A Special Relationship Read online

  I tried to seem unflustered by this question.

  ‘I presume he’s fine.’

  Wilson, sensing my reticence, smiled.

  ‘You presume …?’

  ‘I can’t answer for his well-being.’

  Another of his oleaginous smiles.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But if you are that interested in his welfare,’ I said, ‘you could call his office.’

  He ignored that comment, and instead said, ‘Interesting chap, Hobbs.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh, the fact that he is noted for his legendary recklessness, and his inability to keep his bosses happy.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s common enough knowledge back in London that Hobbs is something of a political disaster when it comes to the game of office politics. A real loose cannon – but a highly talented reporter, which is why he’s been tolerated for so long.’

  He looked at me, waiting for a response. I said nothing. He smiled again – deciding that my silence was further evidence of my discomfort (he was right). Then he added, ‘And I’m sure you’re aware that, when it comes to emotional entanglements, he’s always been something of a … well, how can I put this discreetly?… something of a raging bull, I suppose. Runs through women the way …’

  ‘Is there some point to this commentary?’ I asked lightly.

  Now it was his turn to look startled – though he did so in a quasi-theatrical manner.

  ‘I was just making conversation,’ he said, in mock shock. ‘And, of course, I was trading gossip. And perhaps the biggest piece of gossip about Mr Anthony Hobbs is the way that a woman finally broke the chap’s heart. Mind you, it’s old gossip, but …’

  He broke off, deliberately letting the story dangle. Like a fool I asked, ‘Who was the woman?’

  That’s when Wilson told me about Elaine Plunkett. I listened with uneasy interest – and with growing distaste. Wilson spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone, even though his surface tone was light, frivolous. This was something I began to notice about a certain type of Brit, especially when faced with an American (or, worst yet, an American woman). They considered us so earnest, so ploddingly literal in all our endeavours, that they attempted to upend our serious-mindedness with light-as-a-feather irony, in which nothing they said seemed weighted with importance … even though everything they were telling you was consequential.

  Certainly, this was Wilson’s style – and one that was underscored with a streak of malice. Yet I listened with intent to everything he told me. Because he was talking about Tony – with whom I was in love.

  Now, courtesy of Wilson, I was also finding out that another woman – an Irish journalist working in Washington named Elaine Plunkett – had broken Tony’s heart. But I didn’t feel in any way anguished about this – because I didn’t want to play the jealous idiot, musing endlessly about the fact that this Plunkett woman might have been the one who got away … or, worst yet, the love of his life. What I did feel was a profound distaste for the game that Wilson was playing – and decided that he deserved to be slapped down. Hard. But I waited for the right moment in his monologue to strike.

  ‘… of course, after Hobbs burst into tears in front of our chap in Washington … do you know Christopher Perkins? Fantastically indiscreet … anyway, Hobbs had a bit of a boo-hoo while out boozing with Perkins. The next thing you know, the story was all over London within twenty-four hours. Nobody could believe it. Hard Man Hobbs coming apart because of some woman journo …’

  ‘You mean, like me?’

  Wilson laughed a hollow laugh, but didn’t say anything in reply.

  ‘Well, come on – answer the question,’ I said, my voice loud, amused.

  ‘What question?’ Wilson demanded.

  ‘Am I like this Elaine Plunkett woman?’

  ‘How should I know? I mean, I never met her.’

  ‘Yes – but I am a woman journo, just like her. And I’m also sleeping with Tony Hobbs, just like her.’

  Long pause. Wilson tried to look non-plussed. He failed.

  ‘I didn’t know …’ he said.

  ‘Liar,’ I said, laughing.

  The word hit him like an open hand across the face. ‘What did you just say?’

  I favoured him with an enormous smile. And said, ‘I called you a liar. Which is what you are.’

  ‘I really think …’

  ‘What? That you can play a little head game like that with me, and get away with it?’

  He shifted his large bottom in his chair, and kneaded a handkerchief in his hand.

  ‘I really didn’t mean any offence.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  His eyes started searching the room for the waiter.

  ‘I really must go.’

  I leaned over towards him, until my face was about a half-inch away from his. And maintaining my jovial, non-commital tone, I said, ‘You know something? You’re just like every bully I’ve ever met. You turn tail and run as soon as you’re called out.’

  He stood up and left but didn’t apologize. Englishmen never apologize.

  ‘I’m certain American men aren’t exactly apology-prone,’ Tony said when I made this observation.

  ‘They’re better trained than you lot.’

  ‘That’s because they grow up with all that latent Puritan guilt … and the idea that everything has a price.’

  ‘Whereas the Brits …’

  ‘We think we can get away with it all … maybe.’

  I was tempted to tell him about the conversation with Wilson. But I’d decided that nothing good would come out of him knowing that I was now well informed about Elaine Plunkett. On the contrary, I feared that he might feel exposed … or, worse yet, embarrassed (the one emotional state which all Brits fear). Anyway, I didn’t want to tell him that hearing the Elaine Plunkett story actually made me love him even more. Because I’d learned that he was just as delicate as the rest of us. And I liked that. His fragility was curiously reassuring; a reminder that he had the capacity to be hurt too.

  Two weeks later, I was offered the opportunity to gauge Tony in his home terrain – when, out of the blue, he asked, ‘Feel like running off to London for a few days?’

  He explained that he’d been called back for a meeting at the Chronicle. ‘Nothing sinister – just my annual lunch with the editor,’ he said casually. ‘Fancy a couple of days at the Savoy?’

  It didn’t take any further persuasion. I had been in London only once before. It was during the eighties, prior to my foreign postings – and it was one of those dumb two-week dashes through assorted European capitals, which included four days in London. But I liked what I saw. Mind you, all I saw was assorted monuments and museums and a couple of interesting plays, and a glimpse of the sort of upscale residential life that was lived by those who could afford a Chelsea town house. In other words, my vision of London was selective, to say the least.

  Then again, a room at the Savoy doesn’t exactly give you a down and dirty vision of London either. On the contrary, I was just a little impressed by the suite we were given overlooking the Thames, and the bottle of champagne waiting for us in an ice bucket.

  ‘Is this how the Chronicle usually treats its foreign correspondents?’ I asked.

  ‘You must be joking,’ he said. ‘But the manager’s an old friend. We became chummy when he was running the Intercontinental in Tokyo, so he always fixes me up whenever I’m in town.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fact that you didn’t violate one of the cardinal rules of journalism – never pay for anything yourself.’

  He laughed and pulled me into bed. He poured me a glass of champagne.

  ‘No can do,’ I said. ‘On antibiotics.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since yesterday, when I saw the embassy doctor for a strep throat.’

  ‘You’ve got a strep throat?’

  I opened
my mouth wide. ‘Go on, peep inside.’

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘Is that why you weren’t drinking on the plane?’

  ‘Booze and antibiotics don’t mix.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘Why? It’s just a strep throat.’

  ‘God, you are Ms Toughie.’

  ‘That’s me, all right.’

  ‘Well, I have to say I am disappointed. Because who the hell am I going to drink with over the next few days?’

  Actually, that was something of a rhetorical question, as Tony had plenty of people to drink with over the three days we spent in London. He’d arranged for us to go out every night with assorted journalistic colleagues and friends. Without exception, I liked his choice of cronies. There was Kate Medford – a long-time colleague from the Chronicle who now presented the big late afternoon news programme on BBC Radio 4, and who hosted a little dinner for us (with her oncologist husband, Roger) at her house in a leafy inner suburb called Chiswick. There was an extremely boozy night out (for Tony anyway) with a fellow journo named Dermot Fahy, who was a diarist on the Independent and a great talker. He was also an all-purpose rake who spent much of the evening leering at me, much to Tony’s amusement (as he told me afterwards, ‘Dermot does that with every woman,’ to which I just had to reply, ‘Well, thanks a lot’). Then there was a former Telegraph journo named Robert Matthews who’d made quite a bit of money on his first Robert Ludlum-style thriller. He insisted on taking us for a ridiculously expensive meal at the Ivy, and ordering £60 bottles of wine, and drinking far too much, and briefly regaling us with darkly funny stories about his recent divorce – stories which he told in a brilliant, deadpan, self-mocking style, but which hinted at a terrible private pain.

  All of Tony’s friends were first-rate conversationalists who liked staying up late and having three glasses of wine too many, and (this impressed the hell out of me) never really talking about themselves. Even though Tony hadn’t seen these people in around a year, work was only lightly mentioned (‘Haven’t been shot by Islamic Jihad yet, Tony?’, that sort of thing), and never at great length. If personal matters did arise – like Robert’s divorce – a certain sardonic spin was put on things. Even when Tony gently enquired about Kate’s teenage daughter (who, as it turned out, was getting over a near-fatal involvement with anorexia), Kate said, ‘Well, it’s all a bit like what Rossini said about Wagner’s operas: there are some splendid quarter-of-an-hours.’

  Then the matter was dropped.

  The intriguing thing about this style of discourse was the way everybody disseminated just enough information to let each other know the state of play in their respective lives – but, inevitably, whenever the talk veered towards the personal, it was swiftly deflected back towards less individual matters. I quickly sensed that to speak at length about anything private in a gathering of more than two people was considered just not done … especially in the presence of a stranger like me. Yet I rather liked this conversational style – and the fact that banter was considered a meritorious endeavour. Whenever serious events of the day were broached, they were always undercut by a vein of acerbity and absurdity. No one embraced the kind of earnestness which so often characterized American dinner table debate. Then again, as Tony once told me, the great difference between Yanks and Brits was that Americans believed that life was serious but not hopeless … whereas the English believed that life was hopeless, but not serious.

  Three days of London table chat convinced me of that truth, just as it also convinced me that I could easily hold my own amidst such banter. Tony was introducing me to his friends – and seemed delighted that I integrated with them so quickly. Just as I was pleased that he was showing me off. I wanted to show off Tony too – but my only friend in London, Margaret Campbell, was out of town while we were there. While Tony was lunching with the editor, I jumped the tube to Hampstead, and wandered the well-heeled residential backstreets, and spent an hour roaming the Heath, all the while thinking to myself: this is very pleasant. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that, after Cairo’s ongoing urban madness, London initially came across as a paragon of order and tidiness. Granted, within a day of being there, I was also noticing the Utter on the streets, the graffiti, the indigent population who slept rough, and the snarling traffic. But these scruffy civic attributes simply struck me as an essential component of metropolitan life.

  Then there was the little fact that I was in London with Tony … which made the city look even better. Tony himself also admitted the same thing, telling me that, for the first time in years, he actually ‘got’ the idea of London again.

  He remained pretty close-lipped about his lunch with the editor – except to say that it went well. But then, two days later, he gave me further details of that meeting. We were an hour into our flight back to Cairo when he turned to me and said, ‘I need to talk to you about something.’

  ‘That sounds serious,’ I said, putting down the novel I’d been reading.

  ‘It’s not serious. Just interesting.’

  ‘By which you mean …?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want to mention this while we were in London – because I didn’t want to spend our last two days there discussing it.’

  ‘Discussing what exactly?’

  ‘Discussing the fact that, during my lunch with the editor, he offered me a new job.’

  ‘What kind of new job?’

  ‘Foreign Editor of the paper.’

  This took a moment to sink in.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Did you accept it?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t accept. Because …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well … because I wanted to speak with you first about it.’

  ‘Because it means a transfer back to London?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Do you want the job?’

  ‘Put it this way: His Lordship was hinting very strongly that I should take it. He was also hinting that, after nearly twenty years in the field, it was time I did a stint at HQ. Of course, I could fight coming back. But I don’t think I’d win that one. Anyway, the foreign editorship isn’t exactly a demotion …’

  A pause. I said, ‘So you are going to take the job?’

  ‘I think I have to. But … uhm … that doesn’t mean I have to come back to London alone.’

  Another pause as I thought about that last comment. Finally I said, ‘I have some news too. And I have an admission to make.’

  He looked at me with care.

  ‘And what’s this admission?’

  ‘I’m not on antibiotics. Because I don’t have a strep throat. But I still can’t drink right now … because I happen to be pregnant.’

  Three

  TONY TOOK THE news well. He didn’t shudder, or turn grey. There was a moment of stunned surprise, followed by an initial moment or two of reflection. But then he took my hand and squeezed it and said, ‘This is good news.’

  ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Absolutely. And you’re certain …?’

  ‘Two pregnancy tests certain,’ I said.

  ‘You want to keep it?’

  ‘I’m thirty-seven years old, Tony. Which means I’ve entered the realm of now or never. But just because I might want to keep it doesn’t mean you have to be there too. I’d like you to be, of course. However …’

  He shrugged. ‘I want to be there,’ he said.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Completely. And I want you to come to London with me.’

  Now it was my turn to go a little white.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Surprised.’

  ‘About … ?’

  ‘The course this conversation is taking.’

  ‘Are you worried?’

  Understatement of the year. Though I had managed to keep my anxiety in the background during our days in London (not to mention the week beforehand, when the first pregnancy test came back positive from my doctor in
Cairo), it was still omnipresent. And with good reason. Though part of me was quietly pleased about being pregnant, there was an equally substantial portion of my private self that was terrified by the prospect. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I never really expected to fall pregnant. Though there were the usual hormonal urges, these were inevitably negated by the fact that my happily self-governing life could not incorporate the massive commitment that was motherhood.

  So the discovery that I was pregnant threw me completely. But people always have the capacity to surprise you. Tony certainly did that. For the rest of the flight to Cairo, he informed me that he thought this pregnancy was a very good thing; that, coupled with his transfer back to London, it was as if fate had intervened to propel us into making some major decisions. This had happened at the right moment. Because we were so right for each other. Though it might be something of an adjustment for both of us to be setting up house together – and for us to be at desk jobs (he was certain I could talk my way into the Post’s London bureau) – wasn’t it time we finally surrendered to the inevitable and settled down?

  ‘Are you talking marriage here?’ I asked him after he finished his little spiel.

  He didn’t meet my eye, but still said, ‘Well, yes, I, uh, yes, I suppose I am.’

  I was suddenly in need of a very large vodka, and deeply regretted not being able to touch the stuff.

  ‘I’m going to have to think about all this.’

  Much to Tony’s credit, he let the matter drop. Nor did he, in any way, pressure me over the next week. Then again, that wasn’t Tony’s style. So, during the first few days after we got back from London, we gave each other some thinking time. Correction: he gave me some thinking time. Yes, we spoke on the phone twice a day, and even had an amusing lunch together, during which we never once mentioned the big ‘elephant in the closet’ question hanging over us … though, at the end of it, I did ask, ‘Have you given the Chronicle your decision?’

  ‘No – I’m still awaiting an update from someone.’

  He gave me a little smile when he said that. Even though he was under pressure to make a decision, he was still refusing to pressure me. And I could only contrast his low key approach with that of Richard Pettiford. When he was trying to compel me to marry him, he overstepped the mark on several occasions, eventually treating me (in true lawyerly style) like a reluctant juror who had to be won around to his point of view. With Tony I didn’t even need to respond to his comment about ‘awaiting an update from someone.’ He knew that he was asking me to make a big decision, so all I asked him in reply was, ‘And you still won’t be going back for three months?’