Lovers and Liars by Sally Beauman Page B

had a sudden vision of Gini seated next to him at a candlelit table. He and Gini were drinking champagne and eating wonderful food. Gini looked rapturously happy.
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    Women liked to be taken to restaurants, he thought vaguely. He frowned.
    ‘A tie,’ he said in a meditative tone. ‘A tie. Yes, maybe you are
    ‘And then, sir, we have the new Armani jackets just in. The look, with just a fraction more tailoring than last
    Year. Now this one here . ‘He produced a jacket. Unfortunately iftscal looked at the price tag. An expression of pure horror came vpon his face.
    ‘Ah no. Here I draw the line. Impossible. Unthinkable. Inde—
    4ensible. I have a leather jacket upstairs.’
    ,;,‘Ah Yes. But for that dinner engagement, sir? Would the leather ieally be suitable? This is cashmere, of course.’
    t . Pascal still looked shaken, and unconvinced. Inspiration came Ito the assistant.
    then it would last, sir, there’s always that. Classic styling, b f b * . Ten years from now, you could still be wearing it.’ rper a ric
    Pascal was less nafve than he seemed. He knew an astute sales ji,.,ptch when he heard one, and he smiled at this. He made a quick —vdcula
    tion: perhaps it could be justified, this once. He added the shirt, the knitted tie and the jacket to the pile.
    suffit. Not a sock, not a belt, not an item more. Enough.’
    N,‘Jtetuming to his hotel room, Pascal made an effort. He actually
    11,-iwng up the new clothes. Then they made him feel guilty, and
    ondent - restaurant, what restaurant? He’d probably never -0,
    n take Gini to a restaurant. They would work together during day, and then in the evenings she’d go out with whoever was new man in her life. He glowered at the foolish clothes and t the door on them at once.
    Work, he said to himself, and he set himself to work. He could I the memories, just there at the edge of his consciousness, he wanted them no closer. Work would keep them at bay. opened his heavy address book and began to run down the es of contacts. Forget Beirut, forget that small square bare m above the harbour, forget everything that happened there. t was in another country, in another life.
    He closed his eyes briefly. For an instant he saw Gini, the Gini had known then. She was standing, quietly, near the window. was dawn, the shutters were closed, and the pale outline of her
    d body was striped with the pinkish light from the louvres. was watching him, silently, a little sadly, as he slept. Waking,
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    seeing her, he at once ached to hold her. He lifted his hand to her.
    ‘Darling. Don’t worry. Don’t be sad. We’ll find a solution. I love you. Come back to bed.’
    He swore under his breath, closed the address book, opened it again. The memory faded, eased away, but he knew it would come back. Names, contacts, he said to himself. Somewhere in this address book there would be someone who could help with the Hawthorne story. Someone - but who? Of all these numbers
    - which?
    Pascal’s contacts were his life blood. They had to be better than those of his competitors: his contacts, as much as his camera skills, kept him ahead of the pack. These connections spanned the social scale: at one end were the hostesses, the party-givers, the jet-set pleasure-seekers; at the other end were those who serviced the needs of the first - the private plane pilots, the chauffeurs, the hotel clerks, the ski-instructors, the security operatives, the maids, nannies and gardeners - all those who quietly, efficiently and invisibly served the whims and caprices of the rich.
    The night-club owners, the croupiers, the swimming-pool servicers, the golf pros, the tennis coaches, the vendeuses, the call-girls: it was a huge and useful underclass. Pascal had experienced the pulse of their resentment. Their banked hostility to their employers no longer surprised him. Like them, he had learned from proximity. He had little sympathy for the hypocrisies of the privileged and powerful, little sympathy for the