Dream of Darkness, page 13
‘Why did she go back to Uganda?’ asked Sairey.
‘They caught Uncle Ocen again. He’d infiltrated from Tanzania to make contact with Obote supporters still in Kampala. But four years of Idi had changed people. He was betrayed. They stuck him in Makindye military prison to start with. My mother returned as soon as she heard, unofficially you understand. My father was making the loud official protests about Ocen’s imprisonment. And then Ocen escaped, or was rescued, as the military were handing him over to the SRC, that’s the State Research Centre, Amin’s gestapo. He was badly injured and had to lie up somewhere till he recovered …’
‘He was in our house,’ said Sairey. ‘I remember that. He was in bed, all bandaged …’
‘Yes. Your parents took him in,’ said Allan. ‘And the authorities took my father in on suspicion of complicity in the escape. He was in Makindye, too, then they moved him … I don’t know what happened after that, except that he died.’
‘And your mother and uncle?’
‘Caught as they tried to get out of Kampala.’
‘And you heard nothing more?’
‘Crocodiles don’t send messages,’ he said savagely.
Her shock must have shown.
He said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but you asked. There was a letter, actually. Just one. No date, nothing specific, in case it got intercepted, but it seems to have been written between the time Ocen was fit enough to leave your parents’ house and the time they got caught. I’ll show you it if you’re going back to the Square. Your father borrowed it.’
‘Why?’
‘When people write their memoirs I suppose they get obsessive about documents. It’s all evidence in case someone accuses them of lying. Are you coming back?’
‘Yes,’ said Sairey. ‘There are a couple of things I’d like to pick up.’
They walked back to Masham Square in silence. Allan, she was interested to see, had his own key. The house was empty, at least, no one answered her call. He went into the study while she ran upstairs to her bedroom. Here she started digging round for heavy sweaters and thick trousers. This Indian summer couldn’t last for ever.
‘Here it is,’ said Allan.
She hadn’t heard him come into the room. He handed her a transparent plastic folder, inside which she could see a letter, written in lovely flowing copperplate.
‘Your father is very protective about documents,’ said Allan.
She sat on the bed and started to read. He stood at the window with his back to her, looking down into the little park where they’d first been reunited, the innocent child and her guide, her lapidi.
When she finished she didn’t know what she ought to say, so she said what she felt.
‘Allan, that’s a lovely letter. I wish that I had something like that. I wish …’
She stopped. There was no wish that expression didn’t make more painful. She sat perfectly still on the bed. She wasn’t crying, because what she felt was beyond tears. He came and sat beside her, expressing neither bewilderment nor concern, but simply putting his arm around her shoulders and turning her face towards his.
They were almost too close for proper focus but, curiously, her mind seemed to be seeing things in perfect rational detail. Her sexual experience was limited to medium-heavy petting and she’d not felt a deal of impatience to push back those limits. But it had to happen some time. If so, what better place than here, in her own room? What better partner than this golden boy whom she had adored in her forgotten childhood?
What better time than now?
She moved her face an inch nearer his and it was hint enough. His lips were soft without being sloppy, his mouth tasted of the salad dressing they had shared for lunch, his hands moved from caressing cloth to caressing flesh with little or no fumbling, and hers slid down to his crotch with no fear. He rolled her on to her back and she spread herself on the narrow bed where she had hugged her dolls and listened to the rain on the window-pane and known that it was the noise of scrabbling fingers …
There was a noise now. A door shutting. Her fingers dug into Allan’s slim shoulders, but he had heard it too and lay quite still above her, their flesh touching but not yet joined. Suddenly, she knew she would have to wait for a better time, a better place. In unison, their heads turned towards the door.
Fanny was standing there, regarding them, as if she’d come upon a pair of children playing snakes and ladders. On her face was that faint smile which looked like the surface manifestation of a deep private amusement. Seeing their eyes focus on her, she nodded pleasantly and moved away.
Physically, it was still possible, but there were imperatives beyond the needs of the flesh.
By mutual accord, without a word spoken, they rolled off the bed and began pulling on their clothes.
OP ANTENOR CO-OP 17/33/7 RESTRIC (NON-ATT)
DOC 13AA/FE
ORIG letter f. Apiyo Bright to son Allan Bright (TRANSC)
My dearest boy,
I have only little time to write as I have just heard of a friend who will take this over the border with him, not straight to you, for there are many enemies there, though smiling as friends, but south, where all are friends. Soon we shall follow, if God permits. Your uncle is well again and is living with me till the time comes to go. Before that, he was at the house of your little ‘sister’ where he was nursed with great kindness. Never forget that kindness, my son, even though it should stop. Sometimes goodness leads to evil and friendship to enmity because we understand ourselves even less than we understand each other.
Your father is not with us now, but I know he will be thinking of you with love. Remember, we talked of the bad men who are running our country? Well, there is much talk against them and I do not doubt that in a very short time the good people will throw them out and we can live here happily again as before. Meanwhile, though, your father has been taken by the bad men, but your little ‘sister’s’ father promises he will be all right and I believe him. I know you are all by yourself over there, but you must be brave. Remember that part of you is Acholi. If you had been brought up in my village, at the age of thirteen or fourteen you would have moved out of the family dwelling and your father would have helped you build your own hut to sleep in. This is how you must think of yourself now, as an Acholi boy, building for himself, a little younger than his cousins around Gulu, and without a father’s help. During the day at school, you must be still your father’s son, learning quickly all the modern knowledge which will help you in your future. But at night, remember your Acholi ancestors, practise the steps I taught you of the Larakaraka dance and imagine you can hear me singing you an Apiti song.
Now I must finish. My kind messenger is ready to go. He takes with him all the love of your mother and of your father, my little Acholi, my little European.
14
‘Vita. Was my father a spy?’
It would be nice, one day, to amaze Vita Gray. Sairey had not asked her question with that intent, but if she had done, she would have failed.
‘Was?’ said Vita, not raising her head from the book she was reading. ‘There are some professions, like medicine and priesthood, where the past tense is not strictly applicable.’
‘Is then?’
Now she looked up.
‘He is a man with a very high security clearance,’ she said.
They were sitting after supper in front of a smokey, not very warm, greenwood fire. Sairey had told Vita nothing of her meeting with Allan. She had lain awake all that night thinking at first of the sex act which had come so close, but then, and more disturbingly, of Apiyo’s letter to her son. It was the only letter he had received. There was no way of knowing if it was the only one she wrote. Her messenger may have been caught. Whatever happened to Ocen and Apiyo and Bill Bright, happened after this letter. To Allan, reading it now must be like looking over the edge of a black pit. What lay down there? Did he want to know what lay down there? She thought of the prison notes she had passed on to her father and was glad that she would not be the one to bring them to Allan’s attention. They had talked very personally after Fanny’s interruption, as if offering each to each a compensatory intimacy of mind. He had listened to her history of the Dream and said bitterly, ‘It seems a small price for the privilege of not remembering.’
‘What do you remember, then, that’s so terrible?’ she demanded, stung by this downgrading of her trauma.
‘I remember saying goodbye to my parents and never seeing them again. I remember getting that letter from my mother and counting the days till she came back to me. I remember the day my mind ran out of numbers. I remember your father coming to see me and telling me they were dead, and I remember not believing him. I remember running away from the people I was staying with and trying to get back to Uganda. I remember how their patience ran out after my third or fourth attempt and they showed me a photograph your father had left. It was a photo of my father, dead in his coffin.’
Instantly, the Dream rose in Sairey’s mind, sharp and clear though she was broad waking.
‘Are you all right?’ said Allan.
‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘It’s just so horrible. How could they do such a thing?’
‘It worked,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘He wasn’t easily recognizable, but one look and I knew. After that, I settled down.’
It sounded very cold, but when Sairey looked into his face she saw that it wasn’t coldness but control.
‘You waited,’ she said.
‘That’s right. Till it was over. Or at least, the part which involved Idi Dada was over. I went back, then. What was I looking for? Revenge? The consolation of shared grief? I found neither. Amin and his henchmen had fled. I went north, even though it was not yet safe. I went to my mother’s village. She had reminded me I was an Acholi boy, that I must be true to both sides of my inheritance, so I went in search of the only people I knew as family. The village was a scatter of cold ashes. I found out then what I presume my mother had long known, that after the coup, soldiers had ranged through Acholi land, killing the young men. More recently, Amin’s army in retreat had passed this way again, completing the job. So I went back to Nairobi, unavenged, unconsoled, and completed my education.
‘That is what I remember.’
She had wept then, and taken him in her arms and pressed him close. There had been no further sign of Fanny after her ill-timed appearance, but neither of them felt inclined to let this new closeness rekindle desire.
He had said, ‘Don’t cry, little Sairey. I am still your lapidi. I’ll keep harm from you if I can.’
‘And if you can’t?’ she had answered, trying to struggle back to self-control.
‘Then you, too, must be true to your inheritance. Be subtle as the snake, sharp-eyed as the hawk, patient as the crocodile which lies beneath the water waiting for the dik dik to stoop and drink.’ His tone was both serious and joking, but she could not see the joke.
‘That’s no part of my inheritance,’ she protested.
‘You think not?’ he said, all serious now. ‘We are all half and half, Sairey, even if it doesn’t stand out so clearly as with me. These are your father’s gifts. Use them.’
So here she was, staring into a dull fire, half her mother and half her father, and in no position to understand either half.
‘Why do you ask about your father?’ said Vita.
Sairey realized that by drifting off into this maze of thought, she had unconsciously turned one of Vita’s techniques against her, forcing a response by a long, absorbed silence.
‘I don’t know. I seem to spend all my time chasing after Mummy, trying to get a good look at her. Yet even when I’m sitting opposite Daddy, I’m not sure I really know him any better.’
‘So that makes you think he may be a spy?’
‘No. That would be silly. It makes me feel he judges very carefully how much of himself to show. I think he’ll always keep a piece in reserve, for a rainy day.’
Vita was amused by the expression and showed it in a gentle crinkling of the cheeks.
‘That’s still a long way from espionage,’ she said.
‘Is it?’ said Sairey. ‘I don’t mean a spy like James Bond or Burgess and Maclean. But something on the shady side of diplomacy. No one’s going to be much bothered by the memoirs of an agricultural advisor, are they?’
‘It takes a dumb man not to give offence and a deaf one not to take it,’ said Vita, as if she were quoting. ‘Has your father said something particular which has roused this interest?’
‘He would like me to go to America,’ said Sairey.
‘For a holiday?’
‘For safety, I think.’
Vita nodded, as if this confirmed something.
‘Did you find out whose?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean? What are you getting at?’ Sairey felt a sudden surge of indignation and rushed on. ‘Just because you don’t like Daddy, that’s no reason always to attribute the worst motives to him!’
‘I don’t,’ said Vita. ‘Nor, however, do I always attribute the best. Did you accept the offer?’
‘No!’
‘So the situation, whatever it is, remains unresolved. What will he do now?’
‘What can he do?’ demanded Sairey.
‘He could give up his memoirs.’
‘I don’t think he’ll do that.’
‘Probably not,’ agreed Vita. ‘On the other hand, I think he knows that a direct threat to you would be a last resort. You told him about meeting Kanyagga?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And that you’d met him before in Kent?’
‘Yes. And about the men in the jeep chasing him off.’
‘Did he seem surprised?’
‘No. Hey, perhaps that was Daddy’s doing – perhaps he’s been protecting me all along.’
She looked triumphantly at Vita, who nodded and said, ‘Perhaps. Certainly it was after that he agreed you should come here, which did require some explanation. But now he wants you further, safer, in America, which means …’
‘What?’
‘That he has decided to resist the other pressures that are being brought to bear.’
‘What other pressures, Vita? You talk as if you know something.’
‘Do I? I suppose the steps of reason have always smacked of secret knowledge to the unsophisticated mind. Which is why women, clever beyond their class, used to risk being burnt as witches.’
‘All right. I’m back in my place,’ cried Sairey. ‘Reason or knowledge, what are these other pressures he’s resisting?’
‘Blackmail. The law. The threat of personal violence. Which leaves violence against those near and dear. To wit, you.’
‘And Fanny. And Celia.’
‘Of course. I’d almost forgotten Fanny and Celia.’
She sounded, not puzzled, but interested as to why she should almost have forgotten Fanny and Celia. The ailing fire wheezed out a dying breath of sweet-smelling smoke. As it wreathed around Vita’s uncaring face, it struck Sairey that so she would probably have looked on a witch’s pyre, observing and analysing the reactions of the spectating citizenry.
‘Oh, this is all so silly,’ she suddenly burst out. ‘I’m sure there’s some simple explanation. All this business about his memoirs will turn out to be a load of rubbish. Don’t you think so, Vita? Isn’t it possible?’
Vita regarded her rather crossly.
‘There are two main stages of female maturation,’ she said acidly. ‘In the first, the child often plays at being adult. In the second, the adult finds it convenient to play at being a child.’
‘Just women? Not men?’ interrupted Sairey, anticipating and hoping to divert criticism.
‘Men rarely pass the first stage. The best women reach a third, in which they are content to be themselves.’
‘You’re saying I’m playing at being ignorant? Why should I do that?’
‘Because you’ve lost your mother and want to hang on to your father, even though you’re not absolutely certain he’s worth hanging on to. A child seeks reassurance, not knowledge.’
‘And a woman?’
‘Learns to live with truth.’ Vita closed her book. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now. We’ll make an early start tomorrow, if that’s OK. I have to be in town in the afternoon.’
‘We’re still going on, then?’
‘Of course. Unless you don’t want to. That’s the only reason I’ll stop. Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t know, I just thought maybe you felt, I mean …’
‘Sairey,’ said Vita patiently. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘What? Oh. I see. Really why, you mean? I suppose … I suppose because I want reassurance.’
Vita stood up, stooped, kissed Sairey on the forehead.
‘Goodnight, my dear,’ she said.
After Vita had left the room, Sairey sat staring into the dead fìre. Life seemed a long uphill struggle, particularly if all it promised was learning to live with the truth. What the hell was wrong with wanting reassurance? And what was so difficult about giving it?
She noticed that Vita had left her book on the arm of her chair. Usually, as in the case of Sairey’s Out of Africa left on the garden table, she was fussy to the point of obsession about the need to return books to their proper places. Perhaps, like the goodnight kiss, this was a sign of human weakness. Whether such a sign would be welcome, Sairey wasn’t sure.
She reached out and picked up the book. It was an edition of Dante’s Commedia, nicely bound, with gilt lettering. She let it fall open. Hadn’t this been one of those texts they used for the sortes, that random opening which hopefully revealed a passage of particular significance to the troubled opener? Not that she had much chance of finding guidance. Her Italian stopped at menus!
But the book fell open at a page of the English editor’s commentary, and Sairey started reading. It was clear why it had opened here. Vita must have been looking at this section recently, for the pencil she always held as she read had underscored a passage.
