Cleopatra's Sister Read online

  10

  Howard sat at one end of the back seat, the interpreter at the other. The car careered through the night.

  Initially, Howard thought only in obscenities. He was not a man given to foul language, but now a torrent of obscene verbiage poured through his head. He had not realized he knew such words. Then occasional rafts of clarity and reason joined the flow. Why didn’t they do it there and then, in front of the others? Where are they taking me? What will they do, and how quickly?

  The interpreter did not address him. Once or twice he had a brief exchange with the driver or the soldier in the passenger seat.

  Howard felt a surge of nausea. He decided to speak, if only to distract his own attention from this discomfort. ‘Do you happen to know what your employers have in mind for me?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, man … What are they going to do with me?’

  ‘I am not so sure. Perhaps it is better we do not discuss this. It is most unfortunate. You should feel very angry that your government is so stupid and forces the Callimbian authorities to take these steps.’

  Howard said, ‘Whatever step they have in mind is perfectly avoidable. At least I must be allowed an opportunity to speak to a representative of my government.’

  The interpreter was silent. Howard stared at the back of the driver’s head. He saw the nape of his neck, the glint of his hair, the intimate detail of an insect bite. He was aware of the darkened landscape rushing past the car windows: the outline of a tree etched against the sky, a building packed with light.

  He said, ‘I wonder if you have any idea of the atrocity of the things with which you are so complacently involved.’ He spoke quietly, perhaps to himself.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘I am obliged to carry out instructions,’ said the interpreter. ‘That is all.’

  ‘A familiar plea,’ said Howard.

  ‘It is a pity for your wife,’ said the interpreter. His tone was quite dispassionate. He smoothed his tie. He glanced at his watch.

  Howard turned to look out of the window more intently. He had barely heard the man. They seemed to be going away from the city: the street lights and glimmering buildings had given way to darkness. His nausea had ebbed now and he felt just a cold sinking gloom, a black depth that he would not have thought possible. It occurred to him that if he was going to be shot, then the actual process would be, one assumed, painless. He would die. At once. The pain, the torment, was the anticipatory process. It was what was happening now, in fact. With, presumably, worse to come. The sentence. The physical preparations.

  He thought of Lucy. He summoned her, placed her alongside him on the seat of the car, took her hand in his. We were going to have such an extraordinarily good time together, you and I, he told her. And then this thought became unendurable; he let her go.

  He thought of his parents, decent harmless people who did not deserve this anguish. He thought of his work. He thought for an instant of the unattainable and now almost inconceivable pleasure of gazing down into the tranquil elegant world of Hallucigenia, of Marrella, of Aysheaia. He experienced a flood of wild anger. No, he thought. No, no, no.

  And suddenly there came floating forth an alien voice, from somewhere far within, far back, an echo of childhood maybe, of the time before enlightenment. ‘Please God …’ it said. ‘Please God look after me. Please God may this not be happening.’

  He quenched the voice, silenced it. Rather the obscenities.

  The car fled now along a wide highway. There was no other traffic. Its lights forged a channel in the darkness, flooding the shining metal studs in the centre of the road and the trees at the side. Then suddenly it wheeled to the right. Howard saw a high wire fence, a barrier across the road, a concrete guardhouse from which soldiers emerged.

  That place. Of course, he thought again. Of course. I always knew we were coming here. But he could go no deeper in despair. The black hole engulfed him now, a kind of anaesthesia. He stepped from the car, was led across tarmac towards an entrance. He was aware of sky above him, glittering with stars, the icy brilliance of space. Suddenly he wanted above all to stay out here, where he could see that. He hung back, and hands pushed him violently onwards.

  They went into the building. Lights. Soldiers. He was hustled down a passage. A door was opened. He saw a room, windowless, with a bench. He clawed up out of the black hole of his despair and said, ‘Let me speak to a representative of my government.’ He heard his own voice, loud and angry, and was surprised; it sounded like someone else’s.

  The interpreter was just turning away. He paused. He said, ‘That is not possible, I think.’ One of the soldiers pushed Howard into the room and closed the door. He heard a bolt slam shut.

  He stood there for a moment. Then he sat down on the bench, largely because he felt unsteady. There was a bucket in one corner, which stank. He saw the contents. Someone else had sat here, waiting. And another person, or that person, had made a small drawing on the dirty plaster of the wall. He stared at this for a while, not really seeing it except as an abstract shape, a circle from which sprang a girdle of spikes. The sun. Oh, yes, the sun.

  He inched again out of the black hole. All the time that I am waiting, he thought, nothing has yet happened. And so long as nothing has happened it may not happen. There is still hope. We sat in this room before, or this cell or whatever it is, or if not this one then one very like it, the five of us sat here, and we came out and went back to the convent and I saw Lucy again.

  That was different. They had not said then what has been said this time.

  Nothing that they say is to be relied on.

  Why, in that case, bring me here?

  He got up and paced the room, to test his legs. Four paces one way, four the other. There seemed to be a lot of coming and going outside the door. People hurrying to and fro, urgent exchanges. What are they saying?

  He sat down again. The black hole swarmed up and sucked him in. He supposed that they would come to fetch him, soon. Or possibly not soon. But they would come. And then they would take him somewhere else and whatever they were going to do to him would be done. Punishment.

  A word capable of wide interpretation.

  Logically, it must be supposed that they intended to show that they meant business. They intended to present London with a dead body in order to put on the pressure.

  Or possibly not a dead body, but a severely damaged one.

  At this point he began to panic. His heart raced; he felt weak, dizzy. He made himself get up and walk again, counting the steps. Thirty-six paces for his age. Now nine paces for the month, September. Now sixteen for the date, or was it seventeen? Make it seventeen. Now another hundred for good measure.

  Better. Just a little better. Sit down again.

  He told himself that he must not accede to this. Nobody is entirely powerless. He had a voice. He must continue to protest, to demand contact with London, to remind these people that their actions were criminal.

  For what that was worth.

  And he must remember all the time, every moment, that while to wait was torment, to wait was also to hope. He came surging from the black hole in a fit of indignant disbelief. This could not be happening, not to him, not to anyone.

  Footsteps beyond the door, again. Going past, once more.

  What have they done with the rest of them? What have they done with Lucy?

  And now, somehow, he began to drift. In exhaustion, perhaps, or shock. He stopped hearing the noises beyond the door, and entered a state of suspension, in which there crowded into his head images of familiar places – his flat, his office in the college, the lab, the lecture room. He was in each of these places, simultaneously, their furnishings shimmered above the walls and the floor of the room in which he sat. He saw faces, too. His parents. Colleagues. Vivien. Lucy. Lucy above all. It was as though some benign faculty of the brain had come into play, submerging reality, distancing him
from what was taking place, or was about to take place, or might take place. He seemed to float asunder; his body continued to sit on that bench, nauseous and shivering, but his mind roamed free, intent upon these definitions of identity. Every now and then panic threatened, he could feel it start to well up and he fought it, he tamped it down, forced himself back to this reassuring parade of references. He felt grimly proud of himself, as though he had succeeded in some crippling rite of passage.

  He lost sense of time, focused entirely upon this exercise of will and of endurance. He threw himself into the pursuit of trivia. What was his father’s birthplace? What had been his grandmother’s given names? In what subjects had he received A’s at O level? How many drawers were there to the filing cabinet in his office?

  What colour were Lucy’s eyes?

  Hours might be passing, or perhaps only minutes. Occasionally he would hear the footsteps and the voices in the passage outside and some part of him would respond, his stomach lurching or his eyes anxiously trained upon the door.

  And then, when he was not looking at it, when he was staring at the floor, constructing the outline of an imaginary Opabinia, it opened. The door sprang open and a soldier stood there.

  He held a tray. A tray of food. An arrangement of meat and rice on a plate. A cup of coffee. A paper napkin folded in a triangle. He held the tray out to Howard.

  Howard stared, numbed. He said, ‘I don’t want it.’

  The soldier continued to proffer the tray. Howard shook his head. The soldier shrugged, set the tray down on the bench alongside him and left. The bolt banged shut once more.

  Howard looked at the food. The sight of it made him feel even more nauseated than he had been before. He pushed the tray further from him. He looked now, for the first time, at his watch and saw that it was a quarter past five. He was astonished.

  So what the hell did this mean? Food. Do you feed a person if you are about to execute him? Well, yes, traditionally you do. But not, Howard felt, in these circles. So what then did this imply? He looked again at the food. It would make sense to eat it, he supposed. That, though, was quite impossible.

  And now there was definitely even more activity beyond the door. Boots thudding past. Someone shouting orders. He listened, with gathering unease. Minutes passed. Five. Ten. Time was on the move once more. Erratically. Twelve minutes. Twenty.

  The door opened. Another soldier. An officer, this, Howard noted queasily.

  The man held open the door. He indicated that Howard should come. Howard got slowly to his feet. He stepped forward. Outside there was a little phalanx of soldiers. Three of them. They moved off down the corridor. Howard and the officer in front, the soldiers close behind.

  Lucy saw the day begin. She saw, quite clearly, the precise moment at which light started to suffuse the dark rectangle of sky framed by the window. She watched it seep upwards: midnight-blue mutated to grey stained with yellow. It was now 5.15.

  She stood up and went to look outside, moving cautiously. A few people were asleep. She was still standing there when she heard the sound of a large vehicle manoeuvring in the compound, somewhere out of sight. She heard, registered, but did not respond – stupid with sleeplessness and gloom. She watched a bird wing slowly across the apricot sky, moving exactly parallel with the top of the wire fence. Behind her, a baby was crying; people shifted and murmured.

  And then everything happened very quickly. There were soldiers suddenly in the room, urging everyone to their feet. ‘Go,’ they said. ‘Go now. Go in bus.’ Weary and confused, the women stumbled around gathering up their things. They trailed out of the room, into the passage, out into the cool fresh morning. There stood a coach. They trooped on board, still dazed, not knowing how to react. Was this good or bad? Nothing, surely, could be worse than the place from which they had come? It had all been so quick. ‘Go … Go now.’ Go where?

  The coach moved off. Deserted, early morning roads. The corniche. They stared out of the windows, not saying much. Lucy tried to get a sense of direction. This, she thought, this is surely the way we came. At the beginning. I’ve seen these buildings before. This roundabout. Is it conceivably possible that we are going to the airport?

  Howard gazed incredulously at the interpreter. ‘Say that again?’

  They were in the back of the car. The same car. The car was pulling out on to the highway along which they had come, when it was still dark. It was light now. Howard saw scrubby fields, a petrol station, a line of hills in the distance.

  ‘Say that again. Say where we’re going.’

  ‘I take you now to the airport. There has been a very interesting development. The Callimbian government is now able to make arrangements that you return to your own country. All the group. I am very pleased to tell you this.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ demanded Howard, after a moment.

  The interpreter looked petulant. ‘Why is it necessary that I tell you lies? I have instructions from the highest authority. This is a very recent happening. There is very recent news from London.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Howard. ‘Do you mean that our government has handed over these people?’ He was shaking; it was an effort to speak steadily.

  ‘I think that is not the case. I think it is the case that these people in question are no longer a problem.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The Callimbian government has been able to make arrangements that these people will not be a threat to the internal security of this country. Certain measures have been taken. In your country. There are people friendly and co-operative with the Callimbian authorities who have taken certain measures. This is very satisfactory. You should be very pleased. Now it is possible that you go home.’

  Howard was silent. ‘I take it that you’re saying that they’ve been assassinated, these people. In England.’

  The interpreter winced slightly, as though Howard had committed a social solecism. ‘This is some very dangerous people. It was necessary for the security of this country to make them no longer able to operate.’

  Howard’s head was spinning. He was so divided by emotions that he felt as though he might fly apart. Elation. Compunction (we may have got through this, but others have not). Relief. Doubt (is there any truth in this?). He tried to sort it out and think rationally. There is a strong possibility that it is true: it makes sense, and why otherwise take me from that place and drive me off somewhere else? But there will be no certainty until I see the airport.

  He tried to contain the elation, the relief, and concentrated on the landscape, searching for clues. The hills to the left now, so they were going parallel, between hills and sea. The rising sun ahead, so they were going east. But he had never made any note of directions on their previous travels, so this was not much help.

  ‘I am sure that your wife will be most pleased to see you,’ said the interpreter benignly.

  Howard ignored him. Indeed he barely heard the man, who seemed now like some irritating and repellant insect. He was focused entirely upon controlling his own brimming feelings, upon stopping himself from getting too excited, too hopeful. Not yet. Not yet. It may be another cruel device. Grimly he fought optimism and stared out of the car windows. Now the car turned off the highway, on to a lesser but still purposeful road. And there was a road sign: 7 kilometres to a place whose name meant nothing to him.

  The soldier in the passenger seat turned his head and made some remarks. The interpreter responded, in a desultory tone. He seemed preoccupied, as though something had occurred to him. He fished in his pocket, took out a thick black leather gold-tooled notebook and appeared to hunt for an entry. He delved in another pocket, brought out a note pad and wrote on it. He turned to Howard. ‘Perhaps I ask you a small favour, Mr Beamish?’

  Howard leaned forward, staring between the heads of the driver and the soldier. He had caught sight of another sign ahead. A sign bearing that ubiquitous, global logo: a small stylized aircraft. His heart thumped; he became li
ghtheaded. Left, said the sign, left takes you to the airport.

  The car turned left.

  ‘Mr Beamish, perhaps I ask you a favour?’

  Howard gave a great involuntary sigh. He felt suddenly quite calm, quite balanced, almost dispassionate. He said, ‘Tell me something, if things hadn’t worked out as you say they have, what exactly would have been done with me?’

  The interpreter became obtuse. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Howard. ‘You know damn well what I mean. Were they going to shoot me? Or something along those lines?’

  The interpreter was patently embarrassed. He cleared his throat, ostentatiously examined the face of his watch. ‘Very soon now we arrive …’

  ‘Well, were they?’

  The man avoided Howard’s eye. ‘I am not so sure. I think perhaps unfortunately that would have been necessary. Personally I am very happy that is avoided. This is very good news.’

  The car swung off on to another slip road. There was another airport sign. And another. In the distance Howard saw the long low line of a hangar.

  ‘Mr Beamish, I ask you perhaps …’

  ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ said Howard. ‘Just shut up now, could you?’ He gazed in ecstasy at the mundane and beautiful equipment of the airport: the empty approach road sweeping towards a clutter of buildings, trucks, trailers, a line of small aircraft, neatly roosting. A big jet, burning silver-gilt in the sun.

  The interpreter was peeved. ‘I think you do not understand, Mr Beamish. I am personally liking your country very much. I act on instructions of my government. It is not a personal matter.’

  The car sped down the approach road, through an entrance, round a corner. It drew up in front of the main airport building. Howard was out of it first. The interpreter was hurrying behind him, saying something. Howard headed into the building.

  They were at the far side of the central concourse. He saw James Barrow, Molly, the airline girls. Someone spotted him and shouted out. And then he saw Lucy. She had her back to him. She turned. She saw him. She stood stock-still. And he began the long walk towards her.