The Last Letter from Your Lover(10)
Author: Jojo Moyes

There were seven other guests at dinner: the Moncrieffs, friends of the Stirlings from London—the wife’s gaze was frankly assessing; the local mayor, M. Lafayette, with his wife and their daughter, a lithe brunette with heavily made-up eyes and a definite air of mischief; and the elderly M. and Mme Demarcier. Stirling’s wife was a clean-cut, pretty blonde in the Grace Kelly mold; such women tended to have little to say of interest, having been admired for their looks all their lives. He hoped to be placed next to Mrs. Moncrieff. He hadn’t minded her summing him up. She would be a challenge.

“And you work for a newspaper, Mr. O’Hare?” The elderly Frenchwoman peered up at him.

“Yes. In England.” A manservant appeared at his elbow with a tray of drinks. “Do you have anything soft? Tonic water, perhaps?” The man nodded and disappeared.

“What is it called?” she asked.

“The Nation.”

“The Nation,” she repeated, with apparent dismay. “I haven’t heard of it. I have heard of the Times. That is the best newspaper, isn’t it?”

“I’ve heard that people think so.” Oh, Lord, he thought. Please let the food be good.

The silver tray appeared at his elbow with a tall glass of iced tonic water. Anthony kept his gaze away from the sparkling kir the others were drinking. Instead he tried out a little of his schoolboy French on the mayor’s daughter, who replied in perfect English, with a charming French lilt. Too young, he thought, registering the mayor’s sideways glance.

He was gratified to find himself seated beside Yvonne Moncrieff when they finally sat down. She was polite, entertaining—and completely immune to him. Damn the happily married. Jennifer Stirling was on his left, turned away in conversation.

“Do you spend much time here, Mr. O’Hare?” Francis Moncrieff was a tall, thin man, the physical equivalent of his wife.

“No.”

“You’re more usually tied to the City of London?”

“No. I don’t cover it at all.”

“You’re not a financial journalist?”

“I’m a foreign correspondent. I cover . . . trouble abroad.”

“While Larry causes it.” Moncrieff laughed. “What sort of things do you write about?”

“Oh, war, famine, disease. The cheerful stuff.”

“I don’t think there is much cheerful about those.” The elderly Frenchwoman sipped her wine.

“For the last year I’ve been covering the crisis in Congo.”

“Lumumba’s a troublemaker,” Stirling interjected, “and the Belgians are cowardly fools if they think the place will do anything but sink without them.”

“You believe the Africans can’t be trusted to manage their own affairs?”

“Lumumba was a barefoot jungle postman not five minutes ago. There isn’t a colored with a professional education in the whole of Congo.” He lit a cigar and blew out a plume of smoke. “How are they meant to run the banks once the Belgians have gone, or the hospitals? The place will become a war zone. My mines are on the Rhodesian-Congolese border, and I’ve already had to draft in extra security. Rhodesian security—the Congolese can no longer be trusted.”

There was a brief silence. A muscle had begun to tick insistently in Anthony’s jaw.

Stirling tapped his cigar. “So, Mr. O’Hare, where were you in Congo?”

“Léopoldville, mainly. Brazzaville.”

“Then you know that the Congolese army cannot be controlled.”

“I know that independence is a testing time for any country. And that had Lieutenant General Janssens been more diplomatic, many lives might have been saved.”

Stirling stared at him over the cigar smoke. Anthony felt he was being reassessed. “So, you’ve been sucked into the cult of Lumumba too.” His smile was icy.

“It’s hard to believe that the conditions for many Africans could become any worse.”

“Then you and I must differ,” Stirling retorted. “I think that there are people for whom freedom can be a dangerous gift.”

The room fell silent. In the distance, a motorbike whined up a hillside. Madame Lafayette reached up anxiously to smooth her hair.

“Well, I can’t say I know anything about it,” Jennifer Stirling observed, laying her napkin neatly on her lap.

“Too depressing,” Yvonne Moncrieff agreed. “I simply can’t look at the newspapers some mornings. Francis reads the sport and City pages, and I stick to my magazines. Often the news goes completely unread.”

“My wife considers anything not in the pages of Vogue to not be proper news at all,” Moncrieff said.

The tension eased. Conversation flowed again, and the waiters refilled the glasses. The men discussed the stock market and developments on the Riviera—the influx of campers, which led the elderly couple to complain of a “lowering in tone,” and which awful newcomers had joined the British Bridge Club.

“I shouldn’t worry too much,” said Moncrieff. “The beach huts at Monte Carlo cost fifty pounds a week this year. I shouldn’t think too many Butlins types are going to pay that.”

“I heard that Elsa Maxwell proposed covering the pebbles with foam rubber so the beach wouldn’t be uncomfortable for one’s feet.”

“Terrible hardships one faces in this place,” Anthony remarked quietly. He wanted to leave, but that was impossible at this stage of the meal. He felt too far from where he had been—as if he had been dropped into a parallel universe. How could they be so inured to the mess, the horror, of Africa, when their lives were so plainly built upon it?

He hesitated for a moment, then motioned to a waiter for some wine. Nobody at the table seemed to notice.

“So . . . you’re going to write marvelous things about my husband, are you?” Mrs. Stirling was peering at his cuff. The second course, a platter of fresh seafood, had been laid in front of him, and she had turned toward him.

He adjusted his napkin. “I don’t know. Should I? Is he marvelous?”

“He’s a beacon of sound commercial practice, according to our dear friend Mr. Moncrieff. His factories are built to the highest standards. His turnover increases year after year.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“No?”

“I asked you if he was marvelous.” He knew he was being spiky, but the alcohol had woken him up, made his skin prickle.