The Corporal's Wife (2013), page 1
The Corporal's Wife
Gerald Seymour
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Gerald Seymour 2013
The right of Gerald Seymour to be identified as the Author of the
Work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
eBook ISBN 978 1 444 75858 0
Book ISBN 978 1 444 75855 9
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
For
Gillian
and
Jacqui and Becky
and
Harriet and Georgia
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Author
Prologue
He was already awake.
He heard the footsteps in the corridor, the clanging of the doors as the bolts were pulled back, the whimpering cry of one man, then the shout, anguished, of a second.
He had not slept. In the last hours, segments of his life had slipped by in his mind – picked up, discarded, lost – and those were the good times, with his parents up in the villa on the north side of the city, and when he had roamed in the foothills above his home with his brother and cousins . . . And there had been the times when his behaviour had hurt those he cared for. There were fleeting thoughts of where they were now, whether they knew what would be done to him that morning, whether they prayed or wept or sat silent, numbed, and held hands, or were in ignorance and still asleep. He had thought of them, and his friends. In the hours before they came, he had squatted in the corner of the bright-lit cell, facing the door, his back against the angle of two walls, and thought of her.
He was Johnny. It wasn’t the name given him at birth, and didn’t come from his society or its culture. Before he had dropped out of the university, second year, bored and chafing at its restraints, some had said he resembled the actor Johnny Depp, and it had stuck. He was Johnny now to all who knew him – even the people who brought his food, who had interrogated him and tortured him with beatings and pliers. He was Johnny to her. He had taken comfort during the night from thinking of her. He had not spoken her name in all the weeks since his arrest: if he had, he would have condemned her.
He had a photograph. He held it as the footsteps came closer. He doubted he would look at it again but took a moment to gaze down at it now and hoped it would stay in his memory to the last.
He held it in his palm and saw the tremor, not a shake, which pleased him, and the scarred fingertips from which the nails had been pulled. The photograph was from a booth that supplied passport-sized pictures. The black chador covered her shoulders and hair; a veil hid her nose and mouth. Johnny had done international literature at the university. He knew of a Dr Samuel Johnson and also of that man’s remark: ‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully’. He could see her eyes, the small brown mole at the extremity of the right one; he recognised the defiance that blazed in them – and the mischief. It was to protect her that he had insisted the photograph should show her in ‘good hijab’, so that she would be unrecognisable to investigators. Her eyes were a soft blue.
He had guarded the photograph from the time of his arrest, through several cell moves, courts and interrogation rooms . . . and when they had brought him to the wing housing those awaiting execution. It had been rolled tight or crumpled close, a scrap in the pocket of the jeans he wore now and that he had worn when he was taken. He had created the fun, and the light, in her eyes, which had been captured by the booth’s lens. When she had met him, it had been months, years, since she had laughed or giggled . . . Once, the photograph had been seized by a ‘trusty’ prisoner, who had come to escort him from one block to another. The man had glanced at it, then thrown it down as valueless.
He smoothed it, drank in the strength of the eyes – wondered where she was, what she was doing, whether her husband was in bed beside her or away. Those who knew Johnny, and recognised him as an agitator, a coke-taker, addicted to alcohol, an activist, would have found it difficult to believe that a married woman, living close to the bazaar and from a background he would hardly have known, could captivate him. He pushed himself up and faced the door.
He screwed up the photograph, made a tiny ball of it. It was in his left hand, his fist clenched round it.
The bolt scraped. The noises – fear and shock – of the two men to be executed with him were louder.
The guards came around him. His arms were pulled behind his back and thongs were wrapped tightly round his wrists, then fastened. It hurt, but pain was of little importance to him now. He walked, didn’t allow them to push or drag him, through the door. He looked into the faces of the other two men. He didn’t know whether they were political opponents of the regime or drug-traffickers, rapists or murderers. He saw slack mouths, glazed eyes, sunken chins, shaking shoulders. He heard their muted terror.
Softly, Johnny said, ‘Don’t let them see your fear or they’ll have won.’
He took his place at the front. There was a nudge at his elbow, and he started for the end of the corridor. He could feel, against the softer skin in the palm of his left hand, the screwed-up paper that was her picture, little bigger than an orange pip. They went briskly, and he set the pace.
At the end of the corridor there was a grille of wrought-iron bars. It was opened noisily. Three times, since Johnny had been transferred to the block, he had heard others taken out at dawn. Some had been brave; others had screamed and struggled; a few had been in a state of collapse and were dragged. He walked briskly.
The gate closed behind them.
In the lobby beyond, his interrogator waited. He was a stout man, with a seemingly permanent cold sore beside his mouth and breath that stank of chillies. He had always looked away when Johnny was whipped with the cables and when the pliers wrenched off his fingernails. Johnny had wondered whether the interrogator – after a hard day inflicting pain in the name of the regime – went home and played with his children, then made love to his wife, or if he sat alone in his living room as the darkness closed round him, hearing screams and seeing blood. He tilted his head, looked the man in the face and sneered. The interrogator didn’t know about the woman Johnny had, briefly, loved. That was a triumph.
There were no other interrogators in the lobby, which told him that the other two men were classified as criminals: they had not been convicted of mohareb – making war against God and His Prophet – the offence of which Johnny had been found guilty. His interrogator caught his glance, would have expected him to look away, but he did not. It was the interrogator who broke the contact. Good. Johnny walked on. He knew the route.
They went out into the faint first stirrings of dawn. He could see the shape of the mountains in front of him, and from the east part of the sun was visible. Against it were the gallows, the nooses and shadows that fell from them.
He held her picture and remembered her. There had been a riot: he and thousands had protested the theft of their votes; an idiot had been re-elected by fraud, and the paramilitary basij had come to break up the crowds shouting and chanting for the end of the regime. The basij had fired gas and charged with batons. She had come round a corner and been too confused to run. The basij had caught her and beaten her, then had been driven back by volleys of stones. He had found her as she cowered on the pavement. He had seen her beauty and swept her up in his arms.
The garage had been close by, and he had taken her there. After the shock and terror, he had discovered mischief in her eyes, and loathing. He had a room over the workshop, where two old men repaired motorcycles and scooters. Their love had lasted just over a month before he had been taken. She was married, and wore a ring, thin gold: they ignored it. Neither of them mentioned her husband: not his name, his place of work, or why she was betraying her marriage vows. Twice during that month he had had a day off work. On one they had spent longer in the room above the garage, and on the other they had had time to ride out of the city on his scooter – the day the photograph had been taken in the booth at a petrol station. Precious hours.
He heard the other men’s teeth chattering, and forced himself not to shiver in the early-morning cold: ‘Be brave,’ he muttered from the side of his mouth.
They were hurried forward now and hands gripped his arms. There were three nooses, and three metal-framed chairs with plastic seats, perhaps from the guards’ canteen.
He remembered how it had been with her when they had made love – some afternoons the scratches on his back were deep and bled.
If he shivered they would think he was frightened and would have won. He would give them nothing.
He carried her face in his mind. The second time he had met her Johnny had taken her clothes off gently, eased them away. At first she had been nervous, then hesitant – then she had defied her upbringing.
After arrest some talked of attempting to negotiate with an interrogator. Give him something in exchange for mercy. Johnny hadn’t. If he had given names, there would have been more boys alongside him, guilty of disputing barricades with the basij and countering the gas with petrol bombs and stones. If he had broken, the woman’s name might have slipped from him. He would have gone through fire to save her, and would dangle at the end of a rope to ensure her safety.
He could feel the tiny paper ball of her picture, clenched in his fist. They let him choose: he went to the centre chair, feeling the chilly wind on his cheeks. Beside each there were men who wore dull olive uniforms and black balaclavas to mask their faces. Why did it matter if those who were moments from death should see the features of their killers? He considered it a sign of cowardice.
Men crowded around him and he saw confusion in their expressions. He realised they didn’t understand why he was smiling. It was the dry smile he shared with others of his age who lived on the north side of the city, in the foothills, and demonstrated his contempt for them. Hands clutched at him, but Johnny made a sharp movement, and their grip loosened. They would have lifted him but he stepped up on to the chair. The noose was level with his face. They allowed for no drop so he would die by choking. He didn’t know if his name was on an Amnesty list, if telegrams requesting mercy had been sent from abroad to the Supreme Leader, or if anyone cared.
The photograph was a squashed pellet in his hand but her image lived with him. The others were at either side of him now, and a hooded man used a short stepladder to climb behind each one and put the noose in place. Johnny could feel the rope against his chin.
He clenched his hand, saw her, felt her and heard her laughter.
The stepladder had gone.
The sun was a little higher and lit him, as it had lit her through the windows of the room above the garage . . . He felt a hand on the chair back.
Johnny said clearly to those at either side of him, ‘Fuck them, guys – fuck them.’
The chair was pulled away. He kicked in the air and pain billowed in his throat. His breath came harder and his fists loosened. Johnny saw her face and, with the last of his strength, he tried to tighten his left hand. He saw and heard her . . . Would she remember him?
He didn’t know. He was losing the fight to live. His fist slackened and the paper pellet fell to the ground. Her picture would be among the rivers of urine that always gathered under the gallows on a hanging morning. A trusty would swill it towards the drain, with the photograph, and the sun would dry the ground. His last words, audible only to himself: ‘Fuck them.’
He felt himself slowly circling, and death was close.
Chapter 1
He was sitting on the bed and the girl, in front of him, knelt on the floor. His head was down and he did not look into her face.
The image on the screen in front of a woman in a locked room a floor below was monochrome, and the audio effects were good: she could hear him panting. The watcher and the occupants of the other room were quite different in origin and background but the sex trade had brought them together on that autumn evening. The madam of the brothel, which was above a small hotel on a poorly lit street, set back from the prime property overlooking the Gulf shore, was a Lebanese Christian from the port city of Jounieh. On her screen, fiddling with the man’s shoelaces, was a girl from the west of Ukraine; the low-wattage bulbs beside the bed hid the blemishes on her face and the dark roots of her dyed-blonde hair. The man was Iranian, which ensured that he had been allocated the room with the best camera and microphone.
The woman seldom commented on the punters who visited her eight-room establishment. It had a waiting area with a pretence at a cocktail bar, where temporarily unemployed girls waited, and a bathroom with two showers. There was a small curtained-off area, where the maid waited to change sheets, if necessary, and there was the room with the screens. The woman, large, her face caked with makeup, kept her eyes on the screen. She had already sized him up: he was pathetic.
The girl from Ukraine, a veteran of Paris, Berlin, Naples and Beirut – where she and the madam had met – was the best. In that light, any healthy male, the woman thought, would have been fighting to set his hands on her. He wasn’t. He sat slumped, head down, breathing fast. His shoes and socks were off, and now she removed his trousers. His hands rested on his belly.
Two Arabs had brought him to her premises. They had been with the Romanian girls, had paid, and left after the madam had told them their colleague required a ‘longer service’. The client with the Ukrainian girl was to be kept in the cubicle: the images and sounds were being recorded. The madam was not political, but the money she was paid each week came in dollar bills, and was substantial. She had been waiting for an Iranian, as had those who paid her each Thursday afternoon.
The girl folded the trousers and laid them on the chair against the wall where his jacket hung. The picture above the chair was of a couple copulating but the man seemed not to have looked at it.
Now the girl edged his legs aside and wriggled between them. She took his arms, prised open his fists, laid his fingers on her shoulders and began to undo his shirt. He was shaking and the his eyes were closed, as if he was unwilling to look at her breasts. The madam thought that if the Ukrainian couldn’t arouse the man, no one could. The shirt came off, was folded and laid on top of the trousers. The vest was next.
A bell rang. Annoyed at the interruption, the madam licked her lips, slipped out of her office, locked the door and went into the waiting area. Two Norwegian sailors, officers: they’d have taken a tender ashore and were here before they hit the hotel bars. A quick exchange of money, and two of her girls were chosen at random. She went back, locked the door, peered at the screen and turned up the sound.
The sex act held little interest for her. When she went on holiday – the Seychelles or the Maldives – she would buy the services of a teenage boy. It confused and amazed her that men paid so well for a woman. She already had this one’s money, but he was still sitting motionless on the bed.
The girl turned her head, eyebrows raised, towards the corner of the room where the lens was hidden. Then she went on with her job.
Her robe slid from her shoulders. She edged a little to her left and shifted her knees, exposing her breasts and crotch to the camera. Her hair hung down, hiding much of the man’s face as she kissed him. He didn’t hold her tightly; neither did he push her away. It was as if he endured it and didn’t know how to end it. He would not have wanted to opt out in front of the men who had brought him and be seen as a prude. They would have come to her brothel because her rates were competitive. She gave her cards to the bankers who occupied the high-rises near the harbour.
Iranians of interest came to the city to check bank accounts and work out how to counter financial sanctions, authorise transfers and make covert foreign investments. He had followed that route and those who had brought him had been pleasured at a discount. She chuckled. This man had paid the full price.
The Ukrainian girl had his pants off and, although the night was warm, he shivered, as if he were naked in the snow of the mountains above Beirut – the madam had known them as a child.
The girl was the best. She did what she could. She rubbed her nipples against his mouth, nose and cheeks. She did all that could have been expected of her, and failed.
