by Sharon Maas
‘Come on, Inky’ she said, ‘Let’s go home.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
RIKA: THE SIXTIES
She knew he would come, and waited for his whistle. And there it was. He must have entered the yard through the alley. It was like a scene in a novel she might have written. She walked to the window and looked down. He stood just below, his face invisible in the darkness and only perceptible when he shone the torch he held in his hand upwards, to her. Behind him the white staves of the metal palings stood out against the blackness. Rajan himself wore dark clothes, which, considering the clandestine nature of their meeting, made sense. The front door was locked, as always. A good thing Devil was in the Pomeroon; he’d have barked the house down.
She had to talk to him, and it had to be here, in her room. She had to hold him, be held by him, feel his arms around her, his breath on her cheeks, his lips on hers.
‘Rajan!’ she whispered, and he whispered back.
‘I’m here!’
‘You have to climb up the lattice. I’ll shine the torch for you. Can you do it?’
Rajan was a good climber. She’d seen him in the mango tree, and scaling the coconut palm in her grandmother’s yard. This lattice, between the pillars of the Bottom House, was nothing for him. She shone the torch down on him and, catching him in the spotlight, signalled for him to climb up.
He switched off his own torch and tucked it into a pocket. She shone hers on to the lattice, lighting the way up for him. Gingerly, Rajan managed to place one foot in a diamond of the trellis; from there, he pulled himself up and searched for another hole with his other foot. Rika guided him with her light. He reached the top of the lattice and stretched his arm towards the windowsill.
At that very moment, Rika’s bedroom door flew open and the light flashed on. Rika cried out and whipped around, to face Dorothea. The torch clattered to her feet. In the darkness Rajan’s fingers groped for the window sill and missed; he lost his balance.
With a yell of terror, he fell backwards.
Rika swung around, picked up the torch and shone it downwards. Her hand shook as she searched the bushes down below for Rajan.
* * *
Later, people said that her scream of horror woke the neighbours four houses away, and set off the dogs of the whole city in a relayed volley of barking that bounced back and forth and never stopped until morning.
Rajan lay prostrate on the fence between the two properties. In the circle of light given by Rika’s torch he lay still and silent amidst the bougainvillea that had otherwise broken his fall, covered in blood, half-turned towards her, the crown of his head impaled by the pointed stave of a fence pole, like an arrow shot through from behind.
* * *
Rika’s screams woke not only the house but the neighbourhood. But after that nobody heard her. The street was in uproar, for rumours of the horror downstairs whipped from house to house and people came like flies to a feast. The house and yard spilled with people on the phone, shouting. Several sirens wailed in the distance and drew louder; a fire engine, police cars, emergency vehicles with lights flashing. People came rushing on foot; cars stopped, blocking the street. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.
Rika, alone in her room, could only surrender to her screams. Wave after wave of naked agony pummelled her to her bed where she banged her head again and again against the pillow, as if she could simply whack it out, knock it from her life, and scrape what she had seen from her soul. Make it unseen. Great guttural howls emerged from her throat, groans she didn’t make herself, animal sounds of a prey hunted down and dying on the jungle floor. Wave after wave of utmost unmitigated anguish, each surge containing the whole of herself, each one a tidal wave sweeping her away in its wake.
And then, suddenly, as if every last emotion, every last drop of torment had been spent in the tempest, there was nothing. Just cold empty reason. A chilling vacuum, a place where noise and inner pandemonium had been and now was cold and empty and chillingly rational.
She had to go.
She couldn’t stay in this house; in a matter of seconds home had become a house of horror. Her room was filled with the blood of Rajan. She had seen the worst sight a human being could see: the death of a beloved.
And she couldn’t stay under the same roof as her mother. She couldn’t even look at her mother again, not ever. Not ever not ever not ever. Not ever. She couldn’t even stay in this country. She just had to – go. With that insight she sprang to her feet, overcome by a fervent need for action; to do something, anything. To get away. Forget. Forever.
Rika grabbed her school bag and emptied it on the floor. She threw some clothes into it: underwear, jeans, T-shirts. She looked around: she possessed so little! She hesitated at the three new LP’s given to her by Uncle Matt: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Blonde on Blonde, and Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. How could she ever listen to music again in her life? A life that was over. She turned away and opened her sideboard drawer, because there were her true valuables: her passport and bank book, which she still had not returned to Granny’s desk – the only stroke of luck in the cataclysm of this night. She stuffed them into a small leather shoulder-bag, along with her purse and her few dollars of left-over cash.
Before leaving she gave a cursory glance around the room, and there it was, The Book of Mirdad. Rajan’s book; she had borrowed it so many years ago and never returned it, and he had never asked for it. That book: the beginning of everything. The only thing she had of his. Should she leave it or take it? If she took it, how could she forget? And yet – if there was anything that would help her make sense of this horror, anything that could begin to bring healing, it was that book. She walked back into the room, picked it up, and stuffed it into her bag.
She couldn’t leave by the front gate; there was too much action there, too many people. She slipped out of the gap in the fence for the very last time and went down the alleyway, into the street. Only once did she look back, and a sickening feeling engulfed her. An ambulance stood on the pavement outside the house. She had heard the wail of its siren, it now stood silent, its lights still flashing. What was the point? She had seen him; seen the stave bursting out of his skull, the blood. She shuddered. Could she ever wipe that last picture of Rajan from her mind? She pushed it away. She would never think of it again. This night had to go. Forever. She had to go, forever. How could she even breathe in this place, ever again?
She ran. Ran and ran and ran. North, towards the Sea Wall. Once there, she stood gazing out over the ocean, her body heaving under great deep sobbing, gasping breaths. It was as if there was no air, yet air was all around; the night sky vast and endless and the sea miles away. She thought for a moment of rushing into the sea and never returning, plunging into its waves as it crashed against the Wall, but the tide was out and the seashore was but an endless expanse of dried out hard undulating mud.
Where would she go? The great Utopias of Great Britain, America and Canada were closed to her: she did not have a visa for any of these countries. There was Trinidad, Barbados, one of the smaller islands. Would they find her there, bring her back? She’d have to take the risk; her options were limited.
Right now her only option was to run. Along the Sea Wall, she ran, eastwards. She would run as far as it would take her. Run to Suriname. Brazil. Just run and run.
Trixie! She could go to Trixie. Trixie lived in Subyranville, just past Kitty, along this very wall. If she kept running she’d get to Trixie’s house. She’d take this one step a time. One day at a time. One destination at a time. The first destination, the only one she could think of, was Trixie. Trixie would help her escape.
She ran and ran, along the Wall.
The hollow growl of a motorbike seeped into her consciousness, growing ever louder. Then it was right beside her, and not passing. She looked down, still running. Beside her, keeping pace with her on his Yamaha, was Jag. He was yelling something at her. Her name. She kept on running.
‘Rika! Rika, stop!’
She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t stop. She kept on running, along the Wall, faster, faster. The motorbike roared beside her.
Then silence. She realised he had switched off the motor, was doing something with the bike, but that was all behind her. She kept on running; running and crying, sobbing and running. Run, run, run to the end of the world.
Footsteps behind her, on the Wall. She didn’t glance back, but she knew he was there, behind her, catching up. Then his arms were around her. And only then she stopped running, and collapsed in a twitching, heaving, sobbing heap into his arms.
‘What’s the matter, Rika? Why are you here this time of night? It’s so dangerous! Where are you going?’
The words were like a switch, unleashing all her agony, all her rage. She screamed at him.
‘Let me go, let me go, I want to die! I hate you, go away! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’
She pummelled his chest with all her might, flinging her head back and forth as the words of loathing and wrath poured out of her. The more she pummelled the tighter he held her, all the while steadying her movement before they both fell off the Wall.
And then she was spent, every last atom of her fury used up, and she fell against him in a sobbing, blubbering heap. In Jag’s arms she sobbed and bawled and howled.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jag. ‘But I’m not all bad. Come.’
And then she let him lead her back to his Yamaha and climbed on behind him and let him take her home; to his home, not hers, for now she was homeless.
* * *
The next morning she crept out of Jag’s room while it was still dark. The watchman unlocked the gate for her and she slipped out into the cool pre-dawn. She walked along the Sea Wall back to town; once there she sat gazing out to sea until the sun had risen. The town would be stirring by now. She was hungry but she couldn’t eat. Maybe she could get a coffee somewhere. The bank would open at nine.
She withdrew all her money, changed it into US dollars. Then Rika got on a bus that would take her back the way she had come, but further, up to Ogle airport. At ten-thirty she was able to board a small interior plane to Lethem, in the Rupununi savannah bordering Brazil.
From there it was easy. She crossed the river into Brazil, and got a bus along the dusty road through the Amazon jungle to Boa Vista; from Boa Vista, a small plane to Manaus. From Manaus, the world lay open.
Nobody would ever track her down.
* * *
A month later Rika, having travelled up the Amazon River into Peru, and from the Peruvian rainforest over the Andes into Lima, wrote three postcards: one to Marion, one to Daddy, and one to Uncle Matt. The message in all three cards was the same: she was safe; they should not worry; and she was never coming home. She did not leave a return address. They would not hear from her again for over a decade.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
INKY: THE NOUGHTIES
The jolly tinkle of my ringtone wiggled its way through a deep and dreamless sleep. Automatically my hand reached for the mobile beside my bed and flicked it open. I opened my eyes a slit. ‘Neville,’ said the backlit screen. I groaned and contemplated rejecting the call but duty conquered sleep. I grunted something unintelligible.
‘Why can’t you people answer the house phone? And Rika’s bloody mobile is turned off. Do you know how much trouble I had to go to find out your number? I had to call Marion.’
Propped up on my elbow, still lost in a fog of forgetfulness, I only yawned in response to Neville’s fury. A moment later, though, all the horror, despair and final relief of last night rushed into my consciousness, a torn and tangled bundle of emotion. I struggled to think, to focus, to remember. Mum had rung Neville from the hospital phone with the bad news, told him to tell Norbert and Marion. On the way home at almost four a.m. she’d sent him a short text message: ‘Mum out of danger.’
Neville must have called the landline first thing in the morning. The mobile screen said seven a.m.
‘Didn’t hear it.’
‘Well, go on. How is she? Is she going to survive?’ Groggy from barely three hours of sleep, I updated him on the situation.
‘Well, I’m coming down. I’m just leaving home. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Norbert is coming too. He’s booked a ten a.m. flight. Please wait for me at home.’
‘Wait, wait … I don’t know when we’ll be home …’
‘Well, just be there, that’s all.’
‘Why don’t you go straight to the hospital? We’ll be going there later …’
‘Why should both of you go? What’s the point of going to hospital if she’s not conscious? Give me a bell if there’s any change … But really Inky, this is so typical of Rika. Why didn’t you make sure Mummy had her seat belt on? You know very well that your mother ...’
‘I did. I always do. Gran has the habit of secretly unlocking it. Says the strap bites her. Literally. Listen, Neville, Mum and I didn’t get much sleep last night. Can you not call again till …’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But listen Inky … what about the stamp? Have you secured it?’
‘The stamp? Oh, the Stamp. What do you mean?’
‘I mean exactly what I said. Have you made sure it’s safe?’
‘Not the slightest idea. I haven’t thought about the stamp in twenty-four hours.’
‘Well, you should! Really, Inky. You of all people should be watching out for things like this. You know Rika doesn’t. Has Mummy hidden it again or is it in her purse? Did she have a handbag with her when she had the accident? Did you check?’
‘The hospital gave us her handbag. It’s probably downstairs.’
‘Well, go and check it immediately.’
‘I most certainly will not! I’m going back to sleep. Look, Neville, we’ll talk about this later. I’m dead tired.’
‘Inky, no, wait…’
‘We’ll talk later. I have to go. Bye, Neville.’
‘Inky! Inky, wait!’
‘We’ll talk later. I have to go. Bye, Neville.’
I switched off the phone and wrapped the duvet around me, longing for more delicious sleep. But Neville had planted a bug in my brain, and there it crawled around. Yes, Gran was out of immediate danger but there was the worry about brain damage. What if that was indeed the case? What if she woke up out of anaesthesia and was a completely different person?
Last night that notion had made me weep for Gran. This morning it made me worry. For the stamp. Where was it? Only Gran knew. But what if Gran woke up today and didn’t know?
Finally I got out of bed. Mum’s bedroom door was open and I peeked in – still fast asleep. Obviously, she’d missed her four a.m. date with the laptop. I tiptoed downstairs. Gran’s handbag lay on the hallway sideboard.
I took it into the living room and sat down on the carpet. It was the same voluminous bag of green imitation leather she’d brought from Guyana, with a brass clasp at the top and two rope-like straps, already cracking apart, that fit over Gran’s shoulder so that she could hug the cushiony bulk of the bag under her armpit.
First I removed a stack of papers: grocery receipts, letters, a folded map of the area, several pamphlets from various organisations and a stack of ads for a variety of items ranging from hearing aids to car rentals, and a half-completed Sudoku torn from a newspaper. Delving deeper into the bag I removed a tiny London A-Z, a photograph wallet, a small bottle of Limacol (Gran had found a shop in Brixton that sold it), a box of throat lozenges, a beer coaster from a local pub, a couple of biros, a bottle-opener key-chain with no keys on it, another key-chain in the shape of a boxing glove in Guyana’s colours with several keys on it, a powder compact and a myriad other items. I tipped the bag upside-down so that the rest of its contents fell onto the carpet, tiny things like a book of matches, a hair-pin and a few stray pills of dubious identity.
I searched in an organised manner. First I went through the photo wallet and the purse, searching every secret flap for the stamp. No luck. I
returned to the now mostly empty handbag and looked in its side pockets, zipped open a side compartment. No stamp. Satisfied, I replaced all the items into the bag, stood up and replaced the bag on the sideboard.
By now I was quite wide awake, and totally immersed in my quest. Where would Gran have hidden the stamp? I decided the only way to find it would be to go through the whole room with a fine-tooth comb: start at one corner, and work my way through. I looked at the clock on her bedside table; ten past nine. How long would it take Neville to get here? It would be good if I could find the stamp before he arrived. Before he – and Norbert – began turning the place upside down themselves. I couldn’t let that happen. I was doing this for Mum’s sake, I told myself. To protect her from Neville and Norbert who, once they got their hot little hands on the stamp, would bully Mum into backing off which, knowing Mum and her total indifference to it, she would.
I started with Gran’s wardrobe. I removed all the clothes from it and laid them on the bed. I removed the stacks of clothing from the shelves: Gran’s neatly folded underwear, her blouses and nylon petticoats and the cotton dresses she’d brought from Guyana. The whole wardrobe smelt of Gran. Her scent, a melange of Limacol and face-powder, hair-oil and coconut and rose oils, and old-lady skin, enfolded me in an atmosphere redolent of her presence.
I didn’t hear Mum enter the room, so engrossed was I in my work. I only heard her voice.
‘What in the name of twenty million suns are you up to?’
I didn’t answer. I just stood there, staring back.
‘You sneaky little … little …’ Mum was lost for words, for an epithet terrible enough to describe my iniquity. I tried to calm her, reached out for her hand.
‘Mum, I …’