The woman in the back seat spoke up again.In two hundred yards, take the next exit.
I moved into the right-hand lane and came down the access road. At the end of the curve I found myself in a sylvan suburbia of big houses, double garages, wide drives, and open lawns—a rich but neighborly kind of a place, the houses screened from one another by trees, almost every mailbox bearing a yellow ribbon in honor of the military. I believe it was actually called Pleasant Street.
A sign pointed to Belmont Center, and that was more or less the way I went, along roads that gradually became less populated as the price of the real estate rose. I passed a golf course and turned right into some woods. A red squirrel ran across the road in front of me and jumped on top of a sign forbidding the lighting of campfires, and that was when, in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere, my
guardian angel at last announced, in a tone of calm finality:You have reached your destination.
THIRTEEN
Because I am so enthusiastic about the ghostwriting profession, I may have given the impression that it is an easy way to make a living. If so, then I should qualify my words just a little with a warning.
Ghostwritin g
I PULLED UP ONTOthe verge and turned off the engine. Looking around at the dense and dripping woodland, I felt a profound sense of disappointment. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d been expecting—not Deep Throat in an underground car park, necessarily, but certainly more than this. Yet again, McAra had surprised me. Here was a man reportedly even more hostile to the country than I was, and yet his trail had merely led me to a hiker’s paradise.
I got out of the car and locked it. After two hours’ driving I needed to fill my lungs with cold, damp New England air. I stretched and started to walk down the wet lane. The squirrel watched me from its perch across the road. I took a couple of paces toward it and clapped my hands at the cute little rodent. It streaked up into a nearby tree, flicking its tail at me like a swollen middle finger. I hunted around for a stick to throw at it, then stopped myself. I was spending far too much time alone in the woods, I decided, as I moved on down the road. I’d be happy not to hear the deep, vegetative silence of ten thousand trees for a very long while to come.
I walked on for about fifty yards until I came to an almost invisible gap in the trees. Demurely set back from the road, a five-barred electric gate blocked access to a private drive, which turned sharply after a few yards and disappeared behind trees. I couldn’t see the house. Beside the gate was a gray metal mailbox with no name on it, just a number—3551—and a stone pillar with an intercom and a code pad. A sign said,THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY CYCLOPS SECURITY ; a toll-free number was printed across an eyeball. I hesitated, then pressed the buzzer. While I waited, I glanced around. A small video camera was mounted on a nearby branch. I tried the buzzer again. There was no answer.
I stepped back, uncertain what to do. It briefly crossed my mind to climb the gate and make an unauthorized inspection of the property, but I didn’t like the look of the camera, and I didn’t like the sound of Cyclops Security. I noticed that the mailbox was crammed too full to close properly, and I saw no harm in at least discovering the name of the house’s owner. With another glance over my shoulder, and an apologetic shrug toward the camera, I pulled out a handful of mail. It was variously addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Emmett, Professor and Mrs. Paul Emmett, Professor Emmett, and Nancy Emmett. Judging by the postmarks, it looked as though there was at least two days’ worth uncollected. The Emmetts were either away, or—what? Lying inside, dead? I was developing a morbid imagination. Some of the letters had been forwarded, with a sticker covering the original address. I scraped one of the labels back with my thumb. Emmett, I learned, was president emeritus of something called the Arcadia Institution, with an address in Washington, DC.
Emmett…Emmett…For some reason that name was familiar to me. I stuffed the letters back in the box and returned to my car. I opened my suitcase, took out the package addressed to McAra, and ten minutes later I’d found what I had vaguely remembered: P. Emmett (St. John’s) was one of the cast of the Footlights revue, pictured with Lang. He was the oldest of the group, the one who I’d thought was a postgraduate. He had shorter hair than the others, looked more conventional: “square,” as the expression went at that time. Was this what had brought McAra all the way up here: yet more research about Cambridge? Emmett was mentioned in the memoirs, too, now I came to think about it. I picked up the manuscript and thumbed my way through the section on Lang’s university days, but his name didn’t appear there. Instead he was quoted at the start of the very last chapter:
Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University has written of the unique importance of the English-speaking peoples in the spread of democracy around the world: “As long as these nations stand
together, freedom is safe; whenever they have faltered, tyranny has gathered strength.” I profoundly agree with this sentiment.
The squirrel came back and regarded me malevolently from the roadside.
Odd: that was my overwhelming feeling about everything at that moment.Odd.
I don’t know exactly how long I sat there. I do remember that I was so bemused I forgot to turn on the Ford’s heater, and it was only when I heard the sound of another car approaching that I realized how cold and stiff I had become. I looked in the mirror and saw a pair of headlights, and then a small Japanese car drove past me. A middle-aged, dark-haired woman was at the wheel, and next to her was a man of about sixty, wearing glasses and a jacket and tie. He turned to stare at me, and I knew at once it was Emmett, not because I recognized him (I didn’t) but because I couldn’t imagine who else would be traveling down such a quiet road. The car pulled up outside the entrance to the drive, and I saw Emmett get out to empty his mailbox. Once again, he peered in my direction, and I thought he might be about to come down and challenge me. Instead, he returned to the car, which then moved on, out of my line of sight, presumably up to the house.
I stuffed the photographs and the page from the memoirs into my shoulder bag, gave the Emmetts ten minutes to open the place up and settle themselves in, then turned on the engine and drove up to the gate. This time, when I pressed the buzzer, the answer came immediately.
“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Is that Mrs. Emmett?”
“Who is this?”
“I wondered if I could have a word with Professor Emmett.”
“He’s very tired.” She had a drawling voice, something between an English aristocrat and a
southern belle, and the tinny quality of the intercom accentuated it:“S’vair tahd.”
“I won’t keep him long.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“It’s about Adam Lang. I’m assisting him with his memoirs.”
“Just a moment please.”
I knew they’d be studying me on the video camera. I tried to adopt a suitably respectable pose.
When the intercom crackled again, it was an American male voice that spoke: resonant, fruity, actorish.
“This is Paul Emmett. I believe you must have made a mistake.”
“You were at Cambridge with Mr. Lang, I believe?”
“We were contemporaries, yes, but I can’t claim to know him.”
“I have a picture of the two of you together in a Footlights revue.”
There was a long pause.
“Come on up to the house.”
There was a whine of an electric motor, and the gate slowly opened.
As I followed the drive, the big three-story house gradually appeared through the trees: a central section built of gray stone flanked by wings made of wood and painted white. Most of the windows were arched, with small panes of rippled glass and big slatted shutters. It could have been any age, from six months to a century. Several steps led up to a pillared porch, where Emmett himself was waiting. The extent of the land and the encroaching trees provided a deep sense of seclusion. The only sound of civilization was a big jet, invisible in the low cloud, dropping toward the airport. I parked in front of the garage, next to the Emmetts’ car, and got out carrying my bag.
“You must forgive me if I seem a little groggy,” said Emmett after we’d shaken hands. “We just flew in from Washington and I’m feeling somewhat tired. I normally never see anyone without an appointment. But your mention of a photograph did rather stimulate my curiosity.”
He dressed as precisely as he spoke. His spectacles had fashionably modern tortoiseshell frames, his jacket was dark gray, his shirt was duck egg blue, his bright red tie had a motif of pheasants on the wing, there was a matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. Now I was closer to him, I could discern the younger man staring out from the older: age had merely blurred him, that was all. He couldn’t keep his eyes off my bag. I knew he wanted me to produce the photograph right there on the doorstep. But I was too canny for that. I waited, and kept on waiting, so that eventually he had to say, “Fine. Please, do come in.”
The house had polished wood floors and smelled of wax polish and dried flowers. It had an uninhabited chill about it. A grandfather clock ticked very loudly on the landing. I could hear his wife on the telephone in another room. “Yes,” she said, “he’s here now.” Then she must have moved away. Her voice became indistinct and faded altogether.
Emmett closed the front door behind us.
“May I?” he said.
I took out the cast photograph and gave it to him. He pushed his glasses up onto his silvery thatch of hair and wandered over with it to the hall window. He looked fit for his age and I guessed he played some regular sport: squash, probably; golf, definitely.
“Well, well,” he said, holding the monochrome image up to the weak winter light, tilting it this way and that, peering at it down his long nose, like an expert checking a painting for authenticity, “I have literally no recollection of this.”
“But itis you?”
“Oh, yes. I was on the board of the Dramat in the sixties. Which was quite a time, as you can imagine.” He shared a complicit chuckle with his youthful image. “Oh, yes.”
“The Dramat?”
“I’m sorry.” He looked up. “The Yale Dramatic Association. I thought I’d maintain my theatrical interests when I went over to Cambridge for my doctoral research. Alas, I only managed a term in the Footlights before pressure of work put an end to my dramatic career. May I keep this?”
“I’m afraid not. But I’m sure I can get you a copy.”
“Would you? That would be very kind.” He turned it over and inspected the back. “The Cambridge Evening News . You must tell me how you came by it.”
“I’d be happy to,” I said. And again I waited. It was like playing a hand of cards. He would not yield a trick unless I forced him. The big clock ticked back and forth a few times.
“Come into my study,” he said.
He opened a door and I followed him into a room straight out of Rick’s London club: dark green wallpaper, floor-to-ceiling books, library steps, overstuffed brown leather furniture, a big brass lectern in the shape of an eagle, a Roman bust, a faint odor of cigars. One wall was devoted to memorabilia: citations, prizes, honorary degrees, and a lot of photographs. I took in Emmett with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Emmett with Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela. I’d tell you the names of the others if I knew who they were. A German chancellor. A French president. There was also a picture of him with Lang, a grin-and-grip at what seemed to be a cocktail party. He saw me looking.
“The wall of ego,” he said. “We all have them. Think of it as the equivalent of the orthodontist’s fish tank. Do take a seat. I’m afraid I can only spare a few minutes, unfortunately.”
I perched on the unyielding brown sofa while he took the captain’s chair behind his desk. It rolled easily back and forth. He swung his feet up onto the desk, giving me a fine view of the slightly scuffed
soles of his brogues.
“So,” he said. “The picture.”
“I’m working with Adam Lang on his memoirs.”
“I know. You said. Poor Lang. It’s a very bad business, this posturing by The Hague. As for Rycart—the worst foreign secretary since the war, in my view. It was a terrible error to appoint him. But if the ICC continues to behave so foolishly, they will succeed merely in making Lang first a martyr and then a hero, and thus,” he added, gesturing graciously toward me, “a bestseller.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Lang? Hardly at all. You look surprised.”
“Well, for a start, he mentions you in his memoirs.”
Emmett appeared genuinely taken aback. “Now it’s my turn to be surprised. What does he say?”
“It’s a quote, at the start of the final chapter.” I pulled the relevant page from my bag. “‘As long as these nations’—that’s everyone who speaks English—‘stand together,’” I read, “‘freedom is safe; whenever they have faltered, tyranny has gathered strength.’ And then Lang says, ‘I profoundly agree with this sentiment.’”
“Well, that’s decent of him,” said Emmett. “And his instincts as prime minister were good, in my judgment. But that doesn’t mean I know him.”
“And then there’s that,” I said, pointing to the wall of ego.
“Oh,that .” Emmett waved his hand dismissively. “That was just taken at a reception at Claridge’s, to mark the tenth anniversary of the Arcadia Institution.”
“The Arcadia Institution?” I repeated.
“It’s a little organization I used to run. It’s very select. No reason why you should have heard of it. The prime minister graced us with his presence. It was purely professional.”
“But you must have known Adam Lang at Cambridge,” I persisted.
“Not really. One summer term, our paths crossed. That was it.”
“Can you remember much about him?” I took out my notebook. Emmett eyed it as if I’d just pulled out a revolver. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all. Go ahead. I’m just rather bewildered. No one’s ever mentioned the Cambridge connection between us in all these years. I’ve barely thought about it myself until this moment. I don’t think I can tell you anything worth writing down.”
“But you performed together?”
“In one production. The summer revue. I can’t even remember now what it was called. There
were a hundred members, you know.”
“So he made no impression on you?”
“None.”
“Even though he became prime minister?”
“Obviously if I’d known he was going to do that, I’d have taken the trouble to get to know him
better. But in my time I’ve met eight presidents, four popes, and five British prime ministers, and none of them was what I would describe as personally truly outstanding.”
