Лорен Уиллиг - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

“Is that so?” He was still standing in the classic male pose of aggression, arms crossed, legs spread like Errol Flynn on the deck of a pirate ship, but I could see his elbows begin to relax, like cookie dough going soft at the edges in the oven.

Seeing my chance, I sailed into the offensive. “And what’s the deal with people calling you from Dubai at three in the morning?”

“Dubai? Oh.” Understanding dawned. He must have found just the missed calls when he woke up that morning, without having realized there had been predawn alarums. “Did that wake you up?”

“What do you think, Sherlock?”

Looking harassed, Colin ran a hand roughly through his hair. “That was a friend from university. He works in Dubai now. Great crunching numbers, but has some difficulties calculating time zones. I just visited him there,” he added unnecessarily. “On a research trip. For the book ,” he emphasized.

Okay, I got it, I got it. As far as I was concerned, though, Mr. Selwick still had some explaining to do.

“Why didn’t you just tell me about the book?” I demanded. “Instead of being all cloak and dagger about it?”

“What would you think of a grown man quitting his job to write a novel? It’s a bloody cliché.” There was no mistaking the cri de coeur; the man was so full of angst, he resonated like a tuning fork.

My irritation washed away, subsumed in a tidal wave of intense protectiveness. I wanted to yell at all the other children in the play yard and make them play nicely with him. I could feel myself beginning to ooze sympathy like an underdone soufflé. “It could have been worse,” I said bracingly. “It could have been pig farming.”

“Pig farming?”

Oh, right. Colin hadn’t been there for that spies/sties discussion. At least now I knew I hadn’t been going crazy. Joan had said spies. She had simply meant fictional ones.

“At least writing is a nice, clean job,” I said, warming to my theme. “And so nicely portable, too.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy?” he asked guardedly.

“Only in a good way,” I assured him. “Anything creative is probably a little crazy. But that’s what makes it interesting. And if you have the wherewithal to do it, more power to you.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I think.”

“No, really,” I said, more earnestly this time. “I think it’s splendid. And I want to hear all about it. But why didn’t you tell me?” Rather than letting me jump to insane conclusions, I added silently. Fortunately, he chose not to bring up that bit.

Colin shrugged. “It just seemed a stupid thing to do, leaving a good job to have a go at a novel. A pipe dream.”

“But it’s your pipe dream. And if you actually do it, then it’s not a pipe dream anymore, it’s a career. Writing a spy thriller certainly makes as much sense as what I do,” I said encouragingly. “It will probably sell a lot better.”

“If it sells at all,” he said.

“What made you decide to do it?” I asked curiously. “That had to be a hard decision to make.”

“I’d always wanted to. It seemed so irresponsible, though. But then Dad died, and everything seemed” — he held out both hands palms up — “different,” he finished flatly. “Everything was different.”

I nodded furiously, keeping my mouth shut, trying to channel sympathy and understanding and encouragement without saying anything, even though, when it came down to it, I knew I couldn’t really understand. I could only guess at what it must be like to lose a parent, and to lose a parent relatively young, in a lingering and unpleasant way. I’d never dealt with cancer close up, but it didn’t seem a friendly way to go. At least not for the children and loved ones who were left behind.

“We used to watch James Bond movies together,” Colin said, in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible. “He read everything. Follett, Fleming, le Carré, Forsyth, Deighton.” Some of the names were unfamiliar to me, but I recognized enough of them to guess that we were mostly talking spy thrillers. “It was only at the end that he told me — ”

I cocked my head, indicating interest.

Colin smiled wryly. “ — that he had been in intelligence himself, while he was in the service.”

“Service?” I asked in a very small voice.

“The army,” he translated for my American ears, specifying, “Twenty-first Lancers.” I could hear the small boy’s pride in his voice. “So there’s your spy for you. He was stationed in Germany, Hong Kong, Northern Ireland. And those are only the places he told me about.”

I didn’t know what to say. Something about his tone suggested that he wouldn’t welcome questions about his father. The entire topic was too, too fraught. I felt like I was playing “red light, green light, one, two, three,” that child’s game where you can only advance by increments when the other person’s back is turned. Revelation had to sneak up on him; I couldn’t force it. He would tell me what he wanted me to know in his own way, in his own time.

And then there was all that had been said by being unsaid. It made my heart wrench to think of what Colin must have gone through, seeing the center wrenched out of his world. His change of career seemed in part a reaction to his own mortality, in part a tribute to his father. Either way, it went far deeper than mere fiction.

“I’d love to read what you’ve written,” I said finally, for lack of anything better to say.

It seemed to be the right thing. “Thanks,” he said. The hint of a smile played around his lips. “You know, I did think of writing about the Pink Carnation initially. . . .”

“You didn’t!” I made noises of exaggerated indignation. “So that’s why you wanted to be rid of me!”

The sound of my own voice made me wince. I was too loud, too strident, hamming it up to drum away the ghosts that seemed to be walking with us through the mist-ridden grounds, like natives clanging cymbals around a campfire to scare away the spirits.

“One of the reasons. There was Serena, too,” he said, and I knew he meant Serena’s relationship with a man who had been dating her in hopes of access to their family archives. “But I did initially think of writing a sort of quasi-history, starting with the Purple Gentian and ending with Dad.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said teasingly, sliding my arm through his.

“I’d hate to think of us being in competition. Not to mention that novels sell much better than histories.”

“Tell that to Joan,” he said dryly, but his arm tightened around mine.

“Why did you even bother to tell her?” I asked. Stupid of me, I know, but it bothered me that she had known before I had. She might be annoying, but she was quite attractive in her own way. And she had known Colin far longer. She had known his sister and his parents and the boy he had been before his father’s death. It all made me feel a little bit insecure.

“I had hoped she might put me in touch with her agent,” he admitted. “She wasn’t too chuffed at the notion.”

“Won’t she feel like an idiot when you’re a best seller!” I declared loyally. Too loyally. I was like a one-woman brass band.

“Eloise?” I tilted my head up to find Colin looking at me understandingly. “It’s okay.”

He didn’t have to explain what he meant. It was a little bit of everything: his father, the book, my silly assumptions, Joan. And it really was okay. We had, without my even realizing it, overleaped an indefinable hurdle and landed safely on the other side. I was still getting used to the notion of Colin as novelist, but I found that I liked it. I certainly liked it better than the notion of Colin as spy. Of course, if I were a spy, trying to hide my secret identity from my girlfriend, isn’t that just the sort of cover story I would come up with?