Despite the Darkness, page 28
‘It was Venter,’ Cameron said. ‘What a sick, sadistic bastard.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’ Jules asked.
Cameron hesitated for a few moments longer. Jules would not be pleased that he hadn’t been up-front with her from the start about what Venter had threatened.
‘He was enraged beyond measure by what you said to him when you tore into him during the raid,’ Cameron said. ‘What particularly incensed him was that you humiliated him in front of his men. Just before he left he told me he wanted to teach you a lesson – he said you had been cheeky and needed to have your backside whipped. He told me to tell you what he had said. He will have assumed that I had done so.’
‘A not unreasonable assumption,’ Jules said icily, articulating every syllable with measured precision.
Cameron waited for the storm to build. It didn’t build – it had clearly been gathering for a while – it broke.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing not telling me about that, Cameron?’ Jules said. ‘It was me he was threatening – I needed to know about it. How could you not tell me?’
‘I wanted to protect you from him,’ Cameron answered. ‘I didn’t want you to be upset.’
‘And you think I’m not bloody upset now?’ Jules said for the second time that morning.
Jules was as close to shouting at him as she had ever been. It was to be hoped her mother and the children were well out of earshot. There was nothing he could say – he just had to let the storm blow over. She was right – he should have told her.
‘And I suppose you think you have protected me successfully,’ Jules went on. ‘All I’ve received so far is a pornographic video showing me in graphic detail what the sadistic bastard would like to do to me – some protection that is. And how do you propose to protect me when Venter can no longer resist the urge to do that to me? The simple answer is that you can’t. You know damn well that he could come and detain me any time he wants, he isn’t obliged to give anyone his reasons.’
There was a brief silence at the other end of the line before Jules went on.
‘I can’t stand being patronized, Cameron. You do it all the time. You decide what is good for me without any consideration of the fact that I might have my own ideas about what is good for me. In this instance it was really important for me to know what Venter had threatened to do to me. I needed to know so that I could manage the risk. And in the process of patronizing me you lie to me.’
Jules paused again, but the storm clearly hadn’t exhausted itself.
‘I’ve just realized what Venter was doing when Hilton saw him hitting the tree the other afternoon. He had a particular purpose in trying to scare us. He must have thought that you had told me what he had said and that I would have been imagining what it would be like if, every time that sjambok hit the tree, it had been hitting my bottom instead. You are right in assuming I would have been terrified – but I needed to know. And you knew – but you told me you didn’t have any idea what he was doing, you just said he must be mad. He is bloody mad, but if it is me he’s focusing his madness on you had no right to withhold that information from me. It is outrageous that you should have lied to me about it.’
Cameron didn’t say anything – there wasn’t anything he could say.
‘You have been doing that for some time now, Cameron,’ Jules said. ‘Are you still there, by the way, or am I talking to myself?’
‘Yes, I’m still here,’ Cameron said. ‘I’m listening.’
‘About bloody time you listened,’ Jules said. ‘I’ve told you before not to patronize me. It isn’t as if this is the only time you have lied to me recently. I can perfectly understand that there may be things it would be better for me not to know, because knowing would put me at risk and we need to protect the children. Nicky and Hilton, unlike me, really are children. But you could just have told me that something was happening, or had happened, that it was better for me not to know about, instead of telling me lies. The night of the raid you told me you had been in your office when it was perfectly obvious that you hadn’t been in your office. If your office and the department secretary’s office were the only places you had been, you wouldn’t have needed to come back in a different shirt. The shirt I gave you hasn’t been seen since. I’m not stupid, Cameron.’
There was another pause before she went on, possibly to let this central point sink in. Jules was furious, but her voice was under complete control again.
‘If I know you are lying to me about some things, Cameron, how am I supposed to know when to trust you on anything? It is only because I live with you that I know you are not a police agent – it isn’t because you tell me that you aren’t. You could have been lying to me because you are having an affair. But even if you aren’t having an affair you might as well be. What would bother me would be the betrayal of trust – that is what would matter, not the physical act of screwing somebody else. I would be upset by the thought of that, but I would get over it. By lying to me you have already betrayed my trust. I need to be able to trust you as my partner, and if you tell lies to me I can’t.’
‘I deliberately didn’t ask about the shirt,’ Jules continued. ‘You had every opportunity to tell me something – even if it was just that you couldn’t tell me now, but would tell me some time in the future. But you didn’t – you just carried on as if nothing had happened, as if it didn’t matter to me any more than it apparently did to you. But it did matter to me. Not because I have a particular attachment to a shirt I gave you, but because it is emblematic of what is wrong with our relationship. It is part of the pattern that lets you treat me like a child who needs your protection – protection that you can’t actually provide. You treat me like a child who has to be lied to because she isn’t grown up enough to bear the consequences of being told the truth.’
Cameron didn’t say anything. What, again, was there to say? He had been lying to her. It had made him very uncomfortable, but Jules was not in a mood to be placated by being told that. It didn’t alter the fact that he had lied to her. He had told himself several times that he might as well have been having an affair. He had been trying to protect her. It was the right thing to do – Jules had no idea of the danger – but he could understand why it made her feel as if he was treating her like a child. So he couldn’t really argue with what she was saying – and, given the way she was obviously feeling right now, it would be advisable not to try.
‘I’m still listening,’ Cameron said by way of reassuring Jules that his silence didn’t mean that they had been cut off.
He heard Jules take a long deep breath before speaking again.
‘I’ve decided I’m not coming back, Cameron,’ she said quietly.
‘What do you mean, you’re not coming back?’ Cameron asked.
‘What part of “I … am … not … coming … back” do you not understand, Cameron?’ Jules asked, giving equal emphasis to each word and stringing them out at precise intervals.
‘Coming back where?’ Cameron asked raggedly, feeling the panic rising and the water about to engulf him again.
‘Back to where I used to live with you,’ Jules said. ‘Back to where the phone rings at three in the morning to wake the children. Back to where the people at the other end of the phone are constantly devising new and creative ways of telling you that they want to kill you. Back to where people shoot ginger tomcats for fun, and think that wreaths and dead rats make suitable gifts. Back to where a psychopath policeman lusts after the opportunity to whip me. Back to where half the town thinks we are fleeing the country and the other half thinks that we are going to get divorced. It’s not impossible that they could be right, but that would be none of their bloody business.’
‘This seems a very sudden decision, Jules,’ Cameron said. ‘You saw the video only last night and I’ve only just told you about Venter – isn’t it a bit soon to be taking such a drastic step?’
The not coming back bit was difficult enough to get his head around – the ‘divorce’ word came as too much of a shock to be entertained at all.
‘It isn’t sudden,’ Jules replied. ‘It’s been coming for a while. In fact I made an appointment to speak to Anthony before we left last week about the possibility of a transfer to head-office. He said he would be very sorry to see me go, and couldn’t speak for the Managing Director in Cape Town, but would put in a word for me. He phoned me half an hour later to say that there was a vacancy in the Cape Town office and that a transfer would be possible.’
‘It’s been coming for a while,’ Jules repeated, ‘but it was the phone-call that upset Hilton so badly that was the last straw, coming on top of the raid. I took the decision finally – and I mean finally – at some point during the hours when I was waiting in vain for you to phone last night. The video was just one extra straw. If Venter did do that to me, and it is entirely possible that he might if I were ever to come back, I would be terrified, and the pain and humiliation would be beyond awful. But, in the end, the pain and humiliation would just be temporary – they would be survivable. Pain like that would come to an end and one’s memory could never recall it, or, at least, it couldn’t recapture just how painful it had been. I know – I’ve been through childbirth twice. It is not for myself that I am not coming back, it’s for the children. I don’t want them anywhere within a thousand miles of Venter.’
‘But, Jules … they are my children just as much as yours,’ Cameron said. ‘I love them and don’t know how I would live without them.’
‘Well,’ Jules said, ‘you’ll just have to get a job in Cape Town then if you want to see them on a regular basis.…’
‘But who in their right mind is going to give a University job to someone who is said to be a police agent?’ Cameron interrupted.
‘That is as may be,’ Jules carried on, ‘but I have to ask myself whether I would want to go on living with you if I can’t trust you any more. Living with you in Cape Town would not even solve the Venter part of the problem – he has already demonstrated that his reach extends to Cape Town. If they want you out of the country, the harassment won’t stop just because you have moved to Cape Town. And if we stay together the children would still be faced with one of two bad alternatives: either the same kind of trauma on a regular basis, or no ongoing trauma but no father.’
‘What do you mean “no trauma but no father”?’ Cameron asked, feeling entirely out of his depth.
‘There is no prospect of things changing politically in South Africa,’ Jules elaborated. ‘If they do, it will only be to get worse. There is equally little prospect of you changing. That means either that the children will remain at risk of Special Branch raids and phone-calls, or that you will be detained or murdered. In the latter case they will be spared the raids and phone-calls but they won’t have their father. It is quite clear to me. The best option for the children, upset as they will be to begin with, is for us not to live with you.’
‘And the best option for you?’ Cameron asked.
‘I don’t honestly know what the best option for me in the long term is,’ Jules answered slowly. ‘I know it was a huge relief to get back to Cape Town. I was really pleased to be away from having to worry about police raids and phone-calls – at least until yesterday. Living with you isn’t easy, Cameron – one is kept constantly on edge. I can imagine what living in one of those cliff-top houses on the East coast of England must be like, with the sea relentlessly eating away at the cliff and undermining the house, threatening to send the whole of one’s world crashing down into the water hundreds of feet below. It was bad enough when we were standing together Canute-like on the cliff-top trusting each other to defy the tide together. Not being able to trust you makes it feel as if the floorboards are being white-anted to the point where the entire edifice will collapse long before the time comes for the cliff to give way.’
‘That’s overstating the case a bit, isn’t it Jules?’ Cameron said.
‘No it bloody well isn’t overstating the case, Cameron,’ Jules replied. ‘I was about to say that I think I still love you, but your expression and your tone of voice always give the game away when you are being supercilious. I don’t love that – and I bloody well do feel as if we are all squatting at the top of a cliff with the ground steadily being cut away from under us.’
Wholly unprepared for a discussion about whether or not Jules loved him, or what particular characteristics she did or didn’t love, Cameron felt an urgent need to change tack.
‘Where will you stay if you don’t come back?’ he asked.
‘I’ll stay here, at my mother’s, at least for the time being,’ Jules said. ‘The children are happy and feel secure here – at least they do when the SB isn’t harassing them. The granny-flat in the garden is empty, and my mother says we can move in there for as long as I want, if I want to feel more independent than I would in the house. She would still be available to baby-sit.’
‘Have you told her you are thinking of … of not coming back?’ Cameron asked.
‘Of leaving you?’ Jules said. ‘Yes. I’m a firm believer in being up-front with people I care about – that is known as telling the truth.’
‘You’ve made your point, Jules,’ Cameron said. ‘Point taken. I understand what you are saying. I’m listening. What do you want me to say?’
‘”Sorry” might be a good start,’ Jules retorted.
‘OK, Jules, I’m sorry,’ Cameron said. ‘I’m sorry I tried to make sure you weren’t implicated in any way in anything that might have resulted in your being torn away from our children and locked up for a very long time. I’m sorry I tried to make sure Nicky and Hilton didn’t find themselves motherless as well as fatherless in our godforsaken country. I’m sorry if that was patronizing. I’m very sorry if that makes you question whether you still love me.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic, Cameron – it suits you too well,’ Jules said. ‘It doesn’t sound to me as if you have been taking what I have been saying seriously. I tell you I’m not coming back and all you can do is carry on being your usual clever-clever self. I’m being serious, Cameron. I am not coming back.’
‘Sorry, Jules – I mean it.’ Cameron didn’t have any difficulty sounding contrite. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything. It really is important that you aren’t implicated in any way. But of course I’m not sorry that I have been trying to protect Nicky and Hilton.’
‘Implicated in what, Cameron?’ Jules asked, laying heavy emphasis on the ‘what’. ‘Does this have anything to do with Mirambo and that bomb?’
‘I honestly don’t know whether it has anything to do with the bomb,’ Cameron answered. ‘But I’m not going to tell you anything more than that – it is still just as important as it ever was that you should not be implicated. What you don’t know can’t harm you. All I can do is follow your advice and tell you that I’m not going to tell you anything more now, but I hope to be able to tell you the full story sometime in the future.’
‘Are you by any chance trying to take the Mickey, Cameron?’
Jules’s voice was as menacing as Cameron had ever heard it, and hers wasn’t a voice one would normally associate with menace.
‘No, of course not, Jules,’ Cameron said. ‘It’s just that this conversation has been one hell of a lot to take on board. Right now I’m feeling shell-shocked. When I have time to think about it I know I will feel utterly devastated. At the moment it just feels, to borrow your analogy, as if I have been standing on the verandah watching the land fall away in bits and pieces as the sea advanced, and you have driven a bulldozer up behind the house and pushed the whole bloody lot over the edge of the cliff. I need to think about what you have said. I’ll phone again this evening – apart from anything else, I need to let you know what happened here yesterday. Please give my love to Nicky and Hilton.’
‘Goodbye, Cameron,’ Jules said. ‘We can talk some more when you phone this evening.’
As he put the receiver down Cameron knew that the feeling of emptiness wasn’t just hunger – but hunger wasn’t helping. It was too late for breakfast at the hotel but once he was dressed there would be somewhere on New Church Road he could find something to eat. Then he needed to think about what Jules had said and work out what he was going to do for the rest of the day. That question could be extended to the whole of the next ten days – there was obviously no point in trying to go back to the conference. And, if nobody was going to publish the outcomes of his research ever again, there wasn’t any point in spending a week in libraries and archives in London either.
On the way out of the hotel, Cameron went over to the reception desk to drop his key off with the receptionist, no longer the man from the evening before but a woman barely out of her teens.
‘Good morning. You are Dr Beaumont aren’t you?’ she asked with what sounded like a German accent, looking at the number on his room key.
‘Yes, why do you ask?’
‘A man came in a bit earlier asking whether you were still in your room,’ the receptionist said. ‘I could see from the light on the switchboard that you were on the phone. I told him you were in your room but weren’t available, and asked him if he wanted to wait so that I could put him through to you when you had finished your phone-call. But he just turned and walked out – he didn’t even thank me.’
‘What did he look like?’ Cameron asked.
‘He had long hair down the side of his face on both sides,’ she replied, ‘I don’t know if there is an English word for it, we say koteletten in German.’
