Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“Try not to let it prey on your mind, Jeff.”

For a moment he was afraid she’d read his thoughts. Then he realized that, of course, she imagined he was brooding on his “ex-wife” remarrying.

“You’ve got me now and we’ve a new life ahead of us.”

It might not be a bad idea to let Fiona go on thinking he was unhappy about his final parting from Zillah. In the future, if he seemed preoccupied or absent-minded or just silent, she’d attribute it to this. “I know,” he said. “Don’t think I’m not absolutely content with that. I’m thinking of my son and my little girl. And it’s just that…well, she was my first love.” He took her hand. “And you’re my last. First in my heart and last in my life.” The taxi turned into Blenheim Terrace and he felt in his pockets. “Have you got any change, darling? I’ve only a twenty-pound note.”

Fiona paid the taxi driver. When they were at their table she asked him a bit more about Zillah. “If you wanted a meeting with her, talk it through, that sort of thing, I wouldn’t mind.”

In a way this was his opportunity. It would be wiser not to take it. She might want to come with him or meet Zillah herself. He nearly shuddered. Fiona, with her house, her money, her inheritance, her job, was (as he put it to himself) the best woman who had ever happened to him. “No, my darling. I want to put it all behind me.”

He studied the wine list. In spite of what he’d told Fiona, he wouldn’t use the money he’d made on the horse called Website but instead would pay with the American Express card he’d found in another restaurant, fallen on the floor under a table in Langan’s, where he’d been as the guest of a woman he’d picked up on the Duke of York steps. The card had belonged to one J. H. Leigh and it was this find of his that led to his assuming the name of Leigh when he first met Fiona. He was still Lewis with funny little Minty Knox at the time and for a new identity had been toying with the idea of Long or Lane, but Leigh it was to be. He’d used the card sparingly at first and for small items, always expecting to be told it had been canceled. Nothing happened. He paid for meals with it, even bought clothes for Fiona with it, though he never dared indulge in jewelry.

Inevitably, he’d speculated as to why. Who was this Leigh who was so rich and profligate that he not only didn’t bother to report the loss of his American Express card but continued to pay the bills for it that must arrive at his home each month? Then it came to him. This wasn’t a man at all but a woman kept by a man, a wife or girlfriend, whose AmEx accounts were paid for by husband or lover with no questions asked. Had she been afraid to tell him she’d lost the card? Perhaps been in some situation or place she shouldn’t have been in when the theft or loss happened? Or had she so many cards that she didn’t notice the disappearance of one of them?

He thought along these lines because underhand behavior, deceit, pulling fast ones, and getting something for nothing were practices dear to his heart. One day the card would be stopped, but that might be a long way off and meanwhile he was cashing in.

“I said, are you going to have the grilled vegetables or the smoked salmon? Darling, you’ve not been listening.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I was thinking-well, you know what I was thinking.”

Luckily, she didn’t. How was he going to get hold of Zillah? Phone her? It wouldn’t be hard to find her number. Call round? Once, years ago, while Zillah was pregnant with Eugenie and they were living in that dump near Queen’s Park station, they’d been asked round to drinks by this Melcombe-Smith at his place in Pimlico and they’d gone. Ghastly it had been and nearly turned him into a socialist. Jims, as he was called, might still be living there; it had been only six or seven years. Aghast, he realized he didn’t exactly know the age of his daughter. But he loved her, he knew that, she was his and he had to see her. “Listen to this,” he said. “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?”

“Come off it, Jeff.” Fiona’s patience had snapped. “Save it for this baby we’re supposed to be having next year. I’m grown-up.”

Chapter 10

THE ATTENTION SHE was getting was in many ways attractive and flattering. Zillah hadn’t expected all that publicity in the Mail on Sunday, and when she first saw the pictures and read the respectful story about herself and Jims, she’d been entranced. Other people had seen it too and rung up to congratulate her. Only one had asked why Eugenie and Jordan weren’t mentioned and this woman had supplied her own answer: “I suppose you want to protect them from media attention.”

That was exactly right, Zillah had said. She’d had a few days in which to relax and enjoy living in Abbey Gardens Mansions, appreciate the comforts of her new home, so vastly superior even to the Battersea flat, and to decide it was time to fetch the children. They’d been staying with her parents in Bournemouth since two days before the wedding, but she was beginning to miss them and she wanted them back. The publicity was past. She was realizing the truth of what she’d guessed all along, that Jims wasn’t famous, was a mere backbench MP and an opposition MP at that, and that all that had attracted the press were her and Jims’s good looks. And maybe the fact that everyone had thought he was gay and about to be “outed.”

The children could come back, go out for walks with her, be driven about by her in her nice new silver Mercedes, go to school in Westminster, and no one would take a blind bit of notice. So Zillah thought-until the first journalist phoned.

“I’m not disturbing your honeymoon, I hope?”

“We’re not having a honeymoon till Easter,” said Zillah, who wasn’t much looking forward to this sex-free excursion to an island in the Indian Ocean with nothing to do but drink and chat to Jims all day.

“Not even a tiny scrap of one?” the woman asked. She worked for a national daily. “I’m calling to beg for an interview. Our Thursday slot. I expect you know what I mean.”

Zillah forgot all about Jims’s instructions to refer all such requests to Malina Daz. She forgot her fear of journalists. They’d been so kind to her in the Mail. Why shouldn’t she do it? The children weren’t back yet. This would give her a chance to confirm everything that had already appeared in print and maybe get some more glamour shots. “Will you take photographs?”

She must have sounded apprehensive for the journalist misunderstood. “Well, yes, of course. A piece about someone as attractive as you wouldn’t be much without photos, would it?”

Zillah agreed to it. Two hours later the features editor of a glossy magazine was on the phone. They’d left her alone for a few days, but the time had come to have something appear that was more comprehensive than a few lines about her wedding. Zillah mentioned the other journalist.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Ours will be very different, I assure you. You’ll love it. You’re going to receive a great deal of attention, I can tell you, especially with the rumor going around that your husband was going to be outed.”

“There was never anything in that,” Zillah said nervously.

“You cured him, did you? Sorry, that wasn’t very PC of me. Maybe I should say, you brought about a change of heart. How’s that? We’ll say Friday at three, then, shall we? The photographer will come an hour earlier to get set up.”

By the time Zillah got around to telling Jims and, through him, Malina Daz, two more newspapers and another magazine had joined the queue. Malina belonged to the school of thought which holds that all publicity is good publicity. Jims was more cautious, urging Zillah to deny his reputed orientation as vehemently as possible. The night before the first journalist was due, the two of them invented a past girlfriend for Jims, her name, her appearance, her age, and Zillah’s jealousy of her. At the interview Zillah said this woman was now married and living in Hong Kong. For obvious reasons, her present identity couldn’t be disclosed. When she talked to the magazine she forgot the former girlfriend’s age and said she lived in Singapore, but Jims said it wouldn’t matter, as newspapers got everything wrong anyway.

The children were still in Bournemouth. Their grandparents had agreed, though rather grudgingly, to keep them a week longer. Mrs. Watling said on the phone she thought there was something ironical about Eugenie and Jordan staying in Bournemouth “indefinitely” when for the first time in their lives they had a decent home, while she and their grandfather had never seen them from one year’s end to the next when they’d lived in that dump in Dorset. Zillah said to bear with her a while longer-a phrase she’d picked up from Malina Daz-and she and Jims would be down to fetch the children the weekend after next.