Those Whom the Gods Love. Clare Layton
half-way through his first glass of wine. He hauled himself to his feet when he saw her.
‘You’ve done a terrific job on the rewrite, Ginty.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘So you deserve a celebration. And you look gorgeous. Come and sit down. Red all right for you? It’s proper French stuff; not this New World fruit juice.’
‘Great,’ she said, even though she liked the despised fruitiness. ‘Did you get the photographs?’
‘I did. And I must say they surprised me.’ He raised his glass in a corny toast. ‘You are a bundle of contradictions, aren’t you?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘A size-eight, bird-boned, terrified, war photographer.’
‘I’m not a war photographer.’ She’d never have admitted to terror, but denying it wasn’t likely to be convincing, so she didn’t even try.
‘Could’ve fooled me. I’ve been looking at some of your other pix today, which I found in the files, and I’m dead impressed.’
Ginty thought of the disheartening years when she had been trying to sell her work, sending off examples of it to people like Harbinger, who’d all ignored her. Spending a fortune on prints she never got back, forcing herself to write letters falsely confident enough to satisfy even Gunnar, had eventually worn out her patience. She’d hawked her portfolio around in person, too, only to be sent away with criticism of the sentimentality of her work and advice to think again about her career choices. Now it sounded as though yet more anguished effort had been unnecessary. She tried to ignore it and concentrate on Harbinger, who was looking at her with all the approval she could have wanted.
‘So, how would you describe yourself – in your photographic guise?’
‘A failure,’ she said with a laugh that was supposed to be cheerfully cynical but in fact sounded hard-edged and defensive.
‘Oh, come on. You know you’re not that. Now, what are you going to eat?’
‘I’ll have the roast veg, then the lamb.’ Ginty put down the menu, amazed to see that her hands weren’t even trembling. She felt as though her whole body should be shaking with the power of what she felt.
‘Good, a carnivore. We can go on drinking red.’
‘Fine. Whatever. You know, I’ve been wanting to ask you something.’
‘Yes?’ He didn’t sound interested, probably too busy signalling to the waiter. Ginty kept quiet until they’d ordered and been left alone again. She wanted Harbinger to concentrate before she launched her quest.
‘I’m thinking of writing a piece about this new crisis of masculinity,’ she began when she had his attention again. He laughed.
‘You know,’ she went on, ‘all these young men who are killing themselves either because they can’t cope with competition from strong women, or because they feel undervalued in a world in which female skills are needed much more than traditionally macho strength.’
‘It’s a load of cock.’ Harbinger’s shoulders had tightened under the loose, cream linen jacket. ‘Nothing more than a product of all those noisy feminists seeing their sons growing up. Now that they have to watch their cosseted darlings being made to suffer by girlfriends, they’re at last realizing what they’ve put their husbands and lovers through all these years. They’re manufacturing this idea of a new crisis to get themselves off the hook of their own guilt.’ He shook his head, as though he’d got water in his ears.
‘You could be right,’ Ginty said, drooping over her plate. She picked at some wax from the leaky candle that had settled on the rough wooden table in a warm, yielding mass. ‘After all, young men killing themselves isn’t anything new, is it?’
Harbinger said nothing. When she looked up, he was staring at her.
‘I mean, you did have rather a traumatic time yourself at Oxford, when that friend of yours hanged himself, didn’t you?’
‘How did you get on to that?’
She’d been prepared for him to be angry or contemptuous, but he wasn’t. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought he was grateful. But that was absurd.
‘I’ve been reading the account of the inquest in The Times and talking to one or two people. What happened, John?’ Her voice was gentle and she knew her eyes were soft. It wasn’t completely fake. He’d known her father and she wanted to find her father loveable.
‘Oh, God!’
‘Tell me.’
‘I’m not sure that I can. But … Hell!’
The waiter was back, bringing their food. Ginty waited, but the moment had passed. Harbinger picked up his fork and started eating, gulping down his twice-cooked goat’s cheese souffleé like a pelican choking down an enormous fish. She ate some of the slippery roasted peppers on her plate. The oil coating them had been spiked with balsamic vinegar, and the caramelized edges of the skin added bitterness. The sweet sliding flesh turned to pulp between her tongue and her palate. She swallowed easily.
‘You’re right. I did have a friend who topped himself,’ Harbinger said abruptly. He picked up two lettuce leaves from the garnish on his plate, rolled them into a sausage and stuffed them in his mouth, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. Before he’d swallowed, he muttered something.
‘Sorry?’ Ginty leaned forwards to hear better. He didn’t repeat himself. She poured more wine into his glass. ‘Tell me about him, John. I know his name and I’ve seen his photograph. But what was he like? Steven Flyford.’
Harbinger flinched. Staring at the table, he said: ‘He was my best friend: vulnerable, anxious, eager to please. Good company, too, and clever and kind.’
Something in Ginty’s neck let go and her teeth unclamped.
‘What made him so unhappy, then, that he had to kill himself? The inquest report wasn’t clear.’
Harbinger shook his head. ‘There were all sorts of theories. None of them seemed quite right.’
‘Didn’t he leave any kind of note?’
Harbinger couldn’t think why she was asking all these questions. She’d let him off the hook with her resounding statement on the radio about date rape. That should have been the end of it. Not this inquisition that seemed to go nagging on and on. Somehow he had to stop her asking questions.
He took a great swig of wine, trying not to remember the inquest, trying to concentrate on the face in front of him, with its freckles and its crossed teeth and the wide, hurt, brown eyes. But it didn’t work. He even tried to think about pulling her to distract himself from his memories. But that didn’t work either. That bloody, wet day in Oxford came rolling back like the waves up a beach where he and Steve had once nearly drowned.
They hadn’t known how sharply the ground would shelve away or how strong the undertow that would suck them down. It had been Sasha who’d rescued them then, standing on the beach yelling instructions, wading into the surf to pull them out of the grip of the water with a strong arm.
Coming out of the inquest had been a bit like that, too, with Sasha sniffing back tears as she pulled off her big black felt Biba hat and announced that they’d all better go for a drink now to take the taste away.
‘We could have stopped him,’ she said as she twisted the big, black felt hat between her hands. ‘He never talked about suicide, even when he was most depressed. If it was getting that bad, he should’ve told us. We could have helped, got him into the Warnford even.’
Dom pushed up his spectacles with one lanky finger, hovered on the edge of the first word, then got it out without too much stammering: ‘He w-wouldn’t have wanted to worry us. He never did. That’s why he wrote that letter: ‘Don’t