of my fiance’s abduction I have cooperated with the press for only one reason, to maintain public interest in his plight,” she retorted angrily. That anger was primarily at the assembled journalists but there was a subsidiary reason for her flushed face. When she got to the word fiance her mind had filled with what had happened during the previous twenty-four hours between herself and Baxeter and she’d almost stumbled to an awkward halt.
“Do you intend staying in Cyprus throughout all the hearings, right up to a higher court if the case is committed there?” asked a woman.
Dear God, I wish I knew what I was going to do about anything, Janet thought. She said: “I have not yet decided upon that: it depends how long it takes.”
“You didn’t come back to the hotel last night, Mrs. Stone?” It was the balding Englishman in front again.
“No,” said Janet and stopped. She could physically feel the flush firing through her cheeks.
“Where were you, Mrs. Stone?” A woman, somewhere in the middle of the pack.
“I…” groped Janet but another voice talked over her and she saw Partington walking down the side of the group to where she was sitting. “Partington, British embassy,” said the diplomat. “As Mrs. Stone has already made clear, there was the need for extensive legal discussion after the initial hearing. Those discussions lasted late into the evening and it was decided by the embassy that she needed some uninterrupted time to rest…” He bent, cupping Janet’s arm, but went on talking: “It’s also been made clear that there is no further comment Mrs. Stone can make until the conclusion of the legal processes here on the island so you will have to excuse her…”