Believing the Lie

for it.”

Zed blinked. That put things in an entirely different light. He was on the bottom rung of the ladder at The Source and so were his wages. He tried to do the maths on a train ticket, a hired car, a hotel — perhaps a down-at-heel B amp; B or some old lady letting out rooms on a back street in… where? Not by one of the lakes. That would cost too much, even at this time of year, so it would have to be… And would he be paid for the time he spent in Cumbria? He doubted it. He said, “C’n I have a think on it? I mean, you won’t spike the story straightaway, right? I have to look at my funds, if you know what I mean.”

“Look all you want.” Rodney smiled, a strange and unnatural stretching of his lips that spoke of how seldom he used them in this manner. “Like I said, your time, your dime.”

“Thanks, Rodney.” Zed wasn’t quite sure what he was thanking the other man for, so he nodded, got to his feet, and headed for the door. As he reached for the knob, Rodney added in a friendly tone, “If you decide to make the trip, I suggest you lose the beanie.”

Zed hesitated but before he could speak, Rodney continued. “It’s not a religion thing, kid. I could give a bloody crap about your religion or anyone else’s. This is a recommendation coming from a bloke who’s been in the business since you were in nappies. You can do it or not, but the way I see it, you don’t want anything to distract people or give them a reason to think you’re anything but their confessor, best friend, shoulder to cry on, psychowhosis, or whatever. So when you show up in anything takes their attention away from the story they want to tell — or better yet and for our purposes don’t want to tell — you’ve got a problem. And I mean any of it: turbans, rosary beads swinging from your neck, beanies, full-length beards dyed in henna, daggers at the waist. Are you with me? My point is that an investigative reporter blends in and with the beanie… Look, there’s nothing you can do about the height and the hair — unless you colour the hair, and I’m not asking you to do that — but the beanie takes it over the top.”

As if in reflex Zed touched his yarmulke. “I wear it because — ”

“Don’t care why you wear it. Don’t care if you wear it. It’s a word from the wise, is all. Your choice.”

Zed knew the editor was saying this last bit to avoid a lawsuit. Indeed, he knew the editor had phrased everything he’d said about the yarmulke for the very same reason. The Source was not exactly a bastion of political correctness, but that was not the point. Rodney Aronson knew which side of his professional bread bore the butter.

“Just take it on board,” Rodney told him as the office door opened and his secretary entered, bearing a family-size chocolate bar.

“Will do,” Zed said. “Absolutely.”

ST. JOHN’S WOOD LONDON

Time was of the essence, so he left at once. He planned to take the Tube and switch to the bus at Baker Street. A taxi all the way to St. John’s Wood would have been better — with the added benefit of giving him leg room — but he could ill afford it. So he hoofed it down to Blackfriars Station, waited interminably for a Circle Line train, and when it arrived crammed to the gills, he was forced to ride next to the carriage doors where the only way to fit inside was to hunch his shoulders and rest his chin on his chest in the manner of a penitent.

With a crick in his neck, he stopped at a cashpoint before catching the bus for the final leg of his journey. His purpose was to check his bank account in the vain hope that he’d somehow miscalculated the last time he’d balanced his chequebook. He had no savings other than what was contained in that single account. He saw the amount and felt his spirits sink. A trip to Cumbria would clean him out, and he had to think, was it worth it? It was, after all, only a story. Give it up and he’d merely be assigned another. But there were stories and there were stories, and this one… He knew it was something special.

Undecided still, he arrived home ninety minutes earlier than usual, and because of this he rang the bell at the building’s entrance to announce himself so his mother didn’t panic when she heard a key in the lock at a time of day when no one was due at the flat. He said, “It’s me, Mum,” and she said, “Zedekiah! Wonderful!” which rather puzzled him until he got inside and saw the source of his mother’s delight.

Susanna Benjamin was in the midst of finishing up a modest afternoon tea, but she wasn’t alone. A young woman sat in the most comfortable chair in the lounge — the chair Zed’s mother always reserved for guests — and she blushed prettily and dropped her head for a moment as Zed’s mother made the introductions. She was called Yaffa Shaw, and according to Susanna Benjamin, she had membership in the same book discussion group as Zed’s mother, who proclaimed this a marvelous coincidence for some reason. Zed waited for more and soon was given it in the form of “I was telling Yaffa only just now that my Zedekiah always has his nose in a book. And not only one but four or five at once. Tell Yaffa what you’re reading now, Zed. Yaffa is reading the new Graham Swift. Well, we’re all reading the new Graham Swift. For the book group, Zed. Sit, sit, darling. Have a cup of tea. Oh my goodness, it’s cold. I’ll get some fresh, shall I?”

Before Zed could manage an answer to this, his mother was gone. He heard her in the kitchen banging about. She turned on the radio for good measure. He knew it would take her a deliberate quarter of an hour to produce the tea because he and his mother had been through this before. The last time it had been the girl working on the till at Tesco. The time before that, and a far better bet, the oldest niece of their rabbi, in London to attend a summer course offered by an American university whose name Zed could not remember. After Yaffa, who was watching him doubtless in hope of conversation, there would be another. This would not cease till he’d married one of them and then the prodding for grandchildren would begin. Not for the first time Zed cursed his older sister, her professional life, and her decision not only not to reproduce but also not to marry. She had the career in science that had been intended for him. Not that he’d wanted a career in science but if she’d only cooperated and given their mother a son-in-law and grandchildren, he wouldn’t be coming home time and again to yet another potential mate lured onto the premises through one pretext or another.

He said to Yaffa, “You and Mum… the same book discussion group, is it?”

She blushed more deeply. “Not exactly,” she admitted. “I work in the bookshop. I make recommendations to the group. Your mum and I… we were talking… I mean, the way people do, you know.”

Oh how he knew. And above all the things he knew was the fact that he knew exactly how Susanna Benjamin operated. He could picture the conversation: the sly questions and the trusting replies. He wondered how old the poor girl was and whether his mother had managed to work her fertility into the equation.

He said, “I wager you didn’t expect to find she even had a son.”

“She didn’t say. Only now things’re a bit difficult because — ”

“Zed, darling,” his mother sang out from the kitchen. “Darjeeling’s fine? Tea cake as well? What about a scone, dear? Yaffa, you’ll have more tea, yes? You young people will want to chat, I know.”

That was exactly what Zed didn’t want. What he wanted was time to think and to weigh the pros and cons of going into debt to take himself up to Cumbria for the time needed to sex up his story. And when in Cumbria, if he actually went there, he was going to have to determine exactly what constituted the sex: the zing, the snap, the whatever it was supposed to be to excite the readers of The Source, who, it was highly probable, had the collective intelligence of gravestones. How to excite a gravestone? Give it a corpse. Zed chuckled inwardly at the extended metaphor. He was only glad he hadn’t used it in conversation with Rodney Aronson.

“Here we are, my dears!” Susanna Benjamin rejoined them, bearing a tray of fresh tea, scones, butter, and jam. “My Zedekiah’s a big boy, isn’t he, Yaffa? I don’t know where he got his height. What is it, exactly, dear heart?” This last to Zed. He was six feet eight inches tall and his mother knew that as well as she knew where the height came from, which was his paternal grandfather, who’d been only three inches shorter. When he didn’t reply, she went blithely on with, “And what feet he has. Look at those feet, Yaffa. And hands the size of rugby balls. And you know what they say…” She winked. “Milk and sugar, Zedekiah? You want both, yes?” And to Yaffa, “Two years on the kibbutz, he was, this son of mine. Then two years in the army.”

“Mum,” Zed said.

“Oh, don’t be so bashful.” She poured more tea into Yaffa’s cup. “The Israeli army,