Come on, get a grip.
He dressed, rang down for some coffee, and, feeling a little steadier, sat at the desk. It was almost a quarter to eleven. He needed to send his copy through, the profile he had worked on the previous afternoon. He gazed at his scrawled notes, recalling the end of the evening. The memory came back to him haltingly: Mariette, her face raised to him outside this hotel, demanding to be kissed. His determined refusal, even as he still muttered about what a fool he was: the girl was desirable and had been his for the taking. But he wanted to feel the tiniest bit glad about one thing he’d done that evening.
Oh, Christ. Jennifer Stirling, brittle and wounded, holding his jacket toward him. She had overheard him ranting mindlessly, ungraciously, about them all. What had he said about her? Spoiled little tai-tai . . . not an original thought in her head. He closed his eyes. War zones, he thought, were easier. Safer. In war zones you could always tell who the enemy was.
The coffee arrived. He took a deep breath, then poured a cupful. He lifted the telephone receiver and asked the operator wearily to put him through to London.
Mrs. Stirling,
I am an ungracious pig. I’d like to be able to blame exhaustion, or some uncharacteristic reaction to shellfish, but I’m afraid it was a combination of alcohol, which I shouldn’t take, and the choleric temper of the socially inept. There is little you could say about me that I have not already deduced about myself in my more sober hours.
Please allow me to apologize. If I could buy you and Mr. Stirling lunch before I return to London I’d be very glad to make it up to you.
Yours shamefacedly,
Anthony O’Hare
P.S. I enclose a copy of the report I sent to London to assure you that I have, at least, behaved honorably in that regard.
Anthony folded the letter into an envelope, sealed it, and turned it over. It was possible he was still a little drunk: he couldn’t remember ever having been so honest in a letter.
It was at that point that he remembered he had no address to which he could send it. He swore softly at his own stupidity. The previous evening Stirling’s driver had collected him, and he could remember little of the journey home, aside from its various humiliations.
The hotel’s reception desk offered little help. Stirling? The concierge shook his head.
“You know him? Rich man. Important,” he said. His mouth still tasted powdery.
“Monsieur,” the concierge said wearily, “everyone here is rich and important.”
The afternoon was balmy, the air white, almost phosphoric under the clear sky. He began to walk, retraced the route that the car had taken the previous evening. It had been a drive of less than ten minutes: How hard could it be to find the house again? He would drop the letter at the door and leave. He refused to think about what he would do when he returned to town: since that morning his body, reminded of its long relationship with alcohol, had begun a low, perverse hum of desire. Beer, it urged. Wine. Whiskey. His kidneys ached, and he still trembled a little. The walk, he told himself, nodding in greeting at two smiling, sun-hatted women, would do him good.
The sky above Antibes was a searing blue, the beaches dotted with holidaymakers basting themselves on the white sand. He remembered turning left at this roundabout and saw that the road, dotted with claytiled villas, led him into the hills. This was the way he had come. The sun was beating hard on the back of his neck and straight through his hat. He removed his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder as he walked.
It was in the hills behind the town that things began to go wrong. He had turned left at a church that had looked vaguely familiar and begun to make his way up the side of a hill. The pine and palm trees thinned, then disappeared altogether, leaving him unprotected by shade, the heat bouncing off the pale rocks and tarmac. He felt his exposed skin tighten, and knew that by evening it would be burned and sore.
Occasionally a car would pass, sending sprays of flint over the growing precipice. It had seemed such a brief journey the previous evening, speeded by the scent of the wild herbs, the cool breezes of dusk. Now the milestones stretched before him, and his confidence ebbed as he was forced to contemplate the possibility that he was lost.
Don Franklin would love this, he thought, pausing to wipe his head with his handkerchief. Anthony could make his way from one end of Africa to the other, fight his way across borders, yet here he was, lost in what should have been a ten-minute journey across a millionaires’ playground. He stepped back to let another car pass, then squinted into the light as, with a low squeal of brakes, it stopped. With a whine, it reversed toward him.
Yvonne Moncrieff, sunglasses tilted back on her head, leaned out of a Daimler SP250. “Are you mad?” she said cheerfully. “You’ll fry up here.”
He peered across and saw Jennifer Stirling at the wheel. She gazed at him from behind oversize dark sunglasses, her hair tied back, her expression unreadable.
“Good afternoon,” he said, removing his hat. He was suddenly conscious of the sweat seeping through his crumpled shirt and his face shining with it.
“What on earth are you doing so far out of town, Mr. O’Hare?” Jennifer asked. “Chasing some hot story?”
He took his linen jacket from his shoulder, reached into his pocket, and thrust the letter toward her. “I—I wanted to give you this.”
“What is it?”
“An apology.”
“An apology?”
“For my ungraciousness last night.”
She made no move to stretch across her friend and take it.
“Jennifer, shall I?” Yvonne Moncrieff glanced at her, apparently perturbed.
“No. Can you read it out loud, Mr. O’Hare?” she said.
“Jennifer!”
“If Mr. O’Hare has written it, I’m sure he’s perfectly capable of saying it.” Behind the glasses her face was impassive.
He stood there for a moment, looked behind him at the empty road and down at the sunbaked village below. “I’d really rather—”
“Then it’s not much of an apology, is it, Mr. O’Hare?” she said sweetly. “Anyone can scribble a few words.”
Yvonne Moncrieff was looking at her hands, shaking her head. Jennifer’s blank sunglasses were still focused on him, his silhouette visible in their dark lenses.
He opened the envelope, pulled out the sheet of paper, and after a moment read the contents to her, his voice unnaturally loud on the mountain. He finished and tucked it back into his pocket. He felt oddly embarrassed in the silence, broken only by the quiet hum of the engine.