Dream of Darkness, page 16
By the time she finished she was yelling and Fanny had stopped laughing. Her stepmother rose and came towards her, her glassless hand outstretched.
‘Sairey,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been insensitive, please, let’s …’
‘Don’t touch me!’ exclaimed Sairey, drawing back. ‘Don’t ever touch me. It’s too late. It’s far too late!’
She turned and ran out of the room, out of the house. Behind her, she heard Fanny calling but she did not pause till she was clinging to the park railings.
The rain had stopped, but scatters of drops were still being shaken from the trees by a rising wind, which sent dead leaves whispering across the glistening paths, like tiny crabs on the sea bed.
She thought of the last time she had run from the house to the doubtful haven of these stunted trees. Then she had encountered Allan Bright, her wounded boy.
Allan. She discovered in herself a burning need to see him, now. She didn’t waste time analysing it – perhaps she was afraid to – but she ran across the park and out the far side. A stray taxi, rare in this area at this time of evening, confirmed that this was what fate meant for her.
‘Where to?’ enquired the driver.
A moment of blankness, the beginnings of panic. Allan had given her his address … somewhere in Victoria … she’d written it down but she couldn’t recall what she’d done with … Then it popped into her mind, complete down to the post-code.
She did not doubt now that he would be at home. Nor did it matter that his expression as he opened the door had more of surprise than welcome in it. He seemed to think she’d come in anger, to demand an explanation for something, but she knew instinctively that there was no time for debate, either internal or external. She wanted him. She was going to use him. She put her arms round his neck, drew his face to hers and kissed him passionately. She sensed a hesitation in him. Almost she, too, hesitated. Then into her mind strayed what Vita once said about her mother – for her, choice was never about judgement, it was always about commitment.
She redoubled her pressure on his lips, forcing her tongue deep into his mouth. Then she let one hand slide down his belly beneath his waistband.
He was silkily hard. Now, there was no more hesitation. And this time there was no interruption either.
18
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to say, how was it for you?’
‘All right, how was it for you?’
Sairey considered, then said, ‘All things being equal, it was just about the best screw I’ve ever had.’
‘So I noticed,’ said Allan Bright.
‘There are still a few of us about, you know. Eighteen-year-old virgins.’
‘One less, now. Coffee?’
He rose from the narrow bed and went to switch his electric kettle on. He was totally unself-conscious about his nudity. His frame was too skinny for beauty, but the skin through which the shoulder bones and ribcage showed was like golden silk. Sairey tried to recall precisely what she had felt only a few minutes ago. Already, it was fading. There had been no ecstasy, that was for sure; some pain, but not enough to be a disincentive; and a strange feeling of invasion, which almost became union at the point where his body had arched like a golden bow, before going into spasm. At that moment he had ceased to be in control, so she was able at last to feel uncontrolled. It hadn’t lasted long. She wasn’t yet sure how much she liked it. But it had certainly left her feeling pleasantly relaxed.
She turned her head to look at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the rickety bedside table. She’d glimpsed it as they had first fallen rather awkwardly on to the bed. Only ten minutes had passed. Jesus, it felt much longer. Something tweaked at her mind about another clock and another distorted time-span. Then Allan said, ‘Here’s your coffee,’ and she had to struggle upright, making a conscious effort at unself-consciousness.
He didn’t return to bed but flopped down in the room’s only armchair. His expression was pensive, almost brooding.
She said, ‘Allan. You don’t seem as glad as I imagine a lot of men would be if a young woman came along and gave them her all.’
‘Is that what I’ve had?’ He tried to sound frivolous, but it didn’t come off.
‘So what’s wrong?’
He drank his coffee, watching her over the mug’s rim. The bedsitter was very small, but the chair and the bed seemed to be a gulf apart.
‘I feel guilty,’ he said.
‘Guilty? You’re not into Victorian standards, are you?’
‘No. But I shouldn’t have let it happen.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ said Sairey acidly. ‘But, given that you had no choice, why would you have chosen to say no, if you had?’
‘I think we may end up as enemies, Sairey,’ he said, his gaze falling to his mug.
‘Good Lord.’ She rose from the bed and stood beside him, her unself-consciousness entirely unassumed now. ‘Why? What’s happened? Is it something to do with Daddy?’
‘Why do you ask that?’ he said.
‘Because I can’t imagine it’s to do with me. I mean, you might not fancy me, but that’s not going to make us enemies, is it?’
She saw he was regarding her with a compassion which irritated her vastly. No one who looked so young should look so understanding. What she wanted to see mirrored in his face was her own emotional chaos. People like Vita, Celia, her father, were proper materials for towers of strength. All she wanted from Allan Bright was a willow cabin to rest in for a while.
‘What the hell is my father saying in this bloody book of his?’ she demanded angrily. ‘I can’t get straight answers from anyone. But I know it’s got everyone running around like the end of the world is nigh.’
Allan said, ‘Haven’t you asked your father?’
‘My father thinks the best treatment for inquisitive daughters is to send them off to America without any supper.’
‘He may be right. Sorry! Look, what he’s threatening to expose is the extent to which the UK, with active support from Kenya, backed Amin, and kept on backing him, even after Entebbe. Also, he promises to throw in, for good measure, details of covert help in sanctions-breaking: oil to Rhodesia, arms to South Africa, that sort of thing. And as an appendix, he says he’ll look at relations between Security and the ANC, which were improving recently in line with world trends, till a couple of ANC representatives got killed on their way to a secret meeting with the British.’
‘You keep on saying he “threatens”, or he “promises”. Haven’t you seen any of this stuff?’
‘A bit, but he keeps things pretty close to his chest. I suspect that until his ex-employers can actually prove that he has (a) written and (b) intends to publish secret material, they can’t actually set the law on him, which in any case is often worth a couple of million pounds of free publicity!’
‘So what will they do?’ she asked.
‘Use other channels, I suppose.’
What did that mean? She didn’t ask, but said, ‘Does he ever mention my mother in these memoirs?’
He said slowly, ‘Not much, that I’ve seen. But don’t read anything into that. These are professional memoirs. It’s the work that counts.’
‘But he must mention in passing that his wife died, for God’s sake!’
‘Yes. He does that.’
He hesitated, then rose and went to the tiny wardrobe which prevented the door to the landing opening fully. From its top he took a battered briefcase. In it was a sheaf of typewritten sheets. He riffled through them, picked out four or five and handed them to Sairey.
‘I’ve photocopied a few sections,’ he said.
‘Why? Does he know?’
The young man shrugged indifferently. Sairey’s eyes dropped to the first line. ‘In 1975 my wife died in tragic circumstances.’ She immediately lost all sense of her surroundings or Allan’s presence. When she finished reading, she found she was sitting on the bed with Allan beside her, his arm around her shoulders. She looked at him with eyes full of tears.
‘It isn’t much,’ she said.
‘I told you. It’s not that kind of work. But he seems to have felt it deeply.’
His tone didn’t ring true. She began to feel anger. It wasn’t much, and to suggest that it was less, reduced it to zero.
She said, ‘You don’t believe that, do you? You think he’s acting on paper.’
‘I don’t know what I think yet. Why are you so angry, Sairey? Because he hardly mentions you at all?’
She realized, instantly, how accurate this was, but it didn’t make her any less angry.
‘What the hell are you doing photocopying Daddy’s writing anyway? Are you some kind of spy?’
‘I’m just like you, Sairey, except that I lost my father as well as my mother,’ he said undramatically.
‘Oh God. Of course. I’m sorry.’ Her emotional tunnelvision had let her ignore that these pages were just as much about the death of Allan’s parents. She put her arms around him and tried to pull him close but he resisted. She looked into his face then and suddenly saw things clear.
‘Is this what you meant about us becoming enemies?’ she said incredulously. ‘You think my father was to blame for your mother’s death?’
His eyes confirmed that she was right. She went on, urgently, ‘Allan, that’s stupid. Ocen would have had to leave some time, and it was surely better not to run the risk of him being found in Daddy’s house. It was bad luck, terrible luck, that things happened as they did, but it wasn’t anybody’s fault.’
‘It’s always someone’s fault,’ he said harshly. Then his tense body relaxed a little and he added, ‘But perhaps not necessarily your father’s.’
It was a grudging withdrawal but she sensed it was the best she was going to get. She returned her attention to the printed sheets, reading with her full mind this time, not just the bit focused upon herself.
‘There, he says it. What you were talking about before. “It wasn’t till later that I was to discover the full extent of the covert aid to the Rhodesians and the South Africans and how far it went beyond oil and arms.” He hasn’t written about that yet, you say?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘But it will make a lot of people very angry when he does?’
‘What he’s written so far is enough to make people angry,’ said Allan.
‘How angry? Enough to harm him?’
‘Enough to want to stop him, certainly. But harm … I don’t think so.’
Again that false note. He was trying to reassure her. She said, ‘Why not? They harmed you, didn’t they?’
It was a wild, instinctive shot, but it struck home. He didn’t even bother to attempt a rebuttal. She put her hand to the fading scar on his cheek and said, ‘It wasn’t an accident you were in the park that night, was it?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I was watching the house.’
‘But why? You’d been in England for years without getting in touch. What happened to change things?’
He said, ‘I got a letter. It said, “If you want to know who really killed your mother and your father and your uncle, check it out with Nigel Ellis.” And it gave the Masham Square address. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d no idea your father was living in London. I’d deliberately set about losing touch with him. I just couldn’t bear anything which reminded me of my parents. He tried several times to see me when he came back to Nairobi after Amin fell, but I just refused, till finally he stopped. Now, I went looking for him. That night I had been at a party, that was true. And I was full of booze. So on my way home, when I realized how close I was to the Square, I diverted to have a look.’
‘But it wasn’t punks who beat you up.’
‘No. It was two men. They just got out of a car and this big blond guy started into me. He kept on calling me a fucking kaffir …’
‘And the other. Was he smaller, darker?’
‘Yes. You know them? They’re friends of yours?’
‘Not of mine. I think they’re called Kirkman and Cilliers and they sounded South African to me.’
‘To me, too,’ said Allan, with a reminiscent shudder. ‘The smaller one … ’
‘… Cilliers …’
‘… took my wallet and went through it and he found the note about my parents’ death. Then he laughed and said, “This mulatto might be on our team, after all.” The big guy stopped hitting me for a moment. I lashed out with my foot and, luckily, caught him in the crutch. I managed to pull free and dived over into the park. I got as far as the hut then collapsed. I heard a car pulling away …’
‘What kind of car did they have? A red BMW?’
‘No,’ he said, looking at her curiously. ‘It was a big black, jeep-type thing, Japanese, I think. Anyway, I hoped it was them but I wasn’t taking chances. I stayed put. After a while, I found the tap and started to clean myself up. Then suddenly someone was running along the path towards me. I nearly died of terror! Then I heard a voice calling, “Sairey, Sairey,” and I was back in Nairobi at your parents’ bungalow and your mother was alive and my mother was alive and the sun was shining and we all had a life to look forward to …’
It was a good cue for them to weep on each other’s shoulders, but Sairey was still thinking about cars and seeing the red BMW slowly cruising round the Square with Archbell peering out of the window, like a bear in a circus parade.
And then she saw Archbell peering into the window of another car, a taxi, and being handed a broad, A4-size envelope …
‘You photocopied this on Daddy’s copier?’
‘Yes.’ Allan sounded annoyed at this brusque diversion from nostalgic grief.
‘Does Fanny ever use the copier?’
‘I’ve heard her using it. Why?’
She stood up and began pulling on her clothes. Curiously, it was only when she was half dressed that any of the old self-consciousness returned, but she covered it by telling Allan about Fanny and Archbell.
He stopped looking annoyed and started looking interested.
‘You think Fanny could be leaking the memoirs to your father’s old employers?’
‘Why not? Archbell used to be his boss, and presumably he’s still working for the same people.’
‘But why should she …?’
‘I don’t know,’ she cried impatiently. ‘I’ve never been able to understand why Fanny does anything. But I’ve got to see Daddy straightaway. He’s got to be told, he might be in real danger.’
Allan regarded her with an expression which she could read quite clearly. He was wondering why, just because she’d managed to remain so unaware of what was going on, she should imagine everyone else had. But he didn’t say anything, possibly gauging that it was going to make no difference if he did.
He, too, started to dress.
‘You’ve been home and he wasn’t there?’ he asked as he wriggled his enviably slim thighs into his incredibly narrow jeans.
‘That’s right. But he’s got to come back some time. What time did he go out? Did he say where he was going?’
He looked surprised, then said, ‘Sorry, I should have said. I haven’t been in today. He rang first thing and said he wouldn’t be needing me.’
‘Shit. Let’s hope he’s got back, then.’
She was assuming Allan would be going with her, she realized. And he was assuming the same. In fact, it turned out to be even better. In the street he steered her towards a battle-scarred Fiat 125 and said, ‘Hop in.’
‘Hop? I’d land on the other side.’
‘Never mock a man’s first car,’ he said. ‘Crawl in!’
Number 28 was empty. She felt it again, even as she unlocked the door. But she went right through the house to make sure. Fanny had got changed and gone out. Her powder-blue suit was hanging outside her wardrobe.
When she returned downstairs she found Allan in the study. He looked perplexed.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘Everything’s gone.’
Sairey looked around. It seemed an exaggeration.
‘All the memoirs stuff, I mean,’ said Allan.
‘He’d hardly leave it lying around, would he?’
‘No. He kept it locked up,’ said Allan. ‘All safe and sound.’
As he spoke, he pulled open desk and filing cabinet drawers, bureau cupboards and finally the wall safe.
‘Gone,’ he repeated.
They stood and looked at each other and looked at the empty drawers and did not need to voice the question which was uppermost in both their minds. Who had emptied them? Nigel Ellis? Or …?
Sairey ran back upstairs to her father’s bedroom. She checked his wardrobe, then went on to the bathroom and checked the shelves there.
‘Well?’ asked Allan Bright from the doorway.
‘Nothing. He’s taken nothing. I mean, I suppose I can’t be absolutely sure about his clothes, but toothbrush, shaving gear, it’s all here.’
She didn’t realize how much despair was in her voice till Allan put his arms about her and started uttering words of comfort.
‘It’s nothing. He’ll be back. Why should anyone want to harm him now? All they’ve got to do is stick the Official Secrets Act on him and he’s gagged, in this country, anyway.’
‘Do you think that’s it? Do you think he may have hopped abroad to get his book published?’ she asked hopefully. ‘But surely he’d have let me know? Or let Fanny know. Unless he suspects she’s in league with Archbell. But she didn’t seem at all worried when we came back and he wasn’t there. But perhaps she knew …’
Her mind and her words were spiralling towards hysteria.
‘Sairey, calm down!’ ordered Allan. But she doubted if his simple pleas would have been enough. Then the telephone rang.
Allan got to it first.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Yes, it is. Yes, she’s here.’
He handed the receiver to Sairey.
‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘Your father.’
