Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

‘I saw George Savary last night. He came over to the church. We sat alone there and prayed for guidance.’ Cy pulled a face. ‘Guidance is what we need at the moment, Cy.’

‘Sure. What did Savary have to say?’

‘He said the course you were taking was both immoral and illegal.’

Cy pursed his lips. ‘Strong words.’

‘He says if it were not for people like myself and Mary Butler having voted for you last time, he would have gone to the police.’ Cy stopped pacing. ‘George Savary isn’t going to let this one go, Cy,’ Hector said anxiously.

‘Savary’s threatening you, Hector. You’re not the sort of man that takes threats.’

‘Of course not.’ Cy looked at the red face. He could read the honest uncertainty in the man’s expression. ‘Maybe we should put a moratorium on the clandestine donations.’

‘We decided to continue on down the road,’ Cy said. ‘It’s a course we chose together.’

‘Listen, Cy, this is what Savary plans to do. At the Christmas Eve meeting he is going to propose Fin Butler for president.’

‘Fin? Has he agreed?’

‘Apparently, yes.’

Cy put out a hand to steady himself against the top of a car. He knew now he was in desperate trouble. If Fin became president, if the flow of dollars stopped, the Vietnamese wouldn’t just sit back and accept the cut-off. If he couldn’t deliver, he would be exposed. The first thing anybody learnt about the Vietnamese was that they were utterly implacable.

‘George Savary’s talking to each member in private,’ Hector Hand said. ‘He says he thinks Mary will vote against you this time.’

‘Mary’s in Europe.’

‘She got back the beginning of the week.’

‘And didn’t call him.’

‘What are we going to do, Cy? I don’t like Savary’s talk of a scandal. He puts it in pretty strong terms. Not an accusation, you understand, but he thinks it’s scandalous to be paying Hanoi. Supporting them, he calls it. And frankly I couldn’t afford to be caught up in a scandal of any sort.’

‘What are you saying, Hector?’

‘I’m not being disloyal, Cy, but I guess what I’m saying is that talk of illegalities, of scandals, that sort of talk carries a lot of weight.’

‘A lot of weight,’ Cy agreed. ‘But if we don’t panic, this thing will go through smoothly enough. And next year maybe we’ll start reducing contributions, slowly phasing them out. How about that approach?’

‘It’s no good, Cy. We won’t carry the vote,’ Hector said, ‘unless Mary casts as she did last time.’

‘Hector,’ Cy put his arm round him, ‘I’m going to personally guarantee, and you can pass this on to our supporters, that Mary Butler will be voting for us.’

‘Even against her husband?’

‘Even against her husband.’

There was no sign of Fin Butler’s car in the drive but the garage doors stood open and the heavy grille of Mary’s Range Rover was visible.

Cy pulled up outside the house, scattering gravel. Getting out of the car he walked slowly towards the shallow flight of steps that led to the door. It was already opening as he approached.

Mary Butler stood in the doorway. A dark blue dress set off a deep tan. Her smile, Cy noticed, was not unfriendly, but tentative, uncertain.

‘You didn’t let me know you were back,’ he said.

She opened the door wider for him to come in. He stopped in the hall beside her. ‘Come to think of it, you didn’t even let me know that you’d gone.’

Without answering she led the way into the sitting room.

‘It’s good to see you, Mary. I’ve missed you.’

She indicated the drinks table. ‘Help yourself, Cy.’

‘And for you?’

‘Nothing for me.’

She stood watching him as he poured whisky for himself. ‘I’d like to go on from here, Cy, as if nothing had ever happened between us,’ she said to his back.

He turned slowly, drink in hand. ‘That’s a pretty tall order, Mary. Something did happen between us. Turning back the pages, that’s something people find pretty difficult,’ he said carefully.

‘Being away has made it all a lot clearer.’ With a gesture of impatience at herself she crossed to the table and poured herself a drink. She was alarmed at how affected she found herself by his presence. His presence and those precise, sometimes exhilarating, memories of their past. In the South of France, three thousand miles away from him, she had seen it all differently. As a rather crude affaire . Josette Picard had been excited by the details, of course, those details she had been told. But then she was French. It was a way of life for women like her, living in Antibes. One night they had even allowed themselves to be picked up in a restaurant and had accepted an invitation on to a yacht. But Mary had balked at the last moment, with the Italian’s hand unzipping her dress. She had felt like a schoolgirl. Absurd, when she had set out to prove to herself that she could accept a lover other than Cy. The young Italian had been frightfully offended, especially when Josette was already moaning in ecstasy with her own young man on the other side of the wheelhouse.

The Italians were crew members, of course. As they escorted them back to shore, Josette’s young man had even intimated to her that he was not averse to being paid. The one pleasurable moment for Mary in a disastrous evening.

Cy was smiling as if he were shadowing her thoughts. ‘Far away things always seem clearer, Mary. But we don’t lead our everyday lives far away. We lead them here, in Meyerick. Where you and I see each other two, three times a week as a matter of course.’

‘Cy, we were criminally stupid. What happened was not just an affair. It was something which could have destroyed both our marriages. Destroyed our whole lives here in Meyerick. Thank God I realised before it was too late.’

He nodded. ‘OK, I’ll be going.’ He put down his half-finished glass. ‘Just dropped in to say hullo.’

‘Finish your drink,’ she said, shocked at the speed of his leaving.

He drained his glass. ‘Finished.’ He walked towards the door.

When he had left she stood shaking in the hallway. She had expected him to make a fuss. Why hadn’t he? She thought back to yesterday seeing Anita Simpson at Henri’s. Something between a smile and a smirk on her face. And she remembered now, that day in the garden before she left for Europe, Sunny had thought of Anita Simpson. Was it possible? She shook her head in a halfhearted answer. In any case, what Cy was doing now was nothing to do with her any longer. Her mind was made up. It was just that it had been so much easier than she expected. Easy? Except that he seemed even more attractive than ever. She walked slowly back into the sitting room, exploding a short bitter laugh. Just her luck that he was also her brother-in-law.

The doorbell rang a sharp single blast. With a frown she turned back to open it. It was Cy.

‘One thing I forgot to say,’ he said, his voice subdued. ‘I forgot to say I still love you. That’s not going to change.’

She felt herself tense as waves of confused feeling passed through her. Maddened by the effect he still had on her, she set her face angrily.

‘I didn’t want to make you mad, Mary,’ he said. ‘But it was something I just needed to say, that’s all.’

She opened the door wider. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, stiffly. He slipped his arm round her waist as she closed the door. She felt herself move towards him and with an effort mostly inspired by anger at herself, she pulled away.

‘Cy,’ she said. ‘You say you love me. But I’m trying to tell whether that’s the way you really feel or not, you have no right to say it anymore.’