A Special Relationship Read Online Free PDF Page A

two months, he was working for a dodgy English language newspaper, the Egyptian Gazette . After six months of reporting traffic accidents and petty crimes and the usual small beer stuff, he started offering his services back in Britain as a Cairo-based freelancer. Within a year, he was supplying a steady stream of short pieces to the Chronicle – and when their Egyptian correspondent was called back to London, the paper offered him the job. From that moment on, he was a Chronicle man. With the exception of a brief six-month stint back in London during the mid-eighties (when he threatened to quit if they didn’t post him back in the field), Tony managed to drift from one hot spot to another. Of course, for all his talk of frontline action and total professional independence, he still had to bite the corporate bullet and do a couple of stints as a bureau guy in Frankfurt, Tokyo and Washington, DC (a town he actively hated). But despite these few concessions to the prosaic, Tony Hobbs worked very hard at eluding all the potential traps of domesticity and professional life that ensnared most people. Just like me.
    ‘You know, I always end up cutting and running out of these things,’ I told Tony around a month after we started seeing each other.
    ‘Oh, so that’s what this is – a thing.’
    ‘You know what I’m saying.’
    ‘That I shouldn’t get down on one knee and propose – because you’re planning to break my heart?’
    I laughed and said, ‘I really am not planning to do that.’
    ‘Then your point is … what?’
    ‘My point is …’
    I broke off, feeling profoundly silly.
    ‘You were about to say?’ Tony asked, all smiles.
    ‘The point is …’ I continued, hesitant as hell. ‘I think I sometimes suffer from “foot in mouth” disease. And I should never have made such a dumb comment.’
    ‘No need to apologize,’ he said.
    ‘I’m not apologizing,’ I said, sounding a little cross, then suddenly said, ‘Actually I am. Because …’
    God, I really was sounding tongue-tied and awkward. Once again, Tony just continued smiling an amused smile. Then said, ‘So you’re not planning to cut-and-run?’
    ‘Hardly. Because … uh … oh, will you listen to me …’
    ‘I’m all ears.’
    ‘Because … I’m so damn happy with you, and the very fact that I feel this way is surprising the hell out of me, because I really haven’t felt this way for a long time, and I’m just hoping to hell you feel this way, because I don’t want to waste my time on someone who doesn’t feel this way, because …’
    He cut me off by leaning over and kissing me deeply. When he finished, he said, ‘Does that answer your question?’
    ‘Well …’
    I suppose actions speak louder than words – but I still wanted to hear him say what I had just said. Then again, if I wasn’t very good at outwardly articulating matters of the heart, I’d come to realize that Tony was even more taciturn on such subjects. Which is why I was genuinely surprised when he said, ‘I’m very pleased you’re not cutting and running.’
    Was that a declaration of love? I certainly hoped so. At that moment, I knew I was in love with him. Just as I also knew that my bumbling admission of happiness was about as far as I’d go in confessing such a major emotional truth. Such admissions have always been difficult for me. Just as they were also difficult for my schoolteacher parents – who couldn’t have been more supportive and encouraging when it came to their two children, but who also were deeply buttoned-down and reserved when it came to public displays of affection.
    ‘You know, I can only once remember seeing our parents kiss each other,’ my older sister Sandy told me shortly after they were killed in an automobile accident. ‘And they certainly didn’t score big points on the tactile front. But that really didn’t matter, did it?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘It didn’t at all.’
    At which point Sandy broke down completely and