Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [35]
Gill came down the stairs. “I’ll drive you to the airport,” she said.
Ellis was surprised. “Okay. Thanks.”
When they were on the road Gill said: “She told me she didn’t want to spend a weekend with you.”
“Right.”
“You’re upset, aren’t you?”
“Does it show?”
“To me it does. I used to be married to you.” She paused. “I’m sorry, John.”
“It’s my fault. I didn’t think it through. Before I came along, she had a mommy and a daddy and a home—all any child wants. I’m not just superfluous, though. By being around I threaten her happiness. I’m an intruder, a destabilizing factor. That’s why she hugs Bernard in front of me. She doesn’t mean to hurt me. She does it because she’s afraid of losing him. And it’s me who makes her afraid.”
“She’ll get over it,” Gill said. “America is full of kids with two daddies.”
“That’s no excuse. I fucked up, and I should face it.”
She surprised him again by patting his knee. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” she said. “You just weren’t made for this. I knew that within a month of marrying you. You don’t want a house, a job, the suburbs, children. You’re a little weird. That’s why I fell in love with you, and that’s why I let you go so readily. I loved you because you were different, crazy, original, exciting. You would do anything. But you’re no family man.”
He sat in silence, thinking about what she had said, while she drove. It was meant kindly, and for that he was warmly grateful; but was it true? He thought not. I don’t want a house in the suburbs, he thought, but I’d like a home: maybe a villa in Morocco or a loft in Greenwich Village or a penthouse in Rome. I don’t want a wife to be my housekeeper, cooking and cleaning and shopping and taking the minutes at the PTA; but I’d like a companion, someone to share books and movies and poetry with, someone to talk to at night. I’d even like to have kids, and raise them to know about something more than Michael Jackson.
He did not say any of this to Gill.
She stopped the car and he realized they were outside the Eastern terminal. He looked at his watch: eight fifty. If he hurried he would get on the nine o’clock shuttle. “Thanks for the ride,” he said.
“What you need is a woman like you, one of your kind,” Gill said.
Ellis thought of Jane. “I met one, once.”
“What happened?”
“She married a handsome doctor.”
“Is the doctor crazy like you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then it won’t last. When did she get married?”
“About a year ago.”
“Ah.” Gill was probably figuring that that was when Ellis had come back into Petal’s life in a big way; but she had the grace not to say so. “Take my advice,” she said. “Check her out.”
Ellis got out of the car. “Talk to you soon.”
“Bye.”
He slammed the door and she drove off.
Ellis hurried into the building. He made the flight with a minute or two to spare. As the plane took off he found a newsmagazine in the seat pocket in front of him and looked for a report from Afghanistan.
He had been following the war closely since he had heard, from Bill in Paris, that Jane had carried out her intention of going there with Jean-Pierre. The war was no longer front-page news. Often a week or two would go by with no reports about it at all. But now the winter lull was over and there was something in the press at least once a week.
This magazine had an analysis of the Russian situation in Afghanistan. Ellis began it mistrustfully, for he knew that many such articles in news-magazines emanated from the CIA: a reporter would get an exclusive briefing on the CIA’s intelligence appraisal of some situation, but in fact he would be the unconscious channel for a piece of disinformation aimed at another country’s intelligence service, and the report he wrote would have no more relation to the truth than an article in Pravda.
However, this article seemed straight. There was a buildup of Russian troops and arms going on, it said, in preparation for a major summer offensive. This was seen by Moscow as a make-or-break summer: they had to crush the Resistance this year or they would be forced to reach an accommodation of some