‘You’ll be all right once you’re at my uncle Joe’s.’ ‘Who did you say I was?’ she said.
‘My sister-in-law.’
‘And Clara?’
‘Your niece. Ernie Howe has given his permission —’Oh, I know. I spoke to him myself,’ she said.
‘Nobody tells me anything,’ Harvey said.
‘Will I like your Uncle Joe?’
‘I hope so. If not, you can go to my Auntie Pet.’
‘What is “Pet” short for?’ said Ruth.
‘I really don’t know.’ He could see she wanted to delay the parting. ‘Ring me to-night from Paris,’ he said. He kissed Ruth and he kissed Clara, and practically pushed them towards Anne-Marie who had already seen the suitcases into the car, and was waiting for Ruth, almost taking her under arrest. With a hand under Ruth’s arm she led her along the little path towards the wider path where the car waited. They were off, Ruth and Clara in the front seat beside the driver. They were like an affluent married couple and child. Anne-Marie came back to the house, closed and locked the back door. Harvey said, ‘You lead the way back. I’ll follow you. I don’t know my way about this place.’ She laughed.
Twenty minutes later the press were let in. ‘Quiet!’ said Anne-Marie.
‘We have a baby in the house. You mustn’t wake her.’
Harvey, freshly and acutely aware of Clara’s innocent departure, was startled for an instant, then remembered quickly that Ruth and Clara were gone in secret.
‘Madame is resting, too,’ announced Anne-Marie, ‘please, gentle-men, ladies, no noise.
There were eighteen men, five women; the rest were at the roadblock outside the house arguing vainly with the police. This, Harvey learned from the reporters themselves, who crowded into the living room. There was a predominance of French, British and Americans among them. Harvey scrutinised them, as best he could trying to guess which one of them was a police agent. A wiry woman of about fifty with a red face, broken-veined, and thin grey hair fluffed out and falling all over her face as if to make the most of it, seemed to him a possible
‘Mr Gotham, when did you last see —’I will answer no questions,’ Harvey said, ‘until you stop these flash- photographs.’ He sat back in his chair with folded arms. ‘Stop, ‘he said, ‘just stop. I’ll answer questions first, if they’re reasonable. Then you can take some photos. But not all at once. Kindly keep your voices down; as you’ve heard, there’s a baby sleeping upstairs and a lady who needs a lot of rest.’ One of the reporters, slouching by the door, a large fair middle-aged man, was already taking notes. What of? The man’s face seemed familiar to Harvey but he couldn’t place it.
The French journalists were the most vociferous. ‘Do you know where your wife is?’ — ‘How long has she been a member — ?’ — ‘Your wife Effie’s terrorist activities, do you ascribe them to a reaction against her wealthy matrimonial experience, with all the luxury and boredom that capitalism produces?’ — ‘What exactly are the creed and aims of your religious group, Mr Gotham?’
Harvey said, ‘One at a time, please.’
‘With all your prospects and holdings, you still believe in God, is that right?’ — ‘Are you asking us to believe that you have come to this chateau to study the Bible?’ — ‘Isn’t it so that you originally lived in that little lodge at the end of the drive?’
‘Yes,’ said Harvey, ‘I went to work down there.’
‘Where does your wife get the money for her terrorist activities?’
‘I don’t know that my wife is engaged in terrorist activities.’
‘But the police have identified her. Look, Mr Gotham, those people of the FLE get their money from someplace.’ This came from a fat young American who spoke like a machine-gun.
‘Would you mind speaking French so that we all know where we are?’ said Harvey. A Frenchman swiftly came to his American colleague’s aid, and repeated the question in French.
‘Apparently they bomb supermarkets and rob the cash. Haven’t you read the papers?’ Harvey said.
‘If your wife came in here with a sub-machine-gun right now — ?’ ‘That is a hypothetical question,’ Harvey said. The question was asked by a timid young Asiatic type with fine features and a sad pallor, who had evidently been let in to the conference on a quota system. He looked puzzled. ‘Your question is all theory,’ Harvey said, to help him. The young man nodded wisely and made some notes. What notes? — God knows.
‘Didn’t you hear a registration in the police station of your wife’s voice on a loudspeaker warning the people to leave the supermarket before the bombing? — Surely you recognised your wife’s voice?’ said an American.
‘I heard no registration. But if my wife should happen to give a warning to anyone in danger at any time, that would be very right of her, I think,’ Harvey said.
Most of the reporters were younger than Harvey. One, a bearded Swede, was old, paunchy. He alone seemed to know what the
Harvey saw his chance and took it: ‘I am hardly in the position of Job. He was covered with boils, for one thing, which I am not. And his friends, merely on the basis of his suffering, accused him of having sinned in some way. What Job underwent was tantamount to an interrogation by the Elders of his community. I intend no personal analogy. But I am delighted to get down at last to the subject of this conference: what was the answer to Job’s question? Job’s question was, why does God cause me to suffer when I’ve done nothing to deserve it? Now, Job was in no doubt whatsoever that his sufferings came from God and from no other source. The very rapidity with which one calamity followed upon another, shattering Job’s world, leaving him destitute, bereft and sick all in a short space of time, gave dramatic evidence that the cause was not natural, but supernatural. The supernatural, with power to act so strongly and disastrously, could only, in Job’s mind, be God. And we know he was right in the context of the book, because in the Prologue you read specifically that it was God who brought up the subject of Job to Satan; it was God, in fact, who tempted Satan to torment Job, not Satan who tempted God. I’m afraid my French
