Banishing Verona Page 17

  Between mouthfuls, Toby explained. He had taken refuge with his friends Doug and Simon. When Doug, who designed Web pages, heard what was going on, he had had the same idea as Verona: to trace Henry electronically. He and Toby had gone to the Internet café on the high street. Forty minutes on two terminals had produced a list of the recent transactions on Henry’s credit card. To make a brief story briefer, Henry had flown to Boston last Sunday and was staying there in a hotel.

  “But why all the drama? I thought something terrible had happened.” She tried to keep her voice level. She had abandoned Zeke just to discover that her brother was in America.

  Toby piled his crusts on one side of his plate. “This is going to sound mad. I had a dream about you and the baby, that the two of you were in danger. I woke up at five with my heart pounding. So I made you a reservation here and sent the fax.”

  For a moment she could scarcely contain herself. Then she remembered Nigel standing beside her with the glass of water, his odd cinnamon smell, and how, as he and George closed the door, the glass had slipped from her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, not even knowing what she was apologizing for: her silent fury? the whole impossible situation? “Do you often get warnings in dreams?”

  “Once or twice. And if you’re going to ask whether they’ve proved accurate, the answer is I don’t know because I always obey them. If a dream tells me not to go to the Tower of London, I don’t go. Who knows what would happen if I did?”

  With his last words the hotel phone began to ring. Verona started. Across the table, Toby did the same. “Does anyone know you’re here?” he whispered.

  “Only you.”

  The ringing stopped. He stood up, put the chain on the door, and tiptoed over to the phone. “They left a message,” he said.

  15

  She woke to the pilot’s voice announcing that they were beginning their descent into Boston. They would be on the ground in thirty minutes. The cabin, quiet when she fell asleep, was bustling with people putting away books or headsets, filling out customs forms, adjusting their clothes. Verona climbed out of her seat, luxuriously she had two together, and went to the bathroom. Back in her seat, she gazed down at the fast-approaching clouds and tried to sort out the events of the last twenty-four hours.

  When they had played the message, a familiar voice greeted them, Verona, Toby, Nigel here. Listen, we’re not playing cops and robbers. All we want is Henry back in Britain. The sooner you get him here, the better. We’re losing patience.

  So am I, she had said to Toby, after they both listened twice. It’s only ten in the morning in Boston. We’ll phone Henry right now.

  She had dialed the number and spoken first to the hotel switchboard, then reception. Finally the phone was ringing its strange single note, presumably in Henry’s room. After four rings a robotic female voice invited the caller to leave a message. She did so, telling him about the men and asking him to phone as soon as possible. She hung up with a sense of relief. They would talk to Henry, he would talk to Nigel and George, and everything would be resolved. For an hour, nearly ninety minutes, she and Toby had watched television. Then it had dawned on both of them that Henry might not call back.

  By suppertime—seven-thirty in London, two-thirty in Boston—they had left five fruitless messages and Toby insisted they go downstairs to eat. Their mobile phones sat mute on the table throughout the meal. When they returned to the room a couple of hours later, the message light on the phone was again flashing. Verona seized the receiver only to hear a woman announce that a packet was waiting for her at the front desk. Toby went downstairs and came back with a manila envelope bearing her name. Inside was her passport with a yellow square of paper affixed. Happy travels, it said, in elegant copperplate.

  She had vigorously resisted the suggestion. Why should she fly several thousand miles to talk to Henry face-to-face when he did not want to talk to her at any distance? As soon as he learned to walk, she told Toby, I stopped having any influence on him. If either of us is going, it should be you. But Toby had argued, with surprising determination, that she had a huge influence on Henry; besides, he himself was needed at the gallery while she already had leave from her job. Of course, he added, they would share the costs.

  They had fallen asleep on opposite sides of the double bed, still undecided, and when they woke to another gray morning and the faint continual vibration of the planes, somehow it was settled: Verona was going to Boston. While Toby organized the ticket, she repacked her suitcases. In the queue at the airline desk he had cheerfully listed things he would like from America—a new suit, maple syrup, CDs—but as they neared the moment of departure, he grew increasingly silent. By the entrance to security he drew her over to the wall. I don’t mean to be melodramatic, he said, but there’s something I need to ask you.

  He reached for her hands. Who is the mystery father?

  After months of silence and prevarication finally, this afternoon at terminal three, she had to admit her vanity and failure. There’s really no mystery, she said. I went to a sperm bank. Given my age and situation, it seemed the only dignified solution. I couldn’t imagine saying to one of my male friends, lend me your semen and I swear you won’t have any obligation to the outcome. Or maybe I could imagine that, but I couldn’t imagine telling my child, this man agreed to be your father on condition that he could ignore you. It just seemed too, too … . Well, lots of people—she glanced toward the steady stream of travelers—do it, but I couldn’t.

  What a dark horse you are, Toby had said, swinging their hands. If you knew how many hours Henry and I have spent speculating about your love life. We thought it must be your old beau, the businessman. Do you have any information about the previous owner of your sperm?

  He’s a six-foot-two nineteen-year-old Welsh medical student who plays the piano for pleasure and enjoys squash. She tried to explain the increments by which paternity had become a secret, first waiting for the amniocentesis, then enjoying the sly remarks about her glamorous affair. Truth to tell, Toby said, if you didn’t have a wild fling, I’m glad you went to a sperm bank. I’d feel a little jealous if I wasn’t the first person you turned to to fill your turkey baster. He had kissed her warmly on both cheeks. When you come back, he had said, we must have dinner.

  She had used the same trite phrase, she realized now, looking down at the brown, hilly landscape mottled with snow, when she phoned Emmanuel from the gate to get Zeke’s number. Any time, he had replied, in skeptical tones. She saw houses, a frozen pond, a large factorylike building, and a road crammed with cars.

  Fifteen minutes later they were lurching along the runway between occasional mounds of snow. She lined up to leave the plane, answered questions from unsmiling officials, retrieved her luggage, dodged an Alsatian sniffing for drugs, and answered more questions, trying to sound like any other traveler over for a brief holiday. Only when she stepped outside did she fully grasp that she was in America. She had last been to Boston to comment on a presidential campaign, and each step of the journey had been scheduled and accompanied. Now, standing with her suitcases in the biting wind, she felt a sudden longing to be taken care of. She was only here for a couple of days—four, according to her ticket—but every minute away from the one person who could do that seemed a waste.

  She was in the back of a taxi, almost as grubby as the one that had taken her to Heathrow, when it occurred to her that Henry might have bolted. At once she felt certain that this was the case. Toby had left a message saying she was on her way, but what on earth had made them think Henry would sit still and wait for a conversation he didn’t want to have? “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered.

  “You talking to me?” the driver asked, squinting at her in the rearview mirror. He reminded her of an older, darker version of Emmanuel.

  “I wish,” she said. “Myself.”

  “Well, whatever happens in the next fifteen minutes isn’t your fault.”

  During her previous visit, she had spent a day
interviewing politicians and academics, but all she could remember of the city was a tall glass tower and a red sign beside the river, advertising petrol. As the cab lurched past seemingly endless construction sites, she struggled to control her impatience. We don’t know for certain, the midwife had told her, but we believe stress has an adverse affect on the fetus. To which Verona had offered her usual argument about how stress was connected with many positive aspects of our lives and the trick was to learn to embrace it, not avoid it. Now, feeling her heart smashing against her ribs, she was acutely aware that she wasn’t making life easy for her cohabitant. I’m going to jump out of my skin, she thought, if we don’t get there soon.

  At just that moment the taxi pulled over. A shabby red carpet with a canopy above stretched from the curb to a large glass door. She paid the driver and, ignoring his offer of help, seized a suitcase in either hand and swept into the hotel, almost colliding with a slender Asian woman who was cradling what at first glance she took to be a baby and on second identified as a small white dog with butterfly-shaped ears. At the desk a young man with olive skin and hair gelled into oddly unbecoming spikes began to welcome her to the hotel. “I’m here to see Henry MacIntyre,” she interrupted and, pandering to the vernacular, added, “one of your guests.”

  He turned to his computer and asked how the name was spelled. “M-a-c-I,” said Verona. If he’s here, she vowed, promising the hardest thing she could think of, whatever happens I won’t lose my temper. Then the man was raising his dark eyes to hers, the whites were visible all the way round the pupils, and for an absurd moment all she could think of was Zeke’s blue-eyed gaze. “Use the house phone.” He pointed. “I’ll connect you.”

  The phone began to ring and still she did not allow herself to hope. Even as she slept her way across the Atlantic, he would have paid for his room and moved to another hotel, another city. The ringing stopped.

  “Hi,” said a girlish American voice.

  She let the phone fall, or at least it disappeared from her hand. She tried to hold on to the desk, to blink away the darkness. This isn’t good for the baby, she thought. The room began a slow tilt as she renegotiated her relationship with the floor.

  A hand was stroking her forehead; another, or the same, gently held her wrist. Henry, she thought, he’s here after all. But when she opened her eyes, the person bending over her was a stranger. Close up, Verona saw the woman in fragments: a blue smock, dark hair curling over a pale forehead, slightly crooked teeth. “I’m fine,” she said, struggling to sit up.

  “Lie back. What year is it? Do you know who the president is?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I’ll be fine once I’ve had a cup of tea.”

  On her other side the spiky-haired young man was also bending over her. “Are you Verona MacIntyre?” he said. “I have a letter for you.”

  “In a minute,” said the woman. “Let me ask her a few questions. Do you have a doctor? Have you had a checkup recently?”

  She spoke just a little more loudly than was necessary, as if Verona’s hearing had also been affected by her faint. “I do and I have,” said Verona. She took a deep breath and sat up, carefully pressing her palms against the cool floor. For a moment the room threatened to tilt again. She focused on the woman’s smock until it grew steady. “Really,” she insisted, “I’m perfectly all right.”

  The woman sat back on her heels and eyed her appraisingly. “Have you fainted before?”

  What was the right answer: yes, no, occasionally? She offered the last and added that she hadn’t had much to eat today. “If I don’t feel tip-top tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll get a checkup.”

  “All right, but remember, go to your doctor at the first sign of dizziness or blurred vision or anything out of the ordinary. In your condition you don’t want to take any chances. How about we get you into a chair?” She stood up, motioning to the clerk, who had been hovering throughout, and a few seconds later Verona was seated in a wing-backed chair.

  “Get her some tea and toast,” ordered the nurse, and announced that she’d be on her way. She had just stepped into the hotel to make a phone call.

  As she drank her tea, ate two slices of toast, registered, and was taken up to her room, Verona never once let go of Henry’s letter. Alone at last, lying on top of the spacious bed, she opened it.

  Dear Verona,

  If you’re reading this, you must be furious. Sorry not to be here to welcome you. Please don’t wreck the hotel. I got your messages, all your messages, and several from Nigel and George too, so I have a rough idea of what’s been going on since I left town. I’m checking out some possibilities. Can’t say more, for obvious reasons, but I’ll be in touch v. soon. Enjoy Boston until I get back.

  Love, Henry

  PS My company gets a discount at this hotel.

  Perhaps it was the aftereffects of her brief spell of unconsciousness, perhaps the cumulative effect of the last five days, but what she felt was not the familiar surge of anger but a peculiar numbness. She had heard of this phenomenon, people in the face of disaster experiencing a lack of emotion rather than an excess, but had never understood it. What’s happening to me, she thought. Why aren’t I pounding on the television, smashing the mirror?

  She left the letter lying on the bed and, longing for some vestige of normality, ran a tepid bath. As she lay back, watching her belly crest the surface, she recalled the story she had told Toby about Henry and the English teacher. Mr. Sayers, with his bulbous nose and oddly shaped head, had been her favorite teacher. She had often stayed late after class to consult with him about a poem or essay, but that day, as soon as he asked her to stay behind, she had known something was amiss.

  Verona, he had said, gazing out of the window towards the rose garden, how old are you?

  Thirteen.

  And Henry?

  Nearly nine.

  It never occurred to her that Mr. Sayers might be ill at ease. As far as she was concerned, he suffered from none of the complex emotions he attributed to the characters in novels and plays. Some days he was in a better mood than others. Some days the school cook served charlotte russe.

  I am going to burden you with some information, he said. He described how he had found Henry searching the girls’ raincoats and how, even when Mr. Sayers said he knew he was lying, Henry had stuck to his story that one of the big girls had asked him to fetch a whistle from her coat pocket.

  I put him on detention for a month. And I told your father.

  I heard Linda Harris ask him to fetch her whistle, Verona burst out. He must have got confused.

  Mr. Sayers turned to look at her and went on as if she hadn’t spoken. I decided, he said, that you too ought to be told. Usually older children lead the younger into bad behavior. My own brother did a splendid job of teaching me to steal apples and play tricks on the church organist. In this case, it may be the other way round. Henry, I fear, was born without a conscience, and you will have to be the one to say, and keep saying, lying is wrong, stealing is wrong, hurting other people is wrong. Do you understand?

  She had nodded, red-cheeked, and as soon as he dismissed her she ran out of the room and all the way home. Later, though, her anger had been tinged with relief. For several years she had been trying to pretend to herself and everyone else that Henry was normal. Now, sitting in the cooling water in the small white room, she wondered if she and Mr. Sayers had given up too easily. Was there a time when Henry could have been saved? She pictured him slipping his small hand into the girls’ raincoats, stealing Toby’s money, doing whatever he had done to Nigel and George, and she could not think of a single occasion when her brother had seemed either capable of remorse or susceptible to punishment.

  16

  Outside it was still dark and the broad sidewalk was empty save for a couple of muffled figures walking dogs. Verona clutched her coat against the icy wind and set off to find the coffee shop the clerk had mentioned. After three blocks, just as she was giving up hope, she spotted a glowin
g sign. Inside the steamy establishment, she gave her order to the waitress and was rewarded with a brimming plate of eggs, home fries, toast, and pancakes. It was almost worth the trip, she thought, seizing her knife and fork, to have the American version of the Heart Attack Special.

  By the time she walked back to the hotel the sun was coming up—leaving London, crossing the ocean to Boston—and the streets were busy with people hurrying to work. In her room she phoned Toby at the gallery. When she told him that Henry had fled, leaving only a note, he said quietly, “I was afraid of that.”

  “So why did I get on a plane? Why didn’t we sit tight and wait for him to pick up the phone in his own sweet time? I’m going to check the flights. With luck I can come back standby this evening. That way I won’t even have jet lag.”

  “Please.” Toby lowered his voice. “What did he say in his note?”

  She read it, enunciating every word as if she were reading the news on the radio.

  “So,” Toby said, “he is coming back.”

  “How do we know? He doesn’t exactly promise, and, even if he did, so what?”

  “He says, Enjoy Boston until I get back. And he does promise to be in touch. I’m sorry, I have a customer. I’ll call this evening. Please don’t do anything rash until we talk.”

  “What could be more rash than coming here?” she demanded and hung up.

  In the desk drawer she found a telephone directory and punched her way stubbornly through the airline menu—international flights, she had a preexisting reservation—until a woman, with the kind of southern accent that English people parody, introduced herself as Tiffany. “What can I do for you today?” she said.