I was hanging a silver pear, when I paused to listen. In the distance I heard the church bells ringing out, and how beautiful they sounded on the still night air.
Fiona explained, “There’s a service at the church tonight and it’s lovely. But there’s also one tomorrow for those who’d like to attend.”
Almost immediately after this the carolers were at the front door of Ure House, and the strains of “Silent Night” rang out. This time we all stopped what we were doing and listened, marveling at the beautiful young soprano voices.
Fiona and David went to the front door when the carol was finished and invited the young people in for eggnog and tidbits and a chance to warm up by the fire. And after their little respite from the cold, they sang “The Twelve Days of Christmas” before leaving to wend their way through the neighborhood.
I stood to one side, watching everyone, pleased to see the happiness on their faces. Mike was relaxed, joking with Jake, who couldn’t stop smiling tonight. Mike’s girls, besotted with Françoise, were laughing and helping her to hang golden cherries and apples on a high branch. Rory was draping tinsel with Fiona, and Moira was talking to them with great animation, and David, like me, was standing on the sidelines, the quiet observer. But I could see from the expression on his face how happy he was, and contented. And his eyes never left Fiona.
I realized as I stood there that I had never had a Christmas like this in my entire life—so family oriented, old-fashioned, and full of love.
IV
The dinner was superb.
It had been chiefly cooked by Noel, since Pig on the Roof was closed for the Christmas holidays. But Fiona, Françoise, and Moira had helped out during the day. I had been shooed away, but at least I’d volunteered to pitch in.
Once the meal was ready, Noel went off to change out of his uniform, and when he came back, he, Rory, and Moira hurried into the kitchen and brought out the first course: smoked salmon, foie gras, and potted shrimps. “Something for everyone’s taste,” Fiona said, glancing around the dining room table. She had set it herself that afternoon, and the beautiful china, crystal, and silver gleamed on the antique lace cloth. White winter roses arranged in a silver bowl sat in the center of the table between silver candlesticks with white candles. A perfect setting for the dinner.
After the salmon from Scotland, the potted shrimps from Morecambe Bay, and the French pâté de foie gras, the roast goose was served with its chestnut stuffing, roast potatoes, steamed vegetables, gravy, and apple-sauce.
We all kept telling Noel how delicious it was, and he just beamed and beamed, looking pleased. It was true, and he was a great chef—as well as a pleasant young man with an easygoing, carefree manner; he was interested in everyone.
Halfway through dinner, David startled me when he looked across at me, Mike, and Jake and remarked, “I hope you’ll find time to go into Leeds in the next few days to look at the wonderful new art at the museum there.”
Mike asked, “The paintings are that good, are they?”
David nodded. “Absolutely, and if you do wish to go, I’ll drive you into the city. It’s about an hour and a half from here. You’ll get a wonderful surprise when you see what’s hanging there.”
“Who’s the artist?” Jake asked.
“A local lad, a kid from Leeds who is immensely talented. Well, he’s no kid anymore. He’s a man. But he originally hails from Leeds, and his name’s Bill Smith. But the rest of the world knows him as Alexander St. Just Stevens.”
“He’s from Leeds?” I said, staring at David, and then Mike and I exchanged glances.
Mike said, “I didn’t know that, David. Is it common knowledge?”
David shrugged. “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. We all know in Yorkshire, of course, because he’s from these parts and something of a character. He was born in a poor neighborhood of Leeds, studied at Leeds College of Art before going to London, where he was a student at the Royal College of Art. It was around that time that he changed his name, adopted a posh, upper-class accent, and became a bit of a fancy, rather eccentric dresser. Reinvented himself when he was a student, and never looked back from that moment on. But he’s a genius, no two ways about it, and the paintings he has given to his hometown are mind-boggling. He’s been extremely generous to the city where he was born. And everyone appreciates him and his art.”
“We’ll be gobsmacked, will we?” I asked.
“You certainly will, as will I, Val, yet again. His paintings have that effect on everyone,” David responded.
Mike said slowly, “It’s an odd coincidence, David, but I wanted Val to go and see him when he was in New York. Unfortunately, he’d left, gone back to his place in Mexico before she could visit his loft. I have several magazines wanting photographs of his new series, which he’s painting for the Millennium Art Show to be held in Paris in 2000.”
Looking from Mike to me with great interest, David said, “Then you should see the paintings in Leeds, Mike, and you too, Val, if you’re going to be photographing the new series.”
“I’m not sure that I am,” I said, frowning at Mike, and then I added, “But Alexander St. Just Stevens does sound like an intriguing character.”
“Oh, he is,” Moira volunteered. “Very colorful, isn’t he, Mum?”
Fiona nodded. “Let’s try to go to Leeds together,” she suggested.
We agreed we’d like to make the trip to Leeds if we could, and Alexander St. Just Stevens became the topic of conversation for the rest of the meal.
V
“What a lovely evening,” I said later to Jake as we headed upstairs and went into our bedroom.
“Yes, it was, and especially because we were together, Val.” Pulling me into his arms, he kissed me on the cheek and then reached into his pocket. Slowly turning me around so that my back was to him, he hung a string of pearls around my neck and said, “Merry Christmas, honey.”
I looked at him in surprise, touched the pearls, and ran to the mirror to look at them. Swinging to face him, I exclaimed, “Jake, they’re beautiful! And you shouldn’t have. But thank you, I love them.”
He grinned at me. “They’re not the best, not South Sea pearls, but they are good ones.”
“As if I care about that! They’re gorgeous,” I responded, and went to hug him. “Your gifts are downstairs in that pile near the tree,” I explained. “Shall I creep down and get them?”
“They can wait until morning.” He laughed.
I nodded, then touched the pearls again and turned once more to regard myself in the mirror. As I admired them, I promised, “I’ll wear them always, Jake.”
“Not on the front lines, I hope.”
“I’m not going to be on the front lines, and neither are you,” I replied. I did not realize I was tempting fate again.
Chapter 30
I
Paris, March 1999 We went back to Paris after the New Year’s celebrations, but Jake waited for over two months before dropping his bombshell.
One afternoon, at the beginning of March, I was minding my own business, feeling happy and contented as I worked at home, sorting through a batch of Polaroids of paintings by Alexander St. Just Stevens. Mike was still on my back about the British artist, urging me to go to Mexico to do the shoot. As I sat there, studying the shots, I wondered how to talk Jake into coming with me, if I did accept the assignment, when suddenly he was standing there.
He must have entered the apartment quietly, because I didn’t hear him come in, and then there he was, as large as life, leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb.
“Hi!” I exclaimed, grinning at him. “I was just thinking about you.”
“And what were you thinking?” he asked with a faint smile.
I took a deep breath and decided to plunge. “Mike’s still after me to do the shoot in Mexico, you know, of the paintings by St. Just Stevens, and I was wondering how to talk you into coming with me. If I accept the job.”
“Do you want to do it, Val???
? he asked, scrutinizing me intently and shifting slightly against the doorframe.
“To be honest, I’m not sure. It could be interesting, certainly the art is just . . . mind-boggling, as David said, and as we saw for ourselves in Leeds. But I don’t know, it’s such a long trek to Mexico.”
“But nice weather at this time of year.”
“True. Anyway, what are you doing home so early? I thought you had an important meeting at the agency with Jacques Foucher and the guy from Vanity Fair.”
“Yeah, I did, and we had the meeting.”
“Did it go well?”
He nodded, then walked into the dining room, which served as my office, and came to a stop just before he reached my desk.
I stared at him, a brow lifting quizzically. “What is it?”
“Val, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“What? Why do you look so serious all of a sudden?”
There was an almost imperceptible hesitation on his part before he said, “I’m thinking of going back to Kosovo.”
For a split second I thought I’d misheard. But I knew I hadn’t really. I was so stunned, I couldn’t speak for a second, and I just sat there, gaping at him like a fool. When I could finally speak, I said in a faltering voice, “But you promised you wouldn’t go back there.”
“I didn’t actually promise, Val, I merely said I thought I wouldn’t go back to Kosovo.”
“Jake, it’s me you’re talking to, and you’re splitting hairs!”
“No, I’m not. I said I didn’t want to go back, that I thought I wouldn’t, but I never made you a promise.”
“And now you’re saying you do want to go, is that it?”
“Yes. Because I have to, Val.”
“No, you don’t, there’s no earthly reason why you should go back to that lousy war.” My voice rose slightly as I added a bit shrilly, “You’ll get killed.”
“I won’t. I’m not like Tony Hampton, I don’t take risks.”
“No, I guess you think you’re like Robert Capa, who didn’t take risks either according to you, and made sound judgments before he rushed into the fray. But even so, Capa got himself killed in Indochina by stepping on a land mine. So much for sound judgments.”
“I must go Val, really, it’s important to me that I do.”
“Why?” I cut in peremptorily, and in a harsh voice.
“Because I’m a Jew, that’s why. I can no longer ignore what’s happening in Kosovo, what Slobodan Milosevic’s up to, in all good conscience, I can’t. I have to go and take photographs of the atrocities . . . of the killing and murder, torture and mayhem that’s occurring there right now. This war is escalating, and before you can blink, NATO will intercede, they have to, because Milosevic is perpetrating genocide.”
I couldn’t move or speak for a moment, and I knew then that whatever I said I had probably already lost the battle to stop him going. I finally managed to say in a low voice, “But, Jake, genocide has been committed in other countries in the world. And you didn’t—”
“This is different. This is happening in Europe, and I’m of European stock, and I feel compelled, impelled to go. I was born of German Jews, and this is a repetition of what happened in Nazi Germany in the thirties, and I just can’t stand by and let it happen without lifting a finger. I should say, lifting a camera.”
“I bet if you talked to your mother, she’d tell you not to go.”
“I’m not a little boy needing his mother’s permission,” he said in a suddenly snappish tone. “And no, she wouldn’t tell me not to go, she’d tell me, yes, Jake, go, get over there and take the pictures. Prove that this monstrous man is a criminal, that he should be brought to trial as a criminal.”
“I didn’t mean you needed permission,” I said weakly. “You misunderstood me.”
“Listen to me,” he said, leaning forward slightly, resting his hands on the edge of my desk. “My grandmother Granmutti Hedy and my grandfather Erich Neuberg fled Nazi Germany in 1937 because they knew only too well what was going to happen to them if they stayed. My mother’s parents Ernst and Anna Mayer were just as smart and left Germany in 1935, also fleeing racial persecution. Hitler was already on the rampage. And frankly, Milosevic is of the same ilk. He is waging an ethnic war against the Kosovar people, and it is a criminal war.”
“Oh, Jake, I understand what this means to you!” I said. “Intellectually, I do. Truly, I do. But emotionally, I don’t want you to go, I’m so afraid you’ll be . . . hurt.”
“It’s just seeping through to the world that Milosevic is prepared to act like Hitler, and Stalin . . . he’s going to fight a war against a whole people. Jesus, Val, he’s already doing it!”
“I realize it’s about ethnic cleansing, and that it’s wrong—” My voice wavered, came to a stop, because I saw the look on his face. His expression was stubborn; his blue eyes blazed with passionate intensity.
Jake said, “I can’t help but think the Nazi era is being repeated in Kosovo. That this terrible, primitive kind of fascism is making a comeback, and I don’t believe the world can accept that. I just have to stand up against genocide, Val. I do! Almost all of my grandparents’ relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, and on both sides, Neubergs and Mayers, and Steiners in Munich, on Granmutti Hedy’s side.”
“Please don’t go to Kosovo,” I whispered, leaning back against the chair. I felt sick inside and I was terrified, because I suddenly had a terrible premonition that something unspeakable was going to happen to him. I loved him so much and I had to try to stop him from going, and I had to do it now, before it was too late. “I’m begging you not to go, Jake. For my sake, for our sake. For our future’s sake.”
“Oh, Val darling,” he said quietly, “you know I have to do this. I couldn’t live with myself if I ignored my conscience. You’ve seen the newspapers every day, watched television . . . it’s growing by the minute. And you’ll see, by the end of March, before this month is out, NATO will have to go in and bomb. We have to intervene. And I want to be there, Val, taking the pictures that might help to change somebody’s perception of this war. That’s one of the reasons I became a war photographer, I wanted to make people really see violence and terror and wholesale slaughter. It’s a sea of sorrow and blood over there.”
“If you go, it’s over between us,” I threatened, using the only weapon I had left.
He ignored what I said. “Come with me, Val.”
“No, I just can’t, Jake, I’m totally burnt out. I can’t go. I don’t belong there on the front lines anymore.”
Nodding his understanding, he walked around the desk, bent over me, and kissed me, hugged me tightly. I choked up, yet somehow managed to push back the tears. But my voice wavered as I said, “Oh, Jake, please, please stay . . .”
Releasing me, he looked down into my face and gave me a small boyish smile. “I’m going to be fine, Val. Really I am, you must trust me.”
II
And so he left.
He flew out three nights later to Belgrade.
I was all alone in the apartment, suddenly lost and helpless without him, after seven months of emotional and physical closeness and involvement.
I kept shaking my head, wondering to myself how this had happened. It had all been so sudden, so fast; he had told me what he was going to do, and then he had gone. Toting his cameras and his big bag, in which he had packed his combat boots and flak jacket.
He had gone back to Kosovo, where Tony Hampton had been killed and where my life had changed forever, and because of this I was superstitious. I knew that this place did not bode well for me, and I knew he would be killed. And it was something I could not bear to contemplate.
There was one thing in his favor. I knew he was not rash or foolhardy, as Tony had been, and I hoped and prayed that he would use his good judgment and wisdom once he was in harm’s way.
Yes, I wished him well, because I loved him with all my heart. But deep within myself, at my core, I was hurt,
because he had chosen his cause over me. And that was hard for me to accept.
III
It was Mike who convinced me to take the assignment in Mexico. Although I was at first reluctant, I finally decided my boss had a good point. I would be far away, busy working, and so less inclined to sit and worry about Jake. Of course I would worry, I knew that only too well. But he was right, inasmuch as Acapulco was at the other side of the world. CNN was broadcast there too, but I didn’t have to turn it on.
The project was quite complex, and since we had finally received Alexander St. Just Stevens’s permission to fly to his compound, fairly elaborate arrangements had to be made. “You’ll need a couple of assistants,” Mike had said a few days before, and had suggested two of the junior photographers at Gemstar in New York. They were nice kids and competent, but I turned them down.
“I’d like to take my brother Donald and his fiancée, Alexis Rayne,” I said to Mike, explaining, “She’s an excellent journalist and so is Donald. I need somebody to make notes, keep a written record for me, and in general act like journalists who would be writing the story. Also, they can both help me set up the lighting, assist with that kind of thing. And they wouldn’t be all that expensive,” I’d thought to add.
Mike had agreed, I suppose because he realized how much I was hurting about Jake and he wanted to make me feel better. He was also aware I’d patched up my rift with Donald, and I knew he was in the mood to encourage family affection these days.
In the first few days that Jake had been gone I had cried myself to sleep at night, but eventually I had managed to pull myself together. I had to be grown-up about the situation, act like the mature woman I believed myself to be. I was thirty-one years old and responsible for myself, and I had to earn a living. I had bills to pay, commitments to meet, and floating around like some mad Ophelia wasn’t going to get me anywhere. It would get me nothing, nada, zilch.