Once we were seated, I grabbed Jake’s arm ferociously, pulled him closer to me, and hissed, “You never told me anything about a wake.”
“I thought it better not to, at least not until we got here,” he admitted in a whisper.
“Who’s giving the wake?” I demanded, but kept my voice low, endeavoring to curb my anger with him.
“Rory and Moira.” He glanced at me swiftly, and again nervously cleared his throat. “I have the distinct feeling we won’t be going, will we, Val?”
“You bet we won’t,” I snapped.
III
It was just as well other people came into our pew at this precise moment, because it prevented a continuation of our conversation, which could have easily spiraled out of hand.
I was furious with Jake for not telling me about the wake before then, not to mention irritated with myself for not anticipating that there would be one.
Tony, after all, had been Irish; on the other hand, a wake was usually held after a funeral and not a memorial, wasn’t it? But the Irish were the Irish, with their own unique rules and rituals, and apparently a wake today was deemed in order, perhaps because the funeral had been held in Ireland. A wake was an opportunity for family and friends to get together, to comfort each other, to reminisce and remember, and to celebrate the one who had died. I was fully aware I wouldn’t be able to face the gathering. Coming on top of the memorial, it would be too much for me to handle. What I couldn’t understand was why Jake didn’t realize this.
The sound of organ music echoed through the church, and I glanced around surreptitiously. Here and there among the crowd I caught glimpses of familiar faces—of those we had worked with over the past couple of years. There were also any number of famous photographers and journalists, as well as a few celebrities, none of whom I knew, but instantly recognized because of their fame.
It was an enormous turnout, and Tony would have been gratified and pleased to know that so many friends and members of his profession had come to remember him, to honor him today.
I went on peering about me, hoping to see Rory. I felt quite positive that I would recognize him, since Tony had shown me so many photographs of his son, and of his daughter, Moira. They were nowhere to be seen, yet they had to be there. It struck me then that they would be sitting in the front pew, facing the altar, and that was out of my line of vision.
I sat back, bowed my head, and tuned myself in to the organ music. It was mournful but oddly soothing. I closed my eyes for a moment, and I was filled with relief that I was keeping my feelings in check. Well, for the moment at least.
When the organ music stopped, I opened my eyes at once and saw a priest standing in front of the altar. Immediately, he began to pray for Tony’s soul, and we all knelt to pray with him and then we rose automatically and sat in our seats again. The priest continued to speak, this time about Tony and his life and all that he had done with it, and what he had accomplished.
And I took refuge by sinking down into myself, only half listening, absently drifting along with the proceedings, and endeavoring to remain uninvolved. Instinctively, I was scared to be a participant for fear of making a fool of myself by displaying too much emotion or weeping. Yet, tears had risen to the surface, were rapidly gathering behind my eyes, and I struggled desperately to control myself.
Soon the priest drew to a close and glided over to one side of the altar, and as if from far, far away a lone choirboy’s voice rang out. It was an extraordinary voice, a high-pitched soprano that seemed to emanate from the very rafters of the church. The voice was so pure, so thrilling, it sent chills down my spine, and I sat up straighter and listened, enraptured.
The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you’ll find him.
His father’s sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him . . .
Hearing the young choirboy singing so beautifully literally undid me. My mouth began to tremble uncontrollably, and as my face crumpled, I covered it with my hand. I shrank into the corner of the pew and discovered, a split second later, that I wasn’t able to quell the tears. They rolled down my cheeks unchecked, slipping out from under my dark glasses and dropping down onto my hand, which was clutching the lapel of my jacket.
Jake put his arm around me, drew me closer, wanting to comfort me. Leaning against him gratefully, I swallowed hard, compressed my lips, and finally managed to get my swimming senses under control. The ballad came to an end at last, and that lilting soprano was finally silent. I hoped there would not be too much of this kind of thing, because I knew it would be unbearable for me.
But of course there was more. First Tony’s brother Niall eulogized him; he was followed by Tony’s oldest friend in the business, Eddie Marsden, the photo editor at Tony’s agency, who spoke at length. And finally, it was Rory who was standing there in the pulpit, looking for all the world like a young Tony, strong and courageous in his grief. He had inherited his father’s handsome Black Irish looks, his mannerisms, and his voice was so similar, it was like listening to Tony himself speaking.
Rory’s words came truly from the heart, were eloquent and moving. He reminded us of Tony’s great charm and his talent as a photographer, of his modesty and his lack of conceit, of his abhorrence of violence, his humanity, and his condemnation of the wars he covered. Rory talked of his father’s Irish roots, his love of Ireland and of family. He spoke so lovingly about his father, I felt the tears rising in my throat once more.
Rory went on. “He was too young a man to die . . . and yet he died doing what he loved the most, recording history in the making. And perhaps there’s no better way to die than doing that, doing what you love the most. . . .”
But he could have lived a long life, I thought as young Rory’s voice continued to wash over me. If he hadn’t taken such terrible risks, none of us would be here today grieving over him. The instant these thoughts formed, I hated myself for thinking them. But it was the truth.
IV
Rory spotted us as we came slowly up the central aisle. He was waiting to speak to friends of his father’s as they left the church, his eyes lit up as soon as they settled on Jake. Moira was positioned next to him, and on his other side stood a slender red-haired woman who even from this distance appeared to be quite beautiful. I knew at once it was Fiona, Tony’s former wife. I began to shake inside.
Jake had no way of knowing I had been seized by this internal shaking; nevertheless, he took hold of my elbow to steady me as though he did know.
Fiona was smiling warmly at him, obviously glad to see him, and it was apparent they were old friends. Moving toward her, Jake let go of me only when we came to a standstill in front of her. He wrapped his arms around Fiona and gave her a big bear hug, then hugged Moira and Rory.
Bringing me forward into the group, he introduced me. “Fiona, this is Val—Val Denning.”
“Hello, Val,” she said warmly in a soft voice, and she gave me a small half-smile and thrust out her hand.
I took hold of it and said “Fiona,” and inclined my head, trying not to stare at her. She had a lovely face, with high cheekbones, a dimpled chin, and smooth brow. Her skin was that pale milky white that Irish redheads seem to be blessed with, but it was liberally peppered with freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones. Her hair, cut short and curly, was flame-colored and her eyes were dark, black as coal, in fact. A true Celt, I thought.
“I’m so glad you were able to come to London,” Fiona was saying to Jake in her lilting brogue that bespoke her heritage. “To be honest, I’d worried that you might both be off on assignments, that you wouldn’t make the memorial service. Thanks for coming.” She looked at me, and then back at Jake, and said, “So you’ll be joining us at the house to take a bite with us?”
Jake hesitated uncertainly, gave me a quick glance, and said to Fiona, “Val hasn’t been feeling well since we got here last night, have you, Val?”
He had adroitly
thrown the ball into my court, and I had no option but to go along with him. “No, I haven’t, not really. I think I must be coming down with something.”
Fiona’s face dropped. “Oh, that’s such a disappointment, ’tis indeed, Val. And here I was, wanting to give you both something of Tony’s. As a memento, you know. There’s so much at the house, all of his possessions collected over the years. I thought you could choose something, Val, and you, Jake, something personal, like a camera, or maybe a pair of cuff links.” She paused and shook her head, and a wry smile touched her mouth. “Well, as far as Tony’s concerned, there would be nothing more personal than a camera I’m thinking, since every camera he ever owned was part of him.”
“We do want you to come, Jake, you worked alongside Dad for so long. And you should come too,” Rory cut in, looking directly at me. “If you feel up to it. It’s not a real wake, you know. It’s a sort of . . . well, it’s just a gathering of friends remembering my father with his family, in his home—”
“It won’t be the same without you,” Fiona interjected. “Why, Jake, you were so close to him these last few years, I thought at times that you were joined at the hip. Please come to the house. It means so much to me and the children.”
Jake said something, but I wasn’t paying attention. Instead, I was staring at Fiona. And I knew with absolute certainty that she was not Tony’s ex-wife. Fiona was still his wife. Or, rather, his widow.
Chapter 5
I
“Tony came to me at the end of July and said he was divorced. Why didn’t you tell me he wasn’t?” I asked as evenly as possible, trying to keep my voice level and controlled.
“Because I didn’t know he wasn’t,” Jake answered, returning my stare with one equally as penetrating.
“But why didn’t you know? You were his best buddy, and you seem very pally with Fiona. You must have known something, known what was going on in their life together!” I exclaimed, my voice rising slightly.
Jake did not answer.
We stood facing each other in my room at the Milestone, where we had returned after leaving the Brompton Oratory. When truth and reality had suddenly hit me in the face at the church, I had hurriedly excused myself to Fiona, hinting in a vague way that I really wasn’t well and had to leave. Under pressure from her, Jake had finally agreed to go to her house once he had dropped me off at the hotel. On the way here in the car, he had tried to talk to me, asking me why I had rushed out so abruptly. But I’d hushed him into silence, explaining that we must wait to have our discussion in private.
Now we were having it. He suddenly reached out, as if to take me in his arms. But as he moved toward me, I took a step backward. “Don’t try to comfort me right now,” I said swiftly. “I’m not in the mood, Jake, and anyway, I want to talk this out with you.” I shook my head. “I always thought you were my friend, my best friend, actually, but now . . .” I let my sentence trail off.
Instantly I saw that I had annoyed him. His mouth tightened into a thin line, and his bright blue eyes, usually so benign, had turned flinty and cold. “Don’t you dare question my friendship and loyalty!” he said. “And stop being so damned accusatory, Val. I haven’t done anything to hurt you, I’m only an innocent bystander. Now listen to me for a moment.”
“I’m listening.”
He took a deep breath and said, “Although Tony and I were close, he never confided in me about his private life, only ever hinted at things. I knew there were lots of women—” He cut himself off, looked chagrined, and eyed me carefully before continuing.
I knew Jake would never willfully hurt me, and I guessed that he was now worrying he had just caused me a degree of pain. But that wasn’t so. “It’s okay, Jake, keep going,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring voice.
He nodded. “Val, you have to face up to the fact that you weren’t the first, there were others before you. But he never left Fiona. She was always there in the background, his childhood sweetheart, his child bride, as he called her, and the mother of his children. She was inviolate in a sense. At least, that’s what I believed. As I told you, we never discussed his marriage or his love affairs, just as I didn’t talk about my personal life or my divorce from Sue Ellen. We touched on those things only in the most peripheral way. Very casually. Then he got involved with you last year, and eventually I began to think the unthinkable, that he was going to break up with Fiona. Not that he ever said so. Nor did he discuss you. However, when he came to Paris in July, he announced out of the blue that he was divorced—”
“And you were gobsmacked, as the English say,” I interrupted with some acidity.
Ignoring my sarcasm, Jake continued. “You’re right, in one sense, yes. Because he was such a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic, I’d always thought a divorce was out of the question. And then again, he’d done something I’d never expected him to do. He’d broken the mold. Mind you, Val, I understood on another level why he would want to be free. It was for you. Yes, I understood that aspect of it very well.”
“He lied to both of us. He wasn’t divorced.”
“We don’t really know that,” Jake answered in a reasonable tone.
“Oh yes we do. At least I do.”
“I’d like you to consider a couple of things. First, think about Fiona and her demeanor today. She isn’t playing the grieving widow. She seems a bit sad, I’ll grant you that, but she’s not distraught. And second, she’s having only a small gathering at the house, just a few friends. In other words, she’s not making a big deal out of the memorial.”
“I don’t think those are very good arguments.”
“Are you making the assumption they were not divorced just because she talked about Tony’s possessions being at the house, and because Rory spoke about Tony as if he lived in the bosom of his family, and very happily so?”
“Perhaps.”
“But those things don’t add up to Tony still being married to Fiona when he was killed. Think about it, Val. Even if they were divorced, no one would bring it up today, least of all his son. It just wouldn’t have been appropriate or very nice, and anyway, there was no reason to do so. It was a memorial service given by people who loved Tony, and the legal status of their marriage didn’t figure into it at all.”
“I guess not,” I admitted. “On the other hand, there’s Fiona’s attitude toward me. If there’d been a divorce, why was she so nice to me? So pleasant?”
“Because she didn’t know you were involved with Tony, that’s why.”
“I see.”
“Please don’t make the mistake of using her attitude toward you as a yardstick, Val. That would be very flawed judgment on your part.”
I bit my lip and thought for a moment before saying, “Well, I guess the best way, perhaps the only way, to get to the truth is to ask Fiona if she and Tony were divorced.”
“You wouldn’t do that!”
“No, I wouldn’t. But you could ask her, Jake.”
“Oh, no, not me. And certainly not today of all days.”
I sat down on a chair and dropped my head into my hands. After a minute or two, I looked up at him intently. “Jake, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer it as truthfully as you can. It’s this: Do you really believe Tony and Fiona were divorced?”
Jake lowered his long, lean frame into the other chair. “Yes, I do,” he answered after giving it some thought. And then he slowly shook his head. A doubtful expression flickered in his eyes. He said, “You know, Val, if I’m absolutely honest, I just don’t know whether they were divorced or not. On the other hand, why would he announce it to me as well as to you?” Jake lifted his hands in a helpless sort of gesture and shook his head again. “Why would he invent that? What was his purpose?”
“I don’t know. But trust a woman’s instincts. The other woman’s instincts. They weren’t divorced.”
II
I wound up going with Jake to Fiona’s house in Hampstead.
He wasn’t too happy about th
is because he was nervous at first, worried that I would verbally accost Fiona. But I promised I wouldn’t do that, and he knew I never broke a promise. Also, he understood very well that I would never create an embarrassing scene either.
By the time Jake was leaving my room, I knew I had to go with him, there were no two ways about it. I had to get to the bottom of the situation, find out everything I could without actually asking any direct questions.
It had occurred to me on the drive up to Hampstead with Jake that their home, whether Tony had vacated recently or not, would also tell me a great deal about their relationship. And then there were the children, eighteen-year-old Rory, and Moira, who was twenty. In my experience, children frequently said a lot about their parents, and without actually meaning to they invariably revealed a few secrets. I hoped this would be the case today.
III
Where was the monster? Where was the harridan? Where was the disturbed woman Tony had complained about so often?
Certainly not present today, as far as I could ascertain, not unless Fiona was a superb actress or suffering from a split personality. Could she be a Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde? I was rather doubtful of that. In fact, she appeared to be a pleasant sort of woman who seemed perfectly normal to me.
I knew she was forty, but she didn’t look her age at all. A pretty woman, it was her coloring that was the most striking thing about her, and her natural flame-colored hair and bright, dark eyes gave her a kind of vivid radiance. Of medium height and build, she had an innate gracefulness that was most apparent now as she moved around the room, tending to the needs of her guests. Including Fiona and her children, there were eleven of us altogether, since only Niall, his wife, Kate, and several really close friends and colleagues had been invited to the intimate buffet lunch.