Eddie continued in this vein for a further five minutes. Jamie remained still, and Eddie did not take his eyes off him as he talked. If Isabel had looked at Jamie, she would have seen that a smile played about his lips; it was almost imperceptible, but a sign of what he was thinking. Yet she did not see this, because her own eyes were firmly closed. She was breathing deeply.
Jamie suddenly turned his head and looked at Isabel. He signalled to Eddie, who stopped what he was saying and followed Jamie’s gaze. Eddie was silent for a few moments. Then: “Isabel. I’m going to ask you to do something. Afterwards, I’m going to snap my fingers and when I do that you’ll wake up. Do you understand?”
Isabel did not open her eyes, but she moved her head slightly to indicate assent.
“Right,” said Eddie, winking at Jamie. “Now when I tell you to open your eyes, you’ll see somebody come into the room. This is a person you really, really want to see. Somebody you know well and you want to see again. They’ll come in just to say hallo and then they’ll go out again. But you’ll tell us who it is. All right?”
Again, Isabel nodded.
“So,” said Eddie. “The door’s opening. And your eyes too.”
Isabel’s expression left no doubt that she was looking at somebody. Here was surprise, astonishment perhaps, and then an anguished cry: John. No, don’t go. Don’t go.
Eddie rose to his feet. He snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. Then he snapped them again, more loudly this time. Isabel’s head turned sharply.
Jamie leaned across the table and took her hand. “Are you all right?”
Isabel looked about her. “Of course I’m all right. Eddie, weren’t you going to…”
“No,” said Eddie. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing anxiously at Jamie, as if for reassurance.
“Some other time,” said Jamie. “Not now.” He picked up his small cup of espresso and drained it.
“I should be going home,” said Eddie awkwardly.
He said good-bye to Isabel quickly and Jamie showed him to the door. Then, returning to the kitchen, Jamie found Isabel facing him.
She looked bemused. “Something happened, didn’t it?”
He looked down at the floor. He felt embarrassed to speak about it, but he could hardly refuse to answer her question. “He was trying to hypnotise me, but you somehow got in the way. You went under,” he said. “Like that. I remained wide awake, but you…It was very quick. I wondered whether to stop it, but I thought it might be risky.”
She gasped. “I went under?”
“Yes. You must be very…what do they say? Susceptible?”
“And what happened?”
He looked embarrassed, and she caught her breath. “Do you really want to know?”
This, she thought, is how a drunk must feel when he wakes up the next morning and has no recollection of the night before. What did I do? She felt instinctively for her clothing; it was still there. And surely Jamie would not have allowed anything untoward to happen; he would have stopped her from disgracing herself.
“You saw John Liamor,” he said quietly. “You saw him come into the room and you cried out to him.” He could tell that she was aghast. “No, you didn’t say very much. You just shouted out his name and told him not to go. That was all. Then Eddie clicked his fingers and you came out of it. Nothing more than that.”
She leaned forward, head in her hands. She had tried so hard to forget John Liamor, the man she had married; the man who had broken her heart, once, twice, over and over again. He meant nothing to her now, nothing—at least consciously.
“I’m not still in love with him,” she muttered.
Jamie came to her and put his arm about her. “Of course you aren’t. Of course.”
He had Cat to forget; he knew what an effort it cost. “Let’s think of the president of Bulgaria,” he said.
CHAPTER NINE
NOT THINKING about something can be hard, as Isabel discovered the next day. She had decided to put the incident in the kitchen out of her mind, but it kept coming back. Did she really want to see John Liamor again? Did he still mean something to her? Did what one said under hypnosis have anything to do with what really was going on in the subconscious mind? Surely the mind was full of all sorts of old memories that were really of no significance for how one felt; they merely knocked about in some deep region, like the detritus at the bottom of a lake. And if they surfaced from time to time, that did not mean very much.
At first it was awkward with Eddie. He avoided her when he came into the delicatessen the next morning, but Isabel made a point of speaking to him. “Eddie, what happened last night is nothing. I don’t feel bad about it, and neither should you.” She took his arm. Again that feeling of thinness. “Don’t look away from me, Eddie. Come on now.”
“I’m really sorry,” he mumbled.
She reached out and put her hand against his cheek. He looked at her in surprise. “Come on, Eddie. You don’t have to be sorry about anything. John Liamor was my husband. I shouted out his name because I obviously still think about him subconsciously. Maybe I still care for him. I thought I didn’t.”
She moved her hand away, and she felt him relax. She let go of his arm. Holding Eddie was like holding a cat who does not want to be held.
“I’m still sorry,” he said. “They told us that we should be careful about what we did with it.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s one way of learning that. And there was no harm done anyway.”
He rubbed the place on his arm where she had held him, as if he had been bruised. “You seemed very upset about seeing him. About seeing John What’s-his-name.”
“He hurt me,” said Isabel.
Eddie looked up sharply. “Beat you?”
“Not that. No. But there are lots of other ways of being hurt. And they can be as bad.”
Eddie was silent. I could say something now, she thought. I could say to him: I know that you’ve been hurt too, badly. But she did not. Instead, she said, “Are you all right, Eddie? You know that I’m going to go down to the bank today.” She looked at her watch. “In fact, I’ve got two things I have to do. Do you mind being in charge for a while a bit later on?”
He did not. But he did not say anything about the bank, and so Isabel persisted. “I’m going to get that money I promised you. Remember?” She paused, watching him. He bit his lip. “You said you were in trouble, Eddie. Are you sure that you don’t want to tell me what it is?”
“I don’t,” he muttered.
“All right. You don’t need to. But if you change your mind about that and want to talk to me, I promise you that I wouldn’t tell anybody else. All right?”
He nodded his assent and crossed the room to get his apron from its hook. One act, she thought; one act of violence, one act of callous gratification, and a young life was made into this.
THE BANK WAS the simple part. They had the money ready for her in a white envelope and slipped it to her across the broad wooden desk. She wondered whether people who worked in banks thought about what their clients did with their money, or whether such interest quickly faded. Money was very mundane, really, and the question of who had what was hardly riveting. Or did she feel that way, she asked herself, because she had more than most? She felt no envy when she read, as one occasionally did, of people earning large salaries or bonuses. But others hated this, and muttered darkly about higher taxes and obscene profits. What was obscene about earning a lot of money? One could not put that reaction entirely down to simple envy; there must be something more to it. Unfairness, perhaps. It was unfair that one should have so much when so many had so little. And it was, she thought. In which case, should she divest herself further? She gave a lot to various causes, and one of these charities had written to her recently in a way which spoke of an appeal—a very tactfully put appeal, but an appeal nonetheless.